On our last day in Rwanda, we spent the afternoon at Lake Muhazi, reflecting on our experiences and making plans for how we would bring what we learned back to our chapters and FACE AIDS as an organization. We went around the circle and each shared our personal highlight of the trip, a challenge we faced, and a lingering question. We’ve each written these down to now share with you.

Final Thoughts: Our Highlights, Challenges, and Lingering Questions

Austin Keeley, Stanford University

Highlight: The highlight of the trip for me was our time at the PIH hospital in Rwinkwavu. After having read so much about the work that PIH does and the vast health problems in Rwanda, I was blown away to actually witness first-hand how PIH was working to provide a preferential health option for the poor. To meet the men and women who turned theory into practice was an inspiring moment for me.

Challenge: My biggest challenge during the trip was my own perceived lack of purpose. A question I’ve faced a lot during my time with FACE AIDS is, “Well, are you ever going to go to Africa?” My response was always that I would love to go, but only if I had a defined role in which I could actively give of myself to others. Foreign public service can all too often a self-gratifying experience in which you feel good about having gone, but did not necessarily do any good. During our time in Rwanda I felt torn. On the one hand the educational and emotional growth I was experiencing was truly gut-wrenching and inspiring, but on the other hand, I often felt like a burden to our hosts and felt incapable of doing anything to alleviate the suffering I saw. The only way I could reconcile these emotions was to swear that I would re-double my efforts back home so that what I learned- intellectually and emotionally- would be translated into tangible results.

Question: After this trip I want to know how FACE AIDS can better engage and mobilize students in Rwanda. The amount of passion and enthusiasm that we saw at the Youth Forum and around the country was inspiring. It seems to me that secondary school students and recent graduates have a huge potential to work and fight AIDS in their local communities. Education spread by grass roots means could be a huge force in the country’s fight against HIV/AIDS.

Lila Kalaf, Stanford University

Highlight: If I had to pick one highlight of the trip, which is nearly impossible, it would be the youth forum. There is nothing more special than hearing the experiences of students our age, half way across the world, and hearing all the similarities.

Challenge: I struggle with learning how to integrate my limited knowledge and experience with the genocide and tumultuous Rwandan history into our programs in Rwanda.

Question: I want to further explore how we can better articulate and shape our purpose in Rwanda, and how that translates into our actions back home.

Steven Ma, Oregon State University

Highlight: The highlight of the trip for me was learning about PIH’s presence in Rwanda - along with GHC, FACE AIDS, social workers, and a cooperative government as ingredients for social change. This gave me hope despite the challenges we face and the socioeconomic disparities I witnessed in the country.

Challenge: My greatest challenge was the language barrier and lack of experience as obstacles to fully understanding the significance of what I was experiencing. Without language, I felt that I mostly had to rely on instinct and intuition to give meaning to the various new situations in a drastically different environment - which is quite inaccurate!

Question: The underlying question I could not find an answer to throughout the entire trip was: what exactly is our responsibility in dealing with global poverty? I was greatly affected by the images of poverty on this trip, but also happy to see the differences PIH, FACE AIDS and other global health/social justice organizations have made. As a result, I feel that this issue of poverty and its subsequent effects on health warrant more study and I look forward to not only learning more about but also contributing to global health in the near future.

Amanda Dalessio, University of Texas Austin

Highlight: The highlight of the trip for me was meeting the pin makers of Rwandarera! It gave so much more meaning to pin selling. The time we spent with the Rwandarera community was so inspiring. Walking through the field of cassava was also an incredible experience. Marie and the community were so welcoming to us, people they had never met before. It was incredible. Turning around and looking behind me and seeing all 10 of us and the whole pin making association smiling and laughing is a memory that I will hold in my heart forever.

Challenge: A challenge I faced on the trip I believe will not affect me until I get back home to UT Austin (and with my FACE AIDS chapter): It will be difficult to convey the exact feelings I felt 3 weeks earlier. I want to translate every thought and feeling I had to my fellow chapter members in a way that makes them understand and see the whole picture. I believe that our blogs and pictures will help our fellow chapter members be apart of the wonderful adventure we all took part in this Christmas season.

