Everyday Heroes

A university student finds Zen in the pain and hardship of family life in Rwanda today. She is volunteering at an orphanage and writes upon her arrival. She helped raise funds and art supplies for the trip and delivered some to a young girl in a hospital who recently had both feet amputated due to HIV complications. On medical home visits, she meets many women with AIDS contracted through rape during the genocide, caring for their own children as well as those already orphaned.

AMAKOOROO! (Hello from Rwanda)
By Dani Seligman

I got off of the plane with Barbara and Maddie, a girl who came with her to help her distribute medical supplies, at about 8:30 Saturday night (I left on Thursday). It gets dark here really early as it is their winter so we had to wait until the next morning to see Africa. For the time being we would just breathe in her thick, sweet air. I stepped out onto the balcony of our hotel room the next morning to see Rwanda for the first time. What they say is true. The earth here really is red with patches of greenery and flowers breaking through. I have seen many beautiful flowers here including the most perfectly formed Birds of Paradise.

While still in Kigali with Barbara, Maddie and I visited the genocide memorial which truthfully was very similar to the other genocide museums I have been too. We also visited a church in which thousands of Tutsi men, women and children had been slaughtered. What struck me most was not the piles of clothing or the endless skulls lined up for miles, but the blood smears staining the lower walls from where the Hutus took babies and swung by their ankles into the walls and floor until their skulls cracked open. The story of a woman who had been given a separate and distinct burial in the church (not in a mass grave) also struck a chord with me. This woman, a particularly beautiful Tutsi, had been raped repeatedly by several militiamen, beaten and tortured. As if this were not enough, the aggressors shoved a spear up through her vagina and out her mouth and left her for dead on the holy alter of this Catholic Church. All the while, her six month old infant had been strapped to her back. I wish I could say that these stories are unique but this is not the case. Everyone I meet has a story.

I was dropped off in Rwamagan, the town where I am going to spend the next month, about one and a half weeks ago. I am finally starting to settle in. The town is rather rural and they get very few tourists. In fact, I am it. Throughout my stay so far, I have seen two other white people and that was at a hotel that people stay at as they are passing through on their way to visit other attractions. Most of the residents have scarcely seen a white person before and therefore, I am quite a sight. They call me Muzungu meaning white. Only Mama and Papa Derick call me Dan. As I walk down the street children call to me, "Muzungu, Muzungu, bon après midi!" It is really funny. As I walk past people they often reach out to touch or pinch my arms, as if I were a mirage that will disappear. They simply want to know if I feel the same as them. To their shock, I do!

One funny thing that I have noticed here is that grown men hold hands. It seemed funny at first but really if you think about it, why not - girls do all the time. Another, characteristic of Rwamagana is that it is one of the dustiest places I have ever been. It is the dry season now so the dust has no weight. My allergies are in their prime.

During my stay here in Rwamagana, I am living with the coordinator and founder of orphan care ministries and his lovely family. It is customary in Rwanda to refer to people as the parents of their firstborn child. Therefore, I live with Papa Derick, Mama Derick, Derick and Goddessy. Derick is four and an absolute genius. I swear he will have mastered the English language by the end of the month. He already understands what I tell him in English - he just answers in Kanyarwanda. Goddessy is three and boy is she lucky she is cute because that girl is nothing but spunk and trouble! Mama Derick is amazing. She is a nurse in the maternity ward as well as a full time mother and wife. She does so much it amazes me. They are actually rather well off compared with many of the other residents of this town. They have a lovely house with real walls and a concrete floor. The house does have electricity which is great because I cannot find my way in the dark like they can. There is a light bulb in the living room and one in my room. The house has no kitchen. They cook over fire outside. It quite literally takes all day to prepare the meals. Luckily, Gaga (great grandmother), and two relatives are here to help. In fact, they all live with us. Gaga raised Mama Derick who was orphaned when she was young.

Now for the shocker. We have no running water! This is something that has taken some getting used to. What this means is that there is no shower and no flushable toilet. I have no problem using the toilet at home as it has a seat, but in town is a whole other story. The public restroom is a hole in the ground that has a place on either side for your feet. This has proven to be difficult for me and every time I make an attempt I manage to pee on my right foot. Never the left, oh wow don´t ask. Anyway, enough toilet talk and on to bathing. I bathe in the outhouse. I am given a basin that is about the size of a salad bowl, just wide enough for me to stand in, one bucket of hot water (warmed by fire of course), and one bucket of cold water. The intention is that you pour some water into the basin and use your hands to get the water all over you. This system wasn´t quite working for me as my hands just don´t cup water quite so well. I would end up wet up to my knees, soap all over my body and water all over the floor. I asked Mama Derick is she had an empty container or cup I could use but when she offered me their good dinnerware, I refused. Eventually, I discovered that if I cut one of my empty water bottles in half it works perfectly! Since this discovery, my bathing routine has become much more successful. The floor, however, has not been so lucky. It still ends up a swimming pool. But hey, practice makes perfect. Right?

