"Gorillas in the Mist"

A few weeks ago I was able to finally see the famous Rwandan mountain gorillas. I have been in Rwanda almost a year now and have had to hear so many short-term visitors rave about what an amazing experience it is….yet I never took the initiative to experience it for myself (plus it is $500). We have had several free permits offered to our group, but I have never been able to go due to other commitments. Finally I was able to take someone up on the offer and see the most famous tourist attraction in Rwanda. The ONE Campaign, Bono’s anti-poverty initiative, came to Rwanda a few weeks ago with a group of college students from around the US. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter was supposed to come with the group but ended up cancelling last minute, so I was able to use her gorilla permit:) My permit officially says “Katherine Schwarzenegger”.
The Virunga Mountains in Rwanda, Congo, and Uganda are the only area in the world where the mountain gorillas live. There are about 700 mountain gorillas remaining, and 350 of those live in Rwanda. They are probably most well known due to the research and publicity by Dian Fossey, whom the book and movie "Gorillas in the Mist" is based on. The gorillas live an interesting life, as they just move up and down the mountains eating, sleeping, and being visited by tourists.
The "man" of the group...Mr. Silverback himself.

The experience was definitely worthy of all that I have heard about it for the past year. After hiking up in the Virunga Volcanoes for a couple hours, we finally arrived at our family of gorillas, the Amahoro Family. We spent an hour following and observing the gorillas in their natural habitat. These massive animals walked among us, touched us, smiled at us, performed for us, and just hung out with us. We even had a little excitement in our group. As one silverback gorilla (the largest and the dominant male of the pack) was making his way past us, he just reached out and grabbed the girl next to me, taking her with him. He wasn’t trying to hurt her; it seemed he just wanted to play with her. After the initial shock, I quickly reacted and grabbed her arm to pull her back and away from her suitor. Real live King Kong!

Family time.
Just hanging out with the gorillas.
In the jungle!

Watch this video and walk through the gorilla trek with Jack Hanna!

"I will prepare and someday my chance will come." Abraham Lincoln

I have posted several times about one of my students at Sonrise, Emmanuel. I have known from the beginning that he is special….I was just waiting for the rest of the world to discover him. And they finally have. If you read the previous post on him, you remember me talking about all of the hardships that Emmanuel has endured in his 18 years. Just a brief history…Emmanuel is a double orphan from the genocide. His mother died in a refugee camp in the Congo right after the genocide, and then he was separated from his sisters in the camp. He literally wandered alone through the bushes of the Congo…when he was about 5 years old….dodging bullets, running from rebels and wild animals, and surviving off the little food he could find. After several years he made his way back to Rwanda and was miraculously reunited with his sisters, destined to live a life of poverty and despair with no parents. But God had bigger plans for Emmanuel. Emmanuel was chosen as one of the neediest children in the country to attend Sonrise School the year that it started.
So fast-forward a few years. Emmanuel is in S5 (11th grade) and is the top student in his class. He is well known around Sonrise for his incredible leadership, his talent in preaching and public speaking, and most of all his love and compassion for his fellow students. There is not a student or staff member at Sonrise that does not love him dearly. Most students know that he is an orphan, but they have no idea the hardships that he has had to endure. He takes every opportunity that comes his way and seizes it, having no excuses or self-pity for the troubles he has faced.

And the opportunity arose for Emmanuel to apply to the best academy in Africa. African Leadership Academy located in Johannesburg, South Africa focuses on teaching leadership and entrepreneurship skills to the top African students for their last two years of high school. Every year they choose the top students from every country in the continent to train as future leaders of Africa. This year they chose 3 students from Rwanda….and one of those students was Emmanuel. Amazingly enough, another of those students was one of Emmanuel’s best friends from Sonrise and one of my other students, Dieudonne. Two students from Sonrise were chosen out of the thousands of applicants all over the continent!

Just imagine….a little orphaned boy trying to survive on his own in the harsh jungles of the Congo to a student in the best academy on the continent and destined to become a leader. Emmanuel also received a $50,000 scholarship to attend the academy, which is a lot of money to anyone but to him is absolutely unfathomable.
It has been a process to get him ready to go to school, as he has had to do things such as choosing a date for his official birthday (he has no idea when his real birthday is), applying for a visa, passport, and identification card, getting numerous immunizations, and coming to the realization that he will be stepping on an airplane for the first time in a few weeks to begin a new life.

I have tears in my eyes as I am writing this, as I have grown to love Emmanuel as my own family. He has the purest heart of any person I have ever known. He is pure goodness, wisdom, and compassion. He can win the love of any small child or entertain the intellectual thoughts of any grown man. I have to admit that I selfishly am a little bittersweet about his leaving. I feel like a mother sending her child off to college. Emmanuel told me some of the sweetest words I have ever heard the other day... “Thank you for being the mother I never had and for doing all the things for me that my mother would have done.” But the funny thing is that he is the one who encourages me and gives me a renewed passion everyday for what I am doing here in Rwanda. Words cannot describe him; you just have to meet him. Someday you will….because mark my word, someday he will change the world!

His name is Manirakiza Emmanuel, “God heals, God with us”…his life is a true testament to these two faithful promises from God.

Thank you to the entire B2R team and to everyone who has helped to prepare Emmanuel for ALA!

Folks are just folks

This year I have encouraged the introduction of a book club at Sonrise High School to promote development of English skills and overall pleasure reading for the students. The European influenced educational system in Rwanda forces the students to choose whether they will study Arts or Sciences after their 9th grade year. If they pursue Math and Sciences, which the majority do, they are never able to take a literature class. Because so many of my students love to read, I thought a book club would be a great way to further their love for reading and encourage critical thought during discussion.
For our second book club this year, I chose the classic “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Yes, I was fully aware that the central theme is racism and that I would be the lone white teacher leading the discussion amongst 10 or so African students…but that was my intention. I wanted to hear what they had to say about the matter….about discrimination between black and white, rich and poor, educated and ignorant, families and orphans, ethnic group and ethnic group. I wanted to hear their debates about prejudices in their own culture, in a country that lost a tenth of its population only 16 years ago due to this very matter. And I have to say it was one of the richer conversations I have listened to in a while. I was amazed at my students, by their maturity, depth, and sensitivity on this matter.
While we sat and discussed the matter in a very scholarly and intellectual fashion, we kept coming back to the same simple principle. Like the ten year old Scout says in the book, “I think there is just one kind of folks. Folks.” This is a point that I realize over and over again while living in Africa. That no matter how different our material possessions, education, skin color, and culture may be…..we are all just people trying to navigate through this life. We feel love and pain in the same way; we laugh and cry over the same things.
The great thing about book club, though, is that I don’t have to teach. I just participate in the discussion with all the other members. And on this day, I just sat and learned from all of my students.

World Phenomenon

I greatly apologize for my negligence in updating my blog in the last month. You see, in the last month, we all discovered a world phenomenon for the first time…something known as the World Cup. I have never been much of a soccer fan, but there is something about the camaraderie and unity of this sport that brings people together. Especially when you are on the continent that is hosting the biggest competition literally in the world (soccer is known as the “world’s sport”…everywhere but America!). I never realized how much the world actually stops every four years for this one month. So in true African fashion where the beloved sport is soccer, we became part of the craze. Almost every night we walked around the corner to the new and hip neighborhood sports bar and watched the match with everyone else in town (literally everyone else…we made some really good friends in this month). And my love for soccer grew….as well as my neglect for things such as blogging and emailing.

Above is a pic of some of us at the World Cup finals with our fellow soccer fanatics.

Now back to productivity...