One word: 'Powerful'

Resident travels with granddaughter to Rwanda ... for special introduction

By Kate Bassett
Harbor Light Newspaper

When most Americans hear the word “Rwanda,” one of two images comes to mind: gorillas or genocide. While the two could not be more different in connotation, they do share a common ability to sweep a country of 10.1 million people into a thematic and impersonal box.

For Harbor Springs graduate Gretchen Ford and her grandmother, Harbor Springs resident Dodo Miller, however, the word “Rwanda” means so many things. It means laughter and dancing. It means Fanta and tree tomatoes. It means loss and strength and hope and persistence. It means Josiane and countless other children that can be helped through sponsorship. Mostly, it means faces, stories.

The pair traveled to Rwanda last fall as part of a Compassion International fieldtrip for people to meet and visit their sponsored children. The organization connects individuals with children in developing countries via letters and updates, and in return, sponsors help fund the child’s education, health care, and other basic needs.

“My relationship with Compassion International and Josiane began when Toby Jones (associate minister at First Presbyterian Church) put pictures of children who needed sponsors out on a table on Sunday. I didn’t do anything right away, but three weeks later I did—I took the photo of the most forlorn looking child—and doing so made me wonder why I had not done it earlier. It made that much of an impact on me from the start,” Miller said.

She began to correspond with Josiane, and the two shared moments from their lives and families.

“When you sponsor a child, you are actually helping take care of their entire family. When I send money for Christmas (all extra gifts, Miller noted, are highly regulated by the organization), I get letters back about the chickens they were able to buy. I love that sponsorship helps the medical and educational, as well as basic food and shelter and clothing, needs for Josiane and her two brothers.”

As time passed and their relationship deepened, Miller said she knew she wanted to visit Josiane and see what her country was like. When the opportunity to take a field trip to Rwanda came up, Miller jumped at the chance, and took Ford with her.

“I didn’t really know a lot about what had happened in Rwanda before going. Everyone kept telling me I had to watch (the movie) Hotel Rwanda before I left, but I really wanted to go into the trip as a pretty blank slate,” Ford said.

As soon as they arrived in Kigali, however, the learning curve was fast and steep.

“We went to the genocide memorial/museum the first day we got there. Only knowing bits and pieces of the story, it was really intense to see,” Ford said.

Describing vivid videos and walking through a room full of skulls and a room of the missing—photos of children plastered on the walls—she said the reality of one million people being murdered in a three month period hit incredibly hard.

“It was, however, a good way to start the trip,” Miller said, as Ford nodded in agreement. “It was good for us all to remember that this is what happened here. That this is the story these people are coming from.”

With the horror of the 1994 genocide fresh in their minds, those on the trip were given instructions to not ask about those devastating months, to not use words like “Hutu” or “Tutsi.”

Miller said it was easy to grasp the past but not dwell in it, because the reality of Rwanda today is so different than 15 years ago.

“What is still so completely amazing to me is Rwanda’s forgiveness, its reconciliation. This is a country that, in the wake of a unspeakable massacre, pulled together like nothing you could ever imagine.”’

Miller and Ford actually stayed in the famed “Hotel Rwanda,” which is actually called the Hotel Des Mille Collines. Its brochure—which boasts 112 rooms and suites, the Panorama Restaurant overlooking Kigali, two bars, five conference rooms, a pool, tennis courts and fitness center— bears no trace of its role in the genocide.

“I played tennis while we were there. The hotel itself is beautiful. It was so hard to believe that so much happened on those grounds, and not all that long ago,” Ford said.

The city itself, Miller, noted seems to carry with it an air of determination and change. As evidenced by the peaceful elections carried out in 2003, she said the people of Rwanda seem truly dedicated to moving forward, and yet, never forgetting the past.

“There are signs and memorials everywhere you turn. There are countless plaques that read “genocide: never again.” You can see the wounds, and you understand that families are still torn apart because of what happened, but you also get the sense that this is a country that will rise up from the devastation, because the truth is, they already have in so many ways,” Miller said.

Each day on their trip was jam packed with tours of Compassion International project centers, showing those on the field trip what families were taught and what services they were able to benefit from because of sponsorship.

Accompanied by two guides from Compassion International headquarters in Colorado and two local guides from Kigali, trip participants were wowed again and again by the skills and opportunities—like learning woodworking or sewing, working with a social worker or being cared for in the medical clinic-- that they saw at each project, Miller said. She added that the projects themselves had absolutely nothing on the most stirring part of their day trips: the children.

“When we got off the bus at the first project, we were greeted with an absolute sea of smiling faces,” Miller said. “I stopped in my tracks. I was totally overcome. They started singing and dancing and one of our guides broke in and started dancing with them and the energy was just indescribable.”

Despite language barriers, connecting with the children was so easy, Ford said.

