Here it is: the final weekly update!

In this final week, we wrapped up the project, said some hard goodbyes, had some cool (“authentic”) experiences, and became further acquainted with fútbol. Goodbyes are the worst.

On Monday, we got up bright and early for training as usual, but we quickly realized we had no idea where the new office was. After a quick poll of several housemates and coworkers, we were still pretty clueless. Luckily Amber the hero stepped in and told Hannah and Connor that the new HDI headquarters was a mere two minute walk from their house. Rachel called Ronah to send Pascal, the HDI driver, to pick the knitters up with their anvil of a heavy knitting machine. After a quick round of surveying and exploring the new building, we concluded that it is strange.

The office building is actually a house, but there are a lot of features that none of us ever expected to see in a house. All of the rooms are pained pastel greens, yellows, and pinks and the floors are made of a reflective patterned metal. The entryway on the first floor has a metallic, reflective ceiling and a chandelier that changes color from blue to purple to red to orange. There are also security cameras literally everywhere.

As weird as it is, this office will assumedly be great for HDI. The old office was pretty cramped and was known to kill productivity, and this new place is huge and full of light. The offices are all upstairs, and the first floor will be a brand new clinic for HIV/AIDS testing, an exciting step forward for HDI’s Sexual Health and Reproductive Education program.

We proceeded to training, where Rachel passed her new skills from Friday along to our four knitting captains. The cards were a hit!

Sarah, keeping tabs on the hand knitters, spent a portion of her time learning how to weave baskets from Josefa. It was fun to switch roles for a day!

Hannah, the constant doodler, spent a chunk of the morning drawing various requests by the women.

 

After training, we headed to ABC bagel with Nadege, who was shocked and excited to hear that you could find bagels in Africa. (Note: ABC stands for African Bagel Company). It was sweet to hang with Nadege some more and talk with her about her experience as a Rwandese woman returning from school in America.

After lunch, Sarah and Rachel worked on the knitting machine and Hannah and Connor continued the endless process of writing blogs and newsletters.

We left the office and went to Via Veneto, an Italian restaurant we had wanted to try for a while. On the way there, Hannah felt someone brush up against her at a stoplight, and soon realized that her phone was missing. We tracked it on Connor’s phone and saw it was near the office and moving around slightly. Hannah and Connor ordered and then left to go find it, hoping it would be a quick trip and they would be back before their food arrived. The food came, Sarah and Rachel ate, and then more and more and more time passed.

Long story short, the phone was stolen.

Hannah recalls this experiences as entirely uncomfortable.

On the way back to Kicukiro Centre, Connor’s phone stopped being able to track Hannah’s. Hannah and Connor first went to the office but had no luck. They then circled around the last geographic point where the phone had been located.

To spare everyone the effort of recalling the details: after a lot of searching and almost giving up, Hannah found her phone at a stolen electronics shop. She was cornered by some men who wanted her to pay for the phone, at which point Connor refused and called their Rwandese housemate Yannick for a second opinion. Yannick works for a mobile company called MTN.

Yannick’s 6’5” frame (and the nearby police force sitting on a truck) dwarfed the men and they soon conceded. Yannick, Connor, Hannah, and their housemate Amber returned to the house triumphantly, with Connor and Hannah singing (or yelling) Yannick’s praises: “YANNICK THAT WAS SOOO CLUTCH!!”

In the end, Sarah and Rachel got the uneaten food to go and met back up with Hannah and Connor at their house where we watched television with Yannick, Julie, and Amber. Hannah learned a valuable lesson about securing her valuables.

On Tuesday, we held another training because Wednesday was a national holiday and HDI was closed. Rachel took to the knitting machine again, hoping to teach the knitting captains how to make sweater cuffs. There was a great deal of frustration because little things kept going wrong, and in the end, they only partially figured it out. We are fairly frustrated with the whole knitting machine process because we didn’t manage to teach an entire, finished product using the very expensive equipment. They do have the resource of the woman in Nyamirambo that Rachel learned from, who HDI will hopefully be able to hire for trainings using the money left in our budget; still, we would have liked to accomplish more ourselves.

Sarah, Hannah, and Connor didn’t have much to do during this training because only the Knitting Captains were required to attend by the President. A couple others showed, but they were all weaving baskets. The one really cool thing they got to do, though, was watch Claudine extract the fibers with which the baskets are woven from large pineapple bush-type leaves.

Hannah, Connor, and Sarah also wrote lists of the things still left to do before our departures on Saturday/Sunday/Monday.

On this day we learned more about Nayino; she is now pregnant with her fifth child. She does not have a husband and to the extent of our knowledge no one knows who the father(s) is/are. The other women in the community appear to take a bit of a protective stance about Nayino and check up on her to see how she is doing—in whatever language or gestures are communicable. Being disabled in an already-marginalized community leaves Nayino extremely vulnerable, and she is often taken advantage of.

It has been difficult to see in turn how difficult Nayino’s life is. We are grateful for HDI’s continued presence in the community to provide her with opportunities for generating income, as well as the care that the other women show in looking out for Nayino in what capacity they can.

After training on Tuesday, we had the opportunity to visit Old Bwiza, the old home of the Cyaruzinge community. We took the HDI car up the road from Cyaruzinge to a clearing where we hopped out and walked down a grassy hill with scattered trees.

The people of Cyaruzinge were originally located in the forested/volcanic region of Rwanda, predominantly in areas near what is now Nyungwe and Ruhengeri. In the 1970s, they were forcefully relocated to infertile, steep land in the Ndera sector as the Rwandan government designated their original homes as protected national parks. Because of the steep land, houses would oftentimes tumble down the hill, and it was difficult to grow food. Their main source of income was selling grass, which is used as decorations in traditional ceremonies such as weddings. HDI started working with the community while they were in this location in 2006, and throughout their relocation to the New Bwiza land in 2009, which is flatter land that provides better opportunities for cultivation.

