as life continues in Rwanda....

It is officially month three…. On the culture shock scale… this is the month that you are a little sick of things… don’t get me wrong… I love being here… but things like… not being able to get places, walking everywhere…people seeing a price tag on my forehead…telling MUZNGU all the time… asking for money… OVER charging for everything… these are the things that today… I am a little sick of…. BUT… I still love it here and in no means ready to go home….so here is some news…I am officially an American movie star… well according to the man at burbon who I told…. I told him we were American movie stars and he believed me and told me if I brought in my movie or poster he would hang it up and promote it. Im pretty sure he gave us extra internet time due to our “status”. We brought our guard Alfonze with us to the coffee shop today… he thought it was great… It fun to have the tennessee people here all week! we did alot of hanging at burbon... exploring down town.... going out here is much different then at home... but it is still fun to have friends and pretend you are a normal 21 year old....I had an interesting week though. I went up north again… but this time with a short term team. I think I am convinced that short term teams are a waste of money. There was this team of 6 people… they kicked teachers out of their house so that they had a place to stay, and it seemed like FH was just trying to find something for them to do. They were only slowing down the process of building the house (which I helped build VIA hoeing and digging, and haling water…ect.) The Africans are much more effective then the Americans, and they can do it much faster. The funds they used to come could have built tons of houses in stead of one…but… what can ya do. So we ended up walking water up and down this hill carrying jugs water to make the bricks (also kind of a waste seeing as we had a car… but we walked it so it felt like they were doing something). The team was so gung ho about it too… they just wanted to go go go go go… do do do do do…no breaks…. They couldn’t just BE… they needed to be doing. I am sure they are going to hit a wall soon. They want to live rugged and African… they don’t want to wash their cloths, or have any kind of modern conveniences. When actuality… it is rude to be dirty, Rwandans are very clean, and there are people to wash their cloths, so not washing them is just being silly really. So all in all… I felt frustrated with this team… and the money and time they spent to come here…but at the same time these trips are reasons that people learn about poverty, what it means to own it….missions…. ect… trips can really change people and teach them more about who they are in Christ… But at the same time…. Is it a good thing for the community? It it a good use of money? It just seems silly to have people spend thousands of dollars to do something less effective, or walk water up and down a hill when a car could do it 10x faster… is it worth the things the few westerners that go learn??? I just don’t know… it was very strange to be on the other side of things though… to be the person who is living there, helping the short term team… I have been here for 2 months now… and Rwanda is starting to feel like home… I really do love Africa….Im going to have a lot to process though… it will be hard to come home… humm… well… here’s to another week… my last week of practicum!