Wednesday's Blog

After singing Happy Birthday to Paul at the breakfast table (21 yet again!), the team went to visit King Saloman Academy (KSA.)  Andy and Paul walked the 20 minutes from the guest house to the school, whilst the rest of the team squeezed into a car along with 2 heavy suitcases, bulging with educational resources.  As we drove up the very hummocky dirt track to the school, the driver hooted the horn and a bunch of excited children came out to open the school gate and to greet us heartily.  Wednesday is PE day at the school, so they were all wearing green shorts and vivid yellow T shirts. It was break time and the children  gathered around the mzungus saying, “I want to play with you.”  Paul was swamped with children as he was picking up one child at a time and swinging them wildly around in the air to their delight.  Some he held upside down, others by one arm and one leg.  They were thrilled and he soon found himself in the middle of a scrum, with a little scuffle breaking out at the back between 2 children who wanted to be next!  He therefore had to establish some order, which he did by handing a pebble to a child, to indicate whose turn was next.  Meanwhile Isobel was playing a much more genteel game with a little group of children, holding hands in a circle and practising prepositions moving in and out, up and down etc in a very controlled version of Hokey Cokey!

After discussion with the head teacher Arsene, we’d decided it would be helpful for the teachers amongst us to show the KSA staff the resources we had brought and explain how they are used in the UK.  So the team laid out all of the resources on the staff table and benches so that there was clarity, which were for use in English or maths lessons.  Jonathan and Hannah did a great job organising a pot of stationery for each teacher’s desk, labelled clearly and gave personal explanations of various items eg: what a Pritt stick was or how to use a rubber pencil grip for those children who struggle to hold a pencil correctly.

Arsene arranged for two teachers Bless and Theophile to spend time in the staff room with Grace and Isobel as they talked through the many items that have been kindly donated, by the team’s friends and family as well as some teaching materials from UK schools.  Whilst these teachers looked through the resources, their classes were outside being entertained by the rest of the DT team.  Andy had brought along his parachute, which always causes great excitement for children the world over.  They also played many running games as the team whipped the children up into a state of hyper excitement!

After about an hour the teachers and children swapped over.  Jean-Paul and Patrick joined Grace and Isobel to look through the new equipment.  The men were quite fascinated by some of the games we had brought, and they enjoyed having a little practise using such items as phonics games involving a spinner and Loto to practise numbers.  We were surprised that they had never seen Dominoes before and they found great difficulty reading the numbers on them, so Hannah suggested we colour coded them with felt pens, which did help recognition, but still Patrick was counting the dots rather than recognising the patterns as we played a game together.  

One kind donor had sent along a game for sentence building by using  words on jig saw pieces, so once again the men had a go at this.  It was a great surprise once more, watching one of the teachers trying to join the jig saw pieces by sliding them together.  It was clear that they had never seen a jig saw before, so at this point we showed them some very simple wooden puzzles including one of Postman Pat, which is clearly designed for a very small child, but was a completely new concept to these two men.  We then moved on to Magnetic Fishpond!  It was quite an entertaining sight seeing 4 adult teachers dangling rods into a fake pond and seeing their faces light up when they caught a plastic fish!  We had intended these games to be used to improve the children’s fine motor skills, but I think they may well be enjoyed in the staffroom!

Having seen how testing the teachers had found the Dominoes, we balked at the thought of explaining how to play that 1980s family favourite ‘Mastermind,’ but Jean-Paul was up for the challenge and he and Patrick listened intently as the rules were explained.  They grasped the idea that it is a great game to extend children’s reasoning skills.  Again we expect the two men may be challenging each other to that game over the next few days, rather than sharing it with the children!  Even the cook, seemed to be looking on with interest!

About noon the children went to a small building at the far end of the school field, where they sat on wooden benches to eat their lunch, which had been prepared over a charcoal fire in an adjacent dark room, blackened by smoke.  Between goalposts made of tree branches, Paul was playing goalie with a whole host of children kicking a football on the school field.  Grace, however was sensibly sitting in the shade beside one of the classrooms, reading a story to the little group of children surrounding her.

