driving a thousand hills

Y'all. I sat with my computer and refused to let it fall asleep and the internet didn't drop out, which means that I was able to put up some pictures! 

Jesse and Moses, the triumphant archers. Every banana tree quakes in fear at the sound of their names.

Sunday after church, I went with the Kings and some other families to an orphanage a host of towns over that was opened and run by Ros Carr, the woman who wrote Land of a Thousand Hills. (Don't worry, I haven't read it yet either.) She wrote this book all about her life in Rwanda, and I think it's fairly well known. And she wasn't kidding about those hills. I had to seriously concentrate to ward off car sickness. She was good friends with Diane Fossey, the gorilla lady whose life/work were featured in the movie Gorillas in the Mist. (Yep, haven't seen this one either.) We got to see her house and the gardens around it as well as the orphanage, which no longer houses children but is to be converted to a community center and museum. We had packed a picnic lunch, so we all gathered in a small clearing in the gardens to feast. As lunch was winding down, the Intore dancers arrived to perform some traditional Rwandan dances. 

There was a joy and grace to their movements that no picture could adequately capture, but I did my best. The dancers were backed by a drum line and singers.

I actually can't emphasize their grace enough. Every movement was perfectly fluid.

The men and women had large clusters of what were essentially bells that rang out with every movement. Moses, Lydia, and I bent down and put our hands to the ground to feel the pulse that shot through the ground of their every jump. For one dance, the men had these long white hairpieces (made from a plant) that they would whip around sending pieces of grass and dirt flying into our laps.

This is the moment that all white people grow to dread. There is a performance going on that requires rhythm, and we don't have any, but it seems that they may be pulling up audience members to perform with them. I tried in vain to make peace with my dear and fluffy lord, but I was the first audience member to join the drum line. Thankfully, the man next to me has a simple one-two beat going, so I stuck with him. I guess that some bit of my mother's African upbringing traveled from her heart to mine and I was able to keep up with the other drummers. Eventually, Moses took over the drum on my other side and we laughed so hard while giving the drum beats everything that we had. On the drive home, I confessed to Moses that I had been concentrating as hard as possible and hoping with everything that I had that I would not mess up the beat.

I have been reading a lot. It's the dream because I read so much in college, but none of it was by choice and so much of it was dense textbooks and papers. (Did I read everything I was supposed to? No. But it was enough. Trust me.) I finally have the time to read whatever I want, and it is amazing. The book I just finished is called Running the Rift written by Naomi Benaron. It is a historical fiction account of the genocide in Rwanda. I put off reading it for a super long time because I am here, and I honestly don't want to think about what happened likely on the street I walk down to get to school every day. So much pain, so much brokenness, too much real. But, I need to learn these stories, and I need to know what happened. When you live with people, you get the honor of walking in their mess with them, and you can only hope that someone decides to walk with you in your mess right back. So, I started reading. 

The book is about a boy who lives in Rwanda and has hopes of running in the Olympics, but he has the wrong mark on his ID card. With each tap of my finger (I would say "turning of a page" but I was reading on my Nook, so there weren't actual pages to turn), I felt this sense of impending doom. I knew what was coming as the book progressed. And just now as I wrote that sentence, I have to wonder what people felt like in 1993 when/if they knew something was coming and each day was the turn of a page. I won't ruin the story, but I recommend that you read it if you are at all interested in Rwanda and the genocide. The main character was so easy to relate to, and the writing made such a horrible tragedy just digestible enough for me to make it to the end. It was a wonderful book.

chasing sunlight

This is the my house, complete with the solar power water heater on the left side of the roof. We should get one of those for our house, don't you think Dad?

Yesterday, was the most beautiful day. I woke up, and, for the first time in nearly a week, there was sun peeking through my curtains. I got ready for the day really quickly and threw open the curtains so that I could revel in the beauty of sunshine. The rainy season had just started as I arrived, so it will really begin to pick up in the next few weeks. I don't know why, but "rainy season" didn't compute for me before I got here. I absolutely love the sun. I could lay down in it all day. If you have ever been around me for a week or two where it straight rained the whole time, then you know that in the absence of sunlight my demeanor and energy level rapidly decline. Perhaps I was a plant in a previous life....

