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.