Last Day of First Term

Today was the last day of school for the next 2 weeks. Today, all the parents came to school to get report cards and talk to teachers about any problems their kids were having. We only start back on April 19th.

During the vacation though, I still go to school every day to teach English to some of the nuns. I actually like it! I taught English for 6 months last year and I couldn't stand it. I dreaded having to go to school and teach. This time is different... I actually have fun!

On Saturday I am going to visit Claudine and her family again. Her sisters are back from school and they want to meet me. I'm taking pictures of my family for them to "meet" all of them.

For My Family

Dad, I crossed the Source of the Nile. As you look at this picture, remember what the Bible says about being jealous.

Mom, I know you'll know what this is. They're covering my bed. But we have to share.

Ans, this is a tea field. This picture reminded me of the kinds of pretty pictures you take.

Garrett, in Uganda, they drive on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car. It's weird.

Carys, this happened to us twice. These baboons were RIGHT BESIDE OUR CAR!

Anderson, we made this girl a dress out of newspaper. (Mom, she's starting at ACU in August!)

Vuvs, can you see the big scary dinosaur looking bird? It was in our front yard. Creepy.

I missed you all SO MUCH this week. I wish I could have been with you guys. Love you!

Sweet Little Angels

Tanner and Trevor

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Why It Matters

The other day, I got really mad at myself. I mean, come on. I've come to Rwanda to help and I'm going to a school every day. I could be going to orphanages, hospitals, helping genocide orphans. But I'm going to this school. What am I really doing to help? 

The same day I started having these thoughts, one of the teachers from work named Claudine invited me to go to her house to visit her mom on Saturday. To be honest, I really didn't want to go. Saturday was a busy day and by the time she came to pick me up, I was pretty tired. I just didn't want to go. But I had already promised her I would go, so I went. We walked to her house, which is about 15 minutes away. 

As soon as I got there, I felt so happy I had gone. Her mom was the nicest person I've ever met. She told me I was beautiful.... but not the normal kind of beautiful. She said I was beautiful because Jesus lived in my heart. It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I'm tearing up now just thinking of how much I needed to hear that and how glad I am that she said that. 

Claudine went to her room, got money and sent her mom to buy me a Fanta. While her mom was gone, Claudine showed me her picture albums. She told me "This is my Daddy. He was killed in 1994. I love him." No one here has ever shared with me anything about the genocide... Louise told me they have to trust you very much to share that. She and her mom told me about 20 different times that they were SO happy I had come to visit. They made me promise to come back, bring a picture of my family, send them e-mails when I leave and remember the way to their house so I could visit whenever I wanted to. 

When I got home and was talking to Louise about all this, she reminded me of this Sara Groves song. It is called Why It Matters. Here is why she wrote the song...

Sara continued to introduce the song with the story of Vedran Smailovic, a cellist with the Sarajevo String Quartet. In 1992, in the middle of the war in that country, Smailovic witnessed a bomb attack that took the lives of 22 of his neighbors standing in a breadline at a bakery. In protest of the chaos, hatred, killing, and stupidity of war, the cellist immediately brought out his cello, sat in a chair in the middle of the crater, and filled the air with beautiful music for 22 days (one day for each person killed on that spot).

As Sara told this story every night, she emphasized the importance of BEAUTY as a protest in the face of all that is wrong in the world. While bombs were still exploding and sniper fire rang through the street, a lone cellist risked his own life, and protested the ugliness by holding up beauty in its face.

This is so important to me. To realize that all we have to do is be beauty. Just show we are different. It doesn't matter if all I do in Rwanda is go visit this one lady. I will have made a difference in her life, just like she made one in mine. That's it. Just show beauty.

Randomness

At school, the snack is porridge. I make myself drink a few sips. The teachers said it was the only thing some of them eat all day.

All of the kids have the same haircut (no hair), so the only way I can tell who is a girl or a boy is by seeing who is wearing a skirt and who is wearing shorts.

The kids pet me. Like I'm a dog.

The sisters have something new to show me every day. And they always want me to drink some water before I go home.

Today I am going to visit one of the teacher's family. She invited me to go and she is coming here to pick me up this afternoon.

We are leaving on Monday to go to a ladies retreat in Kenya. I'm really excited!

First Week

So, as you all know, I have a new job! I go to school every morning at 7:30 and come back at 12:15. Then, I go back to school at 2:30 and leave around 4:30.

In the mornings, we have school (duh). There are around 150 kids under the age of 6. It's nuts. Every day I go in a new classroom and help the teacher of that classroom (1 teacher for around 40 students). They learn stuff in English, have a snack, have a Bible study, sing songs, have recess, etc. It goes by pretty fast.