It was sunny all morning yesterday. I laid on the steps of the schoolhouse waiting for class to start. I asked Moses pretty please with a cherry on top can we have class outside? (Usually it is the students who ask to have class outside on a nice day, but it was me this time, and actually every other time there were students asking to go outside on a nice day, that was also me.) I crossed my fingers that the sun would last into the afternoon since we don't have class in the afternoons on Friday. I planned to take my book outside and laze on the grass, but no dice. The trick seems to be that if you see sunlight, you should drop everything you are doing and go be in it because you can do other stuff later, but the sun may only be out for a short while. During lunch, the clouds moved in so fast. I blinked and they were there. In a matter of seconds, the sky had opened and it poured like crazy. There were huge streaks of lightning followed by deafening crashes of thunder. It was just like in the X-Men when somebody makes Storm angry. That's how fast this storm happened. So my afternoon plans changed from reading in the sun to taking a nap. I wasn't too heartbroken by this change of events.

There is a Bible Study on Friday nights that meets in the house of some other missionaries. This Bible Study is composed of four Americans my age (Three of us are from North Carolina. Rep it.), one older American man from the DC area, a German woman, and a handful of Rwandans. There are so many different perspectives represented from nationality to age to occupation. It's really neat when that many different people come together because each person has a different way of looking at Scripture and perhaps a novel way to understand or explain it. The guard for that house has a young daughter who is always present for the Bible Study. She is a diva. There is no better way to explain it. She is well aware that she is the cutest one in the room, and that she has everyone's attention. If you've ever sat with the DeHart women at church, then you know how much we love playing with babies and laughing at them while absolutely paying attention to every word of the service... (hehehe). So, while I do pay attention to the Bible Study, it is always fun to stick around afterwards for a while and play with this little girl who is so full of life and joy!

thinking of Nairobi

Some of you, maybe all of you, heard about the situation in Nairobi. A group of gunmen entered a mall, took out security, killed people, and held a group of people hostage. This is one of those "it's so far away it hardly seems real" scenes to me. It just so happens that it really isn't that far from me here and that many of the missionary families here have ties to Kenya and specifically that mall even. The older King children go to Rift Valley Academy and sometimes spend weekends in Nairobi and at that mall. One of the other families here was recently in Nairobi and spent a fair amount of time at that mall as it was so close to where they were staying. This event was real to them and very near.

The missionary families in Ruhengeri get together every other week for a potluck to fellowship and pray and look through scripture together. As the situation at West Gate Mall was unfolding this weekend, it was much talked about at the dinner. People were shaken, confused, disturbed and really hurting for what was happening there, and that is good. I realized that as I heard the news, it didn't sink in. It was just another situation gone horribly wrong with bad people doing bad things. Was it awful? Yes. Was is uncommon? No. More pain, more brokenness and nothing that I can do beyond prayer.

I thought that because these families willingly chose to move to a country that the majority of the rest of the world sees as dangerous and other that they must not have been afraid, that they were somehow stronger or more sure than the average person to make the choice to move so far into a place so many can't even fathom living. That just isn't true. There are still things that shake them to the core and that's why they are here. In the midst of so much hurt and so many things that aren't right, they are here standing firm on the truth that God is good.

I've been really anxious about my future. You may not think that this relates, but it does to me somehow. It sneaks up on me in waves (and seems rather foolish when held up next to tragedies like that in Nairobi) when I'm not prepared to think about it. What will I do? Where will I live? When will I actually be an adult? Does being an adult mean I have to stop reading teen fiction? (Absolutely not.) I worry about these and so many other things. The truth is, I don't think it matters where I am or what I'm doing. What really matters is that I am a good neighbor, and I stand firm in the love of Christ to the end because the truth is

God is so good.

And besides, when have my plans ever been better than His?

mizungu

Well, I was going to add some photos, but I've been trying all day and the internet seems a bit dodgy today, so you will have to read all my words today and I'll try to post some pictures another day.

Yesterday was a big day. I woke up with the kids and headed to school with them to shadow one of the other teachers. I spent the morning observing and hanging out at the schoolhouse. There are currently four students and now three of us teachers. I hear that there are more students who will be returning in a few months, so our numbers may make it all the way to 7 students. I will be working mostly with my cousin, Moses and also leading P.E. (Speaking of which, if you have any ideas of games or active activities for a small group of kids to play, please feel free to send them my way.) There is a little Dachshund at the schoolhouse named Einstein. He recently got into a tussle with some other dogs, so he is a bit worse for the wear at the moment but seems to be doing ok.

I think that my soul not-so-secretly belongs on a farm. I love every kind of farm animal. If you have been reading my blog, then you know how much I love chickens. The added bonus of my walk to school is that there are so many goats from my house to the school. So. Many. Goats. I just want to walk them around on their leashes and pick up and cradle the little baby goats. They make my heart so glad!

It turns out that there are quite a few young people my age who are also working/serving here. Even cooler is that the majority of them are actually from the East Coast and two of them are from North Carolina. Rep it Carolina. I went to play soccer with a few of them and some locals yesterday afternoon. The field was packed with what seemed like every child within a 50 mile radius. Not really, but there were a lot of kids and the field was so packed. All the kids kept saying "Mizungu" to me and the unknowing me that I am thought they were saying hello! Nope. They were really just saying "white person." Classic. I tried to hold my own at soccer, and I wasn't to horribly bad, but I got the sharpest pain in my chest. I have never felt that before. It took me a while of thinking that I was beyond out of shape before realizing that it was likely the altitude change. Yeah, we'll stick with altitude as the explanation. The goal of the game seemed to be getting the ball while making sure that you didn't step in one of the cow pies that created a minefield all over the ground. See cows? I should be on a farm.

I always leave the window open when I'm falling asleep. Last night, there must have been a host of birds in a tree very near my window. For the most part, they were really quiet. Then, all of a sudden, one bird would caw unleashing a whole host of caws as the other birds argued back. The arguments would last for a few seconds before slowly petering out as one or two of them got the last say.

I only have one more thing to say: fresh avocados. All day, every day.

I swam in Lake Kivu.

I started the morning in Canada, stopped in the States, hung out a bit in Ethiopia and then ended the day in Rwanda. Well, it was two days, but I didn't sleep so it felt like one really long day. I think that airplanes are secretly magic. It doesn't seem possible to be in four different countries in one day, but it somehow is. By way of three flights, I moved from the familiar to the unfamiliar. But man, nothing beats the feeling of stepping off a plane at your final destination and being out of your mind excited for what's about to happen.

Caleb, my first cousin once removed, and a man that he works with came and got from the airport and we drove back from Kigali to Ruhengeri where the family lives. Rwanda is mountainous, so the roads go up and down and wind their way around through various places. If you get car sick easily, I would recommend some serious Dramamine. I was fine as long as I looked out the window. I spent the afternoon in the house talking with family and learning small things that I have probably already forgotten considering I hadn't slept in two days. I walked all the way around the house on the wall with Lydia, my second cousin, and then we played badminton. It was a restful afternoon, which is good because I didn't have the capacity to do much of anything. I did drink a cup of the most delicious tea, which I am hoping will be a recurring thing.

Today, I slept until 11:30. Considering I went to bed around 9, I slept for well over 12 hours. Nailed it. I got up just in time for lunch. The kids were back from school and it was announced that we would all be driving to Gisnyi for the afternoon. Someone needed to go to the dentist and the rest of us were along for the ride. We drove all the way to Lake Kivu, and I got to swim in it! I went in with the kids and noticed that there were little trails of bubbles that would float up to the surface in alternating places. I assumed it had to be some sort of water creature and that I was stepping all over them. It turns out that Lake Kivu is rich in natural gas, methane I think. Also, from where we were, I could see Congo. Can you believe that? I could actually see Goma. Now, Goma is not where my mother grew up, the other side of the country in fact, but I could see the country, which is still pretty neat.

Here is a map so that you can orient yourself to my whereabouts:

Pretty neat, huh?

a wedding

So, I have indeed made it to Rwanda. I am safe and sound with my cousins and will be falling asleep very shortly. Before I tell you of my journey here, I have to finish telling you about my beloved Canada.

I finished up my couch surfing tour back where I started my summer: at the Methven's house. You see, Alison is one of the people I went on the road trip with. (Was that five years ago, or what?) Alison picked me up from Newmarket and we headed to her house, which is very close to the wedding that we attended on Saturday. One of my dearest friends married an absolutely amazing woman on Saturday. It was such a gift that I was able to be there. Again, it was odd but felt so right that I was getting to see and hang out with my camp friends outside of camp. I borrowed a dress from one person and shoes from another and attempted to contain my Justin Beiber flow with a host of bobby pins. I succeeded in that endeavor... Mostly.

The ceremony was wonderful. It was full of joy and worshiping God. It was so clear that this couple approached their relationship and marriage as a way to move one another even closer to the Lord. It was also so fun to see the two of them and their groomsmen (all camp men) looking so spiffy! We spend the whole summer looking ragged and a bit (ok, very very) dirty. If I do say so myself, we are an attractive crowd and we clean up good. The best thing ever happened at the end of this wedding: the wedding party processed out to Footloose by Kenny Loggins. Yeah, that happened. It's as if Jason looked into my soul and knew that this was exactly how I had always wanted his wedding to end. It was magical.

