One of my favorite pictures from my childhood is this one of Russell and I headed to school in Mugonero. We were the only foreign children to have ever enrolled in the Local village of Mugonero school. I was in first grade.
The only school supplies we had were slates and a slate stone to write with and we were lucky as most of the local kids couldn't even afford that.
In order to go to school all children had to have uniforms. This was too much expense for many and for others they were the only pair of clothes they owned. All children, boys and girls, had to keep their heads shaved to. I started school there with long hair and a few weeks into the school year I begged my Mom to shave my head. I was tired of the kids touching my hair all the time as they had never seen a white kid before and they had never touched hair like that. I also wanted to fit in ... so my Mom cried as she shaved off all my hair. I loved it and I still think it looked better like that than when my Mom gave me poodle perms a few years latter.
If you could look through the trees behind Russell and me, you would look across lake Kivu and see the island of Idjwi where the orphans live.
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