It's December already

Despite schools breaking up for Christmas back in October, I have been surprisingly busy for the past six weeks. Since finishing my holiday training, which I wrote about in my last blog, I have been working in Kigali. As part of the ALOA project, VSO had to produce a research report on the data collection we did back in September. I have been working in the office with our Monitoring and Evaluation Manager and with one of the Education Programme Managers to help them write this report. It has been a while since I have used my brain to write something academic but I really enjoyed getting stuck into it - reading studies from other countries, writing literature reviews, analysing data, editing and proof-reading etc etc. The end product is a 15,000 word report which will be published online soon for all to read. Once again this demonstrates the opportunities you can get as a volunteer - helping to write national research papers is not something I expected to be doing in Rwanda but it is certainly something I would do again.

Having finished my work on the report on Tuesday, I then went straight to a 3 day resource development workshop which I organised for VSO volunteers in Kigali. Everyone brought a resource they had made in their district and then we spent 3 days copying each other's resources. Whilst working, we listened to Christmas songs and Rwandan music to keep the spirits high. It was a welcome change to spend time with lots of volunteers and to do some colouring in as opposed to report writing (we teachers love a bit of colouring in!).

In the past week I have been looking for signs that Christmas has come to Rwanda. It is very strange not to be needing a coat or hat as Christmas approaches this year. Especially having spent Christmas last year working in the French Alps. So, to my delight, yesterday I discovered that the shopping centre in town has Christmas trees, Santa figures, supermarket workers wearing Santa hats and shops playing Christmas music. (Photos courtesy of Michelle).

The rain continues to fall here in Rwanda. I often feel like I am playing rain roulette when I look at the sky and try to decide whether I can get a moto to my destination before the skies open. This week the odds were against me and I had two downpours mid-journey. But, when it's not raining, there is glorious sunshine so I can't complain too much. Although secretly I would like a bit of snow to remind me that it is December!

This week's silly mistake: Putting soap on your hands before checking if there is running water. You would have thought that after 8 months I might have learnt this already- doh!

Small steps, Big changes

Life is ticking along quite nicely in Kibungo. Moses, my Zimbabwean VSO colleague has now moved into my house, which is great because I am not longer lonely. It turns out he can also cook ugali and beef sauce (a Zimbabwean staple) so I am looking forward to having a night off from cooking duties once a week and someone to do the washing up all the other nights!

The title of this blog post refers to the training Moses and I are currently conducting with all the schools in our district. It is about recognising children who have impairments and identifying strategies to help them in the classroom. I think we have already made big progress with the participants. At the beginning of one session, a teacher suggested an action we could take was to 'advise the parents to send the child to a special centre' but by the end of the day, they were able to identify lots of strategies they could use to demonstrate inclusive education for all.

The heavy messages have been accompanied by participatory activities too, with us blindfolding teachers, tying their legs together and putting masking tape over their hands so they could attempt to get a sweet from a challenging environment and thus experience what it might be like to have a disability.

We also looked at how people with impairments are treated in society by creating a party environment where different coloured stickers determined whether you were ignored or greeted nicely. This followed with a conversation about how it feels to be left out by society and what we can do to change this. We looked at the use of the Kinyarwanda word 'ikimuga' which means 'broken pot', a word which is sometimes used to describe a person with a disability here. Lots of interesting discussions and plenty of food for thought:

I have also been doing training on Assessment and Differentiation, which follows the SEN training very nicely.

Here is a photo of the participants' ideas and my brilliant drawing of a chef and customer! :

Lots of thanks to the lovely Michelle, Bebhinn and Taravusa for joining us for some of the training. It was great to have some fresh perspective!

And I hope this proves to you all that I do work hard. Although I did manage to squeeze in a swim at the pool in Kigali on Sunday!

Kibuye

At the risk of sounding like a Rwandan tour operator, I am once again writing about a picturesque holiday location in Rwanda. We volunteers do work hard, I promise, but we also make the most out of our weekends in this beautiful country and last weekend was no exception, as I visited Kibuye on Lake Kivu for the first time.

Like most places in Rwanda, there is very little to do in Kibuye, other than eat and enjoy the view (What a hardship!). It is totally unspoilt and incredibly scenic there. A number of hotels are spread out over the hills, providing stunning views over the lake and some good dining options.  My volunteer friends and I spent the weekend eating lake fish, swimming around Amahoro Island and taking a boat trip to visit the bats on Napolean Island. We had a wonderfully relaxed time and once again I was reminded of how lucky I am to work in a place where every weekend I can escape and experience a mini-break in paradise. They even had Cornetto ice cream at one of the hotels which is the fourth ice cream I have had since coming to Rwanda.

As always, I will let the pictures show the rest:

Flying Kites

I was very surprised a fortnight ago when a huge box arrived at my PO Box in Kibungo. It turned out to be a large number of kites which children at the Greycoats Hospital School in Westminster, London had made for the children in my schools. Along with the handmade kites, the children had written beautiful letters to the kids here, sharing snippets about life in England and what they had learnt about Rwanda at school:

I had a great time distributing the kites last week, at two of my schools and the children were fascinated by them. With support, they wrote a few lines of thanks to the students in London, which I have posted back to them. It was great to provide them with a real purpose for writing and some of the children were quite inventive with their letter writing:

Of course the highlight of this project was seeing the kids tearing around in the playground trying to make the kites fly. Due to the lack of wind, it seemed the children who ran flat out had the most success with getting their kites to fly but lots of fun was had by all and I am sure the children will perfect their kite flying soon enough.

An adventurous journey home

My blogging has become a bit lapse recently as I have had the lovely Bebhinn staying at my house. Bebhinn is also a TMA with VSO and she has just started her placement in Rwamagana. I agreed to let her shadow me for a few days so she could see what the role entails.

Yesterday, Bebhinn and I visited one of my further-away schools. Unfortunately the head teacher informed us when we arrived that we could only stay for the morning as he had some business to attend to in the afternoon. We were not too upset by this and quickly made arrangements with our moto drivers to collect us at midday with the intention of being dropped in to town so we could do a spot of shopping, walk home and then get on with some admin tasks. Alas, it was not to be.....

Our motos arrived at midday ready to take us home but the Head Teacher then decided that we could not leave without taking lunch so our motos were asked to wait whilst we were presented with this:

After a delicious feast, we prepared to board our motos but the drivers had disappeared. Eventually we found Safari sleeping in an empty classroom. He told me it was about to rain so we should wait in the school for the storm to pass, and within minutes, the rain was bucketing down! The noise of it hitting the classroom roof was incredible - there is no way lessons can continue during that sort of downpour. Unfortunately the rain continued for another hour and we were not able to leave the school until 2pm. But then we were on our merry way.........

Until.....my moto broke down. I think rain water got inside the mechanism somehow which caused it to go "chug chug chug" and then die. (Technical terms, of course!). Bebhinn and I had quite the crowd of onlookers including a number of children who should have been in the school where we had been working. After 10 minutes of waiting, we decided to start walking home. We had a lovely walk for an hour or so, after which the motos, freshly mended, caught up with us, and whisked us home.

It was really nice to enjoy the landscape at a walking pace and we took lots of photos on our adventure. Here are a few of my favourites which demonstrate the variety of houses in my district.

As you can see Ngoma has lots of banana plantations. In the distance, you can just see one of the beautiful lakes, which lots of the teachers I work with enjoy visiting with picnics during the holiday.

ALOA Schools

Last week was incredibly busy as Moses and I collected data from four of the schools in our ALOA sectors.

The collection went relatively smoothly and it was certainly an interesting exercise. During the week, we assessed 60 children and I found it interesting to see how different their responses were to English children. For example, when asked reading comprehension questions, most of the children who did not know the answer would reply with a word from the excerpt, clearly trying to second-guess an answer, in contrast to children in the UK who would probably remain silent or say "I don't know". It also entertained me when many of the children answered the question "What hit Senga on the head?" with the answer "sister" instead of the correct answer, "rain". I am fairly sure they gave this answer because the story talks about Senga's family, not because they think sisters normally hit their siblings over the head!?!  I also discovered that most of the children could read nonsense words just as well as real words. I suppose they were sounding them all out and probably didn't comprehend the meaning of many of the real words, so this, sadly, would explain the lack of significant difference here.

On Wednesday, we visited the school which is in our comparative sector, a place where we do not provide any support but still collect data so that we can compare it to the data in the sectors where our intervention takes place. I found it hard to be at this school because the teachers and children were really eager to see, and work with, us and I had to confess that we would only visit again when it came to collecting more data. It then took us 4 hours to get home from this school, which is supposed to be an hour and a half on moto. But 10 minutes into the journey, the rain came down in torrents and we had to seek shelter next to a building. Thankfully, a door quickly opened and we were beckoned into a shop where we were able to dry out, buy tea and seat for an hour and a half until the rain stopped and we could continue our journey. I never knew rain could be so painful!

I took a few photos at the schools during the week, and here you can see the contrast between a classroom where we provide intervention, and one that doesn't get support from VSO:

Part II in Rwanda begins

After a wonderful break in England, which consisted mainly of eating chicken and prawns, drinking diet coke, enjoying long hot showers. catching up with family and friends and planning Amanda's wedding, I am now safely back at my home in Rwanda. Here is a photo from the lovely Mr and Mrs Capps' wedding in Sunny England:

It is now the rainy season in Rwanda and within the past 24 hours I have already experienced two massive downpours, with thunder and lightning. Of course, we are lucky because in between the downpours, the sun returns which doesn't often happen in England. But the climate definitely feels different to how it was 3 weeks ago and I'm not looking forward to experiencing a downpour mid-moto ride!

