Sent to Rwanda

I had a friend ask if I would help her develop some type of training for girls who are just graduating senior six, or high school seniors, while they are waiting for results. In the Rwandese school system, they take final exams mid-November and then wait until around mid-January to find out their results. It seems like everyone is always waiting on "results". After talking with a few people, I realized the significance. Test results at various ages will determine your future--where you will go to school, possibly what you will study and finally, what you will become when you grow up. When the students who have graduated secondary school, or high school, are waiting for their exams; this determines whether they will be able to qualify for a scholarship to attend university. If they don't qualify for a scholarship, for many of them, that's the end of their education. So I asked, what happens to the girls if they don't get a scholarship? My friend said that som...

Being a little sister, I have always fought to stay out of someone’s shadow. I don’t want to be seen as anyone’s secondhand anything.  Over the last few months, I have found myself saying a phrase over and over in a few different situations, “I’m not Holly.” Holly is one of our ROC teammates who has a PhD in chemistry, certainly not someone I would put myself in the same category with. I was able to graduate high school with the minimal science and math classes and without any chemistry classes. (The teachers probably had something to do with that for fear I might try to blow something up?!). Anyway, so back to Holly. I was going through my sent email box of thousands of old emails and stumbled on a newsletter from Bryan (Holly’s husband), written by Holly just before I was about to visit Rwanda in 2009. She was describing some of the things she was working on and shared, “Some days are very difficult, so it feels good to share when really good days happen. This wa...