Tuesday 22nd August

Today was our day off, though it was hardly relaxing!  We departed before dawn at 5 am and travelled for 2 and a half hours north east to Akagera National Park on the Tanzanian border.

As the sun was rising the villages on our journey were buzzing with activity with children on their way to school and farmworkers pouring into the village with their produce for market day.  People were pushing bikes, absolutely laden with huge branches covered in bananas or sacks of other produce, so that the bikes were far too heavy to pedal.  

Akagera National Park covers a wide variety of landscapes including a series of lakes, swampland, savannah, scrub and upland areas.  Our driver, Emmanuel drove us through the park from the southern entrance to the northern exit, with only a half-hour break for lunch beside a lake where several hippo and a baby crocodile were bathing.  The national park used to be a lot bigger, but after the genocide, in 1996 when many displaced people were returning to Rwanda, they found that their relatives were dead and they didn’t have any land as they didn’t remember where they came from.  The government then took the decision to give some of the park land to these people to farm and thus the conflict between farmers and wildlife in this area began.  To ensure that the local people recognise the value of the park 10% of the visitor entrance fees are given to local community projects.

After driving through the national park for about 6 hours and seeing a lovely variety of wonderful wildlife, we headed back to Kigali.  Emmanuel had been driving for well over 12 hours, when he dropped us off at the guest house, but we were the ones who looked like wilting rag dolls after the buffeting journey! Andy postponed plans for us to go out for a final meal together in the city till after we have packed up tomorrow, which will be a lovely finale to our time in Rwanda, before we head out to the airport in readiness for our night flight back to UK.

It has been a wonderful, varied and blessed time here in Rwanda and we thank the Lord for all that we have been able to do with our two partners in the dioceses of Gasabo and Byumba. Thank you for your prayers and we will be in touch again once we are back in the UK.

So from us all, it is one final….. good-night.

Grace, Isobel, Hannah, Paul, Jonathan and Andy

Monday 21st August 

After packing up our stuff this morning, Paul, Hannah and Isobel wandered up to the Hannah Ministry to collect and pay for the baskets we had ordered last week.  It is hard to explain how difficult such an apparently simple operation can be in Rwanda.  As we arrived there were two ladies there, neither of whom spoke English or French.  One of them took little notice of us and continued to sit outside changing her baby on her lap.  The other lady, called Verene, had been delayed by some crisis with her daughter.  With a conversation of a mixture of pidgin French and English we tried to unpick the next problem.  Damascus Trust needed a receipt for the payment to take with us to show at customs, but the receipt book was in a locked room and the person with the key was miles away!  After much deliberation, Verene suggested she would make a new receipt in her cathedral office down the road and bring it to us in a couple of minutes as we were about to leave for Kigali.  Needless to say after about half an hour, there was no sign of a receipt, so Paul went to find her office, where she hadn’t yet written the receipt! 

We finally set off about midday.  Jimmy, the guest house manager took some of the team in his car, which had a rather low slung back seat, under which the seat belts were totally buried.   As we tried to pull them out he simply told us that they wouldn't be needed today! By the look of them, thick with orange dust, they haven't been used for years! We stopped to get fuel and also to put air into a rather flat tyre.  Whilst we were having the tyre inflated in the garage, a mechanic was welding another vehicle right next to where we were parked and sparks were flying straight in through the open windows onto us!  We protested but little could be done as we could not close the windows, so we just sat there as targets while the fiery missiles rained down upon us!

On arrival back in Kigali the increase in temperature was marked as we unloaded our stuff at our new home for the next couple of nights, the Presbyterian Guest House near the centre of the city.  We then shared lunch with our drivers and Pastor Placide, who had accompanied us on the journey, before they headed back up north.  Over lunch Placide was telling us about how he may be increasing the size of his household soon, as some relatives have just lost their mother and been abandoned by their father, who has remarried.  Two of the older children have married, though they are under age and the three younger ones are being cared for by the 19 year old.  They live an hour away from him on foot, and he will visit them this week to see how they are coping.  There are 2 primary aged children and one 3 year old, so this is a considerable undertaking as Placide already has 2 small children of his own, and a small home, though it is not at all unusual in this country for caring people to absorb other children into their families.

Soon Pastor Eugene arrived to take us to the charity PHARP to collect the bags that Andy had ordered a couple of weeks ago, and then onto Pastor Eugene’s church where a group of ladies had brought their baskets for Andy to buy.  We worked as a team, trying to help sort the orders, keeping tabs on the costs on the ipad, writing paper receipts for the vendors to sign, folding and stuffing the items into our spare suitcases.  We finally returned to the guest house in the early evening where lots of large fruit bats were screeching as they swooped between the palm trees. After a simple supper of soup and fruit we are heading off to bed for an early night, ready for a crack of dawn start tomorrow.

Good-night.

Grace, Isobel, Hannah, Paul, Jonathan and Andy

Thursday's Blog

Jonathan left for Uganda straight after breakfast for an overnight trip to visit a hospital that his church in Lyndhurst supports.  Soon afterwards the rest of the team headed off to visit two new parishes supported by the Support A Parish programme.  Prior to departure, a large water tank was observed on the back of a pick up truck driving past our guest house.  As suspected, this tank was heading to the same destination as we were!  We journeyed for a long distance along a dirt track, which wound its way up the mountain sides.  The road is currently under construction, under the direction of the Chinese, but this does not stop the traffic in Rwanda, probably because we were one of the very few vehicles to pass that way today.  There were construction workers along the route, and ladies feebly waving green or red flags to direct the traffic, though as we approached the first lady raised her green flag, which promptly dropped off its stick and fell to the ground, leaving her wafting an empty stick in the air!

After some distance, we turned off and climbed up an incredibly steep incline on a dreadfully bumpy road, which left Hannah and Paul rolling around like marbles in the back of our 4x4 truck.  All along the orange roads people were carrying bundles of firewood, bulging sacks of vegetables on their heads or pushing over-loaded bicycles, weighed down with produce or several jerry cans of water.  It’s incredible to consider exactly how far people travel daily on foot to collect water and then carry it up extremely steep slopes.  We were climbing high up on the terraced slopes, moving from one mountain to the next.  Far below us was a very flat open valley of green.  From high above, it resembled the green baize of a snooker table.  Placide told us that it was in fact water, which had been colonised by many plants.  In 1994 this had been one large lake but a large portion of it had silted up and become a marshland, which is now protected as and area of special scientific interest.

After about an hour’s drive we finally arrived at the hilltop parish of Gitovu, where we were warmly greeted by Pastor Emmanuel, who proudly showed us the brand new water tank, that had been delivered this very morning.  Rev James Bruce from UK, had visited this parish last month to discuss the installation of a new water harvesting project funded by Damascus Trust, and we were visiting to see how this project was progressing.  The project aims to collect rainwater off the roof of a building and then collect it to sell to locals to save them having to traipse right down to the valley several times a day to collect water, or to buy it at RFr1500 (about £1.50) from the men who spend their days in the gruelling task of walking up and down the hills pushing a bike, which carries 5 jerry cans of water.  

Paul, Andy and Pastor Emmanuel viewed and discussed the project and also examined the new church building, which is being constructed around the old mud brick church building, which will eventually be demolished from within.  Meanwhile the others enjoyed wandering along the terraces between the fields, where women were hard at work, breaking up the sun-baked earth for cultivation.  Three of their little children spied us and gradually moved towards us, finally plucking up enough courage to stand right in front of us, with very solemn expressions, and too nervous to hold out their hands to greet us. It is unlikely that mzungus are often seen in these remote parts.  Two of the girls in ragged dresses, were about 5 years old. One of these tots was holding a tiny baby, who was very unsure of the pale faces before her.  When Grace reached out her hand towards the baby, her mud-smeared face crumpled, close to tears and she turned away to press her face against her small guardian’s cheek.

We were invited into the pastor’s home, where a plastic bowl of water was held out, whilst a lady poured a measured amount of precious water over our hands prior to being offered the customary variety of rice, beans, vegetables, potatoes and chicken dishes to share with a few church members.

Hannah and Isobel bravely went in search of the long-drop, in the back yard, next to the cow pen.  The poor cow was lying in an enclosure, barely large enough for her to turn around, with her 3 week old calf in an adjacent pen.  Just under the manger, a hen and her tiny chicks were pecking up any fallen grain from the cow fodder.

