From Chris: Day 3 - Rubona

On Friday, we walked to the market in the local town, Rubona. There was lots of market traffic on the road, and as always there were friendly children everywhere. It amazes me that, after everything the people of Rwanda have been through, they remain so warm and raise children that feel comfortable running up to strangers. It's a very friendly place.

Along the way, we passed the local primary school. The kids in the school rushed to the windows to wave.

The market at Rubona is the size of a small flea market. Everything from pineapples to pens to used shoes is for sale.

 

This lady insisted that I take a picture of her and the baby so she could see it on the camera. This happened to us several times, but we also had several people get mad because they got caught in shots. A fair number of people would just run off giggling and hiding if you pointed a camera at them.

We went to Bar Mucho. It has the strange selection of liquor and beer that seems to be typical of Rwandan bars.

Outside of the bar, Savannah was of course busy making new friends. They were very entertained by the digital camera images. I think the two boys in the foreground were threatening to cut me if I didn't back off and leave the nice lady alone.

We bought fabric at this stall in the market. Stacy and Savannah took theirs to the local seamstress to have it made into dresses. Her assistants took their measurements and promised to have the dresses ready on Monday.

This little girl ran over to see Stacey. She gave her five and a big hug. She had tears running down her face and was obviously very sad. We tried to ask her about her parents but she only said one or two words the entire time we talked to her. Eventually we left her to go buy sambusa.

 

This kid was making the dough for the sambusa. He throws a little oil into the pan, where it immediately starts smoking. Then he tosses a stack of thin sheets of dough into the pan, where he pushes them around to cook them. He flips the stack, and then peels off individual sheets. The process is repeated until the whole stack is cooked. His hands had clearly been burned a bit, and his little brother--who picked up the pan with only a single layer of newspaper--appeared to have burned the ends off of his fingers.

While waiting for our sambusa, we spotted an adorable pair of feet sticking out from under the nearby door. Eventually the owner of the feet opened the door to say hello.

While the sambusa were being cooked, Stacey entertained the kids by taking pictures of them and showing them to them on the screen. Some of them wanted copies... we definitely need to bring Polaroids next time.

The  crying girl from earlier followed us over to where the sambusa are made. Stacey and Savannah swung her around and danced with her, which was so much fun that it dried up the tears and brought out a smile.

Eventually someone from her family came over and took her away. Later, when we were leaving the market, she saw us and ran back over to us. She was crying again, and got a death grip on Savannah's hand and just wouldn't let go. Someone, probably a grandmother or aunt, came over to get her this time, and she threw herself on the ground and started bawling. They didn't seem angry with us, but were very angry with the girl. With a lot of stick waving, they took her away from the market. Very sad.

These are the two fabrics I picked up for my mom.

That night, we attended Village Time, when the whole village gets together to share performances, news, discuss major issues, etc. In addition to some good old fashioned gospel singing, we got to see a repeat of the performance given at Stand Up and Be Counted. Afterward, Brian was asked up to give his perspectives on the ASYV student trip to NYC.

From Chris: Day 2 - The Love PC

I saw this bird on the way to work.

On Thursday, Al and I spent all day working on computers in one of the computer labs. The Korean government has a program called "The Love PC." They donate old computers to other countries "to bridge the digital divide." They sent 300 machines to ASYV.

Unfortunately, they are rather old and challenging to set up well. Most of them only have 1GB of RAM, and some are as slow as 1.7GHz Celerons. Very few have DVD drives, and most won't boot off of USB. So installing Windows 7 is very difficult. It's still good to have them, however, as they paid for transportation. Even if we had 100 brand new PCs available in the United States, getting them here would be incredibly expensive.

From Chris: Day 1 - Tour, Meetings, and IT Club

After our hike and a cold shower--the only kind available--we met up with Barrett, tour director extraordinaire, for orientation to the village. We got a quick overview and answers to many questions under The Mango Tree, a common meeting spot in the village.

After that, Barrett took us on a tour of the village. First we stopped by the amphitheater.

Then we stopped by one of the family houses.

These houses are built around a large family room, where nightly meetings called Family Time are held.

There are also bedrooms the brothers or sisters share.

A new effort has been launched to get Internet-connected computers into each family house, so that students don't have to make the long trek up to the High School to use a computer lab at night.

Outside, there is a pair of cement wash basins and lines for clothes to be hung up. On wash day, the lawns are also covered with clothes drying in the sun.

In the little valley between the houses and the dining hall is the sports complex. There is a football (i.e., soccer) field, and a basketball court.