If nothing else, I have a newfound appreciation for all which is in my life. Good and bad. I will send out another email in the next couple of days to tell you a little about what I have been doing since I got here. Get a box of tissue handy because I warn you that it will not be in the same lighthearted spirit as this email. Anyway, you are most likely bored to death by now. That is if you have even made it this far. So, go take a break. Get something to eat perhaps. Or, for most of you who are reading this from work as a method of procrastination. GET BACK TO WORK!

Appreciate every second!

My Rwandan Experience (Part 2)

Amukuru!
Hello it is me again! I trust by now you have all had time to finish the first novel I sent you and are now anxiously awaiting the sequal. The same rules apply! Primarily that I can´t spell.

First of all I would to thank everyone who responded. It was so nice to hear from home. I have my lonely moments here and reading your emails makes it much easier. I could not send everyone a personal email because the internet here moves at the speed of a turtle but that you all for your advice. I believe with our honesty we have taken our relationships to the next level. We can now officially discuss bodily functions. I miss you all!

I spoke to my mom on Friday and she said that Avery was on the bus heading up to camp. I must admit that I felt some pangs of jealousy in the pit of my stomach, afterall it has been my Home Away From Home for the past 13 years. However, those feelings soon subsided and I got back to life as it is here in Rwnada.

I will start off by saying that I have done things here that I never thought I could handle. My grandmother suffered with Alzheimer´s disease for years. Whenever we went to Montreal we would stop by to visit her at the Hospital of Hope. It was more like the Hospital of hopeless in my eyes. I would cry and most likely through a tantrum before entering the building and taking the elevator up to her floor, to walk down the hall past drooling and diapered men and wome, humming, muttering or screaming in their senility. Described above is the girl I was before arriving here. I girl that I no longer am, or have the naivity to be.

On Monday through Friday I am teaching. I teach from 8:00am to 11:30 am and from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. The morning is younger children and in the afternoon the older students (eight and nine) come to sttudy.

The school in which these innocents gather looks more like an abandoned war zone than a school. The ground is unneven, the walls are crumbling and there is no longer glass in the windows. The children play in a courtyard that has no grass, no playground and no sandbox. Rather the grounds are littered with broken glass, metal shavings and bottle caps. The grates and vents used for water drainage no longer have covers and I cringe as they play jump rope (with tattered rope) with the fear that someone is going to brek and ankle. The classroom is small. About 10 ft by 10 ft and in it fit over 50 children, litterally sitting on top of one another. They sit obout ten to a bench and must use their laps as desktops. The blackboard we use is so faded that is should be called a greyboard and it has a hole about the size of a basketball in the left-hand corner. It is dirty. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling. It is hot and there is no circulation. The air we breath in is infused with the stink of each other´s perspiration.

The children. They are unlike any I have ever had the priveledge of working with before, so eager to lear and excited to pretend, if only for a two hours, that they are just children. You may see innocent faces and hear the voices of the young, but, when you look into their eyes you witness their true nature, and realize the knowledge and depth of sadness that they must carry with them day after day. I watch them running around with their distended stomack and open, infected wounds. Yet despite all this they run, they laugh and they play. They act just like children. In class they scream with glee as their Muzungu teacher attempts to act out vocabulary words. You see, we may not speak more than a word of each other´s language, but, we understand each other. Then at the end of the day I send them home, back to the reality of their parentless lives, back to the rality of living with and dying from HIV.

After school, Leonard (the coordinator) and I stop by Rwamagan Hospital to visit Alice. It was not enough that the disease left her an orphan. It had to take away her feet as well. Do to a blood infection, caused by the virus, she had to have both of her feet aputated below the ankles. This was over a month ago and she is still in th ehospital as her wounds will not stop bleading. She is constantly in pain but smiles throug it. I wish I could share with you the look of happinedd on her face when we gave her some of the art supplies (donated by Rondha Schlanger´s kindergarten class). Everytime we go back she has created a new master piece. The nurse tells us she often hears her singing to herself as she colours. I, only for a moment, let myself wonder what her life would have been like if she were born in Canada and had attended a liberal arts school that allowed her to fine tune her talent. Soon my thoughts return to reality. Alice is in Rwanda. She is eight years old, has no feet and she is in a cramped hospital ward. Alice is going to die. After spending some time with Alice we visit some other beds in the children´s ward, handing out some sweets and trying to brighten some days. These children are lying on cots dying from diseases that we have the ability to cure.

