Blairstown Rotary Club donates dictionaries to a school in Rwanda

The Blairstown Rotary Club recently held a meeting at which Susan Batts was the guest speaker for the evening. Club members learned that Susan had delivered the club’s gift of 250 dictionaries to a school in Butare , Rwanda . They also learned that this was no small accomplishment.

As current residents of Harmony, Susan and Richard (Dick) Wallace of the Rotary Club have known each other for a long, long time. He learned that she was going to Rwanda and requested that Susan deliver the Rotary Club’s gift to a school in that country. Richard noted that the dictionary donation had been a two-year quest, as the first shipment never made it to Rwanda . It was lost somewhere in Kenya .

Susan left Kennedy Airport in NYC, flew to Dubai and then to Kenya , all the time giving two large cases of dictionaries her careful attention. Finally, she arrived in Kagali , Rwanda . Then via very rough roads and uncomfortable transportation, she personally delivered the Blairstown Rotary Club’s dictionaries to a village school in Butare. Her PowerPoint and DVD presentation showed the Rwandan students actually receiving their dictionaries and reading the Club’s letter to them.

Susan also commented on her trip to the Volcano National Park and the area where tourists can get up close to gorillas. The pictures of the gorillas, impalas and other wild animals were amazing. The mountainous countryside was very beautiful, but is also economically very poor. Bicycles are the main means of transportation.

At the close of her presentation, Susan was given a very warm and generous round of applause. Susan was given a lot of credit for babysitting the two cases of dictionaries halfway across the world. What a wonderful ending to the “dictionary story!”

Click below to play the video from their distribution.