Rwanda

(this is being written on my mobile, let’s see how it will turn out)

When: 27 February-4 March 2018

Who: with more than 40 volunteers of Actionaid Hellas

Purpose: all the members of the group are sponsors of a child in one of the countries that Actionaid Hellas supports. That means we give 22 euros per month and Actionaid helps the community of our sponsored child by building schools, organising collectives, educating the women on their rights or whatever is mostly needed in this community. Two or three times a year they organize these volunteer trips where the sponsors get to visit one community and help build something.

In this trip we helped build a “safe room” where the schoolgirls can go when they are on their period, in order to clean themselves. We also helped build some new toilets for the school.

Let’s start from the beginning.

The trip was exhausting. I flew from Amsterdam to Istanbul where I met the rest of the team. Turkish Airlines has become a horrible company. All flights I take have a delay and the staff barely speaks English. There was such a big delay that I barely made it on my connecting flight to Kigali, but my luggage didn’t.

And that is not super nice when you fly to Rwanda. We were staying in Gitesi, in a hotel next to a lake. There was no Zara next to it. But my luggage made it there the next day do I was fine.

We arrived at about 02:00, we had to take our visas (although you can do it very easily online) which didn’t take long at all. But still we had to wait for the money exchange office that was arranged to open for us. That happened at 5 in the morning. In the meantime we went to the local Actionaid office and then for some breakfast. I changed 350 euros and got a whole pack that I had to keep in a paper bag. It took at least 2 hours for everyone to change money and then we drove with our minivans to Gitesi and lake Kivu, with was 3.5 hours away.

We were absolutely dead. I was more that 24 hours awake, with short naps on the planes. But still I couldn’t sleep. I kept looking out of the window and taking photos constantly. Amazing nature and amazingly interesting people.

I took hundreds of photos. Finally we arrived at the hotel (Bethany hotel) and it was really way better than I expected. I felt like I was in a resort! It was on the amazing lake, the view was fantastic, the rooms pretty decent, there was hot water and as I soon discovered, very good food. For Africa it was expensive, 40 euros for the double room, but Rwanda is trying to become touristic and the whole Kivu lake area was full of good hotels.

We slept, we are, we met eachother, we slept again and the next day work began.

We were going to Muvungu (I am not sure if that was the name of the village or the school), after driving for about 30-40 minutes on a dirt road with jeeps. People were running out of their houses to see us.

For 5 days we did the same route, waving constantly.

And then we built. It was not easy. The worst task was carrying bricks from more than a km downhill. We made a chain but still it was tiring. Other tasks were carryingbig rocks that would be the foundation of the toilet, carrying dirt that would be cement, mixing it and in the end actual building. And all that in tje amazingnatuee surrounded by the kids of the school. I wanted to play and talk to them and learn more about their lives, so it was hard to keep carrying bricks!

(he seems to have no problem carrying the bricks)

After building we were going for lunch to a local house, where we are mainly rice, beans, potatoes, green beans and bananas. And once, amazing avocado!

(This is where the house we were eating was)

At first I was not sure if I should take photos of the people, but soon I realized that they rarely see photos of themselves, so I was taking photos and showing to them.

I have hundreds of photos I would like to share but it is not possible so I am putting my favorite memories.

My best memory is the kindergarten we visited the 2nd day. A pretty fancy building, since kindergarten is not free. They had some demonstrations for us but I didn’t feel like being in a room with so many people so I was sneaking in the other classrooms. The children were alone sitting quietly, I was so amazed. Of course when they saw me they went crazy. They were all around me and I was showing them photos, they learned immediately how to swipe to see the other photos. It is one of my best memories, probably because I was alone with children so small that didn’t think of me as something so different.

The first day we visited a women’s organization that Actionaid is sponsoring. It is somewhat difficult to be a woman on Rwanda, you have no right to own land, you have to work all day to take care of your family, if you are a widow you have even less… A woman shared a domestic violence story with an apathetic look, because this is normal there. Until you hear from this women’s organization that it is not ok for your husband to beat you and you realize your life can be different.
These women are making baskets and flour from corn using a machine from Actionaid, they have a nice economic system in their organisation and they were very inspiring. Their leader is Esperance, who travels in other African countries and gives speeches to help other women organize. Some days later I found out that this amazing woman was also cooking our lunch and I felt so weird… We should be cooking for her.

Another afternoon we visited a banana plantation that Actionaid is also helping. These people teach other farmers how to plant bananas and they were very proud of their job. They shared their photos with us.

We also met some older children there, about 15 years old, that could speak some English. English is actually the official language the last couple years and all the schoolbooks are in English. However the teachers don’t speak good English so it will take some time.

I was one of the lucky ones, because the kid I am sponsoring was there and I got.to meet her. She was very shy and she actually was sick (and has to walk barefoot many kilometres in a kind of chilly weather with her old clothes) and I don’t think she enjoyed our meeting. But I am sure she will remember it for many years and she grows up will be happy she met me. I already mailed her our photos.

By the way, I sent her photo to friends and family and everyone thought she was a boy because of the shaved head (although to me she is clearly a girl and a very beautiful one).

All the kids have shaved heads, I assume because African hair are quite a challenge. But girls wear blue (and a skirt) and boys brown, so it was easy to differentiate.

Another nice memory I have was from when I went to the classroom of the 10-year olds in Muvungu. They were on a break but some boys came to talk to me. They had a quiz in Geography written on the board and I asked them and got the correct answers. I looked at their books, they showed me all the different lessons they have.

(This guy was so serious that I thought didn’t like me taking his photo. But then he came to me and showed me his book, after searching for this specific page, that he had seen me look at before)

Finally one day we went to buy baskets from another women’s organization. But it happened to be next of the school where Actionaid had built some classrooms in 2012.

By the way this is how a normal classroom looks like:

There is no light. So the Actionaid classrooms were the favorite of the kids.

They had organized for us a whole ceremony. They sang in English (welcome sister, we love you), they danced amazingly and the headmistress gave a speech. In the end most of our people were crying.

I can’t upload a video, but I have one on my Instagram @zizeloni you should check it out.

On the last day we have corn and juice to all the kids and we played football with their football team (and lost). The football team then did an acrobatic show for us (with no shoes, on the ground).

There is no other specific memory from the village, just some nice images in my mind.

And now for more touristic info.

We went for one day to Kigali and visited the genocide museum. The genocide happened in 1994 and about 1 million people belonging to a specific (made up by the Europeans) ethnic group were slaughtered by their neighbours. The museum was heartbreaking. The worst example: the children’s room. It had photos of children from their house, their birthday party, smiling. Underneath it said the name, age, maybe a hobby or favorite food. And under that, how the kid was killed. With a machete mostly. Or that is what I guess, because I had to leave this room. This happened in 1994. For 100 days. I have lost a lot of faith in humanity after that. If you are not familiar with the story, watch the very good movie Hotel Rwanda.

We visited that hotel by the way and heard that the main character of the movie was not as good as they showed in the movie (for which he paid to have it made).

We also went to a chaotic market where we bought various souvenirs.

But the best souvenirs are of course the memories (and my photos!). I also had a very good time with our group.

(This is what we helped build)

That was my first trip to Africa.

I didn’t feel any danger, I ate very good, it wasn’t very warm (more like too rainy), so no stereotypes.

People there had nothing, no electricity or TV or internet in their houses, no shoes or a normal piece of clothing with no holes, not even plastic bottles (they were collecting our garbage to use for carrying water).

But they are living just fine without these things. The country is improving, Kigali was way more advanced than the village, with nice buses and traffic lights with count down.

I understood how important Actionaid is, how much it is improving the lives of these people with our 22 euros per month.

I will definitely go to more Actionaid trips in the future. Because even if I went to Rwanda as a tourist, I would not see all these things I was able to see now because of Actionaid.

And to have a nice message for the end: sponsor a kid too!