Question: I will never understand why genocides occur. How can people kill innocent human beings? I will never in my life forget the things I saw this trip. I also believe that being made aware of something so significant changes your life, and forces you to be aware of how easy “the good” can change into “evil”. Living with that thought will also be challenging and take part in decisions I make in my everyday life.

Kathrina Chen, University of Connecticut

Highlight: The highlight of the trip for me was participating in the AIDS Walk with the Rwandan FACE AIDS members. By being involved in the walk I felt more a part of the movement both in the USA and Rwanda.

Challenge: My challenges from this trip are trying to understand what could have caused the extreme hate that fueled the genocide. I am not only unable to understand why so many people were killed, but I also struggle to understand why they were killed in the gruesome ways.

Question: How will I share the knowledge learned in Rwanda with my chapter and school? How can UConn contribute to programs in Rwanda that need assistance and how will I make the students at my school aware of this need?

John Thomas, Stanford University

Highlight: My highlight was meeting with all of the people that FACE AIDS works with - from the pinmaker Marie, to John and Francois, the FACE AIDS Program Assistans, to Alice the PIH head social worker, all the way up to the Country Director for PIH, Peter Drobac. Hearing everyone’s stories and what makes them passionate about the work they do was truly inspiring.

Challenge: Trying to understand the work of FACE AIDS to fight for health and social justice in the unique context of Rwanda and its history is a consistent challenge.

Question: How best can students, who often are limited in their skills and experience but not in enthusiasm and optimism, make a meaningful difference?

Anne Stake, Stanford University

Highlight: There were so many highlights of the trip that it’s hard to describe only one. Throughout the trip the interactions that we had with the Rwandan people were always the most exciting for me. For instance, the march at the conference with the students was incredible. The meal at the home-stays was also a highlight.

Challenge: Both genocide memorials were incredibly difficult for me to process and experience. I’m not sure whether or not I will ever understand or fully grasp the reason or the implications of the events that took place. I am struggling with how to harness my outrage and confusion in the wake of both experiences and focus on what I can at this moment or in the future.

Question: Personally: I have re-discovered my commitment to working in global health, or at least in development, and I have to find out how I can best contribute and to what field. For FACEAIDS: How can we actually connect the US/Africa programs? Is there anything that FACEAIDS can do to expand the school fees program or to help students like those we met at the conference to go to school? If the pin-sales are the limiting factor on the US side, would another product like necklaces be easier for chapters to sell?

Julie Veroff, FACE AIDS Executive Director

Highlight: The whole trip was the highlight of my time thus far with FACE AIDS, since it united everything I love and admire most about this organization: FACE AIDS chapter members around the world - dedicated, thoughtful, ambitious young leaders who reject the notion that one’s community is limited by geographic borders and fight every day for global health equity and social justice; FACE AIDS’ Rwanda programs – locally-driven initiatives that are beautiful in their simplicity and staggering in their impact; and support to Partners In Health and comprehensive health care – the real, demonstrated, short- and long-term change that comes from giving a preferential option for the poor. This trip drove home for me the message that young people can, have, and must continue to lead the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, particularly through movement-building and direct action.

Challenge: When we were touring the genocide memorial at the church in Nyarabuye, a girls’ choir was singing hymns in the background. How do we continue to have faith – in a higher power, in the human spirit, in the notion of goodness, in anything – in the wake of such violence and injustice? And also, how could be afford to not continue to have faith?

Question: What is FACE AIDS’ core competency, both in Rwanda and in general? How do we continue to strengthen and grow the programs we’ve developed with an eye towards cohesion throughout the model and genuine community-building across campuses and international borders?

Braden Lake, Stanford University

Highlight: Touring the Partners in Health and seeing the tremendous potential of care that is granted, without exclusion, to everyone who comes for service was incredibly inspiring.

Challenge: I was challenged by wanting to give back as much as I was receiving during this trip. I knew I was incredibly lucky to partake in such a trip and was getting so much out of it personally, and I just wanted some way of ensuring that those I was visiting were benefitting as well in some way.

Question: Conceptualizing the genocide, and figuring out how I can integrate it into my world view for the future, is something that I am still struggling with.

Romy Saloner, FACE AIDS Managing Director

Highlight: For me, the most moving part of the trip was having dinner at Marie’s house. Marie is a member of Rwandarera, one of our partner HIV associations. She welcomed us all into her house and prepared an amazing dinner for us. It was such a special meal, sitting in a room full of people who have been part of FACE AIDS in different ways-Pinmakers, US Chapter Leaders and Members, National Directors and US and Rwanda Staff. I felt like FACE AIDS really came together for me at that moment, and I was honored and proud to be part of such an amazing organization and community.

Challenge: I love working for FACE AIDS and value every day that I get to spend with the organization. However, the trip reminded me of the importance of field work and my desire to spend time addressing HIV issues in East Africa. I hope to return soon and I need to make that a priority and focus on creating a plan.

Question: After having the opportunity to engage more closely with the FACE AIDS programs in Rwanda, I feel like I have a much clearer understanding of what we do, but also many more questions about the future of our organization. The trip prompted me to think more about how our programs in Rwanda can and should relate to our programs in America, and what that means for the future.

The whole team with Rwandarera

Day 10: December 28

By Romy Saloner, FACE AIDS Managing Director

We woke up to a beautiful day in Kirehe and began it with a morning hike. We all walked down the main road and then turned down a dirt path through a village. We walked down a hill to the well where children and women were gathering water for the day. On the way back up we moved slowly while we were passed by people carrying buckets of water to their homes. It was quite a hike, and to imagine doing it every day while carrying water made us all feel exhausted.

Anti-malaria billboard we passed as we began our hike

The scenery was incredibly beautiful.

John, Kathrina, and Lila

We ended the hike back at Claire’s house and met up with Elyse, the Partners In Health Head Social Worker in Kirehe. She spoke with us about the School Fees Program that the FACE AIDS Back to School Campaign benefits. The program began in 2006 with 60 students in Kirehe, all of whom are either infected or affected by HIV. The program not only provides students with financial support for schooling, but also loops them into a variety of social support programs with PIH. Unfortunately, due to increasing school fees, PIH has not been able to bring any new students into the program since 2007. However, of those who are lucky enough to be enrolled in the School Fees Program, 22 have already graduated from secondary school and six have gone on to university. Elyse also told us about her personal history and how she ended up working with PIH. She wowed us with her passion for the work and her deep desire to help vulnerable members of her community in Kirehe.

After our meeting with Elyse, we got in the car and started on our way to Lake Muhazi for a final group discussion. Along the way, we stopped at a small restaurant and ate beans, rice and meat under the overhang barely protected from the pouring rain. When we arrived at Lake Muhazi an hour later, the sky had cleared, and we sat a table overlooking the lake and birds. For hours we spoke about what the trip had meant to each of us and how we plan to bring our experiences back home. Everyone had been deeply moved by different aspects of the trip whether it was the dinner at Marie’s house with Rwandarera or the genocide museum in Kigali. No matter what part of the trip each person identified as significant, everyone agreed that there are many ways to share our experiences with our friends, families, communities and FACE AIDS chapters. Some people will be holding events on their campuses and for their chapters, others will be creating slideshows and powerpoint presentations for FACE AIDS, and many will be working together to teach a class on Rwanda and HIV at Stanford in the spring.

Just before it started to get dark, we got back in the car and drove into Kigali. We shared an amazing closing dinner and spent the night talking and laughing before we all had to get up early in the morning and board the flight back to the USA.

We’re Hiring Summer Directors!

Are you a leader and changemaker? Take the next step in the youth movement to fight AIDS and promote global health equity: work with us this summer and help inspire thousands of young people around the world!

We’re looking for:

• 2 Programming Directors to assist in the development of programs, campaigns, and chapter support resources; conduct relevant research; and lead the production of associated toolkits and materials for chapters.
• 1 Camp Kwizera Director and 4 counselors to lead FACE AIDS’ summer camp for middle school students, focused on engaging them in global social justice education and local community service
• 1 Global Health Corps Summer Program Intern to help build and implement the two-week Global Health Corps training and orientation, the cornerstone of GHC’s fellowship program.

Interested? Check out jobs.faceaids.org to learn more andapply. Deadline is February 19th.

Work with FACE AIDS Full Time in Rwanda!

