Rwanda 2012

Saturday morning, we had another rehearsal with Mashirika and we added some of the people who were not there the day before. After about an hour of working, we performed for each other and it was really cool to see the growth and evolution from about 12 hours prior.

After our rehearsal, us and the Mashirika gang all headed to a place called Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village. It is a community of about 500 students who live there all year round except for holidays. It was such an awesome place! It is beautifully maintained, there are tons of programs, clubs, sports and activities that the kids can get involved with. After getting lunch and touring the village, we went to the school’s stone amphitheater. It was so cool! I learned about amphitheaters in theater history, but I had no idea that people still used them. It totally makes sense to have a theater built into the hillside though, considering Rwanda is the land of 1,000 hills…Anyway, after some setting up of technical equipment we began to watch some performances. We saw some traditional African dance, some singing, a short performance from the drama club at the school which was awesome! We also got to see Mashirika do a performance and then we did our piece. The audience loved our piece and they could completely relate, especially to the Romeo and Juliet! The night of performances concluded with another traditional African dance. They came out and grabbed people from the audience to dance with them and of course all of us from Buff State and Mashirika were the first ones front and center dancing along with them! It was a ton of fun and ended with a big dance party on the stage. I had a great time at Agahozo-Shalom and it performing there was definitely one of my favorite times ever!

The dance party on stage was like a rehearsal for us because we went out clubbing with the Mashirika crew! We had a ton of fun and I don’t want to go into too many details so I’ll just say two words: Banana beer. 

Rehearsal with Mashirika!

After the refugee camp, we went home and grabbed a quick dinner and headed to Ishyo to meet up with Mashirika. We shared some words about our experiences in the past week and a half, then condensed them down into three ‘bumper stickers’: There is beauty in every horror, Live to change, and My story is your story. The one that stood out most to me was there is beauty in every horror so I joined that group along with Kara, Simon, and Julia. All three of our groups separated and worked on our pieces for about an hour. We then came back together and performed for each other. A lot of us were nervous about this collaboration and what we could each bring to the table but after seeing each other’s showcases we all realized we were in a great place!

Sorry I’m so far behind…

On Friday we were scheduled to go to the Gihembe refugee camp which is the largest refugee camp in Rwanda with 19,000 people. You can’t just walk onto the refugee camp so we went to the Ministry of Disaster and Refugee Affairs. Drew and Carl went inside and we waited outside. Drew came out after awhile and we had a group discussion about our experience at Murambi. After what seemed like hours, Carl finally came out and told us that unfortunately we were not granted access to the refugee camp….but he was just joking! Carl is such a jokester! We all got in the van and drove to the camp. On the way there Drew and Carl told us it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to take out our cameras or any of our stuff. Not because they’re thieves or anything but that there’s a bunch of curious kids who don’t get many visitors. They told us that two kids turn into fifty very quickly. As soon as we started pulling into the camp kids started running toward our van. When we got out, two turned into fifty into a hundred in a matter of minutes. There were just so many of them! Immediately the kids started calling me Rick Ross, T-Pain, and Rasta. They saw one of my tattoos and started screaming and they all wanted to touch it. Even more kids swarmed around us while some of the older teens and adults just looked on from afar. We taught a bunch of kids the hokie pokie and they loved it. When we started going around the camp, all of the kids followed us and they all wanted to hold our hands. They slapped each others hands away and grabbed our arms and kept slapping my tattoo. They were trying to pull me down and it was already hard enough to walk in a swarm of children so I had to start lifting my arms up and kids were literally swinging from them. They absolutely loved it! They started pushing each other out of the way to get a turn to swing up in the air. Having the kids pull on me from all directions and struggling to walk forward over hills and lifting them up in the air reminded me a lot of when I played rugby in high school. As I write this three days later, I am still pretty sore. The kids were having a blast and it was a lot of fun for me too because I got to see so many happy smiling faces. We visited the Hope school which had a classroom full of teenage students. All they had was a blackboard and the benches they were sitting on yet they were all so bright and eager to learn. The students have to work more than twice as hard as American kids to learn geography and history and math and English. After visiting the school and hearing an amazing poem from one of the students about it, we continued on our tour of the camp. We performed the songs from our piece for them on the basketball courts and they seemed to enjoy it. It was hard to leave the camp, partially because there were hundreds of people around our van but more so because it was such a sad situation there. There are thousands of people who are born and die there, never getting to see their home country or even Rwanda, the country they are living in. The living conditions are deplorable; nearly 20,000 people are crammed into this small compound, its not clean, and they don’t have much more than each other. But they have to stay there because the only other alternative is death in the Congo. Refugees come from all over Africa to Rwanda because of how safe it is. I know that may be hard to understand about a country that had one of the worst genocides in history not even 20 years ago, but it is a very very safe place.

