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.