PENCILS FOR ORPHANS IN RWANDA (AFRICA) --Burl Waits 12-28-05

It was November 26, 2005, when three boxes of presents were shipped to Rwanda for the Children of a rural Lutheran sister parish of a Sacramento congregation. It was December 23, 2005, when an e-mail confirmation was received that the children were really going to get the gifts for Christmas. The history of the purpose and the frustrations provides a learning curve for anyone interested in helping underdeveloped countries.

The story for this writer started when my wife Diane and I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda. How could the world stand by while a million human beings were slaughtered in three months? Could it happen again? What could we do to help?

Life has not been the same for us since we saw that movie. For me it was learning what really happened before, during and since the Rwanda genocide of 1994. My first venture to the Internet provided proof positive that not only did the genocide of a million people happen, but that it could happen again.

As a retired attorney working with America’s education system, my attention was focused on a video conference between survivor students in Rwanda and high school students in America. I purchased the DVD and contacted the producer. Several other documents and books convinced me that some type of involvement was part of my life’s purpose. (An interested reader can follow my involvement on the web page of Process Learning Centers, Inc.)

Back to the pencils….

For Diane the passion was for the Rwandans and especially the thousands who were converted to orphans during the genocide. She soon discovered that the Lutheran church in Northern California was already helping struggling new Lutheran congregations in Rwanda. She urged her home congregation to form a sister-parish relationship with one in Rwanda. They agreed and were assigned a Rwanda parish in the area hit hardest by the genocide of 1994.  Most of the parishioners have no electricity and no easy access to clean water. 

Upon discovering that the large majority of the sister parish were children and youth, many without surviving parents, Diane started thinking about Christmas presents. After discounting t-shirts and having several discussions with others, they decided on pencils, erasers and pencil sharpeners for 200 children.

Fast forward now to Saturday, November 26, 2005…

    My involvement to this point was to haul the three big boxes to a downtown shipping point. Others had helped with raising the money and purchasing the gifts. The shipping clerks said the boxes would be in the capitol city of Kigali, Rwanda within the week and did a good job taping the packages making sure the boxes would (theoretically) stay together.

The clerk stated the cost of shipping to be “four seventy-eight.”  Diane thought $4.78 wasn’t very much, but then she struggled in disbelief when he clarified and said $478.00. The shipping cost was $50 more than the contents of the three boxes. After a few stunned minutes, she pulled out her credit card and confirmed the deal. It was important that the kids have their Christmas presents even if we had to pay double the price to get the gifts there. 

A few days later she receives confirmation that two of the three boxes were waiting in the Kigali airport to be picked up when the customs tax of $258 was paid. Where was the third box?  Messages flew back and forth between our house and Rwanda hoping the fee would be reduced and assuring officials that the pencils, erasers and pencil sharpeners were not for re-sale, but just gifts to orphans through the church. 

The rural Rwanda parish did not have the money for the tax. Again, Diane had to go to her congregation. Again, a worry of how to get the money to Rwanda with the cumbersome transfer process between the United State and central Africa. She then cut a deal with the Lutheran World Federation to pay the fee and her Sacramento congregation would reimburse the LWF. Now the total cost of the $428 gift was over $1,200 and time was of the essence. Christmas was coming. Travel from rural southeastern Rwanda to the capitol of Kigali is not always easy. 

I answered our kitchen telephone one morning and it was the shipping company attempting to trace the third box. For some unknown reason, the box had reached Nairobi, was returned to Ohio, sent on to The Netherlands, then to London and was back in Nairobi. The infamous third box was now scheduled to arrive at the Kigali airport the following day. We wondered what condition it would be in.

After several suspenseful days and many messages back and forth between the two continents, a December 23rd e-mail to our house confirmed that the customs tax had been paid by the Lutheran World Federation, the boxes were released from the Kigali airport, the pastor from the rural sister-parish and his son had the boxes in their possession and would be traveling back to their parish on December 24^th. The gifts would arrive in time to be distributed to the children after worship service on Christmas Day 2005. 

It was a very Merry Christmas all around.