We listened to two chaps from CNLG as they talked about the work that this organization does. They talked about reconciliation efforts and how the government was helping perpetrators and victims live and work in close proximity. They also explained about plans for new projects to itemize and catalogue items left behind by victims at some of the massacre sites. Listening to these two fellow was at times fascinating, sad, and enraging, but ultimately, I felt a sense of hope for Rwanda..
We left CNLG and went to the National Genocide Memorial in Kigali. There a buffet lunch was waiting for us. As you know, Linda and I are vegans, and sometimes it's hard to find food that we care to eat. Luckily the buffet had a mix of beans and veg and we had that on rice, so everything was grand.
Our room-mate Heather fosters a child (the girl is an orphan -both of her parents are dead) in Kigali and had arranged to meet up with the child, her house mother and the priest who directs the foster child program in the country. They came to the museum. Heather was very happy to meet them. I offered my services as a translator. Heather had brought along some gifts for her child, as well as 1,000 dehydrated dinners donated by the farmers of Alberta. These dinners were in the form of a mix of dehydrated veggies, beans, lentils etc. The family would just have to take a scoop of the mix, put it in water over night, and then next day they would mix it with rice and there you go, a dinner high in protein and fibre. Also, Heather's students put together packages of colouring books, pencils, pencils sharpeners, toys etc for the other 50 children that this program serves in Rwanda.
The priest, Father Faustin, said they had arrived by taxi, and we told him we would pay for him to take a taxi back to the village where the girl (Latifa was her name) lived. Plus Linda and I had donated a soccer ball. When Linda went to tell our program leader that we would be leaving in a taxi, he suggested that we take the team bus, considering that Father Faustin insisted that Latifa lived in Kigali, and that her house was very close by.
Well! I was becoming increasingly worried as we got farther and farther from town, since we had to have the bus back by a certain time. We were on rutted dirt roads, and kept going farther and farther up the hills - so far in fact, that my ears were popping with the pressure changes. Finally we came to the girl's home - a mud hut on the top of a hill in a grove of banana trees. No electricity, no running water, no nothing. They cook, eat and socialize outside. People tend to stay outside all day except for sleeping, except, of course during the two rainy seasons of the year.
Despite the little that they had, these kind people, who spoke no English, welcomed us to their home and offered us food and banana beer. My Kinyarwanda lessons took me no farther than greetings and food that I did and didn't like, but was adequate for the purposes of this visit. A baby was given to me to hold, a tradition apparently, to make a person feel like part of a family.
The gift of one thousand meals was met with wonder and wide smiles all around. Father Faustin explained how the dried meals worked and the mother of the house ventured the opinion that the food would last for much longer than one thousand meals. That's more than a year and a half of nutritious, high protein meals. By the time we left, some of the children were playing with soccer ball among the banana trees.
I felt a little weepy as we were leaving - sad for Latifa who had no parents, and sad for this family who lived in a hut made of mud and cow manure and sad for this nation that is trying so hard to move forward.
We made it back to the museum by 3:20, in time to pick up the gang and then wait for two hours for our Liberation day credentials.
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