Gorillas in the Mist

On Sunday I boarded a full bus in Kigali to head up the winding mountains for about 2 hours to Rungheri. From there we spent the day walking around the market and local villages playing with the kids. Finally the sun was beginning to go down and we wanted to get to the base of the volcanos before sunset. We grabbed some motos and took the most breathtaking moto ride I have ever taken. It was like something out of a movie. We got to our Kinigi Guesthouse...which was like a bungalo/dorm style and decided to take a walk at sunset. When we were coming out of the guest house we saw four boys standing on the edge of the road...three of them with sacks of food on top of their heads, and one with a smile that stretched ear to ear. We said hello and asked them where we could walk...they said that they would show us. They ended up taking us on a walk straight for the base of the volcano. On the way we passed some RDF (Rwanda Defense Force) military camps, most likely because we were so close to the border of DR Congo. The walked us all the way through their village. The main boy who showed us around name was Jorge. He told us about their soccer team there and introduced us to his best friends. They took us to their school and through their potato fields...even let us pet their cows. Everyone was so welcoming and loving that I knew this would not be my last time here. One 74 year old women walking on the road came up and gave me the biggest hugs. All of the children would stand there and say "Hello, hello, hello hello hello hello hello!" until we were out of sight. This village was truly how I imagined Africa to be. Full of people that were smiling we joy when they see you and welcoming with open arms. Kigali has given me quite a shock of an african experience, and difficult at times... but going to Sabyinyo village and meeting the futbol team lifted my spirits.

 The sun went down ove

r the cloudy volcano and we headed home to have some African tea and 

get some rest. It was to be a big day hiking to the gorillas the next day. In the morning we woke up at 5 am when the sun had not even rise

n yet. We ate a hearty breakfast and walked to the Gorilla headquarters. W

e got lucky and had become friends with an english girl who had a brother that had lived with the gorillas for 5 months filming them so she had connections when it came to group picking. There are about 5 groups th

at were go

ing up the gorillas that day with only 8 people per group. The biggest hike/family that I wanted to see ended up not bein

g a possiblity becu

ase the day bef

ore the group didnt get back til 9 at n

ight and it was too dangerous; the family of gorillas had moved too far up the mountain. We got asinged the Hir

wa family instead which was supposedly the next best. In this family there was one

 male silverback gorilla, 6 women, and 6 babies. We started our hike through the sa

me vill

age I was in the night befo

re until we got to the ed

ge of the national park. We began the hike through the bamboo forest with two RDF guards with guns for the wild buffaloe and elephants that can char

ge, a guide, and someone to carry bags. The hike was about 2 hours of seroius trekking...like nothing I have ever do

ne before. The jour

ney was wo

rth it for the hike alone. Most of the time we were walking on a ridge surro

unded by cascading jungle the ent

ire time and chopping our way through branches. At some points you have to almost rock climb on plain soil that broke away as you made the vertical climb. I thought I was 

going to not make it at one point cause the air was so thin you felt lik

e you were doing all that you could to breathe and nothing was getting through. After two hours...the guard whispered to stop and put down our bags. The gorillas were 

about 10 min away and

 could s

mell us coming. We would leave the bags behind. He told us that when we got close enough he would make a noise to communicate with the king silverback to ask permission to join

 the family. He did...and it sounded kinda like a grunt. In the distance we could here the king respond and allow us to come. we slowly approached clim

bing straight on top of layers of vines like monkey bars in this ste

ep valley. There were tons of st

inging nettles that caught your skin and hurt like bee stings. We saw our first mama gorilla with her baby appear 

only a couple feet away. they just went past us like we were apart of their clan...eating the stinging nettles on their way! Then we came around to papa gorilla who was hunched over. He must have been the size of an arm sofa! He grunted the angry grunt at us cause 

he just wanted to nap and we were being to loud and our guide grunted the "Its Okay" grunt back to calm him down again. At one point I crawled almost 2 feet away from him and he got angry and swang at me  a little bit. We spent the next hour just observing and taking in all of God's wonder. Gorillas have become probably my favorite animal...especially after this. They are so human like and give you chills when they look at you in the eye. On the way down I got my right foot tangled and fell forward...flipping myself upside down and hanging there by my foot. It was pretty hilarious. The hike down was much faster and I was sad to leave but overall it was the most amazing adventure of my life and I will never forget it!! 

Off into the Jungle!

I am about to catch a bus to the base of the volcanoes 2 hours away. Tomorrow morning I will wake up at the break of dawn to start my trek deep into the jungle for 6 hours to the largest family of silver back gorillas. Our guards will be tracking them will infrared and cutting our way through the jungle with machetes. I will spend about an hour amongst the family of 40 gorillas and their babies. Pray for my safety! This is an adventure of a lifetime.... I love you all. Next blog will be full of footage!

love,

erin

The Remba House

This is my new house in Kigali!...photo montage courtesy of my roommate Seth Johnson. See that grasshopper.

