Para as Mulheres

Hoje é especialmente para aquelas mulheres que doaram tanto tecido para as mulheres daqui. Eu queria ter feito isso antes, mas parece que uma vez por semana surgia uma nova idéia do que fazer com o tecido. Eu queria esperar pra poder falar todas essas idéias para vocês.

Em primeiro lugar, a aula de patchwork. As mulheres são tão queridas e realmente querem fazer alguma coisa para se ajudar e ajudar outras mulheres que não tem como se sustentar. A costura é uma coisa que elas podem fazer em qualquer situação... mesmo se estão grávidas. Esse era um problema aqui... quando uma mulher engravida, não tem quase nada que ela possa fazer para receber dinheiro. Tem muito trabalho manual aqui... trabalho em fazendas, plantações, etc. 

Outro trabalho que eles estão começando a desenvolver aqui é trabalho com as prisões. Eu falei pra vocês sobre o genocídio... imagina a quantidade de pessoas que estão nas prisões. Muitas vezes eles tem famílias fora da prisão que tem que tentar sustentar. Tem várias idéias do que se possa fazer com essas pessoas. Uma é uma cesta feito de cordão e tecido. Outra idéia são coisas feitos com patchwork. Muitas coisas!

Um outro projeto é um projeto novo que a mulher da casa que eu estou ficando (Louise) está começando a trabalhar. É um projeto completamente diferente de tudo que podemos encontrar aqui e é um projeto planejado especialmente para a Ruanda. A Ruanda é chamado "A Terra de Mil Montes". O projeto é um painel desenhado com as paisagens de Ruanda, feito em patchwork de mil pedaços. Vai ser bastante trabalho, mas será um trabalho bem valorizado aqui. 

Ontem eu "transferi" todo o tecido para a Louise. Até ontem, nós estavamos usando alguns pedaços mas não tinhamos tirado tudo ainda. Como eu falei, esses projetos vieram um após o outro... nós estavamos bastante ocupados. Cada pedaço que eu tirava, ela dizia como ela achava que podíamos usar. Ela ficou tão feliz. Nós enchemos uma mala inteira de tecido. Isso é MUITO tecido. 

Eu estou um pouco triste, porque não vou poder estar aqui para ver os resultados desses projetos. Eu queria tanto mostrar pra vocês o que vocês fizeram para este povo. Vocês estão dando oportunidades. Eu sei que não parece... só tecido?! Mas é. Vocês estão ajudando de longe. Eu falei pra Louise que ela teria que nos manter atualizados com o trabalho que eles estão fazendo. Nós vamos ver os resultados desse trabalho logo! 

Amo muito vocês e estou com saudades. Vejo vocês domingo que vem! 

Happy Birthday!!

Ans,

I hope you have a really cool birthday today! I thought about you all morning and I wish I could be there with you. Just one more week!

What kind of cake did you pick? Where did you go out to eat? I love you and I miss you so much!

Love,
The Coolest Sister In The Whole Wide World

Oh yeah... I have a blog.

Oops. I kind of forgot I had a blog. Don't worry Dad, I checked my roots today. No blonde. 

I don't really have anything super duper exciting to tell you guys. When I left this morning for preschool, I figured I would just tell all about my day at preschool. I picked an "exciting" (?) day. I just got back and it seems like the last time I was home was about 2 days ago. Fun, huh? 

It started out like normal. All the kids were in an assembly type thing singing and dancing before class. I've been in Claudine's class for the last few days and I'm really happy about that. After about an hour, the kids started coming up to the board and practicing their writing. As we were paying attention to the kids writing, on girl runs out of the room. Claudine went to see what was wrong with her. 

She discovered a large pool of diarrhea all over the bathroom floor. I didn't know about this, so all of a sudden I was with 30 4 year olds trying to figure out what to do. About 3 seconds (LITERALLY) after Claudine left, another girl puked all over her chair, the floor and herself. Good times.

So here I am, with 30 kids who don't understand a word that I say (and vice-versa) trying to tell them to be quiet while I took the girl to the bathroom. I ran her to the bathroom and left her with Claudine (who was already giving the other a girl a shower). I went back to the classroom and cleaned up the puke. Then I still had another 30 minutes of entertaining them while Claudine cleaned up the 2 girls. 

After she was done cleaning up, it was already time for porridge. While we were fixing their porridge, two boys were being really really bad so she had to put one of them in the front of the room by himself. Porridge time went okay. No more vomiting or anything. We started to clean up all the porridge stuff in the hall. Suddenly we hear lots of yelling from in the room. We both went in and discover that the boy who was in the front of the room had grabbed a stick and was beating the other kids. He (obviously) got in trouble. 

The rest of the morning went okay. When it was time for the final assembly, I was pretty happy and ready to go home. As we're saying the final prayer, 2 boys pee all over the floor. Just to top off the day. 

Let me tell you that my days at the preschool are never like this. At times they can get really tiring or seem to go on forever. But nothing like this ever happens. At the end of the day, Claudine looked at me and said "When you get back to your home, please remember to pray for us. We have a hard job." Believe me, I know. Please pray for all the teachers today. I'm sure they're all tired from our day.

Mountain Gorillas

Man, this is another hard one. I have 150 pictures of the gorillas. I with I could show you all of them.

We started by getting ready. Marty told us to wear comfy clothes, hiking boots, gators and carry a walking stick and a backpack full of food. I thought it was a little too much. It wasn't. It was perfect. I was so glad for everything I had. Thanks Marty!

We met up close to our hotel and decided which group we wanted to see. We decided on the Susa group.It is the hardest hike and most of the time the longest. We were so lucky. We only had to hike 2 hours uphill to find them. It was hard but so worth it.

