Haven’t posted in a while so a lot has happened…….
We went to Kigali for the weekend after our first week of work because we wanted some more time to check out the city. We stayed in a Youth Hostel called “Discover Rwanda”, it is run by an organization called AEGIS, which basically means it is run partly by genocide survivors. It seems like a pretty cool organization that runs all sorts of programs that support survivors from all backgrounds. It was nice to stay in a youth hostel because of the other youth as well, it was interesting to meet other travellers and learn about all the good spots to check out. We ended up going to a club on Friday night called KBC which was a lot like a club in Vancouver just with better dancing. Rogers and Cedric came out with us too and showed us how Rwandans party, and as a result we didn’t really get going on Saturday until about 2pm. Lama came and took us to a local market that had lots of used tools, used clothes and shoes, as well as spices, flours, and dried fish and meat. Later that night, Lama took us along with William, Cedric, and Rogers, to an old school reggae bar, which was pretty entertaining to say the least. Sunday we headed back to Gashora, which we soon realized feels like home.
The next week was a hard week of hot work. A few team members worked on the roof covering the patio of the Covaga weaving house. The “sky team”, as we call them, removed old sticks coving the patio and helped to build a new structure to support the new tin roof. Mayor is the contractor working on the roof and is now a part of our team, he quickly has planned and constructed a waterproof cover for the women so they can sit outside and weave, even when it is raining (which at this time of year is at least once everyday it seems). The rest of us worked mostly on digging holes moving huge rocks around and prepping the borders of the property for a new fence that will keep the chickens and goats out of the fields where we have planted onions along with the already planted cabbage and carrots (soon to be watermelon as well). It seems to be getting hotter everyday and the work gets harder, but the further we get on projects the more exciting it gets, to see what we have accomplished. Today the “sky team” painted the roof and it looks like they are pretty much done!!! Which is pretty amazing. We also put in and cemented a large section of fence posts.
This last weekend we woke up even earlier than we are used to during the week (which is really early) and met our safari driver, Claude, so that we could start our 2.5 hour journey toward Akagera Park. We knew that the park hosted a large array of animals but I don’t think we were prepared for the fields full of Giraffes and Zebras hanging out together, and the hippos and crocs swimming side by side. We also saw a bunch of Pumba looking like wart hogs and some bare bummed baboons. It was pretty crazy to see the open plains as the country is definitely known as the “land of thousand hills” for a reason. I often forget I am in the middle of Africa while I am here, because it already feels like home in Gashora, but the game in the park definitely snapped me back into the reality of where I am!
We have only been here for just over two weeks, but it definitely feels like a lot longer than that. The friends we have made so far, Rogers, William, Mayor, Cedric etc., will definitely not be easily forgotten. We are already thinking of ways we can come back or maybe bring them to us for a visit. I am excited for the next two weeks here but I am also trying to savour every moment, as I am nowhere near ready for it to end!
On Saturday I am going Gorilla trekking….wish me luck!
TaraCrone
DWC Team Member
Rwanda, May 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
May 10th: Getting to know some locals
We arrived in Gashora on Sunday with Lama and Cedric . Our hotel, La Palisse, is on the lake and has amazingly perfect landscaped grounds full with pineapple plants and greenery of all kinds. The grounds sit on a beautiful lake shore, and apparently there are hippos and crocodiles in the lake but I havn’t seen one yet, BUT I WILL! I won’t leave without seeing a Hippo! Our rooms are in a building a little ways up a hill and they are a little remnant of a convent, but in quaint fun kind of way. Lama and Cedric stayed over night with us here and then took the 1km walk into town where Covaga Women’s Initiative (cooperative) is. They introduced us to all of the women as well as two Rwandan University interns, Rogers and William, whom will be working with us at Covaga. We are really lucky to have them as they help us translate anything that we can’t sign to the children or to the women of Covaga. Rogers is a crazy guy who loves to talk about Rwanda, hip hop, and just life in general. Our fist day at lunch he spoke about the Rwandan heart and how he thinks it is a special heart that has the ability to forgive in a way that not many can, and although he has a lot of strong opinions, the Rwandan heart is one I definitely agree with. Forgiveness in any post conflict society is necessary for people to move forward and necessary for people to once again to live side by side, but there is also no denying that the people of Rwanda are very special.