... i shortly hereafter removed it by grabbing its leg... a

nd the journal and bible on the table outside thats mine too! only pieces youll see of me in the house, i was most lik

ely napping in the room he didnt go in.

Here is our family!

Amanda Flores (top right) blog: www.amandainrwanda.blogspot.com

Natalie Warne (top left) blog: www.nataliewarne.blogspot.com

Me (middle left)

Rachel Burney (middle right) blog: http://www.rachelinrwanda.blogspot.com

Seth Johnson (bottom left) blog: http://sethmjohnson.blogspot.com/

Ricky Norris (bottom right) blog: www.africa.rickynorris.com

Uganda to Rwanda

Rwanda to Uganda from Ricky Norris on Vimeo.

My amazing videographer roomate Ricky and Seth on their way to Kigali!

Father's Day

I said goodbye to Amanda yesterday morning and I am really sad because she was my first friend and ended up being my closest here in Rwanda. I know its cliché to say that I really hate goodbyes but in the past 6 months of my life I have had way to many with people I really care about. Its going to be good to go back to the states for a while and then hopefully move to Ireland for a long time after that. I have been doing a lot of searching for jobs in Ireland for after I graduate in May, so say some prayers for me cause the job market is impossible there especially for an American. I ended up not going to the Gorilla naming ceremony yesterday because I’ll be making that trip out there next weekend. Supposedly this week Akon will be coming to perform in the Stadium by my house as well as professional soccer players including Renaldo. We had a good week this past week with…the boys started filming interviews with the women and getting some good footage. We don’t have much to do at night during the week so I have been designated storyteller every night. I have started on display designs for our retailers... one of them being a large branch that I found in a trash pile. My plan was to hang the necklaces on the branch after varnishing it but I came in and the women had used my branch as firewood. They thought it was so funny…now I have to find a new branch.

Today we all went to church in our community, only about 5 houses down. It is something that we always wanted to do because we can hear the choir practicing everyday from out house down the street. When we came in they made us to come the front of the church so that they could welcome us. They even put two translators in between us all so that we could understand. During the sermon, there was a woman who came up who was from the Congo and talked about her family there. They continued on to talk about how in 94 the genocides often took place in churches like this one and how we can never forget. After church I took a moto to the genocide memorial by myself. It told the history of the genocide and was actual the site of many killings. It was not to far from my house that I live in now so it brought me back to reality. In one of the main testimonial videos a woman spoke of her father that was killed and how he was a quite man with many many friends. It made me think of my dad today on Father’s Day and how much I miss him and am so lucky to have him in my life. I will try to get a hold of him later today. If you are reading this Dad,… I love you!

Paradiso

 June 12, 2009 (dates are off because I am behind)

I havn’t found much time to write within the past week, mostly because work has been busy and internet has been down the whole time. I have also been doing a lot of traveling which tends to be exhau

sting especially on winding roads with po

t holes every ten feet for 3 hours. Despite the pot holes on the way, Gyseni was well worth it. Gyseni is a Rwandan town on Lake Kivu that is shared with the Democratic Republic of Congo. We traveled there in my ro

omates car which we call “The Beast” because it can handle everything. We packed up the old white la

ndrover with my two close

st friends both named

 Amanda, 5 law students from Pepperdine, myself, and Gad who is becoming a 

close friend of mine and is one of the most 

genuine humble Rwandans I have met. He takes very good care of us and knows almost everyone in Rwanda, and I mean everyone. We all piled in on th

e bench seats in the back and traveled thr

ough lush green mountains, villages, volcanoes, and gorilla territory to Lake Kivu. The origina

l plan was to try and make it into Goma, DRC on Sunday, but unfortunate

ly that did not happen

. The goal for the weekend was to just get away and relax and enjoy the beautiful country that Rwanda is with a thousand rolling hills. When we got to the Lake it literally looked like Hawaii. Just as we were about to pull into the hotel there was a dust 

cloud up ahead and was moving mysteriously fast toward us. Someone shouted to roll up the windows but we couldn’t because we were in the beast. Next

 thing we kn

ow we come to a complete stop and let the cloud of re

d dust consume us. We took a deep breath ad the dust came in and filled the windows. Not only we

re we in the cloud…we were the cloud. Next thing we know we hear honking and a tractor becomes visible as it is about to scoop us up. We swerved out of the 

way and couldn’t stop laughing at how not one person 

could see it before this all happened. It was a nice relaxing weekend and the Amandas and I found a canoe which we thought we could conquer. This canoe was most defiantly made from one tree and we begged the fisherman to take it out. Within two seconds the canoe took on water and we  

were going under. We sunk the boat and as the captain

 I went down wi

th it. I couldn’t leave this poor man’s boat at the bottom of the lake so I flipped it over under water and somehow got it to shore. Then if that wasn’t enough I found a one man pod like size canoe and paddled my way out into the lake w

ith the end of a shovel that I found. I almost sunk myself and didn’t 

make much progress. With only one paddle and a pod I ended up just going in circles. The drive home on Sunday night felt even longer than the way there. It was like a movie though as we drove back to Kigali under a

 full orange moon above the volcano and clouds lightly covering it.