At first, I have to admit I was a little disappointed. We kept on walking all over just to find one gorilla alone. We had tons of pictures like this. If you squint your eyes really hard, you might be able to see the gorillas.

At last, we got to this clearing in the forest. It was so beautiful. There were probably 15 gorillas. Really cool! Here are some of the best pictures I got.

Look at all the cute babies!

How many can you find?

This one's called Silverback number 1 or The Big Boss.

He's holding his right foot with his left hand. So cute!

For Grandmommy

Sorry to all the rest of you for having to look at pictures of me.

Riding on the roof rack.

With Natalie.

Giraffes!

With gorillas and Pippy Longstocking braids.

Safari Views

Okay, the views from all over Akagera National Park deserve a post of their own. So so amazing.

Safari!

I really have no clue how to do this post. I took over 350 pictures on our safari. I kept thinking "I know my family would love this, so I'm going to take as many pictures as I can for them." We had SO MUCH FUN!! We saw I think 18 animals, but I was only fast enough to catch some. Here they are...

Cape Buffalo.

Hippos. This one's a little bit hard to see. Look for floating heads.

Monkey. Squint really hard.

Giraffes. We counted 18.

Impala.

Topi. These were everywhere. I don't know how I didn't get a better picture. They surrounded our camp site.

Zebras.
We also saw warthogs (PUMBA!) and lots of different birds. I had so much fun! We got to ride on the roofs of the Land Cruisers looking at all these animals. So pretty!

Busy Week

This past week was crazy! 

We left last Thursday to go camping in Akagera National Park. We stayed there from Thursday to Saturday. We slept in tents, saw SO MANY ANIMALS and rode on the roofs of cars. It was so much fun!

On Sunday, we left Kigali at about 3 in the afternoon to go to a city in the north of Rwanda to see mountain gorillas.  That was awesome. We hiked for 2 hours uphill, went through a rainforest and finally got to the gorillas. We were just a few feet away from them. 

This morning, I went to Claudine's house again. She took me to the market, but wouldn't let me buy anything because they were overcharging the white person. 

I promise I'll put lots more pictures on here soon!

For Ans

I've got some sweet facial expressions going on here along with a really annoying voice.

Beads

During our stop in Kampala, Uganda we had the opportunity to meet a lady who makes paper beads and necklaces. That morning, I had the last shower and just as I was getting in, I heard her coming in the house. I was so worried there wouldn't be enough for me when I got out.

Um, I was wrong. =) The lady who brought all the necklaces works to pay her school bills. She takes care of some kids with AIDS (I can't remember if they're her family or not). She was so happy that we bought our beads from her!
Thanks Louise for the picture!

My New Header

So, I have a new header. Duh. I love this one. It's so different than the other one's before. I took all these pictures while we were in Kenya. On Thursday, they had a bird walk for anyone who wanted to go. Since it was at 7, only 5 people showed up.

We saw so many different kinds of birds and all of them were so unique! The prettiest one we saw was the Great Blue Turaco. It's huge! Isn't it pretty though?

No, I didn't take this picture. But this picture doesn't even show how pretty it is. The colors on it are so bright! Did I say it's huge?

We had lots of fun on our bird walk and I wish I could have gotten better pictures of all the birds and beautiful flowers. 

Easter

We had an Easter celebration with all of ATN (the NGO that the Koonces work with). It was in our yard. They hired a big tent for everyone to sit under.

We had worship. We sang pretty songs and heard a really cool comparison between the Passover and Jesus' death and Resurrection. Then we had lunch. Everyone brought different things to eat. We had enough food for everyone to have 2 or 3 meals! After lunch, all the kids did an Easter egg hunt.

"Hey Miss Bwonwyn. Look at my eggs!"

We had so much fun fixing everything for our celebration, and so much fun on Sunday. 

P.S.- Carys, I started eating your chocolate!

Claudine

Last Saturday, I went to Claudine's house again. Her sister was home from school and she wanted me to meet her.

From right to left: Claudine, her sister Anestera and her mom (I think I remember her telling me one time her mom's name is Marie).

Anestera came to the Koonce house on Monday to practice her English. I think she will come a few more times before the break is over.

Their house is right behind them in the picture. It is small. It only has a kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a living room. I didn't see any lights. They live in a strip of houses just like theirs. Theirs is in the middle. Their garden is beautiful. They grow corn, raspberries, papaya and avocados. It's big and very beautiful.

Just a little side note - When I got there, she offered me tea. Rwandans drink just kind of a plain black tea. I said yes. She brought me milk. Some people like to drink tea made with milk instead of water. But this was just milk. Milk and sugar. Dad, remember how I told you the milk tasted like a cow? I drank all of it. Aren't you proud of me?

Safari

This morning we are leaving to go on a camping trip to Akagera National Park. Louise is staying home and we have one more dad and son going with us, so I get to spend lots of time with 7 boys. Does anyone have a gas mask?

We will get home on Saturday, but I'll leave again on Sunday to go on a gorilla trek. I know that when you hear "gorilla trek" you don't think of the coolest thing in the world. But it's supposed to be really cool. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures.

So, since I'll be gone pretty much from Thursday to Tuesday, Mom sent me an e-mail asking me to leave posts ready for you guyses (all 3 of you). During the week, I'll be posting mainly pictures with explanations. Yipee!

Today is the first day of the genocide remembrance time. Every year, it is from the 7th to the 15th. Please pray for Rwanda during this week.

Easter

Happy Birthday Anderson!!

Dear Kanderson... I mean Anderson. I hope you have a super mega great birthday today. Eat lots of cinnamon rolls and lots of cake for me. What kind of cake did you pick? I miss going to Inter games with you! Have you gone to any without me? I love you soooo soooo much!

This is one of my favorite Sara Groves songs.