I now seem to be a cookery facilitator!
All day Tuesday was spent making potage with the older girls - they were great -chopping and slicing, peeling and scraping! eventually bowls were produced and everone tucked in!!
On Wednesday afternoon Frere Jean Marie suddenly became extremely cooperative, whisked me off to the vegetable garden -
" Come Sister, come" and gave me all the veg I wanted AND went to the market so that we could have carrots and eggs to make salad with 2 separate classes the next day! This went quite well except that the teachers got so carried away they took over a lot of the slicing and presentation leaving the pupils idle! They didn't mind too much as I'd brought a jar of mayonnaise which was polished off in double quick time!!
Frere Alexandre appeared in high good humour on Thursday and more or less told me to stop asking for permission to do things but just to go ahead - Carte Blanche? So now I'm thinking maybe I can do some science with some of these children but any help from anyone out there would be very welcome -outlines of lessons, programmes of work, suggestions for topics etc bearing in mind that we have no actual equipment!
I'm in Kigali just now having come for a Disability working Group and training on Global Education which has been really interesting. We also had some NGO speakers including someone talking about the establishment of the Gacaca courts which was fascinating. He explained how the have been developed from local courts which originally dealt with quite trivial crimes such as robbery and land disputes. He really spelt out that after the Genocide there were no lawyers or judges because they were all dead or fled. People had to be trained very quickly. He described in a chillingly matter of fact way how the genocide had been "en plein air" for all to see - like going to work at 8.00 am and finishing at 5.00 with a discussion of how the day's "work" had gone and what was the schedule for the next day.
There is a plan that we might be taken to visit a refugee camp in July which will be extremely interesting. Someone from the World food Programme told us how there is a campaign to keep girls in school by giving them cooking oil at the end of each month completed at school in the 4th, 5th and 6th years and how some of the girls have managed to save by selling the oil and sometimes buying goats which they then sell to pay for their secondary education.
The Sign Language lessons with the Secondary school at Butare have started again and seem to be going well though rain nearly stopped play on Thursday! Lies and I have resumed our efforts to work on a manual of Rwandan Signs as well and the students are great discussing the various signs and variations.
That's it for now - Thanks to EVERYONE who sent parcels- chocolate much appreciated as is all the school equipment.
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