Week 2 and a visit to the Eastern Provence

 This week I have been mostly observing lessons (again!) and trying to work out exactly what is in the TRC! Thursday, Friday and Saturday were slightly different, involving travelling to the Eastern Provence of Matimba for a day with Tutors and volunteers from ten different TTC's  (teacher training colleges) around Rwanda. We left Byumba at 10am and arrived in Matimba around 4pm having travelled down to Kigali and then up to the East. The accomodation was cool but basic and it was good to see some of the volunteers I arrived with and meet lots of other people. We ate lovely goat brochettes for dinner and had a very productive daye on friday discussing EarlyYears curriculum and TRC (teacher resource centre) matters as a large group of about 50 staff. After the training it was time to play so we all met up at the brochette place around 6.30pm and ordered our food - it did not come until 9pm, good thing we were all chatting and having a good time!

It was a special day on Saturday as it is the last in the month - the day when all Rwandans are required to undertake a community service, cleaning up the streets/greenery and painting etc. therefore, we decided to leave Matimba early (5am) and get into Kigali before it started. However, the bus left Matimba around 6.30am and at about 8.30 we were told to pull into a station by the police and wait for a few hours. Lots of people got off the bus but I stayed on to read and play with the small children who wanted to come up and drive the bus - as did a fellow volunteer!We began moving again at 10 and I finally reached home at 2pm! A long day but worth it for all the hilarity! Lets see what this week brings!

First week at Byumba TTC

It's Saturday and I've spent the morning washing clothes, buying household things and helping out Jane with Calibre - a piece of e-reader software. This week has been very interesting, I observed lots of lessons in college and I am getting to know the systems and how it all works at TTC Byumba. During a few of my observations I have been asked to participate by the class teacher which was quite intimidating during an impromptu take-over of an English class of 45 student teachers between 16-20 years old firing vocabulary questions at me for half an hour!
The facilities are good at the college and the staff are nice, the students are very receptive to interactive lessons and learning about teaching techniques which is great for my role as a methodology and resource advisor!
On Thursday I travelled down to Kigali on the bus for a VSO training session on M&E and then myself and Jane travelled back to Gicumbi. It's certainly a lot warmer down there than up here in the mountains plus a lot more concrete jungle. I managed to buy a USB modem in Kigali so I can get Internet for 50p a day now!
After our day out of the district, we returned to no power or water, so had a charcoal burner meal together by moonlight of vegetable pasta.
I'm currently sitting in Ubwuzu - a nice restaurant which is trialing free wi-fi at the moment whilst they set up their business centre. The food here is really good, I had chicken dinner last night and today I'll have steak, having made a conscious decision to eat meat at the weekends here rather than buy and cook it myself with the lack of refrigeration available.
I have a meeting in Matimba next week which is about 4 hours away, so I'll get to see another TTC and what they do there plus a bit more of Rwanda through a bus window!

First day at school - and I realise I'm not the only newcomer!

Woke up Sunday morning to no electricity or water so I didn't do a lot apart from my sudoku book! In the afternoon I went for a brisk walk with Lisa throught the town/village. I now realise how beautiful and hilly the area I am living in is. After our hour trek I got showered (I mean bucket shower of course!) and changed and met Lisa and Jane for dinner at a nice restaurant/guest house here. I had a lovely steak, chips and peas for the grant total of £3 and headed home to bed!
Started school (Teacher Training College) yesterday, I walked for 30 minutes along with half the population of Gicumbi to the college and it poured with rain approximately 5 minutes into that walk! Luckily I had my rain mac with me so only my trousers and feet were soaked through to the skin! I observed lessons all day to get an idea of how different subjects are taught to the first year students - who have only been here for two weeks, so I realise that I am not the only newcomer in the college. The students are friendly and inquisitive, they are happy to practice their English with me - as are most of the population up and down the street, I don't know exactly how many times you can say Good Morning and Good Afternoon, but I think I've beaten my record in the first two days here!
Last night we had power but no water and then the power went off, so Angela stoked up the charcoal burner and we had Rwandan porridge by moonlight! We also went out shopping to buy bread, apples, toilet paper and eggs - such fun when you don't speak the language!
It's good weather today, no rain and I have now been given permission to take photographs at school so they will follow as will the beautiful views I can now see all around.The walk seemed to be shorter today and I was observing the first two lessons, then went in to see Art but the teacher was busy, so I did a lesson on drawing with them - what fun! After a lovely tea break - so nice that they make it the English way here - I met with Simon, the other volunteer based at the same Teacher Training College to discuss our work together and attended a meeting in the language department. This afternoon I will check out the Teaching Resource Centre here and the ICT department. The staff are very welcoming and I feel like a part of the team already, time to go and explore and learn more with them now!