The rest of the week was eventful as the new interns arrived on bus from Uganda. They are the film crew and my friend Rachel who is head of the REMBA team which will be starting a beauty school intiative. I also ended up moving into their house with them because rent was much cheaper and in a better location right behind the US Embassy. Everyone in my new house is mostly from southern California and one is from Hawaii. I finally booked my gorilla trek this week and will be hiking 5 hours into the jungle to be with them on the 27^th. It is going to be so surreal and I have to start training cause apparently the hike is at a very high altitude. I am so excited.

I have spent most of my time this week going over some business checklists with the women. One day I walked up to the market with them after work and we all laughed and linked arms. We ended up having a photo shoot on the walk up to and all the women couldn’t stop laughing. Their spirits are much higher as we bought bundles of food out in the countryside on our way home from Gyseni and gave it to them. I love them so much and I already can’t imagine leaving them. Aside from the great week I had…I also had my first Malaria scare. I woke up on Friday and could tell that something was wrong. My body was aching and I had hot sweats and chills. I came into BURANGA and the women immediately noticed that I looked weak. My boss told me that I had to immediately go get malaria testing cause apparently even though I am on preventative medicine I can still get it. I grabbed a moto to the hospital and waited for a while to get the test. My Rwandan friend and Amanda showed up at the hospital and it meant so much even though they really didn’t need to. Turns out there was no need to worry and the test was negative. Still scary but I knew I didn’t have it. This weekend my friend also hooked me up with tickets to the annual Gorilla naming ceremony, which is a festival that they name all the new baby gorillas that were born that year. Last year Natalie Portman came and this year Akon is coming haha should be a good time. As of now my health is back to normal, the women are finishing up a big order, spirits are high, I will hopefully learn how to drive stick this week, and I can’t wait for the gorillas!

Obstacles and Miracles

Yesterday was a very intense day…both a stressful and good day at the same time… It started off at the internet café where I was to meet Ilea. She told me that we needed to discuss a couple of things and if I could show the new intern

around. What I thought would be a quick meeting turned into a day affair. We had to have a meeting with the women because of the stress that hunger and rent was bringing on them. When times get rough the mind set here is to quit…especially with the lack of confidence of being women in this society. Technically as KEZA we have established BURANGA as a business for the women that they can run themselves. We are not their bosses but are here to empower them and teach them how to create their own business. To them we are currently their only “buyer” of the goods they create…and at times its is difficult even for us to have enough to keep their mouths full and bring in an income large enough to pay their rent. Times are not always easy and as of right now with economy back home, the demand in the US is very slow and we currently do not have sufficient donors. It pains our hearts not to have enough in the past week to support them. To say the least there are HUGE miracles brewing…but have yet to be settled before we see results. We told the women in our meeting that we love them with all of our hearts and at times it is hard to trust us (which is the case for most Rwandans with expats) BUT we are working here for them for free even though it is hard to be believe and are working hard. At the same time Ilea introduced Alaina and me as being here to help them and teach them side by side how to spread their business throughout Kigali and teach them the skills necessary to do so. They got huge smiles across their faces and clapped saying I was their sister. It made me get choked up because here are these women who I have already bonded with, who have trusted me with their babies on my back, and are depending on me to help them feed their children. It is a huge responsibility but I am more then excited to change their lives and give them the foundation for their futures… in truth they are empowering me. The stress levels are very high here right now for all of us and I have decided to start fasting with the women. Like I said there has been such AMAZING things happening with potential opportunity for us in the past two weeks but have yet to show results. We told the women that they must stick together with us on this because the beautiful jewelry that they make will be worn by people all over soon enough and each will know their story. At the end of this intense meeting there was still tension, anger, hope and love. We all held hands and said a prayer…Ilea first and then one of the women stepped up. When she was praying you could feel everything coming from deep within her soul…and this time I really did cry. There are so many emotions right now among all of us and are trying to hold strong. I know some of you that may be following this Blog are

 feeling that your heart is being in pulled in one way or another, and I hate to do this but WE need your help in any way you can! First of all if you get a chance please check out www.keza.com (link on the right) and look at the wonderful jewelry. Not only would I rock this stuff everyday but just WAIT til you see the new lines! These products are unreal and I watch them being made by these wonderful women everyday. We have a warehouse in the states that is full of them but we just need someone who would be willing to sell them back at home. What I am proposing is that you throw a party… a KEZA Party haha. We will send you tons of necklaces on consignment (meaning you don’t need to buy them upfront, but sell what you can and send them b

ack!). All checks for donations and necklace purchases can be written out to KEZA and sent to:

P.O. BOx 681381 

Franklin, TN

37068-1381 USA

KEZA is a registered 501(c)3 Non-Profit Corporation

Tax ID #: 261341516

Alive

Living in Rwanda has made me feel more alive than I have ever felt. 

