Time to go...

Come awake, come alive
Common sense we survive
Then hey, hey, down the road we go
You might learn something
You never know
But anyway you’ve got to go.

--Paul Simon, “Look At That”


It’s almost time to go, but not without saying thanks…



…to Dr. Ann Kao for this wonderful photo of the ARC Rwanda team taken after a celebratory lunch at the Car Wash Restaurant in Kigali.

… to Barry Wheeler, ARC Rwanda Country Director, for his patience, kindness, mentoring and friendship.

…to the Camp Managers who received me so graciously in their homes and supported our work in their camps.

…to Christine Tchenah for taking time away from her business, home and family to teach invaluable new skills to our refugee clients.

…to the IGP Coordinators—Anitha, Louise and Theophile—for their hard work and dedication to improving the most vulnerable of lives.

…to the rest of ARC Rwanda staff for all that they do every day to make our work here possible.

…to my family and friends for encouraging me to be here.

…and to everyone who has contributed to this work with their thoughts, prayers, time and money. You truly are making a difference.

Looking Smart.

When our new groups at Kiziba Camp arrived at the office this week to receive their first grants, I noticed that many of them were exceptionally well dressed.

This could be surprising, since the clients for our Income Generation Program are among the poorest and most vulnerable of the camp population.

But Anitha explained to me that in Congolese culture it is very important to “look smart” for an occasion such as this, to show as well as to command respect. It is so important in fact that one might borrow or even rent suitable clothing.

Although these refugees came to the office to collect money, I think you will agree that the looks on their faces as they were leaving were priceless.

Good Company.

My son Steven arrived in Rwanda last Thursday for a ten-day visit, and as you can imagine this has lifted my spirits tremendously.

We spent the Genocide Memorial Weekend visiting sites in Kigali and elsewhere so that he could get a feel for the country and what has happened to its people.

Today we will head to the field. Two days in Nyabiheke Camp followed by two days in Gihembe, and back to Kigali on Friday.

These will also be my final visits to these camps for this trip, just a quick check in to know that things are running smoothly with our little program and to give Steven a look at all of the work that we have been doing.

I’m leaving the laptop behind on this field trip, so will be in touch when we return to Kigali. See you soon.

Why Are These Women Laughing?

At the end of today’s marketing workshop for the groups involved in making these colorful bags out of nylon thread, I asked the women whether some of them would be willing to participate in a role playing exercise to practice their selling skills.

Someone had told me that in this culture this technique would not work.

As you can see, they were wrong.

The Cruelest Month.

It is April.

This is Rwanda.

T.S. Eliot wrote “The Wasteland” in 1922.

How could he have known?

“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain…

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust…

“Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock…

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

“In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain…”

Goodbye, Gihembe Camp.

When I asked my colleague Theophile about the training schedule for my final morning at Gihembe Camp, he told me that the refugees had requested some time to be able to say thank you and farewell.

I knew from other such occasions that this would be in some ways the most difficult part of my stay in the camp, saying goodbye to people about whom I have come to care a great deal and whom I may never see again. And this time was more emotional than most because of the unexpected arrival of Devote, who had made the three-hour trip from Butare by taxi bus to see me, Bernard and Theophile, and to wish me a safe journey.

Struggling to span three languages at once, I tried to explain to the refugees how much more they do for me than I could ever possibly do for them, and the many lessons that I have learned by being with them for even this short time.

But in the end, I think that the words on the handmade drawing that they presented to me say it best:

“What you have done for me shows that you love me.”

Thank you, refugees of Gihembe Camp. À la prochaine.

Rainy Season.

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

--William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”









The big rainy season seems to have arrived in Rwanda. Even here in Kigali where it is so often hot and sunny, I have awakened today to the kind of rainy Saturday morning that tempts you to do nothing more ambitious than make coffee, grab a newspaper and go back to bed.

But the rain is badly needed in this country and especially in its capitol city, where a shortage of water during the dry season can mean that even those who live in modern houses with plumbing and electricity that work most of the time must carry their water home in jerry cans just like the refugees in the camps.

I’m sure it is raining this morning in Byumba as well, watering the thousands of tree and vegetable seedlings that our IGP group is cultivating in the nursery at Gihembe Camp. This activity was started by a group of elderly refugees, who when asked what they were capable of doing said, “We can tend the land.” After all, this is what they have done for most of their lives in Congo, where both land and rainfall are plentiful.

They used the money from their grant to build the nursery that you see here and to purchase seeds and other supplies. Within a very short time the activity has expanded to the point where they are hiring other refugees to help them with their work.

So as I sit inside on this damp and dreary Saturday, I think of all of them on the hillside, tending their land, appreciating the rain and the mercy that it shows.

Devote.

Some of you who have seen my photos from last summer may remember this young woman whose name is Devote. She is now 20 years old and grew up in Gihembe Camp from the age of 11. She was an excellent student in the school in the camp and the head of the girls’ organization.

For two years Devote has worked as a Refugee Assistant in the Income Generation Program, but she has told me that her ambition is to continue her education at the University and to study to become a doctor.

She may get her wish. When I arrived at Gihembe last week I was told that Devote had just left for Butare, the home of the National University of Rwanda. She is among a handful of refugee students to be awarded university scholarships by the United Nations. I was sad not to be able to say goodbye and wish her well, but very proud and thrilled for her and for the opportunity that she has earned.

Bon travail, Devote, et bonne route.

Sunday in Nyamirambo.

Nyamirambo was one of the first parts of Kigali to be settled, and now it is a bustling commercial district typically African and far different from the sedate and heavily fortified expatriate neighborhood that adjoins it. This afternoon I had a chance to spend a few hours in Nyamirambo as a local, and while this isn’t a story of the refugee camps I thought that you might be interested in how at least a few women passed a Sunday afternoon in Kigali.

The smiling woman in the red t-shirt is named Joy. She is the housekeeper for Barry Wheeler, ARC Country Director and my frequent weekend host. I had told Joy that I would like to get a pedicure this weekend—actually, I was in desperate need of one having walked through the camps in my Teva sandals for the past two months. So we agreed that this afternoon she would take me to Musa’s salon in Nyamirambo, nearby where she lives.

Musa’s salon is clearly among the popular in the quartier. Musa himself is a handsome, bearded Ugandan man who obviously enjoys being surrounded by the somewhat vain and appearance conscious women who fill his shop. Needless to say, I was the only one with white skin and for that reason was a major attraction during the two and a half hours that I sat there having not only my feet but also my hands massaged, smoothed and polished.

Two of Joy’s friends and fellow ARC staff, Miriam and Christine, stopped by and I was able to get a photo of them before I had to put my camera away. But there were at least a dozen other women who came to sit, talk, and spend time together in the typical African way.

A leisurely walk home was the perfect end to a few hours that lifted the small cloud of homesickness that I was feeling when I woke up this morning and replaced it with the warmth and companionship of an unscripted African afternoon.

Women Who Work.

When one of my African friends describes the philosophy behind our program, he is fond of saying that we encounter a person who can barely raise her load as far as her knees and help her so that she is able to lift it onto her head. From there she must carry it the rest of the way herself.

Of course the person carrying the load is usually a woman. In one of the photos that you see here, the woman is Riziki, a Refugee Assistant in the Income Generation Program at Nyabiheke Camp. I took this photo one day after we had all finished work, when Riziki passed by the office on her way to her second job selling vegetables in the market.

The woman weighing potatoes had just carried more than 20 kilograms (see scale) of potatoes on her head from the town market uphill to the Gihembe Camp, where she will sell them as part of a trading group.

And the barefoot woman with the rake was in the middle of tending a vegetable terrace where she and her colleagues have established an amazing nursery and garden on the hill below Gihembe Camp.

To be fair to the men, they were working, too, but the largest things that you will see most of them carrying on their heads are their hats, which are de rigueur especially for the older ones. The man you see here is a friend from my last visit, who dressed in his Sunday best and came to find me when he heard that I was in the camp.

