Rwanda update no. 2 - this time in English

Catching up with Rwanda's national volleyball team
Friday we went out with Christy (another volunteer from the US, who lives in the same house as us) and met up with some of her Rwandan friends, who plays on the national volleyball team. We had a blast of a night. We went to an outdoor club and saw the real Rwandan moves. People here sure know how to dance and the rhythm is just a natural part of them.

Today some of the guys will come to the orphanage and play volleyball with the children. It will be SO cool for the kids to see them and actually play with them.

Gisenyi 

In the weekend we went to Gisenyi, which is in the north-west of Rwanda (only 5 km from Congo). We stayed in the local guest house for volunteers. Sunday we went to Lake Kivu, the local market and walked around in the town. Sunday night we invited a woman's group and their children to our house for a snack. These woman are a part of a woman’s group that Christy has worked with in Gisenyi. They danced and sang. It was a great little “party”. They brought some dolls, which they make and normally sell at the market. The kids just loved playing with Thomas..very cute. The group only had one sewing machine, so we bought them another one the next day, so they can make more dolls and make school uniforms for their kids.

We also visited one of the woman during the day. The standard of a home is very different from ours. She had two rooms (a small room where they eat and another small one where they sleep). Toilet and “stove” were outside. Her kids and some other kids were playing football with some garbage, which was rolled together as a ball…this was hard to watch, so we went to the market and bought a proper football, which brought a lot of joy.

Gisenyi: Visiting Noel orphanage

Over X-mas we worked at the Noel orphanage. This is an orphanage with 600 kids from just 1 week old to 20+ years old. They have cows, goats, chickens, pigs and vegetables so the orphanage is quite self-sufficient, which is good to see.

Due to the short time we couldn’t do a lot up there, so we mainly talked with some of the kids and played with the little ones. They loved playing with Helle's “long” hair, as Rwandans generally don’t have long hair and it's a different type of hair. It is weird having many kids playing with their dirty hands in your hair but hey what can you do :-)

We helped feeding the 1-3 year old. They were SO cute. Imagine stepping into a room and 10 small kids come running at you, all wanting to hold your hands. Amazing experience, but also heartbreaking. In some of the rooms there were small babies - some only 1 week old as their mum just died. That was too tough for Helle to see. Such innocent children with no parents. It is, however, generally really good to see that there are what they call “mamas”, who take care of the children and also some of the older kids come and play with them. The bigger kids actually go to school, which many children who lives with their families don’t do due to poverty.

There were some people from an UK foundation there, who handed out X-mas presents and one of them played Santa Claus. This was really great. This is the only X-mas joy that these kids have, apart from going to church during the day.

It was an amazing experience being at Noel orphanage. Very different from Gimsimba, where we normally are, as there are more kids and younger kids at Noel. Our stay at Noel was way too short and we could easily have stayed longer.

Coke to the kids

In one of our breaks we went to a local restaurant for some lunch. While having bananas for lunch and a coke, 14 kids were watching us. They were quite dirty and definitely not used to drinking soft drinks. Since it was X-mas we thought let’s buy them all some cokes, which we did. They really enjoyed it. Great to see that so little can do so much.

Water – a scarce resource

At home we take water for granted but here in Rwanda, water is a scarce and not reliable resource. We normally only shower once every third day, quite different from normal standards in DK. We feel very dirty, as we are constantly outside, playing with kids and generally surrounded by lots of dirt and germs. Rwanda is not as dirty with lots of garbage as you would probably imaging. It's actually very clean, but overall it's still quite dirty compared to DK. You can wash hands many times, and they will still be dirty :-)

Last week we experienced being out of water for 3 days so no water in the tap or in the toilet to flush :-( You learn to appreciate the basic things in life. The shower generally does not work, so we have only once had a “normal shower”, though the water was a little bit cold. So normally we heat the water in a kettle (2 liters) and then add some cold water in a plastic bowl and then use a cup to pour the water out over the body…hm…very different..but so NICE after not having a shower for many days :-)

X-mas at Gisimba orphanage

25 Dec. we went back to Gisimba at night to say merry X-mas to the kids. We brought lolly pops for them and went around to their dorms to hand them out. They were quite excited about it. We were really happy that we managed to see them too for X-mas. It seemed it made them quite happy. Apart from us no one was there to give them a good time. There had been visitors during lunch time and the previous day though. Some of the kids had left to be with their relatives.

The power has been out for a few days, but hopefully it will be back soon, so we can get the PC room up and running again. The kids love playing with the pc’s.

Gorillas

This coming weekend we will be going to see the gorillas on the border between Rwanda and Uganda. We are VERY excited. It will be a trekking tour for an entire day, but we will spend the entire weekend up there in a town called Musanze which is about 2-3 hours north of Kigali.

New Year

Helle is planning a New Year’s Eve Party with the kids. She has gathered 15 kids, who are part of the party committee. They are very excited and have come up with many ideas for the party. There will be dancing, singing, comedy, music, speeches, and competitions. They don’t mind performing in front of each other and they are really good dancers (natural talents more or less all of them). The other day they were dancing after lunch to some hip hop music video which they showed on their TV in the dining room :-)

It's really great to see how they take responsibility for planning the party, so we are all very excited and interested to see whether this big planning and organising will actually succeed in the end. Tomorrow we will go out and buy soda’s and snacks in the local market.

Next update will have the latest news about the party.

We wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR.