Still Caring

It’s been an awfully long time but I am going to try to be more diligent with blogging. I thought the best way to break my year long silence here would be to write a snapshot of an average day here in the lovely albeit small town of Rukara, this is the story of yesterday. Yesterday started off like any other day. I woke up at 5:30 and scrambled to finish making a poster (more specifically 3 posters) with the lyrics from “Summer Nights” from Grease which I will be using to teach irregular verbs in the past simple to my S1 students. I know from the get go that today will be a doozy. Before I know it it is 7:00 am and I am nearly going to be late for school. I quickly scarf down some dried mango and chug a cup of coffee ( I know I will need it) and dash out the door. Now lucky for me it is the rainy season which gives us a most needed break from the scorching sun. The trade off however is about 5 inches of squishy, slippery mud everywhere. I delicately walk/ski/slide across the school property juggling my three posters, 500 different handouts for the day, a ball (for a warm-up activity), bag of markers, box of prizes, speakers, my computer and a large roll of tape. On the way I greet about 750 itty bitty primary school students. I pass one group of students who appear to be snorting cocaine. On closer look its really just dried koolaid…so I guess that’s better? I literally slide into class for the first lesson of the day: S3B. The topic of the day is Human Rights. This is exciting because I love doing lessons on content that actually matters as opposed to just drilling past simple irregular verbs. I have decided to print out the UN Declaration of Human rights for the lesson. This document, if you have never read it, is chock full of inspiring, fantastically delicious prose. This also, however, means that its full to the brim of very complex vocabulary. Needless to say I over estimated my ability to explain them in English let alone Kinyarwanda. To try and bring the idea that laws are different than rights and that rules should exist to protect rights and not to hurt them I have decided to try a demonstration. I announce that I will be implementing some new rules starting today. I tell students that from now on I will consider row one the good students, they will be the only ones to get books, dictionaries and special prizes from me (I give out pencils). The second row I have determined is no longer allowed to speak in class (they were concerningly ok with this) and finally the third row was declared to be the bad students. They would no longer be allowed to sit in class. They would receive punishment everyday. As well intentioned at the exercise what, it was a bit of a failure-well-in the first two classes at least. The students are used to being told what to do and following un-questioningly. I am not sure if they really understood the concept of an unjust law. Planting seeds right? After 4 straight hours with S3 comes the most anxiety inducing part of my day: going to the toilet. This event causes me daily anxiety not because of the germs-I am pretty sure I am immune to everything by now, not because I have to walk half a mile through a muddy field watched by 1,000 curious eyes- you learn to walk carefully, not because of the 700 flies that buzz around the hole or the fact that there is no toilet paper, water or soap for washing afterwards. No no no my anxiety comes from the fact that some engineering genius decided to put the lock on the OUTSIDE of the latrine and locate the teachers toilets in the middle of the Primary school playground. I desperately fear that one day some smart ass 5 year old is going to lock me in the toilet. Why do I fear this??? Because it HAPPENED the second day here at my home by a 4 year old!!! And it would be so much more humiliating at school. But fortunately for me that did not happen today, today I was safe from certain smelly, claustrophobic death. For today at least. Thus relieved I return to teaching. Now I have two hours with S1A. That lovely, precious, eager group of young minds who understand so very little of what I say. Today I am excited because we are going to sing “summer nights” and I feel confident they will love it. False. Do you know how many key changes there are in that song?!?! Things you just don’t think about when you choose a song for class. Additionally, apparently “Summer Nights” was too much of a jump in vocabulary and melodic complexity from our last song “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles. Yes, that’s probably true. I concede. But not in class I didn’t . Sigh. I find that I often over reach in class. I love challenging my students but there’s a delicate balance. A little challenge is good and promotes thinking and trying and growing, a lot of challenge makes students give up, check out and go crazy. Too often I lean towards the second. If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times: teaching is an art…no doubt about it…hopefully I am getting there. Anyways 6 hours of classes later the school day ends. I’m sorry you may have thought there that I meant I was finished…o contrare. After school a film crew from Kigali comes to my school to film me teaching yet ANOTHER lesson with 7 MORE teaching aids to a DIFFERENT group of students. This lesson is about current events. I am participating in a television program series here called SMART LEARNING in which I work with different teachers to prepare lessons that promote good teaching methods. This week no teacher would agree to do it so that left yours truly as the only candidate. I reel in the students who I have chosen to stay after school to be in the program. We arrange the desks, clean the floor, get our supplies situated and are just about ready to begin when….oh yes that would be rain you here POUNDING on the roof making it impossible to be heard. We wait for about 20 minutes and then the rain subsides enough that we can continue the lesson. I teach the hour and a half lesson, the students do their presentations, the film crew films and then it’s a wrap. The crew brings in fanta for the students, two of them get sick from chugging too fast (mind you they are 19 years old) and then I send them home. At this point I am FINALLY able to pack up my bips and bops and start on the treacherous 5 minute walk home. On the way I meet several students who have apparently camped out along my path to ask for various favors: chalk, to come running with me tomorrow, to check their homework, to come to GLOW camp (still 4 months away) you know, the usual. At 5:30, I FINALLY make it home and turn to close the door for the night when low and behold the door won’t shut because three wiggly giggly girls are holding it open with shrieks and screams of “YOUR HOME!” and I know that I am home. I sit down to collect my strength before sliding down to the floor to draw on princess paper with my girls (neighbors from my compound) and try to remember what my neighbor said about people being lucky if kids like them, that they will find blessings in their lives when kids camp out at their home. Damn I must be lucky☺ Around 6 I start cooking dinner only to find that the electricity has gone out. I give up that endeavor and decide it will be a trailmix and banana kind of a night and I sit down to finish preparing my lessons for tomorrow amid a pile of arms and legs and fingers in my hair (literally). At 8 pm I send the children out with wishes of “dreams of God” and I just about collapse. But not before a quick chat with that ever patient, ever loving, ever thoughtful fiancé of mine. And that’s a wrap. Another PCV recently said to me, “Wow Caitlyn that’s so sweet you still care.” I looked at him blankly, trying to determine his meaning. What, I asked him sincerely, was the alternative? NOT CARING??? That seems like a revolting idea. I hope I always care, I hope I always try even when I am the only on (as it often feels at my school). The good news is that caring is catching and energy is contagious. I hope you’ve got the bug too and if not, share some of mine☺ Yours truly and ever caring, Caitlyn

Some thoughts on women: i.e. they are great

I mean come on, its just true.
When I look into the shockingly beautiful faces of the women here I just know in my core that it’s true. When I see a thin woman carrying a 50 L Jerrycan of water on her head with a baby on her back and a sack of potatoes at her side I know that strength comes from a different place than muscles. When I listen to my friend talk about how, after being impregnated by her teacher in her first year of high school, she never wants to marry but rather to continue raise her child herself and her sister and get a job in business, all the while smiling and laughing, I know that joy can come from a place other than your circumstances. Women are the embodiment of paradoxes, of strength and joy and sadness and passion and exhaustion all mingling together in an encasement of beauty.
Rwandan women are amazing. In the village, they literally do everything. They cook, clean, farm, bear, birth and raise children, they run informal businesses, and see their children through school. They are amazing.
Rwanda, like many developing countries (and developed ones too) has a long history of unequal gender roles. Girls education, women’s involvement in politics, in formal business and as leaders with a voice are all still fairly new ideas. These ideas take time to reach out to the village where old habits, customs and cultures die hard and men are reluctant to relinquish their power.
This can be hard to watch at times. Especially because oftentimes Rwandans don’t see it. The government talks about gender equality a lot and so many people just assume that now they have it. They see girls in school (though fewer than boys with lower scores on average) and women on TV or the radio and assume there is equality. But even though there is great progress being made there are still some frustratingly entrenched ideas persisting here. For example a girl is not a woman until she is married while there is a special word for young man and also a boy can become a man by virtue of age while a girl’s womanhood is directly connected to her husband. People here call Joe my boss, which is completely normal. Many of my friends call their husbands “Boss.” Also, women are often called upon to be the servants at people’s parties so that the men never have to get up but can have a woman continually refill their beer. I really don’t mean to sound accusatory but rather am trying to paint a picture for you.
And yet women don’t seem to be emotionally oppressed by this situation. They are resilient and often seem to accept that this is just the way things are, not desiring or seeking change. I rounded a bend in the path through the banana trees on a run the other day and was faced with a beautiful picture of sisterhood as 5 or 6 women of ages ranging from 12 -60 walked towards me with their arms around each other, hoes on their heads and at least 4 different kinds of fabric on each of them. It was such an image of beauty and vibrance it took my breath away. The great strength and resilience of women, however, does not justify the injustice.
Needless to say, things need to change. And things are changing, just very very slowly. The tricky thing about change is that you can’t just run out in front of a man sitting and drinking beer while his wife cleans, cooks, cares for kids and refills his cup and wave your arms to say STOP STOP! ARE YOU CRAZY!? Things have to CHANGE! No. And when I am asked to be the servant for a party of priests and prominent men and women in my town I can’t stick my chin out and say you can’t make me just because I am a girl in your eyes! You have to be patient, ask pointed questions, draw people’s attention to the inconsistencies and injustices. You can’t tell people they are wrong to their face. You have to help them see that and come to their own conclusions. And my gosh is that hard to do. But if you make people angry and defensive the change will not be positive.
In the name of change,
In the name of women everywhere,

cg

It's been awhile but good news: forgiveness wins

Well I came to the end of my first term of teaching. I felt it is a good time to stop and reflect on what it is I have gotten myself into. ☺ My last few weeks of the term I felt kind of bipolar…thinking one moment that I am so happy and doing good things and liked as a human being and the next minute thinking that I am failing as a teacher, not liked or appreciated and lonely. I think the hurricane of emotions was do to the change in schedule that came with a week of exams and then a week of grading…i.e. more free time than I am used to (never have been good at resting). Now, one week after submitting my grades I am feeling very optimistic and excited about being a teacher and being in Rukara. So that’s a good thing☺

But what I wanted to write about today is not my emotional instability or worth as a human being. Rwandan schools take a break in April because it is their memorial month. It was in the month of April that the genocide began in 1994. April 7 was the national day of mourning and there was a powerful weight over this community as they began to commemorate the anniversary. They spent one week sharing stories, crying, comforting, and declaring “never again.” The people here feel a conviction and a repulsion to killing deeper than any I have seen. Reconciliation, however, is a longer road than some would like to believe. The government here talks a great deal about reconciliation and unity. No one is allowed to talk about tribes or ethnicity and every school is encouraged to have a unity and reconciliation club. In the villages, however, reconciliation is a slower process, but people are trying and there is now a whole generation that was not alive during the atrocities of 94 and they are helping reconciliation along while at the same time trying to understand their place, their posture towards a 100 day long horror that they do not understand but they see the effects of everywhere.

The Rwandan commitment to remembering and reconciling strikes me deeply as I look around the world and in my own heart where the need for reconciliation runs rampant. From the conflict in Israel and Palestine to families in America the power of forgiveness cannot be underestimated. But as the Rwandan people know, forgiving does not mean forgetting or just brushing over the issue. It means facing the pain, injustice and frustration in the face and wading through the muck to choose in every moment to forgive. Reconciliation does not say, “well what happened didn’t matter,” but reconciliation says, “man what happened was terrible and I know that and I feel the pain from that but I choose not to run away but to face you and work towards that which is good and true and shalom-filled.” The Rwandan people amaze me.

My challenge to you is to find someone that you need to forgive and don’t just move on or forget but embrace the hurt and the memory and reconcile. Not with guilt trips or self-pity but with strength that comes from the knowledge that Christ DIED for you when you were still sinner so that YOU could be reconciled to him. He faced more rejection and pain than most of us ever will because he stinkin LOVES you. In that truth we find strength, love and forgiveness for those in our life who have hurt us, for those in this world who have done evil. We don’t forget the evil but we overcome it with good. In Mere Christianity there is a brilliant explanation of why good wins. Good wins (God wins) because only God is truly creative. Only He can create something from nothing. The Devil (or that which is evil) is only ever a manipulation of that which is good-it is never something new, it is only too much or a twisted version of something that started as good. Our God is good. He has forgiven us and reconciled us to himself out of love. Thus we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that forgiveness and reconciliation is a more powerful force in the world than all at hatred and spitefulness can ever muster up. And that is good news.
He is Risen, team, just as he said he would.
Floored by the magnitude of our God, and the power of forgiveness,
Much love and shalom,

cg

things you may not know about Rwanda

Today is my four month anniversary. Its like that point in the relationship when you start to know each other well enough to feel comfortable with silences and establish routines. You also start to notice things you don’t like about each other that you hadn’t noticed before and some of the initial giddiness wears off. I would say all of those things are true for me right now. Four months into my 27 months of service I am settling in, feeling more and more at home but also struck by the reality that this is my life, not just a trip and that teaching is hard, hard work.
The last month has been full of ups and downs but they seem to balance each other out-if I have a rough day at school my time after school in the community is extra encouraging and if I have a frustrating day in the community with drunken men or screaming children, class goes well. So all in all I am doing well. I really feel blessed to be at my sight with really wonderful friends and a stunningly beautiful landscape. My s1 students finally came and I am beginning my third week with them. Teaching them has been one heck of a challenge because their language skills are SO SO low and they are just so young and do not take school very seriously. They are very confused and frustrated by all the new teaching techniques I use with them because my explanations generally go over their head. But buhoro buhoro (slowly slowly). Many days I leave class feeling very defeated but then there are those few moments where the students seem to get it and get excited about English and I rejoice! There was a stretch of days where I didn’t even teach at all because of surprise holidays, local elections (all the teachers just decided not to come back to school after voting), teachers telling me they needed my hours, and poop in the classroom that meant students refused to enter. Awww I am learning patience and not to be married to my plans that’s for sure. I try to work hard and be prepared for excellence but just let it go when things change…which they usually do. I am also learning a great deal about humility as day in and day out I am faced with the ugly reality of my pride. But my life here is a humbling existence so I feel confident that I am growing☺ just very very aware of my need for Christ.
One highlight of this last month was I had all the secondary school teachers (about 20) over to my house for dinner. They seemed to really appreciate that and start to realize that I am meant to be their collegue and friend and not just some outsider. Rwandan’s are a guarded people and they take their sweet time to warm p to you and decide if they will trust you or not. I think they are deciding to trust me. Which is a very good thing!
Buhoro buhoro. ☺
I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you some things you may not know about Rwanda. There are many surprising and ridiculous and wonderful things about this country that you should know about:
1) IT IS BEAUTIFUL! I mean really. Rwanda is a very very small country but it has volcanoes, mountains, grasslands, rainforest, lakes, forests, and even an island! It is nicknamed the land of a thousand hills for a reason, there are SO SO many hills in every direction so that going for a bike ride is a very courageous endeavor. I am just about 8 km from a beautiful lake called Muhazi and goodness it is breathtaking. I went down to the water for the first time a few weeks ago to a little restaurant called Jambo Beach and kind of never wanted to leave. J
2) 1) Fashion is a very very serious thing here. There is this absolutely fantastic fabric called ibitenge which the women wear and it comes in about a thousand different shades and patterns. I seriously have to control myself from new fabric every week at the Wednesday market. The women here wear their igitenge with pride and flair especially on Sunday to church. But what may be even more surprising to you is that men’s fashion is an even bigger deal here than women’s fashion. All the rage this season is the half length tie and the long pointy shoes (that require the men to walk like peacocks!). Also very popular are the satin shirts and shiny pants. They don’t mess around.
3) Kinyarwanda is a ridiculous language (oh wait you may have already figured that out from my venting in other posts) haha ☺ I’ll get there.
4) Rwanda has an incredibly efficient and active government. There are so so so many initiatives aimed at encouraging development, creating a culture of advancement and supporting the poor. And Rwandans LOVE their local government. There are a lot of different levels of government: the umudugudu (or village), the sell, the sector, the district, the province and THEN the country. And all this in a country smaller than most of the states in the US.
5) Rwandans are really really good sharers. In fact, its pretty socially unacceptable to eat alone. I gave up on trying to eat dinner by myself. If I really want to cook then I do and just bring it over to Claudine and Chantel’s house to share and add to whatever we are eating there. A person with a job may pay for the school fees of 5 or 6 kids who aren’t their own and house family members in need. Homelessness is not a problem here and there are no street kids outside of the big cities. That’s because no one is without a family of some sort and people just take care of each other in a really remarkable way.
6) Rwandans have not been too creative with their food over the years. They are constantly weirded out by my recipes. They pretty much have two meals: ibitoke (plaintains) with peanut sauce (and maybe a tomato thrown in) and beans (maybe some cabbage) and rice. I am working on trying to start a garden in which to plant some new veggies like broccoli and spinach and herbs to a) introduce more nutrition and b) just add some VARIETY! If my little garden here at home is successful, the headmaster agreed to allocate some land on the school property to plant some new foods with the incentive that any kid who helps gets to take home the food. Hopefully I can find a few nutrient dense foods that Rwandan’s like and maybe introduce it to the community on a wider scale. All of this is again, buhoro buhoro. You can just dump new food on a culture and demand that they like it just because its good for them. Slowly by slowly☺


Well that’s all for now friends! I hope February has been a tremendous month for you thus far despite the SNOW (I think I would die in the cold at this point) and that Valentines Day was full to the brim of love☺
Much much love from me to you!

cg

called by name

I tell you what…the days here are crazy long but the weeks seem to fly by! I realized (from the questions of a number of dear friends) that I had not written since I began teaching! Well, I believe God heard the prayers voiced in my last blog post because the very next day I started teaching. It was certainly a slow slow start with a painfully floppy schedule at first but each week it gets better. For the last three weeks I have been teaching S2 and S3 students and it has been a lot of fun. The lessons have been kind of random since these are not going to be my permanent students (once the S1 students return on the 7th of Feb I will shift to teach them full time). Basically I have just been choosing random topics that I thought were interesting or fun to talk about and practice different kinds of activities. So far we have covered question words, letter writing (Emma and Tess can get excited since they have about 100 letters coming their way), advertising, futball vocabulary, a story called Police Chase and “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” Its been fun and I am starting to feel more comfortable in my position as a teacher. It is always difficult to find the balance between being friendly and fun with the students and being strict and authoritative, I think I am starting to find my stride. It will certainly be nice, however, when I have my own students so that I can start building my units, establishing procedures, and knowing students names etc.
Rukara is wonderful, it is starting to feel more and more like home. We are entering the hot, dry season which is a bit painful, and we have had a rude introduction this week with incredibly high temperatures and no water in the whole village.
My house is now all decorated (painted some scrap wood from a construction pile with sunflowers….I am so predictable sometimes) and I have a bed and bookshelves and a table which beats the heck out of having piles of stuff on the floor.
Today was the first meeting of a new club called G.L.O.W. club, it stands for Girls Leading Our World, which is VERY exciting. I am really hoping this club can be a safe place for girls to blossom. In Rwandan high schools there are far fewer girls than boys so as my training director in Nyanza liked to say the girls who are still there are the survivors who have resisted family pressure to drop out to work at home, have children or get married. Girls also fall behind boys in performance in school and it is just clear that they are (as a whole-obviously there are those standout girls in every class) more insecure and shy in class. As many of you probably know I LOVE WOMEN and that means I am super pumped at the prospect of encouraging, challenging and getting to know in a personal way the teenage girls in my village! I gave the girls a long speech about the purpose, method and ideology of the club and summed it up by saying the club is about fun, learning and serving i.e. its going to be a blast. My good friend and neighbor Floflo is going to help me with the club which is SO EXCITING! She is a lawyer and an orphan and is just an incredible example of a powerful, smart, independent woman who is quickly becoming a dear friend! She is not very involved in the Rukara community even though she has lived here for a year and she thinks I am way weird for the way I am always moving and talking to people but she puts up with me…hahaha. BUT she asked if she can be apart of GLOW! I about cried with joy!
Of course I am bubbling over with ideas but God has been faithful to give me patience to just be with people before I even begin to try and problem solve or implement my ideas. And for once in my short little life I am ok with that. I am actually having so much joy in taking it slow.
I used to say at Furman that I was trying to do so much that I was not doing anything with excellence but merely half doing everything. Well right now I feel I am in a season where I can actually do things with excellence because life is slow and I am surprising myself by really finding joy in the slowness.
My language skills are coming along and I am starting to feel like I have real friends here. Its also funny because my friends are real adults. Haha After being in school for so long is kind of funny to suddenly find that my natural community is adults-lawyers, secretaries and teachers. ☺
The people here are slowly starting to recognize me as a person rather than just a Muzungu, and the hollers of "Muzungu!" are slowly being replaced with calls of "Ket Ket" (their interpretation of Caitlyn) or "Gasaro" (my kinyarwanda name which means rare bead).
Isn’t it funny how there is just something about being known that just changes everything? It seems as though this desire to be known is one of the core, inescapable characteristics of human kind. It is why we have blogs and twitter and facebook. It drives our friendships and shapes even how we view ourselves. It seems as though people are scrambling to be known by any means necessary. But why are we scrambling? The Bible has told us that God has called us by name. We are known by him-completely and deeply known. This truth has become more meaningful to me in the last month. My heart leaps a little every time someone in my village calls out my name and not just muzungu, and yet the God of the universe has called me by name and I am his! I am blown away and humbled by this powerful truth and I pray that I would be more and more moved by this everyday. If the God of the universe has called me by name, whom shall I fear? Why should I scramble to be known or understood, accepted or proven worthwhile by worldly standards? I have been called by name. It is a journey and a process to really internalize and live out this truth and a joy that we get to do this journey in community.
I hope today you feel in your core that you are called by name-that you don’t have to scramble, that you are loved and that you have been counted worthy on his account. That truth frees us to love deeply and encourage one another on to good works for his Glory and not ours☺

Much much love and shalom
cg

Staying connected

Some other Peace Corps Volunteers and I opened a BP box where you can mail me things...not going to lie, a snail mail letter or care package can be soul reviving! So if the spirit should take you and you want to write address your letter/package as follows:

Caitlyn Griffith/Peace Corps Volunteer
BP 47
Rwamagana
Rwanda

and believe it or not thats all it takes!
letter take about 3 weeks and packages can take about two months to get here via US postal service.
I promise to write you back:)

much love to you all

cg

in the small things

Most of the wisdom I have to share comes from something I have read. A few days ago I read something most timely and thought I would share. Compliments of Ms. Katie Shultz, I have been reading the book Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Yesterday the devotional included a small anecdote about a lay brother named Brother Lawrence from the 17th century who learned to integrate passion for Christ into the mundane and ordinary tasks of washing dishes and keeping the kitchen. He challenged others to “do our common business wholly for the love of Him.”
Right now, my life is a bunch of common business, a collection of mundane and frankly frustrating at times, tasks. I must learn to live the small moments, do the menial tasks with great passion and zeal for Christ and his kingdom. Glorifying God in the small things. I mean when you get down to it, I guess that’s what its all about. Oswald Chambers writes a lot about the challenge of being a disciple in the in-between times. The human spirit is resilient and can get us through the tragedies and “big moments.” Its being radical in the small things and living it day in and day out through the small moments that is what really defines our disciple status.
Today is my one week anniversary of being at my site, my small village of Rukara. It’s hard to believe that I have over 100 more weeks here. I truthfully have not been in one place that long in over 5 years!
This week has been packed and the days have been long. There have been so many minutes both high and low and the emotional whirl wind of trying to get my head around what I am doing here has left me on the brink of tears more than once. A few highlights from the week have been: my craft projects as I have been making my two concrete rooms into a home (its coming a long….my favorite projects being the transformation of my metal trunk into a padded bench with fantastic Rwandan fabric on top and my makeshift pantry made from cinder blocks and scrap wood from the local carpenter that I painted bright orange and green); I cooked for everyone in our little row house (about ten people) Mexican fajitas and they loved it (or were really good at acting like it-highly possible because Rwandans are not too keen on new food); I have tried to go on long walks every day to talk to people and introduce myself and that’s been really fun and a big test of my Kinyarwanda; I made (sort of) kettle corn and had a movie night with my neighbors and 6 girls ranging in age from 3 to 30 climbed into one bed to watch Prince Caspian as I tried to (fairly unsuccessfully) translate for them; I have found a great running route that goes through a lot of very beautiful, very peaceful farmland; AND I had a wonderful visit with the nuns I stayed with last time I was here and I am going to go over there twice a week to teach them English, do crafts (and eat food with them-they have an oven!!!); also I have a new friend named Magnific who is six and practically my shadow-haha. Peace Corps recommended that we not let kids into our home but on day one that proved impossible as she made herself right home among my things and just kept saying over and over “ni munsi mukuru, ni munsi mukuru!” which means “it’s a holiday, it’s a party!” hahaha and she has barely left my side ever since. Sometimes I guiltily lock my door to get a little privacy and keep her out. The funniest part is that she seems to be under the impression that I am fluent in Kinyarwanda and therefore has a constant stream of words coming out of her mouth at a low mumble so that even the words I know I can’t understand! Hahah it doesn’t keep to bother her that I just make little ”mmm” and “ooo” noises instead of actually responding.
School started(ish) on Monday which was certainly noteworthy day even if not especially meaningful. Apparently school here only fake starts on the day it is publicized to start. We were warned about this but its just so much more frustrating to experience it! I showed up a few minutes to 7 (starting time) on Monday and found myself alone with the headmaster. He informed me I might as well go home and he would call me when things started happening. And slowly slowly kids started trickling, their mothers behind them. About two thousand of the 6 thousand showed up the first day. Now I think of myself as a pretty savvy muzungu-you know I have been to east Africa, I know how things work, I am used to being stared at and yelled at and answer pretty patiently to the name “muzungu” and the kids who charge you to shake your hand. But let me just tell you, two thousand kids charging you and screaming at you is another story entirely. Frankly I was terrified. I mean kids were getting run over and trampled! Madness. I now know I have to go around the primary school and not through it to get to the secondary school if I don’t want a high intensity, near death experience at 7 in the morning.
Second surprise is that the grade I am teaching-Senior 1-doesn’t start until February because the Ministry has not yet finished grading their exams from last year. So for the next month I will just be stuck in random classes to teach random, disjointed lessons. (does my tone let you know how I feel about that) and observing Rwandan teachers. Also I will be starting an English club, creative expressions club, teaching English to the other teachers, and teaching the nuns in theory in the next month but things just kind of move on their own time so who knows when these things will actually happen. I am learning, however, that I don’t have to wait to be radically loving and justice seeking until my official “job” starts. I am trying to be radical and passionate in the way I love the people in my row house, in the way I treat and talk to the umukozi (house help who cleans the other houses) and respond to irritatingly forward men in the town. There does not have to be this big divide between your Job and the rest of your life…in fact their shouldn’t be! I am here to serve and love people and hopefully make their lives better in the long term by my existence here.
Well Magnific is getting antsy watching me write this so I am going to go and take the (sort of ) chocolate chip cookies I baked in my makeshift dutchoven over to her aunt’s house to share them☺
So the moral of the story, team, is be radical in the small things, talk to your neighbors, talk to the town crazy, be kind in unexpected ways, make things beautiful-especially things that aren’t usually beautiful like concrete walls and sidewalks!
Much much love to you all and a happy, shalom filled and sought new year!

it's true what they say...

I know I haven't posted in awhile, training is a lot of the same with not too many landmark events. Its crazy to believe that in just 9 days I will be swearing in as a Peace Corps volunteer! The last three weeks we have been doing something called model school where we have been teaching around 700 students each morning. It has been really fun and a lot of work to plan lessons and teach in the middle of also attending tech sessions, language class, and sessions on health, cross cultural, safety and security. The days have been long and sometimes mundane but there have been a few highlights that I would like to share.
For one thing, it was wonderful to teach the kids in our classes. The sheer fact that PC administration was able to find 700 students who wanted to just for fun come to school on their holiday break is pretty amazing. The kids are so motivated and eager and there was more than one moment when I teared up at the overwhelming preciousness of them! There is no way you could get kids in the states to come to three weeks of school on break. I realized just how different it is to teach English as a second language as opposed to teaching an English class in the states. I guess teaching wasn't really something I was worried about in coming here but I now realize that it is going to be incredibly difficult to learn to teach kids english who literally speak no English. struggle. and challenge. I am definitely open to good ESL resources that anyone might know of.
Another highlight was last weekend we look a trip on Sunday to a national park. We drove in a bus for three hours through the AMAZING countryside of Rwanda, waited for an hour and a half to pay and be admitted, went for an hour long hike, got caught in a torrential thunderstorm that included hail in the middle of the rainforest, waited for another hour and a half for the second group to finish and then drove three hours back. All in all, a lot fo travel time for a fairly short hike but worth it. It's apparently true what they say, it does rain in the rainforest...a lot. It also hails in tropical rainforests, lesser known fact....I guess hailforest didn't have the same ring to it. In short, this country is amazingly beautiful and its very exciting to slowly by slowly start to feel at home here.
A few other highlights have been our weekend dinners. There is a guys house just near to ours in our little village of Muganda Mure and every weekend we think up creative things to cook. We have made some amazing stirfrys, veggie fajitas, bean burgers, PUMKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP BREAD (shout out to Annie for rocking that! on a charcoal stove no less), french toast, pumpkin soup and grilled cheese! Basically we eat the same thing every day at the center and so when we get the freedom to cook ourselves we take advantage and go big!
The other major major highlight as of late is, of course, today! Well, and yesterday. Yesterday (Christmas Eve) we had a big white elephant gift exchange which was great because Rwandans have a love of all that is cheesy and flashy so finding entertaining gifts was not a problem. Especially popular this season was the Obama swag-beanies, bags and belt buckles. There were also a lot of ridiculous children's toys and a few american candy bars that people had gotten in packages from the states (those went quickly). Then we had a talent show and the people from my Muganda Mure (farside as we call ourselves) clique performed Crayola Doesn't Make a Color. It was fun, and I was thoroughly impressed with the talent in our training group! There were dances, karate, songs, spoken word and even a re-inactment of the Hiphopapotamous! then we had a big dance party and ate fries! haha This morning I went to a very long, very warm but very enjoyable Christmas church service and now I am about to go eat christmas chili at the center! Tonight I get the best present of all because my very own Joelee is coming to visit and its going to be such a blessing to have him here!
I definitely am feeling some homesickness loud and clear today but I know that this day is just as special no matter where in the world I am and I am so grateful to celebrate Jesus' birth in another culture and language!!
I wanted to send you all my love today and know that I am thinking of you and missing you!! Merry Christmas to you and may your day be filled with Christ centered love!

Site visit, big dreams and thankfulness

Last week I crossed a major milestone in my training as a Peace Corp volunteer: site visit. Peace Corps assigns each volunteer to a different town based on the requests of the local schools. Apparently about 100 schools in Rwanda requested a Peace Corp volunteer and then PC staff selected 65 sites to send volunteers. Last week we got to spend 5 days getting to know our village and the people we will be working with for the next two years. My site assignment is a small village called Rukara in the eastern district of Kayonza about an hour from Kigali.
I travelled with four other Peace Corps Trainees to my site because we were in the same general direction from Nyanza. As we approached Rukara my stomach was in knotted anticipation to see where I would be living and working for the next two years! The bus I was on stopped at the side of the road where there is a small sign announcing Rukara 7km. I got off and greeted my headmaster who had met me at the stop and then hopped on the back of a moto bike to ride up a steep hill to my village.
Rukara is a quiet place with friendly people and little to no industry. Most people there are substistence farmers and there is definitely a culture of sustaining the status quo rather than one of progress and moving forward. One of my favorite things about Rukara was the women! I met so many incredible, lively women and I am very excited to work with them perhaps in community, vocational classes when I live there. The secretary at my school and her sister are two such young women that I anticipate will be my best friends while living there. Though they speak no English we still had so much fun together and they give me some good extra motivation to learn Kinyarwanda.
There is a convent founded by the Spanish church in the village and this is where I stayed during my visit. For the first 4 days of my stay the sisters were actually on a vow of silence and prayers, which they do periodically, so no one could really talk to me! I was very confused until about 10 pm on my last night there when all the sisters came running to me to explain that they are actually very fun and love to sing and dance and talk but only could not this week! Haha that was a relief I must admit because the sisters were not lying, we had a wonderful time celebrating the end of their week of silence and prayers with singing, dancing and REAL CAKE! Nuns are such a unique group of people. They have so much joy and softness but a pronounced stealiness in their core and they definitely understand sisterhood. I will be living at a house owned by the convent during my service so I am excited to be a frequent visitor and honorary sister with them. There are about 20 Rwandan sisters and two Spanish nuns. My brain was about to explode trying to remember my Spanish from high school at the same time as I tried to construct sentences in Kinyarwanda!! Who would have thought that all those years of Spanish would pay off in Africa!? And I will certainly be using it because none of the nuns-Spanish or Rwandan-speak any English!
My primary assignment in Rukara is to teach Secondary school English. Rwanda just recently switched from French to English as their national language and around the same time they extended their public education from 6 years to 9. Schools have struggled to handle the influx of students at the same time as they shifted to a language that neither students nor teachers have a firm grasp on. I will be helping fill the gap and also introducing new pedagogy and learner centered teaching techniques. Teaching is only a part time job however, and the rest of my time will be spent training teachers, teaching English to different members of the community and doing secondary projects. As I walked around Rukara, meeting people and getting a feel for the great need in the community, my mind was racing with ideas for secondary projects. Murals, art and dance clubs, women’s vocational classes, health sessions….the list is endless. Peace Corps administration and even the other volunteers seem to downplay secondary projects, emphasizing the need for these things to start slowly and have small goals. I am not a small goal kind of a girl. I can’t help but dream big dreams. I am not sure if this makes me naïve or just foolish but I am filled with excitement and anticipation at the change and progress that is possible in Rukara. I know without a doubt that there will be tremendous challenges and difficulties. I know I will struggle with loneliness and purpose but I also know I have hope in a big God with a big love for his people in need and I am THRILLED to be his hands and feet in Rukara for the next two years.
This Sabbath day I am filled with joy and peace and big dreams that seem a little impossible but well isn’t that what its all about?? If not then what the heck are we doing here??
I definitely missed home this week of Thanksgiving. I hope you all had remarkable holidays filled with gratefulness for both your blessings and your struggles. I am grateful for the incredible support system God has blessed me with both at home and here. I am grateful for the new friendships I am building here and for dear friends all over the world. I am grateful for the profound beauty of the country where I am living. I am grateful that I dont have to cook turkeys in massive holes dug in the ground every Thanksgiving (haha) and I am grateful for the opportunities I have each day to love the one in front of me, to be excellent for the kingdom and to be the hands and feet of Christ.
I hope your Sabbath is also filled with God-sized dreams and visions for bringing heaven to earth whether you are in Rwanda, Kenya, New Zealand or Nashville. :)

The Complexity of Collectivity

Rwandan society, like much of the east African community, is based around a collective social identity rather individualism which is the foundational social identity in the western world. The phrase “it takes a village (or umudugudu in Kinyarwanda) to raise a child” is very much a reality here. Children are fed, disciplined, instructed and herded by the entire village and not just the biological mother or father. In fact, there is no word in Kinyarwanda for the sister of my mother, she is simply called mama wacu-our mother.
Likewise, there is an expectation that any surplus in the household budget to go towards a neighbor’s hospital bill, sister’s children’s school fees or brother’s schooling. In the wonderfully insightful book “Africa Friends and Money Matters” the author lays out the stark differences between the American/western economic system and the African one. He argues that the African system is structured so that everyone has just enough and does not reward growth or innovation as more valuable than subsistence of the whole. Western capitalism on the other hand is structured such that growth is the ultimate goal and without growth there is great civil unrest. The African economic system based on the collective social identity incentivizes generosity and community solidarity. The western system based on individualism and growth can incentivize greed and amassing of individual wealth.
At first glance, it can appear that Africans have got it right when it comes to a socially just, equitable and generous economic system. It may not be growing rapidly or driving the most innovative progress but at least everyone is taken care of equally right? I think my mindset has been that Africans have the social mindset of economics on the right track and just needed to work on the innovation, investment side of things a little more so that there would be more wealth for everyone. Three weeks into my Rwanda experience, I am thinking that things are much more complicated than they first appeared. It is more complicated because the collective social identity that makes Africans so wonderfully generous and community minded is the same thinking that binds their hands when it comes to innovation and development. The collective social identity that encourages solidarity also incentivizes conformity. It becomes highly undesirable to be different in anyway. From how you dress, to how you clean, to how you make money, different is seen as bad.
Rwandans are quick to criticize a person who chooses to shirk social expectations. This holding each other accountable can be good when it helps make a city cleaner (for example on the monthly day of nation wide community service called umuganda), but it can be destructive when a person trying to increase efficiency by doing an old thing in a new way is ostracized by their community.
I think this spirit of conformity is what I am struggling most with right now. I want to integrate fully into Rwandan community, to be accepted as part of the umudugudu. To do so I must conform to the unspoken rules of dress, behavior and interactions. My very existence here, however, is an oxymoron. I am here to make a change, to facilitate progress because there is a need for change-otherwise Peace Corps would not have sent volunteers here. Change and progress require a breaking with a status quo and a shift in the way things have always been done. Thus my life is lived in the tension between conforming to the pressures to behave, dress and interact like my Rwandan friends and challenging the way they do things in a humble attempt at making things better.
I have never been one to go with the flow of popular opinion or one to conform to the wishes of others. I am having difficulty swallowing the necessity of conformity for the sake of progress. This unforeseen personal challenge is an interesting microcosm of the difficulty of development in east Africa. And like development in east Africa, it requires a great deal of humility, listening, patience and a long long time to see progress. I must learn to swallow my western ideals of individualism and independence if I wish to enter in to the fabric of the collective. If I want to make change I must first make myself nothing, taking on the posture of a servant so that I might work from within to move the collective forward in solidarity instead of conformity. That is why I am here, and that is what I must remind myself on days when I think having a wrinkly shirt is not such a big deal or I don’t feel like greeting everyone in the neighborhood on my way to work or I don’t want to bow to the strict hierarchy in Rwandan schools. I must live in the tension between integration and change, and between solidarity and conformity. I pray for strength to be ready for such an existence, for humility to sustain it and for love to endure it.

In solidarity but never conformity (and of course in shalom)
cg

A Scar is Never Ugly

Peace Corps is very intentional to ease its volunteers into their country of service, in Rwanda, a post-conflict country, they are particularly careful. I arrived, along with 70 other volunteers, to Kigali, Rwanda on Thursday evening where we spent three days in a compound in Kigali doing basic orientation- safety, health, culture, greetings in Kinyarwanda and getting to know the other volunteers. The volunteers in my group come from all over the country, range in age from 21-60 and include three married couples. The range of experience is vast from a few people who have spent time in Africa (probably about 5 of us) to people who have never been out of the country. We are all going to be teachers, either math, science or English, but even the experiences there range from long time teacher to only having tutored once or twice. The great diversity in our group is both a blessing and a challenge because we have SO many different skills and gifts to learn from but we also have to go slowly slowly through all material to address everyone’s individual situation. I found it a bit difficult at first to bond with the group because the primary source of bonding in the first week is the shock, awe and shared experience of exploring/seeing Africa for the first time. There is one other girl here who has been in east Africa and she has been my buddy. Thankfully we were roommates while in Kigali so we could freely share our thoughts and feelings.

The most pivotal point in our few days in Kigali was our visit to the Genocide Memorial Museum. This museum was build to commemorate and remember the genocide of 1994 and to declare to the world “never again.” When we first arrived we placed flowers on the mass graves of 250,000 people who are buried on that ground. This was a hugely emotional action for me as I considered the fact that 250,000 people is essentially 100 Furman Universities buried there. When I thought of the mothers, fathers, children, young people, elderly and babies who were brutally murdered I broke down. The genocide was the result of hatred that had grown over several decades beginning with Belgian colonization and perpetuated by extremists and propaganda. The first floor of the museum discusses the Rwandan genocide but the second floor presents information about other genocides throughout the 20^th century: the holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Namibian genocide and others. The brokenness of the world was staring me in the face and my heart was heavy with grief at the capacity of humankind for evil. I know in my heart that I am no better and I sincerely believe that. I was overwhelmed with the need for Jesus in the world today just as much at it ever has been. I was also filled with admiration for the Rwandan people who have done amazing things in picking themselves up and moving on. Walking down the street afterwards I was struck with the laughter, chatter and well-for lack of a better word- normalness of the people. There is definitely a kind of quiet strength in the Rwandan people that is not seen elsewhere in east Africa.

One thing that stuck out to me as I left the museum was the grave failure of the west to help. After the holocaust, the United Nations created an anti-genocide arm that was supposed to enforce “never again.” Many times the western world has been faced with genocide they have chosen to turn away or argue semantics instead of doing something. I felt guilt at the legacy of my country and frustration that the ideals we spout do not match up with our actions all too often. Even now in Darfur and the Congo mass killings are happening, but little (relatively speaking) has been done. Just something to think about I guess. Being here in Rwanda makes not only the Rwandan genocide seem more real but also makes the acute suffering of people all over the world seem more tangible as well. Facts and statistics can be thrown around a university classroom with indifference but when you look into the scarred face of a genocide survivor you begin to see the flesh and heart of those statistics. Action thus becomes more urgent. And let me assure you, it is urgent.

There is a beautiful quote in the book I just read called Little Bee. It says, “ …I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make and agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

After our stay in Kigali we moved to Nyanza about 2 hours away where we will be staying for our 11 weeks of language, technical and cultural training. As I walk through the market here and practice my rocky Kinyarwanda (local language) I look into faces of those who survived. Some scars are external like many here in Rwanda but many more are internal. We all bear scars that the scar makers want us to believe are ugly. Christ died so that our scars could be made beautiful. And they are beautiful because they tell the story of his grace and great love for us-in that we can rejoice.

So rejoice today in your scars and the beautiful scars of those around you. Rejoice that you survived and choose to defy the scar makers knowing that they too have scars. Each person is in need of grace and each person is infinitely worthy of love for Christ first loved us.

In shalom and in defiance of the scar makers,

cg

all aboard

well, my ship as been pointed and soon I set sail. I decided to accept an invitation from the Peace Corps to serve as a high school English teacher in Rwanda. three months of pre-service training on the ground in Rwanda and then 2 years of being a teacher. an adventure awaits full of humbling moments, frustrations, small triumphs and powerful relationships...at least thats what I am hoping for.

I think the part I am most excited about is that I get to work with Rwandan teachers to develop new curriculum that focuses on critical thinking and problem solving(!!!) which is EXACTLY what I want to do! Also I will be able to integrate some of the As We Forgive stuff I have been working on and with into my class! It is so exciting when you have those brief moments of "wow THATS what God was doing there." Well that is how I feel about this placement-though I have never been to Rwanda-or really even wanted to go-it is SO apparent that the Lord has brought me to this place and equipped me with experiences that will be of tremendous value when I am there.

I am thrilled to really become part of the community and get to know my neighbors in a meaningful, long-term way.

I am not so excited to miss three falls, three thanksgivings and three christmas's but I know that the abundance I will gain from this job will make the sacrifices seem small!

Full speed ahead!

transition reflection

i am at a point where i get to hopefully move from transient to some form of consistent. i am kind of over the three month stint but not ready for the decade long one. i have a lot of fears right now but not the same ones as my friends. i am not afraid of dangerous places or not making enough money or staying single. i am not afraid of the unknown or unfamiliar. my fear is kind of nameless. it stems from a deeprooted belief that the world is not as it should be. we are far from shalom. far from rightness.

for the next few months i will again be transient. teaching. loving. serving. but only temporarily, as usual. in all this coming and going i know that any good done through me can only be evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit and God's work because it sure as heck has very little to do with me.

i dont think i want to be a billboard for social movements. i dont spend my time learning about trendy co-ops or researching scandals while pretending that i hate trendy things. i dont want to be bitter or angry or hypocritical. is that bad? i am not as edgy as my friends. i am not as angry as them either. i feel as though i dont need to read that stuff to know the world is broken. and to spend my energy on that kind of incessent movement watching would just make me tired. i would instead like to focus on the people, loving them, serving them, working shoulder to shoulder with them to make change in tangible ways not nessicarily loud ways. sometimes i want to be like two of my friends. very with-it, knowing the cool blogs and lingo. but i dont. and i dont want to. i think part of me doesnt want to spend any extra time talking about the change and the anger and the solidarity but wants instead to do it. though i might go to a protest now and again i am not a protestor. i am a creator. recently i decided that when i am creating is when i am most alive. not tearing down but building. and i dont want to create or build without being asked to. i dont want to sit at home on my laptop at 3 in the morning thinking of the plan to "save" anyone. i want to GO. i think God has put a desire in my heart to go to the dangerous places and love people until their hearts change, to work for a shalom on earth that provides a scandalous, fragrant hint of the eternal shalom to come. That will be the true structural change. but you cant work for small changes without having some larger, bigger, seemingly impossible change as the end goal. for me that is a new economic system that values people over growth. a prison system meant to rehabilitate rather that crush. a justice system meant to protect rather than perpetuate. a school system that teaches critical thinking and creativity instead of memorization and conformity. a church that LOVES RADICALLY, gives irrationally, serves thoroughly, is colorful and joyful and in the forgotten places.

blistering sun and stubborn children...all in all-goodness

so its definately been awhile since i have written because the internet here in gulu is straight up shoddy. (i used to think that was kind of a curse word but its not because i just read it in jim elliots writing so i know it must be ok:) ) it has been a great two weeks!! angel is the wonderful girl who is my companion here and God has been SO tremendously faithful in providing her! she and i make a remarkable team and get along perfectly!! this community was just in time as i was missing some good girl time in kenya. she is 27 and from texas and just really balances me completely. we are already planning our next trip together.
as far as uganda itself is concerned...it is hot...like WAY hot. like i am perpetually sweating hot and my body cant adjust because every day its just getting hotter as they enter the hot, dry season. the poverty here is overwhelming. angel and i have had the opportunity to work in the camps some (internally displaced people's camps) and its heartbreaking. it almost feels silly to go in there with a bible drama and coloring and just play with teh kids when such huge socioeconimic changes are imperitive!!! reconstruction is a beast. for those of you who dont know Gulu, Uganda where i am has just emerged from a horrific 20 year civil war which left it traumatized, destitute, demoralized and impoverished. the monstrous task of reconstruction, resettlement and rehabilitation has begun but its a slow slow process.
during the day angel and i are teaching 5th and 6th grade english at a local primary school! i love it!! its seriously making think about moving back over here as a full time teacher. i should mention that 5th and 6th grade english means tht we have students ranging from 10 to 20 with boys far bigger than myself. its so frustrating sometimes as we have 98 students in each class (and dont worry thats a moderate sized class-many many schools have 200 to 1 student teacher ratio). i spend most of the class yelling, standing on desks, singing songs and thouroughly terrifing the students. its very fun-i am sure i do worlds for foreign relations with the us. we are trying to so more creative writing, critical thinking exercises as all the students have ever done are robotic grammar exercises. i mean dont get me wrong we are still teaching grammar we are just rapping it instead. hahahaha
in the evenings we work with the kids at the safe house-18 kids who have been rescued from various INTENSE situations to come live at this house where we stay. so basically we are with them ALL THE TIME. sometimes this gets exhausting. but we are working very hard to catch them up in school, we have done art therapy, lots of futball, games and songs galore. its so fun. we also do a devotion with the kids each night from this great book of angels that takes bible lessons from the animal kingdom.
we also have been working on drama's with the kids at the safe house which we perform in the camps.
today i kind of hit a wall of tiredness and general i-want-to-come-homeness so i really need prayer for strength and over whelming love for these kids for these last two weeks. i need sensitivity to the holy spirit to know how best and where best to serve here.
i will be praying for all of you this week as you will be travelling and spending time with family. i will pray that you would drink deeply of His love through your families and that it would be a time of rich refreshment rather than stress. take a lesson from the ugandans-there is no such thing as time or schedule so dont stress-its going to work out....i feel like americans need a good boost of that at the holidays!! i love you all deeply and sincerely!
shalom and a thousand blessings!

