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It’s Saturday morning around 9.00 am and I’m sitting in bourbon, the Starbucks of Kigali. I walked about twenty minutes of the way and flagged a moto for the rest of the journey. With an absence of public parks, I come here to think, write and drink what has got to be some of the best coffee in the world. It’s been a hectic past few weeks and it feels good to stay put for a few days.

I tried to upload a few photos yesterday and the only one that survived the streaming process was the one you can see on this page. Considering I received a phone call from my parents a few hours after posting to make sure that my eye was okay…I should clarify that I was really hit in the eye with more of a pebble or a chunk of dirt than a rock and there are no lasting repercussions, aside from me once again riding through the streets of Rwanda with tears streaming down my cheeks.

It’s so hard to really give an accurate representation of my experiences here. I tend to write about the exciting, strange, hard or bizarre moments, but a lot of my time here is spent reading, going to work, hanging out with friends, journaling, going to the market, watching movies, exploring the city, and doing all the other things I do back home. Before I came here, I thought I’d use some of my free time coming up with some type of post graduation plan. But, while I’m now starting to think more about my life back at home, I had so much to adjust to when I first arrived here that my usual worries couldn’t have been farther from my mind. Now that I’m settled it’s been pretty cool to see the things I usually think about gradually find their way back into my thoughts and awesome to realize how such a different place has come to feel like home.

A few years ago, I read a book in which a character came close to death and had one of those flashbacks in which a person's mind involuntarily replays select moments from their lives. It made me wonder what moments my mind would replay if I was to die, what moments would I want to hold onto so strongly that I couldn’t help but think of them. I think I experienced one of these moments two days ago while walking through a banana grove in Musanze, a small town near the foot of a chain of 7 volcanic mountains stretching from Rwanda into the Congo. I was in the area to interview some women about their experiences of participating in a three day workshop called Femme en Dialogue. The purpose of the workshop is to build community between widows and women whose husbands are in jail. A few of you may have heard about this program, because of the MCC goat buying project linked to program that took place a few years ago around Christmas. In addition to conflict resolution, financial management and small business training these women are encouraged to establish their own cooperative in which they can support each other both financially and emotionally.

Although this is a very communal culture, emotions are often deeply suppressed and people are left to grieve and work through traumatic experiences on their own. After their training, the women who participated in this workshop received some goats whose offspring they eventually hope to use for meat. They currently use the goat dung to fertilize their fields, thereby increasing their crop yields. Although I’m a city girl born and bread, all the farming stories I’ve heard growing up and my childhood visits out west seem to have stuck with me. I’m fascinated by the farming techniques which have been developed here to maximize the production of small plots of land and am especially impressed by the step farming happening way up on the mountain sides surrounding the more fertile valleys. Anyways, in addition to monthly meetings in which each of the women contributes 200 francs and collectively try to work through any problems their members may be experiencing, they decided to start a mushroom growing project. Their church allowed them to use a room in one of its houses to grow their mushrooms and the women began to raise mushrooms which they sold to nearby hotels. According to the women, their venture was beginning to return a profit when the church told them they needed the building back.

The women are hoping to save up enough money to rent a new building, but suitable buildings are in very short supply and building seems to be the only viable option. The project is on hold until they are able to come up with the necessary funds, a task which may be impossible for them. I spoke with the pastor of the church where the women attend, and he said that the church will contribute bricks and labor, but a technician would have to be hired and the sheet metal for a roof and a plot of land would need to be purchased. He imagines the cost of this would be around 450 dollars. In addition to growing mushrooms, the women hope to set up a small store in the same building from which they could sell any of the surplus their fields may now produce.

After the interviews, I asked if I could see some of their fields, and also the goats they had received. One of the women said her house was within walking distance and that I could come to visit her. Five of us walked out into the country and we were joined by a group of young children. A little girl who I imagine would have been around 9 or 10 held my hand as we walked and happily chatted away with her friends. The only things we managed to communicate between us were our ages and our abilities to count to ten in each others respective languages. After walking up a rocky path for awhile, we passed through fields of climbing beans and potatoes before descending into a banana grove. We all had to walk single file to fit between the banana trees and the little girl holding my hand became my leader as she helped me navigate around roots and rocks... as my Birkenstocks kept finding all available material to trip over. As I looked around and saw the sunlight dappling the forest floor and rbeathed in the warm dewy air, I realized that this moment was one I would think back on. This is a moment I will hold onto until the end.