We sure are mighty, too, but I think what we're letting hang out is a bit different than what The Commodores had in mind ;) (More like our singing abilities and laughs and shirt-tails...)
Last Friday (today is Monday) marked the Gustavus team's first day actually working at Rusororo (or the Faith Village orphanage site), and either the second or third day the City Hill team had been working there--hauling bricks. And wooden scaffolding that no longer needs to be used. Hallelujah. I don't know how many of you would find "hard labor" as rewarding as I do, and maybe I wouldn't even say that back home, but watching those bricks pile up (even though we weren't the ones actually laying the mortar and building the walls) and seeing some actually progress (all the while clearing out my sinuses from what I still don't know was a cold or serious allergies to some pollutant in the air) felt totally awesome, let me tell you.
(the hardcore crew--we raced bricks to the pile)
On our return to the site from lunch at La Planete, however, some more interesting events took place (I'll basically leave it to you to determine the significance). We need two cars to get around now since our team has about doubled in size, and I was in the one driven by Alan/King (no one seems to know which is his real name) with Amanda, Emily, Anna, Alexa, Karen and Cindy (from City Hill). We drove for about 10 minutes (just long enough to get "out of the city" from where we were) when a weird clicking/thumping noise started in the right rear wheel. After a lot of stop and go and phone calls back and forth in Kinyarwanda, we pulled off the road and Bosco came to our "rescue" to figure out what the problem was. Alan/King hopped in the other car and drove the other group to Rusororo while Bosco drove us a little further, then ended up pulling off the road (on the other side, I guess because there was more of a shoulder) and turning the car off.
We were in for a long wait.
So what did we do? Well after drawing a hopscotch grid with a rock and Emily's shoe for some little kids walking back from school and dozing on the pavement under an umbrella in the near blistering heat, and seeing another car with about 10 other Rwandans looking to help (I can only assume), we did the only thing there is to do: play Phase 10.
Yes, but unfortunately, he never got to us. Not long after he dropped the other crew off at Rusororo, King/Alan collided with another vehicle. He allegedly went to the hospital, but was unharmed, as we saw him in perfect health today. Still...it made us all wonder--was there are a reason our car "broke down" (we ended up using the same car to get to Rusororo anyway, and Bosco just took it to the "garage" afterward to get an axel problem fixed), and why we switched drivers? Maybe it was simply to bond with each other, maybe to have the experience of being "stranded" (which, according to Karen, must occur on every mission trip), maybe to teach us to be cautious (as the driving around here is just generally chaotic)...who knows. But ask yourself this for me: are there really such things as coincidences?
Anyway, we got there eventually and did our after-school program (between intense periods of brick-stacking, of course) and returned to the guest house tired, hungry and dirty--but accomplished. Saturday, then, was a well-earned respite of shopping, reading and lounging around.
Sunday was much of the same--oodles of cribbage, which I have decided is my new favorite card game, but also a nice candle-lit dinner --but today we got a little change of pace. Our guy at Gisimba, Il de Phonse (Ildephonse?), hasn't obtained the information to complete our proposal yet, so Kelly and I got to go with the rest of the team--and I mean the whole team (minus Karen's husband, who got stuck being babysitter at the guest house for his daughter)--to PEFA for some deep-cleaning. I started out on dishes with Brittni, Alexa and one of the Mamas, Anounciata, but quickly finished that task and moved on to help with laundry until lunch. I probably could've handled that with a little more internal grace, honestly, but now that it's done (and I didn't have to deal with things like scabies and bed bugs, like Anna, bless her soul) I'm glad I could at least help out for one day. Picking up trash after lunch, however, was even less enjoyable, mostly because the only means of disposal they had was a pile on the hill going down from the "playground" to the garden. I just felt like, what's the point? We're just putting all of the trash in a spot where the kids can reach it. Then the guys who were supposed to be working (plus possibly some friends) thought it would be great to take pictures of the muzungu picking up trash in the gutter.
It took pretty much all I had not to either flip them off, yell at them, or throw things at them. I also tried to avoid glaring but I'm pretty sure that one failed.
(I suppose now is probably a good time to tell you that muzungu means "white person." You may have guessed that, and you may or may not find it racist, I don't know. When the little kids say it, they're mostly excited, especially when you acknowledge them. Karen has said that now it means something more like "foreigner" or "passerby," and in some cases, it seems like that. But out of the mouths of others, there's no doubt it's used as a derogatory term, and the only thing you can do is remind yourself that everyone is a child of God, whether they believe it or not. Forgive them for they know not what they do, you know?)
So where does that leave me? Well, back in the comfort of the guest house, it's harder to be angry, to know that, as much as Rwanda has improved, there's still so much to be done. But it's true, and I can only pray that God will use other people (or some of the same, who knows?) to finish what we've started, and what we've furthered little by little.
May we all come to know what it means to help rebuild God's creation.
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