Last night in Kenya…
So this is my last post from Kenya. Tomorrow I leave for Uganda to teach high school and do an afterschool leadership program in Gulu. It’s a bit weird I must admit because I feel like after two months of building relationships and starting projects I now have to start all over. I kind of feel like if I am leaving I should be going home. These last few days/week have been very full. Full of practicing drama, dance, singing, games, crafts and bible studies with the kiddos (the kids had become very jealous of the older girls who I have been doing bible studies with so I found myself being begged to do more hahaha talk about fine by me ) I went to Narok last weekend with a group of 7 young adults from the Limuru area (all Kenyan). We met with 8 Masaai men and told the story of the bible in 16 stories with them. It really was a very cool experience- the bible being told in English, Swahili, Maasai and Kikuyo. They slaughtered two goats (don’t worry, like the pigs testicles I passed. luckily I am a vegetarian all the time so didn’t have to worry about fabricating an elaborate excuse) I got to see much more of the Kenyan landscape on the way including a good deal of wildlife including zebra. We went to a maasai church on Sunday and it was incredible. It was just such a testimony to how unbelievably multicultural our God is.
This week was incredibly busy preparing for the big inter-children’s home competition that happened today. It was an absolute blast. The kids performed very well and just had a lot of fun getting to spend time with kids from the other centers. The moms definitely had a ball and it was the social event of the month! Everyone worked hard and most importantly it was a step in uniting the children’s homes in the area rather than perpetuating this fragmentation and competitiveness between administrations.
I am very tired at the moment but its safe to say that I absolutely love the kids that I have gotten to work with these last few months-and side note-that’s not a given I don’t just LOOVE kids just because they are cute orphans. I will love on kids regardless but I have truly come to fall in love with these kids, with their hearts, stories and personalities.
The preschool sponsorship program is just about complete and that’s just straight up exciting so everyone should go to happyafrica.org and select a child to sponsor. Brian tropiano is a champ and designed the template…its adorable.
Chapter two of this adventure begins…

goodness wins

for starters i just want to assure you that just incase you had any doubts at all: Goodness triumphs over evil. i mean i know we know this to be true because jesus is going to come back and freaking clean house and right this world once and for all but even in the meantime goodness wins!! why? because anything that is bad is only a perversion of something that is good. see mere christianity for more on the subject...i really liked his rational on that one. God is good and this is HIS world and thats just comforting. anyway this is going to be quick because i smell really bad and sitting still like this makes me very aware of that fact (and probably the poor people around me too) plus this key board is a peice of crap so i apologize in advance for any typos:) this last week was good-busy and rainy but good. the youth symposium went really well-there were a lot of last minute changes and a lot of flexibility but all in all i think it was a very good thing. about 60 people came and stayed for the entire thing which is way cool and the money was raised and the youth asked difficult questions and there was good discussion and everything. there was plenty of room for improvement but all in all it was a success. the district office of youth affairs asked us to do more in different areas they have projects in and all these people were saying we should have one at least every month. they kept asking me when the next one was but i told them the torch had been passed and now they have the opportunity to finish what i started! i sincerely hope they will.
i am busy with plans for the competition that is involving five children's homes in teh area as well as continuing to do murals in the new baby centre and work on the preschool sponsorship program (b-trop is a champ for helping with the design) so you should all check out happyafrica.org and sponsor a preschooler for christmas they are each precious and wonderful and in serious serious need...i mean i know all the excuses you might have for not sponsoring a child over seas but let me just assure you that their need is WAY more than yours will ever be. their stories are heart wrenching-literally. mean the things these kids have seen and been through are horrendous and a part of this ridiculous cycle that has no easy answer or solution. i have really been wrestling wtih that lately. i mean this entire country (not to mention the continent) have MAJOR structural changes that need to take place-economic, emotional, psychological, GOVERNMENTAL changes that need to happen. the culture of pverty is stifling and suffocating ingenuity and creativity with the aid of the education system which is a part of a corrupt government which creates/sustains a culture of deceit and corruption which is aided by/created by poverty which results from a complete lack of jobs and misuse of resources which has been perpetuated by decades of microsolutions that do nothing for the future while all along people are having 9 kids that they cant provide for and things just get messier.
thank goodess that goodness wins and that JESUS IS COMING BACK. meanwhile i will continue to love the one in front of me knowing that this is not my kingdom or my home but that my treasure is in heaven. lets not forget that there is enough for everyones need but not for everyones greed.
hopefully that will act as an inspiration to spur you on to good works for the kingdom of heaven rather than depress you into passivity because the latter would be tragic and the former will bring abudence and a transcendent peace to guard your heart!
shalom

pigs testicles and other kenyan wonders

So its time for a quick update…I know you all have been on the edge of your seats waiting…hahah just kidding but I thought the theme of this one should be the wonders of Kenya…just to give you an idea of some of the…eccentricities I come into contact with everyday…. pigs testicular sandwiches being one of them. We took the kids to the Nairobi national museum yesterday because it was a public holiday! It was an incredible day! Truly sooo much fun! After the museum we went to the park and had our picnic of pigs testicle sandwich and soda hahaha the kids looove them and then we just ran around the park playing in fountains running away from strange men with ridiculous money making techniques such as hideous face painting, pushing kids in little miniature cars or making balloon hats (minus any sort of skill or shapliness) like I said it was public holiday so the place was SWAMPED! On Friday I went to this HUGE market to try and track down instruments and costumes for the kids. This is definitely NOT the market that muzungus go to. Haha I now know where alllll our old clothes go….KENYA! there were piles and piles of used clothes from the western world and a whole lot of free spirits. Though I did get a darn cute sweater for 50 shillings (about 75 cents). But the wonder of all the wonders were these backpacks. One booth had all these backpacks exactly the same color, shape, everything except that it had a different brand stamped on it. Basically you could choose whether you are more of a reebok or puma person. Haha I laughed very hard. Also There are no rules of the road here…a trend largely perpetuated by mitatus-the taxi bus. These monstrosities are hardly road worthy and drive like MANIACS. The best part about them (did I mention they are my primary mode of transportation) is the decoration and naming of each unique mitatu. From “redeemed” to “Do me” to “wallz to wallz” these beautiful pieces of craftsmanship are the definition of art and creativity. Hahah its also usually quite clear that the designer did not speak English and so just typed some Swahili words into a translator and painted whatever came out. Or the other common mistake is the misunderstanding of rap lyrics…who can blame them though because I have a hard time myself understanding what they say. On any given day I might get into a mitatu with 37 people (it seats 14), a chicken, a goat, a mattress and 25 kilos of flour already aboard. It’s always an adventure.
Another wonder of Kenya (specifically where I am) are the tea plantations! I have been trying to run some mornings and recently found this back road that leads to the most astonishing, breath taking out of this world tea plantation I have ever seen. I literally rounded the corner and was at the top of a hill and was just baffled by the land that was spread out below me…such green, such blue in the sky such beauty. I really wont even attempt to describe it but let me assure you that there is a God and he IS an artist. Period.
In other news this has been a very busy week with the youth symposium coming up sooo very soon-this Saturday in fact. I am honestly a bit anxious about it. I know that a looot of people are coming ( my phone has been ringing like crazy) but I am just anxious about money, smoothness and whether people will actually think and participate. I would really really appreciate prayer on that account. Also I’ve been planning for the trip that we took yesterday and practicing for the talent competition!! Lots and lots of practicing. Maureen and Lydia spent the night on Sunday to make posters for the youth symposium. That was way fun. I finished my noah’s ark mural at the baby center and it turned out really good which is always a good thing (and certainly not a guarantee haha). Made a newsletter for the center, did bible study –I feel like slowly slowly I am becoming more of a friend and our conversations are getting better though I definitely would appreciate prayer in knowing best how to relate and love them and connect with them and overcome the language barrier, knitted more, spent friday night at the center, watched amelie (such a good movie-I love stories about quirky girls), and Basically that’s whats up. Its been good its been real. Hahah Well soooo much love from my heart to yours!

Christ's life

i was thinking about this concept of "it is no longer i who lives but Christ in me." What a tremendous difference....me living and then Christ living. i think i have a long way to go before i truly understand and live in that truth but there are certainly striking evidences of that in my life now. for example-this week end i just did not spend the time with the Lord that i personally need for basic functionality and it was so evident. i was easily frustrated, tired, stressed and pessimistic about the outcome of several events/programs i am working on. I had to step back last night and deconstruct my behavior until i realized that whoa this was all in direct corralation to the fact that i was not full...i had not drunk from the well of everlasting life-for two days!! thats all it took for me to fall into the trap of self, schedules, and success. what a struggle i am. i totally evaluate my worth according to how much, and how well i DO. its quite pathetic really...if i feel i have not accomplished the things i wanted to in a day i literally start to beleive the lie that i am nothing...not in the freeing Christ-loves-me-and-will-use-me-in-my-brokenness kind of way but in the self pity, self (loathing is too strong) disliking kind of way. i definately need to be free of that if i am to be fully Christs servant and soldier. This quote has been tremendously meaningful to me lately: "We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to DO. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social. emotional,intellectual-even spiritual-plan, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life." Evelyn Underhill especially cocnsidering that God's real name is I AM it makes sense that we are closest to him-perhaps even ONLY close to him when we are BEING-allowing actions to flow from the BEING rather than the DOING to define the BEING.

in other news...this week flew by-like whoa. its hard to believe that i have been here nearly a month. we started working on our play this week and that has been a LOT of fun...the kids now all officially think i am crazy because i yell (not AT them- just in general), and do their lines with more flare than...well than i dont know what. haha they were sooooo pumped at first but the enthusiasm has waned a bit as they have begun to realize how  much work this is going to be. the play is called "The Rabbit and the Well."  its super cute-an african folk tale. we also started choreographing a dance for the talent competition that is going to be happening on November 8th. i dont know if i mentioned this before but i am trying to put together a talent competition between all the children's homes in the area. there are five homes currently planning on participating in the four categories of: Song/Dance, Poetry, Debate and Drama. its hopefully going to be a great thing for unifying the children's homes, developing a sense of ownership over the homes for the kids and building and affirming the kids in their unique giftednesses. 

