Hello everyone!
Sorry that it has been so long. I am also sorry if this blog is short, but we don't know when the internet will cut out, and the power has been going off every five minutes. I can say we are definitely in rainy season now - we are all losing our tans and making sure our ponchos are always on hand! Rainy season, means monsoon season. If it rains, it pours!
Our second week in Gisenyi was good, we made trips to the hospitals (it was very moving this last time) we worked with the church, we went to the lake and local basketball courts just to simply talk to the locals of the town and over the days we built up relationships. We also worked in a doll shop, somedays we didn't have a translator so we jusst sat and smiled at the women (it sounds like nothing - but smiles have started to communicate a lot here!) but the days we had testimonies we answered their questions about our lives and asked them about theirs. It was great - and we are going back to them after our weeks here in Buatre.
While in Butare I also experienced that bed bugs are very very real! I woke up one morning to over 50 bites all over our body! It was/still is awful! I feel like I have chicken pox, they are soo itchy and they itch for days and days and days! So bad! I really hope they don't scar, I have them on my face, arms, legs, stomach, back - you name it and it's there! Whitney has been great, lathering me in cream before I go to bed - basically all over my body. I also feel like a child as people yell "Lauren!" in the middle of their conversation with someone else because they see me out of the corner of their eye scratching like mad. They said the next step is a straight jacket. Just hoping they don't scar, especially those on the face!
We met a woman named Joy who told us her account of the genocide. She went into a lot of detail which was difficult, but necessary for us to understand. As she told her story, we saw her mutilated hand fly back and forth as she loved talking with her hands, soldiers had cut off her finger when she refused to tell where people she was hiding were. I have the written account which I am bringing home, and it would take a few hours to even tell you everything - but she is one of the bravest women I have ever met, and she still has a joy inside of her. She has been raped, beaten, hurt, her family killed infront of her, and when you meet her you would say that she has the brightest smile in the world.
So we have been in Butare for a week. We are working with the sweetest old woman ever - she is 81 years old and full of life. She is hilarious! She reminds of a mixture between Betty White and my own grandma - I am going to be so sad to leave her. She is a widow, when her husband died she decided to leave everything she has and move to Rwanda to help the orphans and widows here. She has opened a workshop - an amazing workshop, which is where we have been working. In this workshop work orphans and widows who are paid for everything they make. Whether it be dolls, jewelery, bags, uniforms, wooden sculptures or even working in the fields. Right now they don't have any orders so she is struggling to provide them with income, but we have been helping fill up their stock with jewelery. I have a new found respect for beaded bracelets! When i show you when i come you - you'll say thats nothing, because really it is. It is sad how many hours it took us to make one tiny bracelet. It is so intricate, and our eyes would be burning after an hour. They laugh us a lot as we poke our fingers with needles every five seconds, and hand the tangled mess of string and beeds over to them to fix. Literally one girl just laughed at me for an hour because everything she moved her attention to something else for the smallest amount of time I would make a mistake. You need to remember we are learning how to make these bracelets and things from their little little little knowledge of English and our little knowledge of Kinya-Rwanda. We laugh, they laugh, we sigh, they sigh - it all works out.
This coming week will be spent with Monique continuing to work in her workshop, we will be teaching both French and English classes and I think I heard something about making bird cages.
Then on Friday we are going back to Gisenyi for the long 6 hour bus trip through the winding hills. We will do our debrief there by the lak, then next Friday we head back to Kigali to get on the plane to fly to France! It will be another long trip with a stop in Brussels but soon we will be able to have hot showers! Yay!
<3 i love you all, and you have no idea how excited I am to see all of your wonderful faces
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Monday, 13 February 2012
Gisenyi.
We have started our second week here in Gisenyi, Rwanda which is more north in Rwanda, and how they like to say "the cold region". To be honest, I am sitting here in a long sleeve shirt and shorts, so yes it is somewhater "cooler" as before I would be in a tank top and shorts and in the shade still dying of the heat!
So this week in Gisenyi has been awesome, I would say my second favourite here in Rwanda so far, my favourite was working with the preschool and being Teacher Lola. Gisenyi is situated right on the lake, and when I saw right on the lake its awesome because we walk out of where we are staying down the road for five minutes and then we get to jump into cool, clean water! That is however not why I am here so I will tell you what we have been up to.
We are working with a contact named Patrick, who we met in Kigali, but he actually lives here. He works with two churches, "The Joy of the Lord Ministries" and "Restoration Church" we have been visiting hospitals, helping the people on the street and I got to sing in a black gospel choir...OH SO FUN!
