The Upper Valley visitors play a spirited game of pickup basketball at a primary school in Kigali. (Cindy Perry photograph)
Part Two
The youngsters, ranging from pre-schoolers to young adults, belong to Amahoro Association, a group that supports young people whose parents have died of AIDS or are sick with the disease. Some of the young people are infected themselves. The association's name, Amahoro — which means peace in Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda — has a special significance in this East African nation, where a 1994 genocide killed some 800,000 people.
But the tragedy in these children's lives and their nation's history seems far away as they sing about how happy they are to be together. Lizzy and Kylie join in the spirited clapping, marking a shared beat on the worn court. Some of these kids probably go home to nothing, Kylie thinks, yet they still come together and have a good time. The experience causes her to reflect on the power of community. "It just shows what a group can do, what friends can bring you," she says later.
Then Eric Rwabuhihi — Rwanda director of Children Affected by HIV/AIDS (CHABHA), the Vermont nonprofit whose programs include Project Independence — draws Kylie and Lizzy into a basketball game with the Rwandan teenagers. The girls cast aside their sandals to run more easily. It's Eric, Lizzy, Kylie, Thetford Academy teacher Cindy Perry and chaperone Debra Archambault against five high school students from Amahoro Association.
Soon, a couple of hundred children have gathered on the sidelines. They go wild when the Amahoro Association team makes the first basket through a rusted rim with no net - and then another and another. Lizzy sinks the first basket for the Upper Valley team. The team of Amahoro students are winning not because of superior basketball skills, but because they have a marked height advantage over the Upper Valley team. Soon the Amahoro team's baskets become so commonplace that the Rwandan children cheer only when the Upper Valley contingent scores. The sounds from the court are a jumble of Kinyarwanda and English as players shout instructions at each other, along with the thud of the ball on concrete as they chase each other up and down the court.
In the end, Lizzy counts 10 baskets scored by the Upper Valley team, but neither that number, nor the blistered feet or sunburn they suffer, fully tells what happened on the court. The language barrier didn't matter there; the rhythm of the game allowed for a different kind of communication.