Adventures In Rwanda

Komera (hello in passing). Just trying to add a few more Kinyarwanda words to the repetoire, as Tenning already used one in an email. Wow. My funny story for the day is after trying to explain to Gerard, the guard at my guesthouse that sometimes I say a Spanish word by accident (and him really not seem to be getting what I meant), he randomly told me that he knew a Spanish song. He proceeded to provide me with the history of how he learned the song...in summary when he was a child in the Congo (then Zaire), his priest taught him this song. The song follows, havanu shalom alechem...it was Hebrew (exclamation point). I could not believe it. I was so excited...and then of course tried to figure out how to explain to him, that in fact he knew a Hebrew song, not a Spanish song. And so the world turns.
I just returned from my first independent travel experience to a town about 2 hours from Kigali, called Kibungo. I stayed with a friend and visted the town market. There is a real sense of appreciation here for my attempts to learn some Kinyarwanda...and so I will continue.
Workwise, I helped to serial cast a childs club foot. But, what I am more happy about, is my ability to finally convince one of the therapists that the saw to remove casts can be quite terrifying to the kids. After we discussed some ideas, he followed by quietly explaining to the kids that the saw is quite loud, but will not hurt them (he placed it on his own hands), then turned it on so they could hear it first, then removed the casts. Those two kids did not release a scream or shed a tear (the only two so far). I hope there can be small changes with respect to the kids mental health and support of their emotional needs. As we say here, buhoro cyane, petit a petit, or step by step.

More later...I love the blog responses. Thanks for all of the updates.