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Gitarama

After a few hours at the orphanage, we made our way back to the town's center where we intended to catch a matuka to the little cathedral a few kilometers south. As Valante and I were leaving, the children started doing backbends and jumping up and down. Essentially, they were putting on a show--but they were sincere, innocent, totally unrehearsed and into their impromptu choreography and acrobatics.

 

I marveled at their limber, pliant bodies torpedoing(sp?) through the air, or wrestling on the grass. It was especially hot this afternoon, the sweat a sleak reminder of the inescapable sun.

 

We all squinted, but these two boys in particular gestured. The middle, he looks sort of pensive, even angry--doesn't he? When I leaf through my images of him, I remember being captive to a gaze that idled between curiousity and mystery.

 

Upclose, you can see, he's an old soul.

 

Orphanage For Handicapped Children.

Girarama, Rwanda.

June, 2005.

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Uploaded on October 18, 2005
Taken on June 9, 2005