The Rafiki Village Rwanda-- a simply beautiful place to live!

Many of you may wonder what an African Rafiki village is like... be prepared for a paradigm shift!  For those of you thinking I was roughing it over in Africa, I'm afraid you may experience some disappointment.  The extent of my "roughing it" was that I had to share a room & bathroom... and since I had such a great roommate, there wasn't anything "rough" about it.  Giant.Slumber.Party.


Front View of the Guest Cottage:

Back view of the Guest Cottage

See that beautiful Hibiscus at the back of the Guest cottage in the pic above? 

Here is a close-up!  The plants and flowers are all similar to those that grow in Southern FL & Southern CA.



Here's the view of the front door and living room area for visiting.

Below is the view of the dining room & kitchen from the living room.

Here is a close-up of the kitchen...

Below is a pic of Barb's room... all the bedrooms have 2 beds in them and an adjoining bathroom.



Now I'll take you on a little tour of the rest of the village campus:

The village is designed to have several PODS consisting of 3 cottages for the smaller children (up through age 12 I think?) and their "Mama's" with a gazebo in the middle of them.  The cottage directly behind the gazebo is Mama Marie's and the cottage to the right is Mama Judith's (Enid's) cottage.

The Dining Hall, where we all had our meals.

This is one of the ROS staff cottages. (ROS is Rafiki Overseas Staff-- they are employees of Rafiki)

See the cement sidewalk leading up to the ROS building in the pic above?  We were told that was just put in the week before we arrived at the village.  NICE!  That would have been quite an experience on a rainy day when it was a dirt path.  #notenoughSpraynwashinAfrica!

Side view of the school building.  The Dining Hall the building shown partially to the right.

Below is the view of the school building from the Dining Hall down below.  You can begin to get a sense that the village is on a hill.  The Guest cottage is at the top of the hill-- so that is how I got my daily exercise-- up and down that hill!

Aren't they so cute in their school uniforms?

So, did this change your perception of what an African village looks like?  It is true, not ALL African villages look like this, but all RAFIKI African villages look very similar.  One of the aims of Rafiki is to help change the standard of living in the 10 poorest African countries and one way the address this is by creating simple, comfortable homes for the orphans they adopt and the Nationals they employ.

Check out this address for more info about Rafiki:  http://www.rafikifoundation.org/