Parcels, meetings, school visits or ....a life of a VSO Volunteer in Kibungo
on Tina in Rwanda (Rwanda), 26/Aug/2009 21:57, 34 days ago
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.Normal0MicrosoftInternetExplorer4st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";}Hi everybody,I received the most amazing parcel yesterday.Austindid 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 Iam 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 andRelief AgencyRwanda). We discussed about that at the moment there are 56‘Child Friendly Schools’ all overRwanda. The future goal is that all primary schools all overRwandaare‘Child Friendly’. Us VSOs are really working hard on that and it is a long way to go. At the moment I am the only Teacher Trainer who is working in our District and we have 63 Primary Schools. Some of them are extremely remote in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The meeting was very interestingand I hope that together we will be able to achieve this goal in the far future. It will be a very very long process and a lot of work with different stakeholders.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. It was great to see everybody. We were in the middle of our meeting in the big hall of our District when we suddenly received the information that there would be a more important meeting in this room and we therefore would have to leave.…..No comment!!!!......But just imagine what you would think and yes….that is what I thought!!!! So….we ended up sitting in the shade of a tree. Well, at least we took chairs.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 got touched in my hair or at my white skinned arm 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 around 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 aswell. 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 weare 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 theUkfor 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