The women have been very welcoming, they seem to warm up to us more and more each day. One day while we are waiting out the rain inside the newly built structure, one of them called me over. I thought she was going to show me how to weave but they just wanted to play with my hair! Which is great because I love having my hair played with, so what better way to pass the time. So far we have been working mostly in the field behind the building where they are growing a vegetable garden. The women work together in a row with hoes to overturn the soil, many of them with babies or youngsters tied on their backs with fabric. We try to keep up! We moved rocks and debris out of the way and for composting on the first day; on the second we measured out plots and transplanted onions; third we built a garden out of sticks and plastic that spells “Covaga” out in front of the building! Rogers said to us “ no one will ever forget who wrote Covaga”. I don’t know if that is true, but I know that I certainly will never forget. Today we dug holes for the posts of a new fence that will keep the goats out of the field.
Although the women are very welcoming, they are nothing compared to the children! We have acquired quite the fan club! The children meet us as we exit the hotel grounds and come up the hill, they work with us/watch us during the day, follow us when we go for lunch, and they walk us home at the end of the day! They love to yell “mazunga” which means white person! William tells us though that the president of Covaga is trying to teach them to call us friend in kinrwandan instead J. We have a few kids that are around a lot and we have gotten to know! One in particular, Odei or as we have named him "Big Dog", is pretty much always with us! He can most often be seen wearing our work gloves, one pair of our sunglasses and maybe even one of raincoats! He is pretty amazing and he seems to have a lot of say over the other children as well! We are not 100% sure of what his story is but we are pretty sure is Dad is in jail, and his mom committed suicide. From what we can tell he lives with an old man but again we can’t quite tell what the whole story is, but he has definitely become part of our little family here, which is hard because we cannot buy him food or give him water as this would single him out from the other children.
We are going to Kigali for the weekend after work tomorrow! We are going to explore the city a bit more and maybe see what the nightlife is like! Hopefully I will pick up so sick Rwandan dance moves!
TaraCrone
DWC Team Member
Rwanda, May 2012
The women have been very welcoming, they seem to warm up to us more and more each day. One day while we are waiting out the rain inside the newly built structure, one of them called me over. I thought she was going to show me how to weave but they just wanted to play with my hair! Which is great because I love having my hair played with, so what better way to pass the time. So far we have been working mostly in the field behind the building where they are growing a vegetable garden. The women work together in a row with hoes to overturn the soil, many of them with babies or youngsters tied on their backs with fabric. We try to keep up! We moved rocks and debris out of the way and for composting on the first day; on the second we measured out plots and transplanted onions; third we built a garden out of sticks and plastic that spells “Covaga” out in front of the building! Rogers said to us “ no one will ever forget who wrote Covaga”. I don’t know if that is true, but I know that I certainly will never forget. Today we dug holes for the posts of a new fence that will keep the goats out of the field.
Although the women are very welcoming, they are nothing compared to the children! We have acquired quite the fan club! The children meet us as we exit the hotel grounds and come up the hill, they work with us/watch us during the day, follow us when we go for lunch, and they walk us home at the end of the day! They love to yell “mazunga” which means white person! William tells us though that the president of Covaga is trying to teach them to call us friend in kinrwandan instead J. We have a few kids that are around a lot and we have gotten to know! One in particular, Odei or as we have named him "Big Dog", is pretty much always with us! He can most often be seen wearing our work gloves, one pair of our sunglasses and maybe even one of raincoats! He is pretty amazing and he seems to have a lot of say over the other children as well! We are not 100% sure of what his story is but we are pretty sure is Dad is in jail, and his mom committed suicide. From what we can tell he lives with an old man but again we can’t quite tell what the whole story is, but he has definitely become part of our little family here, which is hard because we cannot buy him food or give him water as this would single him out from the other children.
We are going to Kigali for the weekend after work tomorrow! We are going to explore the city a bit more and maybe see what the nightlife is like! Hopefully I will pick up so sick Rwandan dance moves!
