Goodbye Kigali!

Friends, sorry that it’s been a little longer than normal since I’ve written! We had a wonderful Easter here, complete with a ham, green beans, and potatoes dinner.
Monday morning the girls spent time doing laundry and washing shoes outside our rooms at the convent. Our friend monkey stopped by to grace us with his presence, and even caught a bird and ate it in front of us, in addition to the banana that we fed him. In the afternoon we departed for Rulindo, a district in the northern province of Rwanda. The mountainous beauty of this district was incredible. Our cars just kept winding up, up, up twisty dirt back roads until we came to Tumba College of Technology, nestled on the peak of the mountain. This two year old college was incredibly welcoming to us. We spent our mornings researching in rural sectors, our afternoons typing up data, and our evenings socializing among ourselves and with the students there. Wednesday evening we were able to join a group of students for worship, and they graciously translated from Kinyarwanda to English for us, so that we were able to really engage in worship. I enjoyed that immensely. That same night we were bombarded by thousands, perhaps millions, of termites that flooded the campus. I pulled my scarf tightly around my ears, making sure that the edges didn’t protrude too far around my face which would have trapped the insects and made them flap their wings against my nose and eyes. The best night by far was Thursday night, when we had a cultural exchange with the Rwandan students. They performed traditional Rwandan dance for us, and we sang songs and taught them line dancing. We even did “The Catch-All” skit with no preparation! It was a pretty big hit. But the best was the line dancing, with Sophie as our awesome instructor. We played some group games and just hung out until late in the evening.
Friday morning we came back to Kigali and spent the weekend writing up our reports from the research we did in Rulindo, as well as making trips to the market and to church. There have been rainstorms every afternoon, which makes the dirt roads quite slick. We went to a coffee shop for awhile, and did a few more sessions of aerobics. On Saturday afternoon we went to a soccer game of the team from Tumba College verses a Kigali Technical college team. It was really great to see a few of our friends again.
At 5:00 on Friday morning I will be leaving my life here in Kigali. I will miss waking up to the singing of the nuns and our fresh hot milk. I will miss the lizards that crawl all around our room and the cows that graze in the backyard. I will miss walking past the stadium everyday and hearing echoes of the concerts going on inside. I will miss the delicious grocery store lunches of Masaka vanilla yogurt, peanuts and chapatti. I will miss teaching English to the sewing students at PHARP. I will miss sitting right here on the Jackson’s porch, enjoying the cool evening air as I play games and check email overlooking the bright lights of Remera.
A little over a week, and then I will embark on the long flights home. I will try to write one last update in Kampala, but who knows how the internet will be there!
Grace and peace to all of you.