Rwanda
LAST DAY!
Mwaramutse!
I don’t even want to type this, but.. today is our last full day here in Rwanda. It absolutely breaks my heart. In such a short amount of time, this place has become my home and these people have become my family. Carl left this morning for Dubai to meet his wife, and we will miss him more than anyone knows! He has made this experience really special for us, and we cannot thank him enough. We’ve been working really hard the past three days on our collaborative piece, and tonight is the night it comes to fruition. It’s a really good piece with music, dance, original song and the themed scenes we worked on the other day. It’s gonna be great, and though for me, I found it a little difficult to work well with such a large group, it was important for me to learn to do that. It’s a bittersweet reality because I don’t want to leave, but I really miss people back home. Badly.
I want to say whole-heartedly that this trip has changed my life, but I truly believe this is just the beginning to my international exploration. Being the first time out of the continent I am comfortable with, I have slowly begun to realize that you cannot run from the burdens you have acquired at home but the people you meet on your journeys will help you shoulder burdens and begin to make them lighter.
This post will be really short because we’re on our way out the door. We’ll rehearse for most of the day, visit the Rebecca Davis Dance Company, who works here in Rwanda helping troubled youth through dance, then back to Ishyo at 5pm to warm up before the performance.
LAST DAY, HERE WE GO!
[Brittany]
All of the Things
Mwaramutse!
This post will be relatively short, but I’ve been lagging on my blog responsibilities. Simply because we do so much during the day and we spend time playing games together at night, and often, I’m too tired to wake up early in the morning. Especially this morning!
Last night, we went out dancing with members from Mashirika. We had so much fun. The transportation was a challenge. I don’t particularly like taking taxis, and all the drivers were competing for our attention, but this is the same anywhere. First, we went to the MTN Center, which is a shopping center and has a restaurant on the very top level with a balcony that overlooked parts of Kigali. It was very cool. Finally, we went to another place where we danced until the early morning. Totally worth the groggy eyes the morning.
But yesterday, we had an early rehearsal at 9am with Mashirika. We worked on developing the pieces we had created the day before, and adding some members to each of our groups. My piece, which was themed “Your story is my story”, evolved into something very different and just as powerful. It was a really awesome exercise, and I felt much better after, even though I had been feeling very much under the weather.
After this, we went to Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, which is an AWESOME place about an hour outside of Kigali. I think even Americans would want to go to school here. It is a independently funded boarding school, operating since 2009, where they house children who come from poor communities all over Rwanda and educate them. The students are exposed to many different path and allowed to choose their own. They choose from a combination of three general studies (ie; math, physics, geography, economics) as well as participating in something called an ‘enrichment program’. These enrichment programs include a wide variety of recreational subjects (ie; music, art, sports) as well as professional skills such as hospitality or agriculture. The boys and girls live in houses of about 16 students each, and have a guardian to guide them through their studies. It’s an incredible structured school, but the students learn to be empowered, educated, and can take their first steps to being independent.
Masirika visited with us at Shalom Village, and we both performed there. They have a amphitheater modeled after ancient Greek structure. How freaking cool is that? Check out this theater!
Some more pictures from Agahozo-Shalom. Their moto is “If you see far, you will go far”.
Visit their website to learn more about the village and volunteer opportunities. (http://www.asyv.org/home.html)
I’d love to blog all day about this really amazing place doing amazing things for the youth of Rwanda, but I’ve got to go get ready for the day. We are traveling to visit Gerard Cina, an entrepreneur, that comes from no formal education but has worked so incredibly hard to rebuild his community, provide shelter and food for the people, and give them jobs to be self-sustaining. I’m really excited to meeting him. Only five days left!
[Brittany]
I’m Late, I’m Late For a Very Important Date!
Hello there!
I know it’s been a few days since I’ve blogged but so much has been going on and I’m finding very little free time. But I will try to recap the last three days! This is probably only my second time blogging in the afternoon, but we had a late start on Thursday. I didn’t wake up until 7am, and we didn’t need to leave until 10:30 and actually, didn’t end up leaving until 11:15. We spent the entire morning at different markets buying gifts and souvenirs for our loved ones, and in my case, mostly myself. ;)
The day before that, Wednesday, we went to the town of Muhanga, which is Buffalo’s sister city. We visited many places with some guide from the Muhanga District Office. First, went to a school for the handicapped and deaf. Two of my fellow travelers knew sign language so they helped us communicate with the kids. They signed for us the Rwandan National Anthem, and we toured their school. The head masters there are doing very good work, and have even facilitated a sound booth for helping test children’s hearing. Then we visited a growing technical school that is continuing to construct and build new things for their students. Finally, we visited an educational school for growing teachers and performed our piece there. Also, (as if that wasn’t enough!) we went a really nice buffet with the Mayor of Muhanga. A woman mayor!
Today is Friday, we went to Giheme refugee camp outside of Kigali and met some amazing people. As soon as we parked, the children swarmed the car. There were so many of them! There are about 19,000 Congolese refugees living in this camp. And this is the biggest refugee camp out of four in Rwanda. There are many others in places like Uganda and Burundi, but Rwanda is the safest. We spoke with some of the students at one of their two schools, Hope School. The students there were about our age and very inspirational. Many of them have dreams to travel to America or study in University. The sad reality is that many of the people there will not make it out of the refugee camp. Some are even born and eventually die there. It is a very harsh truth that we must face, but until genocide in the Congo ends, there will always be refugees who will be fleeing. And though the camp is rough, it provides basic needs to the people and is much better than the place they came from. After we finished our time at Giheme, where we performed for the mass of people, we went home for lunch and a very brief moment to relax.
Finally, we went for our first official rehearsal back at Ishyo. Though I was beaten down from the day and had a hard time connecting with some of the exercises at first, we had a really awesome collaboration exercise. We brainstormed some words about our experience so far, then some overall themes. Each of us took one of the themes and created a short abstract piece representing that theme. My group’s was “Your story is my story”. And our piece turned out really awesome! I will post a video someday if I can. Our awesome videographers, Paige and Stacey, have documented a lot of our trip. But that’s all I can write for tonight, I’m way too tired. Goodnight!
[Brittany]
And on the Seventh Day…
Mwaramutse!
It is about 8pm on Wednesday the 11th here in Rwanda. It is the morning of our seventh day, which means this is the end our of first week here. And it has been unbelievable. If we had to go home today, I would be incredibly satisfied, but to know we have a whole other week to experience Rwanda is awesome.
I just wanted to take a minute to say ‘thank you’ to everyone who has been reading our blogs. Not just mine, but all of the students. Drew tells us every time he gets an email about it and it is incredibly humbling to know that there are people out there who care about our journey. So thank you!
And I just wanted to say a special ‘thank you’ to my boyfriend, Jake. He’s celebrating his 20th birthday today and I am so sad I won’t be there to share that with him. But I absolutely wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. I owe this amazing journey to you, gooba. I love you, happy birthday! :)
Baby and mama Zebra, from yesterday’s trip to Akagera National Park!
Yesterday is a little difficult for me to talk about. We went to Murambi, another genocide memorial, about three hours outside of the city. I won’t say much, but Murambi was a technical school that was in construction. During the genocide, anti-Tutsi radio were telling people to go these buildings where they would be protected. Murambi sits on top of one of the many Rwandan hills and can be seen from all angles around the countryside. This is why they chose Murambi, it was isolated and could be monitored. It was all strategic, the perpetrators didn’t do things without calculating them first. And this particular group of perpetrators were driven by four men, who would return to the site of the massacre and congratulate their soldiers on a job well done. After there were a significant amount of people at Murambi seeking refuge, they cut off the water supply. Any one who went out to gather water or fire wood was murdered on the spot. Once the group was weakened, the militia attacked. But even though they were starving, dehydrated and many sick, there were many stories about victims who fought back against their killers, even though the killers had guns and machetes, and they only had stones. At Murambi, 50,000 people were killed. At the memorial, they have decided to preserve some of the bodies (about 800) with lye. I don’t know if I agree with this, but that is what we saw yesterday.
The long buildings in the distance are Murambi. It can be seen from the road miles away.
Through this horrific site, standing on the grounds where thousands of lives were lost, we stepped away from the building and there were about a dozen local children who were smiling at us. They had seen us walking through the memorial, and ran from their homes to sit on a hill and look at us. They smiled, waved, laughed, and one of them was dancing! I don’t believe in God, but something powerful put those children in our path, on that day, during that hard journey, to remind us that behind us was Rwanda’s past, and this is Rwanda’s future.
After the memorial, we went back into Butare, since we passed through there on our way to Murambi, and went to the University of Rwanda. We saw Ingoma Nshya Women’s Initiative who are women drummers, and they were amazing! So full of spirit, and electricity, joy and power. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. These women aren’t students, they are women from all over the town who had a spark within them, and found themselves through drumming. We even got to get up and drum with them! They have been to New York City, partnered with an ice cream parlor called Blue Marble. Blue Marble set up an ice cream shop for them here in Butare so that the women would have a source of income. They manage the shop, where they make the ice cream from scratch. We got to go there and it was delicious. They hope to one day own the shop themselves. It was a really great experience after the day that we had.
On our three hour drive home, we played some riddle games, most that were taught to us by Carl, and had a lot to laugh about. It was a great way to end the day.
Here’s to the end of the week!
[Brittany]