Through the Global Health Corps, FACE AIDS is hiring two Rwanda Program Directors, who will work full-time in Rwanda from August 2010 to August 2011.

The Program Directors will devote the majority of their time to managing, strengthening, and growing FACE AIDS’ two program areas: youth mobilization, and structured savings and business development. Each fellow will take the lead on one of these areas. In addition, both fellows will spend some time strengthening the overall capacity of FACE AIDS’ and PIH’s programs by working in partnership with the Chief Operations Officer of Partners In Health Rwanda on management, coordination, administration, and special projects, focused on PIH’s program on social and economic rights.

To learn more about the opportunity and apply, visit http://apply.ghcorps.org. Applications due March 1st for US citizens and April 1st for Rwandan citizens.

There are also 14 other fellowship opportunities through Global Health Corps, based in the US, Rwanda, Burundi, and Malawi. Jobs range from computer science to monitoring and evaluation to health counseling. GHC fellows receive full funding, in addition to mentorship, training, and community support. Apply today!

As part of FACE AIDS’ monthly education series, February is focused on food security.

Food security is a significant factor in understanding and addressing the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. Research has shown that food insecurity and inadequate nutrition significantly reduce the effectiveness of anti-retroviral treatment programs, because, like any medical treatment, ARV treatment requires a diverse and stable diet in order to remain effective. As organizations such as Partners In Health and FACE AIDS have recognized, successful HIV/AIDS interventions require solutions to issues of food insecurity, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where food insecurity and HIV/AIDS coexist in many vulnerable populations.

Check out the education packet to learn more about food security and its relationship to HIV/AIDS, the politics of food aid, and innovative programs on the ground in sub-Saharan Africa.

We also have a great fact sheet you can use for tabling, emailing, etc..

Thanks! Let us know if you have comments on the materials. We’d love to hear how you’re using them!

Day 9: December 27

By Kathrina Chen, University of Connecticut

Today, I woke up early after a night of singing, dancing, and shadow puppets, in which two other FACE AIDSers and I along with our host family and a number of neighbors participated. As the other two girls slept I went outside and was warmly welcomed by Omar (our host) his family and neighbors. After we ate breakfast, we went for a walk around the village and stopped by the home stay of the other two girls on the trip. Later we set out to Nyarubuye from our Kihere home stay and visited the Nyarubuye Church genocide memorial. There we toured the church in which approximately 37,000 people were murdered and over 50,000 bodies total were stored. During the tour we saw clothing that was removed from the victims, their bones, and the weapons that were used to kill them. One thing that struck me was the ceremonial manner in which the victims were killed. Some of the victims’ hearts were ground in meat grinders and a genocidaire nicknamed Simba baked and ate his victims’ hearts.

Shoes gathered from the victims murdered at Nyarabuye

Skulls of the victims

Mass graves at Nyarabuye

The church at Nyarabuye is still used. While we toured the genocide memorial, we heard the church choir singing joyfully in the background.

Later that afternoon we visited the homes of members of the Girimpuhwe Cooperative, one of FACE AIDS’ partners in the pin-making, structured savings, and business training program. The members use savings generated through their employment with FACE AIDS to launch small businesses, providing a source of income through sewing, farming, and other activities. I remembered the story of one of the members. She and her brothers were orphaned and she worked hard to support them and send them to school. Currently she is a seamstress. She makes clothing for women as a source of income. I found her story so interesting because it shows how a strong will can enable you to achieve.

Day 8: December 26

By Austin Keeley, Stanford University

The morning after Christmas we awoke late, piled into our trusty van, and began the drive out of Rwinkwavu towards Kirehe. Driving out of the valley for the last time left me with a strange feeling. Though I had only spent a few days there, I had grown quite fond of Rwinkwavu and the people there, and was sad to leave. Still, I was excited for the day ahead. We were set to visit the hospital at Kirehe, have a formalized talk with John and François, and have our first homestays.

Upon arriving in Kirehe, Claire gave us a tour of the PIH supported hospital there. Strikingly different from Rwinkwavu, the hospital was located on a main road and much more easily accessible by van. The hospital was one of the few buildings outside of Kigali that was two stories tall. Construction was currently working erecting a new surgery facility.

