Validation

The outdoor village market on Wednesday and Saturday

in the largest village in the sector of the high school.

This was a restful and fun day for Shauna and me, but not for Lori and Richard. Shauna had meetings with bank people and the Rwandan branch of Tuf Stuff solar power for cell phones, batteries, radios & lights. Emanuel, the Manager here has an amazing story of entrepreneurship starting at age 12. He will come next week to tell his story to our students and plan how they can start businesses selling the product. I stayed at the guest house to finish recuperating to be ready for an intense week. In the afternoon Shauna and I met with Debbie from the women’s coop and she took us down side streets and alleys, down narrow stairs into basements and we found beautiful African fabric for from 1/6^th to 1/10^th of the price we saw in the tourist section. It is like the pictures of Middle East bazaars, but in the basement up and down very high crumbling cement steps. It was the first really hot day.

Up on the mountain Lori found that there had been two trauma incidents over the weekend, and many students very upset by the memorial service and burial on Saturday of 54 newly found unidentified bodies in the local village. It is natural for the students to wonder if that could be their parents, brothers, sisters, aunts. Lori worked with the Project LIGHT students to help clear their trauma, and then teach more about being peer counselors. We will do more tomorrow. Richard did leadership training and will the rest of this week as he is leaving Sunday. Lori talked with Rev. Thoms and community leaders about plans for preventing this kind of occurrence again. The program Lori instituted in 2009 has not been followed since Pastor Seth left in November. That suggests that the tremendous improvement in going an entire year with no incidents is a result of Lori and Create Global Healing’s work.

There were many synchronicities today. Emanuel from Tuf Stuff has previously worked with people in Santa Barbara that Shauna and Lori know; the bank has offered to do financial training for one hour per week for the month after we leave; the crafts we were planning for our PLR students will now be used to give the high school students something creative to do after school to keep them from obsessively thinking about the genocide and feel joy; (I will be teaching them to sew by machine and hand, so they will also be learning a skill that they can use after high school); and Debbie and Shauna found several mutual connections and shared funding sources with one another. If we just do what is in front of us to do next, miracles happen.

The Call of Africa

The Mazungas. Archbishop

Samuel is second from right

Two Swedes are taking the

picture.

The children's choir

The church was beautiful, with 20 large windows around a huge sanctuary with views of the Rwandan mountains. There were four adult choirs and a children’s choir with at least 25 energetic, joyful children with very good voices. Only a few people got up to dance because there were probably 400 to 500 people there. Africa time was operating, as when church started the pews were less than ¼ full, and by the end of the service they were at least 2/3 full. The pews are hard wood slats for the seat and only two slats high up for the back. The service was just over three hours (read: complaining back). The sermon was focused on positive thinking with only a few references that I could not translate into my own perspective. There were four people there from a Swedish Methodist church who work with handicapped children, and the church has a center there for such children—mostly mentally handicapped. The church provided translators to sit with us. Afterward children came up to greet us and give us a hug. It was a heart-warming experience. One of the men from Sweden told a quote: “Once you have tasted the water of Africa, you will be thirsty the rest of your life.” I know what he means. There is something so primordial, so captivating to the soul about the land and the people. There has to be for so many Westerners to keep coming back to a place with dangerous sanitation, almost constant physical stressors, and such a totally unfamiliar way of life. The beauty of the land is not enough, and I don’t think guilt over how the West abandoned Rwanda is enough either. I am learning more about the times we are now in and the historical cycle of evolution which has led humanity to this choice point in finding greater connection and cooperation with our environment and with one another, or face the possible extinction of our planet. I have recently heard about how science has found that all of humanity can trace their ancestry to Africa, and that it is now believed that humans originated in Central Africa. It makes sense to me that the hub of conscious evolution could then be in Central Africa.

I am having to admit that the events of Friday had more impact on me than I recognized. There is no way to describe the intensity of the energy, the depth of the angst or the helplessness that you feel when you want to help. I am still processing, trying to let my body recuperate (I didn’t go to visit a cooperative today and rested instead), and to make sense of the big picture of the lessons for me and for the young people who experienced such tremendous trauma. Lori is carefully mentioning to people like the Archbishop that although she does not have answers, it is very important to find a balanced way to commemorate the genocide victims without re-traumatizing as is happening now. The Archbishop and others are aware that children who did not experience the genocide are now traumatized through the continued memories of the culture.

