Rwanda Update!

7.14.12 By: Elizabeth

Friday morning we drove a little over an hour to Lake Kivu. It was absolutely gorgeous! Lake Kivu definitely reflected God's beauty. We took our group photo and then played an intense game of soccer on the beach. We could see the Congolese border from the beach. Hard to believe we were so close to another African country with a history filled with violence. After about 2 hours at Lake Kivu, we headed off on our next adventure.
After a short bus ride and a quick lunch, we arrived at Noel Orphanage. Noel is the largest orphanage in Rwanda. It is home to 650 children that range in age from 2 weeks to 28 years old. Our first stop on our extensive tour was a baby room.There are 25 babies to a room and there are 2 mothers that care for them. After holding a few babies and playing with the toddlers for a few minutes, we had to continue on our tour. None of us wanted to leave those adorable babies. Next, we saw a room where the oldest girls lived. They sleep 2 or 3 to a bed on a bunk bed. Not very much room for those girls! We then walked and saw the 3 to 5 year olds napping on a large palette of mattresses. After that we saw the sewing room which also serves as a shop that sells the carved statues, bracelets, and cards made by the children of Noel. We saw some more buildings where the boys and girls live, including one where the special needs children live. We saw the smoky kitchen and ended our tour at the newly built basketball court. Kenzie, Grace, Caki, and I all returned the baby rooms to play with them. Kenzie, Caki, and I played with the 1 year olds. They were walking machines! Kenzie and Caki left after a little while and played with the toddlers while I stayed behind. The babies and their "mamas" were fascinated by my camera and loved posing for pictures. When it was time for a snack, I left and went to play with the toddlers. After a few hours, I returned to the rest of the group who had been playing basketball and volleyball on the basketball court with the older children. Everyone had a lot of fun playing with all the children.
It was an amazing day! It was probably my favorite day so far, but everyday has been awesome and exposed us to something different.

7.15.12 By:Katie
Saturday we went to Imbabazi Orphanage. It was near Noel Orphanage but a little closer to Musanze. We spent all day there learning about the history and hanging out with the kids. The Orphanage had an interesting history. Before it was an orphanage they grew Pyrethrum but after the genocide there was a huge need for orphanages so they turned it into an orphanage. The orphanage had about 51 kids in it, but at one time had over 400. Once the founder of the orphanage died they decided to not take in anymore kids. It was one of the wishes of the founder before she died. While we were at the orphanage we got a tour, played soccer, had lunch, played in the music room, went for a walk and watched the dancers perform. Most of the kids were amazing at soccer. It is amaing how good they can be without any training! It was cool that we got to see what their normal lunches were like. Some people in our group thought the lunch was amazing but I did not like it. At the music room we played drums, guitar and piano. We found out that Caki and Kenzie are amazing at singing and piano. Josh is also really good at the guitar. The coolest part was when the kids started playing. They knew all these songs that we knew but sang them in Kinyarwanda. Sometimes music is the same weather you are in the United States or on the other side of the world in Africa. After that we went for, what I thought was going to be a nice walk, but ended up being a pretty steep hike. We walked off of the orphanage grounds into a small village where all the kids swarmed around us and then up the side of an inactive volcano. The volcano was super dry which made it really hard climb up. At the top of the volcano we looked down into this huge crater. In the crater there were rows and rows of plants and farmers. I was not expecting it to be so awesome. The walk back down was interesting. Caki and Ellie fell because it was so dry and slippery from all the dust. Once we came back from the hike it was time for the performance. It was the first time the dancers had performed since they had finished there 5 weeks of training. The dancers were so beautiful. They all wore bells on their ankles so we could hear every movement they made. They also had a drumming routine. The drummers took people from the audience and had them dry drumming too. It was super funny to watch the expression on everyone's faces when they tried drumming. As we left the orphanage we had a minor difficulty. Once we got off the dirt road that led to the orphanage we realized there was a rock stuck in the back of the bus. In order to get it out we had the back into a stick that we lodged under the bus to unlodge the rock. All in all it was an amazing day.