Thursday evening we went to Ishyo to see the Mashirika group perform one of their shows: Africa’s Hope. When they originally performed this piece they did it in their futbol (soccer) stadium and they had a cast of 1,000 people. They have since then shortened it down to 9 people and have even traveled to the UK to perform this play. It was a very moving piece that dealt with genocide through the eyes of children who lived through it. These actors are so talented, I can’t wait to collaborate with them! After their last song and their bows, they repeated their last song and let anyone who wanted come onstage and dance and sing along with them. Naturally our whole Buff State team ran to the stage immediately….so much fun!!  

After playing in the rain we went to a couple different marketplaces. This was a completely new experience for a bunch of us because in the smaller shops you could haggle with them and get the price lowered! This was a lot of fun for me because it was almost like a game to see how low you could get something. And there was so much cool stuff! I ran out of Rwandan money twice at one place and had to exchange some with Carl so I could get more stuff. We also went to a mall and I found an elephant!

On Thursday morning it rained here in Kigali. When it rains in Rwanda, it rains really hard but not for very long. Stacey, Lewis, Tie, Julia and Eve all ran out and started playing like little kids. It was really fun to watch!

On Wednesday, we went to Buffalo’s sister city in Rwanda called Muhunga. When we got there we met with some of the mayor’s staff and they piled into the van with us. They were all so cool and funny, I would never have guessed they worked for the mayor. Not that they were unprofessional or anything, it’s just they were so down to earth and welcoming which was a pretty big difference from the politicians and their staff that I’m used to in the states. We visited a school for handicapped children which was pretty cool. We went in the classroom for deaf children and they signed the Rwandan national anthem for us. Paige knows how to sign so she was conversing with a whole bunch of the students and that was really cool. We went to a boarding school that specialized in sciences and sports. We went to another school that specialized in training the students to become teachers. We performed for these students and afterward we got to talk to them a little bit and they were really cool. After we left this third school we met up with the vice mayor of Muhunga and we drove to a little village in one of the hillsides to do a cow distribution. We went on a little tour of the village and they showed us a small building. The last time people from Buffalo visited this village, they helped the people get a solar panel which enables them to have power two light bulbs. It may not sound like much, but there’s no electricity there so when the sun goes down it is pitch black. Having the two light bulbs enables them to see at night a little bit better. After touring the village, we made the cow distribution official with a ceremony performed by one of the elders of the village. We named the cow Anne after The Anne Frank Project. The people were so happy and it was an awesome event to be a part of because there’s really nothing like it in America. Giving a family a cow in Rwanda is a big deal because a cow brings prosperity, a little wealth and some economic stability to them. After the distribution we went and had lunch where we were met by the mayor of Muhunga who paid for all of our lunches and give us a gift to give to our mayor when we get back. You can see Drew posing with her and I am posing with one of the mayor’s staff named John. It was a really cool day and we got to meet a ton of great people!

