Rwanda 2014: Day 7

Catch up on Part 1 of our Rwanda trip here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here

TUESDAY | September 16th

After a busy week in Nyabihu and a late night getting back to Kigali, Ben suggested that we rest Tuesday morning. We must have been way more tired than any of us thought because we didn’t wake up until almost 9am. We had another big breakfast {oh, how I miss breakfast in Rwanda!} and spent the morning playing with Ben and Josephine’s daughter, Micaiah.

I reckon after the craziness the day before {speeding ticket and almost wrecking} Ben figured Cory needed a break from driving and had a driver meet us at the house at 1pm. Josephine warned us that we would need food in our bellies to be able to do the home visits for that day so we sat and had lunch with Alex the driver, otherwise known as “VP”, for the rest of the trip.

Here’s how Alex earned the name VP…

Alex:  {Asked Cory a question about our plan for the day that I can’t even remember now}

Cory: That’s up to you, Boss.

Alex: I’m not the boss. Ben’s the boss.

Cory: Okay, so you’re like the VP.

Jarrod: Yeeeah. VP!

And so it was.

We had so much fun with VP the rest of the trip! He was such a joy to be around.

Our first stop of the day was at Gahanga II Primary School, to meet Pastor Matias and wait on Ben and Phiona. While waiting, Pastor Matias walked us around the school and let us see the some of the classrooms. Pastor was telling us that they had 1162 kids enrolled, of which 53 are sponsored by RCRI.

And for those 1162 kids, there are 17 teachers.

17 teachers, y’all.

Pastor Matias’ house which is right beside the school and church. Pastor Matias is an older gentleman and he walks for miles around the neighboring communities every day visiting the people in their homes.

When we got back to the truck, Ben and Viani {a teacher at the school who also helps Ben out by keeping up with the children that attend Gahanga II and their families} where waiting on us. We headed into a small village called Kane, also known as the Potter’s Village, which is a few miles past the school and one of the poorest villages in Rwanda.

Viani {in the purple shirt} often visits the families and is very familiar with each child in this village that RCRI supports.

The majority of the village lies up the side of a mountain but there are a few homes at the basin where a river runs through. All they have here is the mud and clay so their only trade is to make pottery. We saw some of the pots and they are gorgeously hand crafted and would easily go for hundreds of dollars here in the states but they can’t get more than $2 or $3 out of them where they live.

They carried this bench from house to house so we would have somewhere to sit.

The people of this village have absolutely nothing and no way of providing food for their families. The dirt is full of rocks so many of them had very little to no crops and more so than in Nyabihu, the children had protruded bellies from malnutrition and starvation.

Their bellies were so hard.

We started walking straight up the side of this mountain to visit homes. And I mean straight up.

A chicken coop.

We spent the whole afternoon going from home to home, seeing the poverty over and over again, and it was just heart-wrenching. We spent more time in these homes since Ben was there and he makes it a point to get in more in-depth conversations with the families. He holds them accountable and makes sure they are going to church because the church can provide an immense sense of community and a support network for them. His passion for these children and their families shines through the conversations he has with them but this also means the we hear more of their stories. We heard from a father who was trying to quit smoking so that he could go to church, how their marriages were suffering because of what they are going through, and even heard about deaths of their children and how the parents don’t even know how their child died.

Seeing and hearing what we did was very emotional and left us all feeling numb.

See right over the roof of that house? That’s where we had just come from. Josephine wasn’t kidding around when she said we would need a big lunch!

We were taken to the top of the hill to meet a young widow who had several children. She struggled to pay her rent from month to month, but she had ownership of this house across from hers. If she could make the necessary rebuilding/repairs , she could live there with her family rent-free. Jarrod and Cory offered to help with the repairs for the next couple days while Amber and I continued on profiles in the Gahanga area.

This smile, y’all!

This little boy was so scared of us. Poor fella!

The only toy I saw while in Rwanda, and it was obviously made by one of the kids out of trash.

Sweet giggles from seeing their pictures on my camera and Amber’s phone.

After leaving Kane, we had to go Nakkumat because Cory needed deodorant. We had dropped Ben off to pick up Josephine’s car from the shop and VP was driving. He went to pass a car and there was a car in the other lane heading towards us. It freaked Amber out, who was sitting in the front seat, and she screamed and covered her eyes. As cool as cucumber, VP tells her not to cover her eyes because she needs to face her problems! He went on for a good five minutes about how she didn’t need to be scared, he had it under control and she must always face her problems.

The three of us in the back seat about lost it!

A few minutes later, while sitting in traffic, a lady was crossing the street when she almost walked out in front of a moped. The driver of the moped honked his horn, which stopped the lady, but as the moped passed her the driver reached out and smacked her right across the head! And the woman was okay with it! She just waited for him to pass and kept on walking.

Crazy, right?

After running into Ben at Bourbon Coffee {right outside Nakkumat} he told VP he could go on home and rode home with us. It was after 8:00pm before we got home and had dinner and we were all physically and emotionally drained.

We spent some time decompressing and discussing the day with Ben and Josephine before Ben prayed over the day. One line in the prayer that will always stick out in my head was “Thank you Lord for breaking our hearts even though you made them.”  Sometimes God has to break our hearts to teach us what He wants us to understand. We all went to bed Tuesday night with broken hearts, but a better understanding of why Ben does what he does.

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