Heading for Home

Friday was our last day in Rwanda. We will be leaving for the airport at about 1:30pm; from there it is a long, long way home. I know that we have a 5-hour layover in Washington DC, so we may get an opportunity to contact a few people during that time.

I am currently writing this from the boarding area in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (the airport personnel and others just call it “Addis”). It is just after 8:30pm Ethiopian time, which is 11 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. I’m sure I will be able to really sleep once we get on this plane, as we haven’t gotten much sleep the last two nights…..Something about girls coming into our room and staying up talking and plotting and just plain visiting. It was fun though. And then of course last night we had to pack for our departure. I was able to get all of my stuff in my bag, except for two large things that one of the others was able to put in his suitcase. And he is also going all the way to Pasco, so it should work out well.

Tuesday we packed up and moved from Kigali to Butare. What a difference in scenery. Butare is much more mountainous and a lot colder. I slept with a blanket every night.

The differences between Kigali and Butare are numerous. For one, there are no street lights in Butare. And also we had hot water (at least “some” of the time) in Kigali, but absolutely NONE in Butare. It felt much more laid-back and relaxed. But Kigali is the capitol of Rwanda, so a little bit more hubbub is expected.

Our first day in Butare we spent going to a museum one morning, visiting the AMA offices, touring the brand new choir house. It was actually a renovated building that is on a corner lot in a nice area just 4 blocks from the office. We got a tour of the building and the grounds. It is going to be a very nice area for the kids. We also went over to Butare’s AMA school (sorry, but I can’t remember the school name). This was the first school built for the poor children of Africa. The school at Hilltop is an exact replica of the first one. We saw Butare’s water tower, so now we have a better idea of what the one we were working on is going to look like.

Wednesday we went to another genocide memorial, but this one was very graphic. I’ll spare you the details, but just a short 15-years ago, over 50,000 people were tricked into coming from the surrounding hills and mountains to this barracks-like structure for “security”. They were then locked into rooms and denied food AND water for 14 days. And then shortly after that the French came and killed all the rest of the people. Lost a lot of respect for the French government over that. The weather became very dark and threatening, so I got a lot of pictures of dark skies. It started to pour down rain after we left the site.

But we have been lucky with the rain. We never got rained out during our construction days. And the weather never stopped us for doing any of our planned events.

We are currently in DC. We were over 1 hour late getting in, then customs and rechecking our luggage took forever, so by the time we actually got up to our gate, we have less than 1 hour before boarding our next flight.

Peg............if you read this before I arrive home, please call Jim & tell him that I'm getting a ride home when some of the people I flew home with. I'll try to call you, since my phone doesn't work (lost it's charge and my charger is somewhere in my checked luggage), I'll hopefully be able to use one of the other gal's phones.

I actually slept alot on the plane from Rome to DC. But 10 hours is a very, VERY long time on a plane.

I'm guarding the luggage now, as everyone else has taken off someplace. But I need to grab a bite to eat before we leave.

Hopefully I'll be home by 8pm Saturday..........but dead to the world until Sunday.

Thanks everyone for following me while I was in Rwanda. I appreciate it, I really do. When I get back to "normal", I'll get my pictures out to everyone, along with some sort of a conclusion.

Love you guys.