Baho Neza Mwana Olympics

The 2015 Olympics took place at Baho Neza Mwana today. The opening ceremony was delayed owing to the fact that it was umuganda. There were some similarities in the opening ceremony to the London Games with 4 teams making constructions out of spaghetti and marshmallows. The teams had to create the highest construction which would hold a ball. Only after they finished did they realise that the marshmallows were edible, afterwards called 'bug sugar', and promptly finished off. Less familiar was Lulu and the lampshades (aka Beth, Maddie, Laurie and Andrea) teaching the cup song to a group of the boys. 

After lunch sports introduced for the first time at these Olympics were juggling ball and Rwandan spoon race, wheel barrow race (a homage to Neville) and nerf ball javelin. Teams, originally labelled red, blue, yellow and pink, competed as much in gentle sledging as they did in the activities.

Football, unsurprisingly had to feature at some point, with Ben putting in a gallant effort on behalf of the UK team. More surprisingly snakes and ladders, and twister also featured. In a time honoured tradition Stephanie performed gymnastics. However she did not feature in the medals having had Andrea come out of retirement to perform, who was in turn pipped to the post by two of the Baho Neza Residents. 

The closing ceremony featured African drumming. The highlight was definitely some specially written chants for the 3 houses: Ingagi (Gorilla), Intare (lion) and Ingwe (Jaguar). Less of a highlight was Pharrel's song "Happy" performed by the whole UK group. Although when asked for another, we had to resort to Beth doing a solo of "Ho Hey". 

Before leaving group photos were taken, and then more excitingly sunglasses were given to all students donated by the fundraising project of Kit Rutterford.  After fond farewells the UK groups left, exhausted but invigorated by the success of the day.

Painting at Baho Neza Mwana and a King's House day at Cyato

This morning we awoke to a power cut, changing our plans for nice hot showers, coffee and eggy bread. Not wanting to let the rest of the house down with their offer of breakfast, Andrea, Maddie and Laurie set to work on making breakfast on the imbambura (fire) outside. We discovered that it is much quicker than using the small electric hobs in the kitchen so what we thought was going to be a challenge turned out rather well!

On our way to Baho Neza Mwana, the street children's village, we stopped in the market in Kamembe to buy some material for some of the group to have traditional Rwandan clothes made.

The rest of the day was spent painting the murals under Beth's excellent guidance and supervision. Beth, Stephanie and Maddie worked on the ingagi (gorilla), Andrea and Sue on the ingwe (jaguar), Laurie and Sarah on the intare (lion), Dave on the lettering for Baho Neza Mwana and Francine, Moreen and Stephan on the Rwandan dancers. The murals are already looking fantastically colourful and the boys are excited about the new decorations to their houses. Some were even keen to help out with the painting.

The team from King's House Richmond, Harriet, Jane and Ben, spent the day at King's House, Cyato; the school that was Rwanda Aid's first large project and has gone from strength to strength with continued support and funding. There are now 1000 pupils and they have just won an award for being the best Eco-friendly school. The headmaster met with Harriet, Jane and Ben to discuss how Rwanda Aid and King's House School can take the school forward. They had brought individual profiles from King's House from a number of pupils, which will be put on display for the Cyato children to practise their English. In return, Harriet, Jane and Ben asked the P4 class to write about themselves so they can take a snapshot of the Rwandan children back to the UK. They were then treated to a specially rehearsed dance and song routine to show their continuing thanks for help. Harriet, Jane, Ben and Alex all joined in the dancing with much hilarity. It was a joy to return to Cyato to rekindle links.

This evening the whole UK team went out for dinner with the Rwanda Aid team to say thank you for having us out here to stay and for looking after us so well. It is also Dave and Stephanie's 16th wedding anniversary today so another reason to celebrate!

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.