Gashora

Gashora, our host community, lies beside one of Rwanda's many beautiful lakes. It is much dryer here than in Kigali and the hills are softer as though someone has rolled them out with a rolling pin. The community has been very welcoming, for quite a few this means a new pass time of watching the Muzungus while we work. We have made many friends, played a few games of basketball and have been practicing our Kinyarwanda. All in all Gashora will be a lovely home for the next two months.

Covaga is a women's collective working in Gashora to fight poverty though their incredible talent for weaving baskets made from water hyacinth and papyrus. The women are kind and seem to be constantly giggling usually at our attempts to speak Kinyarwanda. These women are strong, patient and empowered. They dress in colourful traditional dresses and sit comfortably in the shade weaving for hours. Sitting amongst them in silence can only be described as serenity.

Jen and Dan
DWC Student Team Leaders
Gashora, Rwanda, May 2010

Kigali

Surprisingly, the arrival of our 25 friends in Kigali has consumed most of our past week and has not allowed us access to a computer. For the first week of our African journey Dan and I spent our days exploring Kigali. Kigali is clean, beautiful and constantly bustling. The city is spread out over at least a dozen rolling lush green hills dotted with banana trees and corn fields. Brick houses line the dusty red roads.

Dan and I spent our days on crowded fifteen passenger city buses and slow moving motos and have enjoyed a constant diet of beans, rice, potato, banana and brechette(basically goat on a stick- the local favorite). We have met a dear friend Chistopher who has given us a incredibly warm welcome to Rwanda which has included several Rwandan lunches and tours around downtown. Chistopher has even been kind enough to invite us to his house where we enjoyed an evening of Rwandan beans and rice and of course rap music videos. What unites us always comes in surprising forms!

On May 15th Dan, Lama, Chistopher and myself spent the day meeting our host partners. At the Nelson Mandela center, just outside Kigali, we met the greenhelmets team from Germany who will be the architects on the Covaga center. Currently the team is working with the community to build a school for vocational training. We enjoyed a french cup of Rwandan coffee with the group then headed to Gashora to meet the Covaga women.


Jen and Dan
Student Team Leaders
Rwanda May 2010

African Scene

The travel took thirty hours, but we've landed safe and sound. we've met Lama Mugabo, our host and director of Building Bridges with Rwanda. we made it out last night- our first night in Kigali- and walked around, went to a few restaurants and had a few beers with Lama.

Not much has happened to this point, but I will leave you with a little anecdote:
Yesterday morning, we were flying into Nairobi International Airport. Having flown over night, it was the tail end of a long, dark, 9 hour flight. We flew over many things that we wished we would have been able to see; the sahara, Lake Victoria, the mountains of Kenya. but just as we were making our final approach, the sunrise poked gloriously over the horizon out the window over my left shoulder. The cocktail explosion of colors would be hard to do any justice by mere description but there was however two Kenyan men sitting directly behind me who summed it up best. They had been quiet for the duration of the flight, but seeing the sunrise one leaned over to the other and said to the other in his distinctive Swahili accent: "it's beautiful, no? this is an african scene."

Dan Couture
DWC Team Leader
Rwanda 2010

May and July 2010 Student Teams in Gashora, Rwanda.

vutika - be interested, be attracted, be fascinated

All news out of Africa is bad. It made me want to go there, though not for the horror, the hot spots, the massacre-and-earthquake stories you read in the newspaper; I wanted the pleasure of being in Africa.

- Theroux-