Hope those titles caught your attention, because I've got a lot of things to cover, and it has come to my attention that my blog should perhaps contain fewer words and more pictures.
So. For the time being I will limit the words, because I'm too lazy to add pictures right now and will likely be more so after writing this because I must choose my words carefully.
Ha. And now that I have sufficiently wasted your time, here I go.
Um, where to start. Shoot. Well Sunday was beautiful, and you should read all about it on our team blog (http://gacrwanda2012.blogspot.com/). Monday we spent most of the day at PEFA (Pentecote Evangelique de Fraternite en Afrique)--
(insert abrupt and ephemeral pillow fight here, in real time)
--which is a small orphanage off a ridiculously non-navigable (except by our superman driver Bosco) dirt road "run" by three "Mamas," who care for about 22 kids aged about one to ten (wow that was an awkward sentence. Can you tell I'm thinking about something else? I promise we'll get there. I'm nervous is all. Or something. Sheesh). It was a lot of fun to just play with the kids--and work in the garden, even though I felt pretty inept at it...but Innocent and Manuel were very patient with us and I had the joy of hacking apart eggplants and such using a not-quite-boy scout-safe knife with Alexa :)
Anyway, it was fun but I can't imagine dealing with all that every day, on top of cleaning clothes, sheets, floors and bathrooms (which are honestly too nasty to describe, and Kelly was the only one who actually saw them at their worst AND volunteered to help clean them, God bless her), so I'm glad I was not assigned there for the week, because it would've been just that--an assignment. My heart would not have been in it.
Little did I know, that assignment wouldn't mean much this time around anyway.
(Ha. The suspense is killing you, isn't it? I promise I'll get there soon. By which I really mean eventually. Oh geez.)
After PEFA, we all clambered back into the Land Cruiser with the tricked out stereo and the non-functional seatbelts (sorry parents, I promise it's not terrifying and like I said, we have a super driver) and drove to Gisimba Memorial Centre, which is actually another orphanage. This one was a little weirder, because out of the 141 (or 138, Kelly and I have yet to account for the other three in our calculations for the school project proposal), probably 50% were above the age of 15, all the way up to like, 27. Still not quite sure how that works. But this place was nicer (flushing toilets, hooray), a bit bigger perhaps, and run by people who actually speak English (but have great French names like Jean-Marie, Jean-Francois and Ildephonse). We got a quick tour but it was kind of late in the day for much to get done (things pretty much quit around 3:30 here it seems, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe it's supposed to be nap time between then and dinner time at 7:30...but you also have to keep in mind that when you say you want to be picked up at 3:30, it probably means the car will roll in at about 4:04), so we headed back to the guest house for a pretty low-key evening.
Pause.
Wow. It's like by being paranthetical, I think I'm writing less--so false. Sorry guys.
Play.
The next morning we headed off to PEFA again for the main part of the day, then planned to make it to the Faith Village site by around 4'oclock (Rwanda time). Started off all well and good, picking up kids and swingin' them around, having our watches messed with until the Chrono mode was all sorts of whacked out and alarms were going off at random times, getting snot and spit smeared in our hair by the Hair Mongrel (don't actually know his name), playing "Hagarara, Genda" (our Kinyarwanda version of Red light, Green light, literally Stop, Go) and generally having a rollicking good time, but all the while I was feeling more fatigued. At one point I sat down next to the orphanage owner's daughter to avoid the climbing children, and after we struggled to converse in English for about 90 seconds she asks, "You know Justahn Biebah?"
Justin Bieber. Of course.
I smile. "Yeah."
"You look like heem."
Or something to that effect (which she later changed to "hees seestah," but we all know the real story). So yes, it is true friends, even half way across the world, where more than half the population probably knows little to no English, I have the same hair as the 13 year old JBiebs. Such is life.
And it is after this revelation that the real stuff begins. We go out to the "playground" at Pefa (maybe a 60'x40' plot of dirt in the back) to play Hagarara, Genda, and it's getting hot. I'm not feeling great, so I do the yelling of Genda and Hagarara with Karen, but when we switch games, I've had enough. I spend the next 3 and half hours or so in a locked room, curled up on a concrete floor for the most part, trying to tell myself the queasiness will go away.
It doesn't. But we get in the car and drive to Rusororo (Faith Village site) to host an after school program, and I actually feel a little better when I get out. Amanda and I sit under the mango tree with the bench and exchange emails and fun facts about America with John Peter, one of the workers, while the rest of the team collects kids in the neighborhood with the collective call to come: muze. Once they've got everyone gathered, I take the position of videographer for 5-10 minutes, then pass the camera off to Anna because I think I'm going to vomit. I'll spare you the description of the hole I tried (and surprisingly, failed) to barf in.
Then I curled up next to the big metal supply container 50 meters from the group and start thinking about that mango I had for breakfast.
In retrospect, it probably wasn't the mango. Or maybe it was, but my reasoning behind dwelling on that was more likely because of Gunner's bad mango incident on the CHS ski team trip to Valdez junior year. (So I really hope someone reads this who catches that reference.)Anyway, it gets to be about 5:30 and I'm freezing. I'm wearing a t-shirt, but I'm also on the equator. I should not be this cold. I'm surrounded by little Rwanda kids staring and pointing at the sick muzungu (I'll explain the definitions behind that word another day), but I don't even care. We get in the car--I'm sitting in the front this time, with the window rolled all the way down--and the shakes are starting, tylenol is being passed to me, hands are being layed on me and the thermometer reads 101 something.
Yikes, right? It gets better.
Everyone's praying, some in Kinyarwanda, some in English, maybe one in "tongues." I don't know what to think.
Thermometer again, and I'm at 102.6. It's a miracle I wasn't swearing in my head, but suddenly I'm hearing two people in tongues. Three. Maybe more. I didn't even know we had that many people in the car who could do that. In all honestly, I wasn't so sure I believed ANYONE could do that anymore.
I've had my eyes and mouth shut the whole time, but the saline is pouring over my face and suddenly Karen asks me what I think about speaking in tongues.
'scuse me, what?
Well you might guess what happened then. I told her what I thought. She told me what she thinks. Words/syllables pop into her head and she speaks the ones she can pick out, the ones that sound right. Suddenly, it sounded so simple. As she was saying this, words were popping into my head. But I fought it. I thought, No way. Not that fast. But I'm a slow learner--is anything too hard for the Lord (Genesis 18:14)?
No I can't tell you what I said. It sounded like gibberish to me too, but it just came gushing out (even if at a whisper). And then, there was one phrase, the first phrase, that stuck: ndshaka hab'la. I'd ask Karen about it later if I remembered, I reasoned.
Finally we got back to the guest house, Karen walked me to my room and to bed with the rest of the team in tow, prayed some more, and took my temperature one more time: 99.5. Sleep well, she said.
...and I'll finish the rest later because I don't have time (and to keep you somewhat in suspense ;))
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