Rwanda 2014: Day 8

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 Part 7 here

WEDNESDAY | September 17th

Wednesday started off by dropping Cory, Jarrod, and Phiona off in Kane to work on the widow’s house while VP took Amber and me to meet Gaudence at Gahanga 1 Primary School to work on the profiles. There were only a few left to do with the primary-aged children, so for the first time, we were able to talk to secondary-aged students.

The thing about schools in Rwanda is that a student stays in the grade they are in until you are able to pass the exams so you may have 23-year-olds in their last year of secondary school.

While I really enjoyed all the younger children, it was so interesting to hear the stories and be able to carry on {short} conversations with the older students.

After finishing our interviews with the students at Gahanga 1, we moved onto Gatanga Primary School, which was about 15 minutes away but most of the kids were out of school that day so we headed across the street to Gatanga Secondary School.

While we were there, it started raining so VP went to pick up Jarrod and Cory since they couldn’t “work” in the rain.

When Cory and Jarrod told us about their day {and we saw them covered in dirt}, I just thought they must have worked super hard carrying lumber up the hill I talked about from the day before.

And while they did get really dirty tearing down two of the walls {because they couldn’t be salvaged}…

…and did have to carry lumber up the super steep hill…

…their pictures from the day told the real story.

After a little confusion, a mini freak-out by Yours Truly {not my finest moment} and Gaudence calming me down and telling me “Pardon Cory”, we headed back to Kane to hand out the clothes we brought from our supporters. This was something I really didn’t want to miss and may have let my passion come out too strongly.

Oops.

Gaudence just dressing this little lady with her new dress. By jamming it over her head.

Vianey was a huge help while we were doing this. Last year Cory and the team just randomly handed things out, and they couldn’t tell if the families that needed it the most got what they needed. Vianey had a list and let us know exactly how to make sure everyone got exactly what they needed and it made it so nice!

American clothes don’t quite fit the slim Rwandans every time!

The drum came out while we were finishing up and a celebration was about to begin!

Everybody was modeling their new clothes. It’s a rare thing for anyone in this village to get anything new, so it’s exciting for everyone to get something new all at once–it was a huge honor for us to be able to help with that and it made us feel really great to be part of it.

This shirt was pretty funny to us, especially since no one in the village had any idea what it said! We might want to think twice about what shirts we donate, though.

It was cool to see somebody in a SC Ride 4 Life shirt in Rwanda!

We made friends with this young man. The RCRI folks had been having some problems with him skipping school and running away, so they had made him promise to always be wearing his school uniform when they came by to visit, as he should have been either coming from or going to school when they came by. He had been doing a great job always being in his school uniform, but it turned out he was always wearing it because he didn’t have any other clothes to wear.

We didn’t have much in our donated clothing in his size, so we went through our bags and found some things that would fit him. We got super excited when he put on a ONE Community Church {our church} shirt!

Before this trip, I was so timid to pray in front of people. And by day 8, I was volunteering to pray over a whole village of people.

The muzungus in the back of the truck were attracting a lot of attention on the way back to town.

There were businesses all over the place called “Face Book Bar” or “Whatsapp Bar”, which are named after whatever apps or websites are popular at the time…possibly copyright violations? You decide.

Just outside Gahanga we found a little out-of-the-way restaurant called J. Lynn’s, that had strong wi-fi, bagels, pizzas, and COOKIES. Straight out of suburban USA. Benjamin walked in the door, stopped in his tracks, and said, “This is an American place. You will find bagels nowhere else in Rwanda”. Well American or not, the food was good and the wi-fi was fast, so it was a great place to stop for a meal and catch up.

After our late lunch, we headed to this little market that resembled an American jockey lot to do a little souvenir shopping. Thank goodness we had Gaudence and VP with us because the merchants were like piranhas trying to get us to come into each of their shops. But we found most of gifts there and Gaudence haggled all the prices for us.

#winning

That night we went to Gaudence’s house, where we told a bunch of stories, laughed, and ate an AMAZING meal {some sort of fried fish with this ranch sauce} that Gaudence cooked up for us. We had some great conversation, acted silly, and got to know her better, and it was a perfect end to a great day.

Cory and Jarrod complained about the flash on my camera so I asked them to be still so I could get a picture without it and I got this…

As we were leaving Gaudence’s house and backing down her almost vertical, impossibly narrow (with walls on both sides) driveway, VP told us to have faith, not be scared, and not to look behind us. He kept asking if we had faith he could back us down the driveway–and he wasn’t looking behind him either! The suspense was killing me so I had to look. He said I didn’t have faith because I looked and his faith was in the Trinity…once we got out of the driveway he told us when backing out to have faith in the Trinity–as he pointed to his rearview mirror and both side mirrors.

He’s hilarious, I tell ya.

And then Cory did this.

And we took the fuzziest group selfie of all times as we talked and goofed off well past midnight.