My Absolute Favorite Thing in the World

Eleanor Roosevelt Sings:

Mana Nkuko Wafashaga

Mana nkuko wasfashaga

Basogokuruza

Niko natwe uza dupacha

Mumyaka iri mbere

Umuyaga wi shuhe ri

Urawuturinda

Uzatubere ubuturo

Budashira iteka

Ker abo kwiringiraga

Bari mumohoro

Tugupite ntitwifuza

Undi murengezo

Yes, I know you can't see anything.  This is the lighting in the village.  It's light without light.  I can't explain it, but Rwandans can see by it.  The point is just to hear it.  They sing like this a lot, especially before we pray and it's beautiful and amazing and easy and not given a care by them.  This is my favorite song they sing and I asked them to sing it to me on our last family time together as a family this year.  I cried and cried.

We also discussed some great memories from the year, and they gave me beautiful handmade cards and an incredible clock that you'll be sure to see if you are ever in my home.  The girls danced for me, and sang and gave speeches of thanks.  Everyone.  I gave farewell remarks as well, but I can;t remember what I was saying, only trying to talk through the tears.

It was a sad night, but my thinking on it now is that it's really great to have a sad night that was planned and expected and not a trauma of any kind.  It's life.  It's natural. Comeza.

Gravesite Rededication

So today, the Eleanor Roosevelt Family traveled to Rugalika in Kamonyi District, to the site of Jeannette's burial.  (The girls have been raising money for a gravesite improvement all term.)  We were planning on contracting with local laborers, which turned out to be Jeannette's uncle.  A couple weeks ago, there was a pretty tense scene when I was supposed to negotiate labor costs with the bereaved family and maybe didn't drive a hard enough bargain, but in the end it all worked out okay.

Today we got up early and headed to Rugalika.  It was a couple hour ride over some pretty rough roads and we were pretty cramped in the van:

1/5th of me, Happiness and Jeanette.  Grace and Yvonne are practicing the song in the back row.

For various reasons (some Rwandan and some universal), we arrived about one hour late. For me it was a hard day, but ultimately it was a success.  I was very nervous about all the details.  Death rituals are cultural and leaving so much up to an outsider made me feel we might leave out something essential or inadvertently offend someone.   Jeannette was in the ASYV family for 4 months, and in her biological family for 15 years, so showing up and taking over felt stiff and forced.

Going over those 'roads' in the van makes me think about how terrible her last hours must have been.  So sick. Vomiting and septic.  Her guardians realizing in a panic way too late just how sick she was. Struggling to get off that steep hill and get to a 'health clinic' that couldn't do a thing for her anyway.  It just rips me up. 

The girls had prepared a whole ceremony with an MC, prayers, songs, poems and speeches.  They all cried their little eyes out and hearing 15 girls sing through tears is heart wrenching and must be some special Priority Mail® type of prayer.

The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village Founder, Anne Heyman, was expected to attend, but fell ill this morning and sent her apologies.  In her absence, Jeannette's family decided to lavish undeserved praise on the only white person within 30 kilometers, yours truly.  The entire ceremony and speeches were all in Kinyarwanda and while I was able to follow the general tone of course, I had no idea what was going on.  You can hardly imagine my surprise when Jeannette's Aunt, a catholic nun, whipped out some perfumed oil, lunged across the room and started washing my feet. Jiminy fing Cricket!!!  My face contorted into a wildly inappropriate tight smile that is my 'go-to' a lot these days when wanting to run and scream but not appear socially insensitive.  My mind was racing.  I wanted to strongly reject the Christ imagery and the notion that I was deserving or superior.  But I didn't feel I could communicate in delicate way that I was rejecting the overture because I felt it was unnecessary and not because I was rejecting the Aunt.  

In the end, maybe just due to he path of least resistance, I just went along with it and the ceremony moved on to the next agenda item before I had fully wrestled with what this meant, what it implied and how I should react.  

I was later called on to speak and it was difficult.  I was struggling a bit, and then in some way that I am culturally blind to, it 'became time' to serve the Fanta, so while I was talking about Jeannette and the ongoing impact she'll have on me and girls in Eleanor Roosevelt, someone was walking around with an opener and a crate asking "Orange, Citron or Coca?" and that somehow made it all so much easier.  This is sad, and grief is grief, but there is Fanta to be had so we will have it now thank you.  Life goes on.