After Murambi and some lunch, we went to the National University of Rwanda in Butare. We were graced by the most amazing drum performance I have ever seen. This group was comprised of all women, and not just any women. These drummers are the best of the best; winning multiple contests and traveling all over the world to perform, even to New York! What makes them even more remarkable is that women do not traditionally drum in Rwanda and many other African countries, yet this women’s group is not only able to thrive and flourish, but they compete with men and still outshine them. They performed a half hour piece that had me wanting to get up and dance the whole time. It was simply amazing! After their performance, they did a workshop with us where they brought us on the stage and taught us how to drum. They taught us how to hold the drum sticks, the names and sounds of the drums and then several different drum patterns. They were really impressed with how well and quick we caught on. It was so much fun drumming with them and it was a great workout! During their travels to New York, the women drummers became partners with an ice cream company called Blue Marble and they have opened their own shop in Butare called Inzozi Nziza which means ‘Sweet Dreams’ in English! After drumming we went there and had delicious pineapple and chocolate ice cream. Later after we got home and were having dinner, Drew told us that the drumming troupe was made up of widows, victims, and perpetrators of the genocide. Seeing them drum together, we would have never guessed because of the incredible sense of community and togetherness they all share. The major lesson I took away from that experience and later hearing that information was the power of forgiveness.

Due to the interest of time and money, we were unable to do the canopy walk. But at lunch, we saw a wonderfully painted wall and I posed in front of it…almost looks real doesn’t it?

Tuesday we visited the Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre. This memorial was particularly rough. This was a school before the genocide. When the killing started, government officials told people to go there because they would be safe. Shortly after tens of thousands of people arrived there, the water supply was cut off and the four guards that were assigned to them disappeared. After the people were weak from lack of food and water, the massacres began. Over 50,000 innocent people were murdered there. This place was strategically chosen because it was isolated on top of a hill so the perpetrators could easily contain everyone and ensure there would be no survivors. What made this place particularly rough was that the behind the newly built memorial building, were the actual school buildings. Inside the school were bodies preserved using lime. Carl and Drew told us about this about this the day before when they were telling us what we would be doing for the next couple of days. When we walked into the memorial building my heart was pounding and my legs felt like jello. I couldn’t focus on what the tour guide was saying because she had a really thick accent. I couldn’t focus on the historical information because we had already read most of it at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre. All I could focus on was what we were going to see when we got behind the building and into the school. I got the sense that other people were feeling that way too. I saw a lot of legs tapping and the rest of the group just seemed restless and anxious. The whole time my mind was racing: I had no idea what body preserved with lime would look like. So I was trying to imagine it. I imagined we would walk into the school and see bodies sitting in classrooms frozen forever in their last position . I imagined we would see people in tattered clothing with open wounds and pools of blood around them. I imagined we would see complete carnage all over the place and in my mind I was beginning to freak out. When we finished walking through the memorial we went outside and had a moment of silence at the mass graves. Then we made our way behind the main memorial building to the school. Fortunately what I imagined was a lot worse than what we saw, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. In each room there were dozens of bodies lied out on tables. What they looked like were kind of like mummies but without the wrapping. We could see where bones had been broken, limbs had been severed and skulls had been crushed. There were bodies of children, adults, men, women. Those who committed these heinous acts did not discriminate. There were over 800 bodies lied out on the tables in these rooms. It was tough to go from room to room seeing these bodies especially because there was a horrible stench. However this visit to the Murambi Genocide Memorial Site was lightened by some beautiful kids who lived in the hillside less than 100 feet from the buildings. The kids saw us and waved earnestly. They ran up close to shake our hands and play with us. They danced and laughed and seeing their bright eager faces made it easier for us to finish touring the memorial. Drew told us to be prepared to have our hearts broken and filled, but I didn’t think it could happen almost simultaneously. I thought it was incredible for them to live so close to that horrible site, yet still have extreme joy in their hearts. I don’t know how much they knew about what had happened there or how much their parents had told them but seeing them really brightened my day and gave me a sense of peace.