The last 24 hours: Hope Shines camp, going back to America for a few hours, and trying to save a Zebra from poachers

First off,  I'd like to continue to prove-out what I said in an earlier post: Virginians truly are everywhere. I'm currently sitting at breakfast typing this blog and just a few moments ago I met another person staying at the guest house, a professor here for research. Of course, she is from Virginia and went to Midlothian High School (about 15 minutes from where I grew-up for those who don't know). Similarly, last week I went to dinner with a few co-workers and their friends. When I walked-in, they had been joking about how one of their friends was connected to everyone. So naturally, he asked where I was from to see if I was connected. Come to find out, he went to Midlothian High School and is also a UVA grad! Then, at a party the other night (story below), I met one of the 4 marines responsible for guarding the embassy, and where was he from? Tidewater. And then of course there are the volunteers from Hope Shines who are from Virginia. I think it's funny what a small world it is :)

Hopes Shines camp - mentoring orphaned children in Kigali
On Friday I went to the Hope Shines camp, run by the volunteers from Virginia that I met at the guest house. The camps are one week long and focus on providing mentoring, creative learning, and confidence building opportunities for orphaned and vulnerable children. The founder, April, is really interesting. She was a buyer for Macy's several years ago and came to Rwanda for the first time to meet the weavers of the the Rwandan Peace Baskets that you might now see advertised at Costco and other retail stores - the weavers are survivors of the 1994 genocide. On her trip, April visited an orphanage and saw that only two adults were responsible for raising over 100 children. She knew that with only two adults, it was difficult for each child to receive special mentoring and/or recognition; so she developed these week-long camps in which children play sports, do crafts, dance, learn, and are individually recognized and encouraged for their strengths. She developed the curriculum such that each activity has a learning component whether that be gratitude, friendship, math or English.

Cake and Fanta to celebrate the end of the camp

After a few hours of work on Friday, I got on a moto and went to help-out at the camp, which is on the outskirts of Kigali. There are three weeks of camp, each taking place in a different location and with different groups of children. Due to a loss of funding, the first camp's orphans no longer have a center where they can live. Most of the children live in foster situations or with grandparents or friends. Since it's summer vacation here, Hope Shines was able to rent a school to use for the week.

Dance competition!

The camp is best described as fast-paced fun! As soon as I walked-in, they handed me a volunteer t-shirt and directed me to help the girls make thank you notes with construction paper, crayons, markers and stickers. April, the founder, setup a program where children in the U.S. send crayons and such to the camp and then the children at the camp send them hand-written thank you notes. I sat down with a group of girls who were about 10-15 years old and started looking at their cards. I complimented one girl, Hyguette, on her drawing skills and said that she must be an artist. She smiled and then busily made five more, equally beautiful, cards. When she was finished with each one, she brought it to me and at the end of the day she compiled all of her cards and asked me to look at them all again. I was touched that my compliments mattered so much to her, so I took the time to look through and read each one carefully and let her point out the details she was most proud of. I can definitely see how April was immediately touched and felt compelled to do something to provide more positive learning and motivation outlets for these children who just don't get enough attention on a regular basis. They always need volunteers for the Hope Shines camps, so I definitely recommend it to anyone looking to make an impact and volunteer over the summer! You can volunteer for one, two or three weeks (www.hopeshines.net).

Back to U.S. soil for a few hours
On Friday night, after a really fun day at camp, we went to a party at the U.S. embassy. As a benefit of being deployed, the marines who guard the embassy get movies earlier than they are available on video; so we watched the comedy, "Take Me Home Tonight." It's another movie making fun of the 80's. This was quite a production. They had setup an inflatable movie screen and had a projector and bleachers out on a lawn. They also had grilled brochettes and a full bar available (for purchase of course - don't worry taxpayers weren't paying for this party :) There were probably about 30-40 people and it truly felt like being home for a little while. I wish I could've taken pictures, but you're not allowed to bring any electronics past the security gate. Afterwards, the marines gave us a ride home in their giant suburban, which I'm pretty sure is the largest vehicle in Rwanda. They are friends with April and had been volunteering at the Hope Shines camp with everyone. They were SO good with the kids and gave some of the boys special U.S. Marine's awards!

Akagera National Park

Going to Akagera

At 5:00am on Saturday morning, we all loaded into two Land Cruisers and drove to Akagera National Park, which is the only game park in Rwanda. A lot of game parks in Africa, like the one I visited in Tanzania, are pretty fancy and organized with fencing, official vehicles and lots of rules. That is not the case with Akagera. We drove our own car straight into the game park. Our driver pointed to a post off to one side and explained that eventually they were going to fence in the park; but of course that means it's not fenced right now. Lack of fencing means it's hard to preserve certain types of animals (i.e. the ones the lions eat), but it's also fun because it's truly a natural habitat.

In the Lion King

After about a 10 minute drive, we came to a large field in the shadow of some of the mountains. In that field, roaming around together were about 100 zebras and an immeasurable number of water buck, water buffalo, antelopes, and topi (large deer-like animals). It felt like standing in the middle of the Lion King. We got out of the car, which is already unheard of in most safaris, and took a lot of pictures. Then, to our surprise, when we were all safely back in the car, our guide pulled off the road and started driving straight through the field! I guess the animals knew they outnumbered us because they didn't run. The zebras kind of looked at us like we were crazy.

Zebras having a little lunch

Cutting the zebra lose to save him from the poacher's trap

Halfway through the field, our friends in the other car spotted giraffes in the distance and took-off to see them. However, at the same time, our car saw a zebra that was dragging a large bushel of trees and branches behind it. It looked like it was struggling so we got closer to see what was wrong. Our driver pointed to the barbed wire around it's neck and said that it was a poacher's trap - probably meant for an antelope. It was clearly choking the zebra and we saw it stop and lie down to rest a couple of times, as pictured. When we were close enough, the zebra stopped to rest again and Dan, one of our friends, grabbed the driver's wire cutters and hopped out of the jeep to try and cut it loose. He was able to cut the wire off successfully, but the zebra had probably been dragging it around and for several days and wasn't in good shape. As we were leaving, we saw several other zebras approaching the one we'd cut loose. In fact, one of the zebras hadn't left the other the entire time we were there, so we are assuming they are family. Luckily they aren't aggressive so none seemed bothered when we approached to try and help. Our guide said that we'd have to tell the rangers so they could be on the look-out for poachers' traps. I hope fencing will help keep poachers out too.

Giraffes posing for us

When we continued on our journey, we found the group of giraffes that everyone else had raced after. There were three of them standing very close to us, almost like they were posing for the camera. Incredible! We then drove around for awhile looking for elephants. Though we never found the elephants (it was probably too hot for them to be out), we did see a large group of hippos (my favorite). They had a baby with them who was very cute!


This week preview
On Sunday I'm going to run errands and go out to tutor at the orphanage again. Holly arrives on Monday afternoon and we have a fun week planned! She's going to go out to the orphanage to help-out while I'm at work, and then I think we're going to hike a volcano this weekend. On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I'm going to an Ariel Camp, which are the psycho-social support camps that EGPAF runs for HIV+ children. There will be 40 children at the camp, and they asked me to take photos and help write an article for the website. Everyone in the office is very excited for this week - they said the camps are so moving!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! I love and miss you!

Always,
Meredith