Rwanda 2014: Day 2

Catch up on part 1 of our Rwanda trip here.

THURSDAY | September 11th

Our first morning in Musanze started with war.

Muzungu* vs. Death Wasp.

Cory posted a Facebook status recounting our adventure so I’ll just share his side of it because he’s a better story teller than myself.

I promise you, it wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill black wasp. It was huge and scared the living daylights out of me when it came flying around my head while brushing my teeth. This wasn’t the wasp but a similar one Cory discovered in his room the next day. Tell me that thing isn’t abnormally large!

After Ninja Cory speared the wasp with a throwing star plastic knife, I got in the shower in anticipation of having hot water and washing my hair. Wrong! I had about 5 seconds of hot water but if you turned the water completely off and turned it back on real fast you had a few more seconds of warm water. Weird, right?

We headed to meet Ben and Phiona for breakfast at 7:00am {ok, yeah, so it was more like 7:15. We were late for everything in Rwanda} and we had this gigantic breakfast of toast, passion fruit, papaya, pineapple, bananas, and an omelet.

I didn’t mean to eat so much. They just kept bringing us plate after plate and their fruit is SO much better than ours.

Over breakfast, Ben shared from Ephesians 6:10 about being an ambassador of Christ and wearing His armor. All I could think about was all of the spiritual warfare we had already faced leading up to the trip so I declared that “no matter what, I will do what it takes to be an ambassador of Christ today“.

After grabbing our stuff for the day, we started the 40-mile ride from Musanze to Nyabihu, which is where the school is located. Since Phiona had taken public transportation the day before, she rode with us and Ben took a bus.

One thing Cory was not exaggerating on was how many times we heard “Muzungu*” as we drove by. We really didn’t hear it much the first day in Kigali but the children “out in the boonies” of Nyabihu were so excited {those that weren’t afraid of us} and would even run after our truck and try to get on the back.

When we got to Nyabihu, Anastas, one of the teachers, {in the striped shirt} set up a table and chair for us to work from in front of the window. We could see hundreds of little hands waving at us from their seats and if they got brave, they would slip over to the window and peek out at us. Cory and Jarrod did a few songs with them before they started working on the construction and I was totally jealous.

One of our main goals while in Rwanda was to create profiles for the children to provide information to their sponsors, so that morning while the children were in school we had them come out one by one so we could snap a few pictures and ask them a few basic questions about themselves.

We hadn’t even been there 30 minutes when this little girl came outside looking like she was going to cry. Phiona asked her why she looked so sad and she told her it was because she was so hungry.

Knife in my heart.

I’m not sure how these kids got the nickname of the “dusty kids” but it’s what Cory called them last year and it just kind of stuck. They aren’t in school {even though Nyabihu Christian Academy is free} and they just hang out in the hills all day.

Getting dusty.

Oh.

While we were working on the profiles, the guys were staring death in the face.

Or helping with construction on the new building.

Around 12pm, the children were dismissed from school to go home, but when they discovered me and Amber sitting outside with our cameras we got bombarded {in the best possible way}. Please notice Henriette, the one with the little ‘fro, and the sass she is walking with.

Love, love, love her!

I’ll let these pictures speak for themselves…

Babies holding babies, y’all.

After about 30 minutes, they slowly lost interest in having their pictures taken {and seeing the pictures} and began walking home. Y’all, this little girl in the skirt was 3 years old. And every day she walks. home. by. herself.

After the children left, the construction workers took their lunch break {much to the boys’ relief!} and it was decided that Amber and I would spend the afternoon doing home visits around the village to verify some of the answers we had received from the children and get more in-depth answers from the parents.

Remember when I said I had declared to myself that “no matter what, I will do what it takes to be an ambassador of Christ today” well don’t ya know He made sure what I said was true. Apparently the milk I had in my African tea at breakfast was fresh raw milk and it did not sit well on my stomach. I’m talking about some devilish stomach cramps that had me doubled over and sweating bullets soon after this picture was snapped.

When asked if I felt like doing the home visits, I could have easily said no because I for real felt like death. But “no matter what, I will do what it takes” so I sucked it up and agreed to go.

My stomach didn’t cramp one time while walking around that afternoon.

#praisejesus

Precious? YES

Hilarious? YES

Safe? bahahaha

Suspected gang activity outside the store.

Public restroom facilities.

Little ducklings.

After visiting five homes, Phiona was ready to call it a day so we headed back to the school to meet back up with the boys. We were pretty hungry because we didn’t eat lunch so we busted out the sandwiches and handed Phiona one {who was sitting outside in front of the dusty kids}. I was unsure of where we were supposed to eat so Amber and I sat down with her. Our lunch was nothing spectacular–peanut butter and jelly sandwiches–but as I started to eat, I couldn’t help but feel the eyes of hungry dusty kids staring at me.

Should I just split it up between the 5 or 6 kids there? Would it cause even bigger problems if I did? It made me so sick to my stomach just thinking of eating in front of them, I couldn’t finish the sandwich.

Later, I asked Cory if that would have been okay to share it with them and he said that as hard as it was not to, it could have easily become a sticky situation if it looked to all the kids and adults around like we were giving away food, especially since we didn’t have enough.

While waiting on the guys to get done, we sorted and took inventory of the school supplies we brought with us and snapped some pictures of the school. It still blows my mind that just one short year ago, this building was just a rock foundation and barely any walls. It’s come so far!

As we were coming back into Musanze, Ben called Phiona and asked us to meet him at the Gorilla Hotel. We had no idea why but when we got there, he was meeting with a man named Bishop John and two of his colleagues–influential Christian men who are leaders not only in the world of ministry, but in the national government. The boys were a little ashamed to be on the lawn of a luxury hotel meeting government officials in suits while they were covered in red dirt, sweat, and Spider-Man t-shirts, but the men were very gracious and prayed with us before leaving.

Once we returned to the hotel, nobody felt like getting ready and going back out to eat at a restaurant {except Phiona and we didn’t realize she had left to eat by herself. Oops!}. Luckily, Jarrod saved the day with some prepackaged chicken salad and beef jerky.

Delicious AND nutritious.

We all hung out in the boys’ room until bedtime–see, it turned out that their room had wifi, and our room had water so a treaty was in order. That’s when the boys let us in on the real story of the day: apparently Rwandan construction methods and the American construction methods that the guys are used to are very different things. We learned from the guys that the wood is harder, the conditions vastly more dangerous, the tools are rougher, and the instructions are cloudier–all of which resulted in Jarrod hitting himself in the face with a hammer {three times!} and the Rwandan workers laughing all day and saying “muzungu* sorry”! Combine that with Cory’s paralyzing fear of heights {while being forced to walk out on broomstick-sized boards thirty feet above jagged volcanic rock–0% chance of survival} and both Jarrod and Cory getting literally blistered with sunburn {Jessica offered me a bottle of sunscreen at the airport but I turned it down thinking we wouldn’t need it} and you get a day chock full of lessons in humility for the boys.

After a bout of silliness resulting from making fun of the guys {and exhaustion}, Cory kicked Amber and me out so he could have some peace and quiet to work on his sermon. We all collapsed from exhaustion, dreaming sweet dreams of those sweet babies’ faces.

*Kinyarwanda for “white person”