By Elana Stern

 

I looked down at the muddy floor again and, just to be sure, I gazed back at the water tap in the ceiling. Nothing. It was my second day in Rwanda, and there was no running water. I had listened to all the other advice we had been given but I hadn’t believed that running water would actually stop.

 

I spent the month of February volunteering at the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda. I would do things I once thought entirely out of the realm of possibility in my life (chopping down trees with a machete, building a warehouse out of concrete and bricks, teaching English and French to African orphans).

 

Read more in the New Jersey Jewish News. Elana Stern participated in Masa Israel’s Young Judaea Year Course, with the Social Action Rwanda track