Our first week of classes consisted primarily of attending to the class lists and introducing the project. Team AoC has learned that the first class meetings can be a bit trying due to the number of students who show up. While the district secretaries and school headmasters do their best in providing us with a list of 50 individuals they wish to participate in AoC’s classes, many more people show up and insist on staying. We explain to the extras that it is difficult to provide the materials and space for more than 50 people. Many of them do not even know what we are offering, but to them it is perhaps a missed opportunity which may offer aid to their hard lives.

Valerie, Fahad, and Eric are busy getting the names, ages, and level of education from the children of Nyabigoma Primary School.

Tuesday mornings, Valerie, Eric, Fahad, and I travel approximately 9 kilometers west and a little south of Ruhengeri/Musanze Town, where we all live, as if one is heading to Lake Kivu which is located on the border of Rwanda and DRC. From this tarmac road, we head north and bounce along for about 5.7 kilometers to Shingiro Sector Office. The landscape is pretty. Not every inch of land is cultivated so the natural outcropping of the volcanic rock presents a more rough and freer place. Trees are taller and are not organized systematically.

Telesphore NSENGIYUMVA, Executive Secretary of Shingiro Sector, spent time with
Art of Conservation’s team describing the challenges his communities face, such as wild buffaloes leaving the nearby Protected Area,
Parc National des Volcans (PNV), and wreaking havoc on people’s property, otherwise known as crop raiding. A dry stone wall is in place around much of the park’s perimeter to deter wild animals from coming out of the forest, but the buffaloes, forest elephants, golden monkeys, and mountain gorillas still manage to check out what is on the other side. Telesphore claims that poaching trees in the park occurs frequently. Some of this wood is then made into charcoal and sold. People, he says, survive day to day and at this level of reasoning they can’t embrace the protection of the park and its animals. Additionally, the 1994 genocide and the 1997 insurgence deeply affected this area of the Northern Province, leaving many orphans and widows. Many of these distraught individuals rely on prostitution as a means of survival and many are HIV positive. Polygamy is widely practiced here, but frowned upon by the government.

The students enrolled in the Shingiro art class range from 23 to 59 years of age and are either a community health worker or a traditional healer. The nearby health clinic is currently underway with improved health care orchestrated by Laura Clauson and the CCHIPS program. For more information on Laura and CCHIPS, please see Clinics Rising.

We started drawing at the second class meeting in Shingiro. We asked the students to draw a picture of a mountain gorilla, wild buffalo, and forest elephant as they would be in the forest, using pencil. After some initial giggling and moaning, they started drawing. Then we asked the students to draw the same animals as they would appear outside of the forest. Below are drawings by student Jean Domicille NKUYAHAGA.

Nyabigoma Primary School is not quite as far away as Shingiro but in a pretty area, as well. From here, one can see many of the six Virunga Volcanoes, the tallest being Karisimbi at 14,187 feet / 4,324 meters. We will be here every Saturday and Sunday for the next few months, reaching out to 100 kids. Eric did all the talking about the project on Sunday as I relaxed in the back of the class with Valerie translating to me Eric’s words and I am so glad I did. I was taken by Eric’s poetic description on how everything is connected and how during the time together we would be learning from each other. I think the kids felt the same way because when he finished speaking, no one moved. Then they started clapping. Wow, I am fortuntate to be working with such people.

A look at some of the faces of AoC’s students.

In closing, here are a few photographs showing some of the places, locally, a Rwandan and a visitor can view art being made in our classes.

Jean hangs the banners every morning and takes them down every evening.

Students paint their own design on AoC T-Shirts.

L’Hotel Muhabura manager, Desiree GATARAYIHA, and Valerie stand next to art displayed at the hotel’s restaurant.

Dr. Lucy Spelman, MGVP, at Kinigi’s ORTPN headquarters.

Until the next posting,
Julie

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