Rwanda 2014: Day 3

Catch up on Part 1 of our Rwanda trip here
Part 2 here

FRIDAY | September 12th

6:00 AM

I am awakened by what I can only assume is either a party or a soccer game, judging by the clapping, whooping, hollering, and singing happening outside my window.

Irritated and a little confused, I could only be soothed by what was my first warm shower in Africa. After another huge breakfast with Phiona, it was time to head back to Nyabihu.

However, after I ate my nice breakfast and as we drove into the village, I couldn’t help but be overcome with an overwhelming sense of guilt. Here we are, in a nice truck, all in nice, clean clothes and shoes, with a expensive {yet borrowed} Kavu bag in my lap with a nice cell phone and $1000 worth of camera equipment in it. But with all this luxury, we are passing people, including small children, who walk miles every day just for water {and those jerry cans are heavy when they’re full!} or carrying whatever they can scrape up to the market to sell. Day in and day out, the children wear the same dirty clothes, shoes that their little toes are busting out of, and what they have on could very well be the only clothing they own. I almost felt ashamed to be an American and live a life with “I need more” attitude.

In my journal I wrote “It scares me to think that I will easily fall back into a normal life of wanting more and spending money on useless stuff.”

Since Cory and Jarrod had such a rough day on Thursday and we had so many to do, Phiona suggested they help us with the profiles and the boys definitely didn’t complain. Cory’s poor legs were so sore, he wasn’t even sure if he could climb a ladder.

Bless it.

It worked out really well though because since we were able to split into two groups, by 12pm we had finished interviewing all the children.

When Cory saw this, I’m pretty sure he was thanking God for getting him off the roof that morning.

Since a lot of the kids are hungry, it’s common to find them chewing on a piece of raw sugar cane. The two downsides to this are bad teeth and sharp edges that can cut their hands or gums. Just a moment after this picture, the little fella in the purple hoodie cut his hand pretty bad on the piece he was chewing on. I was sitting at the desk by the front of the school when I heard a cry and all I had to do was make eye contact with him–as soon as our eyes locked, he walked straight up to the school, up the stairs and right to me.

He came to me, y’all.

He could have gone up to Phiona or Anastas who were both there at the time, but even with a language barrier, something about the way our eyes connected reassured him that I could help him. I wasn’t sure why he was crying until he held up his clenched fist and as I pulled his little fingers back, I realized he was bleeding.

But I stopped as soon as I saw the blood. Partly because I don’t do blood- I have a weak stomach and often the sight of blood makes me queasy–but mainly because of the high risk of HIV in Africa. I gave him a wet wipe that I had in my bag–I had him straighten his finger out and gently wrapped the wipe around it and he balled his little fist back up and he went back to the other kids.

For the rest of the morning, I couldn’t help but think that I needed to do more. That little wipe wasn’t enough.

This little girl had found a piece of chalk and even though she doesn’t go and likely has never gone to school, she was looking through the door and copying the alphabet off the wall. They are so eager to learn and it puzzles me that these children aren’t in school.

The children dismissed for the day and this time, it was Jarrod and Cory’s turn to get bombarded.

Before they all scurried home, we took a few group photos.

With a cow.

Miss thang.

And just like the day before, they all walked home by themselves.

We had some time to kill so Onesimus, the other teacher, decided to show us around the campus which includes the church that Cory worked on last year and Onesimus’s house. We ran into his brother Jeremiah, whom Cory made friends with last year, and they welcomed us into their home.

Onesimus’s dad is the pastor at the church and his whole family are some of the sweetest people we met. His mother welcomed us into her home and kept talking about how beautiful we were and how it was just a ray of sunshine for us to be in her home and how happy they were to have us and how fat we were.

Hold up! Fat?

Apparently, that is a complement in Rwanda because it means that we are healthy and have plenty of food to eat.

She kept apologizing for not having any tea to give us, while cutting eyes at Onesimus for surprising her by bringing us over. We were invited over again so she could have something prepared.

After thinking about the little boy and his finger, I remembered Jarrod and I both had first aid kits in the truck and Jarrod mentioned that his had latex gloves in it. I asked Onesimus if it would be okay to look at the little guy’s finger and clean it up, this time properly.

This little boy reminded me why I was in Rwanda.

Over the past year, if you’d asked me why I felt called to Rwanda my response would have been “to love on some babies”. Over and over again, I felt like God was telling me to go to Rwanda and love on these children, to show them the love of Jesus, but I wasn’t sure how that love would come across. I held these children, hugged them, and played with them but never in a million years did I think that I would be able to stomach cleaning up a bloody finger. In that moment, it was clear. I was in Rwanda, loving on this sweet boy and fulfilling what God has called me to do.

And it’s all starting to make sense as to why my heart feels so strongly towards Nyabihu.

After splitting our sandwiches with Anastas, Onesimus, and Jeremiah we discussed the home visits we would be doing that afternoon. We had hoped to be split up so we could cover more ground but they couldn’t figure out a way to divide the two notebooks of interviews without us visiting the same homes. Phiona decided to stay behind at the school and let Onesimus translate for us since as their teacher, he knows where many of the children live.

So after a few minutes of resting and goofing off, we headed down the street to do some more home visits. You know, just the five of us.

And our entourage of 57 children.

This is the living room in one of the children’s homes. An entire family’s possessions. You can’t come back from this, and I wouldn’t want to.

There are so many dangerous activities that take place in Rwanda.

After dropping Phiona off at this crazy bus stop/market, we headed back to the hotel to find a bag waiting for us at the front desk. If you remember, the guys had gotten scorched on Thursday and at breakfast we asked Phiona if there was anywhere to buy Aloe.

There’s not, in case you’re wondering.

We had forgotten that she called Ben to ask and he called in a huge favor from his muzungu friend, Thomas, that we had met the day before. He had left us a bag of spiced cream and burn ointment, which we ran up to the room and smothered ourselves in.

After settling into our room, we realized we had run out of water, bananas, and bread–basically 80% of our Nyabihu diet, plus no tooth-brushing without bottles of water and this chick was gonna brush her teeth. However, we had no idea where to go to buy those things in Musanze, and Ben had already gone back to Kigali. Fortunately, Ben called a friend at the hotel and they had a guy lined up to guide us through town.

Two favors in one day!

I’m not gonna lie, as the sun went down, our guide was walking about 42 miles an hour through town, we got more and more separated and lost in the crowds of the agricultural market. If I had had a rope, I would’ve made our group all hold on to it, like preschoolers, so no one got lost. Especially after our guide shook our hands and walked off in the other direction, leaving us to find our own way back. I wouldn’t say we panicked but we may have jogged power walked back to the hotel.

Luckily I had Cory here to carry water like a Rwandan so we fit right in.

I feel so much safer.

Got our nanners.

After we got back, we were all starving but nobody wanted the usual Tawakal Restaurant meal of rice and beans.

Okay, Jarrod did.

I had a taste for some pizza after all the healthy Rwandan meals I had eaten, so in a moment of desperation I Googled “pizza in Rwanda”. Wouldn’t you know, the first result was basically across the street from our hotel.

This was our “super glad to be going to get pizza” face. Obviously, Jarrod wanted beans. These are your missionaries, folks.

A DOG!

The only pet dog I could find in Rwanda belonged to the pizza restaurant, which as you can see, was a really nice place, even if it was clearly geared towards Americans in both decor and menu. We had a great dinner that made us feel right at home half a world away.

Plus dogs.

As we were walking back into the hotel, we met a group from Seattle and jokingly made a comment around the lines of “hope you’ve got plenty of sunscreen because we learned the hard way, you can’t find any in Rwanda”. We laughed about it and headed into the guys room to watching a strange, ultra-grainy socc–I mean, football game.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door and the gentleman from Seattle handed Jarrod a bottle of sunscreen. He said this wasn’t his first trip to Rwanda and they had plenty to share. That makes the third favor for us in one day.

We were blessed.

Cory worked hard preparing for the next day, always doing his due diligence to make sure the team was provided for and ready for whatever came next, sweating and scraping tirelessly late into the night.

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