In the afternoons, only the teachers are at school. I go to pretty much do whatever they ask. Yesterday I wrote 40 tests for one class and today I colored (yipee!). I'm a good colorer (haha). I think they like having me there because I do stuff that they don't like doing and they get to go home earlier. 

I like both parts. I love being with the kids, but it makes me tired. Kinyarwanda makes my brain hurt. It's frustrating to me not being able to understand. Today the teachers gave me a "teacher smock" which is what all the teachers wear. The kids immediately began tattling on each other to me in Kinyarwanda. And expecting me to do something about it. I just kind of smiled and tried to occupy them with other stuff.  

Here is a video of the kids singing before they go to there classes. In the first part, they say "We are sleeping sleeping, we are sleeping in the ...........". Whoever can fill in that blank gets a prize. I can only hear something between microphone and rightophone. Seeing as how neither of those make sense, I'm open to suggestions. Any help?

My New Job

Today, I had a meeting with the nuns across the street. They run a preschool/kindergarden. Some of the american kids go there. One of our friends, Kristin, had already talked to the nuns about me going to help them. The nuns said "Ehh.... we'll think about it." Sounds a little bit like a no to me.

Yesterday, Kristen called and said the nuns wanted me to go there to help them with their English pronunciation. So, at 3, I showed up at the school. They immediately took me to meet the Brazilian nun that lives there. She acted like I was her long lost sister. I think she was so happy to have someone speaking her language. We are even from the same state!

After that the head nun, Mama Teodozi, took me to meet the teachers. They were all in one room grading papers and preparing the next day's lesson. There were 6 different teachers. They asked me to sit in the teachers chair (which was so much higher than the little kids chairs they were sitting on) and introduced themselves. The next part of the conversation went something like this:

"What do you give to our school?"
"I'm sorry... I didn't understand the question."
"We wanted to know what you can offer our school."
"Umm, I don't know. English?! I taught English for about 6 months last year."
"Okay, starting tomorrow you come every day. Tomorrow you just observe and then you start to teach songs and dances and words and games in English. Okay? Okay."
"Um, okay I guess."
"And then, after school, you come here to discuss all problems you see in our school."
"Um, okay."
"And you can help the teachers teach all their classes."
"Okay."
"Thank you so much for everything you do for us."
"Um, okay. Thank you."

It must have been my extraordinary use of the English language or my professional looking clothes or my lovely resume. Whatever it was, I seem to have a new job!

Genocide Memorial

On Thursday, I went to the genocide memorial here in Kigali. I think it was good for me to go to this one first... it's more of an informational memorial and not so much an emotional. It reminded me a lot of the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. It even had a floor dedicated to different genocides around the world.

These are ladies who are widows and sometimes the only survivors in their families. Most of them were raped and now are HIV positive.

This is the part that killed me. All of these pictures are of kids who were killed during the genocide. 

The four above were tortured in different ways before dying. 

Aren't they precious? 

This little sweet girl broke my heart. She was Giovanni's age. She was burnt alive. How can someone do something like this? To this sweet little girl? I kept thinking of how blessed we are to live somewhere where we don't have to worry about if our baby will live or not. After a while, I imagine the parents started praying for their kids just to die quickly and not suffer. Isn't that awful that they would even have to think that?

She was super nice. She let these guys start the show.

She let her backup singer sing 2 songs from her new album. (Her name is Melody Olsen... she's amazing!)

She reminded me of Mom. Her clothes, hair, jewelry.

It was a really cool show!

I'm going to her show tonight.

Nyamata

Before I even start writing, let me say that I'm awful at communicating what I want to say. Yesterday was kind of like a culture overload, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to babble a bunch. You have been warned.

Yesterday I went with Christine Crowson  to Nyamata, a village about 30 minutes out of Kigali. We went with Nsegimana to visit his sister Jane. (A little family history... Nsegimana and Jane have 2 other living brothers. Their parents were killed in the genocide along with their 2 oldest brothers who tried to fight.) 

Jane is a widow and is HIV positive. She has a 14 year old girl and a 9 year old boy. She lives alone and doesn't have any work except for going to the market 2 days a week to try to get money for food. Her brothers want her to move out of her house because they think it's too big for her. This is her house.

After we visited Jane's house, we all went to visit Jane and Nsegimana brother who lives about 30 minutes off the main road. He wasn't home, but his wife and two kids were. Both of his babies are sick with malaria right now.

He lives in the family house and has a piece of land to cultivate. These are beans and corn, what I've mainly seen growing here.

