Out of Place

Hello readers, thanks for tuning in. Before I begin this post I would like to inform you that the Food for the Hungry Interns 2007 introduction video can be found at the bottom of this page. Simply click the link, and scroll up where you will find it loading. The video was made by Caleb Lilley, a fellow intern, and is pretty hilarious. It is also a good way to get to know the cast of characters that will appear in subsequent videos.

As for blogging my life here in Rwanda, yesterday is hard to describe. But as the following paragraphs will attest to, I am sure going to try. After a two drive from Kigali, Emmanuel took Aaron (a fellow intern) and me to a refugee camp in southern Rwanda to make a needs assessment, essentially, to figure out what role Food for the Hungry can play. The camp held about a thousand people, almost three hundred families. Though everyone referred to them as refugees, they are technically returnees. In the 1960s, during turbulent times, many families fled Rwanda into Tanzania. However, in the past few months, the government of Tanzania has been kicking these families out by force. Now there is nearly 16,000 "refugees" in Rwanda, out of an estimated 60,000 in the long-run.

Walking through the camp, I witnessed the most extreme poverty I have ever encountered. It was a filthy campground in a dry, hilly region. One obvious exception being that this was no vacation. The camp had two doctors and one healthcare center, a white tent, with medicine sprawled about it. The school was made to lashed sticks and tarps. Houses resembled forts I had made in the Boy Scouts, complete with old tarps (from UNHCR) and rough sleeping arrangements. Infrastructure was weak. The water supply was always low. And when it rained, the drops penetrated the tents, ruining what little food and furniture they had.



During our assessment, I had the opportunity to meet many of the people, from pot-bellied children to worn grandparents. Everyone looked hopeless: three university students who were a year away from becoming certified teachers, a woman who pleaded for help, an undernourished child who had scabs on his shaved head. It was devastating. All of them were stripped of their life in Tanzania and unexpectedly booted out into Rwanda with no means of survival.

Yet there certainly is hope. Talking with Rurangwa Gerard, a dressmaker who now makes clothes for his fellow refugees, opened my eyes to their situation in Tanzania. He told me that as former Rwandans, men were commonly beaten, and women raped. He said that life in the refugee camp, along with the help from the Rwandan government and international organizations, was better than it was before. Looking around me, that statement was hard to swallow.

Today, Aaron and I have been working on a program for FH to implement in the refugee camp. We think we have some exciting solutions. This weekend we are traveling to Guitarama, to meet with the other interns, where we will brainstorm some more as well. But that also means I will not have internet until Sunday. So I will be sure to write then.

Before I sign off, I would like to give a congratulations to Marc Hong and Sarah DeYoung, the latter of whom will become Sarah Hong tomorrow. I am extremely excited for you guys and will surely be thinking of you throughout the day. And for the rest, thank you for reading! God bless!