Bees in my Bonnet

A couple of weeks ago, I came home to find part of my ceiling collapsed along with a huge beehive and a bunch of dead bees (there were still some live ones around to cause me trouble as well). Luckily, I found some community members to help me clean the hive (and honey) out of my ceiling and now it only remains for my ceiling to be fixed and the room painted so it no longer has honey leaking all over it. The community members were eating the honey straight from the hive that had been in my ceiling for months and months. When they offered me some, I said "oya, murakoze" - no thanks. I'll stick to the honey you can buy in the store, thank you.

Some of you know that a couple of days later I found out that my cat that was living with my ex (and also 21 years old) was put to sleep. It was a difficult week for me and I appreciate those of you who offered condolences. Here is a picture of the beehive that is outside my house now.

Birthday Weekend!

For the first time in my life, I spent my birthday in Africa (although it is not the first time spending my birthday overseas - had 2 birthdays in Cambodia). My friend Epi, another VSO volunteer from Canada, and I went to Gisenyi which is on Lake Kivu in the northwest part of Rwanda. It has nice beaches and feels like you could be on the Meditteranean! We spent Friday and Saturday night there and came back to Kigali on Sunday where I had a lovely dinner at the Serena Hotel with another volunteer friend, Portia. All in all, it was a pretty decent 41st birthday! Here is a picture of me relaxing on the beach - still a young naive 40 year old....and by some strange coincidence, this is picture number 41 in my gallery!

VSO Family Dinner

Early September saw the arrival of 19 new VSO volunteers to Rwanda (unfortunately, none of them coming to my district). They had a week and a half of In-Country Training followed by the VSO Family Dinner, where all VSO volunteers are invited to meet the new volunteers, have a free meal (including alcohol!) and watch some fantastic entertainment by local Intore dancers. The new volunteers seem keen to start their new placements - some are short term (3 - 6 months) and some are here as long as 2 years. Most are in the Education sector as Management or Methodology 'experts' and some are in disability. All seem like excellent additions to the VSO family in Rwanda. Murakaza Neza, new VSO volunteers - I hope to work with you all in the near future!

Back to work!

I've now been back in my placement for 2 weeks & doing workshops as well as classroom observations with the teachers in my district. I have facilitated my "Strengths & Weaknesses of Muhura Schools" workshop in 8 schools & now only have 1 school left. This workshop runs from 2 to 3 hours where I present some of the strengths & weaknesses I saw in all of the schools I visited (hence the title). Afterwards, the teachers work in small groups to find solutions to the weaknesses. There is a fair bit of acting on my part as I demonstrate some of the weaknesses (like shouting 'you!' to a student instead of using names) so the teachers understand why something is an issue & could easily be changed. I also teach a couple of songs (yes, I sing in front of the teachers) and a game (Simon Says) so the teachers can see how easy it is to incorporate these things into their classes.

As I have no pictures of my workshops yet, I will post a picture of beautiful Zanzibar - I place I highly recommend you visit if you get a chance....

Holiday in Zanzibar

My 1st vacation from my placement in small-town Rwanda was to the exotic spice island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania. The adventure started with a 28 hour bus journey through the plains of Africa, followed by a pick pocketing incident in Dar es Salaam in which my cell phone was taken far, far way. My traveling companions were Collette & Shala, 2 awesome VSO volunteers without whom this experience wouldn't even be worth discussing. We spent some time in the labyrinthine Stonetown where each side alley lead to more & more interesting sites plus endless shopping opportunities! We took the local transport called a Dalla Dalla to the popular beach area called Nungwi where we stayed 2 nights before heading to the beautiful, tranquil Kendwa Rocks. We swam, beached, ate, drank, & danced the night(s) away for 4 days before heading back to Stonetown for more cultural experiences & shopping. I think the attached picture is a fairly accurate representation of how we spent most of our vacation. Cheers!

Waiting, workshops, & more waiting

Trying to do workshops with teachers during the most important exams of the semester was probably not the wisest move, but yours truly will definitely know better for next time:) I mentioned in an earlier post that I was observing lessons & giving feedback in the schools in my sector. I noticed that all schools had some common strengths & they also made the same "mistakes" - the areas for improvement were very similar! This is how I came to create the "Strengths & Weaknesses of Muhura Schools" which is about 2 1/2 hours long. So far I have facilitated this workshop at 3 schools with a fair amount of success (ie. nobody booed me or threw tomatoes at me) and hope to do 2 more this week. I say hope because schedules have a way of changing at last minute here (like 8:30pm the night before a workshop) but we just have to learn to take things slowly - buhoro, buhoro as they say here in Rwanda!

When I am not visiting schools in my area, I am often in Kigali sharing information (and good times!) with other volunteers. The picture above shows a group of the education volunteers deeply involved in their group activity....

Canada Day in Rwanda

Had the awesome opportunity to help with a workshop in another district called Nyanza with the 2 Mels (Melanie & Melissa). It was a very long day of teaching students & teacher-training - not to mention the extrac-curricular activities such as the 3 legged races! Thanks to the Mels for letting me participate as it was a great learning experience & a good time was had by all. Check out the picture of me with some of the students - they oughta be in pictures!

Canada Day happened to fall on the same day as Indepence Day in Rwanda. I celebrated our nation's birthday in style at the Canadian ambassadors house in Kigali. My team won the Canada Day quiz & won cool pens - I even got a temporary tattoo to show my loyalty to my country!