A boy at a "life skills" workshop for children affected by HIV/AIDS. (Debra Archambault photograph)
Part One
Rwanda, a country slightly larger than Vermont, is best known in the West for the 1994 genocide in which the majority ethnic group, Hutus, killed some 800,000 people, mostly the minority Tutsis. The genocide contributed to a scourge that continues to affect Rwanda: AIDS. Roughly half a million women were raped during the genocide, many by HIV-positive men trying to infect them. Because of the genocide and AIDS, nearly one of every five children in Rwanda is an orphan.
The genocide and the civil war that preceded it also crippled the country's economy, which has been recovering steadily since the mid-1990s. Nonetheless, Rwanda remains among the least developed of the world's countries, with widespread poverty that will make a deep impression on the Upper Valley contingent.
Now, however, in a makeshift room in the Kigali airport, everyone is focused on the mundane and immediate: getting out of the airport, preferably with all our bags. A young airport official, who speaks little English, is anxiously inspecting several of them crammed with deflated balls.
Cindy Perry, coordinator of Operation Day's Work in the United States and the Thetford Academy teacher leading the trip, tries to convey that the balls are gifts for orphaned children. The official asks if she has a certificate showing that we're giving the equipment to orphans. Of course she doesn't, but after more explaining, the official slowly understands that we're not trying to make a profit off the balls. A grin transforms his bureaucratic mask. Since the balls are going to children in Kigali, he says, he'll probably end up playing with them, too.
Relieved, we gather our bags. We've managed to connect through a shared pastime, overcoming the language barrier. It will be a continual theme during our trip.
Outside, the December afternoon air is comfortably warm. The porters pile our luggage into a taxi van as we are greeted by Rwandan staff and the American founder of the Vermont-based nonprofit that runs Project Independence. Duffel bags and suitcases are piled high on the floor and cover half the seats. We all have the same thought: There's no way the van has room for everyone.
Some of us offer to stay behind so the van can make two runs, but the Rwandans insist we can ride together. "Eighteen Rwandans can fit in there," someone says.
Still doubtful, we clamber inside. We're squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder on the dark vinyl seats. But we fit. Later, that first bus ride comes to symbolize a key difference between America and Rwanda: What we consider essential — drinkable water from the tap, access to health care, elbow room in a taxi — is a luxury in Rwanda, if it exists at all.
The old taxi noisily exits the parking lot, exhaust fumes seeping through a hole in the floor. Kigali, a small, crowded city constructed on hillsides, is home to one out of every 10 Rwandans. Squat concrete roadside buildings with motel-like facades house grocery stores, hair salons and restaurants. Just beyond the main thoroughfares, brown shanties with roofs of corrugated tin cling haphazardly to steep slopes, pieces of timber covering the sockets of empty windows. Children walk past Internet cafes lugging bright yellow jerry cans filled with water from public taps because they have no running water. People chat on cell phones as women carry pineapples, bananas, avocados, fish and laundry on their heads.
We're still in Kigali, but the van has turned onto a deeply rutted dirt road off the main street in Remera, a district on the outskirts of the city. I'm thrown toward Lizzy, my seatmate, as the van lurches uphill, first on one side of the road and then on the other to avoid the gullies.