Today has been a great day! We got up early to be ready to get to training and sat out on the porch waiting for our bus. It was slightly delayed which gave us time to ‘interview’ Clemy ready for her blog post which was published earlier this evening.
Buses over here, especially their suspension, can’t last long given the bumpy roads! Half of the journey was on tarmac, the other half on very bumpy tracks. We did make it to training in one piece though and were greeted by a very friendly headteacher of the school where the guide group meet. He showed us around the school which was originally built in the 1950’s with additions up until 2017. The primary school has 1300 pupils – too many to have in one day so the children come for either a long morning or long afternoon. The high school has 400 pupils with a nursery attached for an additional 100 and 37 teachers for them all.
Our training session today was based around developing leadership skills and highlighting the qualities that make a good leader. The girls are all part of a new troop in Jabana and are 12-18. Their smiles when we walked through the door were huge and they were all really enthusiastic throughout our session. They even greeted us by doing the macarena – some of them had obviously been to camp!
We had a varied session planned for the girls: chair circles, blind-folded obstacle course, discussions about what makes a good leader, ordering themselves into age and height order without talking and lots of energises too!
The session finished just before 13.00 so that they could have their lunch. We were very pleased to be ‘guests of honour’ in the school visitors book. Both ourselves and the Rwandan GOLD team signed it to say we had been there with Girlguiding. The headteacher was so pleased.
We headed back into Kigali where the GOLD team kindly took us to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum. All of us had a little understanding about this before coming to Rwanda but were interested to learn more about the history which has shaped the country that we were visiting. The experience was very emotional, filled with lots of real stories and videos as well as giving us a full history from start to finish which allowed us to have a better understanding about what happened. We were very lucky to have shared this experience with Dodo, Sylvi and Clemy.
This evening we have relaxed and had the most amazing tea – potato, aubergine and tomato bake with melted cheese on top plus tinned peaches for pudding! It has been our favourite tea so far. We have also enjoyed having our hair plaited by hairdresser Hannah whilst watching and singing along to Mamma Mia – such a feel good film to end a fantastic day.
Tomorrow we are off to a school in Nyarugenge. We look forward to keeping you posted!
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GOLD Rwanda 2019 