If you want to have a glimpse of what it is like to be here, just spend a moment studying the faces of these refugees and try to imagine yourself in their place.

Helping to make the load easier to carry is the least we can do.



P.S. I apologize if the photos are out of order—I haven’t yet figured out how to control that function in the blog template—but I hope that from the descriptions I’ve given you will understand what you are seeing.

In Case You Were Wondering...

Yes, I am enjoying this work, immensely. And the people you see here are some of the reasons why.

This picture was taken after one of our training sessions for new IGP clients at Gihembe Camp. The man on my left is Bernard, himself a refugee and a teacher in our program, and the women are clients.

During the past three days at Gihembe I have learned and photographed enough for several blog postings. Now I just need to write the accompanying notes. So stay tuned, and enjoy!

"You Are Welcome."

This is what my Rwandese friends and colleagues always say to me when I arrive at their homes, at the office, or at the camp. They say it whether I have been gone for an hour or for a month. And I truly believe that they mean it.

So now here I am, back in Rwanda after a very lovely break in London, and feeling welcomed by one and all.

The next few weeks will be filled with homecomings and farewells, a blend of emotions that I already know will cast a different light on the work that I am doing here and the urgency that I feel to do it as well and as completely as possible before I step back on the plane to Minnesota at the end of April.

I’ll be moving around a lot in the coming weeks, so will update as often as I am able. It has been an incredible journey so far and it is great having you along.

Mile 13.1

It is hard to believe but we have arrived at the halfway point of this particular marathon and the water stop up ahead looks like London. I will be spending ten days there reconnecting with my family before returning back to Rwanda on March 6 for the second half of the journey.

I leave here with a heightened awareness of the elements of privilege and good fortune that allow me to travel freely and at will. I am most grateful for all of that, and committed to using it well.

See you soon.

A Sign from God?

The other day a small child ran to the front of the room in one of my training sessions and threw his arms around my legs in the kind of two-year-old hug that is familiar to parents and grandparents everywhere.

But Rwanda is not everywhere, and neither is Nyabiheke Camp, and it is rare for anyone, even children, to engage in such an open display of trust and affection.

Theodore told me later that this was a very good sign.

“If small children and old people love you, then it means that god loves you. Small children know, because they have seen god more recently, and old people know because they will be seeing him soon.”

However this notion fits with your own particular belief system, I hope that you can appreciate, as I did, the symmetry of it. I only wish that as you are reading those words you could hear the wonderful French African accent with which they were spoken. Actually, I know that some of you can.

We do not have to look far to find small children and old people at Nyabiheke Camp. God seems to have many messengers there and we can only hope that they will put in a good word for us.

Slowly By Slowly.

This is one of my favorite sayings in Africa. It describes so many things here—the way of walking, the pace of change, the
mental framework that those of us from the so-called developed world do well to adopt if we are to be happy and effective in our work.

This expression conveys no value judgments, just the realities of a culture that keeps time by the progress of the sun and measures the distance between places by the time that it takes to go on foot.

So slowly by slowly, the Income Generation Program at Nyabiheke Camp has arrived at an important moment, when we begin distributing our small grants to the groups who have shown the initiative to organize and the willingness to work together to help themselves.

The women that you see in the photo had just received their grant, and you can see on their faces how proud and happy they are.

The groups are undertaking many different activities, including soap making, tailoring and trading. With your help, all of them will have a chance to try, and slowly by slowly, most of them will succeed.

Thank you.

Valentine's Day.

Yes, Virginia, they do celebrate Valentine's Day in Rwanda. Here is how:

Our housekeeper put a vase of fresh flowers in the living room.

Our driver sent a text message to his girl friend who was still on night duty in the Health Center.

And a full moon in a clear sky over Nyabiheke Camp relieved the darkness for at least one night.

My love to you all. Happy Valentine's Day.

The Africa Cup.

