Waking up on Umuganda Day

Savage Family Note: This post is contributed by Steve Greek, the principal at Virunga Valley Academy. He and his wonderful wife Claudia are the Savage kids’ “adopted grandparents” since moving here. We hope you enjoy this post from their perspective and that it helps you to get to know these dear friends we’ve made since moving here.

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If one forgets that the last Saturday of the month is a special time in Rwanda, the reminders come early! As the sunlight dawns, groups of people begin walking up and down the streets, chanting and singing with jubilant enthusiasm, as they scurry to the various job opportunity sites.  It is “Umuganda” which can be translated “coming together in common purpose to achieve an outcome.” A form of Umuganda started with Rwanda’s independence from foreign rule in 1962.  It has become a national day of community development during which all Rwandans, and visitors to Rwanda, are invited to participate in any of hundreds of community development projects for a few hours on this special day. Traveling for leisure or business is seriously restricted unless it is oriented around national or community development on this monthly Saturday morning. Rwandans do not resent the restriction. Rather, they eagerly participate in opportunities through which neighbors help neighbors.

On the September Umuganda Day, VVA students and faculty were invited to assist a family that lost their home in a recent flood. The administration of the school got permission from local authorities to transport groups of students and VVA staff to the worksite.  We were told we would assist a family in “building a house.” People in our work group conjured up various interpretations of what this implied for our morning. Would we be throwing mud up on a frame of sticks to make an African hut with a grass roof? Or would we be hanging drywall, hammering plywood, painting interior walls, or fishing wires through ceiling boards?  As it turned out, we did some heavy work, but it was not what any of us expected.

Our caravan of vehicles turned off the highway onto a dirt road. After several miles and a few more turns, it became clear that our vehicles were no longer able to traverse the terrain, so we parked and started walking toward the house site.  The woman facilitating the community project stopped us and described our role in helping our local neighbors.  She explained that a truck had brought a load of sand which would be used to mix concrete.  It was delivered to this point, a central area where the lorry could turn around, but could travel no further. 

Our job was to tote the sand the remaining kilometer to the house site.  She passed out gunny sacks to be filled and used for hauling sand.  Young children and grown adults filled their sacks until they were an appropriate weight, hefted the bags onto their shoulders, backs, or heads, and started up the path covered with volcanic rocks. By late morning, our crew had moved a mound from the end of the road to the remote house site. With a bit of faith and a great deal of faithfulness, our group from VVA had indeed “moved a mountain” of sand!

Seeing the World from Below

Our family has built a house before; In fact, we have built two houses. We have shopped at Home Depot, placed orders at Lowe's Home Improvement Center, and benefited from the customer service and expert advice from Ace Hardware.  We worked hard and feel we have earned every blister, callous and splinter.  Nevertheless, Claudia and I have looked at the world differently after experiencing East African home building opportunities. On the way home from church today we passed a large pile of several tons of sand.  Claudia mused, “I wonder who put that pile of sand there and I wonder where it has to go next?”  The pile of sand looks different now than it did last month.

Our first invitation to build a house in Africa was in Kenya.  We knew that it would be intense labor, so we wore some work clothes and tennis shoes.  When we saw the mud pit, we suspected we were significantly overdressed for the event.  Men from the church had driven vertical stakes into the ground  in a large rectangle. Next, they tethered smaller sticks horizontally, weaving them in and out of the stakes to form walls that would hold large clumps of mud.  The women, and the visitors from America, took their shoes off and started stamping on a pile of mud, dung, and grass which constituted something like soft, adobe clay. This was thrown, packed, and smeared onto the walls of the new house.  We contributed one day toward the house building experience.  Our Kenyan brothers and sisters spent the following weeks finishing the house construction, but our shared, formative experience built more than a house that day. It caused some of us to reconstruct our view of the world.

Dietrich Bonhoffer was a prominent theologian of the 20th century. He reexamined his own theology while living through the atrocities of World War II. During the time he was imprisoned in a concentration camp, he wrote letters and recorded thoughts which were ultimately published as “Letters and Papers from Prison.” He underscored the importance of seeing the world from the vantage point of those who have fewer privileges:

There remains an experience of incomparable value.  We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled - in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.

Our Umuganda Day work crew did a marvelous job on September 30, 2023.  These 40 people did a substantial amount of work delivering sand from the road to the plot of land where a new house will be constructed. Yet all of us realize this is just the beginning of a significant building project. The impact this experience had on the students is also significant. The small entourage of students, teachers, parents and workers from Virunga Valley Academy got a glimpse at what it is like to replace a house that has been lost through natural disaster. They had the opportunity to look through a different lens. Perhaps this new vantage point can be described as “seeing the world from below.” The school’s participation in the Umuganda project was coupled with a two-week emphasis on “listening with empathy and understanding.”  One of the parents was overheard whispering to his son, “can you imagine what it would be like to lose your house in a rainstorm? That is why we are here!”

In reflecting on the life of Jesus, it is remarkably easy to note how Jesus saw the world from below.  Jesus was born into a scandalous setting.  His parents were hardworking, poor people, living in oppression. They fled Jesus’ native country to escape threats on his young life. Throughout his ministry he embraced the sick, the lonely, the outcast, the strangers, and those people viewed with suspicion and judgment by others. Jesus challenged his followers by kneeling, with a basin and towel, and looking at his own disciples from this vantage point. He looked up at them, from below, and personified some of his life’s teachings.  May we all learn to serve as Jesus did, seek to listen with empathy and understanding, and see the world from below.

We miss and love you all,

Steve and Claudia

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Addendums

Hey there, Thom again. I wanted to also follow-up on Steve’s beautiful post with a couple of additional media items we had from the Umuganda event. The first is of the man himself, Steve Greek, giving a great overview of what was going on. After that is a video I took celebrating with some other Rwandans, singing a folk song that roughly translates to “Together We’ll Build It”.