Getting Out of the City...With the Camera

My main project right now at work is to evaluate the language and computer training schools that are available to our students so that ORI can select the best ones to use. While most of our students receive their instruction in Kigali during orientation, others do so in Butare, which is where the National University of Rwanda is located.

Yesterday I took a drive to Butare with a couple members of the staff, and in addition to evaluating a couple schools, we stopped at two of ORI's partner organizations to pick up applications for this year's class of scholarship recipients. I've already commented about how the hills here in Kigali make for amazing views from most anywhere in town. The landscape outside of the city is even more stunning. While many of the hillsides have been sectioned into individual tracts for farming, much of the land is untouched, and, thanks to daily rainshowers, the unfarmed land is a lush, vibrant green.

The drive took about two and a half hours along a windy but well-paved two-lane road. There were people walking along side the road for most of the trip. Some were carrying jugs of clean water from a pump, others had large bunches of branches or fruit on their heads, and there were lots of kids playing and running around.

Our first stop was an orphanage called JAM, where we picked up about 70 applications. One of the social workers there gave us a tour of the grounds and I was impressed to see that the kids there have access to an excellent computer lab. I didn't really feel comfortable pulling out my camera as we walked around, so I only took a photo of the grounds from the road.

When we arrived in Butare, we stopped in at the men's group house and chatted with the guys who live there. Like the guys at the house here in Kigali, the students were very welcoming, and all ten of them came out to sit around the table and talk. Charles suggested that I introduce myself, so I told the students to tell me what they wanted to know:

Question 1: "Where are you from?"
California, New York, and DC all received knowing nods.

Question 2: "What is your marital status?"
Wasn't expecting that one...

I'm not sure, but I think when we left the house I made some sort of promise to come back soon and dance. I didn't tell them that they were letting me off easy. (Here's one more shot of two of the students at the house)

We also stopped by a couple of the women's houses. Most of them were off studying on the university campus, but I did get to meet a few of them, and a couple I knew already from the SGA meeting. Here are a couple shots of the path that leads from the main road down to the houses.

Probably the highlight of the day was driving from Butare to S.O.S. Orphanage in Gikongoro to pick up one more batch of applications. An ORI student named Eric accompanied us and was a generous guide. He pointed out sets of trees along the road that were planted to encourage re-forestation, told me about prisoner work projects in the area, and explained that in the years before the genocide, the government mostly neglected the area of Gikongoro, and because of that the area is still underdeveloped. S.O.S is perched at the top of the hill, and from there Eric pointed out a genocide memorial located at a site called Murambi. He told me the story of the massacre that occurred there, and then told me that, during the genocide, his family tried to protect him by dressing him as a girl. I didn't pry for anything more than that.

Here I am at S.O.S.

Now I'm off to have one of the students show me around one of Kigai's open-air markets...