![]() What leads a person to live for the sake of others? Really, what would cause a person to dream up strategies to change the lives of a struggling people group, to sacrifice resources meant for their own offspring in order to feed starving children, and dedicate their life to a community that is not their own? I wondered this when I first met David Ndayisenga, a husband and father of three young children. David would leave his home in Kigali, Rwanda on his motorbike every morning to a village outside the city, Busanza, where the well-being and education of the children in this impoverished village drove him to an unpaid job in education. When he shared his story, context brought sense to his sacrificial lifestyle. David was a survivor. His childhood was a scarring memory of genocide. Neighbors once considered trusted, turned against one another in one of the bloodiest times in human history. Conducted almost entirely by hand, machetes and clubs as the slaughtering tools of a horrific massacre, David kept his life, but he was not spared from the trauma. Nearly 800,000 were killed, mostly of the Tutsi minority. A blood-ridden four months of terrorizing reality and the many years of tension before, the Rwandan Genocide came to an end in July of 1994. David, a young boy at the time, camouflaged himself inside the dense leaves of a mango tree, as the Genocidiares approached his family’s home. While he quietly awaited their passing in concealed hiding, he had just enough visibility to witness the Hutu attackers bashing his father’s head to death. Friends of his father, taking refuge inside their home, were victims of the death brigade David witnessed that day. David’s mother and children were sent away to find protection. Later, he would find out that six of his eleven brothers and sisters were murdered or missing. As for David, his survival came through nothing short of miraculous encounters. The first attempt on his life, David was fleeing the oncoming militia as they threw machetes his way, striking him on the back, then a cow ran by and distracted the men, allowing David time to escape. The second time he was attacked and tied up when several goats came through, stealing the men’s attention once again, and David got away. It turns out the army was hungrier for food than blood at the time, and sacrifices were provided. “To this day, I refuse to eat meat,” David said, believing the animals sensed his danger and protected him. The anger from the genocide and death of family members permeated in David’s heart and made life difficult for him. He wanted to join the army as an outlet for his anger, but he was too young at the time. Isolation became the only window to escape the pain. For survivors, getting their feet back on the ground was difficult in all senses. The systemic and political instability made it complicated for students to return to school. Many patiently waited until they could afford or were allowed to go back into the school system. Some went back in their early twenties to get a high school education so they could have a chance at going to a university. At first, David was not allowed to go back to school, due to political association, but a man of power who had known his father well, made a way for him to return. He was set back a few years but was able to attend high school and position his feet forward in life. It was there, in high school, that David was able to begin the journey towards healing. As classmates befriended him, the walls of isolation began crumbling. He was challenged at times, having to face his anger and mistrust towards humanity, but ultimately, he found people who consistently pursued him in love and friendship, and it was through their tangible relationship, David could feel restoration towards humanity in his heart again. He could finally taste the newness of life ahead. It didn’t take much time spent with David to see that his heart beats for children. July, 2017, I observed him and the 42 children attending Kingdom Gate School singing songs, jumping up and down, laughing, clapping hands, dancing in circles all around as David hopped and sang in the middle, enticing the whole mayhem. A year ago this school didn’t even exist, it was a thick cloud of hope weighing heavy on David’s heart. “I would walk through the village carrying chocolates in my hands,” he recalled, “children would come running up to me and circling around me as I handed the candy out.” “We have had Busanza on our hearts for many years,” David’s wife, Christine said. The village is a long, bumpy dirt path, far from any running water. Families live in stable-like shelters where they sleep, cook and eat on the red dirt ground. Some of the more developed homes are a mixture of mud and sticks, built during the rainy season out of the clay-like earth. The government in Rwanda provides a cow and a goat to families living under a certain degree of poverty. But often times, people cannot afford to feed their own children, let alone a large animal. Also, these animals have little room to graze, so they end up getting sold for profit, become sick, or they are returned back to the government. For the most part, the families in Busanza live off of porridge made from maize and sorghum flour, since these ingredients are fairly inexpensive and sustainable resources, it is common throughout Rwanda. Some families are fortunate to have access to avocado or fruit trees on their land, while some were given or able to buy chickens at one point, offering more substantial meals for them. Work is hard to come by, as many of these adults do not have the education and skills needed for creating business. This has a lot to do with the instability during and after the genocide, preventing people from finishing or furthering their education. In some cases, adults are HIV positive, having been infected through rape during the genocide. This often leads to parents dying and relatives or neighbors taking care of their children. With no form of birth control in this village, children are plentiful, living in strictly impoverished conditions, often with little access to education, and no access to health care. It is a harsh life for families, but it is all they know. “I was given a vision one day while walking through the village." David said. "I decided I was going to start a school in the center of Busanza." While David had a teaching background, this was a big step. It meant leaving behind a paying career with a family dependent on him. At the time, it was a one-man-mission, and it was a big one at that. A single small building down a rugged dirt path was the future home of Kingdom Gate. David saved what little money that had been donated to his family to acquire this building and put feet to the dream. He found teachers from the village by running a week try-out/training with women who had no teaching background, certification or training. He observed the ones with an