The dining hall, like the amphitheater, is one of the few places in the village where all of the students can gather together at once.

It also has a stage, flanked by the murals painted at Stand Up and Be Counted.

Beneath the dining hall is a large cellar and a kitchen with ginormous soup kettles.

While we were in the dining hall, we had a meeting with Barrett to talk about our plans for the week. The CMU students, who are here for ten weeks, joined us later, and then we all met with JC, the village director.

After the meeting, I went on a tour of problematic wifi spots in the residence area with Al and Jack, the long-term IT volunteer. This took us past the new Steve Jobs house.

We found a few antennae which had drooped, and this fine example of how not to install high-power electronics devices.

After planning how to take care of the issues we found, we attended a meeting of the IT club.

It was a looooooong first day.

From Chris: Day 1 - Morning hike

Four of us started the day with a nice hike around the perimeter of the village. Our guest house (Guest House 1) has a beautifully landscaped yard, where I found these colorful birds.

Our guest house is also right next to the perimeter fence and the entrance to the farm, and that's where we began our hike.

It seems that every plot of land in Rwanda is covered in banana trees, and the ASYV farm is no exception.

There are far fewer mosquitoes and other flying pests here than I expected, but there is no shortage of insects to pollinate the plants on the farm.

All around the village perimeter are typical Rwandan homes, made out of mud or brick with corrugated roofs, where families living on small plots of land support themselves with subsistence farming.

What surprised me most when I first arrived here is the incredible number and variety of birds. There are at least 220 species of birds in the village. I've only captured a few so far. The first shown below is a Pied Crow. I haven't identified the others, yet. I should be able to do so when I get a copy of the bird identification guide the village has produced.

And there are some very serious ants here.

At one point in our hike, we got a great view of the Liquidnet Family High School at the top of the hill.

From Chris: Travel and Arrival

(I had trouble posting for most of the trip, as my email doesn't work here. I've got it all worked out now, however, and will be catching up. I'm back-dating the entries so that they make sense.)

The trip down here was a long one: two eight-hour flights, with a layover in Brussels. The layover was about four hours, just enough time for us to get some breakfast and relax briefly with a game of cards. This airport knows doesn't pay much attention to the time of day; jumbo glasses of fine Belgian beer were available at 7am, along with blaring music videos.

After the last flight, we were met at the airport by Barrett, the village's awesome volunteer in charge of visitors, and one of the village's drivers. Driving in Kigali traffic is not for the meek; you have to make your own opportunities to merge and cross. We stopped at Ndoli's Market (a local Bodega) to exchange dollars for Rwandan francs and to get bottled water. The trip out to the village took about an hour. When we finally arrived, the kids had made us a sign (see Brian's earlier post) and left us a basket of welcome cards.

They also left us a generous spread of tasty food, including some rare meat sambusa (the local version of a samosa), fruit salad, and some snacks. After a brief meeting to work out plans for the next day, we hit the sack.

From Brian: we feel very welcomed by our ASYV hosts

From Brian: arrival in Kigali

From Paige: photos from Rwanda

In between sitting in that small room with so many people, we got a break and walked to the local market – Rubona Market. I thought I was going to buy some trinkets to bring home for all of the “liquidnetinrwanda” blog fans but I am sorry to disappoint you that I didn’t get anything. It was completely not what I expected, and I am so glad I went. It was a market for every day Rwandanese people to go and sell what they had to the local villagers.
Here you see the first “stand”. They are selling screws, water cans, empty wine bottles. Other stands have bananas, tomatoes, used clothing that looks like it was probably from the US, even women with sewing machines.

You can see some more of the Rubona Market behind Laurie and I in this picture.

The kids loved having us there, I guess we are a change of scenery. Here are some pictures of us, the mazungas, with the kids from the village. One ran up to Jeff and gave him a big hug, some were slowly approaching me and I was able to get a picture with them (the middle one bent down when he saw me do it) and there is one with a number of kids surrounding Rob so they could see their picture on his camera. Considering the people that live in Rubona and I believe much of Rwanda are struggling to get water and food, I am not surprised at how amazed they were by seeing themselves in the pictures. Crowds would gather.

Here is one of Mike, Jeff, Rob and me on the walk back from Rubona. This has been a great group to travel with. We work hard, get along well and are all generally interested in what Rwanda and Agahozo Shalom has for us to see and experience and what we can do to help while we are here.

[You may have noticed that this post has a lot of pictures with me in them. My kids have asked for some pictures of me on here and how can I not deliver?]