Stormy crossings lead to calm waters

After a lovely weekend at Home St Jean meeting new people, watching the Six Nations rugby and generally chilling out I set off back to the village by boat rather later in the day than was expected. Consequently the weather got worse and the lake became turbulent. It wasn’t raining but the wind was blowing and the boat was ‘dancing’ (to quote Jean Baptiste). In other words the boat was lurching up and down and waves were pounding into the hull. We had a ‘baler outerer’ in the form of Samuel and a small plastic container. We also had life jackets and I must admit that I considered what I would do if we capsized. I think I could manage myself but how could I leave my friends who couldn’t swim? Baptiste is an excellent swimmer so he could try to save one person. I am an okay swimmer and would make an attempt. My concern would be that their panic might take us both down. Someone once gave me advice that in that situation the rescuer should give the struggler a knock on the head so that their body would go limp and make the rescue easier. But with what would I hit them having been thrown out of the boat? – Ideas on a postcard please!!

After pondering on this for some time I decided to calm myself down and pray, so began singing quietly ‘Be still and know that I am God....’ It helped. During this stormy session on the lake we passed the fishermen out in their ‘tri- boat’ paddling against the storm. Three wooden boats are fastened together with long wooden poles and there are three paddlers in each boat. Watching them struggle against the high waves made me realize once again how physically demanding life in Rwanda can be.

Anyway, Baptiste is an experienced boatsman and having held the tiller steady for two hours he steered us into the calm waters of the bay. We noticed a very overloaded boat had also taken refuge in our bay. The people were possibly from DRC on their way home from the market.

Hello! from Viro Primary School, Gihombo

Harvesting the beans in the school grounds

This week I visited the local Primary school again and had a lovely time with some of our children who have moved up to Primary 1. I was delighted to discover they still remembered the songs and the role play activities in English!  I gave them the letters from schoolchildren in Rochdale which had been translated into Kinyarwanda by my friend in Kigali. I asked the teachers to help the children to write replies in Kinyarwanda and planned to collect them next week. A real and unexpected bonus came in the form of Samuel who is a School Based Mentor and, of all the schools in the area that he could be based at, he is based at the two schools where our children from Gasundwe go after being at our school. I just love how these things happen sometimes – things working together for good. The presence of Samuel in the school has meant a vast improvement in the use of English by the teachers and subsequently the students.

In the background of the photo you will see the school children harvesting the beans that are grown in the school grounds- no bit of land is left uncultivated here in Rwanda and many hands make light work.

Samuel came to the village to take part in some training that I was doing with the teachers and he stayed overnight. He and Gabriel exchanged telephone numbers and I think they will be a big encouragement for each other. I also went to the school nearest to the Sector Office where some VSO volunteers were doing training and it was wonderful to see them at work in this neglected area of the District. My dear friend and colleague, Tracy, who is doing the same job in Nyamasheke District that I was doing in Muhanga District was there and she also came to stay overnight in the guesthouse. All these links are raising the profile of Gasundwe in the sector and in the District.

The photos above show the members of the household who look after us all. This  is a busy house with folks working hard on growing, gathering and preparing food for much of the day. 

This week we had a harvest of groundnuts (see photo), mangoes and beans. We also decided to improve the porridge recipe by adding soya to the mixture of sorghum and maize. This decision was taken because some of the children are suffering from protein deficiency.

We had a great day of training on Thursday when I got out some of the locally made teaching materials and showed how to use them. We had two teachers, a Teaching assistant and the School Based Mentor. I was going to do the training for more of the Nursery teachers in the sector but the journeying and organisation is so frustratingly difficult that I decided to do it just for our little school. I'm glad i did because the children enjoyed it and they didn't miss a day of school.

Bottle tops for counting and making patterns

Put the correct number of beans in the bottle - the bean harvest is in the backgroun.

Learning colours and matching

The children are not used to sitting on the grass mat in school. They usually sit on benches facing the front but we wanted to try something new and the children are able to manipulate materials easier in this situation.

These individual boards are the Rwandan equivalent of the little white boards that children in the UK use with a marker pen.The Teaching assistant is showing a little boy how to hold the board and the chalk at the same time.  

So... we had great fun!

The next day it was back on the boat to Kibuye and then to Kigali for me. I had to come back to Kigali again bringing the teachers laptop to have additional programs and drivers installed. 

Off we go again...

Look what was in the reeds waving us off.

I will return to Gasundwe on Wednesday for my last visit before going home on 20^th February.