Three Days of Beauty



View from the Balcony of the Hoiliday Hotel

  

One of the great advantages of doing VSO is that you get to see and go to lots of places you would never have seen had you stayed at home. The getting there and particularly coming back can be a bit of a trial but the bit in the middle is always worthwhile. That was all true for our last trip to Lake Kivu in the Western Province of Rwanda.

The getting there was an overcrowded 1 ¼ hour minibus to Kigali and a change to the Impala Coaches and, after an hour’s wait on a hot bus, a 2 ½ hour ride to Kibuye, one of the resorts on the edge of the Lake. Normally we would sleep but this journey was not only really beautiful but the twists and turns on the road made it impossible to stay upright. Rwanda is the land of “a Thousand Hills” and so many of them are in this area.

We can assure you it was worth the ride because the scenery was stunning!

If you want to research the Lake, just follow this link:-

For more about Lake Kivu, Click Here

But less of the oxidisers and the methane gas and more of the beauty!


It was a bit fraught at first as these things often can be but, once we got everything sorted, it was amazing. We had booked the Bethanie Guest House nearly a month ago and they said they would ring and confirm the day before as it was a 4 day weekend. They didn’t so I phoned them only to be told that the place was fully booked and they had given all the rooms away to a big group. Now, could that be a group of Americans celebrating the 4th July, I ask? Not that I am blaming them. That is the first time I have had a stand up shouting row in French with anyone on the phone. I could see our holiday slipping away and we so much needed it. It made me feel better though.

Golf Eden Park Hotel

But to the rescue came the Golf Eden Rock Hotel with a lake view room for not much more. So that’s where we spent the first night WITH THE DEAFENING MUSIC COMING FROM THE BEACH BAR OPPOSITE!!!! It was not the peace and tranquillity we had hoped for. So, another place had to be found. Fortunately, this time, the last room at the Holiday Hotel was snipped up and, after a bit of bartering (that’s the way it’s done here), a room at a reasonable price with balcony was secured and from hereon in the story improves.

I walked to it to do the deed (about 1km along the lake side), walked back, packed our bags and walked back again to find our room and the tranquillity of the lake, the striking views and the pleasant environment waiting for us. This was the peace we craved and now we had found it.

 

Holiday Hotel Resort

We spent the evening with Tricia from Gitarama, who was also searching for a bit of peace, at her Guest House Home St John which was jutted out onto the lake with Kivu all around. The walk there and back was worth the effort to meet another volunteer. Walking, walking, walking everywhere is the life here. Everyone is always on the move at all times. We were pleased we had made the move as we passed the Golf again on the way back as the music and partying was even louder. This time we are sure it was 4th July celebrations. Good luck to them!

 
The next day, we hired a boat and captain and did a tour of some of the islands in the mist and were amazed by the display of thousands upon thousands of bats that flew off the Napoleon’s Hat Island just letting us know that they were there. Now their flight may have had something to do with the whooping and banging done by the captain but it was great spectacle. I don’t think the RSPCA (or is it the RSPB?) would approve. What is a bat? Along with other birds and all manner of creatures, it was a great experience. We broke our trip at Peace Island and enjoyed a relaxing and tranquil break until the return trip to the hotel. We may have reached a venerable age but it is so good to know that we can still do such things.

 

Our  Boat

Relaxing on Peace Island

Peace on "Peace Island"



Bats, Bats, Bats everywhwere

 On the Sunday afternoon, sitting on the balcony, the peace was suddenly shattered with cars, motos, hooting of horns and general revellry. A wedding party had arrived at the hotel in great style. The bride and groom, already married, walked down to the jetty with the guests for photos, donned their life jackets and boarded a speed boat. the other guests went off in canapied boats and the peace was restored again. It was really interesting to watch.More walking, sleeping, reading, cross-stitching and taking in the scenery and we were ready the next day to come home, Now, to cut the story short, with a national holiday, Liberation day celebrations, the crazy non-existent bus timetable, it took us 9 hours to get back. But that was worth the effort again for the great weekend.

Church at Kibuye

 But it would be wrong not to finish with this following significant event in one of Africa’s most beautiful places. On the way back to the village, we stopped at the church where huge numbers of people were massacred during the genocide of 1994. I’ve attached a link which can describe the effect on the town better than I can.


Bathed in Light

 

For more about the Church in Kibuye, Click Here

The church was bathed in coloured light from the striking stain glass windows which coloured the simple stone building. It was a place for reflection and meditation about the past and the way people treat people and what can happen when human beings lose sight of the dignity and value of human life!


Bride and groom go off in life jackets



Workshops, workshops, workshops

It's the end of a very busy fortnight. We're not quite finished yet. We still have one more "planning lessons" workshop for 40 teachers on Tuesday morning and another "Methodology and Resources" one in the afternoon of the same day. Then, we're all done for the time being and all that remains before we come home for a well deserved break in July is to do all of the reports for the District, the Mayor and the Ministry and visit one or two schools more for follow up.

We've put together a few more pictures of the workshops. So, just click on the link below and you'll see a bit more of what we've been up to.

Rwanda Workshops June 2011

Our visit to Nzige



Cam in her tropical garden



You will have seen in previous posts that our VSO colleague, Camilla has joined us on a few occasions in Rwamagana. Now it was our turn to visit her. In fact, we were her first visitors and the second of our Sector Workshops was to be in the Teacher Training College where she is a Lecturer in Methodology and her main work is to set up a resource centre using local materials. The workshop was in her well-equipped resource centre. She has done an amazing job and transformed the place from a room with no windows and furniture to an Aladdin’s Cave of resources, almost all of which she has made herself. A very talented lady!



