On Wednesday morning Lars, Emily, Luke, Jake, Ryan, and I
will depart for various placement sites throughout the country. We have spent the last three weeks together
in Kigali. Our fearless leader and
country coordinator, Kate, has been guiding us as we learn more about the
culture, the language, and how God is at work here. Here are some of the highlights of the past
few weeks:
The Kigali Memorial Museum provided powerful and humbling
insight into the country’s past. It is
hard to imagine a genocide taking place in a country that today is so full of
life and optimism. We met a few youth
that were part of a campaign to collect one million messages of hope in
remembrance of the genocide that took place twenty years ago.
We took an excursion to Kigali’s second largest city, Huye,
where we visited a couple of Rwanda’s national museums. We toured a replica of a traditional home of
a Rwandan king.
Cows are an important part of Rwandan culture. Traditionally symbols of wealth and beauty,
cows were decorated for weddings and celebrations. These cows at the museum were “the royal breed” of the past
kings. They looked rather majestic with
their long horns. The cows must have
felt pretty special too because they even had their own royal cow singer to keep them happy. Here's a picture of the cows being serenaded. I think one of them is smiling.
One of our new friends, Frank, taught us how to dance like a
cow (which is much more elegant than it sounds) with arms spread wide to mimic
the giant horns.
Saturday morning, we joined the youth at the church to help clean the church grounds. Afterwards, they shared Fantas with us and showed us some of their dance moves.
When we were learning basic greetings and conversation starters, Peter taught us how to say we are working as partners of the Lutheran Church. So next time I'm making small talk and someone asks me what I do, all I have to say is, "Nkora k' urusengero rw' Abaruteri nk' umufatanyabikorwa." Try saying that fives times fast.
