Your Story

It was a quiet and powerful reminder to me of the way so many of the people live, in tiny mud huts with a bit of a garden, perhaps a goat, and very little water (they can seldom wash themselves or their clothes). It may seem picturesque, but it is really squalid. In the city of Kigali, it is easy to get lulled into the idea that things are ok in Rwanda. It’s neat, clean, with many modern and attractive buildings, and ICT growing ever more prevalent and complex. Water flows from taps (if people have taps), at least most of the time, and electricity is available, if people are connected to it and have money to buy it. In Kigali, if you don’t look beyond the boulevards, you wouldn’t know you were in a developing country. But in the village, all goes on very much as it always has, only in many ways worse because the genocide has taken such a huge toll—on homes, livestock, fields, families, neighborliness—and it’s important for me to keep that in view.
Jean McAlister
Missionary, living in Kigali, Rwanda
May 2010 Part 2