In celebration of the conclusion of the Africa Cup of Nations Soccer Tournament this week, I offer a photo of my own “Africa cup,” crafted by Sarah Dudgeon of Wisconsin and given to me by Ann Pifer, owner of The Grand Hand Gallery in St. Paul, Minnesota (see link).

This is one of my treasured coffee mugs at home in Minnesota, and I brought it to Africa with me for comfort and inspiration. It has provided both, surviving the trip from Afton to Gituza and all of the bumpy roads in between.

So thanks to Sarah and Ann and all who enhance our lives with truly beautiful gifts from the heart. That includes all of you, who have made it possible for us to be here making a difference for people who are more like ourselves than we may have any way of knowing.

A toast to you, from my Africa cup and from me.

Three Thousand Words.

With apologies for the greenish light that prevails inside our plastic sheeted classroom, here are three training session photos which I hope will explain a great deal about what we are doing with our Income Generation Program at Nyabiheke Camp.

The white board depicts the “Circle Training” concept that we are using to help our IGP participants to think about the whole cycle of acquiring materials, making a product (in this case, soap), allocating income and profit among many possible uses, and deciding how rapidly they can afford to expand their businesses.

In the next photo you see one of our IGP Refugee Assistants, Riziki, explaining the program to a group of elderly women while IGP Coordinator Louise Bodji looks on. Riziki is an amazingly strong woman—both emotionally and physically—who works all day each day with our program, then at 5:00 hoists a bucket of tomatoes to balance on top of her head (no hands, thank you) and goes off to the market to sell.

Finally, there is a photo of a group of women who attended one of the orientation sessions for vulnerable persons and decided to form a group together.

I wish that all of you could be here for just one of these training sessions to experience for yourself the energy, the excitement, and the appreciation that is so evident in everyone. Thank you, merci, murakoze from us all.

It Could Be Harder.

Today at lunch when I was telling our Camp Manager about my meeting with a group of refugees this morning I happened to mention that many of them had business experience from their lives in Congo, before they became refugees. This is very helpful for our program since they understand the concepts of buying, selling, manufacturing, keeping records, earning a profit, saving, reinvesting in the business and so forth.

Theo told me that when he worked with ARC in Sudan he had to explain to his groups there the reasons why they needed to take the soap that they had made to market in order to sell it. They seemed to think that if people needed soap they would find out where soap was being made and go there to buy it. Theo asked them what they would do if they had a cow that they wanted to sell and they replied that they would leave the cow at home, then go to market and describe the cow to the people they met there.

So, this work with all of its challenges could always be even more difficult. I cannot imagine that it could be more rewarding. My warmest greetings and deepest thanks to all of you for making this program possible.

Chimes of Freedom.

Far between the city sundown and midnight’s broken tones,
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder was crashing,
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sound,
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing.
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on their unarmed road of flight
And for each and every underdog soldier in the night,
We gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

--Bob Dylan


Thanks to the library of music on my laptop I’m able to listen now and then to some familiar songs, which often take on new meaning in this distant land.

This past weekend it was Bob Dylan, the album “No Direction Home,” which includes one of the best versions of “Chimes of Freedom” that I’ve heard. It keeps running through my head as I think about our refugees, the fighting that sent them here, and the hope that they have to return home soon to at least some sort of freedom.

One Day, One Life.

When I go to the camp in the morning I try to remind myself that all that I have ahead of me is this one day of my life, to do what I can to make some other lives a little bit better.

Today I met with a group of some of Nyabiheke Camp’s most vulnerable refugees—elderly widows, orphaned teenagers, old men, those with physical handicaps that include missing or misshapen limbs. I told them that although we call them vulnerable, they must be among the most courageous and resourceful of all of the refugees to have made it all the way to Nyabiheke from their far away homes in Congo.

The teenagers are to me the most heartbreaking. Small children can always find someone to care for them, but in this culture a 15 or 16 year old is viewed as an adult, even though we all know that deep inside they are still children and in need of love, guidance and support. I am hoping that through our program they can gain some skills and self confidence that might have a chance of keeping the boys from picking up a weapon to fight or the girls from giving birth to yet more children.