In the end, as sad as the girls seemed, it is probably healthy for them to have some ceremony to commemorate Jeannette's death and to be able to participate.  Hopefully this was a purposeful step in the grieving process. 

Here's the Before:

And a few of the After:

The new gravesite is finished in concrete that will hold up much better in the Rwandan rainy seasons.

The large cement cross has a space for a photo you might recognize:

The ride home was long and hot and cramped and the girls were tired.  I was tired. I am tired.  I am going to bed.

Dictionary Distribution Drive! - Delighted Denizens

You guys never cease to amaze me.  THANK YOU SO MUCH.  The folks at Scripps Networks Interactive Knoxville (with some other helping hands) have sent a huge shipment of Kinyarwanda/English Dictionaries to ASYV.  I am so excited and so overwhelmed with gratitude.

I know that it was a concerted effort and that many people donated books, so many thanks to Vikki Neil for coordinating that and thank you to everyone who got involved and pitched in. Extra thanks to Jillian, Amy & Erin who I know were excited to help from the start and gathered donations.

The books have allowed us to place several dictionaries in each of the 32 family homes as well as many in the school and other libraries and study locations around the village. Additionally some books have been held back in reserve as awards for the winners of the upcoming spelling bee and village quiz night.

I opened the large boxes with a few of my girls from the Eleanor Roosevelt Family: Yvonne and Josianne. (Aren't they beautiful?) Some photos of that are below (Photo Credit: Jerrod Popham).  

Yvonne & Josianne helped me to distribute the books thoughout the village.  You can see the smiles.  However, what we really needed to convey the excitement is sound.  The girls were giggling and couldn't help opening and paging through the dictionaries right away.

Think about that for a second.  These are teenagers.  Giddily, eagerly flipping through a dictionary.

The sounds in each house when we brought the books were like Christmas morning with bikes and a new gaming system.  All of the kids shouted, "Wow!" over and over and hugged each other.  I'm not kidding or exaggerating.  If you got a "wow" out of an American kid for a dictionary it would probably be sarcastic, but these students were genuinely thrilled to have a key to unlock the language they've been working so hard to learn.  I really cannot express how grateful and excited you have made 500 kids, kids that I think are just amazing.

I can't imagine how frustrating it's been to try and learn a foreign language without a dictionary, but I know it will be much easier for them now.  The dictionaries will be used every night while students do their homework and throughout the day at school.  Starting now and years from now, when these students have better chances than they would have at scholarships and jobs due to improved English, this effort will be the reason. It's a real, substantive change that's been made and I am so appreciative.

Here's a few pics of us opening the boxes:

(Thanks so much to fellow volunteer Jerrod Popham for taking and giving me these photos.)

And here are a few more of my thoughts in interview style:

How does it make you feel that these people at Scripps sent you so many dictionaries?

 Overwhelmed with their generosity.  I know why I give to these kids.  I work with them every day and I know they are so deserving, but that people half a world away who have never met them care is a real testament to the generosity of the good people at Scripps in Knoxville.  It makes me proud to know them.


Where you surprised they wanted to get involved, since you were at Scripps as a consultant and not an employee?

In a way, yes, but in my time consulting at Scripps I was continually made aware of how Scripps gives back to United Way and many other generous charitable campaigns.  The staff I worked with in Knoxville were very supportive of my endeavor and interested in my plans, and I know they are just wonderful people, so I'm not really that shocked that they once again decided to get involved and make a difference.  As a consultant, Scripps employees never made me feel like an outsider, but instead treated me with genuine Southern hospitality, welcoming me into friendships and their homes, and when they learned about this great cause, they got involved, regardless of the labels.

How has this donation affected the Rwandan people you are working with?

 It directly impacts the lives of 500 vulnerable orphans in the residential youth community where I work.  They take all their classes and tests in English but learn it as a second or third language, after Kinyarwanda, their native tongue, and French, the official language here in Rwandan until 2008.  These students are so dedicated, but they really struggle to learn a language without a Kinyarwanda /English dictionary.  That's where Vikki Neil and Scripps stepped in to get involved. When I was handing out the dictionaries, the kids were celebrating like they just got the best present in the world.  They were so immediately appreciative and excited.

