Sorry I don’t update this very often and when I do the entries are so long. Oh well. I’ll try to work on my bloggin skills.
Well since I last wrote a lot of rad stuff has happened. Two weekends ago I went to Rwanda and it was really an amazing trip. The bus ride there lasted like 10 hours. It wasn’t that bad except the bus broke down for like 2 hours so we sat on the side of the road and read and played scattergories. Also, they played some awesome music videos on the bus and the volume was full blast and they couldn’t turn it down. My favorite was “If You Do Me, I’ll Do You”. The drive was so beautiful. Rwanda is the prettiest place I’ve ever been. There are lush green hills everywhere and the people live and farm on all of them. Kigale, the capital, is really developed and clean. We spent 2 days in Rwanda and we mainly just went to some genocide sites and memorials. I learned a lot about the genocide that happened there in ’94. It’s hard to believe that happened just 14 years ago. It was kind of weird walking and driving around knowing that over 1 million people were dead in the streets all over the country. We went to the Kigale memorial centre—that was extremely sad. We went to the “Hotel des milles collines” where the story of “Hotel Rwanda” took place. We talked to one of the survivors who worked there in ’94 and he told us his story it was amazing. One of his children was born in the hotel during that time.
Probably the most shocking part of the trip was when we went to a school where 50,000 Tutsis were massacred. All of the classrooms are filled with skeletons and dead bodies that have been preserved with limestone. Many of the bodies are still in the same positions as when they died and still have some jewelry and clothes on. I walked through some of the rooms alone and it was very eerie and extremely sad. Many of the bodies are little children and babies that were killed. there was a man there who was one of 4 survivors out of 50,000 tutsis killed at the school. he had a deep indented scar in his forehead from where he was shot in the head. after he was shot in the head he laid with the dead bodies of his family and friends for a day and then ran for 3 nights while hiding during the days until he made it past tutsi rebel lines and got help (all with a bullet in his head). it was incredible to hear his story. i'll try to put some photos of this trip on here soon.
The ride home from Rwanda was the bus ride from hell. We had to run to make the bus as it was driving away and the ride consisted of absolutely no leg room or anywhere to rest your head, disgusting African movies with rapings and weird voodoo stuff, the guy behind me peed on Ashley, very short bathroom breaks with the bus driving away honking as you finish peeing, and 3 of us getting left at the border because we didn’t have enough money to buy visas back into Uganda. So anyways, Ashley, David, and Corbin got across the border on a later bus and met us in Kampala after they got money. It was an amazing trip overall….except for the bus ride. But I guess that made some good memories.
Yesterday we got back from hiking at Sipi Falls. That was really fun too. We did two amazing hikes and it was beautiful. We saw waterfalls and swam under them and we stayed at an awesome resort on the edge of a canyon with a waterfall and an amazing view. It was a pretty luxurious place and the trip was only like $100 so that was good.
As for the humanitarian stuff, which is pretty noteworthy too I guess, everything is going well. I taught the lesson in the business training last Thursday on bookkeeping. It went well. I visited two class members’ businesses during the week. I took pictures of their books and then put them up on our projector during the class and had them explain their books to the class. It was very cool and I think they learned some stuff. However, it was kind of a bummer because only 4 people showed up to the class. The secondary school club went well. The lesson was on empowerment and self-esteem. Seren and Emily lead the lesson and did a good job. A lot of the kids are still really shy so hopefully we can get them out of their shells next week. And today, I helped out on an adobe stove and we built the form for it. I laid a lot of bricks and chopped a lot of stuff with a machete so I felt pretty bad-A. It was boss, mos def.
Wow this is long. Sorry. I’m going to Tanzania on Saturday and I’ll be there for a week so I don’t know when I’ll update this jazz again. Besos.
