In the painting studio

      I had been nervous about doing volunteer work at the school.  It had not been my first choice.  While I like to volunteer on my trips, it has always been wildlife that attracted me before.  I wanted to see gorillas, but I simply could not find any opportunities for volunteering with gorillas.  I knew I would feel comfortable around gorillas.  I was not so sure I would be around children.
     My experience with kids in Zimbabwe was very positive though, so when Moses told me he could find me a volunteer placement in Rwanda at a school for "street boys," I decided that could be rewarding--for me, anyway.  I wasn't so sure about the kids.
      I had to send my resume' over to the school to apply for a volunteer post, and I wasn't at all sure it would be acceptable, given my almost total lack of experience with kids.  However, I was accepted.  So there started the quandary of what on earth could I possibly contribute to these kids' lives?
      Well, I knew that one of the most rewarding things I'd been doing in the past year is painting.  My painting class is VERY important to me, and I have unconditionally LOVED it.  Perhaps the kids would like to paint with me.  Not knowing what sorts of supplies they had available, I took some watercolors, pencils, and paraphernalia. Turns out the kids had loads of art supplies, including, literally, GALLONS of acrylic paint.
     Charles told me that some of the kids loved to paint and were good at it.  In fact, they had a little gallery of paintings done by the kids which the school sold and split the profits with the kids.  He instructed the "Minister of Education" to show me the gallery and to help me get my very own class set up.  Much more about the school and its ministers later.

Upon walking into the gallery, I could see that these young artists had no need for instruction from an amateur like me.  Their work was, I thought, of very high quality.

Here, one of the artists begins work on a new painting.









Below are the two paintings in the gallery I liked best.

This painting is by an unknown artist.

Here, the artist known as Prince holds one of his more recent works.  This painting is now in the Eshelman collection.

  

       





We all got painting and drawing together, starting out with trees and African animals, until the artists who were present got bored with the subject matter and started searching my phone for more interesting material.  
Pascal found a photo I'd taken of a totem pole near Vancouver and drew his own version of it.

              

 "Is this your God?" Pascal asked me.
I found I really didn't know how to answer him.