Parcels, meetings, school visits or ....a life of a VSO Volunteer in Rwanda

Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.

Hi everybody,

I received the most amazing parcel yesterday. Austin did send a whole box full of presents with a little note on each of them.

He is such a good man!!! I opened the first present which said: ‘Open this when you need a cuddle’.

This is so exiting. I will keep them all wrapped for the right moment and it will probably take me 3 months until I will open them all.

Otherwise….today….is just another day in the life of a VSO Volunteer in this country. I, as usual, woke up by the sound of our guard sweeping the floor. That always means…that I can still sleep for about one more hour. Then it is time to have a freezing cold shower….when we have water. And….since I am back we have had water every single day…. I really do appreciate that. Afterwards I have a quick breakfast and then it is time to…..walk up the hill to the office or to walk to a school in Kibungo or to take a Motorbike into the middle of nowhere.

Today we had a meeting in our office with a representative from ‘UNICEF’ and two Project Managers from ‘ADRA’ (Adventist Development and Relief Agency Rwanda). We discussed about that at the moment there are 56 ‘Child Friendly Schools’ all over Rwanda. The future goal is that all primary schools all over Rwanda are ‘Child Friendly’.

The meeting was very interesting and I hope that together Rwanda will be able to achieve this goal in the future.

Straight afterwards I rushed to the meeting with all the Primary Head Teachers from our District, as I am going to deliver 5 workshops in the next 3 weeks and I wanted to inform the heads about dates, venues and timings. The meeting took place outside which was for the first time, as normally we are in a room.

It was pretty funny and my part took just 15 minutes but the other topics from the other facilitators took about 2 hours. By that time…..I had ants all over my pants….inside my shirt…and just everywhere. Huge ants…..I think it was quite funny, as I tried to get rid of them and not kind of disturb the meeting to much.

Well, quite a few of us kind of wiggled and giggled around. I think I was not the only one.

After the meeting I went to the market and it was funny how everybody greeted and wanted to tell his or her news of the last 6 weeks. Well….I did not understand a word but it was good fun. It seems to be a good time of the year, as I was able to buy nice peppers and even cucumbers. Cucumbers are very seldom over here and most teachers I do train do not even know what a cucumber is. Therefore I was really happy.

I went home with my goodies and made a huge salad and a sandwich with avocado in our amazing kitchen.....well the colour of the walls is amazing.

And the view from the kitchen is just.....stunning.It is good to be in Kibungo when it is market day as otherwise….there is no shopping for fruit or veggies. You need to wash the veggies quite well when you make a salad in this country.

Look at all the goodies I bought today!!!

After lunch I walked to one of my schools to talk to the teachers, as I want to teach along with them tomorrow and show them some child friendly active methodology. Therefore I needed to ask what content I need to prepare and at what time the lessons are.

This is the view from our living room window. The school I went to today and I will go to tomorrow is far behind the row of trees you see in the very back.

As usual I had a lot of small talks along the road, met a member of my Volleyball Team, got laughed at and so on. It was funny.

I came home after a long day with loads of different things going on. At home I filtered 5 litres of water and then Danny came along and we had a nice coffee. Epi came to my house at 5.30 and we cooked some ‘Chilli con Carne’ without beans and without meat….but it was still great, as we had rice, peppers, tomatoes and an onion and a pack of sauce from the UK. We watched a movie and had the most relaxing evening since ages. She is staying here overnight and it is great that she lives in Kibungo as well. We will try to cook together once a week and as we have different sport DVDs we want to start doing some sports together. I never did sport with a DVD but bought a Box-Aerobics action DVD to get that energy out of my body. Well…to be honest….I did walk in the heat for 2 hours today and we are living at quite an altitude….and therefore….I have done enough exercise for today. It needs some time to adjust again after having been in the Uk for a while.

I should probably try to sleep now as I need to teach and train teachers tomorrow. It has been a good day.

Take care,

xxx Tina