5 Apr 2008 by Zoe Isaacs
Tags: My Experience with Orphans
A trip to Rwanda last April turned out to be a life changing experience for me. A journey through this beautiful, but often overlooked country is indeed humbling.
A trip to Rwanda last April turned out to be a life changing experience for me. A journey through this beautiful, but often overlooked country is indeed humbling. Driving or walking on a dusty red road past green hills of rich soil, men and women smile as they walk past, barefoot, carrying firewood, children, and rarely, food. These smiles can be deceiving, for just past them is despair.
After meeting hundreds of children in a small town called Rwinkwavu, I was inspired. While their bellies were distended, and their clothes ragged, they had hope for a better future. Though orphaned by genocide ten years past, the children of Rwinkwavu find happiness once a day, at dusk, on dusty soccer field overridden with cattle. Just before sundown each day, when their work subsistence farming or mining is done, thousands of children crowd onto two soccer fields to play a game that has turned into more than just soccer. Once divided by race and tribe, these children see no difference in one another. Perhaps some have had more to eat than others, and perhaps one boy has a home, while his friend seeks shelter each night. Many of these children are orphaned by HIV/AIDS, and many of them have HIV/AIDS themselves. On the soccer field, these differences dissolve, and once a day, these children are just children.
What does this look like? An abandoned soccer field lies decaying as herds of cows roam aimlessly through it. Then, just before sunset, hundreds of children run to the field, stampeding down the dusty road, to do the one thing that they can look forward to each day, play soccer.
It is difficult to understand what it means to be homeless. Hunger is often an idea that is hard to grasp, and joy is a fundamental element that we Americans take for granted. In the most overcrowded nation in Africa, these ideas are not abstract, but instead are realities for the nearly 8.2 million inhabitants of Rwanda. Yet there exists possibility, even among shacks and shanties riddled with disease and starvation. We, as citizens of the western world, have the resources to help. We cannot afford to sit by and watch as problems of poverty and disease escalate. We must change our course. It is not an option; it is a necessity and an obligation.
Zoe Isaacs, 16
Woodstock, Vermont
www.changetheworldkids.org
