Volunteering/field trips

Last Thursday, we had our first day of volunteering. I am in the group that goes to an orphanage! Or we were supposed to go to an orphanage at least, but we kind of had a change of plans at the last minute because when we arrived at the orphanage, the nun said that no visitors were allowed on Thursdays! We were all a bit upset, because we had already talked to the director who said we could volunteer, and because we all really wanted to see the orphanage! But I guess when you're traveling, you have to be flexible. Donna, our professor, calls it the "f-word," haha. FLEXIBLE. So we were standing in this orphanage with this kind of mean nun, and our taxi driver told us that he knew a place that we could go and volunteer. So we went! It was a primary school and an orphanage.
We didn't really do that much, but it was really fun anyway. First, we just walked around saying hi to the orphans. One tiny little girl was sooo cute. She held my hand the whole time. Then we went into one of the classrooms and helped teach English. We taught the students the song "head, shoulders, knees, and toes." They were soo cute. When the teacher asked them a question, they would all raise their hands and yell "please, teacher, please!" Anyway, we taught them the ABC's and colors too. Then we played on the playground. Basically they just chased us all around, and it was tiring!
Then we went to get goat kabobs and potatoes for a late lunch. When you go to a restaurant and there is no menu and all they have is goat kabobs, you know it is a restaurant where locals go. Then Moriah, Jenny, Matt, and I went to volunteer at another primary school, where we were supposed to teach dance! But it ended up that the kids taught us dance instead. They did an Intore performance (Rwandan traditional dance) and it was seriously so incredibly cool. Sooo cool, I was just smiling the whole time.Words can't even describe how awesome it was. Then Matt showed them a little ballet. He is seriously sooooooo good; it made me want to learn ballet.
Afterwards, the walk back to the bus station was sooo long. We walked up and down mountains trying not to trip over rocks or fall into huge holes in the dirt road. Then we went to dinner at the Chinese restaurant down the road, and had a really interesting conversation. We knew that Friday, the next day, we were going to visit two churches where thousands and thousands of people were killed in the genocide, and we were nervous. We started talking about how sometimes we feel nervous here. People smile, but we know how sad they still are. We also started talking about god and religion. It's kind of hard, for me at least, to believe in God when something like the genocide happened. I mean, a million innocent people were slaughtered by machetes. How could god let that happen? But at the same time, religion has definitely helped Rwandans move on and get through reconciliation after the genocide.
So on Friday, we visited the two churches, called Ntarama and Nyatama. They were about a half an hour outside Kigali. On the way, we passed by the school that is the subject of the movie Shooting Dogs. Thousands of people gathered there during the genocide because the UN was protecting the area. But the the UN soldiers were given the order to pull out, and the killers came right away and just killed everyone in the school. The UN soldiers basically had to stand there and watch all of those people get murdered, because they could not shoot to stop the killers. They could only shoot the dogs that started eating the dead bodies. That is why the movie is called Shooting Dogs.
The first church we stopped at was called Ntarama. This is probably in my head, but when I stepped off the bus, the air seriously felt oppressive. When we first walked in the church, all we could see was rows and rows of skulls and bones almost piled high to the ceiling. Some of them were broken, and one had a rod through the top of the skull and down through the chin. God, that must have been an awful way to die. There were piles and piles of clothes tied around everywhere, that were from the bodies that were found in the church. There was a kitchen were a few hundred people were burned alive. Almost 5,000 people were murdered there. Afterwards we walked around the road, and it was weird to see that life still goes on in that area. It was such a contrast, seeing so much death and then walking outside and seeing people living their lives. But there still seemed to be a sadness in people's eyes, more so than in Kigali.
Next we stopped at another church called Nyatama, where 10,000 were killed during the genocide. It was similar to Ntarama, but there was a grave in the ground that you could walk in to. It was really dark and eery, and when I walked down the stairs I seriously was scared, for some reason, that I would never come out. There were even more skulls and bones. It was awful. There were people filming a documentary, which was going to be about the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. They wanted to interview some of us, but I wasn't really in the mood. And I don't really feel like I can articulate my feelings well about the Rwandan genocide. After being in those churches, I just didn't feel like myself. And not all of it has even been prosessed in my mind; it will probably take months and months after leaving Rwanda for me to start to understand what we have experienced. Even the things that don't ever completely surface in our minds will still profoundly affect our lives. Anyway, one of the girls on our trip, Moriah, did do the interview, and I can't wait to see her become famous!
Oh! and I also peed in my first hole in the ground. It was a legitimate hole in the ground, no toilet or water or anything!
On the way home, we stopped at a river called Nyabarongo. During the genocide, thousands and thousands of bodies were thrown in the river. It is a tradition to go back and visit the site, and throw a flower or a piece of paper with a message into the river. I threw in a piece of paper, and I wrote a message. I watched it flow away.
At night, I went to teach English to secondary school teachers for three hours. That is a long time, and it was exhausting! But it was totally worth it. It was really really hard to communicate with them, because the group I was with hardly spoke any English at all. I never thought it would be so hard to teach someone the word "smile." But I have been back a couple of times, and I really love going, because I feel useful!
Then we went to get dinner. It may have been the strangest dinner of my life. It wasn't because of the food, it was because of the people. We went to meet two people from our group who were at the restaurant already, but they had been talking to some Rwandans for a couple of hours. The Rwandans there were really strange, and we felt a little uncomfortable. They were government workers, we think they might have been in parliament. One of them was a former RPF leader, which is the militia that defeated the Hutu genocide leaders and ended the genocide. They were just kind of strange, and later we found out they tried to exchange a prostitute for one of the girls in our group. How awful is that?! (I wasn't there when that happened though, so don't worry mom and dad.)