Joe Gorman writes from Rwanda
[Joe Gorman is the CoAid representative in Rwanda and DRC]
Dear Family and Friends,
Tomorrow will make one week that my son, Jimmie, and his friend, Chuck Ward, and I have been in Africa. It always takes a while to get unjetlagged, write a few things down, and then get access to a computer. Hopefully I'll be able to send out updates more regularly now.
Today is our fifth day in Africa. The boys have adjusted amazingly well. The cultural shift they have experienced journeying from America to Africa is like going from grade school to graduate school in the space of forty hours and three plane rides: Denver to London and London to Nairobi and Nairobi to Kigali, Rwanda; and a six hour drive along the eucalyptus-lined hills of Rwanda.
Thank God that all of our luggage arrived with us, including four boxes of various parts to a pineapple press we and Simon Pierre will take to Gahinga, Rwanda later in our trip. After we cleared customs it was a very welcome sight to see Celestin's and Simon Pierre's smiling faces. After eating a breakfast of crossisants, eggs, pineapple, baked beans, potatoes, and mango juice at Chez Lando, we hit the road with our hired van and driver on our way to Bukavu. Immediately, new experiences began to bombard the boys from all directions. They said they felt like dried sponges taking in all the new sites, sounds, and smells.
Prior to our trip the boys' primary introduction to Rwanda was the movie "Hotel Rwanda" and the little they already knew about the 1994 Genocide in which almost one million Tutsis were killed by their Hutu neighbors over the course of one hundred days. As we began wending our way through many of Rwanda's thousands of lush tea and banana tree blanketed hills on our way to Bukavu, Jimmie and Chuck said they had expected to see soldiers walking around everywhere with AK47s. One of their fears is that one of them would pull a gun on them. They told me that they have now realized that Rwanda is nothing like that, because it's much more like a tropical paradise than a killing zone.
About three hours out of Kigali we drove through a town in which there were about a dozen men with orange jumpsuits working alongside the road. From previous trips I had learned that men in pink jumpsuits had been accused of participating in the genocide, but I didn't know that those in orange had been formally charged with acts of genocide. The boys said that it was overwhelming to think that these men were those who had actually killed or raped during the Genocide.
On our first day we made it as far as Cyangugu ("Shawn-goo-goo"), which is right on the Rwanda/DRC border. The man who needed to check us through at the Congolese border wasn't there so we ended up spending the night at a Catholic Guest House. Our rooms had concrete floors and full-sized beds with mosquito nets draped over them. They weren't fancy rooms, but they had all we needed and were very clean. For 8,000 Rwandese Francs (about $14) we received a room, dinner, breakfast, and probably the last hot shower we'll have for a few more weeks.
The boys said their first night in Rwanda was really spooky for them. They saw a couple military guys walking down the streets with AK47s and that didn't help their nerves any. :-)
While we were waiting for our visas into Congo the next morning, we were able to greet several of the handicapped men I've gotten to know who work at the border hauling heavy loads of cassava, charcoal, beans, rice, and concrete from Rwanda into Congo. These men's fortitude and positive attitude in the midst of unimaginable adversity constantly amazes and challenges me. I'm really excited that we are working together with them on a long-term project that will help them take better care of themselves and families. I'll write more about this developing project in a few days.
Thank you again for your prayers and words of encouragement! We really are having an incredible time. I'm so proud of the boys and how well they've adjusted to difficult circumstances and new cultural challenges in a matter of a few days.
Thank you for your prayers and Mungu (God) awabariki (bless you all)!
Joe