She lives in Nzige which is an hour’s moto ride from our home over the most varied scenery you could possibly imagine from rolling hills, rice fields, valleys, remote villages and lines of trees with ditches sprouting water lilies to hundreds of people walking to market and the fields, collecting water or just passing the time of day. It’s a hard ride and so far we are the only ones that have done it from the VSO community because of its remoteness. Camilla lives in a house in the centre of town and, being the only Muzungu, is the centre of attention as you can imagine. She has a beautiful garden which she tells us she doesn’t have to lift a finger to maintain. She gave us a brilliant weekend and bought a mattress in our honour. Well done, Cam, for being one of VSOs country cousins!



Nzige Residence

Sector Headteacher Workshops

Workshop in Cam's Teacher Resource Centre

The first workshop we did was for Headteachers in the Kigabiro and Muhazi sectors on leadership and management in March. Since then, we have done training for newly appointed Headteachers and have been visiting schools on a day to day basis. The plan was to do it for all of the sectors in the district. This involves grouping sectors (or sub-districts), finding a venue in the middle and inviting all school Heads for the one day workshop. So, we have done three of them in the last two weeks and, I’m pleased to say, that now all 75 Heads in the Rwamagana District have been involved.

As with Mary’s workshop, the evaluations were very good but the main comment was that they wanted more and especially for the teachers in their schools. Sadly, there are only two of us but we hope that it can be carried on by other volunteers after we have gone.



Camilla doing her bit with the Heads

The workshop dealt with different kinds of leadership and management, the difference between the two, planning lessons and expectations of Heads of their staff, school effectiveness and materials from local sources. A big order for 6 ½ hours but we did it even if all, especially us, were shattered at the end. Again the challenge was language and it got more difficult towards the latter workshops and the last one had to be done in French with a little English. If nothing else, my French has improved but I am not sure that talking about school effectiveness will stand me in good stead when we get our next Gite in Bretagne!!!!!

Ordering the parts of a lesson

Mary teaching Japanese numbers

Methodology and Materials Workshops

Describing the materials

Right from the beginning of our time here, despite the fact that we had different jobs, we decided that we would work together in everything and we have more or less kept that up. Mary prepared a series of half day workshops which we delivered together on the practical stuff a teacher needs in schools. Now generally here the learning environment is just the classroom and a chalk board, so we set out to add a few rice sacks (posters), counters made from bottle tops and flashcards made from biscuit packets and much, much more. Concerning the last, we had to eat a great deal of varieties of biscuit to provide the necessary shapes and sizes of flashcard but our sacrifice will be the gain of the children of Rwanda!!

We started with the schools where Mary works and will probably roll out this workshop in many other schools before we leave. The evaluations have been great and what we have done has been greatly welcomed by the teachers. We did half-day workshops involving 9 schools in the first week and several more the next week. Practice makes perfect and we feel we could practically do it in our sleep now. Well done, Mary, for such a varied workshop with so many different aspects to it, from songs to resources and games to evaluation techniques. It was all there in less than four hours each one. The biggest challenge for us was language. Although the language of instruction has changed to English in the last two years, few teachers are yet comfortable with it and so we had to use a mixture of English and French as, as you can imagine, our Kinyarwanda was not up to it!

Mary in full flow

A good attempt

Maths from bottle tops

The welcome and aims

Preparing for a busy two weeks

Cutting up rice sacks to make posters

Everything comes at a price and the price of doing 10 workshops in a couple of weeks is working through the weekend. But we don’t do it very often and when we must, we do. This is practical stuff, mainly for Mary’s half day workshops on Methodology, making materials and child-centred education. The office is too small so we work and store things at home. As our home is not much bigger than a fixed-site caravan in Bognor, it can be a bit of a squeeze but we manage because, above all, VSOs are imaginative, flexible and good at improvising. Well, that’s the theory and the two of us try.



Storage on the bed in the kitchen



Preparing materials



Give us our living room back!

I think the pictures speak for themselves. Well, in a couple of week’s time, we’ll get our house back and, I’m sure it will all have been worth it!

Copying a map of Rwamagana

Getting Around

In Guyana, it was taxis, minibuses, planes and boats. In Rwanda, boats are few and far between, minibuses generally on the main roads, taxis far too expensive and planes only if you intend to fly out of the country. However, most of our journeys to schools go off the main road and into the countryside away from the main roads. Some of them are well maintained if not a little bumpy but many have seen better days from the ravages of the rainy season creating huge potholes and furrows that can go on for ages which are gouged into the ground and see the rain off when it comes with a vengeance. Added to this, Rwanda is not called “Mille Collins” (Land of a Thousand Hills” for nothing. No trip to a school is without its amazing views, long drops and rolling countryside with every square centimetre cultivated whether it’s banana, beans, tomatoes, maize and all the rest you can think of!

So, how do we get around? There are moto taxis everywhere. Every town has its group of licensed young lads on their machines waiting to take you wherever you want, whatever the terrain for a price. Most are beyond the local people who prefer the cheaper bicycle taxis but that would take an age and, being a little on the large size ourselves, would probably give the drivers a coronary with those steep inclines. Generally our rides can be from 10 minutes to up to an hour and, as we go to two schools a day, that can be hard on the nether regions! But the views are to die for and the welcome in the schools is well worth the effort.

We have two regular drivers who look after us and we look after them. They are always on time and, most of all, very safe. In fact, Mary wants hers to go faster – the speed merchant that she is. I’m happy with plodding along especially when you look at those 600ft drops that are just 12 inches away to the side of the road. But they don’t want us to fall off any more than we do, so we feel very safe.