I was very happy to find that my tomatoes had ripened whilst I was away. Patrick has, very kindly, been picking them for me and this is what I found in my kitchen: 

 

I was quite pleased with myself to have grown these from seed (look back through my blog for the photo of tomatoes growing in my garden).

This afternoon, having been to the market, I set about making bolognese using my new mincer, which my aunt kindly bought for me: 

 

The mincer works a treat and has drastically enhanced my menu options...Now I am dreaming of hamburgers, shepherds pie and fajitas which are all within my reach- feeling like quite the domestic goddess!

As for work, the next couple of weeks will be very busy as we begin data collection for the Monitoring and Evaluation part of our VSO work. I will endeavour to blog again soon as I am sure the findings will be interesting and will hopefully demonstrate the impact we have been having at a local level.

Uganda with Jess

After a whirlwind tour of Uganda which involved excessive hours spent travelling by road (more than 24 in one week!), I am now typing this on my flight back to England.

During the week, I found myself constantly comparing the country to Rwanda and I was surprised by how much I preferred Rwanda and missed my African "home". Kampala is a hectic city, with an enormous volume of traffic resulting in a minimum of 5 hours' rush hour every day. Despite the size of it, it seemed the centre was not well-designed and all the main travel hubs are in close quarters resulting in gridlock which even the boda bodas (motortaxis) could not avoid. Unlike Rwanda, safe driving does not reach the same level in Uganda. It is rare to see a Boda boda driver with a helmet on, let alone one for a passenger (which all Rwandan moto drivers carry). Our taxi driver told me that there is an entire wing in the local hospital full of people who have boda boda accidents and I can't say I'm surprised. Our first taxi journey demonstrated this as they were driving up the pavements, tearing in between cars, travelling with 3 passengers etc etc.

Generally Kampala is a colourful city, similar to Rwanda, with  different coloured buildings advertising various products. A big difference I noticed is the number of tiny shack-shops and food stalls out on the road (something Rwanda has stopped in recent years, instead finding roofed areas for craft markets etc to set up). The people seemed friendly even though we were overcharged by our first cab driver who insisted he had agreed 20,000 shillings each instead of a total ride for 20,000 shillings. We were careful not to fall into that trap again and double checked everything from then on.

Source of the Nile

Having briefly seen Kampala, we headed out to Jinja and the River Nile. The place we stayed in (Adrift) was spectacular. It had a picture-perfect log cabin bar, which overlooked the Nile and even had HOT showers! Whilst there, we visited the source of the Nile, where Lake Victoria meets the river but most excitingly, we went went white water rafting down the Nile; exhilarating, scorching hot and totally incredible. I will remember the sensation of floating down the Nile next to our raft very fondly, holding hands with Jess as she floated alongside me saying "Just taking a quick dip in the Nile" - magical!



Front right = me, behind me = Jess

Whilst in Jinja, we also did a bit more souvenir shopping. Jesso commissioned a painting because the one she liked was too big for her house boat. So the painter, Mike, set about making a smaller version for her whilst we continued walking for a couple of hours. Here he is in his studio, amidst his beautifully bright artwork. The big painting on the floor is the original we liked. Prices were a bit cheaper than Rwanda on the whole, although their African fabrics tended to be more expensive (so no more dresses for me!).

Next on the Ugandan hit list was Murchison Falls which brought about a safari, boat trip and visit to the waterfalls. I think photos will sum this up better than words. Unfortunately the lions decided not to come out to play but other than that, we had a high success rate on the animal spotting. Highlights included staying in safari tents whilst a hippo grazed  a couple of metres away from us and a naughty warthog ripped through our neighbours' tent because the even naughtier neighbours forgot to leave their biscuits at the bar (the strict "no food in the tents" rule is there for a reason).

To minimise the disappointment of not seeing the lions, Jess and I spent our last night in Uganda at the Entebbe Wildlife Centre and after a stunning sunrise, we went to visit the lions, hyenas, zebras (zeblas as they say in Rwanda) and cerval cats amongst other animals. The Education Centre is a great place to stay and for the cost of the dorm room (20,000 shillings per person) you get entry to the centre which is normally 30,000 shillings on its own.

A wonderful adventure to finish off Jess' stay in Africa. I will be sad to return to Rwanda without her although we have some amazing memories and photos of our time together. And fingers crossed she's got the bug and will come again soon ;-)