USA-Rwanda: Ohio man finds his calling in Rwandan orphanage

By Kathy Lynn Gray
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
December 26, 2009

Jeff Ramsey grew up on a dairy farm and didn't travel much beyond his family's home in Richmond, near Steubenville in eastern Ohio.

He helped with the farm, played saxophone in the high-school band, showed animals at the county fair and hung out with his three brothers.

He dreamed of being a veterinarian but instead majored in computer science at Ohio State University and then spent the next 22 years working at Nationwide in Columbus.

So his family was understandably shocked this fall when the 46-year-old rented out his home, quit his job and moved 7,500 miles away to run an orphanage on a remote mountain in Rwanda.

"It was a big decision in an otherwise very orderly life," said his friend Charlene Jendry. "It took so much courage to leave everything that was familiar."

Yet Jendry understands what pulled Ramsey to the lush but troubled African country near the equator. Jendry and Ramsey helped found Partners in Conservation in 1991 at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, where Ramsey was a volunteer and Jendry was on the staff. The group's goal was to support conservation and humanitarian programs in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Eventually, the group began supporting the Imbabazi Orphanage in the northwest corner of Rwanda near Volcanoes National Park, home to the endangered mountain gorilla. In 1999, Ramsey began traveling each summer to the orphanage and other programs the group supported.

The orphanage, with more than 100 children who lost their families during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, kept drawing him back. He became friends with the children who live there and with its founder, Roz Carr, who died in September 2006 at age 94.

When the foundation running the orphanage decided to hire its first executive director, Jendry and others persuaded Ramsey to apply.

"He's kind, compassionate, a really good listener, and he's fair and not judgmental," Jendry said. "He takes all sides into consideration, and he has a great, great respect for the people of Rwanda. Once he decided, he knew that this was what he was supposed to do right now, and he hasn't looked back."

Now, Ramsey boils water for a bath and shave each morning on a two-burner cookstove and depends on a fireplace to keep his house warm. He longs for hot showers and junk food but loves listening to the rain lull him to sleep as it falls on his tin roof at night.

In an e-mail interview, he said his biggest surprise is the scope of his job. Not only does he oversee the orphanage, but also the acres of land surrounding it, farming plots of flowers and vegetables, a tract of eucalyptus trees and a herd of cows.

He also counts out the pay, in Rwandan francs, for more than 30 employees; drives bouquets of flowers to a bus for transport into the city, where they are sold to raise money for the orphanage; teaches children how to shuffle decks of cards; sells bulls to local butchers; and reviews report cards with the children.

He's finding, through trial and error, that he can't make changes at the pace he'd like.

"Rwandanese culture requires a personal relationship as part of conducting business," he wrote. "My biggest hurdle is my own impatience and lack of understanding of the process that must be followed to complete a task. I'm getting better at discussing what I want to get done prior to giving orders."

Ramsey's niece Sarah Matheny of Lancaster said his family misses the uncle who was so devoted that he'd travel an hour each way several times a week to watch a niece or nephew play basketball.

But Matheny, 30, said she knows that Uncle Jeff is putting his heart and soul into his new job.

"He believes wholeheartedly in the orphanage, the gorillas, all of that," she said. "If anyone's going to be good for that job, it's going to be him."

Note: Kathy Lynn Gray can be contacted at "kgray@dispatch.com"

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