on a mission to connect with my compassion kid in rwanda. lucky for moi, one of the pastors here used to be a project manager for compassion. unlucky for moi, he has been out of town, and sick. get better, emmanuel!
totally having selfish moments of just wanting to remain clean for one day… i can only take so much dirt. BUT, i revel in dirt when i get to help build an actual house! we went with the students to help a poor family. they were not far from the school - i love that these students understanding helping their community in practical ways. when we arrived, we saw the…. well… the hovel/shack/hole this family of 5-6 had been living in. since 1995! it was under 6 ft tall, and i don't think it totaled more than 5x5 ft square! earlier, i believe a group of men came in to build the basic structure - a metal roof atop 4 main poles, with several upright poles in between. it appears they cut down all the poles from branches in the grove of surrounding banana trees. the students went to the water station (if you don't have water, you have to buy it from a local water station, or get it from a pond) and schlepped back these large yellow jugs. a hole had already been dug in the ground to the right of the house-to-be, and a tarp lined the hole. they poured some of the water into the tarp to soak banana leaves - these are used to tie sticks together for structure support. in the meantime, several students gathered long thin sticks into small bunches.
we basically made "rope" out of tearing the soaked banana leaves into strips and tying them together. i accidentally snapped a rope in two, and one student looked impressed, and said, "not so much….. power?" i love the way they word things with limited vocabulary. so i had to keep my enormous muscles in check after that…. there was a simple twisting and tie method to strengthen the banana leaf. they smelled pretty gross, and i had mud everywhere! i don't recall the last time i was that muddy, but it was great!
basically, we would attach the long thin sticks crosswise to the upright poles and loop under, around, over and tie the rope into itself to hold the sticks against the uprights. i obviously couldn't reach the top, but i did several sections - there were so many students helping, we tried to do a little, and then let someone else jump in. once we had three walls finished with the cross/tie hoopla, then we made mud!
more yellow water jugs, a bunch of hoes, some jumping around in the mud, we had a lovely mud hole. these kids knew how to WORK. they were up to their knees in mud and had this whole mixing system down. very impressed with how hard the students worked. then we passed mud blobs down an assembly line, where inside the house, students and a few teachers slapped the blobs into place into the cross/tie sections. it was amazing how simple it was, and how long it would take a single person to do all that work themselves. with all those students there, we finished half of two walls in less than 3 hours from start to finish.
so impressive, so dirty, and SO fun. the family was so grateful, and the father so proud. he had a huge scar across his chest, their children were so sweet, and i wanted so badly to know their story!
other fun interactions were with the passers-by. many many kids, women passed by to watch the construction of the house, and had additional shock at seeing white people mixed in with the students. rwandans are quite soft spoken and reserved, so it's fun to see little kids freak out. they LOVE to see themselves on your camera, so that is always a fun game. i wish i would have taken bags & bags of candy. i could have been a hero! my favorite moment is when a little ankle biter finally musters up enough courage to touch my hand or my foot. apparently, some of the fear of white people is not helped by the parental reproach of, "if you do this bad thing, a muzungo (white person) will come eat you!" i think my parents threatened me with grounding / hard labor / sending us to boarding school, etc.
the best moments: where curiosity triumphs over fear for a very small one, and they approach me, touch my hand, and just stare. i sat in the middle of the road with a wee one who couldn't stop staring at her little hand touching my white hand. thus far, one of my favorite moments.
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