I have no photos to show you of this group, since I am very reluctant to point my camera at people who may feel exploited. But I want you to know that as they filed out of the room each and everyone took my hand and thanked me—and you—for our help.

So for this day of this life, we brought hope and encouragement. Thank you.

Learning to make body lotion.

These are some photos of the body lotion training that I observed on Monday at Gihembe Camp. Ever since I did business training there last year we have been conducting skills training workshops to give the participants in the Income Generation Program the opportunity to learn how to manufacture products that they can sell in the camp and in local markets.

The beautiful woman in the blue dress is Christine Tchenah, the wife of our Camp Manager, who came all the way from her home in Benin to volunteer as a skills trainer with our program. She is also teaching the refugees how to make soap and to weave shopping bags out of nylon thread.

Making body lotion is easy if you can avoid accidents involving hot fires, boiling oil, and the small children who are inevitably underfoot in any gathering of refugee women. I’m happy to report that our training was accident free and that everyone walked away with a small container of body lotion that had been made in front of their eyes. The key ingredients are vegetable oil, candles and scent, and the only equipment required is a pot, a big wooden spoon, and some containers to hold the lotion when it is finished.

The next step for this group will be a business training session where we will attach costs to the ingredients, talk about the selling price in the market, and help the refugees to figure out how to make and use the profits from their enterprise.

Kiziba Homecoming.

It is hard to describe the feelings that I had as we came over the hill and saw Kiziba Camp in the distance, a sad but familiar sight that reminded me that while I was busy with my life these past six months since my last visit here these refugees were surviving day by day in a difficult and sometimes overwhelming struggle against poverty, dependence and despair.

At the same time I was very excited about seeing my friends from the IGP, the ones whose names I had learned, whose stories I had heard, and whose courage I had shared with my friends and supporters back home.

So here they are for you to meet, some of the people of Kiziba Camp--Tisay, Dancille, Charlotte and Jean Luc--who welcomed me back with warm greetings and many hugs and even a few tears. They are still there, they are still brave, and they are so very grateful that we have not forgotten them.

A School Without Walls.

There are more than 1500 school age children at Nyabiheke Camp, between the ages of 6 and 16. The school year in Rwanda begins in January and we had all hoped that there would be a school in the camp in time to start the year. But bureaucratic delays have intervened, and the children are still waiting.

And so with the support and encouragement of our Camp Manager, the refugees have taken matters into their own hands, the teachers among them organizing and teaching classes for all of the school-aged children. Thirty classes with 50 students each meet every day under the pine trees on a hill in the camp using supplies provided by UNICEF. We stopped briefly on our drive down the hill to greet the students, and they in turn greeted us with singing.

The importance of this informal schooling cannot be overstated. In addition to learning, the children have adult supervision for much of the day. The refugee teachers have a purpose when they get up in the morning. Other refugees and our Camp Manager have organized after school activities such as soccer and scouting. The whole feel of the camp is different without the large gangs of idle kids that I saw here last summer when the camp was brand new.

Even on this remote and rocky hillside in Rwanda, help comes to those who help themselves.

And finally, Nyabiheke Camp.

And here is a photo of me with my IGP team--Louise, Riziki, and Christine. We are standing in front of our office in the camp where we will work together selecting groups, distributing grants, and providing business advice.

Yesterday after 10 days in country I finally arrived at Nyabiheke Camp, where I will be working for the next month or so to support the implementation of the Income Generation Program. Thanks to the efforts of the staff here, many groups have begun to form doing sewing, soap making and various forms of what they call "petit commerce." My role will be to help organize the selection of groups that are truly in need of our grants and can put them to use effectively, to support the staff in the selection and training of those groups, and to learn as much as I can from all of them about the work that they are doing.

The camp is a vibrant and exciting place and the refugees there seem to feel inspired to take responsibility for themselves. This is a great contrast to the culture of dependency that I have seen in other camps and it is very encouraging.