Then, we went back to the main road and up a different dirt path to see Nsegimana's new house. The Red Cross donated the land and roofs of these houses to orphans. Since Nsegimana lives in the city, he is building this house for Jane to live in and be able to make some money off the land.

Jane stayed at the new house and we went back to Kigali. Writing all of this, it seems like we just went and came back. We were gone from 9 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon. Everything is so far off the main road, and the dirt roads are awful.

On the way from Kigali to Nyamata, we passed a sign in French that I was pretty sure said something about the genocide. It was a genocide memorial. Then it hit me. I knew where I was. I had read about this place. In this book and this book. I recognized these swamps and the main road. I had seen pictures. This was where one of the worst areas of the genocide was. Christine told me the people would hide every morning in the swamps. The perpetrators would come from other villages and basically hack through the swamps until they hit someone. Nsegimana's family was a wealthy family from Nyamata. They had many cows. During the genocide, they lost not only their parents and brothers, but also their wealth. It's hard to believe that a place this beautiful has seen so much pain.

Happy Birthday!!

Carys,
I hope you have the best birthday ever! Have fun at school with all your new friends! Tell Dad not to bother you today... it's not allowed on your birthday! I love you so much and I wish I could be there with you today!
Love,
Your most favoritist stister in the whole wide world Bronwyn

Just more pictures...

I am so mad at myself. I made a video of Marty speaking in Kinyarwanda to one of his friends who is helping him write a dictionary. The problem is, I filmed it from so far away, you can't hear what they're saying (not that you'd be able to understand it anyway). I'm going to have to film another conversation right up in their faces so it'll work next time. Fun. So today, I'm just going to put some pictures of parts of my day (what a surprise, I know).

 Sorry some of the pictures are blurry... my camera has been kind of funky today.

Random Pictures

I don't really have much to tell about these last few days. We are trying to figure out stuff for me to do so I've spent the last few days just following them around to grocery stores, schools, etc. That is completely fine with me! I was/am so jet-lagged. At about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, I would start feeling like I need to go to bed. I've been making myself stay up at least until 8 just so I can get used to the time here. This time has been good for me  just to chill. Here are some random pictures of the last few days...

Dirt road we have to go on to get to the house. This is one of it's better spots.

Working on crafts for prisoners to do. Remind you of anything Mom?

Tanner's chapel play about Joseph. He's the one in the blue, standing up. He played Joseph's father. Really cute play!

In Kenya

To get to Rwanda, there is no such thing as a direct flight. Louise told me she thinks the only direct flight is from Brussels. So, to get to Rwanda from Brazil, I had to go through South Africa and Kenya.

Ans and I counted a few weeks ago how many planes we had been on. It was close to 40. Now, with this trip, it will be close to 50. So let's just say that I've been in a lot of airports. The airport in Kenya was one of the nastiest ones I've ever seen. So gross. Dirt on the floor, walls, people. When they started letting us go through to get on our flight, I was so thankful. Until I saw this.

This is about 5 minutes before we are supposed to board the plane. The plane on the right is Kenya Air. The plane on the left is orange, and Rwandair is blue and white. What's left?

Um... God? THERE IS NO WAY I'M GOING ON THAT. I'VE BEEN IN AIRPORTS OR ON AIRPLANES FOR MORE THAN 24 HOURS. I DIDN'T SLEEP HARDLY AT ALL. EVERYTHING SMELLS BAD AND THERE IS JUST NO WAY I'M GOING ON THAT.

Let's just think about this. I could just stay here in Kenya... they need people to help in Kenya too, right? Right! I'll just find an orphanage here and live there for the next 2 months! No one would know the difference! But what about the Koonces? Well, I could just walk to Rwanda. It's just right next door! Or I could ride a bus. Or I could just pitch a fit until they change the airplane. I could ask them to put me on a different flight. What if I just went back home? That could work. I'll just say Rwanda isn't allowing visitors right now or something.

In the end, it all worked out. My airplane was hiding. It was big and normal and I had 2 seats to myself. See, God does listen to me!

Finally Here!

I'm finally here in Rwanda! Seriously, that might have been the most exhausting trip I've ever had. It took FOREVER! But, I'm finally here... and safe. Which is the most important thing. No turbulence AT ALL.

Today has already been busy. This morning, we walked to the ladies sewing/quilting class. It was great!

After lunch, Louise and I went to 2 grocery stores. I saw a lot of different foods. Let's just say I don't think I'll ever be eating pickled eggplant, olives, tomatoes or anything else. Gross.

Here are some pictures of my first day here! (which isn't even over yet)