Demolition

After our 7:00 AM breakfast this morning along the lake (surprisingly prepared on time), we took off for our next destination, of which I’m honestly not sure.  Our schedule (it’s a stretch to call it that) says “AMU Kibuye,” but it took an hour of driving over winding dirt roads to actually get there from our hotel.  However, we’ll just assume it was AMU’s set up in Kibuye.  Once we arrived, we were greeted by a crowd of kids, per usual, and we wandered out of the bus receiving handshakes and stares.  We were under the assumption that we would be teaching little classes on brushing teeth and HIV transmission, but we ended up coming around a building to see a crowd of people tearing down what I believe was an old classroom.  Next thing you know, we were forming lines to haul clay bricks from the rubble.  Rumor has it that AMU brought the community in to help clear out the clay-based building to make room for a sturdier building (made out of actual bricks, rather than clay ones which crumble when passed from person to person). 

After most of the building was demolished and clay bricks piled how off to the side, we went into a dark gym for what we again suspected would be our HIV/toothbrush presentation, but instead we were presented with an hour and a half of singing, dancing, and drumming.  It was a fun (but long) show, which they explained represented how guests of the king would be greeted back in the day.  Once again they asked us to sing a song as well… and once again, we bombed.  Somehow, after some semi-valid possibilities were presented by the group, we ended up singing “A Whole New World” from Aladdin.  Normally you’d be able to brush off a mess like that as a joke, but I feel like they thanked us for our song 3-5 times throughout the rest of the presentation (“Even if [they] couldn’t understand all of the words”).  It would appear that they take songs very seriously, and I hope we’re able to figure out a safe song to sing in the event we’re asked again.

After the welcome ceremony, we attempted to make our way off for lunch (more hand shakes, high fives, fist bumps, stares).  After lunch, we decided to hand out toothbrushes (we brought something like 800), even though we hadn’t presented the topic.  And chaos ensued.  There’s always a mad rush to see what the muzungus are giving away, even if it’s just something like toothbrushes, and this was no different.  A number of the kids were visibly hording them (though they would hide them while asking for one), older kids were stealing from younger kids, and fights broke out over the Colgates (came in boxes rather than bags).  While we ran into this issue a bit with candy at the last AMU compound, the group was generally smaller and more easily controlled, and we had plenty of stickers to go around.  Today, you could just see how desperate people here can be at times (not to mention the commonly uttered phrase “Give me my money,” but that’s really heard anywhere when some older kids see muzungus). 

-Scott

The clay building wasn't the only thing to be demolished today.  My camera also bit the dust (more literally than figuratively).  It had been having trouble already, probably due in part to the generally dusty nature of the country, and today was the last nail in the coffin.  The lens will no longer open, and I am instead greeted with an unpleasant BEEP, BEEP, BEEP... before it turns itself off again.  So, here is one of the last pictures taken with my Samsung SL502. From here on out, I'm just along for the ride.  I'll still try to get some updates up, but I imagine I'll just be inserting unrelated pictures from previous days.