Andy and Grace made a video interview of the pastor and his wife with their daughter helpfully translating, whilst the rest of the team wandered  along another mud path between  the terraces.  As if from nowhere, children appeared.  School was out and clearly word had got round that mzungus were in the vicinity!  Paul stooped to draw a noughts and crosses board in the dusty earth, and having challenged both Hannah and Isobel to a match, some of the onlooking crowd of children had grasped the game and were keen to play.  Just as they were embarking on their first game, Paul was summonsed for a video interview re the water harvesting project.  Obediently Paul followed this call, but was accompanied by a torrent of children pouring down the hillside after him!  They were fascinated by the tripod, supporting a video camera and soon the whole scene resembled a Hollywood film set!  Andy, in the director’s hat manned the camera, facing Pastor Emannuel, Paul and translator Placide in front of the new water tank.  In a large semi-circle, out of shot, was a great gathering of children observing the spectacle from behind the cameraman, looking every bit the crowd of local ‘extras,’ Hollywood often drafts on location!  After the interview however, as Andy scanned the camera round the ring of spectators, they scampered off, disappearing into the fields, leaving only a few brave souls to play a hand slapping game with Paul.   Little by little they reemerged from their hiding places but it was only the bold who reached their hands out to engage in Paul’s antics.

Soon we were back in the 4x4 truck and on our way to the next new parish to join the SAP programme, Ruyange.   We climbed higher up the mountainside to achieve wonderful views of the marshlands, which then gave way to a fresh water lake as we travelled further.  At the far end of the lake we dipped down to the muddy water’s edge only to climb up again the other side of the valley on a very bumpy road, to finally arrive at another hilltop parish.  There were stunning views of the lake far below and endless terraced hills on all sides as far as the eye could see.

Once again, we were invited into the pastor’s home, where our hands were washed and we were ushered to sit in the large wooden chairs along with the church committee.  As usual we were presented with the same range of dishes along with delicious, freshly cut pineapple.  Following the meal, the committee introduced themselves and explained their roles one after the other, as one of their members, a school teacher, translated for us.  

Just above the pastor’s home, perched on the pinnacle of the hill, was the small, dark mud-brick church building.  Andy and Pastor Danot found a hole in the uneven ground surrounding the church, where they both reclined and filmed a most unorthodox, relaxed interview! 

The English teacher from a school just below the church enjoyed practising his English on us and told us all about his remote school that had 2500 children on roll. The catchment covered a large area as there were so few schools in this region.  He told us of some children that walk for 2 hours to attend school, which starts at 6.40am.  This means that they must be setting and walking for some distance in the dark.  It is incredible to consider how they navigate this mountain terrain in the dark without a torch.  Some children join hands to bring a blind child along with them too.

As were standing chatting in this idillic hilltop setting the sky was darkening and storm clouds were moving in with very ominous rumbles of thunder around us.  So we were keen to get underway before the rains came to make the long bumpy return journey more hazardous.

Tomorrow we will be visiting another of our new SAP-linked parishes - Bugarura.

Until then - good-night.

Grace, Isobel, Hannah, Paul, Jonathan and Andy

Saturday's Blog:

Today was the day of the Youth Conference in Byumba, but it was a little alarming at 9am, the time the first teaching session was due to begin, to find not a single delegate had arrived!  Needless to say, in true Rwandan style, people did gradually trickle into the conference room over the next hour.  A few spontaneous songs struck up as a signal to others that the proceedings were getting under way.  Pastor Eliab, the cathedral’s sub-dean opened the conference and we introduced ourselves in the usual manner.  After several ice breakers, including a series of human knots to untangle, the teaching finally got underway about 10am, when many young people had finally arrived.

After a break Paul organised some fun sporting activities in the garden next to the guest house.  The team went off to put on appropriate running shoes, but Isobel found that hers were missing.  She had put them outside her room, as they were stinking out her room, but wonderful room maid Constance, had taken this as a cue to clean the smelly items.  Andy later found them drying on the roof of the refectory, well out of anyone’s smell-range!  Paul organised throwing games to learn people’s names and the little known Alaskan baseball.  There were some elements of competition, plenty of cheating and a lot of misunderstanding due to poor translation, but there was also plenty of enthusiasm on the part of the youth, much laughter and exuberant chanting of team names. 

