Memorial

From the 7th to the 14th of April Rwanda is commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Genocide against the Tutsi. As a result the country is operating at half pace this week with work finishing at midday so that everyone can attend village meetings in the afternoon. Here they discuss the genocide and ongoing social conditions with the aim of carving a brighter future for themselves and their children. Somewhat ironically this has coincided with our work starting as we finished up our planning week on Friday.

The Memorial week commenced with a series of national events across Kigali, the capital, starting with a presidential speech and then the 'walk to remember' and finished up in the evening with a candle lit vigil in the stadium.

Our team attended the walk and the vigil to stand by and show our respect for Rwandans who have made remarkable progress in healing from the deep wounds of the past. It was a privilege to be able to attend as thousands upon thousands filled the city to commemorate the tragic loss of their families, friends, neighbours and colleagues.

As we head towards rainy season the down pours will become all the more common but for now they are still a welcome refreshment during the day to cool us off. We enjoyed our first proper rainfall with raindrops like gold balls and decided to revel in it with a walk in the rain.

As the week picked up we went back to the catch up school that we visited last week and helped provide holiday activities for the children in the form of games in the scorching sun. It was a lot of fun to be able to get involved in the community and invest in these kids who are some of the most needy and vulnerable in society.

The following day we visited a local primary school, half of the team looked after the children there while the other half helped in capacity building for the teachers. Half of the staff were given English lessons and the other half we taught IT skills.

The week was rounded off with helping the partnering charity with all of their administrative activities. From filing quarterly reports to maintaining and updating their website.

Time here is now starting to pass by quickly as we have more to fill our hands with. No doubt as things continue to gain pace the time will fly by and it will be over before I know it!

Takeoff

We have now been in Rwanda for 10 days, or so my malaria pill count tells me; it certainly feels like it has been significantly longer. There is much to take in about the new environment and plenty to prepare for with 8 or so weeks of work ahead of us.

So and update in a week of pictures, we finished our orientation without a hitch and moved to our new base of operations as a team of 8. It was surprising how quickly friendships were built in just a week of orientation and parting ways with the other 4 teams was a mix of emotions.

Since then things have started to take off a bit, we have met the partners of Tearfund in country that we will be working with. We have spent this week so far being introduced to different projects that we will be helping out with, enabling us to come up with a strategy of how best to help in different areas.

So, in chronological order:

The day after we arrived at our residence we decided to get stuck into the community, 'Umuganda' was the perfect opportunity. On the last Saturday of every month there is community service everywhere in the country. Our local one was a 2 minute walk up the road. We did not come particularly well equipped for manual labour but we were willing and got involved. The practical work was relatively trivial, cleaning up the side of one dirt road but umuganda serves as a community building tool that goes far beyond cleaning up the streets. We were able to meet some of our neighbours and introduced ourselves. The rest of the time was spent allowing local matters to be discussed among community members (all in Kinyarwandan so we only picked up on pieces here and there that were translated for us).

On Sunday we went to a Christian Life Assembly church and got caught out in the rain on the way home.

We also met some of our new house mates:

On Monday we had our first meeting with our host partners, enabling us to get to know the team that we will be working along side, the day was also in meetings as a team ourselves to organise all of our own rotas and get all the administrative stuff out the way.

Tuesday we visited a farming co-operative in Kigali where we were able to probe enough to give us an idea of how we can help to improve their productivity and hopefully work towards lifting more people from poverty.

Wednesday we visited two catch up schools for children aged 10-20 who are yet to complete primary school. The genocide 20 years ago has left Rwanda with 85000 child led homes and thousands of orphans, many of whom grow up on the streets. These schools provide those children with an alternative path in life.

This morning we visited a church led self-help saving group who have used their collectively saved money to fight poverty together. The main avenue that this has taken is through forming an agricultural co-operative together, some 90% of Rwandans make their living through farming in one way or another. The saving group has also gathered all of the required materials to build a nursery that we will help to construct at some point during our stay.

In between all of that we have not really stopped laughing together. Our meal times frequently leave us in stitches as we laugh at ourselves with each other.  As you have probably gathered Rwanda is a very green country and I haven't been to a place yet where the horizon isn't littered with rolling hills.

I am enjoying my time so far and looking forward to really getting stuck in as we begin executing the plans from next Monday.