A Very Special Day at Ngwino Nawe

Today the whole team was at Ngwino Nawe, the disabled children's village set up by Rwanda Aid.

The sock rabbits proved so popular at Isha school that Maddie, Andrea, Laurie and Francine made them again with the older children at the village today. They showed off their fantastic sewing skills and were thrilled with their rabbits, refusing to put them down, even when they had moved on to the next activity! The next crafting activity, which a small group of children did in the morning and a much larger group in the afternoon, was making tissue paper flowers. The children were delighted with their brightly coloured creations which will decorate their classrooms.

Great fun was had doing a variety of sports. Ben started with the first group doing a light warm up which had Stephan and Dave sweating within a short time. The children were fine. There followed a variety of activities using footballs, soft frisbees and skipping ropes. The only minor disaster was when the football flew down the very steep hill, was collected by Dave and then promptly flew down the hill again.

The guitar proved very intriguing to the children in the music session. Anita, one of the older residents, really enjoyed Old McDonald. However, by the time Old McDonald had a lion, elephant, hippo and gorilla, his farm had turned into a zoo. 

One real delight was seeing the children dancing to Beth's Rwanda Mix. It was amazing to see children who couldn't necessarily hear the music dance so beautifully and mimic every movement we did. 

Harriet and Jane's task for the day was to set out the Nursery classroom implementing all the ideas they had discussed in training this week. Using fabric bowls and spoons they had purchased in Kamembe market the previous day, they created a role play area, a completely new concept in a  Rwandan classroom. They explained the value of role play and how it promoted communication and language and allowed the children to create stories, they even gave an impromptu demonstration! 

The rest of the classroom was set out to include all the different areas of learning in a Nursery classroom. This included an area to share books and stories. The night before we had a sewing circle after dinner and created a set of cushions (with material provided by Marji) for the children to sit on at circle time.  We discovered that we had a hidden talent in our midst as Stephan produced a wonderful cushion!  The children had a wonderful time exploring their new environment, they wasted no time and were soon very busy dressing up and cooking a meal in their new role play kitchen.

Stephanie and Sarah helped the children to create their own rhythmic gymnastic ribbons with which they thoroughly enjoyed creating patterns involving their whole body.  They also used a variety of media to create pictures of themselves which were then hung on the nursery washing lines.

There was also some very good news today.  Therese, the headmistress, told us that five pupils with club foot have been operated on in the children's hospital in Kigali.  The process of correcting their legs and feet means that some of them will have to spend up to seven months at the children's hospital in Kigali, a 6 hour drive away from home.  However, the long term benefit for the children is huge - and Chantal, one of the girls, asking Therese at the weekend "Will I now be able to walk like the other girls?" shows just what an immense difference these operations will make to their lives.