Traveling with the Choir

At the end of March I was officially welcomed into the choir. Now I get to sing every Sunday morning and attend the all-night prayer meetings the last Saturday of every month. I still don't know all of the songs, but I'm pretty good at the dancing.

Last week the choir began preparing for its trip to Ruhengeri. We were invited to participate in the 20^th anniversary celebration at the Friends’ school there. Each day we practiced for about two hours and on Wednesday there was an all-day and all-night prayer meeting. We started at 9:00 AM Wednesday, took a 3 hour break in the late afternoon, and then continued until 5:00 AM Thursday morning. It would be hard enough for me to stay awake in such a long meeting conducted in English, but as this one was in Kinyarwanda and I ended up falling asleep several times before it was over. However, the loud synthesizer music, praying, and dancing helped to wake me up.

We left for Ruhengeri early Saturday morning. The choir assembled at the church by 7:00 AM and then we walked down to the center where the van taxis assemble. From there we took two busses to the city center where we purchased our tickets to Ruhengeri. The trip took a little more than 2 ½ hours. I was very relieved to find a near bye toilet when we finally arrived in Ruhengeri town -- there are no restroom breaks when using public transportation here. In Ruhengeri we found three taxi vans to take us the rest of the way to the Friends’ school. There were about 57 people in the group; this meant that we were cramming 19-20 people into vans made for 15. Luckily, we didn’t have too much luggage as people here pack light for trips. I had the most with my full backpack, blanket, and pillow.

We finally arrived at the school at 2:30 -- just in time for introductions and lunch. Following lunch we had a break to set up our beds and rest a little. All of the girls stayed in the dormitory as most of the students had gone home on vacation. The dormitory is made up of two large rooms full of wooden bunk-beds. There were no electric lights in the room we stayed in, but there were huge glassless windows with wooden shutters that let in light during the day. Unfortunately they also let in cold air at night. Because Ruhengeri is at a higher elevation and near the volcanoes it got very cold at night and even rained several times while we were there. The rest of the evening was taken up by a concert (several choirs singing) and preaching. I went to bed around 8:30, but everyone else stayed up for dinner and fellowship.

On Sunday I was awakened at 6:00 AM by the other girls getting ready for the day. Even though most of them hadn’t gone to sleep much before midnight, they were awake early. They thoughtfully sent someone to get hot water for me so that I could wash. The wash rooms were made up of concrete floors and walls, but no roof. They did have a wooden door for privacy, though. One of the girls helped me wash my hair. Her name was Alice and she spoke the best English of any of the girls there. She took me under her wing for the weekend and made sure I knew what was going on.

At 9:00 the festivities began. We had to meet outside because there were so many people. About 5 choirs were invited to sing and we all had our places to one side on backless benches crammed pretty close together. At the front was a covered area for the public officials, church leaders, and other important people in attendance (even the chief of police came). On the other two sides they brought out all the school desks for spectators to sit on. There must have been close to 1,000 people there. The ceremony lasted all day. Despite a little rain and some intense sunshine, choirs kept singing, dancers danced, preachers preached, and a history of the school, speeches and gifts were given. At 3:00 they fed everyone and gave us Fantas to drink, but it still wasn’t over. Finally, at 5:30, it drew to a close.

Afterwards our choir and a choir from a local university met together to sing, pray and dance. Next we were given an hour or so to go into town. I went with some of the choir members to a small restaurant owned by a church member. There we were given beet juice and enjoyed replays of the day on a small T.V. Back at the school we got ready for another concert in the evening. By 10:30 PM I was so tired that I had to go sleep. However, they thoughtfully woke me up at 11:30 for dinner and tea.

We woke up at 5:30 AM, Monday morning in order to be ready for the taxi at 6:30. The taxi vans came and picked us up at the school; however, our van had to get it’s tires changed and inflated, check it’s oil and get gas before we could actually leave Ruhingeri Town (and it did all of this with us still in it). Transportation sure is different here. We got back to Kigali around 10:30 AM and I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping.