Visiting schools

I have had a wonderful week in Kibungo, having spent a lot of time in the house, sorting through rice sacks and useful resources for my work here. I also managed to visit a few schools and the local orphanage.

There are 42 children in the orphanage, 18 aged between 0-3. They are all there because their mothers died during child birth. The youngest orphan is not yet a month old-he was tiny and very beautiful. When the children reach the age of 3, the orphanage tries to re-home them with family members or adoptive parents. If this is not possible, they stay in the orphanage. I have agreed to visit the older children every Saturday when I am in Kibungo to give them English lessons - we are going to learn lots of English songs and games. Any ideas welcome!

It was also great to watch some lessons in school. In most of the lessons I saw, the children were very well behaved although it was hard not to notice that some of the teachers carried a cane which they waved around to control the kids, giving them the occasional tap if they fell out of line. Some of the classrooms had electricity but none of them were using it - the rooms were just about bright enough with the windows (some glass and some open) and open doors. Here is a photo of one of the classes:

On Friday, I shadowed Ingrid and Amass, VSO volunteers in a nearby town called Rwamagana. Together we helped  teachers in a school to create a library room with all the text books and story books that had previously been inaccessible for teachers to use: