First of all, let me introduce to you. My name is Gianni and I have been working with the Nolite Timere Onlus for more than a year. Together with other volunteers, I have had the possibility to visit Rwanda, also called “the Country of great lakes and thousand hills”.

Rwanda is “colored”, with many wonderful landscapes … very different from what I had imagined. It is as large as Piemonte in Italy, populated by a 8 million people. On the hills, among banana trees, people live by cultivating beans, maize, rice and coffee. Rwanda is based on a subsistence economy, the luckiest own a cow, some chickens  and one or two goats. There are few possibilities to find a job, maybe in the agricultural field.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of children, live in the streets, with nothing to live. They are big bellied, because they suffer from malnutrition. Their faces and bodies are yellow because of malaria. They eat rice and beans, they are sweet and frisky, they walk barefoot in the rain, dressed with midges … they smile.

You are “muzungu”, a European white man, and when they see you they start running towards you, they look at you, they touch you and take your hand in order to walk with you. A little bit of fun in their life made of poverty and sadness.

Walking through the villages, we used to say hi using the local language. “Amakuru?” (how are you?). “Nimeza” (well, thank you).

To tell you the truth, almost nothing goes well. Almost all the survivors of the terrible genocide of 1994 knows it well, people who lost hope and faith. After more than 10 years, children still suffer from the terrible consequences of the genocide. Besides, they live in little hygienic places, thus facing endemic diseases, such as HIV.

I remember little Arthur, 7 years hold, HIV-positive. On his back and on his stomach he had a lot of multi colored stains. The woman who was cradling him in her arms told me the story of his mother, whose death had been caused by HIV. Arthur was silent and it seemed to me as if he knew that his life depended on the same medicine his mother took.

It is almost impossible to forget what I saw during my stay in Rwanda and when I remember I cannot stop my tears. In Africa wars and diseases are creating a new social class, never seen before, a generation of 700,000 orphans. We have the moral duty to give them back dignity and enthusiasm to live their lives. Time for words is ended, we need to act. The most important aim of the Nolite Timere Onlus is to give those children a new hope in the future.