Today was another beautiful day at the Gisenyi school here in the lush, hazy mountains of Rwanda. The thing that touched my heart the very most was actually a running conversation I had with a Rwandan student named Peter. He is one of our translators, and his real name is not Peter, but Minani, which means “eight,” because he was the eighth child to come into his family. He helped in our music sessions today - playing the African drums and encouraging the children to dance more extravagantly, which they are very good at once they get past their shyness.
Peter was also interested in learning to play the guitar, and I gladly gave him a very basic lesson. We continued the lesson after lunch, joined by a man from the village who plays the guitar, I think, better than I do! Imagine - way out in the mountains where most of the villagers do not have consistent electricity or running water, and yet somehow this man had learned to play the guitar - and play well! The three of us sat there for nearly two hours, and not a moment of it was I wishing to be elsewhere - this, though an enormous game of Capture the Flag was going on in the soccer field.
Some more precious memories from today . . . Sugar cane came for the children today: a surprise desert before lunch (you would never get away with that in America!). Straight out of the ground, cut into fat 18-inch sticks, complete with yellow bark-like covering. The children were ecstatic - though I’m learning that it doesn’t take much! Oh, and we got some too. Our next feat was figuring out how to eat it. Imagine being given a fat stick, told there was sugar inside, and you just had to chew past the outer layer of wood first. How the children laughed! They did try very sincerely to help, leading by example when they realized how utterly clueless we were, but they couldn’t help giggling outright at the faces we made.
Once I’d been more or less properly instructed in the ways of sugar cane eating and heartily laughed at, I was called over to a grassy knob by three teenage boys. I sat down with them, and we ate our sugar cane - rather, we bit off chunks of the stuff to suck the juice out, then spat the remainder on the ground - and tried to communicate with the limited words we have in common. We also sang “Jesus loves me” - via their request - and tried some others. One of the boys even took me aside and launched into a veritable sermon about how much Jesus loves me and that He came to earth to die and take away my sins. I was speechless.
As I write this, I am sitting here on my bottom bunk with the haziness of a mosquito net pulled down around me, listening to the Africans downstairs singing. And beating out their heart’s rhythm on the drums. I love hearing the Africans sing. I love that they sing with the fulness of their voices - on or off key - I love that they are forever clapping and swaying. Of all the things I am learning to love about Africa, I think it is their music I like best.
