Rwanda 2018 | Days 10 & 11

Hi Friends! Happy Friday- at least I think it’s Friday! To be honest, I don’t which way is up or which way is down these days. We’ve been quarantined for 7 weeks and very rarely do I know the day of the week. When the quarantine first started, I thought to myself “Now will be the perfect time to get caught up on all the blog post I want to write” but I have really struggled to find a new normal being at home with Baker all day and trying to get work done for my actual, full- time job. My sleep schedule is way off, my days go by way too quickly, and by the time I sit down at night my brain is too frazzled from answering the 796 questions my three-year-old asks all day, every day to formulate a blog post. Life is weird right now and I know I’m not alone in that statement. 

If you would like to catch up on the previous Rwanda 2018 post, you can do that here. If not, let’s just jump on into Days 10 and 11 from Rwanda 2018. 

Tuesday | July 24th

Day 10:

Much like the day before, we had breakfast at the house then headed back to Gahanga to resume work on the house.

Over the entire summer of 2018, RCRI had an intern student named Heidi. We met her briefly the first night we were back in Kigali and got to see her again the morning of Day 10 when she showed up on a motorbike at the church. Let me just add how jealous I am of getting a whole summer in Rwanda.

This house we were working on was so much different then the houses the guys have worked on in the past because it was at the top of the road to Gahanga rather than further down towards Kane. They didn’t have the volunteers like they’ve had in the past because this house wasn’t in the “heart of the village”. It was kind of tucked away and I honestly don’t think people in the village knew they were there working.

When we arrived, there was one guy out there working and had a pile of dirt already dug for the guys. In some of the trash around the house, we found some banana beer bottles and the label said it had 16% alcohol content 😳.

As we were getting out of the car, Keneth said Ben was on his way to do home visits with us ladies. I didn’t want to get dirty (like slinging mud kind of dirty) before doing home visits so I hung back with Baker. This trip felt like a lot of sitting and waiting for the women (all due to a failure to plan on our part) and we discussed ideas to help with that in future years.

Crystal couldn’t take watching everyone else work so she hopped right in. That’s just who she is!

Gosh, she was so little. Sometimes I wonder if we were crazy for taking her to Rwanda but we’ve survived every year!

After an hour and half or so, Ben arrived and we were able to start home visits. I knew it would be difficult with Baker but that was just the nature of this trip. We piled into the car with Claude, Ben, and Vianey (all in the front seats, I should add) and headed to the first house.

The first house was one we had been to in the past and the lady recognized me. I stayed in for as long as possible but when Baker got fussy, asking for a cookie, I took her to the car so she wouldn’t disrupt the visit.

After the first house, we started down the road towards Kane. On the way down, we passed Idu’s grandmother walking with Solange. Idu was a child that Dorian and I had been introduced to the year before. Ben explained that Idu had been removed from the home and they were trying to get the other baby out since the grandmother was an alcoholic. It’s also my hope that we can get Solange out.

We picked up Joseph, the little boy Haven and Nak sponsor and he hopped right in Crystal’s lap. I immediately pulled out some of Baker’s apple sauce for him and Crystal gave him her water. It was very apparent that Joseph and Vianny have a close relationship.

The road into Kane was too bad for us to drive down to the bottom so we stopped about halfway, loaded Baker in the backpack, and started walking. We passed a man who saw we were struggling and cut us some walking sticks out of his woodpile because that’s what Rwandans do.

Home visits with Ben is a very different experience than with Keneth because Ben knows the deep-rooted history of many of these families. He goes into in-depth conversations with the families, he isn’t afraid to hold them accountable in a loving way, but he also isn’t afraid to tell us exactly what he hears from the families. We visited several homes of friends (Esther, Martha, Joseph), homes that our team had worked on in the past, as well as homes that have had severe issues.

We found families in despair and in ruins and tried our best to offer encouragement and hope. We found homes where the parents had left and only the children remained, trying to carve out a life on the side of that hill.

We found homes where food was so scarce that parents were on the brink of giving up, where parents leave just to spare themselves the pain of watching their children starve to death or die of easily treatable illnesses for lack of money for medicine.

We found homes where due to abuse young girls are pregnant over and over and left to try to care for these babies with no income and no idea of how.

During the last visit, we were at the home the guys worked on last year.  The mother has 5 or 6 kids- one is an older girl, maybe 10 years old, then there are 3 or 4 that are under the age of 4. The little girls were sitting and playing on a mattress in the living room. They would flip and just giggle and laugh and do it over and over again. I noticed none of them had underwear on though and wondered how they don’t get infections being exposed to all the dirt in their private parts.

These are just a few of the situations these families deal with, that we were trying to offer the hope and love of Jesus to, along with whatever small physical comfort we can bring, making home visits undoubtedly the hardest part of our trips.

Baker did very well while I was moving but would get fussy when I stopped to try to visit a home. Finally, on the way back up, she fell asleep in the backpack. Vianny took me by the hand and all but pulled me up most of the trek back to the car (which was straight uphill- pictured above).

As we were doing home visits, the guys finished some of the interior walls of the home, which involved digging more of the yard to make large piles of dirt, breaking the dirt up, mixing the mud to the right consistency, and applying the mud. The walls had degraded to the point that there were large gaps between the roof and the walls, so using the mud as mortar, they filled those gaps with rocks before applying mud to seal the openings. Joel, Jamie, and Kenny worked nonstop digging and mixing all day while Jordan and Cory applied mud to the walls.

Claude picked us up around 2:00 and Baker stayed asleep as we put her in her car seat. Crystal and Sarah went to check on the guys and the house and I stayed with Baker in the car at the church. About an hour later, everyone came our way and we headed home to clean up and head back out to town.

