On our last full day in Rwanda we made our most memorable trip. This trip was to visit Umuhoza, our sponsored child through Compassion International. It was because of the visit to see Umuhoza that we had planned the trip in the first place. I could not help but think that morning that everything else had been so special on the trip. How ironic it would be if the initial purpose of the trip did not live up to expectations, when everything else had exceeded any thoughts or expectations I might have had. Fortunately, this trip like everything else with our visit would be quite special as well.
Compassion had asked us to contact someone in the Kigali office to arrange for our excursion to Marumbi. Contacting the office had been no problem, especially having Ebralie to make the calls and arrangements for us. The morning of our visit to Murambi, John from Compassion met us at the Guest House and drove us to see Umuhoza.
The village of Murambi was about 70 miles northeast of Kigali, off the highway that led to Uganda. There were no major cities on this road, so the vehicle and foot traffic was far lighter on this trip than it had been when we went to Remera. The land this direction was much flatter, but it was curious to me that the fields were less populated. After about an hour and a half, we had made it to the small village of Murambi. John had to ask for directions several times to find the Compassion facility via the dirt back roads of the village. As we drove slowly through the rutted roads, children came to see the large SUV making its way along. They soon spotted me and Andrea, and began running behind us excitedly. They were yelling “Muzungo, Muzungo!” as they smiled and laughed following our SUV, and Ebralie began laughing. I asked Ebralie what they were yelling that was so funny. She said they were yelling “White People, White People!” We all joined in the laughter.
When we finally reached the Compassion facility, there were still about a dozen children from the village that were with the truck. Andrea and I got out, and suddenly the children became much more shy. We greeted them with “amakoru”, and they smiled to hear us speak Kinyarwanda. We were then met by the folks from Compassion, and they brought us in a small office. They told us a bit about the program there. Compassion has about 180 projects in Rwanda, each serving about 300 children, so Compassion helps about 50,000 children and their families in Rwanda. We were shocked and a bit touched to learn that we were the first sponsors to ever visit this project in Murambi. We might well have been the first “muzungo” some of the village children had ever seen.
This particular Compassion project was in conjunction with the Pentecostal Church. We learned that Compassion did not start and build its own stand-alone projects. Rather, they partnered with the local churches to serve the local children. It was interesting that the churches seemed to work in a very cooperative fashion. One village might have an Anglican Church, while the next might have a Presbyterian Church, and so on. There seemed not to be competition but cooperation as they all had the common goal of serving the local population. Compassion said that while they worked out of the Pentecostal facilities at this location, they served any children of the community whether they attended that church or not. The aid provided by Compassion included school supplies for the kids, as well as food and financial support for the children and their families. I had asked about Compassion when I met with many people in Kigali, including Francois (the Presbyterian Minister of Education) and Tharcisse (the CPR Director). I was pleased to find that Compassion seemed to have a universal reputation for great work in Rwanda.
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