The hospitals, are always a hard visit, but at the same time they are always the ones that make you feel that you have made a difference. We walk into this hospital and it was a lot cleaner than the one we visited in Kigali, it didn't make my stomach churn. We were separated into groups and then each group was handed bananas and lots of milk to hand around. We all went into different wards - im not sure which ward we were taken to because we didn't have the luck of having a translator. It made things harder, not only because we couldn't understand them, but we couldn't sit down and talk to them or find our what they were suffering from. We used the little Rwanda that we know to try and bring a smile to their faces, "Moraho!" (hello!) "Amakuru?" (how are you?) and they would reply "Me nesa" (im fine) and then our conversation ended. One sight that I still have not been able to forget was seeting an elderly man, in the corner of a hospital room look as though we had been swallowed by his mattress. He was so thin and frail, they told us not to give him bananas or milk. It was as thought he had been pushed aside, and they were ready for him to die so that they could have another bed. This unfortunately is usually the case, the more beds they have the better. I sat down beside him and just held his hand, I didn't really know what else I could do. As we got rushed along to the next room a little naked baby, no joke, ran into my arms full on sprint (or however fast a baby can run!) and i picked him up and we had a little cuddle before some doctor yelled at him and i assume told him to go back to his room. Some patients were not allowed to leave the hospital until they paid their hospital fee, but the problem was that some of them had no money so they had to stay even though they were healthy and their bills went higher and higher. A few of us paid for patients like these, or paid for the patients that couldn't afford their medicine. The final ward we went to was my favourite, the baby ward. It was very hard, you see all of these babies in beds with tubes stuck all over them, their mothers watching them helplessly. One baby I saw didn't have anyone around him nd he had a terrible terrible couch, you could hear it rattling in his chest. No one seemed to notice him crying and wincing every time he breathed in and out. I went over to him and just rubbed his tummy, and even though it wasnt much - i think it was my favourite moment. He eyes slowly rolled back as I sang a nursery rhyme and he fell asleep. I then met a woman Justine, and her baby - i don't know his name, it was very complicated. He looked as though he was malnourished, very very time arms and big bloated belly, but he had these huge eyes that were so interactive. I sat with this little boy on my lap for maybe a couple of hours and by the end i had him laughing so hard, which had his mum laughing, she told me thank you. You don't realize that sometimes all they want is for people to take time with them, and even though there is a language barrier your eyes and your smile and communicate so much.
Ahh i have only have 15 minutes left and ive hardly told you guys anything!
What else hmm.....
Oh yeah the choir was soo fun!! Okay so we went to a choir practice, just for fun. Singing and dancing is very important here, and its very important to the Rwandans that we learn parts of their cultre - which we love doing because it makes us laugh all the time, all of thier crazy dances. So we go and they ask us to practice singing with them, so we learn some songs in Rwandan and then we sing some songs in English, but when i say sing i mean like black gospel choir singing, not our lame white people singing haha, and its black gospel choir with a twist of Rwanda in it. So we are singing an English song and the choir leader out of everyone hands me the microphone - i was like Oh really mee!! So yeah I got to lead a couple of songs AND THEN the next day they had a show i guess you would call it - where all these choirs came from all over Rwanda to sing and dance, so we watch them singing and dancing, they make us do our little white people dances and stuff which seem so lame and boring compared to theirs and then they call the choir up that we practiced with the day before and the guy hands me the microphone again. I know it seems like nothing, but it was so exciting for me! I loved it!!!
I cant believe i forgot to say - we climbed a mountain!! Mount Rubavo! It was exhausting and hot and sweaty but we did it, and it was so cool once we got to the top. Some of us girls had to stop because we felt faint from the change in oxygen levels but we all arrived safely. Raphaelle and I kept yelling "danger danger" because with my history of falling here in Rwanda they all worry about me, especially coming back down a very steep mountain.
Anyways I have to sign out,
We are in Gisenyi until Thursday and then we head to Bhutari, well half of us. Something I also forgto to update you on. Half of us are going to Bhukara and the other half to Bhutari - but ill explain later!
Lauren :)
So this week in Gisenyi has been awesome, I would say my second favourite here in Rwanda so far, my favourite was working with the preschool and being Teacher Lola. Gisenyi is situated right on the lake, and when I saw right on the lake its awesome because we walk out of where we are staying down the road for five minutes and then we get to jump into cool, clean water! That is however not why I am here so I will tell you what we have been up to.
