They say that home is where the heart is but my heart is in many places. I guess this means that my home is where I reside among the hospitable. I have now been adopted by two Kenyan families. Meet my lovely Luo family as you accompany me into life in the Kenyan village of Manuanda.

I met my African queen and her name is Elizabeth. Seriously, I don’t think I have seen a cuter little girl since my little sister entered the world. I met Elizabeth at my last dinner in Uganda with Dickens, a good friend that I made on this trip, and his family at their home. Dickens recently planted a church in one of the neediest areas of Kampala. They began meeting as a small group under a tree and it has grown to the point where the people requested that he start a church.

Everyone has heard the stories of problems in Africa. Sometimes I think it is all we think of when we hear about this continent. One of the questions that makes me internally roll my eyes is, “Africa, isn’t it dangerous over there?” What we fail to consider is that Africa is a continent, not a country. It is very large, more than three times the size of the USA, and very diverse. There are politically unstable areas and peaceful areas, as there are in most parts of the world. There are certain themes, however, that emerge when one analyzes troubled areas and situations around this vast continent. The riots that just broke out in Kampala highlight one of the primary issues that continues to cause problems in Africa.

After this experience I think I’m one step closer to being a true African. I took an eleven hour bus trip from Kigali to Kampala, all while riding on the floor. To be more specific, I was sitting on the engine cover, slowly cooking along the way. I’ve never had trouble finding a seat on a bus here in East Africa but today when I showed up for the last buses to Kampala they were all full. Then a confident man strolled up asking if I was heading to Kampala and then motioning for me to follow him. Along the way he said something about Kampala Coach being the best bus and having air conditioning. For a few seconds I almost believed this sales pitch aimed at naive muzungus. I think what he meant by air conditioning was that the windows opened.

Can you imagine losing every member of your extended family in a matter of weeks? To be the only survivor among the people you loved the most? This is exactly what the young man in this picture experienced and I sat there listening to him sing about it. Through the help of a translator I learned that the lyrics went something like this;

When I remember my past
My heart is filled with praise
Because God did the impossible for me
I remember the people who died all around me
But after they tried to kill me several times I survived
And that is impossible

Informed by a mere paragraph in Lonely Planet and a quick glimpse at their website, I set out to find the Solace Ministries Guesthouse in Kigali, Rwanda. The vague map in my travel guide pointed in the right direction without actually pinpointing the location. Passing through multiple neighborhoods, making several phone calls, and asking anyone he could find, my moto-taxi gradually narrowed down the spot until we had found the place. Introducing myself to Denise, the manager of the guesthouse, I mentioned that I sometimes photograph and write about vital causes that I find in East Africa. She then took me to the office of the founder and director of the ministry, John Gakwandi. Listening to what must have sounded like a bizarre story of how I found my way to his organization, John welcomed me and introduced me to their work.

Kigali has a fresh feeling to it. There is a chill breeze that carries minimal smog. Colors are vibrant and unhidden by pollution. Built on rolling hills, Kigali seems to naturally connect urban with rural. It is as though the cityscape is nestled into the countryside. The rise and fall of the local terrain means that in many parts of the city you get a fantastic view of the surrounding area.

Here I am at the Hotel des Mille Collines, sipping a cup of tea and pondering the tragic events that unfolded here only 15 years ago. Amidst chirping birds, laughing people, quality food and the luxurious atmosphere of this place, it is hard to imagine that hundreds of Rwandans once hid here to escape the genocide of 1994 that claimed more than one million lives in one hundred days.

I have long desired to visit Rwanda. It wasn’t clear if this trip would afford the proper circumstances for a visit or if it would be too far out of the way. Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, requires a ten hour bus ride from Kampala and since there isn’t much public transport back to Kenya through Tanzania around the South of Lake Victoria, you have to bus back to Kampala again before heading East into Kenya. When I decided to go gorilla trekking, however, I realized that I would be taking a bus most of the way to Kigali by reaching my stop in Southwest Uganda.

The next question was, what would I do there? Besides adding to my country count and experiencing a new place, would there be some redeeming value to the additional time and expenses that I would incur? While reading through my Lonely planet travel guide, I noticed with surprise that under their accommodations for Kigali they featured a guesthouse run by a Christian ministry. Solace Ministries, it said, used the funds raised by the guesthouse to purchase the ARVs, AIDS medication, for women who had been raped during the genocide. Realizing that this was exactly the kind of ministry that I have been looking for to support in East Africa, it was settled and I had to go.

There are rare moments in life where we have to remind ourselves to pause and take it all in. To realize that what is happening right now is unlikely to ever be repeated. When the extraordinary overpowers the ordinary and leaves us in awe. This is how I felt while trekking through the tropical rain forest of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park en route to visit a group of endangered mountain gorillas. The 13 mountain gorillas of the Bitukura family are among the 710 or so left in the world, all of which reside in either Bwindi or the Virunga Volcanoe range in the region bordering Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Referred to by Lonely Planet as “One of life’s great experiences”, seeing a family of mountain gorillas close range in their own domain is truly awe-inspiring.