Reunion for best friends

The story:

Edison’s mother works at Urukundo, and Edison has grown up and gone to school with Urukundo kids. It was not a surprise that Edison missed Jacob, his best friend through daycare and preschool at Urukundo Learning Center.

Jacob was moved to a foster family over a year ago. One Sunday morning, Edison asked his mother, “Where is Jacob? I need to see Jacob.” His mom called Olive, our child advocate, telling her that Edison said, “‘If I can't see Jacob, then I will ask NCC to find me a foster family so I can live with Jacob.’” The NCC is the National Commission for Children.

This was a bit funny to adults as Edison has a mom, dad, brother and a great home. It was not funny to Edison. He was serious.

Tresor who just came home from Arizona State University and was very close to Jacob when they both lived at our home. He also wanted to see Jacob, so a surprise trip was arranged.

Benita, who also lived at Urukundo Home, had a history with Jacob. When Benita was 3 years old and had to go visit her grandmother far away, she was told she would come back but had to see her grandmother. She agreed to travel by bus to see her grandmother near the Burundi border. When she stepped out of the bus and saw her grandmother, she looked at her traveling companion and said, “OK, now let's go home. Jacob needs me.”

The impact Jacob had with so many has been felt. So Tresor, Edison and Benita went to spend the afternoon with Jacob. They had a wonderful time together.

Next visit, our maintenance worker Benjamin, who was Jacob's idol, will go to see Jacob. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Jacob’s answer was always the same. “I want to be Benjamin.” No greater love.

Jacob in green and Edison in blue

Benita, Jacob and Edison, who were best friends at Urukundo Home, meet again after being separated for over a year.

Kids are kids. Photos are fun.

Edison and Benita came home to tell me, “Jacob has a tooth problem and needs to come home to get it fixed.”

Tresor and Jacob

Playtime at daycare

New ball at the daycare. Purple is a good color.

Here are some of our favorite toys. Elmo is tops and speaks.

Joy at Rwanda wedding

I receive many wedding invitations, but because of distance, very rugged terrain and the time away from home, I attend very few. A monetary gift is always given after receiving the invitation.

Rwanda weddings have three ceremonies: the civil ceremony, the dowry giving and then the church wedding.

This dowry giving is the fun part. Oswald, who is my driver and board member, went with me as the interpreter. He is such a blessing to me.

The bride is the adopted daughter of my contractor Felix. She was orphaned as a child during the Genocide.

Felix in blue shirt

The dresses are eye-catching, The bride is lovely. She was presented by her brothers and papa Felix.

Bride and groom after both families have accepted this union.

Bride’s attendants with gifts for the groom’s family.

Groom’s female attendants with gifts for the bride's family.

A band and singers were present. They played and sang African music. The gentleman, who is holding the guitar and lead singer, is blind. It is his band, and he has a great voice. I was impressed.

Best of all for me, storks kept watch over the ceremony.

I watched the storks.

They are beautiful birds in flight.

Not so beautiful up close and personal.

I am assuming the tall guy is the male. Don’t know a lot about storks, but in the USA, tradition says these birds bring babies. Not in any stretch of the imagination.

It was awesome for me to meet again, at the wedding, after many years, Imbaraga, his wife and children. His wedding was one of the first I attended many years ago. Now his children are students at Urukundo Learning Center.

Farm News

Production continues at the farm. Nine babies. Mama pig looks tired.

September rain has begun. Workers prepare a field for planting.

Construction

This will be an all-purpose classroom.The main use will be the Sewing Center.

The Sewing Center classroom is looking good. Ready for use. Outside painting is all that remains to be done. White is the primer coat.

Front

Side

Back

From my window, this addition now blocks my view of the mountain. Progress sometimes is wonderful, but it changes the environment. I miss seeing the cows walking across the ridge to graze.

Visitor from the USA

I was so pleased to have a short visit with Bruce Krogh, a return visitor and friend from Pittsburgh, PA.  Bruce is the former director of the Carnegie Mellon University campus in Rwanda and lived in Kigali just an hour away from Urukundo Village. Bruce has retired from that position and moved back to the states. We miss having Bruce and his wife Margie close by.

Bruce and I arranged to meet in Kigali. We then visited the kids at the university house. With a very tight schedule, Bruce could not fit a visit to Urukundo Village. It was good to see him.

House manager Divine hosted this visit.