We are working with a contact named Patrick, who we met in Kigali, but he actually lives here. He works with two churches, "The Joy of the Lord Ministries" and "Restoration Church" we have been visiting hospitals, helping the people on the street and I got to sing in a black gospel choir...OH SO FUN!
The hospitals, are always a hard visit, but at the same time they are always the ones that make you feel that you have made a difference. We walk into this hospital and it was a lot cleaner than the one we visited in Kigali, it didn't make my stomach churn. We were separated into groups and then each group was handed bananas and lots of milk to hand around. We all went into different wards - im not sure which ward we were taken to because we didn't have the luck of having a translator. It made things harder, not only because we couldn't understand them, but we couldn't sit down and talk to them or find our what they were suffering from. We used the little Rwanda that we know to try and bring a smile to their faces, "Moraho!" (hello!) "Amakuru?" (how are you?) and they would reply "Me nesa" (im fine) and then our conversation ended. One sight that I still have not been able to forget was seeting an elderly man, in the corner of a hospital room look as though we had been swallowed by his mattress. He was so thin and frail, they told us not to give him bananas or milk. It was as thought he had been pushed aside, and they were ready for him to die so that they could have another bed. This unfortunately is usually the case, the more beds they have the better. I sat down beside him and just held his hand, I didn't really know what else I could do. As we got rushed along to the next room a little naked baby, no joke, ran into my arms full on sprint (or however fast a baby can run!) and i picked him up and we had a little cuddle before some doctor yelled at him and i assume told him to go back to his room. Some patients were not allowed to leave the hospital until they paid their hospital fee, but the problem was that some of them had no money so they had to stay even though they were healthy and their bills went higher and higher. A few of us paid for patients like these, or paid for the patients that couldn't afford their medicine. The final ward we went to was my favourite, the baby ward. It was very hard, you see all of these babies in beds with tubes stuck all over them, their mothers watching them helplessly. One baby I saw didn't have anyone around him nd he had a terrible terrible couch, you could hear it rattling in his chest. No one seemed to notice him crying and wincing every time he breathed in and out. I went over to him and just rubbed his tummy, and even though it wasnt much - i think it was my favourite moment. He eyes slowly rolled back as I sang a nursery rhyme and he fell asleep. I then met a woman Justine, and her baby - i don't know his name, it was very complicated. He looked as though he was malnourished, very very time arms and big bloated belly, but he had these huge eyes that were so interactive. I sat with this little boy on my lap for maybe a couple of hours and by the end i had him laughing so hard, which had his mum laughing, she told me thank you. You don't realize that sometimes all they want is for people to take time with them, and even though there is a language barrier your eyes and your smile and communicate so much.
Ahh i have only have 15 minutes left and ive hardly told you guys anything!
What else hmm.....
Oh yeah the choir was soo fun!! Okay so we went to a choir practice, just for fun. Singing and dancing is very important here, and its very important to the Rwandans that we learn parts of their cultre - which we love doing because it makes us laugh all the time, all of thier crazy dances. So we go and they ask us to practice singing with them, so we learn some songs in Rwandan and then we sing some songs in English, but when i say sing i mean like black gospel choir singing, not our lame white people singing haha, and its black gospel choir with a twist of Rwanda in it. So we are singing an English song and the choir leader out of everyone hands me the microphone - i was like Oh really mee!! So yeah I got to lead a couple of songs AND THEN the next day they had a show i guess you would call it - where all these choirs came from all over Rwanda to sing and dance, so we watch them singing and dancing, they make us do our little white people dances and stuff which seem so lame and boring compared to theirs and then they call the choir up that we practiced with the day before and the guy hands me the microphone again. I know it seems like nothing, but it was so exciting for me! I loved it!!!
I cant believe i forgot to say - we climbed a mountain!! Mount Rubavo! It was exhausting and hot and sweaty but we did it, and it was so cool once we got to the top. Some of us girls had to stop because we felt faint from the change in oxygen levels but we all arrived safely. Raphaelle and I kept yelling "danger danger" because with my history of falling here in Rwanda they all worry about me, especially coming back down a very steep mountain.
Anyways I have to sign out,
We are in Gisenyi until Thursday and then we head to Bhutari, well half of us. Something I also forgto to update you on. Half of us are going to Bhukara and the other half to Bhutari - but ill explain later!
Lauren :)
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Teacher LOLA!
This is our last day in Kigali until we depart for home in five weeks! Tomorrow we head to Gisenyi, which is apparently beautiful and by a lake! We can't wait! We don't know if we are going to stay in Gisenyi for 1 or 2 weeks, it depends on the work that we find there. The bus ride is three hours, and it's going to be hilarious to see all of us try and fit with our huge backpacks and all of the other things we have seemed to accumulate as the weeks pass on.