apparent “teaching heart” and who displayed an obvious love for children. Once chosen, he offered them a volunteer position as a teacher with the goal of one day paying them. Before Kingdom Gate, there was not many options for these kids to receive education. In the village was one government school, where sometimes up to 80 kids are stuffed into one classroom, and families are charged a standard fee that makes it difficult for them to pay, especially with multiple children. Kingdom Gate now has five teachers and 42 students ranging from ages 3-7. At this time, the school can only facilitate grades Pre-K to Kindergarten, with the dream to extend. At times, David has had to make tough decisions between choosing to give to the children in Busanza or his own family. Early in the first year at Kingdom Gate, a lot of kids were unable to come because of sickness, and as David saw signs of malnutrition, swollen stomachs and orange colored faces, he knew he needed to help. Knowing his own children had recently eaten, and in ways had more opportunities to receive food, he decided to use money he would have normally spent to feed his own family, towards buying ingredients to supply daily porridge for the kids at his school. The attendance rate dramatically increased and signs of kids becoming healthy again reassured him that the sacrifice was paying off. But why was education and focusing on the children at the forefront of David’s desires? In a conversation with David’s wife, who is also an educator and volunteer headmaster for a school in Kigali, I understood why two genocide survivor’s heart would beat for future generations. "Those who planned the genocide, were highly educated individuals,” Christine said. “Therefore it is not enough to just be educated, one must build character too." With ingrained understanding of the reality of this truth, both David and Christine have dedicated their vocations to educating children holistically, considering the physical, spiritual, emotional and mental needs of human beings. All needs equal, all working together, this is their mission as they help shape young individual’s lives. David's approach to holistic education, means the school's focus is to care for the health of the children, their spirituality, behavior, character development, as well as their advancement academically. The day’s curriculum consists of language classes, music, mathematics, drawing, prayer time, games, discipline and lessons on respect, and a healthy snack time. In between each class, the children recite chants and songs that teach them unity and respect for one another and their teachers. They perform a stomping exercise before snack time to teach them order, patience and discipline. They spend time praying for one another and their families, building on a spiritual foundation that was not present before coming to Kingdom Gate. The teachers greet them with a hug as they arrive every day, making sure every student receives affection and recognition. They go through a stream of questions checking on the child's health, "How are you? How did you sleep? How is your mom?" The kids respond back in English, as this school tries to incorporate as much English and French as they can to further the student’s knowledge and academic future. But the education does not just stop at the children. David has realized that in helping children, you intrinsically begin helping an entire community. He has recently started a Savings Plan Group, where parents of the children can come together to collect and save money for future community endeavors. They meet every Wednesday and bring what money they have to place in a group savings. One member takes the collection into the city bank, where the money can grow and accumulate interest. The collected resources helps create a financial plan for water, land purchase for the school expansion and future community gardening projects. Also, whenever one member wants to start a small business, like making and selling bread, or buying a sewing machine to be a tailor, or buying a motorbike to be a taxi, they come to the group stating how much they will need to start the business, and collectively, they decide how much they are able and willing to give. Already, several women within the group have started small businesses, one woman sells sodas and water at a house-front cantina, another woman sells vegetables and fruit growing on her land at the weekend markets. In this way, parents of the children at Kingdom Gate, can begin to make their own money and support their children's education in dignified and sustainable ways. attending the school. One woman said her son prays for her family every night without fail. Another woman said since her son has been attending school at Kingdom Gate, he has started to collect bricks for his single, sick mom, promising that he will build her a house one day. Parents are already asking if David would increase the school to higher grade levels so the kids can continue in this learning environment. At the end of this trimester, some of the students will be advancing from Kindergarten to P1, and so far the school does not have the staff or facilities to support the growth. But parents are begging. David's dream is to extend the school through middle school, so that students will be launched out into schools in other communities, in order to make a difference there. But even to reach that goal is a long way. There is not enough space with the land he currently owns and the buildings on it. He dreams of acquiring the two lots to the left and right of Kingdom Gate for the further development of higher grade levels, as well as the land behind the school in order to create a community garden for the children and their family. With the current state of unpaid teachers, there is not enough money for new land at this time. Kingdom Gate, is a place that not only impacts the lives of the children attending, but their families and the community involved. Some of David's immediate goals are to use the building as a training center for the families to develop skills and knowledge to be able to create work and income for their family. He is also seeking out ways of creating better water access for the community, and meeting some of their basic, daily food needs through projects and ideas. His drive, so deeply connected to his own survival, has given him a new hope for the future in Rwanda and it is seen in the faces of the young girls and boys David and his team at Kingdom Gate invest in every day. Their smiling faces and eager spirits offer peace to a tragic history and bring beauty in the rubble of ash this land once bore.
1 Comment
Dave Bouvier
10/28/2020 08:58:53 am
It makes sense that you would be off & about doing God's work...
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AuthorKatie Elizabeth: Writer, Wonderer, Wanderer. Archives
October 2020
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