After lunch Paul once more valiantly pursued his game organisation.  The concept of passing an electric current throughout a lined-up team by squeezing each others’ hands seemed to surpass practically everyone’s comprehension and using a balloon pump was clearly a great novelty.  The balloon models they created, supposedly of Bible stories were however less than amazing!  Needless to say, it was an enjoyable day and fun was had by many!  Andy did a final teaching session looking at the call of Gideon, which brought the conference to a close. As the young people departed they burst into jubilant song and dance wearing many of their weird and wonderful balloon models on their heads.

As they walked past the cathedral in jolly mood, a church warden, dressed in the statement green overall, popped out to hush them up and move them on as a wedding was in progress.  On seeing Isobel, amongst the crowd however, she was keen to pull her in to join the wedding service just as the bride and groom were signing the register.  Grace had formerly past by and received the same treatment, clearly the presence of a mzungu at a wedding was a good thing! Once in the cathedral the children were certainly as interested as the mzungu presence as the bride and groom.  There was a curious medley of people at the wedding, a blue robed choir, several smartly dressed guests, lots of random members of the community, who had simply dropped in, like our room maid Constance and a collection of children, some wielding balloons, taller than themselves, which they had clearly purloined from the delegates at the youth conference.  The other children were clearly very envious of the balloons and once again the bride and groom were sidelined.  Rather oddly one child sitting quietly on a cathedral bench watching the marriage was dressed as spider man!

This evening’s meal out once more was a cause of some confusion.  Pastor Etienne was supposedly one of our hosts, but we were then informed that he was at a wedding in Kigali today.  The other host on our schedule was sub-dean Eliab, who had joined us for lunch and in conversation it seemed a surprise to him that we were dining with him this evening.  When we arrived at his home just behind the cathedral at the appointed time this evening, he informed us that his young 3 year old son had fallen over this afternoon and cut his mouth.  Eliab’s wife had taken the injured boy to hospital along with her other 2 children and Eliab hadn’t gone as we were expected.  He had drafted in Jacqueline, a  young girl who had been at today’s youth conference, to assist him in this evening’s hospitality.  She poured out large cups of hot milk for each of us for us to make tea or hot chocolate, and gave us each 2 slices of plain bread.   We shared the tea with them and prayed for the family but didn’t stay long as we felt it more important that Eliab went to the hospital to be with his family.  It was so selfless of him to honour our invitation this evening under very difficult circumstances.

Back at the guest house it was once more the Henderson larder to the rescue to provide pot noodles for our evening meal!

We had a phone call from Juvenal to say that Eliab’s son was okay and having received treatment, was being taken back home. We continue to pray for a complete recovery.

Tomorrow we go back to Gitovu to celebrate the installation of their new water-harvesting project.

Until next time…. Good-night.

Grace, Isobel, Hannah, Paul, Jonathan and Andy

Friday’s Blog:

Today it was Andy and Isobel’s turn to wobble around the rear of the 4x4 truck.  The chairs had been washed overnight so were oozing with water as Isobel leaned back on them.  To cushion us from the violent bumps along the road, Andy went to fetch a couple of pillows, but unfortunately his pillow self destructed as it was pulled out of its pillow case.  Isobel’s pillow worked as a great shock absorber, but regrettably it also absorbed the water from the seat leaving a squiggly mess on her back, which, coupled with a self collapsing seat, made for a less than comfortable ride on rutted roads as we climbed high into the mountains.  

The hillsides were notably a richer darker brown colour today as they had been dampened by the overnight rains  We even noticed a couple of waterfalls plunging down the hillside on the opposite side of the valley way below us.  These will of course multiply as the rainy season progresses.  It was a beautiful, scenic journey as we travelled on to the top of the world.  After about an 1 hr and 45 mins of being buffeted by the rough roads into a remote corner of this country, Placide, our navigator worryingly announced that he’d never been to this far flung parish before and then calmly uttered those memorable words, “ We might be lost!”  After stopping to ask the way on several occasions to the excitement of various passers by, we finally arrived in the parish of Bugarura. There was group of people beside the road queuing in front of a small shack, apparently a pub, and they were waiting to buy a drink of cassava beer.  The driver asked the way and we promptly drew into a dusty village square, where we were warmly greeted by the beaming face of Pastor Seth.  This pastor was immediately recognisable, though short in stature, his smart suit certainly compensated for his diminutive height.  His bold black, white and red tartan effect checked suit would have cut a dash on any western golf course, but appeared a little incongruous in this African backwater!  When Andy complimented him on his impressive suit, Placide told us that according to Rwandan custom, Seth now needed to pay Andy some money in recognition of this compliment. We then reminded Placide however, that he in that case, also owed us money as we’d previously commented on this trousers, that ‘shimmered in the sunlight.’  He’d told us that these were his special wedding trousers, that he had not worn since his marriage ceremony!  

