PLR students and Alisoun
and Shauna dancing--the
orbs are back
The team
The electricity is off and so is the internet. The internet is actually better on the mountain than it is here at the guest house. Today the students were tired from a play put on last night about HIV/AIDS. They said it was hilarious and very well done, and it was exciting because another high school was invited. I don’t know where they put them all. It is quite possible they sat on one another’s laps. I did about 20 minutes of testing with eight of them today, and I will finish the other four Monday. They are doing surprisingly well on a measure that shows neurological problems in the visual/spatial/motor aspects of the brain. I had thought many of them would have been head injured and do poorly. So far, none has done really poorly, and only two show some problems. They are so willing to try what you suggest and so grateful for almost anything you do for them.
I promised to tell about our bus (a maxi-van made for 13 people) of yesterday. Today we had what would be called a klunker in the U.S., but yesterday we had one of the worst vehicles I have ever seen that has not been in a crash—or maybe it had. Every time we went over the big rocks or deep ruts or huge puddles it shook so much we could not hear one another and we were sure we had lost at least two more parts. The seatbelt was twisted into a rope and frayed on both edges and then folded in half. There were only bare wires where a radio should have been, and other openings with either nothing or bare wires. The emergency brake was broken off and waving wildly over the bumps. Several times he had to try three times to get it into the next gear. The front seats had seat covers with plastic over them, but the rest of the seats had foam sticking out, and the driver had to pick up a metal rod to stick into the fold-down seat before it would work. There were no handles to roll up windows, and the driver had to get a handle that he was using as a key chain to stick on the metal nub to roll up the windows which took two hands, one to pull up on the glass and one to turn the stiff handle. There is more, but I think you get the idea. If we did not believe that we will be OK to finish our purpose here, we would have been pretty scared. We made it home and Lori requested another vehicle for today. I’m sorry to say that others who have been to more parts of Africa report it is not all that unusual. We took extra people down the mountain for the weekend, so we had ten people plus the driver. I didn’t get a picture of it, but above is a picture of today’s van with our team: Front left clockwise—Gakuba (interpreter, only 51 years old), Paul, Alisoun, Sharon (favorite interpreter), Shauna, Lori, Richard, and Eric (interpreter).
The pictures of the last two days are showing the orbs again, and not just when they are dancing. The orbs are smaller. I don’t know what that is related to, but we have smaller numbers of students this year. The energy of connection and joy is increasing as the students do more and more trauma healing and have more and more experiences of connection. Our PLR students are hearing from the school students about problems they are having, and our students are teaching them tapping with consistent good results. They are fully stepping into their roles of leadership and helping. Next week will continue some trauma healing, but will be mostly focused on the entrepreneurship and skill development and planning for how they will form teams to continue after we leave. I have even greater connections with the students this year than last, so I’m not thinking about the leaving.
I continue to see the evidence of such extreme poverty that we have no reference points for. Children walk in flip flops made out of tires, carrying loads of branches or grass or bananas on their heads that are bigger than they are for miles on red dirt and red rock roads. People walk for miles on Wednesday and Saturday, bringing on their heads or on bicycles whatever they have to trade for the things they need—rice, cassava, carrots, cloth, grass, firewood, cabbages, bananas, mangoes, avocados (twice the size of ours), second-hand T-shirts, pots, and things I don’t know what they are. I saw that the driver of the van was paid 2000 Rwandan Francs (about $3.30) for a 10-hour day. Drivers are considered one of the better jobs. People in the villages have no possibility of a job without going the 2-hour moto bike ride into Kigali. I am reminding myself of how much I cannot understand their life every time I have a negative reaction to seeing someone holding out their hand and saying “where’s the money” as we drive or walk by. Most react with excited waving and big smiles. There are so many more things to tell about, but I must get to scoring the tests and preparing for tomorrow.
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