New Fresh Volunteer Powers Arrive!!

After sad goodbyes with the volunteers from Group 1 returning home, the coordinators and the remaining volunteers could luckily welcome new, fresh forces from United States, Australia and Denmark. After their long travels, the six new volunteers were delighted to have reached Rwanda and excited to learn about the project experiences of the past two weeks.

While most of Saturday was spent helping the newcomers settle in, Sunday proposed cultural experiences and insights. One of these experiences was the visit to the local church where Sanejo Co-founder David has a special history. At the age of 13 a young David founded a children’s choir for the church, a choir that today still exists among the young children of the congregation. The pastor of the church was excited to have YGAP and Sanejo join David at the Sunday morning mass where the current children’s choir gave an amazing performance, demonstrating huge musical talent. To top of the experience David showed that he himself is still a bit of a songbird as he performed with original choir members who still attend the church. The
Sunday was ended with an orientation meeting for new volunteers and a bit of world cup football.

Mon 28 – Tues 29 June:
Start of week three was kicked of with the students and teachers of Ntenyo Primary School giving the new volunteers a warm and musical welcome! Volunteers and teachers were then paired to continue the success and development of the teachers English skills. The day included a lot of classroom observing from the new volunteers, as well as interaction with the children during recess. One of the observations made included the students’ great interest in the volunteers as well as the dedication towards also teaching the volunteers

Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda.
At the building site things were moving along successfully. Not only had the local contractors done an amazing job over the past weekend with the brick work, the team could also learn that thanks to such efforts the construction is moving along ahead of schedule.

Wed 30 June –Thurs 1 July:
In the absence of one of the teachers on Wednesday, some of the volunteers took charge spending a large part of the day teaching the children in P1 – the youngest class at the school. As the English skills of the children at this age are limited, it demanded creative thinking from the volunteers who took it upon them to teach the students the alphabet as well as different children’s songs.
On the building site local contractors and the team began the restoration of the grave site of David’s grandparents. Wednesday evening was spent with an orientation meeting back at the guesthouse where David and Elliot shared the vision of the project with all volunteers, a vision that in everyway inspired.

Thursday 1st of July was Rwanda’s National Independence Day which meant that the school was closed. However, at the building site the constructions continued. In addition to the construction of the two school buildings and the grave site the contractors also spent Thursday improving the very poor toilet facilities at the school.

Thursday afternoon was ended with a festive goodbye session, as Elliot had his last day at site as he is leaving Rwanda on Saturday. This meant that fruit and juice was served to all contractors who very gratefully accepted. Furthermore, the day ended with volunteers and contractors joining in a traditional Rwandan dance, to the amazement of all. You can view video clips of this at YGAP’s YouTube Channel, photos on Flickr and much more on our Facebook profile.