TaraCrone
DWC Team Member
Rwanda, May 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
May 2012: Student team gets a warm welcome to Gashora
Everything is going great, we've been warmly welcomed into Gashora by Covaga and the community. So far we have participated in some planting on the farm, worked on installing steel roofing for the center and have been working on a fence around the farmland (including making holes, cutting and painting metal beams, and implanting them in the ground with concrete). We are working with two Rwandan agricultural students; both of them are lots of fun. The work isn't always consistent; sometimes we are rained out and we occasionally have to wait for direction or materials (we're operating on so-called "Africa time").
The team dynamic has been good so far, everyone seems to get along well. A few people have been sick, but nothing serious, just stomach issues no doubt due to different food, environment etc. Everyone has been enjoying the local cuisine, which is about 95% carbs with a little bit of protein. It's interesting having a meal of potatoes, yams, rice, bananas and beans.
Last weekend we visited Kigali where we went out to a local club with our agro student friends, checked out the big market at Kimirongo and went to a reggae show. This week was back to work, but tomorrow we will be taking a day trip to Akagera National Park to see some animals. The prospect of seeing wild elephants and giraffes has everyone excited.
We've all started picking up local habits and customs, and have been working on our Kinyarwandan. Our conversations go something like this:
"Maramutse!" (Good morning!)
"Miriwe, amokoro?" (hello, how are you?)
"Nimesa!" (Well!)
At this point we run out of things to say, but the communication is a riot regardless.
Jim Boyle
DWC Team Leader
Rwanda, May 2012
The team dynamic has been good so far, everyone seems to get along well. A few people have been sick, but nothing serious, just stomach issues no doubt due to different food, environment etc. Everyone has been enjoying the local cuisine, which is about 95% carbs with a little bit of protein. It's interesting having a meal of potatoes, yams, rice, bananas and beans.
Last weekend we visited Kigali where we went out to a local club with our agro student friends, checked out the big market at Kimirongo and went to a reggae show. This week was back to work, but tomorrow we will be taking a day trip to Akagera National Park to see some animals. The prospect of seeing wild elephants and giraffes has everyone excited.
We've all started picking up local habits and customs, and have been working on our Kinyarwandan. Our conversations go something like this:
"Maramutse!" (Good morning!)
"Miriwe, amokoro?" (hello, how are you?)
"Nimesa!" (Well!)
At this point we run out of things to say, but the communication is a riot regardless.
Jim Boyle
DWC Team Leader
Rwanda, May 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
May 7th: Arriving in Rwanda
After over 48 hours of travel we finally made it to Rwanda on Saturday. We ended up getting caught up in a storm in Chicago and had to sit on the tarmac for 2 hours, which caused us to miss our connecting flight in Zurich to Dubai. The airline re routed us through Frankfurt to Nairobi which was no big deal but when we got to Nairobi they weren’t sure where our plane to Kigali (the Capital of Rwanda) was and so we sat around for about six hours and let the Kenyans yell at the airline, eventually they “found” the plane and as we headed to the back to row 31 of the plane, which is where our tickets indicated that we should sit, we noticed that the plane only had 28 rows!! But they squeezed us in and found us seats, so no big deal; it’s all part of the experience J
Lama, the founder and head honcho of “Building Bridges with Rwanda”, the organization we are working with here, and his colleague Sedrick picked us up at the airport and showed us to our hotel for a quick freshen up! He then asked which of us wanted to join him to downtown as he had to help our team leader, Jim, pick up a cell phone. We all decided to join him for what we thought would be a bus ride, however before we knew it he had a caravan of motorcycles, or Motos, for us to taxi into the city centre. It was adventurous ride carving through cars and cutting people off, warning them with a honkhonk of course, and traveling at speeds I normally don’t even in a car, we made it (not with out my hand mark bruises on my drivers arms I’m sure).
Kigali is a beautiful city, it is clean and amazingly landscaped everywhere you look. There are huge roundabouts all throughout the city that remind me of Europe, and there palm trees lining the medians. The city is one of the cleanest I have seen, there are trash cans every where that say “help keep Kigali clean” and apparently the last Saturday of every month is dedicated to cleaning the city. Plastic bags are illegal, which is very cool because they often litter large cities in developing nations. Though all the statistics show that Rwanda suffers from great poverty, you wouldn’t really know it from cruising though streets of Kigali. Everyone tries their best to dress well and keep the streets and gardens looking immaculate. It wasn’t until our journey to our final destination of Gashora that we really started to see more intense signs of poverty.
