pigs and kids

I'm glad that Ian wrote about the lovely Conservative Baptist man that we met. He should have known that we weren't his type when he saw that I was in jeans at church. I avoid men like that but I don't avoid all westerners. Tonight, Ian and I are venturing out to the American Club. I've never been and have always been turned off by the fact you have to have an American passport to enter but it seems like something I should experience at least once. They have free movies on Fridays and there's not much else to do in Kigali so we'll try it.

Our days are getting busier so it's nice to relax sometimes. The evaluations for Kabuga and Gasabo need to be done soon but everything moves slower here and we haven't collected all of the ones we need. We don't always get accurate information either. Many of the widows had children after the genocide but don't have husbands. Very few men will marry a widow and so these women get lonely and find a "husband" for just a short time. It provides companionship and much needed money. The problem is that the man usually leaves when the child is born and then the woman is alone again with another mouth to feed. There are many (over 50) of these children in the sponsorship program at Solace. The problem is that the widows are ashamed to tell this Christian organization that they had a child out of wedlock so they will lie and put the name of their dead husband as the father's name of the sponsorship forms. This leads Solace and the sponsors to think they are sponsoring a genocide orphan when they aren't. These children still deserve sponsorship because they are abandonded and at-risk but it's important to me that the sponsors get an accurate description of their sponsorship child. Now I'm trying to get a more accurate description of the children before Ian's evaluation is due.

That's my little rant about research. Our days aren't all work though. I got to go to Ruhengeri yesterday to look at pigs. Solace is going to start a pig project there. The pigs multiply fast, they produce lots of fertilizer, they can be sold in the market for good money and they are easy to raise. However, Solace doesn't have a pig project going already because very few widows are willing to take pigs. Everyone wants cows because cows represent wealth and status. Pigs don't do the same thing. It's nice that the widows and orphans are willing to stop thinking about what makes them look rich and start thinking about what will actually bring them money. The pig are also cheap to buy - $1.50 a kilo. You can buy a six-month-old pig for less than $30. I went with Ben and he also let me drive most of the way home. It was 1.5 hours on winding roads up and down the hills in a pick-up. It was great. We even stopped on the way to buy sugar cane from village kids. They cut it straight from the field for us. It was $.30 for 4 stalks.

When I got home from Ruhengeri, Ian and I did our nightly jog/walk. We took a new route and when we got to one area, about 20 minutes from the guesthouse, we saw this group of kids pop out of the bush. They starting jumping in a circle, dancing and shouting "abazungu, abazungu" which means "foreigner." The youngest was less than 2 and the oldest child was no more than 5. They ran to us and walked with us, holding our hands and petting us, for about 10 minutes. They were adorable. I think it was the most fun I've had with street children in Rwanda.