Preparing for Ruhanga
On Friday we visited Ruhanga to check that things were in place for the training. I emphasised the important things like lunch provision. Vianney, Peter and I will do the training with Ernestine, the settlement's social worker acting as translator... she didn't seem to have a lot of English on Friday, but by the time I've demonstrated my Swahili and French skills most people decide English is our best common language. Some returnees from Uganda don't speak Rwandan yet and manage in English or Lungana. As most t.v. films are in English it's a language with a future!
We met 3 of the boys who'll do the training. I'd hoped for girls but was told none of the girls wanted trained. The boys have little schooling, one has not had any at all. It is dawning on me that the 2 days training that Thai people get is for people who are no doubt already skilled masons working against a back-drop of familiarity with the technology. We're going to need to teach the boys how to make cement before we do much else. Happily, the church technical school will continue with the training once I leave so one way or another we still have a viable project. A plastic tank costs around #70 more than a cement jar and with 28 houses to furnish with 2 or 3 jars there's huge benefit in getting the project running smoothly.
The pots themselves are coming along. We still haven't made a full size one, and one of our practice pots broke on Friday... people here are a bit more refined than our workers in Tanzania who made sure they put on a very heavy render; the pot that broke was only around 10mm thick cement in places. So we'll make the next pot thicker and give it longer to dry before working on it further.
Visit to Kagitumba
Wednesday was an early start on the 5.40 bus to the Ugandan border. Didn't worry much about this as our 8.30 bus last summer in Kenya didn't leave until 12.10. But this is Rwanda. We hit the bus station at exactly 5.39, the taxi having got lost, and the bus was already moving. Happily they let me on and I arrived at the border with a nice amount of time to look at the classroom block CED is supporting with money from a trust fund. Not quite as far on as it should be as the contractor disappeared but they have now found others to carry on and things are moving. James of RHEPI arrived with an agroforestry professor and we walked to the new tree nursery funded by the university of California. It was tree planting day and everyone got some seedlings to plant in preprepared holes. The district mayor arrived and made a speech. He's giving the community the nearby hill to cover with trees. Everyone cheered but it occurs to me that it's a lot of work that won't benefit the people for a couple of decades... I guess people here can think ahead better than westerners; there's more awareness of climate change. I left James happily working out how he could put together a project for RHEPI to run the programme.
On Friday we visited Ruhanga to check that things were in place for the training. I emphasised the important things like lunch provision. Vianney, Peter and I will do the training with Ernestine, the settlement's social worker acting as translator... she didn't seem to have a lot of English on Friday, but by the time I've demonstrated my Swahili and French skills most people decide English is our best common language. Some returnees from Uganda don't speak Rwandan yet and manage in English or Lungana. As most t.v. films are in English it's a language with a future!
We met 3 of the boys who'll do the training. I'd hoped for girls but was told none of the girls wanted trained. The boys have little schooling, one has not had any at all. It is dawning on me that the 2 days training that Thai people get is for people who are no doubt already skilled masons working against a back-drop of familiarity with the technology. We're going to need to teach the boys how to make cement before we do much else. Happily, the church technical school will continue with the training once I leave so one way or another we still have a viable project. A plastic tank costs around #70 more than a cement jar and with 28 houses to furnish with 2 or 3 jars there's huge benefit in getting the project running smoothly.
The pots themselves are coming along. We still haven't made a full size one, and one of our practice pots broke on Friday... people here are a bit more refined than our workers in Tanzania who made sure they put on a very heavy render; the pot that broke was only around 10mm thick cement in places. So we'll make the next pot thicker and give it longer to dry before working on it further.
Visit to Kagitumba
Wednesday was an early start on the 5.40 bus to the Ugandan border. Didn't worry much about this as our 8.30 bus last summer in Kenya didn't leave until 12.10. But this is Rwanda. We hit the bus station at exactly 5.39, the taxi having got lost, and the bus was already moving. Happily they let me on and I arrived at the border with a nice amount of time to look at the classroom block CED is supporting with money from a trust fund. Not quite as far on as it should be as the contractor disappeared but they have now found others to carry on and things are moving. James of RHEPI arrived with an agroforestry professor and we walked to the new tree nursery funded by the university of California. It was tree planting day and everyone got some seedlings to plant in preprepared holes. The district mayor arrived and made a speech. He's giving the community the nearby hill to cover with trees. Everyone cheered but it occurs to me that it's a lot of work that won't benefit the people for a couple of decades... I guess people here can think ahead better than westerners; there's more awareness of climate change. I left James happily working out how he could put together a project for RHEPI to run the programme.
posted by Ian at 7:37 AM
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