a wild time

These photos speak for themselves. We saw over one million wildebeest, lions, lions mating, elephants, baby elephants, giraffes, thousands of zebras, hundreds of warthogs, cheetahs, vultures, crocodiles, hippos- if its in the Lion King, we saw it. We hung out with it over the weekend.

Some moments in your life pass by slowly and you think, "it's never going to get any sweeter than this." This was one of those moments. A truly once-in-a-lifetime, all the cheesy phrases you can think of - that is a safari in Africa during the Great Migration. It was beyond spectacular.

the wildebeests fording the river for their life

hyena pup

tanzania/kenya serengeti/masai mara border

Check them all out here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10200648457430135.1073741835.1121340352&type=1&l=544e993826

There's more to see than can ever be seen and more to do than can ever be done

I am off to KENYA! I will be there for 5 days, doing a 3 day safari sleeping in tents in the Masai Mara. Check it out here.
In anticipation until I get back, Read on about the Great Migration HERE: http://www.phoenix-safaris.com/images/news/Migration%20Update%20Mara%20Siria2013.pdf

But most of you probably relate to it because it was this migration of Wildebeest that killed Mufasa.




Wish me great adventures, can't wait to share photos and stories when I get back!

until God sends us somewhere else

One of the most popular posts on this blog from when I was living in Madrid, Spain was a series I did on my favorite people. And so, a few snippets of the amazing people that I have met in my six weeks in Rwanda. Meeting people is absolutely one of my top three favorite things about traveling. And this summer a few people I've had limited interactions with have had a BIG impact on me.

• Akagera Couple - a woman who developed curriculum for USAID and her husband, who have been living in Rwanda for one year but have been living in Africa or the Middle East for 27 years. When I asked them if when they got married they had any idea they would live overseas for most of their marriage, he responded, "We didn't know at the altar, but God made it pretty clear shortly after." And I just love that. When asked how much longer they would be in Rwanda, he chirped immediately, "Well, we'll be here until God sends us somewhere else." I just loved that. Aren't we all just somewhere until God sends us somewhere else?
• Mimi - Mimi lived in the DRC as a missionary kid for the first 15 years of her life. Then she went to boarding school in the US and didn't see her parents for many years. It could take a year for a letter to get to DRC from the US in the 50's, if it even got there at all. She told us some incredible stories and I could have listened to her talk for hours. I said to a friend of hers how impressed I was and that she should write a book! She responded plainly, "She has!" Click here for her story and devotional books. Her husband, a doctor and professor of medicine for the University of Colorado is in Rwanda working for the Clinton Foundation to help educate doctors in Rwanda to promote better family health practices. 
• Two high schoolers with such maturity and wisdom far beyond their years in Rwanda for several weeks to help Mimi with her projects and around the house. They have such bright futures ahead! 
• A girl who is here in Rwanda designing the sowing projects for a women's cooperative with her fashion design degree. SO COOL!!
• Missionary Family #1 - Gary has been here in Rwanda for 27 years. It goes without saying that he has an incredible story about coming here on a short term mission trip, and never leaving. Read on HERE.
• Missionary Family #2- A couple who have lived in Southern California and Oxford, UK and now have their two children in Rwanda. When they first met, they had no idea that he would chase a Masters in Divinity in Oxford, that would lead them to WorldVenture, that would lead them to Rwanda. These missionaries host a school for preachers. Since Rwanda's education system is built on memorization, the average Rwandan doesn't know how to use the critical thinking portion of his or her brain. This blows my mind, because as a law student, the ONLY part of your brain you use is critical thinking. So the preachers here start preaching to churches, only on what they have memorized or feel "called" to talk about, but have no formal biblical education. Very interesting the work they do, and how it can have such a huge impact on Rwandans whose faith is stronger than most faith, but whose biblical knowledge and spiritual foundation is lacking.
  Read MORE here. Really cool work, interesting people and this organization is the one who provided us a house to live in while in Rwanda.
• Devin - fluent in Kinyarwanda (I cannot overemphasize the impressive nature of this statement because this language is so impossible) from living in rural Rwanda for two years with the PeaceCorp. She is now in law school at Tulane, and is a delight to spend time with. 
• Mary Ann - a student working on her Masters in Counseling, in Rwanda for a few weeks to host a training session with our IJM counselors. Mary Ann is awesome. She came to Rwanda with open eyes, an open heart and dived right in. She asked some hard-hitting questions, and got us each thinking about God's plan and our futures as she was contemplating her own. Interested in using her gifts for counseling victims of trauma, I am confident that wherever God sends her, she will be a great asset to that community. We were so sad she wasn't here for the whole summer. She also boldly drank an entire glass of fermented milk. You may be thinking, "that's not so impressive," but I couldn't stand within 20 feet of the milk for more than 30 seconds until I got gagged and had to run out of the room. And she drank it! Then survived a three hour drive on bumpy, uneven, dirt roads in the back of the car. She is a champion. We miss you Mary Ann! 
• A girl who works for WorldVision, about my age. She is on a tour of East Africa, spending a few days in each country visiting WorldVision sites. After three sentences, I was green with envy for her job.

