FVA Orphanage

On our second day of orientation we were picked up early and headed a short way out of the city into rural Kigali to visit an orphange being built by FVA. Part of the programme fee that we paid goes directly to the construction of this orphange. There was a marked change to the landscape and the surroundings the further away from the city we got. Fields of produce, basic farms and small shacks lined the dusty red dirt roads. The poverty was more apparent and children wandered barefoot and in dirty clothes. As we pulled up to the site children wide eyed and smiling appeared from houses and looked on curiously at us, the muzungo. The orphanage is in the early stage of construction and is being built on a large piece of land. A few local families are using part of the land to grow vegetables and beans. Some of this produce feeds their familes and the rest goes to the other FVA programmes, partner orphanages and the volunteer house. We watched on fascinated as women sifted husks and dirt from beans which were laying on tarpulins drying in the sun. The sons of one of the ladies were adorable, the youngest in particular. He looked about 3 years old, barefoot with big brown eyes and eating raw corn on the cob. The children loved the attention, happily taking our hands and showing us around "their" dirt patch. They happily posed for photos and excitedly insisted we show them the image on the camera screen after each photo. It made me smile when I asked the ladies sifting beans if they were happy for me to take a photo of them and they too excitedly posed for the camera and giggled seeing the photos of themselves. We later found out that one of these ladies and her two sons, the ones we had been playing with, have nowhere to live so sleep in the field, taking shelter in the tin tool shed on rainy nights. The youngest child was was actually 5 years old and malnutrition had serverly stunted his growth.
We spent the afternoon at the FVA offices where we met Peace who will be our interpreter and some of the ladies we will be counselling and working with. As it was Tuesday the ladies were busy weaving baskets, this activity the income generating component of the Gender Based Violence Programme. The ladies were lovely and welcomed us with warm Kinyarwanda greetings.
Axx