Umuganda

A Note from Jessy

Every last Saturday of the month, Rwandans are required by the government to go out and work in local community service projects. So as a part of our time here in Kigali, we joined with the crowds today to dig a new road through a nearby neighborhood. Beginning at eight in the morning, we used shovels and hoes to carve out the road. Though we only worked for two hours, the rest of the group will continue working until midday.

Personally, this seems like a good idea to bring back to the States -- require everyone to clean up their neighborhood every month to improve the aesthetics of the cities. I'm not sure our government could ever motivate anyone enough to actually do that though. . .

But anyway. . . we worked for two hours digging through red African dirt, which I'm convinced is different than American dirt because African dirt (amazingly) gets everywhere and soaks into clothes and shoes and hair and everything. The experience was so cool though, because all of the neighborhood people come together and, while they're working, they talk and laugh together. We got some good pictures of us among all the people, but it's still hard for me to feel like we can connect with people because of the language difference. It's pretty funny, actually, because we know a few phrases in Kinyarwanda and then we (hopefully) know English and a little bit of French, so we try to carry on conversations throwing out various languages. I have to laugh when we use this method. . .