About Me
Monday, April 28, 2008
A few days to go
Well we have started the debriefing process and the realization that I have to go back to the states is setting in. My time here has been amazing. I have learned so much, and the lord has pretty much rocked my world. I have realized how HUGE the lord is, and how SMALL I am. He has a plan for my life, and I patiently await what he has in store... it better be big because I don't think after this experience I can have a normal American life. I realize I will not be content unless my future job includes feeding and clothing those who need it... or at least being apart of the process.
I realize it has been hard being in Africa as a STUDENT... it was not the typical mission experience where you are "doing good" or have the "spiritual high". It was LIVING in Africa, and going to school. We were not changing things but mostly learning of things. It was hard to be in that position knowing there was so much to be done... but that was not what I went to do. Not that I sat around and did nothing... I am proud of the things I have done. Of helping the communities get sponsored...But I also learned that is was not me at all. I am literally one of the biggest sinners in the world... and it is only because of the Christ in me that any good could be done.... I also learned to wrestle with things.... to wrestle with poverty. I don't have a solution, but i am not ignoring it. How does one draw the line between causing dependency and giving to the poor? And how can we become OK with passing those in need on the street.
So many things i am going to have to continue to ponder and develop once i go home...
I am excited to come home and see JUST HOW MUCH the lord has rocked my life... I am also excited to see where the lord Leads me... HE is truly teaching me trust.... learning to Trust in him to lead me to what is next... because I am oblivious to the future.
This is a funny picture I saw on the road...IF ONLY AMERICANS HAD THIS WANT
Monday, April 21, 2008
Life Goes on....
One... There was a strike in the taxi park. The government decided that only new taxi's could run in the city. So all the old taxi's decided to strike, and they threw rocks and began a riot. There were fires, and people died. We were not allowed to go down town for a while...
Second... I learned that the only reason there is poverty is due to corruption in government. We have learned all the ways to eradicate it... and the only reason that it is not happening, is due to corruption.
Third... inspired by the office (the TV show)... we are having GO ED Olympics... the opening ceremonies started yesterday.... every one is way more into them they they should be!! haha.. there are consumes, events EVERY day.... etc... Bruce the man in charge of Go-Ed even wore a toga and had a torch run. We almost burnt ourselves. Then we went to eat at the Beijing restaurant down the street to kick start a fun week of events. I feel like I am at summer camp.
Fourth....Sam from Rwanda came to visit/work... so thats pretty exciting.
Well... time is rappin up... and its almost time to go home....
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Safari
Well... I had one of the most amazing weekends ever. We went to Queen Elizabeth's National Park on the way back to Uganda...We stayed in Hostels on the Game park (where Hippos would stalk our houses) We saw some of the most amazing animals in the world. I have never been so close to some of the most Majestic creatures ever. We went on 5 drives, and we saw Lions, Leopard, hogs, water buck, water buffalo, elephants, hippos, crocks, mongoose, and many more... it was one of the coolest things I have ever done, and also one of the most beautiful. It was humorous, because we went on these safaris on essentially a charter bus.... so on the way home today our bus over heated, probably because buses were not made to go offloading... but (TIA- this is Africa). So due to the over heating, it took us 12 hours to drive back to UGANDA.... so that was a little INTENSE To say the least. But we are now back in Uganda... back to the amazing cooks, and guards that i loved and missed. On the way here we stopped at the equator which was really cool. Did you know that on one hemisphere the water goes down one way, and on the other it goes the opposite... and ON the equator it goes STRAIT.... and this all can happen in a few feet... WEIRD huh....I am glad to be Back... but i do miss Rwanda...We did however go to the chao chao tonight, had the ice cream i craved, and visited the cat who lives in the grocery store... who is still alive and well, just a little smelly! It is nice to come back to somewhere I know... We also have a new addition to our "family"... there was a man from the embassy who went back home.. and left us his puppy!! so we have a new golden retriever named jack... we are very excited about him! he is Me and Leah's new running partner!!
Friday, March 28, 2008
Last night in Kigali...
Well... sadly... tonight is my last night in Kigali... I am going to miss it here... two months have FLOWN by... I have made so many friends... and met so many random people, had so many random experiences...I am actually really sad to leave... but I am sure I will enjoy my last month in Kampala... SERIOUSLY this semester is FLYING by and needs to slow down a little....
tonight... we are "kareoking" at the Mille Collines again... and this weekend.. SAFARI... we have a lot of fun things coming up.... but I am truly going to miss it here...
Good Bye Kigali... I hope we meet again
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
EASTER weekend!
Then Saturday morning we left for our trip, we went to Kubuye.. where we stayed in a hotel right on Lake Victoria... it was beautiful! one of the prettiest places ever! the Next morning (easter) we went to church where we sang (they really like the white people to prefrom here) And then after lunch we went on an adventure... we took a boat out on the lake and stopped at a few islands. The first one was Bat Island, and they dont call it that for no reason. There were thousands of Bats flying all around, it was INSAINE... i have never seen so many bats in my life. We hiked the mountian on that island and it was BEAUTIFUL.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The view from a court room and a mass grave
Yesterday we visited the Guchacha courts. It was an odd experience to be a few feet away from someone convicted of murdering. The court was a lot different then the courts in
This experience was also very frustrating. I was frustrated by the way the hearing was going. I was mad that it was all people saying what they thought, or heard. It was one person’s word against another, and I didn’t think that there was enough evidence to be putting people in jail, or to be sentencing people for something that they really don’t have enough to judge on. I also we amazed by the fact that it is fourteen years after the Genocide, and these people are just now getting a trial. I know that there are so many people accused of crimes, and that if they all went as long as they went yesterday there is no way that it could have been done in less time, but I think of the one man who was tried. He had already spent 12 years in jail, and he was pleading innocent. All evidence was what people said, or thought, nothing concrete. What if this man was innocent and 14 years later he had his trial, and with no evidence they set him free. 12 years of his life were wasted in jail because of what people said. Also, how concrete can evidence be after 14 years? These courts are good, and it is a good way to try to obtain justice, and I know that one court can’t do all the trials, but it seems almost ineffective. How can you know what people did 14 years ago by people differing stories? Do these people really want justice? Or do they just want to feel like the crime paid on their loved ones has been rectified. It was very interesting though, and neat to see the way the courts work here.
So then today we went to the Nyamata Memorial site. It was a very hard thing to see. I am reading a book right now called “A Time for Machetes”, which is about the killers of this area. A man goes and interviews them about the genocide, and talk about killing in this church, so going to this church where I heave been reading about what these men did was a little difficult. We walked up to this church, and they are doing a lot of re building and beautifying (i.e. planting flowers, making a path, etc) this building, which was a little nuts. It has already been 14 years, and they are just starting now to beatify this building. We walked into this church, the door way was blown in, and the man told us that that was how they got into the church by blowing out the door. There were tons of holes in the ceiling as well from the effects of the bomb. There was over 10,000 people hiding in this church, a place where they thought they could find refuge. It was a church, it was supposed to be a safe place, but even the house of God meant nothing to the killers of the genocide. Out of the 10,000 people, two children survived. There was gun holes all over the church, doors looked like they had been ripped open very harshly. When we walked in, to the left was a broken door, and inside was all the cloths of the people that died. I felt a little ever whelmed looking at this room full of cloths; it was almost from the ceiling to the floor, piles and piles of cloths. We then walked down stairs where there was a case of bones and skulls, as well as a grave at the bottom. The man told us, the woman in the grave was a woman who fell in a well, and because she fell in the well, it is the only in tact body that was not completely mutilated by a machete. He then took us outside to the mass graves. We were allowed to go into these graves. The first one was just coffins with many bones in each. The second one was bones. There was hundreds and hundreds of skulls, thousands of bones. From the ceiling to the floor on every wall there were bones. You could see the way these people died, holes in the skulls, faces completely missing, huge crushed places where the machete had blown. You could smell the death in that room. You could see the thousands of people who had died. There were just so many skulls, with no race, gender, age, just a human skull with teeth, skulls that were once humans hiding in a church thinking that they might be saved. I have seen skulls before, in science, or in a book, but always for learning purposes, bones given after the death for the sake of learning and research. These skulls in this mass grave were not given after the fact for the sake of learning. They were lives forcibly taken for no good reason and rest in a mass grave because there were too many deaths, and people were in too many pieces to have their own graves. This memorial was a little hard for me. It was more then just reading, and hearing people’s stories. I was in the church these people died in; I was in the grave these people will spend the rest of their existence in. So many lives were taken during the genocide. I still cannot understand how people could hate one another so much.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Dealing with Genocide
“Human nature is for man to be a killer” is what our tour guide told us today. We went to the genocide memorial today. It was an intense experience. To have been here for a month already and still in some ways be so ignorant of the things that have happened here. The memorial was more of a walk though, with pictures, videos, testimonies. Upstairs there was a little section of all the genocides that have gone on around the world. There have been so many, in Europe, Africa, and
(The pictures are of the mass graves and names of people killed in the Genocide taken outside of the Memorial, cameras were not allowed inside)