Gicumbi - the long and winding road...

I arrived in Gicumbi (or Byumba) Friday to an empty house with nothing but furniture in it. The electricity and water were not working and the house appears to have been vacant for a while as it is filthy and covered in red dirt! I was whisked off to school after dropping my bags inside to meet the principal of Byumba TTC – Bosco, he is a very nice man with extremely good English, French and Kinyarwanda. He showed me around the campus, which is beautiful and then I was dropped back off at the house. Luckily, I’d taken a banana and piece of bread at breakfast, so I had them for lunch and prompted fell asleep after moving some of the furniture around. A guy (Peter) came to the door but didn’t speak enough English to communicate with me that he wanted to help me with the house so I sent him away without realising. When the girls arrived in the afternoon, they went off to buy electricity and  somehow managed to make the lady understand how much and what they wanted between the Kenyan and Ugandan languages they speak! Peter came back and began to put up mosquito nets and clothes hangers for us in our rooms. The water didn’t come back on, so we just went to the shop to buy some and get a few basic things together for the house. We just boiled the kettle for a drink and the power went off for the whole district so we ate Nutella sandwiches by torchlight and waited for it to return. After that we headed to our rooms for the night. I knew I would be up first because I had school at 10am but I slept late as I was so cold! Is this Africa?

Today I woke around 7am and went quickly to check if the water was on – yes! I filled up the buckets and bowls that were out and began boiling the kettle for tea and breakfast. Angela and Debra woke later and I left for school as Peter was back to change the front door lock. I jumped on a moto and had a long chat with Principal Bosco about school life and hours before meeting Simon – another volunteer who is based there and was running a workshop. I decided to walk back to see how long it would take and suss out the route and found myself at the front gate within half an hour. So I will walk to school on Monday rather than pay to ride pillion on the back of a dirty great bike. Our place is conveniently in the centre of town, opposite the post office, just up from the bus station and next to the phone centre and moto (motorbike taxi) stop.  Upon my return, the ladies I live with greeted me with new friends who took us to the market and helped us to buy fruit, vegetables and meat – all a very eye opening experience, I will take pictures once I’ve settled in and know more people to ask permission. The water has been out since lunchtime and we returned from shopping before a massive thunderstorm which wiped out the power until 4pm, so we all cooked then and realised that we trip the system easily – even so, I managed to cook my super-noodles, meat and carrots. At 6pm we went to a bar/restaurant guest house with the other volunteers here, Lisa and Jane and met more development workers from the area, I had a second dinner here of Tilapia brochette and chips, washed down with a coke and Fanta. Tomorrow I’m going for a walk with Lisa to see a bit more of Byumba and the landlord is coming to visit so we can sort out all our problems with the house.

Language and history lessons...

