Kibuye Stephen and Anna

Met Stephen and Anna at the Airport on Saturday evening.  Set off to Kibuye on Sunday morning.  It took us until lunchtime to reach Kibuye.  Kibuye is beautiful. 

We stayed at Home St John and were met by John who was all smiles and laughter.  Checked into the rooms which were lovely (with hot water! Yippee) and then walked into town to see the sights. Decided to do the circular walk around the one way road through town. 

Sounds easy but we got lost and went off along a dirt track instead of staying on the main road!  Oh well… met lots of kids and played with them .

Children playing with whip and tops.

Met up with Olivier who said he would take us to Bethany which is the opposite side of the promontory – he eventually came with us all the way around the loop which was nice. The lakes are stunning and this must be the best view from a toilet window anywhere! 

Next day took a boat out to Napoleon Island with our guide Everest   He took us on the island and proceeded to guide us along the path.  At one point he said I am going in the forest to clap and then you will see the birds!  So we waited and he clapped and the BATS call came out of the trees.  Millions of them screeching above our heads it was surreal. 

Anna and I were in fits of laugher and just hoping none of the bat pooh landed on our heads!  Then we walked up to the summit of the island which was not easy in the heat. 

Turns out there are cows on the island and when we asked him how they got there he said they swam!  Didn’t know cows swam either!  Headed back to the shore taking a trip around amahoro island (peace island) on the way back. 

A very pleasant trip.  Then set off for Musanze.

Party Nyarubuye

This week I was invited to the end of term party at Nyarubuye. It was nice but very formal and not like a party in the UK at all! I was on the top table with, the head teacher, head of the local church and the SEO.

Then more speeches and then traditional dancing and then an opportunity for the teachers to air their views.

We all had to make speeches and then we had Fanta or beer and food.  Followed by them presenting me with a gift which was lovely and very unexpected.   I really enjoyed the party and it was nice to be invited.

Shelves Nyarubuye

Dear all

Had a fab week. Monday and Wednesday were bank holidays this week - so it has been a realxing time.  Tuesday was spent at the school in this blog.

One of the first things that I noticed when I visited the school was that the P1 classes were housed in very poor quality classrooms but the staffroom, book room and head teachers office were taking up 3 perfectly good classrooms.

 

I suggested that they may be able to combine these three rooms into one and enable the primary 1 classes to move into the better classrooms.  Two sponsors from the UK gave me £50 each so I said I would donate this money (100,000Rwf) to build shelves to house the books in the classroom so that we could know how many books the school had and get them into some sort of order for pupils and teachers to use.

The pictures below show the book store where books were just lying about on benches and desks in no particular order, staffroom and head teachers office.

The picture below shows the shelves that were constructed with the money from donors and the head teacher’s office which was created in the same room.

We had a huge task of moving all the books from the book store into the room with the shelves and sorting them out into subject and level.  Some pupils and staff helped with the job.   Also my moto driver helped by building supports to go between the struts in the shelving to support the books!

Pictures of the library being created.

The children were all given pens and notebooks for helping at the end of the day.

Both the staff and students were delighted with their work. We also altered some old visual aids that they had that were in French, cleaned them up changed the labels to English and hung them around the walls so that teachers could use them too.

The P1 pupils are moving into the new classrooms this week.