I haven’t written in a while so I figured that I should let you all know what I am up to and that I am still alive! Between hanging out with giraffes in the National Park, teaching tic-tac-toe to street kids, and hiking mountains to get to church, I have been very busy and having an awesome time! But since I don’t have time to detail all of my adventures I’ll give you a little glimpse of rural Rwandan life as I saw it yesterday. We were going to a church way out near the Congo border which was supposed to take four hours. Now keep in mind that there are 15 of us plus a baby squished in a very beat up van. Every time we go anywhere the driver is putting the van back together. Sometimes it’s a mirror that falls off, sometimes it’s the exhaust pipe. So we begin our adventure at 5:00 am and just down the road the tail pipe falls off, so he fixes that and we continue. Around 6:30 we pop a tire. We spend some time fixing that and then continue. Around 9:00 we start hitting really run down roads as we enter the more rural areas. Many times we had to get out and walk because the van couldn’t make it with so many people. There were many prayers being said as we came close to falling off cliffs, even the translator was talking about meeting Jesus sooner rather than later and the driver kept gasping! About a half hour later we popped another tire – this time we were in the middle of nowhere, but somehow we fixed it and continued. After a series of walking and riding, we made it to this little trail by 10:30. With our butts numb and our backs aching we were happy to finally be there. Except the catch was that we weren’t actually there – now was the time that we had to spend 20 minutes hiking a mountain. After we had been hiking a while we came to this clearing and one of the Rwandans pointed to a little building on the top of the next mountain over and told us that was the church. We thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. So we finally made it a little after 11:00.
Even though it was a huge trek to get there, the views were beautiful!!!! Rwanda is the most beautiful country ever. I wish I could post pictures but you will all have to wait until I get home. The church was great too – I loved it. I only wish that it was easier to get to. Afterwards we went to the house of a church elder and they made us lunch – this was amazing since they were very poor. It was a little sketchy looking and included bones of some sort of animal, but we tried to eat it graciously. I also tried fish. Now I don’t mean fish patty or tuna. I mean a real whole little fish with a head and EYES! Yes, I took a picture of the fish to prove it. I ate its head!!! And those of you who know me well know that I HATE all kinds of fish. So you should all be proud. Anyway, the trip back went the same way, minus one flat tire. But over all I had an awesome time. It was a really great experience and the views were priceless!
So that is a little taste of what I have been up to. E-mail me and let me know how you are doing and what you are up to. DHappel06@hotmail.com I am missing American summer activities (like camp!).
I love you all-
Dana
