Day 1 - It's Time for Africa

Sitting on the couch in New Life Guest House in Kigali Rwanda and almost everyone I’m here with is blogging haha. In case you missed it, I spent all of my 21^st Birthday on a plane to Africa. Correction: not A plane…more like 4 planes. From Boston to Buffalo to DC to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to a stop in Uganda and FINALLY over 15 hours later to Kigali, Rwanda.   It took me from “snow” to desert and the longest leg of our flight was 12 hours!! We got here around 2pm Rwanda time, piled all of our bags into the bag of a truck and followed it in a big van.  We had a couple hours to settle in and take a quick shower before we headed out to ISHYO Performing Arts Center to meet up with the Rwandan performance group Mashirika (www.mashirika.com).  When we first arrived, there were a lot of kids around and we are so obviously American they couldn’t get enough of us.  It reminded me of when we went to the gypsy villages this summer. They ambushed us to take their picture and were totally tripping out on my video camera. I was letting them look through the lens and see themselves in the screen.  Definitely almost got it taken away from me at one point when I was surrounded by little kids with no way out, but they all listened very well once I got the heart to tell them no more. They weren’t even mad about it and started dancing for us. AND THESE KIDS COULD DANCE! They were doin the dougie and breakdancing. It was so cool. We were talking about it later and still can’t figure out how they know that stuff since most of them don’t have tv (a few didn’t even know that “dougie” had a name).

We finally went inside to “give” them our performance. It was so inspiring to watch both groups…definitely made me miss my Kam Skoo drama kids. The AFP group from Buffalo State performed 2 scenes from Romeo & Juliet and a few songs from RENT.  Mashirika’s performed an excerpt from one of their full-length plays inspired by the word “tomorrow.” It was about how children view tomorrow and the vicious cycle of abuse and runaways who get lost in it.  All the actors were stunning as individuals and as a group and we definitely got some great footage. Of course, at the end it ended in hugs like we’d known each other for more than just those few hours. After over an hour of carrying the camera on that shoulder mount I could definitely use some TLC on my back :) We’re all so tired after dinner (which was bomb btw), that when we all got on our computers to blog about it Papa Drew (aka Drengis Kahn) passed out on the couch with laptop in his lap. So of course we took a few great pics before we woke him up.

Tomorrow we’re meeting with Mashirika again so that they can start collaborating on the story they’re going to create together in their original (very very small) performance space. Then we’re going to lunch and heading over to the Nyamata Genocide Memorial…which I guess I’ll talk about tomorrow :)

Thanks again to everyone who supported me through this (financially and just keeping me sane whenever I freaked out about it).  I couldn’t have done it without all of you.