This week was amazing! Amazing, amazing, amazing! Definitely my favourite so far and I am sad to see it end. This week we changed locations to La League, where the rooms are let's say not the ritz, but the location is beautiful! When you walk out of your dark room, you see hills, flowers and beautiful greenery. We eat our breakfast on the grass and stay up late talking and playing the guitar. We are very close to Ingrid's so have had a few more bonfires to keep us occupied! We have not seen what we looked like in over a week due to not having a mirror anywhere except for the odd reflection in the glass - we are kind of happy to not know the sweaty messes we are in. We appreciate cold showers after the long days and always fall alseep as soon as our heads hit the pillow!
This week we worked with YWAM Rwanda - I was very surprised when I saw their base because I had thought it would be just a tiny little organization - but they are doing great things! They have a daycare, primary school and secondary school. They run a ministry called Mercy Ministries where they work with HIV/AIDS people and so much more! It was really cool because they actually had three other YWAM teams there, from Switzerland, England, and...the other one slips my mind so we had the opportunity to meet a lot more people and have some good conversations in our free time. We had to wake up at 5am, in order to get to the YWAM base for 8 a.m., so they were long days but Whitters and I were happy when we had the opportunity to work in the daycare and the primary school - finally!! 5am wake up was definitely worth it! We were separated into different classes, i had "top class" which was the class at the top of the stairs. They are learning to speak English and I had to help with their alphabet, numbers and sounds of letters. It was tiring as every child wants your hand and attention but so rewarding, by the end of the week I even saw an improvement and even knew almost all of their names - go mee!! They called me Teacher Lola, because they somehow got that from Lauren and enjoyed all of the songs that I taught them. During this week I fell in love with a little boy named Joshua, it's funny how there can be a playground full of children but one always seems to pull on your heart strings. He was a trouble maker in class, but at the same one of the most intelligent, he was a brave boy until he fell and burst into tears with a bloody knee - I showed him mine and that we were the same, everyone falls - he seemed to like that. After bandaging him up we were inseparable - unfortunately this got him in trouble with Teacher Robert. The children only had school until lunch time, but it was a full course load until then, with a snack time (yumm!!) After lunch Whitney and I headed back to help the teachers prepare their lesson plans and they also asked us a lot of questions about the school systems in Canada and how they discipline their children etc. Here in Rwanda all children are beat with a stick as discipline, and this school is trying to change the parents mind set that a stick is not always the best option. They said it's very hard to get through to the parents because they do not agree, but they can see the children responding to them as the teachers more and more each week. It was also great to see that all of the teachers YWAM employs are Rwandan. During this week we also worked with the HIV/AIDS ministry. We went into anther remote little area and we went to just spend time with the people. They didn't speak any English but we had a translator with us. Basically we were all a teary mess by the end. All of them are struggling to survive, most of them were women - men had slept with them gotten them pregnant and left them, while also giving them HIV. They said that no one in their community wants to touch them and that they are an embarassment so they stay in their house. Also, because of the disease they don't have the physical strength to take care of their families - to get water, find food, make the meals etc. They said every day is a struggle. The "house" we were in was also crumbling and with the next rain storm it could be completely destroyed and then the woman will be homeless. All they wanted was people to be with them so we shared testimonies, stories, played the guitar for them, we had each brought them something that we made, we prayed with them - anything they wanted. For all of our likings we left far too soon, we could have stayed all night!
Today was our day off, so as a team we all went into town to eat at a "restaurant" - had a delicious burger and milkshake (again!) and then went to look at the stores in town. Sam - the leader of our base in France came to visit us for a week and left today, so that was sad to see him go, but it means that we are beyond half way.
This week was full of a lot of laughter, lastnight I laughed the hardest I have all week. It was due to exhaustion and just laughter. We are all creating lists of things we long to eat once we get home, of things we long to do - including hot shower and a clean bed.
After Gisenyi we head to Bhutari and then after Bhutari we dont know where we are off to, but we'll see. Tonight we have to pack our big backpacks in order to walk up the hills again, but luckily this time its in the morning so it wont be too hot.
To answer the questions from home:
How blonde is my hair? - not so blonde, but getting long!
Have i lost weight? - negatory, the food is not what you think!
Do you really have to pee in a hole? - yes, not all the time, but yes!
Following that - have i gotten used to it? - no, and i don't think i will haha many funny experiences
I should go so i can give someone else a computer!