The other major project is the Youth Symposium with Career Fair, Identity Finder activities, hot topic discussion and art exibition. i would REALLY appreciate prayer on that. its coming up sooner than i can beleive on Oct. 25. there is SOOOO much to do between now and then it blows my mind and makes me stressed out.

it has been an incredible week in terms of community. i feel i have really started to develop close friendships with the people who live at the house-especially Brioni. She's a passionate australian and just such a remarkable woman of God. also i feel i have started to finally break through in starting to form real friendships with the older girls-not just you know surfaceyness. well i am growing weary of typing and i can only assume that you have to be more than weary of reading so i shall spare us both and stop here. 

to God be the glory for ever and ever...

shalom and chocolate kisses  

this week was similar to last though maybe a bit less packed. the highlights were going to the elderly home with the kiddos and taking all the knitting we had been working on. i spent the night at the center on friday and that was a blast!!  the kids didnt have school on wednesday so we had the whole day to have fun (and wear me out). we made sock puppets and did puppet shows. 

sunday we had a debate. that was a struggle because the kids are simply NOT TAUGHT to think at ALL!! its very frustrating because those are the skills that cause change in a people-the ability to think critically, outside the box!! so we are going to be doing debates every sunday. the kids just stared at us as we tried to ask them the WHY question to whether boys and girls should recieve equal education and whether the kenyan education system is efficient, excellent and adequately prepares them for their future careers. even the teacher (Kenyan) who was helping with the activity couldnt comprehend the concept. he just wanted them to memorize the reasons we wrote on the board and i was just dumbfounded. i started yelling and jumping up and down-no writing no writing just THINK!!! we dusted off our thinking caps (literally) and put them on and TRIED TRIED TRIED to think. it was a start. a bit of a struggle though

i am feeling a bit loopy this morning as my sinuses are funky and its rainy, cold and misty. 

oh one really fun thing that we did was on saturday night my house mates and I went to the movies and out to this cRAZY indian food court. it was a blast though my bowls did not appreciate it. hahah too much information?? probably but thats the glory of blogs i dont have to mind. 

another highlight was going to Kibera to teach a bible lesson on prayer at this school called New Adventure Primary School. (i wonder if the kids there are more excited about learning) 

no profound thoughts this morning maybe tomorrow.

shalom 

two weeks in

Wow so its been awhile since I have written. More so in experience than in actual time passing. I have been here for nearly two weeks now. I am just going to put into list form what I have been up to in the last week: hanging out at Limuru Children’s Centre a LOT. I painted a gate (all pretty and cutesy) for a new baby center opening as a part of LCC. I went to a Care for Aids center and helped with the body empowerment section (as I assured them I did not have any medical background-they wanted me to act as the health consultant-that’s dangerous haha) therefore I handed out rations on food with my friend Maureen. I taught the girls at the center how to knit and we have been knitting up a storm to take to an elderly home that we are going to on Saturday. I really want to help the kids understand that they are capable of making a difference. And that they have each been uniquely and wonderfully designed by the God of the universe with gifts, talents and capabilities that can be used to help, serve and build his kingdom. Thus anytime I do an activity with them it will have that goal in mind-not just a fun activity to fill the time. We also planned an activity day for Sunday (yesterday) during which we invited the kids at a nearby children’s home to come over to LCC and the older girls organized and facilitated a number of activities and games for the kids (being leaders). Everyone had a BLAST. I went to church in Nairobi (where I learned that the G-spot is a myth-just so that you all know-stop your searching hahhahahaa true story we got the sex talk) and had to take a mitatu (public taxi bus) back which can be rather unpredictable and therefore was like an hour and a half late. Patrick (the director of the center) was worried because I wasn’t there and feared it would not happen but I was confident that the older girls would step up to the plate and go on with the plan regardless of my attendence. And sure enough they did great! When I got there I was overjoyed to see all these little warrior faces smiling up at me (we did face painting-African style) and bubbles and chalk everywhere. And there were my four girls (the older ones) right in the middle orchestrating the whole thing!! I guess I should explain-one of the things I am really focusing on is pouring into these four older girls-Grace, Elizabeth, Caroline and Diana. They are a few years older than the rest of the kiddos and this often results in a bad attitude and a desire to separate themselves from the younger ones. I really want to see them take ownership of the center and of their position as leaders to be an example in faith, life, love, and purity (think 1 Tim 4:12). I am doing a once a week bible study with them and that’s the verse we discussed last week. They spent the night at my house (everyone else was out of town so we had the house to ourselves) and we had a slumber party like you wouldn’t be believe! Haha think nail polish, bible study, activity day planning, tea, dance party and a movie. It was great. I really don’t want to be overwhelming or constantly badgering them but rather I want to grow in relationship with them as they become more and more comfortable around me and in their own skin. Our slumber party was a remarkable step in that direction. They were so excited yesterday to tell me about the activity day and what they had done!! Also in the last week we made a newspaper (to help the kids with their writing, expressing themselves, discovering their interests and taking ownership of the center). I went to Kibera (one of the slums outside of Nairobi) with Lydia, Maureen and Reagan (three Kenyan students) where we did a benefit walk and a bible lesson with some kiddos at a place called the Blue House where the average teacher to student ration (as reported by one of the teachers/pastor) is 400 to one. (not a typo). Needless to say they were very happy to see us and invited us back (lets be honest-it was more than an invitation-more like a plea) so I think I am going to start going there on Friday mornings to teach-what I don’t know but teach nonetheless. Wednesday I helped out at a feeding program and loathed myself for being white. The humility and semi-bows I received from some of the widows made me embarrassed and ashamed of my excess and privilege. I understand that there may not be a better way to get lots of food to lots of people but a food line is just so rigid and puts such a distance between the hander-outer and the receiver. I am brainstorming a more relational manner of distribution. Which reminds me-if any of you want to join me prayer for the gift of tongues please feel free. I am trying to learn Swahili and its just a slow process and the gift of tongues would be really helpful right about nowJ sounds facetious but I am serious.
I have hung out with the moms at the center a bunch as well. Hahaha they are so fun, and very eager to teach me Swahili. I will sit with them sometimes and shred carrots or cut scumewiki and just chat about kids and life and gossip. It’s too funny.
I think that’s about it for the last week and a half. Lots of meetings and connecting and figuring out and brainstorming and playing and holding kiddos (one in particular her name is Leah and shes about 4. She goes to the preschool at the center and is a hoot and a half. She will fake cry if I am holding someone else and just stand there with her arms up straining making noises until I pay her attention. She has big ears and a huge smile though she’s smaller than most of the rest. One day I was walking through the village back to the center from the Care for Aids clinic and I saw Leah on her way home from school-she doesn’t live at the center- and she just started sprinting as soon as she saw me and jumped into my arms. It was a good moment. )
I have also had some sweet sweet moments with the Lord, listening to Misty Edwards and just being overwhelmed with the love of my lover. He really is good.
All in all its been a remarkable week though I definitely miss everyone at home earnestly. I kind of wish my life (aka the people in it) could just all transfer over here- that I think would be bliss-heaven on earth. God has been faithful to provide friends such as Maureen and Lydia as well at the people at the house. He has given me creativity and opportunities to serve and connect. Its really been great. I miss you all-PLEASE don’t hesitate to send me detailed updates of your lives…I mean it it would be a tremendous blessing to me! Mungu Akubariki (God bless you) Tu Tu a nana (see you later)
shalom