Ok, it’s a misty Wednesday and I should have gone to my placement today but we were told this morning that some of us (including me) are not leaving until tomorrow. After a successful Kinyarwanda lesson where I learnt how to politely say I’m a single lady and how to buy food at the market, we were dismissed until we depart. A small group of us decided to take a trip this afternoon to the Gisozi Genocide Memorial in town and I cannot put into words the emotions it called upon inside me. You had to pay to take pictures inside and I did not have enough money, so I’ll go back another time to do that but I cannot erase the pictures from memory. Inside the museum there are many posters outlining each stage of the genocide and how it came about. There are videos where survivors are talking about their experiences during the genocide and still images playing of horrific injuries people endured during that period. The worst part for me was the A2 portraits of children who were massacred – their parents have given the most recent picture of them to be enlarged and underneath there is a commemoration plaque explaining the name, age, likes, dreams of the child and a description of how they died. I will take the sentence on a 4 year olds plaque “stabbed in both eyes through the head” to my grave as a reason not to hate others even if encouraged to do so.  There are many skulls and bones of the deceased in other rooms, along with some of their clothes amidst beautiful stained glass windows and quotes from people about the bravery of those who helped those being persecuted. Outside you can walk around the peace gardens where the mass graves have been placed. This year in April, it is 20 years since the 100 day period where nearly a million people were massacred - as I said before... no words.

On a lighter note, I will be picked up by my new manager tomorrow at 10am and taken to Byumba where I will live and work for the next 2 years. It sits higher up in the mountains than Kigali, so I expect it to be a little chillier there – going to wear my long sleeves tomorrow!

Our group is down to 6 now as eight went off to their placements today – quiet times!

First Days In The Mist

I arrived safely on Monday along with two other volunteers from the UK. We reached the accommodation about 8.30am and started reading some of the in-country material. Throughout the day new volunteers arrived from the Netherlands, Kenya, Uganda and India. Our group is up to a total of 11 people, all with education skills. The weather here is lovely - I feel like I'm back in the Caribbean, minus the beaches of course! Kigali is the capital city of Rwanda, so far it’s the cleanest capital I’ve seen bar Singapore. No plastic bags are allowed here, you get a brown paper bag at the shop and people don’t smoke or eat/drink on the street either. It is a mixture of high rise offices, malls and banks, low rise accommodation and shops and green areas with trees, bushes and flowers. Beautiful! I feel really safe - so don't worry about me!

There are lovely gardens here at the Centre Christus where we are all staying, which attract birds and even some cheeky little monkeys! One came into our training session, stole a pen and proceeded to tumble in forward rolls down the embankment to amuse himself whilst we were learning all about our placements. I spoke to my programme manager who advised that I will be based in a Teacher Training Centre in the north of Rwanda near the Uganda border. I found out that most student teachers are between  16 and 19 years old as teaching is chosen as an upper secondary school option. I will also be teaching mentors and in-service teachers.

On Tuesday we began by heading over to the VSO office to log online and meeting the Country Manager for VSO. We learnt about the particulars of our accommodation in our various locations around Rwanda. I am lucky to be sharing a house with two people who have arrived at the same time as me, one lady from Kenya and one from Uganda. Our house has intermittent electricity and water supply inside which is very reassuring!  This afternoon we finished a little early and headed to the local bar/nightclub called “Cosmic” with a volunteer who has been here a while. The music was very loud and the soft drinks are always warm here unless you ask for a cold one!

Its Wednesday today and we had our first Kinyarwanda lesson this morning – all very confusing, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon. We then had a cultural briefing which was very informative. The most interesting thing happened to me this morning when I put my trousers on. I felt a prickly sensation down my leg and thought the seam may be irritating me but when i removed my trousers to check, a spiky caterpillar dropped out. I screamed and stamped on it immediately – not the best thing to do but it gave me a shock and I saw the nasty centipede bites in the Caribbean! My leg’s been a bit sore all day but it seems to have subsided now so I learnt a valuable lesson – shake your clothes before you put them on!  We shopped all afternoon for our new place and I just enjoyed a lovely chicken, potato and beans dinner, topped off with banana and tangerine. The food here is excellent, I can’t wait to start visiting the market and cooking for myself. We head of to our placements tomorrow after another intensive language session – who knows what the internet connection will be like there.