By: Robbi Hartt, MS English

Today we were blessed by the village of Cyabatanzi in ways that may not be fully appreciated until sometime down the road, which is often true of intangible blessings. We drove early to attend the church service at the recently completed “new” church in the village, finding that the choicest seats in front next to the minister and worship leaders were reserved for our group. All of the other wooden benches were filled with parishioners who would still be worshipping until mid afternoon. Several young boys helped to add a musical accompaniment (mostly repeated I, IV, I, V7, I chord combinations) whenever the pitch seemed to fit, a toddler clapped and danced apart from everyone in her bright orange dress, men clutching New Testaments and wearing their Sunday best nodded and prayed, and women smiled with curious, welcoming eyes.

We had met many of the villagers the previous day, but this morning felt different. Caroline explained it this way: “Before I felt like they were watching and sort of judging us, but in the church service I felt welcomed and like we were really part of their community.” The choir sang a special song for us and then allowed the students to return their gift of song, all of it more lively than Easter Sunday. Winnie, a young Rwandan woman, translated as the minister read a passage from Isaiah mandating that we defend the widows and orphans, the minister prayed in superlatives that didn’t need translating, and the offering was taken. After that, people started bringing up other gifts – bags filled with corn, papaya, avocados, sugar cane, squash. These were auctioned off to help raise more money for the church. When several students began bidding, I worried that we were taking food items that someone in the church needed much more; but immediately after the service, Sean Fletcher (Stanwich lead teacher) pointed to the house the village had built for its widows and orphans two years before and said, “We’ll bring them there.”

Walking up to the classrooms to begin our painting, I had a new understanding of what it means to look out for the most vulnerable members in the community. As the students began prepping the walls using water and rags, swept the floor with a broom made from twigs, mixed paints while village leaders attempted to hold the children back, it seemed like we were engaged in something simply and profoundly human. A crowd gathered and stayed for hours – children peering in windows and reciting their numbers in English, women cooking and sharing ears of corn, village supervisors checking to make sure our work wasn’t impeded by the crowd.

What did we take away from today? The simplicity of a gift of song, crude work tools for cleaning, primary colors mixed to make a limited palette, and the joy of working together to make something so much bigger possible. In January, when the children run to peer through the windows again, they will be blessed with an open door welcoming them to their new school – a place where they can learn to count, to read, to find their voices and their dreams.

By: Elettra Baldi, ’15

Project Blessing is a mission created by the Stanwich School about 7 years ago.  This is our first year working with this mission and we will be helping to paint a kindergarten classroom. This mission creates opportunities for the kids living in Cyabatanzi, a town located at the top of a mountain in rural Rwanda. Without the classrooms built through Project Blessing, children in Cyabatanzi would not be able to attend school year-round. During the dry season, school is a possibility for the kids because they can travel from their homes down the road to the closest school (more than a mile away) without being in danger. As we learned in the Kigali City School, kids are passionate about learning.  Unfortunately, during the months of wet season, the rain that washes the steep clay roads makes it unsafe for the children to walk to school. When they do return to school, the children are behind in their studies, which might make them feel hopeless about their future and lead them to drop out.

Many of the children in Cyabatanzi have to travel the same distance to fetch water every day. In order for us to better understand their experiences, we mimicked their normal walk from the only water source to the top of the mountain, where the Project Blessing site is locate.  It was more than a mile-long walk with the sun beating on our backs. The winding, chalky, maroon roads kept going up the mountains. The walk would have been much tougher if we had not eaten breakfast and if the dirt road had not just been cleared. Going up the mountain, Team Blessing was warmly greeted by the village kids as they followed us up to the school. Mr. Llanque took the extra step and helped a nine-year-old village boy push his bike with 5 gallons of water on it. He was small and thin, barely taller than the bike.

This was our first true experience with rural Rwanda. As we passed other kids, they would greet, sometimes yell, “Muzungu”, which means white person.  We were as rare a sight for them as they were for us.  Earlier this week, we spent time at the Kigali City School, which was a private and, by comparison, more privileged school.  But the kids in Cyabatanzi asked for money and water; a simple empty water bottle would make them happy. They would gladly fill it with sand and throw it around. They did not wear clean uniforms like the ones in the city; they wore whatever they could find. As I was entering the bus, I turned around to see a young boy wearing a donated Riverside School t-shirt, which just happened to be my elementary school. The world might be small, but the gaps are still wide.

