A weekend of worship, sugary tea and Great Mutual Expectations.

This weekend involved a visit to LLCCM, an orphanage initiative supported by RVCP, a leg of the Tour de Rwanda (of which there are sadly no photos...), The Great Mutual Expectations Meeting, a three hour Church service, Primus, dodgy sun-burn, an insane amount of mosquito bites and a lot of HALLELUJAH! AMEN!

On Saturday, Libby and I joined Miriam and went to LLCCM, a community-based voluntary organisation to help children orphaned by HIV/AIDs or the genocide. The initiative aims to place children back with any family that remain, and the organisation acts as a centre to support the children and their families. Saturday is Children's Day, which includes Bible/worship sessions, games and lunch.

Since LLCCM is based in a village outside of Butare, the easiest and cheapest way to get there is by a cycle-taxi. Next time I promise I will take photos, it was absolutely hilarious. It's quite nice to sit on a cushion attached to the back of a bicycle and be pedalled along, but everyone does stare at you (because clearly seeing a white person on a bike is the FUNNIEST THING EVER).

The worship part of Children's Day at LLCCM was also an experience. All in Kinya-Rwandan, it involved a lot of singing, dancing and a call-and-response shout: 'HALLELUJAH!' 'AMEN!' x 3 (this randomly occurred throughout the morning). I felt slightly awkward not knowing what was going on, and the entire session lasted 2 hours so it was quite hard work to pay attention for all that time without understanding a single word (except the HALLELUJAH! AMEN! bits). Afterwards we played some games with the children and met the cows and goats that are kept there before having a lunch of extremely sugary tea, rice and beans which were the best beans I have had in Africa so far.

On our ride back to Butare, I sadly got a bit burnt, which was annoying cause I was wearing a necklace at the time so now I have a vaguely elephant-shaped tan line. This goes well with all the bites I have, my feet have never been so itchy. If anyone wants to send me a present, then send Aloe Vera gel because one tube is not going to be enough for 8 months.... My address is P.O Box 696, Butare, Rwanda by the way (Christmas is soon, right?!)

After returning to Butare, Miriam and I went to have ice-cream at Inzozi-Nziza, a non-profit organisation from a New York ice-cream company (which our housemate Lora works for) to empower women and provide them with jobs and income (as well as making amazing ice-cream available for Butare!)

Saturday evening was the evening of our Great Mutual Expectations Meeting. This was with the RVCP committee and aimed to do several things: explain who BVDA are and how we work, outline why BVDA have sent two long-term capacity builders to RVCP, and to discuss our expectations of each other while we are here. The meeting itself went really well; the RVCP members thought it was useful, interesting and the discussion about what we expect from each other was very productive. However, when we did the session evaluation at the end, all the members thought of the same problem: there wasn't enough sugar in the tea. This is a totally Rwandan thing - each cup of tea has to have about three large spoons of sugar in it before anyone will drink it. Which is 1) totally alien to me and 2) meant we got through about half a kilo of sugar in just one evening (and still this wasn't enough).

The Great Mutual Expectations Meeting

On Sunday morning, I met Peter and went to Church. I wanted to experience a Rwandan Church service, and thought that it would help me immerse myself into the community even more, because going to Church plays such a huge part in the Rwandan week. I chose to go to the Protestant service Peter attends because of the music and the dancing, and this definitely didn't disappoint! I was immediately made welcome, and someone appeared next to me who translated the entire service. There was a stage at the front with a band (electric guitars, keyboards, drum-kit - it was like being at a school concert) and a huge gospel choir. Everyone was standing up, dancing and singing, and I was given a child to look after more or less as soon as I arrived. My translator translated everything for me, which was great because I would have definitely fallen asleep during the guest speaker's hour long speech if I hadn't have been able to understand him. The service ended up being about three hours long (and we missed the first hour) which was way too long but we met Miriam and Hyacinthe afterwards and went to Shekina for lunch (more on Shekina another time. This blog post is way too long).

If you've read this far, you can be rewarded with a photo of us trying (and failing) to light our stove:

Interesting reading:

LLCCM: http://www.llccm-rwanda.org

Inzozi Nziza: http://www.bluemarbledreams.org/