A Busy Second Day in Kamembe

Today was a very busy day for the whole team who are out in Kamembe at the moment, with lots of different activities going on.

Day two at Isha School kicked off with Francine teaching decimals, Sarah teaching the future tense to years five and six and Dave and Maddie contaminating water, littering the classroom and setting fire to paper to teach pollution to the year six classes. Then all together taught the banana counting song to the year ones. In the afternoon Sarah and Francine clambered on top of classroom furniture (throwing health and safety to the wind) in pursuit of embarking on their mission to create learning walls in one of the year six classrooms.

Stephan and Sam (the Rwanda Aid farm training manager) went out today to visit some of the farms and see how the farmers are getting on. It was a very exciting trip (partly because they travelled over 100km on motos) and it was great to see what wonderful work Sam does training these farmers to move forward and become self efficient.

Harriet, Jane and Ben went to Ngwino Nawe, the disabled children's village. They spent time in the Early Years classroom helping teachers to develop the space to enhance learning. The children enjoyed building with duplo, exploring sequencing with numbers and colours, and beading. In the afternoon they worked with the teachers to share ideas for developing handwriting skills and introduced equipment such as pattern boards, that local carpenters could reproduce, button snakes and finger exercises. The day was filled with fun, laughter and song by some wonderful children and their incredibly enthusiastic teachers.

This morning Stephanie, Andrea, Laurie and Bethany were taken to Nkombo Nursery by a handcrafted wooden dugout boat. After being greeted by a group of gorgeous children very excited to see us all, Andrea got crafty with some collage butterflies which the children loved, whilst the others sang some songs and taught the children the Hokey Cokey. Afterwards they served them porridge for their lunch.

After returning from Nkombo Beth, Steph, Laurie and Andrea headed back to Baho Neza Mwana where they were helped by Harriet to continue the work on the mural. They added a boat to Lake Kivu and after dark started work on the big jaguar, whilst being watched keenly by the street children.

The evening has once again been spent planning all our lessons for another day at Isha.