The reception was basically all my camp peeps and I dancing for hours on end. Seriously, there would be times when the dance floor was a little more cleared out, but we held our ground like we had tar on our heels. There was no removing us from that dance floor. Someone suggested that since we work at Adventure Camp, we spend our entire summers making complete fools of ourselves and loving every minute of it because we make our kids and each other laugh. We are also ridiculously comfortable with one another. This is the perfect recipe for dance hilarity. The ceiling couldn't hold us. Hand down, the best part of that whole dance time was when the song Thrift Shop by Macklemore came on. You may remember that Wynd-it and I rewrote the lyrics to that song to make a music video at AC. So, the song comes on, Mike and I are dancing near each other, and both of us sing the entire song with the lyrics that we wrote. Ok, we didn't remember all the lyrics, but we did pretty well.

Being at the wedding of two people I love immensely and getting to dance the night away with a whole crowd of people that I love immensely was the best way to end my summer. I know that is was their wedding, but it was also my going away party, and also Rhys' birthday party. Essentially, it was just a really big party.

adventures in Newmarket

I spent the weekend in Hamilton helping Carrie and her roommate organize their apartment and decide which knives they need and how many strings of Christmas lights they needed to properly illuminate the balcony. For the first time in my life, I went into Canadian Tire. I was confused when they talked about Canadian Tire as the place to find great kitchen knives. From the name of the store, "Canadian Tire," one would think that the store was full of tires and car parts and car related things. Nope. I mean, those things are in there, but it is full of loads of things, like knives, grills, Christmas lights, decorations, hardware, etc. Really, the name "Canadian Tire" is a misnomer and incredibly misleading. However, it was super fun to help them shop for their apartment. It's always way easier to help other people make decisions for their living space than it is to make decisions for your own. We ended the weekend with a lovely walk on the Hamilton waterfront. It was so beautiful and green and the night got to the perfect temperature of cool. There was even a rink for roller skating and a DJ. We didn't partake, but that just means that I'll have to come back at some point!

Then it was time for me to move on to the next stop on this crazy tour. Carrie and I drove to Ikea to meet Delo, the Inclusion Coordinator for OPC. We met her and two of her three sons for lunch, and then I returned with them to Newmarket. I have had the joy of living life with this family for nearly a week. I put my hammock up in the backyard yesterday and the three boys and I loved swinging and hiding in the folds of the fabric. I've had wonderful talks with Delo as I look ahead to leaving for Rwanda on Monday (AHHHHHHH!). Today, the youngest and I were hanging out while the others were at the dentist, and we played on the trampoline and laughed so hard. A series of simple, beautiful moments.

The best part of being with a camp family for an extra week is that I am still Rogue. The three boys know my real name, but they are way more familiar with and accustomed to calling me Rogue. It is wonderful. There is this huge culture at camp of being one person for the summer and then returning to regular life and being someone entirely different. As much as I love the fact that all the staff have camp names, I think it adds to that mentality that you are one person at camp with one name and another at home with another name. Being here and having these three little lives and this family still call me Rogue is a little reminder. "Hey, you are the same person now as you were this summer. We didn't forget who you are and neither should you."

surfing

First of all, Mike recently sent me a copy of our Program Team photo, so I decided to share it here with all of you so that you could understand a little part of why I love camp so much. Here we all are in our Duck Dynasty finest, channeling our inner red necks for everything we are worth: Wynd-it, Parker, Narwhal, Rogue and Stitch. We are the dream team. One for the ages.

I am currently half-way through my two weeks of couch surfing before I fly off to the great unknown that is the next year of my life in Rwanda. I spent the najority of this past week in Pickering, Ontario with my dear, dear friends, Tober and D’Brev, or Allyson and Jaclyn and their awesome mother. Ally and I were roommates this summer and Jac was the Discovery Mayor, so she lived above us in the lodge. The magic that was the three of us continued into this week. We mostly slept, watched movies and TV, read books, and slept some more. I reserve the right to sleep for a few days after the end of a long summer at camp. Sleep and get a pedicure.

One night, we had some of other staff from AC over for dinner.

Aren’t they a sight to see! It was such a joy to hang out and talk with them outside of camp. Since I always had to leave to get home, and early at that, I never got the chance to hang out with camp people in the weeks and months that followed camp. It has been such a blessing to spend time with my camp friends after the summer has ended and talk/laugh/debrief. It’s so wonderful to know that there are a host of people who understand the language and the memories that I have when I’m talking about this past summer.