It was really cool to visit with some of the community leaders and listen to their stories of their time in Old Bwiza.

“Do you miss it?” We ask. “Of course we miss it,” said Cell leader Jean Marie, “But we would certainly not go back.”

After returning to Kicukiro, we went to lunch with Claude at a local place (ironically named “FastFood”), then attended a soccer game.

This was borne out of a conversation with Claude that took an unprecedented turn; Claude invited us to come to the semifinals of the Peace Cup, a football (soccer) tournament comprised of the best teams in Rwanda. The soccer game was literally down the street from where we were eating. Serendipitous. We saw Isonga FC vs. Rayon Sports FC. Isonga is the unofficial U17 Rwandan National Team, as they receive some sponsoring from the Ministry of Sports and Culture. These boys are members of an intensive program through which they receive mentoring and education, growing together to develop critical character and football skills.

Rayon Sports is the wider favorite, and they ultimately won the game to advance to the finals. After the game, we got to stick around and meet the head coach of Isonga, who happens to be a friend of Claude.

We came back to Oscar’s house and worked with Claude, then went back to Masters where Connor had some pretty great fajitas and Hannah ate ice cream for dinner. A few of us went on to Bourbon for wifi, and then headed home to bed.

Wednesday was a national holiday (Rwandan Independence Day), which we planned to spend working intensely on our evaluations, final report, blogs and etc. However, things turn another serendipitous turn when we got a call from Claude in the morning asking if we would like to come to the community and play soccer with the kids he works with. We’d wanted to do this since we first heard about it and struggled to pass up this offer.

So, Sarah headed to a rooftop book café called Inzora (as she wasn’t feeling well and is clearly more responsible than the rest of us) and cranked out some work while Hannah, Rachel, and Connor headed to Cyaruzinge to meet Claude.

Playing soccer with the kids in Cyaruzinge was quite the experience. We were divided into teams and took turns subbing out as one team would make a goal. It was a flurry of dust and rapid Kinyarwanda and the occasional goal celebration. It was so fun. We were able to greet some of the cooperative members and watch as Claude and the Cell leader concocted a drink and snack for the kids at the end of their time.

It took a while to make our way back to Kicukiro, as we walked a good way with Claude and Jean Marie. We were stopped by a Cyaruzinge executive, who invited us into a local shop and bought us drinks. Eventually we made it back to a main road and met up with Sarah to take a break. We then later all convened at Inzora and worked for a while.

We later went back home and met up with our housemate Kaleigh, who had returned from her trip to Tanzania. We also spent time with Theo and Christian, who continues to make us smile and break our heart. Excuse the cheesy language.

On Thursday, we returned to an internet-less office and were able to spend the morning at ABC Bagel with fellow intern Maddie. Maddie has the most interesting life. Hearing about her adventures moving (every year) around the globe since she was a child with a Navy Seal dad made for some pretty action-packed conversation. Plus, she’s a nurse and she’s only 18!

Midway through our time there, Rachel left for the airport to go pick up her parents! We met up with her and her mom at a (super touristy) craft market, then headed off to Bourbon. Connor was knee deep in passport woes and spent a while searching Nakumat for thank you cards to give to the lady who’d been helping him at the Canadian High Commission. There were many cards. But no thank you cards. Instead, he found the likes of this:

Welp.

Later we met up with our friend Muad for a late goodbye dinner at a restaurant called New Cactus. New Cactus is advertised as an Italian and Congolese restaurant. It sells largely French food. It’s atmosphere and décor mirror that of a Mexican restaurant. This experience was confusing, but delicious.

On Friday, we headed out to the field for our FINAL DAY OF TRAINING. Also it was CONNOR’S TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY. What.

We spoke a bit about the skills that the women had developed during our time with them and the capacity that they now have to enact change in their cooperative, pushing themselves forward to a more prosperous model based on community care. Rachel’s parents were able to come and were shown around the community and primary school by Claude.

Hannah later met with the leadership committee and polled them about how comfortable they felt in their positions and if they had any questions or immediate needs moving forward. We received a reassuringly positive response, and President Claudine expressed her content with the skills and attitudes represented in her leadership committee. There are still a few journals that can be purchased for the Treasurer and Secretary, but we are hopeful and expectant that the cooperative has the skills amongst themselves to build each other up and tackle challenges.

We waited around, took a photo, bought some baskets from the women, and said some hard goodbyes. To say we have enjoyed our time in this community is an understatement. We will truly miss the women of Cyaruzinge. They gave each of us interns a gift upon departure; each of us received a small handwoven basket. Which we will all treasure, obviously. Leaving Cyaruzinge for the last time was emotional. Goodbyes are the worst.

We returned to Kicukiro to work on our final report (which is currently 60 typed pages and counting… oops). We then waited around at the office for hours for the final Fanta Friday. It was a pretty frustrating buildup, but it was nice to convene with some coworkers and talk over our project at its commencement.

We had to say some final goodbyes to HDI staff. Again, goodbyes are the worst. Feelings will be saved for later reflective posts.

We left for Kimironko market with Toussaint to pick up some kitenge clothes we had made, and then we headed over to an Oriental restaurant called Zen. There, we met Rachel’s parents as well as Kaleigh and Julie. We celebrated Connor’s birthday and then headed back to Theo’s house to continue the celebration with friends. Celebration itself was dulled by Connor’s passport woes, but it was still nice to have a last night with friends before the first of us (Rachel) left.