Jun 06 2007
Part III
The Construction
Our main goals on the trip were to build a playground and to pull off a children’s neighbourhood festival out of the Kigali CLA Circus tent (a church in a tent - who’d have thought?) Jeff had already done some conceptual work, based on our preliminary ideas. I found myself tasked with drafting some drawings of the swing set and the boat, after having decided corporately to do a three piece structure - tower, dock, and boat. We did a bit of site prep, clearing rocks and doing a little ground levelling, then set to work.
The tower was the first objective, followed by prep work for all the pieces of the dock. While most of the team worked on those two jobs, Dennis and I worked on the swings, because they were to be made of metal. As Dennis’s assistant, I did a lot of standing around, which made me feel like a dummy sometimes. I have to confess, in manual labour situations, I need pretty thorough directions, or I start to feel lost and at wit’s end. I am not a good self-starter on construction sites.
By the end of the day, the dock was completed (with a small climbing wall attached), the tower was completed (with monkeybars, a fireman’s pole and a suspension bridge attached), and peripherally, three teeter-totters, the swings, and a balance beam. We had plans for the construction of a zip line, and obviously a boat to dock at the dock, but we simply ran out of time.
The children’s festival went off very well. We didn’t really have a chance to publicize it well, but sending some friends off into the surrounding community quickly had us overwhelmed by children. Many of our games and activities proved to be too unusual to keep the kids calm - we had mobs of children grabbing unfilled balloons before we could blow them up or draw on them. We had juggling balls (made of sand and balloons) go missing quickly. It taught us a lot about how the simplest things we take for granted in Canada are unimaginable in places like Africa. Still, the singing and dancing we had great deals of fun with - we all had no idea that Elizabeth had so many skills in singing and dancing!
Visiting Rwandan Churches
In between bouts of work we had the opportunity to visit different parts of Kigali and the surrounding areas. We attended church at the English-speaking Kigali CLA the first Sunday, then the next Sunday we went to a Kinyarwandan service in another part of the city. It blew our minds that they were singing some of the same songs we knew, but in their own language! We were priveleged to see the efforts of the Samaritan’s Purse “Operation Christmas Child” program bear fruit as about 200 children were all given boxes from North America full of toys and supplies. The looks of joy and awe on their faces as they explored their boxes will never be forgotten.
I’ll say something more about those boxes for a second. I know I thought pretty casually about those boxes in the past - oh, they’re a nice idea, but what good will they really do? One thing I learned over there is the most precious thing that children can possibly receive over there is an education. Children in Africa thirst for knowledge, in ways we simply cannot relate to. They know - they KNOW there is no other way out of their poverty and illness. Every book, every pencil is precious to them because it gives them one more chance to make themselves into someone of value - someone who can help their family, their town, or even their country overcome the massive disadvantages they are in right now. One of the most moving testimonies I had heard prior to leaving for Rwanda came from a man who told us about how all he could hope for was to finish elementary school. That when he had left Grade 6 (in the 80s) there was only one high school in all of Rwanda - one high school for 8 million people! He worked so hard to get marks good enough to get in. He failed the first time. He got in the second time, but only by an error - and he made the most of it! It is only slightly better now, but there are millions of Rwandan children who will never get that chance he did. It sickens me to think how callous and uncaring I was while in school. How little I cared for grades, for working hard, for doing my best. It shames me to think back on those days. It drives me to plan carefully for my sons’ futures, to insure they do not fall into that trap I did. I want to take them to Africa one day, so that they can learn this truth sooner than later like I did.
More in Part IV
