What a blessing...Dr. Annie Dandavati worked her magic to get into the exclusive Human Rights Conference which lasts all week! A perfect opportunity for her potential June term in Rwanda of the course theme of Human Rights and Human Wrongs.
The rest of us went to the NCV site while Floriane met with her legal representative and a government land official to mark the land of her village. There has been some issues of neighbors wanting to take over the land since the orphanage isn't done yet. Last week Floriane took Lindsay, Becca and her husband to meet with the Mayor of Nymata so this meeting today stemmed from the previous one. While Floriane talked with the two men in Kinyarwandan, the rest of us had a chance to walk around the street. All the kids followed us (about 30) and passed a home where there were around 50 people gathered around. Jake passed out twizzlers to everyone and some kids danced for us!! It was crazy but very exciting to try to talk with the locals.
We not only interacted with more kids for a few hours at the NCV site, but we helped build a little on two of the houses. It was hard to converse with them since their English wasn't very good but we did get to transport some plaster mix for a worker to put in a window frame. We wanted to help more but there wasn't that much to do so we sat and watched them work and conversed more.
It was a long morning...lots of sun (we all got burnt! Becca got it the worst). It was a great learning experience to see how Rwandans build houses, very different from they way we build in America. They don't really have the means to most tools we're familiar with and Luke and Lindsay noticed that the only professional tool they had was a leveler. That was it! But they work they do is very impressive and sustainable.
The afternoon was left to recoup from the morning and just from the very busy trip so far. We really haven't had any down time yet! Thats a wrap for our Monday.
Below are some pictures from the weekend...
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