After over 2 hours on this bone-shaking journey, we were all keen to relieve our jostled bladders.  We were directed across the back yard, under a tree laden with avocados to a surprisingly clean concrete shed, where a brand new toilet roll was placed beside the long drop, especially for the honoured guests.  Under the tin roof was a large air gap, which afforded a refreshing waft of fresh air into the hut and a pleasing view out to a grove of banana trees, which rustled as they swayed in the breeze.

As usual we were ushered into the pastor’s house, where we washed our hands and were offered flasks of milky African tea along with a range of local fruits - small finger bananas, green skinned oranges, tangerines and tree tomatoes.  Placide demonstrated how Rwandans bite off the top of tree tomatoes to then suck out the juicy contents, similar to normal tomatoes, but a little sweeter.  Though Grace gave this a go, mzungus are not very adept at this practice, so most of us reverted to slicing them with Andy’s army knife, to the fascination of the row of watching catechists.

Soon the pastor’s wife, Jeanette, arrived.  She was significantly taller than her pint size husband, but when I questioned Placide as to whether Pastor Seth was from the Rwanda’s minority Twa tribe of ‘pygmy’ height, which he had told us all about yesterday, Placide rubbished this comment and found it hilarious. Jeanette sat down with us to breast feed their 3 month old baby. After our refreshments, we introduced ourselves and then in turn all of the representatives from all 7 local congregations explained to us their roles in each particular church along with their secular jobs as farmers.

Pastor Seth apologised that as today is a holiday for the inauguration of the president, several of his church members would not be here to meet us, as they were listening to the president’s speech on the radio or TV.  This explained why Paul had noticed a group of people gathered around a TV on the roadside.

Grace began to explain that she was about to conduct video interviews of the parish ministry team and that it might be good to start with a rousing chorus.  No sooner than these words had been translated, the whole room erupted into song, clapping, dancing, rhythmically stamping their feet on the floor whilst twirling around with their arms outstretched so that the whole world reverberated in praise.  The pastor’s wife couldn’t possibly miss out of this exuberant outburst, so the poor baby was unceremoniously ripped from her breast and dumped on a nearby chair as she threw herself into the worship on the dance floor!  It was beyond Grace’s control to tell them that we weren’t actually ready yet!

Whilst Grace and Paul were conducting the interviews, Hannah and Isobel wandered out to explore the environment.  Just outside the pastor’s house is the shell of a church building with rudimentary scaffolding of tree branches.  They began building the church in 2015 and expect it to be finished in 2020.  They meet there to worship even though the walls are a couple of metres high and there is no hint of a roof.

Beside the church construction, is a partially built school, totally deserted today on account of the public holiday.  Once again there were fantastic panoramic views.  Though Placide had described the landscape of this area as ‘flat’, clearly Rwandans don’t understand this term in the same way as we do.  Though not as steep as the mountains around Byumba in the Northern Province, here the undulating terrain in the Eastern Province was reminiscent of the Derbyshire Dales, with hill and vale superimposed upon each other as far as the horizon.  The less steep gradients did not necessitate the terracing of slopes in this viscidity, but was well suited to the cultivation of coffee.  Indeed, just behind the school was a small coffee planation, largely devoid of coffee beans, as the bushes had clearly been recently harvested.  As we emerged from the plantation a man appeared, who introduced himself as the school’s headmaster, and was keen to show us his office.  The school is only partially complete because former management 10 years ago had run away with school funds.  The foundation of several new classrooms are marked out on the ground, but the government is loathed to provide further finance after this former embesilment of funds.  The school is also struggling with a lack of water.  Although some water tanks have been constructed, they have not been maintained and guttering to feed the tank is damaged.

At lunch time the catechists piled their plates high with the usual variety of dishes, as they always do.  We served ourselves too and those amongst us with strong jaws tackled the chicken legs.  It was humbling to find out that it is only on special occasions when meat is served.  Seth told us that normally they would only eat meat once every two months, yet we have been presented with meat at every parish that we have visited.  No wonder all the church leaders’ plates have been filled to the brim, as they have shared these auspicious meals with us.  Apparently a chicken costs 3000 R Francs (about £3) which of course is a great expense in this society.  

