Glen Ellyn youth group find trip to Rwanda a life-changing experience

The joy Emily Gorz saw among the people of Rwanda confounded her.

“It’s incomprehensible to me how they could have so much joy in their lives when they have every reason not to,” she said.

Gorz, a senior at Glenbard West High School, was among eight teens and four adults from Faith Lutheran Church in Glen Ellyn who went on a two-week mission to the East African nation in June.

The teens spent months preparing, raising $22,000 for the trip, reading books on Rwandan culture, learning about the 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 and about the Kiziba Refugee Camp they would visit in the western part of the country.

They also spent time in the Rwandan capital of Kagali, where they met street children and visited Ubuzima, a ministry to women and children infected with AIDS/HIV. Many of the women contracted AIDS during the genocide, when rape was used as a weapon. But at Ubuzima, where the women learned to make rolled-paper jewelry to support themselves, Gorz saw joy.

“You would never know they were sick,” she said.

Gorz learned that one woman they visited, who seemed healthy, died a few days later, leaving five HIV-infected children.

“Just seeing that (up) close made it seem more real,” she said.

Poverty, hardship and death are still the lot of many people in Rwanda, but that doesn’t stop them from rejoicing in life, said Domenic Frappolli, another teen who went on the trip, also a senior at Glenbard West.

“Everyone seems so alive,” he said. “We went to church, people were dancing.”

At the three church memorials the group members visited, they saw sobering reminders of the genocide. People who tried to take refuge in the churches were shot, burned and hacked to death. Babies were thrown against walls.

The teens were led to the graves where they saw the skeletons and skulls of victims. But the Rwandans reminded the young people that the genocide was part of the country’s past. They learned that in one church, two girls sing beside each other despite the fact the father of one girl killed the father of the other.

“One of the things that was stressed to us when we visited the church memorials (was), ‘we remember the past, but we don’t live in it,’” Frappolli said.

Today, Rwanda has a stable government. It’s illegal to put any emphasis on whether anyone is Hutu or Tutsi, the two groups that fought during the massacres, he said.

Frappolli reflected that perhaps the genocide had made Rwandans value life more and put less emphasis on material possessions than Americans.

“Yes, they want materials, but they would never trade their friendships, their families, their relationship with God for any material objects,” he said.

Refugee camp

Jennifer Bradbury, the director of youth ministry who led the trip, said the Kibuye Refugee Camp made the biggest impact. The United Nations-run camp houses 20,000 refugees from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo living in squalid conditions with no electricity and food that often arrives spoiled.

Yet even there, the group found the people welcoming.

“People were living in mud and stick houses, yet you were invited in,” she said.

Bradbury, who is active in Faith Lutheran’s refugee ministry, said the camp visit helped her better understand the situation of people who had to flee their country. She acknowledged that before, she had sometimes been frustrated to see refugees in the Western suburbs doing things like putting clothes in the refrigerator. Knowing that they had never seen refrigerators before made their actions more understandable, she said.

“It made everything so much clearer,” she said.

Refugee camp children attend school only to ninth grade (the equivalent of eighth grade here). Most refugee children would love to attend high school, but it costs $20 a month, which is more than they can afford, teen Stephanie Warner wrote in the group’s blog.

“These people would do anything to continue and most high schoolers in the United States, when asked, would say they can’t wait to be done with school,” she wrote.

To better experience the life of the refugees, the group also took the water walk the refugees make twice a day. Frappolli chose a 10-liter container as his vessel and walked downhill over rocky ground two miles, only to realize he would have to carry the water uphill the same distance.

“It was the longest two miles of my life,” he said. “If you saw the water, … you would never drink it — standing water, very murky; it had fish swimming in it.”

The teens learned that digging a well would cost $20,000, roughly the same amount they raised for the trip.

Frappolli said that in talking with missionaries with International Teams, the interdenominational Christian organization that organized the trip, he became convinced they could do so much more if they only had the money. Sometime in the future, he wants to raise a significant amount of money for Rwanda and return there himself, he said.

“I would definitely like to go back with some skills that I thought could make a difference,” he said. “I’ve learned how lucky I am. I’ve learned to cherish the small things in life a lot more.”

Gorz said the trip inspired her to recommit to the refugee ministry at Faith Lutheran, where she helps provide child care while refugee parents attend weekly ESL classes during the school year. She also is interested in becoming involved in the New Neighbor Program of Exodus World Service, an Itasca-based interdenominational organization that helps refugees adjust to life in the United States.

Bradbury said Faith Lutheran is looking at pairing adult mentors with teens in the New Neighbor ministry, and starting another ESL class. Fundraising to help meet some of the needs in Rwanda is also a possibility, she said.

“I think youth can often provide fuel in a church to spark a revolution,” Bradbury said. “It excites me to see what happens now.”

Aftermath

Meanwhile, the group is telling others about their experiences and meeting with mixed reactions. Frappolli said he gets the question, “How is Africa?”

“I don’t even know where to start,” he said. “I can’t have them feel what I felt.”

Gorz said before the trip, she often was asked, “Are you scared?”

“A lot of people don’t understand that Rwanda is peaceful now,” she said.

In the group’s blog, one of the teens wrote of the beauty of the Rwandan countryside and noted the nation’s nickname is “Land of a Thousand Hills.” They spent one day on a safari.

“An important part of the trip was to see God in creation,” Gorz said.

The group stayed in a hostel-type guesthouse and ate food that ranged from the basic fare of street children to meals in nice restaurants. Frappolli pronounced the pineapple and passion fruit delicious.

“We had some of the best food I’ve definitely ever had,” he said.

Bradbury said people display curiosity and sometimes disbelief about their experiences.

“Some people are incredibly moved by our stories,” she said.

To read more about Faith Lutheran youth group’s trip to Rwanda, read the blog at rwandain2011.blogspot.com.