Pity Party

When people see me dragging my three kids, by myself, into church or to get groceries, there is always this look of sympathy and worry in their eyes. "How are you holding up sweetie?" they often say and offer to bring me a meal through the week or watch the kids while I run errands. Don't get me wrong, I could absolutely not make it through these weeks of Justin's absence without the help. I'm grateful every time someone offers to carry a child for me or hold the door for us or bring over Chinese take-out.

Some have even gotten in the habit of saying things like "I sure hope Justin is planning to take you to the beach when he gets back!" as if he's been gallivanting around the globe hopping from resort to resort. If sleeping on a concrete floor with a thin piece of foam for a mattress and eating beans and rice for every meal is a vacation, then, yes, he's certainly living it up and owes me a tropical getaway.

The truth is, life is not daisies and roses for any of us when he's gone. No question about it, we lived much easier and simpler lives before we got involved with this project. The going and coming, the frustrations of dealing with foreign politics, the red tape, the language barrier, the food, or lack of, the financial burden....all of it can seem a little overwhelming at times.

So why do we keep doing it? Why do we keep going back?

Simple. Because of Daniel. And the nearly 1 million kids just like him.

On our first trip to Rwanda back in 2008 Justin and I did a lot of driving around the country scouting locations for a possible farm site. When we would reach our destination, before we even stepped foot out of the vehicle, we were surrounded by kids.

Kids are everywhere in Rwanda and here are some of their sobering statistics:

1% of the population in Rwanda has any type of Post-Secondary Education
34% of the households are headed by widows
13% of households are headed by children
26% of the population under the age of 14 are orphans (somewhere between 825,000 and 1,000,000 children)

It's been said that a nation cannot prosper unless it cares for its most vulnerable and nowhere is this more true than in Rwanda.

So how does modern farming help someone like Daniel, his 6 siblings and the hundreds of thousands of orphans in his country? Right now, it looks like producing better seed and more of it so the local farmers (which make up over 90% of the population) can buy it at a cheaper price. It also means making mechanization available to even the small farmers and training them in best practices like seed bed preparation and plant health. We hope, at some point, to introduce animal production so Daniel and his family can afford to include meat as a regular part of their diet and so that meat can be raised, butchered and sold in a more regulated way.

In the long term, we hope what we are doing will attract other business owners around the world to begin to see Rwanda as a global partner and a strategic place to invest.

A country with over a million little mouths to feed will soon have a million teenage mouths to feed and then a million adults who need jobs and need industries in which to work and specialize. Farming in Rwanda has to become a more diversified business and we hope what we're doing is contributing to that end.

So, while it's certainly easy for me to slip into pity party mode from time to time, when I haven't left my house or talked another adult in days, I need only look at these pictures of sweet Daniel and remember that I care about his little future. I care that he has all of the opportunities as he grows up that my children will have.

That being said, there's always room on the pity porch for some shrimp lo mien and bottle of Riesling if you happen to be in the area.

If you would like more information on sponsoring a child like Daniel, please visit the ProCom Rwanda website by clicking here.