After leaving the hospital we go for a drink and I take my $3.00 Malaria pill. A pill which costs more money then most people here live on every day. Yet, I take it and fight to swollow. I may not be much good alive but I am certainly no good dead.

The orphans here do not live in orphanages. Rather, they live with foster parents. On Saturdays we go visit the village where most of the these foster parents live. It takes a half hour to get there on a motor cycle. A distance that these children must travel everyday, on foot, to get to school. The first time I walked the paths and entered this village was my introduction to what poverty really is. We walked around, visiting hut after hut, talking to the foster parents about their lives and how they were doing. With the exception of one child, all orphans are being reared by women with no father or man in the picture. In my eyes these are true heroes. They have been widowed by and infected with HIV. Yet, they choose not to wollow in their own misery but to move on and continue to give. They give when they themselves have nothing. Many of these are Tutsi women were infected with HIV during the genocide. Knowing that they were HIV+ Hutu men raped millions of women. The average time someone lives in Rwanda after being infected with HIV is 4 years. Some might say that these women are the lucky ones. They are still alive after all. Others would argue that their suffering has only been prolonged. I would like to now introduce what I think is one of histories most terrible ironies. The genocidaires who were convicted during the Arusha trials are protected by the laws of the geneva convention. Therefor, as prisoner the anti-retoviral drugs are provided to them for free. These women, these victims are left unable to pay for the expensive treatment that next to none of them can afford. Explain to me how that makes sense.

Many of the other women were infected by their husbands whose sexual escapades already cost them their own lives. The damage they have done continues long after their suffering has ceassed. They leave behind wives who will follow them into the grave soon after and young children who are now left parentless, and, who all to often are also HIV+.

This is what I have been doing here in Rwanda. This is what I see. What I have described above are the lives of the men, women and children living here in Rwamagana district. What scares me is that the situation here is relatively stable when compare with many other countries on this suffering continent.

Upon reading this many of you may think that I cry myself to sleep and sob as I hear these realities of life. After all, many of you have sat next to me and my box of Kleenex as I watch Grey´s Anatomy and sob as Derick and Meridith break up and make up and break up and make up again. Truth be told, I have no shed a tear since I have been here. Why is it that a television set can make me wheep but the atrocities of this world when witnessed first hand leave my eyes dry. This is a question I am trying to anser for myself. Perhaps it is all too real. Perhanps, as I listen to these firsthand accounts of suffering, in a language I do not know yet understanding every word, I know that my tears are a waste. No amount of crying will to an HIV positive negative. No volume of tears will give a child back the parents she lost. I will continue to search for the answer to this question.

I want to assure you that dispite the realities of life here, Rwanda is not sad. She is a strong and determined people working tirelessly and making giant strides in the fight to wipe out HIV and to educate her young. People laugh, sing and enjoy life despite or perhaps due to their circumstances. As it is said "we are her for a good time, not a long time".

The goal of this email, despite it´s apocalyptic tone was not to leave you depressed and hopeless, rather it was to offer a perspective. A simple reminder that we all need at times that our lives really aren´t that bad. We all have the right to sadness and frustration, after all we are only human. Sometimes, however, remembering the state of the world puts our problems into perspective. Hopefully it will just help us enjoy what we do have and what do do experience a little more.

To leave you on a more positive note I thought I would end off with a self depricating anecdote about the Muzungu living in Africa. A few nights ago I walked into the outhouse and to my suprise their was a chicken with its legs tied on the floor. To say I was surpised may not really get across my true feelings. I shrieked (three times) and the chicken clucked. I must have given the poor thing a heart attack because together we caused quite the ruckus. After I calmed myself down I heard howls of laughter coming from outside. Mama Derick, Hopu (one of the cousins who lives with us) and Gaga were laughing hysterically and my spaztik ways. Now just so you know I am not afraid of chickens it is just that I do not expect them in washroom. Anyway I just thought I would leave you with this picture. Me (white princess from big city toronto), chicken (from god knows where, and three Rwandan women laughing at the rediculousness of their Muzungu house guest.

I hope that this email finds you all well. Just know that I miss you all and am so glad that modern technology allows for you to share this experience with me.

Thinking of you always,

Dani (aka. Muzungu)

22.08.2007

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