A Rich Drink. Bitter & Sweet.

Saturday was a day like no other. Rwanda is a rich bittersweet drink I can never get enough of. I woke with the Muslims call to prayer then snoozed until the roosters roused me. I trotted over to the Novotel Hotel lobby to get internet access. When I returned to Solace, it was decided that we would teach a workshop today, but we weren’t ready. I went to look at the room we would use and it turned out to be an open are pavilion with a dirt floor and several rows of hard wood church pews in straight lines. That wouldn’t do. I asked the Solace staff to help me to collect every free standing classroom chair they could find; meanwhile, I tried to determine how many students would be coming to the workshop or who they would be. Would it be 10? 20? Would they children? Adults? No one was sure? Would anyone come? No one had a clear answer.
I had thought 30 people at the most would come. Meanwhile, in the field next to the pavilion workers were cultivating the soil. Saturday was a community service day all over Rwanda and all able bodied folks are expected to contribute time and sweat to the betterment and beautification of the country. People were toiling hard in the morning sun while we hastily prepared our class.
Two o’clock came and I was drenched with sweat myself from running around, gather supplies, trying to get ready at the last minute. I walked into the pavilion and found the chairs in a circle as I had requested. Next to the circle were the pews with about 75 people crammed into them. These were the same people who had been working in the field next door all day. They were the ones who had come for the class. They were orphans, widows and child heads of households. They were hungry, tired yet somehow eager to learn.
We began with a prayerful song, an invocation of sorts, which they sang to God, as my group and I listened. When they finished I invited them to come to the circle. We talked about why we were sitting in a circle and how a circle signifies oneness and unity. This all came from them. Then I asked them what they wanted to learn about today. They chose four topics: Communication, God, Music, and Gratitude. So together we created a class about those things. All 100 of us.
I can’t help but feel like the student. Thank God I had a chair in the circle.