Day 6: Rwanda as a People

We started out on the long drive to Butare, in the southern region of Rwanda. Everywhere along the road, women and men and children walk. They carry, with perfect posture, yellow jugs of water or bundles of bamboo or sacks of grain on their heads. They seem at ease.

We stopped once at a bustling market in a busy village. But we never made it to the market itself... instead, we became objects of attraction. With careful gesturing and reassuring smiles, I was able to take a picture of a local woman carrying two babies: 1 in front and 1 in back.

The market was filled with chickens, and some of the people were carrying them. For a while, we stood on the side of the road and faced a sea of stares - until a local policeman asked us to step farther into the market, as we were becoming a traffic hazard. All around me, bright eyes of all ages gazed down. I was intimidated, but never threatened. I was a curiosity. It was too difficult to take pictures; but it was the most interesting sensation, as I turned around to greet each face with equal gravity.

As we clambered back into the vans, this boy ran to keep up with us.

Our next stop was a small village in which we saw the rehabilitated house of a widow. Crowds began to gather, first of children...

And then of adults, peering in through the bushes.

We visited a widow who brews banana beer to make ends meet. In her back yard, everyone gathered to see the spectacle as we distributed 2 soccer balls to the widow's 4 sons.

With our first gift complete, we hopped into the vans with the smiles of the children and the widow still flashing in our hearts.