We stood in a long line shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other community service day participants and passed bricks, sang, and danced our way through the morning. Apparently a news camera caught the antics of the only two mazunga’s in the entire place but we did not have a chance to see it on TV. Ultimately we ended up in the Congo later that day, buying tomatoes and corn . . . Who would have guessed? More on that later. It was an long and adventure filled day. Going to a Batwa village, walking along lake Tanganyika and ending up at a night club in Bujumbura.

Today we are heading out to another Batwa Village called Matara. Community for Burundi, our host organization while here, and the Batwa, have begun to rebuild the village from huts to more substantial houses, as well as empowering the residents to support themselves.

Today was Burundi Day, where our friends from Burundi traveled all day on the bus yesterday just to be with us. We’ve heard lots of heart wrenching stories. We’ve laughed alot, dance the jig with them, prayed with them and them with us, exchanged lots of hugs. I love the African dance trot! Problem is they look so good at it and we just look like Muzungu’s (white folk) making a mess of their jig. But we get good mileage off it–lots of laughter. Seriously, I could move to Africa just to learn to dance! ha ha . . . dance their way, that is.

The team is amazing. They dive right in to engaging with the Burundians, the Rwandans, and any other Muzungu around. They are like sponges to learn and absorb everything around them. Becca is the team pet. The Rwandans love a young high school doll that she is, and enjoy teasing her all the time. She’s handling it very well. Susan is the team —no, not just the team, anyone who will let her–be the Mamma–gathering her little chicks whenever possible. It’s been fun to see her be herself and enjoying every minute of it. Lisa is loving seeing Becca just get alot-o-laughs and seeing her mature in the process. They are both loving it. Heidi and myself so appreciate seeing the people we met last time and making new friends. The culture goes in deeper another notch. Heidi is a great traveler.

So, all for now. We are two days away from going to Akagera Park excursion . . . We probably won’t have any FB connections there . . . don’t know . . . but will check in tomorrow, then we are off to Akagera on Wed. We’ll be back on Saturday.

Okay . . . All for now . . .
Much love from the Rwanda Team . . .

A team of five women, led by Leigh Buchan, had their first opportunity to show their flexibility and willingness to ‘go with the flow,’ as plans to visit Burundi were abruptly canceled due to political unrest in that part of the country. Reacting swiftly, Leigh called an emergency meeting of the group; they created a new plan on the fly and will now spend close to three weeks in Rwanda.

Topping the list is the originally planned visit to Steven Turikunkiko and his family, whose work with a village of widows and orphans has enabled them to begin building a self-sustaining life. The team will visit the villages and a newly established shop where several women, with sewing machines, in part provided by G2M funding, are creating and selling garments. In addition to sewing, women are planting gardens and seeking creative ways to provide a future for themselves and their children.

In a scenario repeated all over Rwanda, large groups of kids orphaned by the 1994 genocide are raising themselves and living in abject poverty. A soccer field near Steven is home to 80 of these teenagers, ages around 15 –18. Over a third of them are HIV positive. It is an unimaginable situation for most of us. How can 80 children possibly live on their own, in small huts located around a soccer field, with no adults, no conveniences, no jobs, and little or no access to education?

Our goal is to hear their stories, build relationships and communicate their needs via words and pictures. This is the core of a meaningful travel experience – a trip that promises to enrich those of us traveling, and those who we meet along the way.

Real estate agents Leigh Buchan and Diane Ellis were having a beer one night and discussing the speaker they’d heard that day. He had asked them to consider the 100 things they wanted to do before they die. Ellis mentioned she wanted to go to Tibet or Africa; Buchan, who has a background in church mission work, concurred, and by the end of the evening the two ambitious women had a trip to a Tibetan village all planned.

Wanting to do more than just visit, they contacted a man Buchan knows who does development work in a remote area there and asked if there was a project that needed to be done. They decided to raise money to build a kitchen for a rustic school.

“We knew that was the way to go into the culture,” said Ellis of their project.

“It sounded like way more fun,” added Buchan.

They raised $5,000, which was doubled twice by matching donors, providing $20,000 for the school rebuilding fund in a village that hadn’t had running water in its 500-year existence. They hiked 23 kilometers to elevations of up to 13,000 feet to reach the village, then spent three weeks in rural homes there while the work was completed with the help of the townspeople.

“We thought, that’s it, we need to do this again,” said Ellis. “This was a very cool thing and we thought people needed to see this side of travel.”

After each took individual trips to Africa, the friends founded a nonprofit called “Go the Second Mile” to offer meaningful travel experiences to others who wanted to combine exploring another country with the desire to make a difference in the world.

Since that first trip to Tibet, they have taken groups to Peru to build a children’s center for street kids, to the poorest section of Acuna, Mexico to work on a school, and to Costa Rica to feed and teach English to inner city children. They always combine the volunteer portion of the trip with a vacation element at the end, such as spending a few days in the national park in Costa Rica. “We do have a sense of adventure underlying all of this,” said Ellis.

But it’s the service aspect that is life changing for most participants. Their mission is two-fold. “We empower people [in the countries they visit] to do the work themselves, and we make better global citizens out of the volunteers,” said Buchan. “It’s a great opportunity to be culturally aware and not objectify the underprivileged. It breaks down barriers and people come back and want to help here. The real transformational piece is that when people rub shoulders with those who don’t have as much, they realize they don’t need as much [themselves].”

Each trip is prefaced by a retreat where participants learn about cultural issues in the country they’ll be visiting, what to expect while they’re there, and how to be sensitive and helpful to others, said Buchan. They also write down personal goals for the trip. The groups debrief each day while traveling and keep journals to process their experiences. Before they return home, they write a post card to themselves about what they want to remember most. Ellis and Buchan then mail those cards to travelers about six months after they return home as a reminder of their experience.

“Poverty can be an overwhelming thing and people can shut down. You have to prepare mentally,” explained Buchan. “We talk a lot about reverse culture shock when we return.”

The tag line for Go the Second Mile is, “Changing lives one trip at a time.” Ellis said they hope to leave the places they visit better off than when they arrived and bring volunteer tourists back with a desire to help others.

With this in mind, the group has three upcoming trips planned: to Costa Rica, June 26 through July 5; to Burundi (Africa) in July to help build houses for the Batwa indigenous tribe; and an educational trip to Rwanda in October that will allow participants to meet genocide survivors and study the role of forgiveness in reconciliation.

Ellis and Buchan believe combining volunteer travel with adventure appeals to a large group of people who want their experiences to have meaning and purpose — those who “want to roll up their sleeves and do some work,” said Buchan. “We think there is an innate desire to give back — to live your life outside yourself.”

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