We begin another week tomorrow. I am anxious to see how our twelve did over the weekend, and what will be needed in the school. I may not be writing every night, as I know I need to pay more attention to recuperation from the intensity of the days.

Shopping in Kigali

Our neighbors in Kigali who wait for us at the gate, and dance and sing for us on the street below.

This was a wonderful, relaxing day. We slept in and then went to the craft markets to get supplies for the students’ craft prototypes to take back to the U.S. to show people there who are interested in marketing them. The primary purpose of the crafts is to teach business and entrepreneurship, but we hope it will also provide some income for the young people and the orphanage and give them a creative outlet that they currently don’t have. The first craft market had only completed craft items, and I wanted to buy about 25 things. I waited because it was the most touristy place we were going and predicted there would be cheaper prices other places. We then went to the craft district downtown, and found our beads, fabric and other supplies. The Rwandan fabrics that we have so admired are made in Holland, and cost $22 per yard in six-yard pieces ($132). You can’t just buy an African dress, they must be made for you, but first you have to buy the fabric. I won’t be getting an African dress. We shopped at their store equivalent to WalMart and ate lunch—a salad!!. There were more Mazungas (rich white people) there than we have seen anywhere, so we figured the raw food was safe. On the sidewalk next to the outdoor eating area was a young woman who walked on her hands with a twisted body, most likely from polio. It was surprising to see anyone with a disease that has been eradicated at home, and that their means of making a living is begging.

Last night we met two exceptional women. Grace Lillienthal who is the sister of a former Cal Poly student who I danced West Coast Swing with, and Debbie who is from Colorado and has volunteered for the Peace Corps twice, and is now volunteering for a cooperative run by an amazing African woman who started a grass-roots battered woman’s discussion group that has grown to several cooperatives, a battered women’s shelter, a school, and now a gym and yoga studio. Debbie teaches English to the women, and is a dynamo. She will help Shauna find fabric and other supplies more cheaply. Grace has been an intern for seven months with a ministry to rehabilitate and counsel genocide prisoners, male and female. She has friends who are also volunteering in Africa. The more time I spend here and hear of the work being done, the more I marvel at what is happening here. I wonder if the latest scientific buzz about evidence that the entire human race began in central Africa has anything to do with the fact much of the world is focused on the needs of Africans, and Kigali has become a thriving, rapidly growing city. Perhaps the place where humanity started is the place where it will most evolve and move into a new type of society.

At the guest house the cook is a very sweet young man (26, but looks and acts much younger) who is a genocide survivor and head-of-household for his two younger sisters. He has had that responsibility with no assistance since he was nine. He did pass the exam to enter the University, but no money for tuition and books. He has had a sponsor to pay for school expenses, but since he has to work so many hours he has not been able to study and must drop out. He therefore loses his sponsor. His oldest sister (22) does not have a job, and his youngest sister, (20) is still in high school due to lack of schooling after the genocide and other problems caused by the genocide. Tonight he invited all of us to his house for dinner—he makes very little money and is willing to share whatever he has with us. We did not know about him, or he would have been in Project LIGHT. He will be in our next group in September.

Church at the Archbishop’s church tomorrow, and more work on getting the $30 sewing machines to work and creating samples of the craft projects for the students. Another fun day.

The Best Laid Plans...

The girls dorm top left

with clothes drying on

the lawn (day without rain)

I rested last night so I could keep my eyes open after 3:00. We expect the students to, so I’d better be a proper model. I made it until half-way home today.

We had a full day planned, beginning the Transformational Leadership training and several other things. When we arrived at the school, we were told that four of the girls had been hospitalized due to trauma incidents. I mentioned before that the whole month of April commemorates the genocide, and many, many images and sounds of the massacre are shown in newspapers and on T.V. Tomorrow is the final memorial service in every village and sector. We were told that twelve other girls were sleeping and had been triggered and crying all night. We checked in with our Project LIGHT group and three of the young men had been called to help hold and carry the girls to the hospital (one in a health center nearby, and three all the way to Kigali). We did Energy Medicine and breathing exercises with them and then Lori and I went to the dorms to check on the girls. They were no longer sleeping, but eight of them were in full flashbacks, screaming and crying as I have never heard in person before. One girl was screaming over and over, “They are going to kill me—no, no. God has left me.” (translated) Other students, about three for every girl in trauma, were holding them, stroking their heads, comforting them as best they could. The girls in trauma were not present; they did not recognize anyone or anything that was being said to them. I asked for guidance and all the unseen help available. I helped the comforting girls with how to touch and breathe to create more calm, used Reiki, used intuitive healing, did surrogate Energy Psychology and learned the Kinyarwandan words for “safe now” and “you are not alone.” I had a translator only about ten minutes, as she was helping Lori with the most severe girl most of the time. The doctor was there when we came in and had just given the girls shots which he said were not working, but it made our work more difficult. One girl I worked with was able to calm enough to tell the translator that she fell and hurt her back and that was why she was still crying. Her cries before had sounded like a baby (and she would have been a baby during the genocide), but now were loud whimpers which did sound more like pain. I was going to do energy work on her back, but another girl began to thrash and scream, so her friends put a mattress on the floor and carried her to it so we could work with her. The two things that seemed to work with her were my doing surrogate Tappas Acupressure Technique and the Energy Medicine life force points on the bottom of her feet. After coughing and seeming like she coughed up something that was stuck in her throat, she calmed down and went to sleep. When she awoke about 20 minutes later she asked for water and was present. Her friends took her to walk outside. I went to work with another girl, training her friend and starting to use energy work. She was calming, but still sobbing. The principal decided to take all the crying girls to the hospital because they were triggering the other girls. Lori and I knew we were making progress, but we also know we are there for only a few days and they are there all the time. Sixteen girls ended up in the hospital. The community officials from the local village were called, and promised to provide whatever was needed for the girls and the school over the weekend. We taught our eleven (our most traumatized girl was in Kigali for an appointment—another miracle) how to breathe and hold someone in trauma, and practiced all of the trauma healing techniques they know to date on themselves so they can help over the weekend. There are over 150 new students there this year. The principal who was at the school for all the past years that Lori has been there, Pastor Seth, and who has been trained by her left this year, and there is a new principal who has had no training. The Headmaster, Rev. Thoms, who runs the program with Lori was gone to Uganda until Sunday night. Had either of them been there last night we feel confident there would have been a different outcome.

I am so grateful for all the training I have had in my own healing, Energy Psychology and Energy Medicine, and intuitive healing. Even with all of that, there is no way I could think of what to do. I had to allow a higher power to direct me. In a situation like that, I didn’t care what the other girls thought about the weird pose I was in or that I was tapping on one girl’s hand or that I closed my eyes and smoothed my hands down her back. I had some struggle to keep focused on love and seeing the girls whole and calm. Hearing and seeing the unbelievable pain and terror they were in and having my own momentary flashbacks to scenes from the movies “Hotel Rwanda” and “Beyond the Gates” brought up anger at the perpetrators that I had to clear as quickly as I could. I am now even more dedicated to teaching as many of the students as possible, and as many people in Rwanda as possible to use Energy Psychology, mostly EFT, to release trauma symptoms and feelings as early as possible so that they do not get into the space of losing themselves in the past reality. It is very, very difficult to bring someone back from that. I am also even more in awe of those who have healed and forgiven.

I want to mention another aspect that was very disturbing from our time in the dorm. The mattresses are about five inch foam, most of them smashed down, stained, many of them with big hunks torn out. I would not be able to lie on them for more than five minutes. The sheets are worn thin and stained. None of them match (I’m sure they don’t care about that, but I’d notice). It would take $4,000 to replace the mattresses. One donor has raised $1,000 for mattresses so far. I’m going to put the link to my First Giving page in case any of you know of an angel, or many angels, who could help with this. Here is the link: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/kathryn-brewer/create-global-healingproject-light.