Love love love!
Teacher Lola!
This week was amazing! Amazing, amazing, amazing! Definitely my favourite so far and I am sad to see it end. This week we changed locations to La League, where the rooms are let's say not the ritz, but the location is beautiful! When you walk out of your dark room, you see hills, flowers and beautiful greenery. We eat our breakfast on the grass and stay up late talking and playing the guitar. We are very close to Ingrid's so have had a few more bonfires to keep us occupied! We have not seen what we looked like in over a week due to not having a mirror anywhere except for the odd reflection in the glass - we are kind of happy to not know the sweaty messes we are in. We appreciate cold showers after the long days and always fall alseep as soon as our heads hit the pillow!
This week we worked with YWAM Rwanda - I was very surprised when I saw their base because I had thought it would be just a tiny little organization - but they are doing great things! They have a daycare, primary school and secondary school. They run a ministry called Mercy Ministries where they work with HIV/AIDS people and so much more! It was really cool because they actually had three other YWAM teams there, from Switzerland, England, and...the other one slips my mind so we had the opportunity to meet a lot more people and have some good conversations in our free time. We had to wake up at 5am, in order to get to the YWAM base for 8 a.m., so they were long days but Whitters and I were happy when we had the opportunity to work in the daycare and the primary school - finally!! 5am wake up was definitely worth it! We were separated into different classes, i had "top class" which was the class at the top of the stairs. They are learning to speak English and I had to help with their alphabet, numbers and sounds of letters. It was tiring as every child wants your hand and attention but so rewarding, by the end of the week I even saw an improvement and even knew almost all of their names - go mee!! They called me Teacher Lola, because they somehow got that from Lauren and enjoyed all of the songs that I taught them. During this week I fell in love with a little boy named Joshua, it's funny how there can be a playground full of children but one always seems to pull on your heart strings. He was a trouble maker in class, but at the same one of the most intelligent, he was a brave boy until he fell and burst into tears with a bloody knee - I showed him mine and that we were the same, everyone falls - he seemed to like that. After bandaging him up we were inseparable - unfortunately this got him in trouble with Teacher Robert. The children only had school until lunch time, but it was a full course load until then, with a snack time (yumm!!) After lunch Whitney and I headed back to help the teachers prepare their lesson plans and they also asked us a lot of questions about the school systems in Canada and how they discipline their children etc. Here in Rwanda all children are beat with a stick as discipline, and this school is trying to change the parents mind set that a stick is not always the best option. They said it's very hard to get through to the parents because they do not agree, but they can see the children responding to them as the teachers more and more each week. It was also great to see that all of the teachers YWAM employs are Rwandan. During this week we also worked with the HIV/AIDS ministry. We went into anther remote little area and we went to just spend time with the people. They didn't speak any English but we had a translator with us. Basically we were all a teary mess by the end. All of them are struggling to survive, most of them were women - men had slept with them gotten them pregnant and left them, while also giving them HIV. They said that no one in their community wants to touch them and that they are an embarassment so they stay in their house. Also, because of the disease they don't have the physical strength to take care of their families - to get water, find food, make the meals etc. They said every day is a struggle. The "house" we were in was also crumbling and with the next rain storm it could be completely destroyed and then the woman will be homeless. All they wanted was people to be with them so we shared testimonies, stories, played the guitar for them, we had each brought them something that we made, we prayed with them - anything they wanted. For all of our likings we left far too soon, we could have stayed all night!
Today was our day off, so as a team we all went into town to eat at a "restaurant" - had a delicious burger and milkshake (again!) and then went to look at the stores in town. Sam - the leader of our base in France came to visit us for a week and left today, so that was sad to see him go, but it means that we are beyond half way.
This week was full of a lot of laughter, lastnight I laughed the hardest I have all week. It was due to exhaustion and just laughter. We are all creating lists of things we long to eat once we get home, of things we long to do - including hot shower and a clean bed.
After Gisenyi we head to Bhutari and then after Bhutari we dont know where we are off to, but we'll see. Tonight we have to pack our big backpacks in order to walk up the hills again, but luckily this time its in the morning so it wont be too hot.
To answer the questions from home:
How blonde is my hair? - not so blonde, but getting long!
Have i lost weight? - negatory, the food is not what you think!
Do you really have to pee in a hole? - yes, not all the time, but yes!
Following that - have i gotten used to it? - no, and i don't think i will haha many funny experiences
I should go so i can give someone else a computer!
Love love love!
Teacher Lola!
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