The people I have REALLY gotten to know this summer I will "teach you" (as you would say in Spanish) about in my next post.

"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."
-Matthew 9:36-38

Voldemort and 100,000 ghosts

Cambodia, Armenia, Darfur, Sudan, Rwanda...

This land of a thousand hills is also the land of a thousand skulls. This weekend, I went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial and then to two churches outside of the city. One church where 10,000 were murdered mostly with machetes and another church where 5,000 were murdered. The two churches are now home to the skulls, bones, and grave for over 60,000 bodies, inhumanely discarded in April 1994.
I am not ready to write about my experience in these places, and this blog will not be the appropriate outlet for me to share my thoughts and emotions.
There is a lot to say.
There are a lot of questions.
One thing is clear: what happened in 1994 is REAL.
And it is still very much a large part of every day life here.
As I am coming up on less than three weeks until my return to the United States, I ask you kindly to have graciousness with me, as I cope with the traumatic things that I have heard and witnessed, that cannot be shared on this page.
My convictions are strong that the only way to prevent such mass atrocities of gross human violence is to educate ourselves and to shamelessly inform others. Therefore, if you want to know about what I saw at the churches, what I have seen here in relation to this topic, and the questions I am wrestling with, please email me and I am happy to share with you.

"To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."
-Elie Weisel, author of Night in the forward to his book

To say "never forget" is clearly not enough. We must not only remember, but we must find a solution that erodes the political barriers, that solves the questions of limited resources, that eliminates apathy for the plight of someone living on a different continent and deeply commit ourselves to ensuring that our children's generations will not live through such grusome hatred for the sake of hatred.

How many lives will such hatred mercilessly take? 

to relish is both a blessing and a curse, but it is mostly a blessing

"What is it like there??" you've been asking.
Here's the best I've got. A typical weekday around here:
Wake up at 6:30: take a semi-warm shower. The "shower" is actually a tray on the ground against a corner with a loosely hanging curtain that only covers 1 side and leaves the side by the toilet completely exposed for water to go spraying everywhere. But it is a shower and not a bucket, which I am very grateful for.
Get dressed: work attire is business casual, I usually wear a pencil skirt with a nice top and cardigan or dress pants. Women dress very conservatively, professionals are expected to dress smart, and the backs of a woman's knees are the sexiest part of her body. So, shield your eyes America.
Eat breakfast: usually cereal (which costs about $8-10 per box), Mango Juice (a highlight of my day) with a piece of toast and jam if I am extra hungry. Milk comes in fortified Ziplock bags, which is the sketchiest thing ever, but thankfully it also comes in unrefrigerated boxes. Fermented milk is also big in Rwanda, but in the wise words of Shelley, "it tastes like milk with some hoof" so I stay away from that.
Walk to Work: this takes about 10-15 minutes and is about half a mile. It's usually crisp in the morning, by the afternoon it is hot.
8:00 am- Stillness - this is an IJM-wide phenomenom, a time of silence and reflection with God over the work. Taken more seriously at HQ than in the Rwanda office, it is still a highlight of my day. I have been reading through some devotionals that I would encourage you to add to your daily routine. Click here!
It is culturally expected to greet anyone as you walk past them, and with my desk at the very front lobby of the office, the mornings are full of Maramutse! Amakuro? Nmeza. (Good morning! How are you? Good.) to each person that walks in. This continues all day as clients pour into the office, visitors come in for various meetings and staff walks in and out.
I take this time to pray over the staff, IJM work globally, and to journal, read my Bible and pray for anything that comes to mind. Let me know how I can be praying for you by leaving a comment or sending me an email. I will add you to my morning routine!
8:30 am - Staff Devotional begins - Led by a different staff member each day, we usually sing 2-3 songs in either English or Kinyarwanda and take time to reflect over Scripture. Then we take Prayer Requests and Praises. We close with a prayer over all that's just been discussed and a blessing over each of us for the day ahead.
9:15ish - Check Emails, and get right to work on whatever is the most pressing. A few of the projects I've been working on:

• (current project) Preparing IJM for its annual registration with the Rwanda government. IJM activities must be in line with the government's priorities and their envisioned plans for the future of Rwanda. This involves making an "Action Plan" of all of IJMs activities, recording the realized activities from last year and also forecasting for the next years. We are applying for 5-year registration, and fingers crossed, prayers up - this laborious process will be easier next year if we get registered for 5 years. The registration paperwork must be approved by all of IJM's government partners AND by each of the 3 districts of Kigali. It is a huge, laborious process with documents that are 100 pages each.
• Writing stories of our clients for Headquarters to share on www.ijm.org
• Doing legal analysis on the strengths and weaknesses of potential client cases and making a recommendation as to whether or not IJM should accept or reject the case
• Doing legal research in several areas- criminal procedure, evidence law, Child Protection laws
• Preparing the quarterly report for headquarters from each department
• Assessing donor's needs and requirements, and whether or not we are meeting them
• Reporting on our compliance with our Memoranda of Understanding with our government partners
• Inputting cases from hard-copy files into the online case tracking system

We have a nice long lunch break in the middle of the day. If we aren't meeting someone, like the Pepperdine students working at the Ministry of Justice, or girls we have met through church, we usually walk home for lunch.
5:00 pm - on the dot, we all get kicked out of the office.
6:00 pm - The only decent window to talk to my boyfriend, who has been such a trooper to chat with me on his lunch break everyday. A huge highlight of my day!
Then, Carmen and I work out. We do these videos from Hell called Insanity. We have improved though from the first time I did it. But basically I end up laying on the floor sweating, as red as a tomato and thinking "this is what dying feels like."
Next, we usually attempt to scrounge together something for dinner. Sometimes, our house staff cooks for us, sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes we attempt to cook and fail, sometimes we attempt to cook and it is decent. We have learned quite a bit, but its still cooking in Africa and thus is a great gamble. We have made banana bread about 10 times and really have it down. We have also managed to burn rice and nearly set the house on fire. So, hey, you never know.
Sometimes we go do something like go on a walk to the cafe with internet, grocery shop or meet up with friends. Sometimes we watch a few episodes from the DVDs I brought, or read books, or play around on the Internet.
More or less by 10:00 pm, we are both in bed and exhausted.

They say that 9:00 is "Missionary Midnight" because the days are so jam-packed and the work is so mentally and emotionally exhausting. I read child sexual assault cases all day. Lots of words and phrases make me feel like I've been sitting in dirt like a pig rolling around in mud. Time passes quite slow here. It's remarkable because I am cognizant of what I am doing, each word I am typing, everything I am thinking. It's a nice treat to get to relish in a moment and truly appreciate it. Something we rarely, if ever, slow down long enough to do in the US. It is also troublesome to sit with the dirt and the challenges and the obstacles that the office here faces everyday. It is frustrating to not have power or Internet when the work is pressing. Frustrating doesn't even cover the feeling when you read the evidence for a case and then read the perpetrator was acquitted. Or that his sentence was much less than what the law explictly calls for. The time spent waiting on the power to return feels painstakingly slow. The weekends and the nights pass slower than a snail's pace. As it turns out, slow paced life is both a blessing and a curse.