August 2019 Newsletter

Several years ago, Urukundo experienced the horror of what a lightning strike can do. A day worker at Urukundo sought shelter from the rain under an avocado tree. The tree was struck, and the young man lost his life. It was a sad time and an awful experience for Urukundo.

Rwanda is a dangerous place for lightning strikes.

The New Times, a newspaper in Rwanda, wrote in March 2018 that “49 people were killed by lightning strikes in Rwanda, from January last year up to last weekend when 16 people were killed in Nyaruguru. The strikes also injured another 187 people and killed 45 livestock.”

Urukundo is stepping up.

In August, Urukundo, with help from the parent committee, took steps to protect our school. Most schools are built at the high point. As Rwanda is mountain upon mountain, there is no place else to build.

In order to protect our area, Urukundo has installed lightning rods to protect our school and the children and staff who attend there. The rods were installed by Optone Engineering Group Ltd. The rods are now the highest point on the mountain.

I remember the big metal rooster that sat on the top of my grandfather’s barn when I was a child. We called it a weathervane. Oh, so long ago!

At the school

In the village

Not only will the lightning rods protect the Learning Center and our Urukundo Village but also the local community in all directions. As far as I know, the community is not aware of this protection given to them. If one life is saved, it is a good mission outreach.

Safety for day care kids

A new walk to my front porch was needed. I feared that one of the small children coming for day care would fall and get banged up knees or worse. Photo of before and after will show you my meaning.

Before

After

Sewing Desks

Ever wonder what you can do to help?

Here’s a thought:

A great way is to support the Urukundo Sewing Center. A big help with a small gift.

We have a Sewing Center classroom nearly ready to start the new school year in 2020. We have no desks or chairs.

Yes, we need chairs for our students to sit on. These students are young adults.

The chair we wish to purchase is one with a side desk, thus saving on buying both a desk and chair. Economically, this is the best buy at US$30 each. We find if we were to buy a desk and chair separately, the cost would be US$60 for the two pieces. We try to save where we can. The metal frame will hold up better, and wood parts can be replaced, keeping the cost down. The chair is made here by our local vendor, so we help not only our economy but the economy in our district.

Donations can be sent to

Hope Made Real

Box 3222

Williamsport, Pa.

17701

or

Use the “donate now” button on the website, www.hopemadereal.org.

Thank you all for the generous donations.

Mama

August Visitors

Visitors from Austria

A yearly visitor to Urukundo is Dr. Otto Fischer, a doctor of veterinary medicine in Austria and founder and director of the NGO Future for Kids. This group is located in the Rwaza sector of Rwanda. He also founded a vet clinic. He brings many visitors to Rwanda from Austria, both vet students others. I am always glad to see him and his friends.

This time. Dr. Otto brought with him 12 aspiring young people on their way to graduating from veterinary school. It was our pleasure to have them tour Urukundo’s farm.

Andreas, Tamara, Lara and Clara came to Rwanda from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria.

Anga, Esther, Prudence and Leandre are students at the University of Rwanda, Nyagatare campus.

With Dr. Otto was Dr. Thomas and his vet tech, Anna, from the animal clinic in Rankweil, Austria.

Visitors from Texas, USA

Dr. Casey Call and a delegation from the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University came to spend a few hours getting acquainted with Urukundo Learning Center and Village. An internship between Urukundo and Texas Christian is a possibility. We look forward to a closer relationship in the future.

It was our pleasure to share Urukundo’s history and goals with Jana Hunsley, Ashley West, Mindy Cook and Dr. Call, who is assistant director of the Karyn Purvis Institute.

Accompanying the visitors was Francoise Uzamukunda, a representative from the Global Engagement Institute in Rwanda.

Making new friends continues to be our goal at Urukundo Foundation.

Ok, so I am the short one. Don’t expect I will get taller.

Love those kids

August is the month for paying a call on our kids living away from home. Olive and Oswald had that honor.

Janette is doing well and growing. Olive took her a new friend, yellow bear.

Jason had asked Olive for a toy car last visit, so she took two cars for him this time. He is a happy boy.

Olive and Jason

This special boy worried us a bit on our last visit. Last time, Claude was not looking so good. We arranged for transportation for him to and from school and for him to have a nourishing lunch at school. We can see an improvement. We can still make a difference.

This smile warms the soul.

Jacob is doing well in his new home and school. Banita and Edison miss him so much. Notice the missing front teeth. He is that age, you know.

He is a charmer and so full of love to share.

Our driver Oswald and Jacob at Jacob’s school.

Kenny is growing tall. His school is in the background. He is finishing primary and will take the National Exam this October. He said he will do well. He is a good student. Kenny is one of the twins. Kenilla is his twin sister. We will visit her next week in Kigali where she lives with her grandfather. So sorry the twins are separated.

Hello from the farm

Old MacDonald had a farm and so does Mama Arlene.

I remember singing this song as a child and teaching it to my children and grandchildren. Here in Urukundo, our children also sing this song and in English.

We don't have all the animals in the song here on our farm.

We do have chickens.

Our egg layers are beautiful and productive. We do not have a cock-a-doodle-do.

Layers are a source of income. As the demand for eggs goes up, so will the number of layers. Seriously, no rooster. We buy our layers as day-old chicks.

Broilers are also bought as day-old chicks. How fast they grow after only one month! They are sold after three months.

Pigs and piglets

Our mamas produce large litters.

The story of biogas:

Our pigs are a necessary part of our farm. We do not butcher pigs but sell the babies to private parties.

Now here is the cycle our pigs make possible. Our kitchen has many scraps as does the dining room. These scraps are fed to the pigs. Pigs provide manure for our biogas. Biogas is used in cooking the vegetables in the kitchen.The kitchen provides food for the pigs.

Hey, it cannot get better than that. A perfect round robin.

Cows. The one outside the shed is me. Oh, yah.

Love the little black and white calves (baby cows).

We have four cowboys and one intern: Pierre, Jean, intern Abais, Everist and Jovith.

We are honored that other schools choose the Urukundo farm to send their students as interns for further training.

Our boys who work the farm are actually called cowboys. No, they do not ride a horse, wear a 10-gallon hat, sing or play guitar. They also do not ride off into the sunset. That was only in movies from long ago. That was Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter & Tom Mix. Showing my age.

Our mountainside farm.

Pigs at top, cows in middle, chickens on bottom.

Built one level at a time. Seems like the pigs should be on the bottom, not the top.

Drainage is well contained and not a problem as it is collected and used in biogas production.

A short history of the farm

Our farm started as a place purchased to move 40 chickens from the boys’ compound in

Gitarama town. When we rented a compound to start a home for boys, 40 chickens went with the property. Chicken dirt and little boys were not a good mix. We decided to move the chickens out into the country, so we bought a piece of land for that purpose. Not to move the boys, just the chickens. Later we moved the boys and all of Urukundo to this land. The cow first came as a wedding gift from one of our employees, so we needed a cow shed. A visitor from Ringgold, Pennsylvania, USA, decided we should have pigs. So like Topsy in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (age again) the farm just grew.

It is now a productive part of Urukundo Village.

News from the Farm

Bringing you up-to-date, farmwise.

At our last monitor and evaluation meeting, it was decided to reduce the number of cows from nine to three, not counting calves.

Owning cows means wealth in Rwanda, but providing grass and food for them is a big problem. We have tried different types of grasses and maize (corn) fodder. When you use the milk only for home use and not to sell, two fresh cows are enough. We do sell the calves, but that does not add up to enough income to support the cows.

What to do?

After much deliberation, it was decided to keep three cows, one for milk and two to produce babies. OK, maybe I am not so knowledgeable, but as I see it, one cow would be giving milk, another would be nearly ready to deliver and the third one would meet with a bull.

Make sense???

Where does the farm make its money? The chicken part of the farm is our main source of revenue. It was decided to convert all but three stalls for the cows into chicken houses.

With more than 100 laying hens, we use the eggs at the home and sell eggs in the community. We also sell young layers to beginning farmers. Chicken manure is also sold as garden fertilizer to community growers.

The largest number of chickens are broilers. These are raised on a rotating basis. We try to bring in day-old chicks every month as we sell full-grown broilers each month. Our customers are hotels, restaurants, schools, other NGOs and our village. On any given day, we have more than 3,000 broilers.

We are trying to get more customers, but we need to have more space for more chickens. We have an old building on the farm that can be torn down and a storage barn could be built.

The building has a bad roof and holes where small animals invade and birds fly in and eat the grain. It is also not a good size for storing food for the animals.

I thank you for the generous gifts you have sent so that we can continue to improve our farm and vaccinate our animals, pay our cowboys and buy food for the animals. We cannot grow enough food for the animals as land is scarce and the growing season short.

With more space we can up the production of broilers and purchase many more day-old chicks.

Our goal is for the farm to be self-sufficient someday or at least break even.

Donations for the advancement of the farm are so needed and appreciated.