Azizi Life is Online!!

After our '09 trip to Rwanda, I blogged about our friends at Azizi Life here. Well, just in time for the Christmas season, they have gone live with their website. The handicrafts you order here will benefit artisans in the area we are supporting with Food for the Hungry! My favorites are the woven baskets and trivet sets. Here are a couple that I have in my kitchen at home... This update came from Christi at Azizi Life...

Every Friday afternoon, a group of women get together in their village in Rwanda, East Africa. They are artists, skilled at weaving beautiful and useful objects from natural, locally-gathered materials. These women have a vision. They are determined to use their art to benefit their families’ health, nutrition, and education. As they meet together, the women share advice on everything from perfect weaving, to parenting, to HIV/AIDS prevention. They talk, weave, laugh, encourage, sing, and pray. These are the remarkable women of the Abarikumwe “People Who are Together” Association. You are invited to meet the Abarikumwe artists, visit their community, and see their art on a new website from Azizi Life! Visit www.azizilife.com ! Azizi Life is a small Rwanda-based company of Christians dedicated to promoting the development of Rwandan craftspeople, their communities, and their art. There are 25 independent groups of artisans- like Abarikumwe Association- who are now earning fair wages, receiving coaching in quality and design, and being connected to a global market through Azizi Life.

A Widow's Song

On our first day in Rwanda, we had the privilege of meeting a widow named Therese who has been fighting a long battle to get her land back from her husband's family. As she begins to tell in this video, she went to court three times, and finally won her case. The family drove her and her children off of the land soon after her husband died. There was no where that she could go. There are not homeless shelters, or many options for someone who does not have a place to grow their food. To not have land is like a death sentence. Here in the video with her is the IJM social worker who keeps in touch with her, and makes sure that she has everything she needs. During the time when she was fighting for her land, IJM provided this rental home for her and her children. It has been a long fight, but she was within weeks of moving back onto her own land when we met, and has probably made the transition by now. She will be living near her husband's family, and said this will be difficult, but she will have a means to live and provide for her children, and IJM will keep in touch with her to make sure she is safe. While we were together, she sang a song for us. The video cuts off, but she continued to interpret for us how the chorus says that God provides morning, noon and night! She was generous in every way during our visit, sharing her personal story, and sharing tea and cookies with all of us. The government there has done many good things to document land ownership, and to provide education about land rights, so the IJM office is seeing fewer and fewer cases of land grabbing.

Amsterdam, thank you ma'am

So on a layover, I usually opt for sleeping on a row of chairs, but thank goodness I am married to Troy whose main philosophy in travel is 'when are we going to be here again?' and 'you can sleep anytime'. That is why we have so much fun on the road. Even in the smallest small town, there is something amazing, and in Amsterdam, something amazing on every corner. What a city! We had a nine hour layover, so we caught the train into the older part of town. The buildings and canals are breathtaking, and the funny little house boats with full electric hook-ups were fascinating. They formed a sort of water trailer park along the edges of the canal, and I wondered if they ever disconnected and traveled around. It seems like that would be the benefit of living on a boat, but these boats looked pretty permanently affixed.

the front door of a house boat

The downside to Amsterdam is the possibility of walking through a more touristy, sex-shop-y, marijuana-y area. Fortunately I figured out where we were before Toby did, and called his attention to the intricate cobblestone walk... for a whole block. On the face of one building, large letters stated, "God is dead" and I lost count of the number of psychic healing and other establishments promoting humanism. But on another block, we came across a small Christian bookstore. We went inside, and Troy pointed out my CD to the owner, "This is Sara Groves" (I do not enjoy this, by the way). The proprietor looked at the CD, and then looked at my bedraggled self, and said, "It doesn't look like you." No. No, it doesn't does it. It was good to meet Ed Baker and have a brief conversation about faith in Amsterdam, and what the difference is between Holland and The Netherlands.

Talking with Ed Baker. Can you see Fireflies and Songs on the wall between us?

We wanted to see the Corri ten Boom Museum, but it was closed, and so from there we went to the the Anne Frank Museum, which is located in the factory and house where they hid. We went up into their hiding place, and saw on the walls of Anne's room, the magazine pictures and beauty adds that she had put up to make that time and place more bearable. We saw the one window she looked out of in the attic, and the bookshelf that covered the door at the bottom of the stairs. At the end of the tour, there is a short video of Otto Frank explaining how he never knew that the Anne of the diary was inside the everyday Anne he knew as his daughter. He wondered if a parent could ever really know his or her children. I asked Toby, "Do I know you?" He said "yup", but I suspect that Otto is right.

Album

We are finishing up the mix for the album, and are re-entering summer in Minnesota. We hear from our friends in Rwanda, and ask for your prayers for the FH office in Kigali, and for the community of Gesanga as they continue to work so diligently on community development and care for these kids and their families.

Visit Part One - Getting there We just got an update from our sponsored child in Rwanda, and it was so strange to be able to picture the backdrop to that letter. I could picture Remy, the interpreter, helping Iranzi with his letter, and wondered if he had worked on this particular response at school or during one of his home visits. Iranzi's home is well off the beaten path. You have to have some pretty good shoes to get down the side of the hill that he and his family lives on. Or in the case of the children leading us down, you need no shoes and a lifetime of experience. When we went to visit Iranzi there was a lot of expectation, and I was trying so hard to take mental snapshots of what was going on without missing actually being in the moment as it was happening. In Rwanda, you do not have to be rich to have a great view. It is called the Land of a Thousand Hills, and whether you are perched at the top of one of those hills, deep in the valleys, or anywhere in between, the lush green, rolling views are breathtaking.

Iranzi's family was about three-quarters of a mile down one of those 'hills'. There is no road to speak of, just a foot path that goes from house to house. Moments before we got to the house, Kirby fell and scraped his knee. Cameras were rolling to document our visit as FH advocates, and I knew Kirby was not going to be able to pull it together by the time we reached the house. He was the focus of things because he and Iranzi are about the same age. I knew he was okay, but with all of the attention, he was overwhelmed, and was having a hard time calming down. I had one of those parent moments where I wondered if I should sternly command him to pull it together because we needed a good picture of him, or if even here on the side of this hill in Rwanda, I needed to take the time to hear him out. Kirby and I walked away from the group a bit and I could tell his knee was okay. It just took him a minute to regroup, and then we were ready to meet the family.

I am in that position a lot where I want my kids to act a certain way because we are in public, and have found that my expectations can be like poison to my whole family. I have to really check my motives. I want them to be kind, gentle people, but if my motive comes from my wanting to look good, my kids will figure out that my correction was ultimately about me and not about them. I have to admit that I was on the verge of hissing in his ear, but later I was glad that I had an opportunity to show Kirby that he is important to me even when we are doing other important things.

Sara and Kirby embark on their journey to meet their sponsored child Iranz.

The Groves family, with Food for the Hungry coordinator Remy, traverse the terrain to Iranz's house.

Kirby with Iranz's last letter he got back in Minnesota.