“Everywhere we went, there would be one little boy or girl that would catch your eye and they would latch on to you the entire time. There was always someone right there to hug.”

“The joy was so present,” Miller said of their interactions with the children.

“Growing up in a country still healing from civil war, a country with so very little, it was really humbling to see the deep sense of joy these children had. It was written all over their faces.”

“They loved stickers,” Ford added with a laugh. “We gave them sheets of stickers and before we knew it they had them stuck all over their faces.”

“And when they ran out of stickers,” Miller interjected with a laugh, “they ripped up the rest of the sticky paper and used it!”

“I think what was so great was to be around these kids—they were so happy and so playful and so full of smiles—and to realize that kids everywhere are the same in that way,” Ford said.

When the day came to meet Josiane—all the children in 125 projects around Rwanda were gathered together at a park—Miller said she was full of emotion.

“Ours were the first names they called, and I saw all the children, I about fell over,” she said with a smile.

“Boy, that hug we shared was something,” she added of her first interaction with Josiane.

The sweet face with a broad smile is the personal story of Rwanda for Miller and Ford. Josiane’s father—who was in prison when Miller began sponsoring her—is out now, but has fled the area, presumably just another of the two million people that were displaced (many of whom have not returned) after the genocide for fear of retribution.

Despite the obvious hardships in her life—Miller noted even the nicest homes they saw had dirt floors—Josiane was a life force of light and curiosity.

“These children are just incredible. I cannot say that enough. I cannot talk enough about the way their personalities would shine through their eyes and their smiles, or how their singing and dancing and laughter just swept us up.”

Treated to fabulous meals with some local fare—Ford said she fell in love with “tree tomatoes,” a kind of fruit that you bite the end off of and then suck out the insides— and some things more of the familiar variety (every meal had a beverage offering of Fanta or Coke), the pair said they loved how every detail of the trip was designed to show them how sponsorship made a difference.

“During meals we heard moving testimonials. We got to see one man, on the trip to see another sponsored child, get a surprise visit from a child he had sponsored and had graduated from the program,” Miller said.

“I trusted Compassion International before because I knew Toby had done his research, but seeing the projects and going to the local office, we really got a sense for how organized these operations really are. Knowing 84-percent of what you give goes directly to your sponsored child makes you feel good, but seeing it in action is a whole different story,” she said.

Ford added that it was relatively easy to tell which children were sponsored and which ones weren’t—from the obvious things like clothing to the more haunting, like facial expressions—she said there was a tangible difference.

“Sponsorship is huge in terms of helping keep kids from just running the streets. We saw a child get sponsored by someone on the trip while we were there, and the child’s mom was so emotional and grateful, it had a big impact on all of us to see what that is like.”

Even though many of the houses they saw seemed to barely remain standing (and yet housed entire families), even though they saw tombs with hundreds of thousands of bodies from the massacre and were surrounded with foreign words and foods and sights and smells, both Miller and Ford said true culture shock didn’t hit until they arrived back home.

“When I got back here I had to be very careful,” Miller said, more to Ford than anyone. It was obvious the two of them shared an understanding that took a trip to Rwanda and back to create.

“It was so hard to listen to people complain and it was so hard to not feel ridiculous about all that I have in my life,” Miller said. “We were told that might happen, and that we might feel like sending a ton of stuff back over or getting rid of everything we have here, but we were also told that we were blessed and to not feel that way. For me, I came away feeling like I want to tell everyone, if you can help only one child, do it,” Miller said.

She added that trip leaders also warned it would be hard to put all that had been experienced into words, especially because most people would want to know about the genocide or the gorillas.

“We were told to pick one word to describe our trip, because that would give us something to focus on and I chose the word “powerful,” Miller said. “That’s the word I use to start to cover it, but I can tell you, most people who ask me about this trip quickly realize I am going to corner them—and not to talk about the gorillas either.”

Powerful seems, perhaps, to be the best description of what affect Rwanda had on Miller and Ford. When asked if they plan to return to the country, both gave fervent answers of “yes!”

When listening to the stories of different children they met, of their Kigali guides--- now friends—and the city that is rising up again into the beautiful, landlocked countryside, it seems Rwanda itself has one word to cover its deep roots and budding future.

“’Kwizera’ is a word we heard a lot when we were there,” Miller said.

“It means ‘hope,’” Ford added. “That’s what these programs are all about, really.”

Hope in the form of the next generation. Hope as a bridge between countries and cultures. Hope in the form of one child’s face, one sponsor’s choice.

There are a variety of organizations that offer the opportunity to sponsor a child. According to the American Institute of Philanthropy, Compassion International (www.compassion.com) is an “A” rated organization. Some other “A” rated child sponsorship organizations include Pearl S. Buck International (www.psbi.org) and Save the Children (www.savethechildren.org).

This is part of the June 10, 2009 online edition of Harbor Light Newspaper.

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