A few of us had to get a few more gifts and Jamie and Crystal wanted to look for new luggage because it’s so cheap in Rwanda. We headed downtown and pretty quickly, they found a set they liked for a good price. And I found a jersey for Gracie because I didn’t think about getting her one in Musanze.

Downtown Kigali is always a place that causes me anxiety, especially at night. It’s not because I don’t feel safe but there are just so many people, it’s hard to keep the group together. I had a momentary panic attack while Keneth was carrying Baker and got too far ahead of me when our group got split up. After hollering his name a few times, I’m guessing Jamie could hear the panic in my voice and ran ahead to catch him. There aren’t many situations that cause me to have anxiety like that but thankfully, Keneth understood. 

We stopped at a grocery store on the way home for some Panache and found Diabetes & Obesity 😂.

After getting home, we had an intense devotion recounting the day. Some days, devotions are short, simple, and to the point because the team is lacking the physical, spiritual, and emotional strength to discuss any further but after a day like this day, these discussions needed to happen for the sake of our team members.

Wednesday | July 25th

Day 11:

Day 11 was another challenging day for the team that ended in victory. Will we ever learn that God’s got us??

The ladies and I were all set Wednesday morning to go to a local high school that we work with and meet with a young ladies’ group to counsel them, answer their questions, and encourage them. We found out early that morning that the school was not going to allow the girls to miss class as planned due to exams, so we weren’t going to be able to meet with them until late afternoon. So with that change of plans, we all headed over to Gahanga as one big group again to the mother’s house that we’d been working on. On the way, the guys had a big discussion about how physically beat down they were and how much of a struggle the day was going to be with no help from the village. They were also discouraged about the fact that they weren’t going to finish the house because the scope of work was so large and the time so limited, but they admonished themselves to have hope in the power of the Lord and that He could do anything, and that all they could do was do their best.

BUT GOD! 

When we arrived, we found a crew of ten men working like madmen on the house and they had gotten there so early they had nearly finished the outside of the house before we arrived! Energized by the help and the progress, the guys jumped in and worked insanely hard the rest of the day to finish inside and outside.

The ladies stayed until around lunchtime and then returned home to plan and prepare for the young ladies’ meeting. On the way home, Claude took us on the new road between Gahanga and the house we are staying in, which was a huge shortcut to the house we were staying. When I say new, I mean parts of it still weren’t paved. Rwanda is a very small country but one of the most densely populated African countries so it was very weird to see parts of the city that haven’t been developed yet. After 4 years, this was the first time I had seen so much undeveloped land and not to mention, huge equipment in Rwanda.  

I also noticed more police cars and police motorcycles driving around this year. Rwanda has always had a pretty heavy police force but in the past, you saw them mainly standing on the side of the road (just an officer, no vehicle). 

By the time it was time for the guys to leave to take over Baker duty and see the ladies off, the house was nearly 85-90% finished. They left it in the hands of the crew boss who promised to finish the job and got a photo with the crew who worked so hard beside them and saved the project for us. 

And our old friend Paul, who lives in the village but also worked for the crew that showed up, worked with them. He is such a fun young man to be around and always wants to serve us while he is around. He wanted to be sure to help clean the guy’s feet from stomping in the mud. 

Even though we had a microwave at the house, we couldn’t find any microwaveable popcorn at the grocery store the night before (I always bring some with me but forgot it this year!). We did, however, find popcorn kernels so Crystal, Sarah, and I cooked some popcorn on the stove for lunch. We got ready and once the guys got home, we went by the office to drop off the sanitary items we had, picked up Jo and Michaiah, and headed to Kicukiro to meet with the girls.

The guys spent the rest of the day cleaning around the house because Cory and Joel (if you know, you know), changing sheets, doing laundry, and other such acts of domestication.

We were able to meet with the girls including Josiane, who is sponsored by the ONEsisters group. It was a great time of fellowship and devotion, with the girls having the opportunity to ask lots of questions and get a lot of encouragement from our ladies. These girls struggle with many of the same problems young ladies in America do, from boy problems to feminine hygiene to the questions of a young Christian that needs a spiritual leader. They also face issues that are unique to their situations, from abuse to poverty, to ways to manage their feminine issues, and not miss school because of a lack of hygiene products. Not only did we come equipped with such products, but we were able to offer encouragement and spiritual guidance as well as instruct the ladies on seeking help for their issues in the right places. Crystal was such a blessing to have at this meeting. Her experience as being a housemother at a local children’s home, as well as raising her own kids was vital. Even though I’m a mother, I’ve never had to mother a teenage girl and Crystal was able to use her experience and bless these young ladies. 

Many of these ladies came from other schools and stayed after school to meet with us. We were so thankful for their time!

We all reconvened at the house for dinner and took inventory of the last of our supplies that we intended to distribute the next day.

There are many experiences and relationships that I am thankful for before, during, and after these trips but I sure do enjoy getting to watch Baker form relationships with the team members and vice versa. She sure did love her Jommie (how she said Jamie). 

We did our best to make a plan for our final days in-country but found it challenging to find a realistic and efficient way to visit a couple of families, distribute some supplies, and finish up some final “housekeeping” we needed to do as it concerns specific families, children, and needs we would like to meet while also meeting with the university students who completed the RCRI program and are beneficiaries of the Randy Ruble Scholarship. Our 2017 team was part of the inaugural gifting of this scholarship the previous October and Joel planned to address these beneficiaries while the ladies delivered backpacks with small gifts inside to these students. As we closed out the night, we prayed that our final days were pleasing to the Lord and productive, but that the team was able to breathe and be present spiritually and emotionally as we hurtled towards departure.