Starting Work and Getting Around

This week has been another shock to the system. I started work full time. From Monday to Wednesday I was in the Kamonyi District Office, meeting the people I’ll be working with, being shown around and learning the job. It’s in a very different context, but very familiar from a skills perspective.

Travelling to and from work is complicated – at 6.45am, I take a 5 minute moto-taxi ride from the Hacienda to the express bus stop in Muhanga (Gitarama) and buy a ticket for the Horizon bus. That’s a more expensive bus but faster and less crowded, with mostly professionals heading for work in the capital, Kigali, which is an hour away.  In half an hour I arrive at Kamonyi village and get another moto-taxi 7km along a gravel road up into the higher hills to the office.

 

Coming home at 4pm, I do the reverse, but use a local smaller minibus (a matatu) which come by regularly. These vehicles have a conductor as well as a driver, who collects as many passengers with their various pieces of luggage and equipment as he can. The matatu is stopped by banging on the window or ceiling. Sometimes you are almost on the lap of your fellow passengers or may even have a local child on your own lap. With a computer rucksack and my own moto helmet, it can be rather complicated. It’s good if the windows are open for fresh air as the well-worn vehicles draw in exhaust fumes to mingle with those of the passengers.

 

On Thursday and Friday, I shadowed Hetty and Ingrid on visits to schools and to deliver teacher training. The school we visited in Musambira was a Belgian and EU funded project led by an enthusiastic former head teacher. It’s a school delivering the primary curriculum for those pupils (mostly teenagers) who’ve missed out on their education so far. It’s all very encouraging as there will be training opportunities for us in that school in the future. Friday’s training course was for 30 teachers at Buye Group Scholaire (mixed primary and secondary) on the New English Curriculum. It was heartening to see the teachers engaged in the interactive tasks which had been prepared – as an example of how not just sitting and listening – to make the learning more enjoyable and effective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weekend is a quiet one. We began with a brunch at a new local restaurant with other volunteers from other volunteer groups, followed by shopping in the local market for meals for the coming week.

 

Now I need to stop, take stock of my journey so far and absorb all my new experiences.