Grace and Paul tried to wish everyone a ‘bon appetite’ at lunch time, by saying the Kinyarwanda phrase ‘mor-dior-hair-way’ but Placide looked confused and asked which language they were speaking!

We arrived back in Byumba in the early evening to a lovely surprise.  One of the elusive 7 distant volcanoes on the Congo border, generally obscured by cloud was visible from the main street, and to it’s left the other 6 volcanoes in the chain could faintly be observed too.  Grace and Isobel had hoped for a beautiful sunset shot, as the sun sank down behind them, but unfortunately before sundown the cloud had enveloped their presence once more.

This evening we were all ready to go to dinner with Reverend Gaudance, when thunder began to roar, the rains lashed down and sheet lightning lit up the darkness.  A tremendous storm lashed down and soon torrents of water were pouring from the guttering and the guest house courtyard was awash with rivulets.  We were awaiting the arrival of Gaudance to show us the way to her home.  Not relishing walking out in this fierce storm and fearing that her house would be down a muddy track, Andy tried to phone her to get an update.  After the normal confusion of mixed messages, it appeared that Gaudance had seen reason and postponed our invitation till Sunday, which was a great relief to us all.   

Hannah and Paul rallied round and created a makeshift meal for us out of their larder suitcase, supplemented by some rather stale sweet bread rolls from the kitchen.  We acted quickly to boil the kettles for warm drinks between the power-cuts.  It is significant however, how much more reliable the power system has been this year, even throughout the storm, compared to last August, when torches were used much more frequently, for very long periods.  It was wonderful to gather in Andy’s warm, dry room whilst the storm raged outside, though those of us whose rooms were further down hill left after our picnic, with some trepidation, knowing that there was at least a 2 inch gap under our bedroom doors and we wondered quite how much water might have pooled inside our rooms.

Thankfully all was dry and we retired to bed.

Good-night.

Grace, Isobel, Hannah, Paul, Jonathan and Andy

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

Tuesday's Blog.

It was a very long night for the pastors and insomniac Hannah!  Taking advantage of this rare opportunity, with most pastors of the diocese in town, the Bishop held a meeting which continued until 1 am.  Then at 2.57am, as predicted on the Feast of the Assumption, the rains came and thundered down for an hour on the tin roof of our rooms.  Andy amended the teaching content of his sessions this morning to include some rousing activity (acting out putting on the armour of God) in response to the pastors’ sleep deprivation.  Then further alterations to the teaching programme ensued as the pastors had a plethora of questions they wished Andy to answer on the topic of baptism in the Holy Spirit and water.  Meanwhile in the very chilly garden, Jonathan, Grace and Isobel continued with the video interviews in relation to the Support A Parish programme.

At about 1pm the Bishop drew the conference to a close and after lunch the pastors dispersed to their various parishes, keen to be home before the worst of the rain arrived.  We loaded Pastor Wilson up with a good selection of teaching materials for his long journey back to the remote village where he is currently starting a school in a converted old church building.

Later in the afternoon we wandered along Byumba’s dusty orange main street to visit the Hannah Ministry.  Set up to support orphans and children with HIV, the Hannah Ministry organises ladies to sew and weave traditional baskets.  These products are then sold to enable children to be fed a nutritious meal on a daily basis, as this helps their HIV medication to perform more effectively.  Andy examined all their wares and selected a new collection of baskets to replenish his stock back in UK, which will in turn be sold to support these ministries in Rwanda.

Next came the selection of banana fibre cards, manufactured by another group of ladies in the vicinity.  At the cathedral we met Jane, who is in charge of this enterprise and together we unloaded her boxes of hand made cards, checked, sorted and counted the packs as we laid them out all over the benches at the back of the cathedral, so that once again Andy could replenish his stock. 

This evening in our team meeting, we talked through tomorrow’s programme and suddenly realised that Pastor Juvenal, who had invited some of the team to dinner tomorrow night, had just left for a few days in Uganda!  Clearly there will be yet more alterations on our very fluid timetable! But it all helps us to trust the Lord that we can do what he wants us to do.

Tomorrow we will all be visiting King Solomon Academy to have time with the teachers and children. Should be fun. So until then….

Good-night.

Grace, Isobel, Hannah, Paul, Jonathan and Andy