Thanks to all who are supporting this work. I wish that you could have been with me yesterday to be greeted by our groups and to see the difference that we make just by showing up. Bless you all.

Training Days.

It's been a busy week of training sessions at the ARC office in Kigali. The group that arrived Monday morning consisted of two Camp Managers, two IGP Coordinators, three Refugee Assistants, and a special volunteer who is working with us on skills training. I have had to do my best to carry on the training in French after establishing that it was the language understood and spoken by the most people. Fortunately I have been able to count on Theodore for a lot of help with interpreting, and the group has been very patient as I have searched for words and resorted to miming.

We have covered a number of topics related to the program and the teamwork has been terrific. Our big creative breakthrough came yesterday afternoon when we came up with the idea of holding an IGP "job fair" at Nyabiheke Camp to introduce the program to the camp population and familiarize the refugees with the wide range of income generating activities that they might want to undertake. I leave for the camp this afternoon, and getting this organized and implemented will keep me very busy for the next couple of weeks.

My colleague Dr. Susan Briggs arrived from Boston on Monday and she is eager to get to the field as well. She has tremendous energy and enthusiasm for the Income Generation Program and is also planning to assist at the Health Center.

Our internet connections at the house in the field are uncertain at best, but I will try to keep my journal up to date and add new postings when I am able. In the meantime, I would love to hear from you and hope that you are enjoying the story.

All my best,

Louise

Africa Magic

If you’ve never spent an evening watching bad Nigerian soap opera movies on this oddly popular satellite channel, you really haven’t missed anything.

But if you’ve never spent an evening in the company of an elegant and charming gentleman from Benin and his equally elegant and charming wife, you have missed a great deal. Theodore Tchenah is ARC’s Camp Manager at Nyabiheke Camp. His wife, Christine, has joined us for a few months to lend her expertise in soap making, weaving, and other practical skills to our fledgling program.

It just so happens that Theodore is a loyal fan of the Africa Magic channel, and as he told me tonight, the movies always give us a lesson. For example from this evening’s selection, I believe the lesson would be don’t try to have a pair of hit men kill your husband or you might end up going to jail.

The point being, cultures clash, and then they don’t. Somewhere in there it is a soap opera and we can’t resist tuning in to see how it all turns out.

Pie in the sky.

Just as I was finishing my packing on Sunday back in Minnesota, I had a visit from my friend and Afton neighbor Anne Dimock. Anne is also a writer, and she's just published a book called "Humble Pie: Musings on what lies beneath the crust." In addition to two copies of the book, she sent me off to Africa with Crisco and Gold Medal Flour so that I could learn to bake pies in the third world.

Sleeping on airplanes has never been very easy for me, so as we flew endlessly towards the Equator through the night sky from Amsterdam I opened Anne's book and began to read. I closed the book as we were touching down in Nairobi, satisified with having savored every crumb of what I would describe in the most positive terms as "literary comfort food." I'd been feeling pretty far away from Minnesota and Anne's essays helped to shorten the distance.

So thank you, Anne, for this, and for your support of our work in Rwanda. I'll let you know how the pies turn out.

For those who don't know Anne and her work, I've posted a link to her website for you to follow.

Into Africa Once More.

You know you've stepped into a different world when the seedy little transfer lounge at the Nairobi Airport looks like a peaceful oasis at 7:00 in the morning. Surprisingly full, even at this early hour, every chair and bench occupied by weary travelers waiting to connect to the array of exotic sounding places that are Africa. Mogadishu. Entebbe. Kigali. Kilamanjaro. Names that conjure violence, adventure or romance, but which on this Wednesday morning are just places that people are going with their luggage and their laptops.

As for me, I will be in Kigali by noon, looking forward to a hot shower and a nap.

Let the adventure begin.

Good news!

In the midst of the rush of packing and last minute preparations, I was thrilled to spend some time talking to Dave Beal, Business Columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who wrote a wonderful story highlighting our work in Rwanda. You can read it by clicking on the appropriate item in the Links column of my blog.