On our way to Gashora we stopped at a Genocide Museum, which was extremely educational, beautiful and emotional. The museum was surrounded by beautiful gardens that all represented parts of the genocide, such as garden of self-protection, which was a garden of cactus. This was to represent that they needed to protect themselves as the international community failed to step in; a children’s garden filled with fruit trees as children are the fruit of life. As well as a fountain of rocks which represents reconciliation, each rock representing the rebuilding of Rwanda piece by piece.
After the museum we stopped at a former church that has been turned into a memorial site for the genocide. During the 100 day Genocide more than 5000 Tutsi people fled to this particular very small church to seek refuge, as in previous years churches had been protected, unfortunately many of priests were cooperating with the Hutu rebels, and most if not all of these 5000 Tutsis were killed in one day. Today, the church is filled with hundreds of skulls, pelvis bones, etc. laid out on display as a way not to forget. Blood and dirt stained clothing cover the walls and shoes are lined up by the front alter. It is an intense sight and extremely emotional to see first hand. The Sunday school building behind the church still has bloodstains on the wall from where they threw babies and children against it to kill them. It is impossible to comprehend and it is hard not to look at every single person here and wander what their story is, where they were during those 100 days in 1994, and how it has changed their lives.
The people here are so friendly and it is hard to understand where all their optimism comes from after learning about all that they have been through, but the more I talk to people the more I understand…..
We had our first day of work today so I will write more soon!!
TaraCrone
DWC Team Member
Rwanda, May 2012
Lama, the founder and head honcho of “Building Bridges with Rwanda”, the organization we are working with here, and his colleague Sedrick picked us up at the airport and showed us to our hotel for a quick freshen up! He then asked which of us wanted to join him to downtown as he had to help our team leader, Jim, pick up a cell phone. We all decided to join him for what we thought would be a bus ride, however before we knew it he had a caravan of motorcycles, or Motos, for us to taxi into the city centre. It was adventurous ride carving through cars and cutting people off, warning them with a honkhonk of course, and traveling at speeds I normally don’t even in a car, we made it (not with out my hand mark bruises on my drivers arms I’m sure).
Kigali is a beautiful city, it is clean and amazingly landscaped everywhere you look. There are huge roundabouts all throughout the city that remind me of Europe, and there palm trees lining the medians. The city is one of the cleanest I have seen, there are trash cans every where that say “help keep Kigali clean” and apparently the last Saturday of every month is dedicated to cleaning the city. Plastic bags are illegal, which is very cool because they often litter large cities in developing nations. Though all the statistics show that Rwanda suffers from great poverty, you wouldn’t really know it from cruising though streets of Kigali. Everyone tries their best to dress well and keep the streets and gardens looking immaculate. It wasn’t until our journey to our final destination of Gashora that we really started to see more intense signs of poverty.
On our way to Gashora we stopped at a Genocide Museum, which was extremely educational, beautiful and emotional. The museum was surrounded by beautiful gardens that all represented parts of the genocide, such as garden of self-protection, which was a garden of cactus. This was to represent that they needed to protect themselves as the international community failed to step in; a children’s garden filled with fruit trees as children are the fruit of life. As well as a fountain of rocks which represents reconciliation, each rock representing the rebuilding of Rwanda piece by piece.
After the museum we stopped at a former church that has been turned into a memorial site for the genocide. During the 100 day Genocide more than 5000 Tutsi people fled to this particular very small church to seek refuge, as in previous years churches had been protected, unfortunately many of priests were cooperating with the Hutu rebels, and most if not all of these 5000 Tutsis were killed in one day. Today, the church is filled with hundreds of skulls, pelvis bones, etc. laid out on display as a way not to forget. Blood and dirt stained clothing cover the walls and shoes are lined up by the front alter. It is an intense sight and extremely emotional to see first hand. The Sunday school building behind the church still has bloodstains on the wall from where they threw babies and children against it to kill them. It is impossible to comprehend and it is hard not to look at every single person here and wander what their story is, where they were during those 100 days in 1994, and how it has changed their lives.
The people here are so friendly and it is hard to understand where all their optimism comes from after learning about all that they have been through, but the more I talk to people the more I understand…..
We had our first day of work today so I will write more soon!!
TaraCrone
DWC Team Member
Rwanda, May 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)