By: Lydia Picoli, ’16

The “thing” that many associate with Rwanda is genocide. It influences so many opinions about this country. This association with the Genocide leads people to make Rwanda out to be a place of sorrow, unrest, and anger. This view is anything but the nature of this welcoming country. Today we experienced the one adjective that I would use to sum up the true nature of Rwanda, joy. Starting with the morning assembly, the children sang songs of peace, love, and joy. The assembly is the very first thing the kids do on Fridays and it lasted for about an hour. Throughout the assembly we came to realize that this country is about love, happiness, and hope. When we were planning our lessons that we would teach them today, as a group we decided that we needed to give them motivation, inspiration, and hope for a better future. We were immediately proven wrong when we asked the kids what they wanted to be in the future. They all had quite unexpected answers – doctor, musician, dancer, pastor, lawyer, etc. Hearing these responses was such a pleasant surprise because we all thought that they were lacking hope for the future. So we thought quickly on our feet and tried to push them a little further by having them think about how they might go about achieving their dreams.

We also shared our dreams with them (Mom and Dad, I know you’re going to love this). I told them about how I want to be an actor and how much of a struggle it is to go about it when everyone tells you no and tells you it isn’t possible. I shared with them what I tell myself when I hear this, as I am sure that their dreams are shot down too: nothing is impossible when all you need in life is that one thing, as long as that one thing is going to bring you joy, and if you have the drive and never let anything discourage you, it will become your reality. Today more than ever, I saw such passion, joy, and hope in these kids’ eyes and it was so rewarding to someone who shares the same endless hope.

By: Caroline Rintoul, ’17

As I was sitting in the classroom at Kigali City School where a majority of the boys in the class sat, I noticed the difference of work ethic and voice between students. As Alex, the P-6 classroom teacher (where the oldest kids in the school learn), taught about conjunctions, which was even some new information to me, I noticed that what seemed like perfect attentiveness through the class on a hot and dusty day seemed to dwindle. Some of the students did not have the same drive to work to completely understand the concepts as I saw in the other kids. It seemed some of the boys and girls cared more about doing work for the basic memorization than understanding why the concept was needed. Every time I walked by a bench of three students, they all immediately looked down and started writing. It seemed as though they thought I was the big, bad teacher ready to punish them rather than help them, or as if some of the students were scared of failing in front of their peers and would rather sit back and watch the others than challenge themselves to understand what was being repeated over and over again. When we split into smaller groups of 5 or 6, I asked the kids questions and they spoke quietly and looked down, afraid of being judged by their friends. I was surprised by the giggles that arose after some of the students’ friends tried tackling an exercise. I understood most of these giggles must have been from the excitement and nervousness of new, American visitors, but I couldn’t help wondering if the giggles could also be a lack of support. When I asked the boys what girls in their class were good at, they replied “nothing” or “sleeping.” I was stunned by the answers. The girls seemed to feel this was nothing new and were reluctant to scold the boys for putting them down.  It seemed to simply be second nature to them. When we came back to our homey guesthouse, we reconvened and shared our experiences and ideas for how we could apply our knowledge to the lessons we would be creating for the next day. Many of the experiences had to do with the passion students have for class or the unexplainable look in their wide eyes as we showed the pictures we took of them playing soccer or dancing to Nicki Minaj. Most of the ideas we came up with led to the theme of “voice.” At Greens Farms Academy, we are blessed with an unexplainable bond and relationship with our teachers. Time for one-on-one instruction is a given and teachers invite students to share their thoughts and ideas when covering new concepts. At the Kigali City School in classes of up to 54 students, one-on-one teaching is close to impossible as there are so many needs to juggle. Students’ voices can be suppressed in the midst of the lesson, while their aspirations for the future rarely come to surface. Many of the boys wanted to be doctors or engineers, whereas the girls seemed to resort to the social norms of their society, such as mother or storeowner. In tomorrow’s lesson, we want to highlight the importance of students hearing and supporting one another with their own voices and aspirations. We plan to have students share times in their lives where they felt like leaders or in control of a situation and then we will tell them about our own stories and about finding our voices.  As we talk to each other, we hope that our passions for learning will grow.