After completing the tour we had lunch and headed back to Claire’s place to meet with John and François, our FACE AIDS Program Assistants. We’d had the pleasure of John and François’ company at different points throughout the trip, but it was incredible to talk with them about their own stories, their plans for the future, and their vision for FACE AIDS.

John and François are a part of PIH’s School Fees Program. After completing secondary school they scored so high on the standardized test score that they received government scholarships to attend university. Still, the government scholarship doesn’t cover the outside costs of living at university. This is where FACE AIDS came in; they decided to support both John and François through college. After working with FACE AIDS for several months, they are set to head out to university in January. They are two remarkably inspirational men whom I am so happy to count among my friends. Best of luck John and François!

Group discussion with John and Francois at Claire's house in Kirehe

We were well into the afternoon by this point, and once again found ourselves in the car. The drive was much shorter than the morning’s ride as we headed off road to a small village near the Kirehe hospital. We were set to meet the Rwanderera Association, the first ever pin-making association for FACE AIDS! It was an exciting moment when we pulled up and the smiling faces that greeted us were faces we had seen before on pin cards.

Walking through the cassava fields of Rwandarera, one of FACE AIDS' partner associations. Rwandarera members used income from the pin-making project and savings generated through FACE AIDS' structured savings and business training program to purchase the land and cultivate the fields, dramatically improving their quality of life.

Austin with cassava

After introductions and learning about how the structured savings program has helped the members of Rwanderea expand their farming production of cassava from one to three fields, we headed into the fields themselves to see how the crop was produced.

The view from Rwandarera's cassava fields, and members of the Rwandarera association.

Lila, Amanda, Anne, and all the new friends we made during our walk with Rwandarera.

The trek eventually led us to the home of Marie, our host for the evening. We dined with our new friends, played with the kids, and sat watching the beautiful sunset over the hills.

Just before the sunset we divided up and headed out to our different homestays. This was one of the parts of the trip that I had been most looking forward to. Steven, John, and I stayed with Marie and her family. After dinner we sang, dances, and showed our gratitude through a series of smiles and nods. Around 9 we headed to bed and settled in for a good night’s sleep after a long day.

Amanda, Lila, and Anne with Omar and his family, their hosts for the evening

Julie and Austin with Marie, a pin-maker with Rwandarera. Marie welcomed us all into her home for dinner, and hosted Austin, Steven, and John for the night

Day 7: December 25

By Anne Stake, Stanford University

Christmas Day in Kigali was bright and sunny. John Thomas and I rose not to pancakes or presents left by Santa, but to the busy Kigali roads as we went on our early morning run. As we ran everyone bid us “Merry Christmas.” On our route to the Hotel des Mille Collines we passes a church choir rehearsing a delightful rendition of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”. Their singing brought us our first taste of holiday cheer!

Soon after we returned we all packed our bags into our trusty van named “God Only” and we made our way to Café Bourbon to meet Claire Watt for Christmas brunch. We all gathered around the outdoor table sharing stories about holiday traditions. We ordered festive drinks like African coffee with ginger, banana chocolate smoothies and passion fruit juices and lots of delicious food.

Christmas brunch at Bourbon Coffee in Kigali

More delicious food - apparently a theme of our trip!

After brunch we went to the local super market to gather bounty for our Christmas night feast with our friends at Partners in Health. We divided and conquered our list, but most of us were distracted by exploring the differences between Rwandan and American grocery stores. We eventually left with all the ingredients that we needed to cook our meal, including six small chickens!

Shopping for Christmas dinner in Kigali

We left Kigali for Rinkwavu, the main partners in health site, to begin the preparations for our Christmas feast. The PIH’ers were in charge of the chicken preparation, but Amanda and the rest of the FACE AIDS gang made the side dishes, including mashed potatoes, stuffing, asparagus, and green beans with feta and cashews. We all agreed that we were eating better in Rwanda than we did at home!

The view from PIH's training center in Rwinkwavu, Rwanda

With the Christmas music playing and the sun descending over the Rwandan hills we all gathered around the tables to enjoy our feast. When the power went out the mood was complete. As we all settled around the candle-lit tables I felt lucky to be a part of such an amazing group of people working towards common goals. It was really special to have FACEAIDS and PIHer’s come together in celebration of more than the Christmas holiday, but of our common goals, of our solidarity and of our hopes for a happy and healthy year to come.