I have now transitioned to the Hamilton, Ontario portion of this couch surfing tour. I am spending a few days with AC’s fearless leader, O captain our captain, Temp (or Carrie). Fun Fact, Carrie has known me since I was 14 because she was an LIT in my chalet the summer I was 14. That’s nuts. Carrie and her roommate are participating in something called Move In, a movement of people who decide to move into a low-income or neglected neighborhood with the intention of being good neighbors. The two of them literally moved into this apartment a few days ago and are saints for already hosting someone even though they aren’t even fully settled themselves. What’s also cool is that they are doing the exact same thing that I did last summer with CHAT, only they are staying here indefinitely and I was only in Church Hill for a summer (though CHAT is there year-round, so it’s the same thing).

It blows my mind how good God is and how global. Yeah, Canada isn’t super foreign or anything, but the fact that people in Richmond, Virginia and people in Hamilton, Ontario are making decisions and praying for similar things and serving a good a loving God who calls us to be good neighbors is amazing to me. They are fairly far away and don’t know that each other exist, and yet they have the same purpose and the same drive to see positive change in their neighborhoods and to God be the glory. I’ve thought a lot about it in the past year, and, while I can’t say where I will be living in my future, I know that something like Move In or what’s happening in Church Hill is what I want to do. I just have to figure out where…

leaving camp

I spent this past week over at the Boy's Camp site doing program for Fuel. Fuel is a week-long teen camp for 15-17 year olds. A good number of them were LITs and staff at the various sites around the lake and then go to Fuel to be a camper one last time and debrief/decompress from the summer. The week's theme was Jumanji, which I think I wrote in my last blog post, so sorry for being redundant. What would happen is every day, at random, we would play the sound of the drums from the Jumanji movie over the PA system at Boy's Camp. Every time they heard the drums, they had to gather at their team locations, get a clue, and complete some sort of task: fit your whole team into a chalet, get the milk out of a coconut and take it to someone, build a fire on the beach, etc. There was one night where we had a pig roast on the beach, so their task was to take all the dining hall benches and tables down to the beach, which was hilarious and awesome.

The week was challenging in new and different ways from the rest of the summer. For example, I spent the whole summer programming for 6 to 10 year olds and was now having to program for 15 to 17 year olds. I actually missed children so much that I got the camp-wide inclusion coordinator, who was my neighbor in the lodge the whole summer, to drive her three boys over to Boy's Camp so that I could hang out with them for an hour. Best hour of my life. I also just missed the AC program team. Don't get me wrong, the people I was working with for Fuel were wonderful and amazing, but they just weren't the people I'd been working with all summer, and it's difficult to transition so quickly to a brand new set of people. The good news is that I ended up rooming with one of my best friends from years past at AC, which made the week this incredible time for us to catch up and hang out after not having seen each other for 2 or 3 years.

The highlight of my week was by far hanging out with the work program guys. I don't remember if I've explained what work program is or not yet, so I'm going to explain it again. At camp, we have the inclusion program where kids with exceptionalities or kids who need some extra care and support are able to be integrated into camp programming and participate as fully as possible in whatever is going on. Then those campers grow up and really age out of camp programming, so they can come back and do work program. Each participant is paired with a job coach, and the two of them will spend the majority of the day cleaning the site, doing dishes, doing laundry, restocking the tuck shop, whatever needs doing. Then of course they get to goof around at the waterfront or join in a wide game or what have you. It's an amazing program. Three of the work program staff were guys on staff at AC this summer, so I already wanted to hang out with them, but their participants were also amazing and I loved every second I spent with them. The Work Pro staff always had to do paperwork during breakfast, so I sat with one participant most mornings. He would often look up at me, smile and tell me that I was fired. Very soon after that he would then tell me that I was hired. It basically experienced a roller coaster of emotions every morning as I was fired and re-hired several times. He always laughed at my jokes, he wanted to know what I was doing for the day,  he waved every time he saw me, it was the best friendship, and I'm really sad that the week is over and we can't hang out again.

But, like every week, Fuel had to end. We cleaned and closed down the Boy's Camp site, went for one last swim, ate some delicious burgers, said our goodbyes, and rolled away from camp. While it wasn't as difficult as closing day at AC, it was still hard to leave camp for good. It's always difficult to step down off the mountaintop. Like Peter, I find myself saying, "Lord, it is good for me to be here" (Matthew 17:4). But like Peter, I am also a bit shortsighted and can't even imagine what is coming next. I have this feeling in my belly (right next to the feeling of serious hunger that I am about to go fix) that something big is happening, something exciting that I can't even fathom. I know I'm spending a year in Rwanda, but this feeling isn't just about a place, it's about all the things that will happen and the ways I will grow and learn. I can't wait.