Working for IJM has truly been everything I could have ever dreamed it would be. It has exceeded my expectations in every possible way (and my expectations were high). I love that I crawl into bed knowing that what I did that day could have made a legitimate difference in someone's life. I love the feeling when my head hits the pillow that I have done something with my day that was "worthy of the calling I received." (Eph. 4:1) And I love that I legitimately jump out of bed in the morning to do it all over again the next day. I've even kicked my atrocious snooze habit AND stopped drinking coffee!!
I repeat, I love that I legitimately jump out of bed in the morning to do it all over again the next day.

So, What Did I Miss at YOUR Church on Sunday?

A tale of Two Cities

Asking me to compare Kigali and Kampala is like asking if you prefer day or night. Kigali is quiet, still, clean and pristine. There is no trash anywhere; plastic bags are banned in the county. Military men with AK 47s are poised every hundred yards on major roads. The city is full of staffed security guards stationed at each home, most of which are concealed by a cumbersome gate and overgrown bushes. Selling on the streets is illegal, although it is customary to greet anyone who crosses your path, no one in Kigali does anything to draw attention to oneself. Although, interestingly, drawing great attention to a MUZUNGU is completely normal.

Kampala is alive with energy and excitement. It wasn't until I was there, I realized it had been almost a month since I heard the radio. In Kigali, people listen to talk radio on their phones. In Kampala, music of all kinds is blaring from the cars, restaurants and bars pouring out onto the street. The traffic is chaos, a constant rhythm of honking and brakes screeching. In Kampala, everyone speaks English, with English advertisements decorating each corner; interactions with people flow easily because there is no communication barrier.

I never realized the full extent to which your own personality contributes to whether or not you love a place until I came to Kigali. I have been in love with a lot of places I have been. I have not been in love with Kigali. It wasn't until I visited Kampala that I realized, perhaps its my personality that clashes with Kigali. I love the madness, the chaos, the noise, the pollution, the energy. I am loud, all over the place, full of expressions and full of energy. Rwandans are "buttoned up." Rwandans are reserved. 

But my perspective on Rwanda completely transformed at a traditional Rwandan church this morning.
There we found the energy, the life, the joy of the Rwandan people.

Scratch Sunday School, make it Sunday Morning Zumba with Jesus

Burning calories for Jesus? Tell me more, you say!
This is the scene. The choir is singing at the top of their lungs, shouting the words in joy, then church wide choreography commences. I'm not talking about our dinky little motions for "He came from Heaven to Earth to show the way" oh no, this is legitimate- three steps to the right, JUMP! three quick steps to the left, JUMP! Clapping for such long periods, that if I stopped clapping, my hands stung. And- you have no choice in participating in the cheoreography or you will get run over. The church, about the size of the average American kitchen was filled to the brim, teaming with children. Each bench was so full, cheeks were on top of cheeks. If you decided to stand still instead of moving around with the crowd, you would get knocked over and stepped on like a small animal that falls behind in a stampede.

Between each song, everyone prays out loud. Can you imagine this- if you witnessed 100 prayers all being declared, knowing that God hears and understands each and every word. But more importantly, that he LISTENS and responds to all those prayers. Amazing!

The choir was accompanied by a drum machine, piano. At the end of one song, a huge mosh pit session broke out. One woman took off the sash of her robe and was swinging it in the air like a girl with her shirt on a girls gone wild video. 

The church was filled with children, like little monkeys, clapping and singing along. Two little girls befriended me and taught me the dances for the song. At age six, they blew my skills out of the water. There were about five choirs that each led the church- a women's choir, a boys choir, a children's choir and the choir that had robes. One song had a full-blown choreography routine that was basically the Cha-Cha, luckily it was quick to pick up or I'm sure I would been stampeded. While your body is trying to keep up, your hands aren't dead the whole time. Oh no, your hands have responsibilities too- to be raised above your head, clapping to a complicated rhythm, moving to the beat as your body moves. Every part of your body is worshipping at once. And let me tell you, after four hours of this... it was a better workout than any Zumba class could offer.