Christmas marks a turning point in our journey. We have already been so inspired by CARE international, by PIH and most of all by the youth in Rwanda. In the next couple days we will be able to learn more about our own FACE AIDS programs. Our journey is far from over! We settled into our bug nets that evening, perhaps missing our families at home, but so proud to have found a home away from home in Rwanda. Merry Christmas!

Day 6: December 24

By Julie Veroff, FACE AIDS Executive Director

This was the most diverse and eventful Christmas Eve Day in my recent memory. It was also the first day Claire could join us, as the Rwanda Youth Forum had just wrapped up. The morning began in Kigali at the Genocide Memorial. As we made the drive from Rwinkwavu, I was curious about how the events of 1994 would be depicted and in what context they would be situated, and apprehensive about how I might personally process such information. Rather than narrate the structure of the memorial and describe all that I saw, an impossible task, I’d like to share the moments and memories that struck me most.

• The memorial situated Rwanda’s genocide in the context of other twentieth century genocides: Armenia, Namibia, the Holocaust, Bosnia, and Cambodia. A constant reminder that most of the world has never really meant, or at least never been committed to making good on, the promise of “Never again.” I kept thinking of the two Primo Levi quotes that Philip Gourevitch uses in We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: “If there is one thing sure in this world, it is certainly this: that it will not happen to us a second time,” (Survival in Auschwitz, 1958). And then, 28 years later, “It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere,” (The Drowned and the Saved, 1986). It can, it has, it is.
• One of the final exhibits in the museum before exiting outside to view the mass graves is the children’s exhibit. “You could have been our future,” reads the placard on the wall. Photos of children killed in the genocide were submitted by family members, and they’re placed above devastatingly juxtaposed facts like favorite food – rice and beans, best friend – his mom, and means of death – hacked by machete. One I won’t forgot: last words – don’t worry, mom, UNAMIR will come.
• Skulls. Many of them on display, nowhere near the over 800,000. If we could see all 800,000 at once, rather than fixate on the fractures of one, the violence done to one, would we feel 800,000 times the outrage? Would we be less shocked? Would it seem more or less rational?
• Videos were playing of survivors recounting their personal stories. A man spoke of the wife he lost. They met in secondary school, fell in love, got married and had kids. “We grew up together,” he said. They had been together for 25 years when she was murdered.
• Celebrated by the exhibit were those people who saved their neighbors, who saved strangers, by hiding them, protecting them, risking their own safety to do what they knew was right. What enables some to be saviors and compels others to become killers?
• The utter failure of the international community and of individuals to act, to prevent, to respond, to stop. The failure of Kofi Annan and the Department of Peacekeeping, who knew but did nothing. Worse still, who was asked to act and refused. The explicit complicity and guilt of the French. How do you hold an external regime accountable?
• Many Rwandans live now in the same places they lived when the genocide happened, next to neighbors who might be victims, might be killers. How is this possible? What does it mean when a whole society is involved? When a whole society is traumatized? And when that whole society still lives together, side by side?
• The use of sexual violence to purposefully spread HIV/AIDS as a weapon of war. A reminder that injustices in global health are not just about treatment access, or unwillingness to embrace evidence-based prevention strategies. Egregious violations related to HIV/AIDS occur every day. HIV+ women in Namibia are being forcibly sterilized. Homosexuality is criminalized in 38 African countries. There is a direct relationship between domestic violence and HIV prevalence. Let us fight not just the disease itself, but the structural violence associated with it, driving it and reinforced by it.
• Five million people have died in Eastern Congo in the last decade. Five million people. Let us not celebrate the end of violence, let us not be too quick to usher in an era of peace. The conflict rages on. How many people are talking about it, how many people are outraged the way we like to imagine we would be if Rwanda’s genocide were taking place today? When I next return to Rwanda and visit the Genocide Memorial, will Eastern Congo and Darfur have been added to the list of twentieth century genocides? If so, what will be written under the question of the international community’s response?

…

There is no simple transition from the Genocide Museum to the rest of one’s day, and so I can’t really think of a simple transition for this post. To shift with the same jarring sense I had when we lived it, let me jump to talking briefly about our meeting with Leon, the Executive Secretary of the Rwanda NGOs Forum on HIV/AIDS and Health Promotion.

Leon was kind of enough to meet with us the day before Christmas, when he should have been home with his family. I’m thankful he did: his commitment to activism and advocacy and his leadership of the NGOs Forum was absolutely inspirational. The Forum was founded in 1999 to harmonize NGOs’ interventions in Rwanda. Their vision is to eradicate the barriers to behavior change that would protect people from HIV/AIDS and to ensure the human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS so that they can partake in the same rights as all citizens. I was struck by the focus first and foremost on rights. The NGOs Forum has been doing great work to enhance civil society’s capacity to implement effective community responses to HIV/AIDS. They’re doing things like mobilizing the country’s religious leaders to get involved with community-wide sensitizations, and convinced 130 of them to publicly take HIV tests. They also took a strong stand against the Parliament’s efforts to criminalize homosexuality, helping to defeat the bill.

….

We returned back to Ibiscus to decompress before coming together as a group to recap and process the day. We all struggled to articulate the questions and thoughts gnawing at us since the memorial: the nature of good and evil, the indomitable human spirit, what our role in Rwanda is and should be. We are all so young, we said – what could we actually accomplish here? And then Claire so wisely reminded us, yes, we are young, and that is wonderful. Because we are experts at being young, at knowing what it feels like to want to take action and change the world, and at the same time feeling underqualified and unsure about how to do it. Our work in Rwanda focuses on mobilizing young people to be leaders in their own lives and leaders in their communities. What better way to do that than build a movement of young people, who can struggle through that all together?

As we left the conversation, ready to head out for Christmas Eve dinner, we caught a glimpse of our soccer game on television! The World AIDS Day Youth Forum made the news on Rwanda TV, airing in English, French, and Kinyrwanda. I think it’s safe to say it will be the only time I will ever be on TV doing anything remotely athletic. A Christmas miracle, perhaps?

Day 5: December 23

By Braden Lake, Stanford University

Today, I was given an especially gifted vantage point to observe my trip-mates and record the day when, thanks to some higher being, I rolled my sprained ankle. Nothing allows you to pick up on minute details and take in the Rwandan countryside like hobbling.

It all began with the soccer game that we played against some of the participants of the Youth Forum, which began the Forum’s final day – and it almost didn’t happen! Thank God it did, because who knows the next time we would have the chance to flounder about with a soccer ball with hundreds of Rwandan youth cheering us on, only to have it broadcast on Rwandan national television? Although fears arose as we strode up, 10-deep and clad all in red Arsenal jerseys, only to be met by muscled shirtless twenty-somethings, the opposing team played us with grace and forgiveness for our terrible abilities. Anne made a wonderful team captain (who persuaded the others to shorten playing time to twenty-minute halves), and Jonny Dorsey made a cameo. The opposing team even let us win! If there is a better example of the generosity of the Rwandan spirit that we encountered numerous times throughout the trip, then I do not know it.

The FACE AIDS Soccer Team!

After the soccer game and high off our win, we joined the forum for its closing ceremonies. The students in the forum shared their skits, poems, songs, and dances with us and graciously seated us as honor guests in the front of the show, along with the mayor of Kayonza, for the best view. Claire made a beautiful speech about the importance of leadership completely in Kinyarwanda, which earned massive applause from its listeners. I was moved by the solidarity coursing through everyone in the room, something that FACE AIDS strives to cultivate. The community that the Forum had created over the past days was palpable as the students cheered each other on and shared their plans for the future with FACE AIDS.

Traditional dance at the Youth Forum's closing ceremony

Claire's closing ceremony speech in Kinyrwanda

The day ended with a celebration, an appropriate conclusion to the incredible accomplishments of the Forum. Back in Rwinkwavu at the PIH guest houses, we enjoyed goat and Mutzig while chatting with PIH staff about their work and challenges. Such civilized conversation quickly disintegrated into dancing to Rwandan hiphop, which lasted well into the night….all the way until 9pm, at which point our feet could no longer hold us and we slipped away. A successful end to the day.