Even though I am living in Kigali, full of people, cars, shops, motos and traffic lights…just when I think I am cruising along worry free, the pavement ends and I am off roading once again hoping the SUV doesn’t get stuck in a ditch or tumble into the embankment on the right. The thing about life here is that its not simple like cruising down PCH along the coast at home. The littlest tasks take effort… having nothing to eat and having to climb up the hill to a crowded market where you are getting bombarded left and right.

 Some mornings you just don’t feel like bartering. The same goes for then bringing the food home and having to boil water to kill the bacteria. You are more aware of your body and your life…where eating is necessary to stop hunger pains (still not even comparable to those who suffer this everyday). Brings you back to reality when you are starting to get sick and hope its not cholera or that maybe your malaria pills didn’t work for the mosquito bite on your right toe. At this point you are almost praying for the flu. Luckily, I have yet to get sick. The same goes for doing business here. The processes for getting permission for the simplest tasks to build a business take forever. These are just a few things that make me aware of my life and how much is taken for granted back at home. When life is simpler you almost forget what it takes to live…if that makes any sense.Having these feelings is not a bad thing…for those that may take these as negatives…I am enjoying them. I am in my element and LIVING.

On the days that I have gotten a full nights sleep, I really do LOVE my outdoor marketplace, and I know in the three months I am here I will never stop loving my job. These are some pictures of my grocery store or your Ralphs, Dunnes, or Tom Thumb. And these are the beautiful women that I am fortun

ate to 

bond with everyday as they roll our paper beads. I absolutely adore them. On Friday th

ey tied a baby on my back

 African style! I wanted to keep the bab

y back there for hours cause it 

was actually very comfortable and secure… I think we should bring this one back to America. They all couldn’t stop laughing

 at

 me calling me Mzungu Mama Christian. (that’s the baby’s name J)

On Sunday I went to my first Rwandan we

dding…. The longest weddi

ng of my life! First of all… I didn’t’ even know the bride or groom and was invited! In our community there is a little bootleg video shop owned by Frank and his wife JoJ

o. JoJo inv

ited us last week to her sisters wedding and insisted we came, and I am so glad we did! When we got there they dressed us in traditional wear. The day was full of cultural traditions that they made sure we were a part of. It was like we were in the wedding! The day started out at the Mother of the brides house. They fed us lunch and then the groom and his groomsmen came over to the house to meet the bride. They sat on the couch and drank a glass of milk. This was symbolic of bringing yourself back to nature and preparation of the day ahead. From there we all went over to the church and had a traditional Catholic wedding. Not much different except that the bride and groom came in together cause they had already seen eachother…their wedding party followed. After we caravanned to Novahotel to take pictures. From there we caravanned again to the reception 

which was much different from home. Everyone sat in rows of chairs facing the wedding party. We were served bottled soft

 drinks in our chairs while we watched Traditional African dancing….kinda like warrior dancing. They then cut the wedding cake and passed around a slice piece by piece to some 200 guests. After the cake there was more traditional dancing and then a presentation of the gifts. The reception where we just sat there went on for abo

ut 4 hours. Then a small group would go back to the bride and grooms new house for dinner. Rwandan style did not mean dinner right away… it was already 9:45 at night and had not eaten sine 11 when all of these festivities started. Before we could eat there were more speeches in Kinyarwanda and then the 

bride and groom were taken to their room to perform some cultural traditions with the father of the groom and some other close family members. Surprisingly the

y made us come too and watch. In the room the bride and the groom sat on the end of their bed with a boy and a girl sitting at

 their feet. This was symbolic of the children they would bear…hopefully one of each sex. They then had to give the children milk…keep in mind these children were like 8 years old. Then they clipped a piece of the brides hair off saying that now she was a women. Short hair= woman….long hair= girl. After this rite of initiation the

 women carried in baskets of food and house supplies to the new house that would last them for a

 month, then we ate dinner and did some traditional dancing. I got up there and danced for the bride with about 6 others. You 

do this thing where you just kind of put your arms out and move them in flowing motions haha Everyone loved it. The whole day lasted til midnight and although that might sound normal…when the majority of that time is all spent sitting in silence….it is the longest day of you life. Still, nonetheless I am glad I pushed through cause it was a once in a lifetime experience. I conquered my first Rwandan Wedding and might as well been a bridesmaid. Beautiful day…..