Should you feel moved by the sermon or a song, cat calls are welcomed and encouraged. Also, if you've never used your Bible as a drum or tambourine, then you have not used your Bible to its full potential. 

Now it all makes sense! No wonder Rwandans seem so reserved, they are exhausted Monday through Wednesday from Sunday's activity. Then Thursday through Saturday, they are storing up energy to release it all Sunday in a worship, I mean, work-out, I mean worship session. Incredible!!! 

all the little girls I shared a bench with this morning

Do it. But, wear a sports bra and bring banana bread

The Adventure that was Kigali to Kampala

Carmen and I met Shelley (a fellow Pepperdine law student) at 6:30 am and walked to the bus stop together. Minibuses in Kigali are essentially large white vans with movable seats so that every inch of seating can be filled. As we were waiting for a bus to come, a white Corolla rolled up saying "taxi, taxi." After being here for almost four weeks, yesterday was the first time I saw a car with the actual word "taxi" displayed. One of the most mind-boggling things to me is the boldness of the Motos and taxi drivers in Kigali. We can be walking along and have a moto drive up  within inches of our face saying, "Moto, moto?" As if, even though we hadn't flagged him down or expressed any interest in needing a moto at all whatsoever, we would see that the moto was RIGHT there and suddenly realize just how badly we needed one. So this is the game we play, annoyed muzungus versus taxi driver at 6:35 am. "No, we are waiting for the bus. Thank you."
Then we bargained for about ten minutes to get a better deal, as our patience and faith in a bus with three empty seats waned, but the Rwandan's patience and harassment paid off. Angry at the principle of the matter that we just fed the system, but thrilled to be in a cozy unmarked white stranger's car instead of crammed into an unmarked white minibus with 20 strangers. We arrived promptly at checkin, and boarded the bus an hour later. 4 minutes after our scheduled departure, we were off.
It's a large coach bus, about the same height as a double decker and every seat is filled. We got airborne about every 2 minutes or so from the smooth, excellently paved roads (that's sarcasm). It's more like a roller coaster ride than a bus ride for the first hour. All the muscles in my body ached from self-bracing at each hairpin turn to ensure I didn't fall onto my next-seat neighbor. I legitimately wished for a harness like the ones that go over your head and shoulders on a roller coaster. Now, I find it important to tell you, that remarkably, it didn't feel unsafe. In fact, I was in awe of the suspension of the bus as I am of the suspension of any vehicle whose displeasure is life in Kigali.

Looking out of the tinted window, I had a realization. In America, we live on the land. But in Africa, they live OFF the EARTH. Spending time in Africa is like opening the pages of a colorful geography textbook. Want to see what the land looks like tilled by man's bare hands alone? Africa. Want to learn what people eat when they only eat what they grow off the plot of land they own? Rwanda. Sure, Americans use the land for buildings, parking lots, parks. But in Africa, everywhere you go, every panorama your eyes take in, you observe the Earth, lying there open, rugged and raw. Exposed. And there is something beautiful in seeing the Earth and all that it supplies as such a valued source of life. 

Just over an hour into the ride, we come to a stop. People start trickling off the bus, so we follow suit. Then we realize we think maybe we are at the border already. So we frantically fill out our customs forms, stand in what we discern to be the appropriate line and then get shifted over to another line. Fifteen minutes later, we have our passports back. We start standing around, just waiting for everyone to start getting back on the bus, but no one else is really around. Finally, one man says, "Sista, you go to Uganda?" we say, "yes" and he says, "You walk. The bus will find you on the other side."
Walk?! We have to walk to Uganda?? Ooookkkaayy....
So we start, very timidly, walking in what we presume is the direction of Uganda. A man sitting in a plastic chair checks our passports, and ushers us forward. Five minutes of walking later, as we are verbally wondering if this entire thing is a joke, we see a small handwritten sign that says "STOP, Uganda Customs." I hope I am doing a decent job of describing the absurdity of this scene- we've had absolutely no instructions, we have walked into Uganda, the bus is behind us, and we are just floundering wandering along. We determined from the collection of shacks around that our next move is to follow the next line to get our Ugandan visas at what was the most official looking shack of them all.
Sure enough, about ten minutes later, our bus appears, other passengers vaporize and we all load on. And that was that. Customs East African style.