(reference: http://www.africaportal.org/articles/2012/05/31/costs-and-consequences-rwanda%E2%80%99s-shift-language-policy)


How has this donated affected you?

Does it sound sappy to say it has re-affirmed my faith in humanity?  In a large sense, I feel great that my friends and colleagues care about this organization for orphaned and vulnerable Rwandan youth and want the best for them.  On a micro level, I work with these kids every day and I have grown to really love them.  I am so excited for them to have these dictionaries and learn English better.  So the effect on me is that Pacifique, who works so hard, has another tool to help him learn, and that Agnes, who is too shy to ask questions, can learn straight from the book. And there's 498 other kids with stories like that who will truly benefit from this.  

Groundhog Day Wake (In Kinyarwanda)

• It begins with the scraping of chairs.  16 kids arrive in our small family room, each with a chair brought from their family's house.  It's a long process to get the chairs all in and arranged and a bit like that game where you can move one of 25 plastic tiles to get the photo of the tiger back.
• Then there is a 'game'.  This involves all of the kids from the visiting family drawing a number 1 through 16 and then being paired up with a girl from our family of a previously assigned number to sit together, or for one visitor, a chorus of "Oh, Sorry!" and being handed a framed photo of Jeanette.  (If the other family is a boy's family, this game is accompanied by copious giggling, like you might imagine would happen in a 6th grade PE class forced into partners for square dancing.)
• Then an 'emcee' from our family welcomes the visitors.  There is a strict protocol.
• There is a moment of silence.  
• The emcee invites one girl from Eleanor Roosevelt to speak, who thanks the visitors for coming and for being with us.
• The emcee invites one child from the other family to speak, who stands and offers condolences.  
• The emcee invites one girl from Eleanor Roosevelt to sing a sad song.
• The emcee invites one child from the other family to sing a sad song.
• The emcee invites our family mother to speak.  She gives the same speech about God picking the fresh blooms off the rose bush, and Jeanette being a good girl who was very obedient (possibly untrue?) [Look, I loved Jeanette, but obedience was not a strong suit for her, and definitely not a defining characteristic. One of the things I loved about her was that when Momma would ask her do something ridiculous like mop an already clean floor she would scrunch up her nose and make a face and move as slooooowly as possible to do the task. I always liked that she was showing her personality and a bit of backbone.]
• The emcee invites the visiting family mother to speak, who invariably claims a close connection to Jeanette, and then encourages the girls of Eleanor Roosevelt to make the most of opportunities at the village that Jeannette did not get the chance to, and to study hard and dedicate their effort to Jeanette.  
• The visiting family offers a gift, usually a package of biscuits for each girl, or a bag* of milk or some candy.  As with all food in the village, this generates significant excitement.  (*Not a typo.  Like a pouch really.  Not that different than a capri sun, sans straw.)
• The emcee invites our family big sister to speak and she and talks of death as a natural part of life, and how we must not be selfish, that we will all be together in heaven soon.  Simultaneously, the gift is being distributed, so there is much rustling of packaging and perhaps a minor disturbance if there is not enough for everyone. 
• The emcee invites the visiting family big brother or sister to speak and s/he says that Jeanette is an angel in heaven watching over all of us all the time, a possibility I find troubling on a number of levels.  Rustling continues
• The emcee invites me to speak, and I struggle.  This is the first English of the night and the kids are all well into their snack at this point, and tired.  I look at 31 bored faces.  Over the rustling and chewing sounds, I try to honor Jeanette and also be honest about how we are feeling at that point in the long, rote ceremony.  I usually talk about how she was funny, and a joker and brought a lot of joy and levity to our family.
• The emcee calls us to stand again, and invites someone to lead us in a closing prayer.  The prayer is long, and fervent and maybe even a bit evangelical seeming in cadence and volume.
• All the chair scraping begins in reverse.

So far we have been visited by 14 of the families in the village, so this will happen 17 more times. 

Update: Whether cowardice or sloth I'm not sure, but I bagged it for the half-marathon.  The Achilles still hurts enough when I walk and I just don't think I could gut it out.  I'm mightily disappointed.