Just as we were about to leave, Bless was informed that it was Paul’s birthday, so she rapidly rallied the troops and a whole load of children ran to surrounded Paul to sing him Happy Birthday, which they repeated.  They then sang the greeting a third time, ‘with flowers,’ which entailed stretching their hands up high and flashing open their hands with fingers waving, a bit like petals! 

Back at the guest house, as we were seated at the table for lunch, a long line of pastors came in to join us.  Andy realised this presented another opportunity for a birthday greeting for Paul.  Pastor Johnson who speaks excellent English, and has helped as one of our translators during the conference, dutifully organised the pastors to burst into the day’s third rendition of Happy Birthday as they stood in their dinner queue! 

In the mid afternoon we we all wandered down into the town to find the Pentecostal church, which Sally, the recent British volunteer teacher at KSA had attended, during her stay in Byumba.  Though we didn't really know where we were going, Byumba is not a very big place and between us we managed to bump into 2 pastors, who gave us directions.  We were all somewhat taken aback to find a huge building, which must seat a thousand people, though this afternoon it was decidedly empty!  We had thought it would be good to encourage the church by attending their English service at 3pm.  Somehow wires had been crossed and the 3 young men fiddling with the electrics in the otherwise empty church were extremely welcoming, if rather surprised to see us!  

As we were in town several of us decided to take a good look around and meet a few locals.  Byumba is a busy little town, surrounded on all sides by the rolling hills with terraced slopes.  Five mzungus wandering through the streets drew plenty of attention.  People were keen to stare, try out their few English words and call their friends to have a look at us!  As we passed through the ‘mending a motorbike area’ the mechanics were very friendly.  One lad rode past on the luggage rack on the back of bike and shouted, ‘Good morning!” to which we replied, “Good afternoon,” and then another voice chimed up, hedging his bets on the appropriate greeting for the time of day, “Good aftering,”  A little further down the street was the door making area, where men were busy welding and grinding.  As we looked down from above, it appeared that we were’t the only ones fascinated by the sights before us. We were being watched from below and one workman pointed his phone in our direction and was thrilled when we all waved and posed for his photo!

The streets are full of small shops where huge sacks of grains are piled up with a spring balance hanging above them, massive branches of bananas cut straight from the tree, sheets of beans lying on the ground to dry, a man sitting in a doorway weaving shopping baskets for sale… all manner of different activities. Just inside the market the every type of flip-flop was laid on tarpaulins on the ground.  Behind these were a row of small shops, one belonging to Pastor Elson’s wife Chantel, so she was happy to show us her wares.  She was selling clothes as well as beaded bags, which she makes.  The traditional bright African fabric stalls on the market have all relocated since last year, so Chantel led us to their new location, in a unit rented from the church.  The walls were covered in swathes of cloth of every imaginable vibrant colour, in bright bold patterns, also modelled by the ladies selling the fabric.  Hannah had spied a design that she liked for a long dining table cover and Chantel had established an acceptable price.  However, just before Hannah bought the cloth, she watched in horror as the retailer sliced the fabric in two, and then to add insult to injury charged her an inflated, clearly ‘mzungo price’ for one of the smaller pieces, which was now useless for its intended function!

Andy and Grace had a meeting with Bishop Emmanuel and the rest of the team joined them at the Bishop’s large, modern house for dinner this evening, along with Namara, who works in development programmes for vulnerable rural communities and Jose one of Byumba’s deputy mayors.  On the living room wall, amongst pictures of the Bishop’s wife Vicky, is special clock, that was made in her memory, after her death a few years ago.  The clock face is covered in photos of the children that Emmanuel and his wife have brought up over the years.  They have twin 17 year olds of their own, but have brought up a total of 19 children, whom they have adopted into their family.  He was describing how children were sleeping all over the living space in his home during the genocide.These children are now all over the world, in various African countries, USA, Belgium and France but they try to get together to visit the Bishop every 2 years.

Blessed with good food and interesting company this was a lovely end to another busy day for us all.

Good-night.

Grace, Isobel, Hannah, Paul, Jonathan and Andy