Researching the patterns of inclusion and exclusion

Mentally handicapped man.

Children on the street (they love pictures!)

Big brother carrying little brother. It was not uncommon to see siblings carrying little ones throughout street.

Our campsite! My tent is the one under the tree.

Spending time with the community. I was getting the maize cleaned off so it could lay in the sun. Got a super bad blister, which the children found very interesting.

Presenting to the community what our research found and some solutions we had.

My group with a 90 year old woman who was abandoned by her daughter. The woman on the far left had welcomed the elderly woman into her home.

So much happened this week! On Monday we left for the Mpanga sector of Rwanda. This was about four hours from Kigali (we were about 2 kilometers from Tanzania) and is extremely poverty stricken. We camped out in tents till Thursday night and during our stay we researched the community. It was the most amazing place to camp and it was definitely something I will never experience again! We always had multiple fires going because there was a herd of water buffalo (the fire kept them away from our camp) and there was a hippo about one mile from where we were camping! As most of you know I HATE snakes… Well thank goodness I never saw a snake but we did carry these special sticks around with us (I honestly don’t remember the name) but the point of these sticks was to hit a snake if we saw one. We had built latrines and all 20+ of us had tents scattered on the property.

Tuesday while interviewing it was so amazing to be in a rural area and just being with the people. Many of these people are lucky to have a meal every other day and really were making it by with the bare minimal. I got to meet a woman who was ninety years old and was praying to live to be a one-hundred. I found it so inspirational that despite the poverty people still have a love for Christ and care for fellow community members. This 90 year old women was adopted by another family. Her daughter left her and she was literally going to die on the street… So a family adopted her in. This was so inspirational to see the community values but it tore me apart hearing her story about how her daughter left her to the streets. I got to meet a mentally handicapped man also. He couldn’t talk and he just mumbled to himself. Again my heart just broke for this man. He had no resources for help and just wondered the compound talking to himself.

Being in Mpanga tore me apart. The day would end and I would crash because I was so emotionally and physically worn out. It is so hard to see such poverty and desperation. In America people have clean water everyday, take multiple showers a day, eat as much food as they want, families usually have multiple cars, we leave the lights on during the day, we use so much electricity to wash our clothes (and it is not hard at all to hand wash), the list can keep going and going with how much Americans have  (and that I have personally taken for granted) and how little these people have. I found this week such an emotionally wearing experience and I honestly cannot explain how there is such inner turmoil inside of me. We saw such hardships that prior to this week I had heard about but had never seen.  It was so beautiful how they opened their homes to us and would thank us for simply coming into their home. One interview we left a water bottle in the house… It would have been so easy for them to keep the bottle and had the only clean water in the village… But the woman ran after us on the street and gave us the bottle. I know I would of kept it… Little things like that happened all the time and again just added to the inner conflict. There was one interview where a little girl cried the whole time because she was hungry and begged her mother for food. Things like this just make me cry because I don’t know what I can do… What can I do as an individual? What can we do as Christians? Sure I could have given her a meal but what would happen next time she is hungry and I was not there? How do we help end the cycle of poverty rather than just one circumstance? After a week of being in Mpanga I still don’t know the answer and this frustrates me because I will always have the memories of a little girl crying from hunger, families eating one meal every two days, mentally handicapped people wandering the streets and a crying ninety year old woman whose only daughter left her to die, these memories will always be with me.

I also saw encouragement though… There was equal enrollment in school and the amount of female leaders was equal to men. Now even though girls did not attend school as often because of home duties and women leaders did not have as much responsibilities as men… The community is making steps in the right direction. And despite constantly being emotionally worn out I did have an amazing time. I loved walking down the street and being able to play with the children. I loved seeing them smile as I took pictures and having them chase me around the streets. I loved being able to hold the infants and hear stories from the elders. I was also camping with an amazing group and we made wonderful memories at camp. Wednesday night our tent flooded so Megan and I slept in the van. Ten minutes after we got in another tent flooded and we ended up staying the night in a van… Little memories of laughing till our sides hurt in a van, in the middle of storm and being scared to death will also be with me for the rest of my life. So overall it was an amazing experience and I loved every minute of it.