May/June 2009

A short trip to Rwanda for the wedding of a friend and a visit to the project meant that May passed with out a newsletter! Many good things are happening in Kigali, the children love coming to school and the hats from Matthew’s nana are very popular!!  The staff work hard and the children are making good progress and our work is becoming more well known in the area.

As we are becoming better known around the world also, so our small force of volunteers is growing. Brittney, from Canada, has done a marvellous job over the last five months, teaching the Primary 2 class and helping with the general organisation of the finances. Read about her on our website. Maddy, also from Canada, arrived via Thailand with a suitcase full of art materials and has had a lot of fun with the children for five weeks. Andrea, from the UK, is currently running two English classes for the adults and Karen will shortly arrive from the USA to work with Primary 2 next term and help develop our feeding programme.

I know all the visitors are welcomed with great enthusiasm by the community as they offer so much and I am profoundly grateful for all the work they do. Certainly we are achieving so much more than I expected; mainly due to our lovely volunteers who pay their own way and work for nothing but the pleasure of giving which is both humbling and amazing.

We were also thrilled to see Gemma on a short visit from her current work in Uganda. Many people would like her to come back to work with us one day!

Meanwhile, here in the UK I have been busy visiting some of the many schools in Cumbria which have given us so much support.
We are planning two main developments to help us to grow. Firstly we need toilets and a kitchen. We also need to provide additional class spaces. For the toilets we need to clear the space and build retaining walls. We hope to install water-free eco-toilets which will be a great improvement on our current arrangements. Our wonderful fundraisers, Ben Honisett and Dan Parker are currently trekking the Pyrenees to raise money towards for our toilet scheme. I hope they are having a lot of fun. 

Francoise, our cook, currently does an amazing job preparing porridge for 170 children and rice and beans for 35 children each day. She uses two small charcoal stoves, situated outside the back door. We need to increase the number of children we feed, but we cannot do this in the space we have. We hope to do the building of the toilets and the kitchen at the same time.

Secondly, we need to provide more teaching space for the Primary section as we add another class in January.

The third group of tailors will begin their training in July. This programme has been very successful. We are now looking at how to assist the groups to form co-operatives and really get to work earning money.

We are growing, we are full of enthusiasm and we are very thankful for the continuing support of so many people around the world who are keeping faith with us and supporting us in so many different ways.

For my part, I am enjoying the summer at home, but Kinamba is always in my mind. Wherever you are, I hope your summer is kind. I hope you are happy healthy and smiling!

Love, peace, and very grateful thanks to you all. Meg