The rest of the ride was more likable to a roller coaster than a bus on a dirt road, although the analogy is still more accurate than what you'd imagine on a bus in the US. I saw spectacular sights along the way. And I am so happy I did it. I'm also quite pleased we decided to fly back to Kigali. Thank the Lord Carmen baked us banana bread the night before the bus. It was all we had for three meals! Also there were no pens to fill the customs forms out to be found. Soo if you ask me how you should get from Kigali to Kampala, and if you should take the bus, my response is..Do it. But come prepared. Sports bra, pen, and a lot of food. 
Oh, and you walk into Uganda, sister.

ELEVEN hours of my life later, we were in Kampala. 

Happy Cultural Tapestry Day!

Read my friend Shelley’s post on her time in Rwanda, called “A Friday Afternoon”:

www.wavesofjustice.com

I finally got to upload pictures from my first few weeks here, so go check those out on Facebook. It takes too much internet to upload them in more than one place.

Just wanted to ask for prayers, as I will be traveling all day Thursday, July 4, and Sunday, July 6^th to and from Uganda on a bus for a very long bus ride. There is a group of Pepperdine students in Kampala, and I want to see them, experience the greatness of Kampala that I’ve been hearing about my whole first year at Pepperdine. I’m really, so excited. I have heard the difference between Uganda and Rwanda is like day and night, so I can’t wait for a new adventure! I’ve done plenty of research, talking to all the right people, and although no bus in the developing world is particularly “safe,” it seems like a completely reasonable trip to make, that thousands make everyday. You know, all those quotes about “enjoying the ride”? Well, I’ll be enjoying it for ten hours from Rwanda to Uganda.

I’ve been thinking about where I spent the last few fourth of Julys

2008: Munich, Germany

2009: Cozumel, Mexico

2010: Sevilla, Spain

2011: Rome, Italy

2012: Madrid, Spain

2013: Kigali, Rwanda to Kampala, Uganda and everywhere in between

I’d say I’ve been enjoying the ride, alright. Oh, I wouldn’t have it any other way. There’s nothing more patriotic than raw appreciation for your own home country. And you didn’t read my last post if you aren’t cognizant of just how appreciative I am of each and every thing these days. But maybe, my version of the fourth of July is becoming less of a day about American patriotism, more about destroying that unfounded ethnocentricity, and more about celebrating my cultural tapestry, many threads of which are very American, and many threads are from many other spectacular places.

Travel is an intensified feeling—maximum thrills per minute and one of the last great sources of legal adventure. Travel is freedom. It’s recess and we need it…

Connecting with people carbonates your experience. Extroverts have more fun.

If your trip is low on magic moments, kick yourself and make things happen.

 If you don’t enjoy a place, maybe you don’t know enough about it. Seek the truth. Recognize tourist traps. Give the culture the benefit of your open mind. See things as different, but not better or worse. Any culture has plenty to share.

Of course, travel, like the world, is a series of hills and valleys.

Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic.

 If something’s not to your liking, change your liking. Travel can make you a happier American, as well as a citizen of the world. Our Earth is home to six and a half billion equally precious people. It’s humbling to travel and find that other people don’t have the “American Dream”—they have their own dreams. Europeans like us, but with all due respect, they wouldn’t trade passports. Thoughtful travel engages us with the world. In tough economic times, it reminds us what is truly important. By broadening perspectives, travel teaches new ways to measure quality of life. Globetrotting destroys ethnocentricity, helping us understand and appreciate other cultures. Rather than fear the diversity on this planet, celebrate it. Among your most prized souvenirs will be the strands of different cultures you choose to knit into your own character. The world is a cultural yarn shop, and Back Door travelers are weaving the tapestry. Join in! –Rick Steves, Europe Through the Back Door

Happy 4^th of July, y’all! <3