``There were huts with walls made out of cow poo,'' he said. ``There were three-year-olds walking kilometres three times a day to fetch water out of a dirty well that then had to be boiled to drink.''

The trip served its purpose it made an impression.

You have to hear Keating verbally painting the picture to know how big an impression.

He was part of a group that brought some smiles to those faces.

Those smiles gave more than a temporary warm inner glow.

They gave Keating the determination to do something more lasting than a bit of bricklaying for a new house, important as that was.

``We'll definitely do fund-raising next year and I want to go back,'' he said.

The high-profile professional footballer went to Rwanda fresh from Parramatta's 23-18 grand-final loss, with further fame and riches beckoning.

He was accompanied by Eels teammate Joel Reddy, Joe Gualavao (who's off to Manly), Justin Poore (who's joining the Eels), Parramatta chief executive officer Paul Osborne and Nathan Hindmarsh's partner Bonnie Scott.

And, yes, he returned a changed young man.

He'd had a quick primer beforehand on Rwanda and its tragedy the million people slaughtered in a month but said the reality of the country hit him with a shock.

``All the things we take for granted their lives are just about survival,'' he said.

Even in Rwanda, the lives of the big-time footballers and the villagers were comparative luxury compared with subsistence.

``We stayed in a guest house,'' he said. ``We had electricity, bottles of water. The villagers had nothing.

``The worst villages had the walls made out of cow poo.

``Their lives are all labour, six hours a day.''

The visitors weren't big-name footballers to children without modern media but the kids, whose recreation was soccer, knew the visitors were somebodies.

There were soccer games and touch football with the somebodies in between work.

Keating said the visitors put in their own yakka laying bricks.

``We didn't laze around,'' he said, but they had another world to return to.