First Day in the Village

If you are not prepared for a long read, please stop here!!
Today we visited the widow we (as a family) sponsor, Constance.
I will start at the very beginning of the trip, we had a brief breakfast and made lunches for everyone, while Cyprien arrived. I was very excited to be going into the village for the first time, BUT was well aware of the driving and walking time... that kind of put me off, but only a little!! The driving and walking time was roughly 5 hours!!!!!!! YIKES!!! So we got started driving, it took us about 20 minutes to get out of Kigali, then we were on a nice, PAVED road. My parents told me that this road goes all the way to Uganda!! So we are on this road okay, and the farther we go, the more beautiful, higher up, and scary it gets!!! Eventually, we were halfway up the mountain, we were in the city of Byumba (is that how you spell it?). It wasn't much of a city really... to me, it didn't even look like a full subdivision!! I was like, "A city, haha, riiiight..." at the end of Byumba, we turned right onto a NON-paved road... lemme tell ya, this road was DEFINITELY the path from HELL!!! There were potholes like no one can imagine, huge bumps with no warning in front of them, it was just big enough for one car with maybe 5 ft. of room, and after that 5 ft. a sheer drop down the mountain!! It was fun on the way there, but on the way back, hoho!! But, I am getting too far along in the story... where were we.... OH yes, the freakish road made by the devil!! On this road we saw some people with bikes carrying at LEAST 50 lbs. on their bikes, on this riddiculous "road"!! When they looked at us they would wave hectically shouting "Mizungu, mizungu!!!!!!!!" As we got even higher on the mountain, the road got smaller, it looked like a walking path!! There were children on the side of the road, maybe 3 years old, all alone, who have probably never seen white people before, looked at us in amazement. And some of the older children (5-9) would chase after us yelling the familiar phrase, "Mizungu, mizungu!!!!!"
Finally, after 3 1/2 hours of driving, we got to a school. Here, the children jumped out of the windows to come and see us up close. The volunteers and teachers were out first (but not out of the windows) they all gave us hugs and some of them spoke a little bit of english. Then when nearly all of the kids were outside, they sang us a song!! It was very cute, but I was very surrounded, and to be completely honest, everyone smelled... really bad... they were all very sweet and cute and nice, but I was glad to get out of that huge group. They all followed us while we walked, and Vienne warned them that he would beat them if they did not get back to school, and when they did not listen, he really did take a stick right off a tree and whacked them!! hard!! It was really funny, but I got scared!!
After walking for 1 1/2 hours, we got to Constance's house. It was very nice and we saw her 1 week old baby. She was ADORABLE, we talked with Constance for awhile and met her children, and it was really great.
On the way to and back from Constance's house, we met people who have been sponsored. I thought to myself, are we getting so large, that we meet people that we work with on the road?? The was back from Constance's house was REALLY difficult, because we were going uphill, for an hour and a half!!!!!!!! It was really crazy and my coughing became a problem, as soon as we got to the school we left because we were all extremely drained. God really got me through today... on my way uphill when I was most tired, I kept thanking God for things that I had to keep my mind and thoughts on positive things!! It worked, thank God!!! I made it and am now very tired, keep up the comments!!
In His Hands,
~*YAmber LynnY*~