Today in Rwanda was the traditional, last Saturday of every month celebration known as ‘Umaganda’. This is where usual work is stopped and work within the community is taken up. This is an amazing thing that the Rwandans do and should definitely be taken up within other cultures.
Our usual team was split into two groups, my group consisted of me, Jess, Sarah and Sam. Our part in Umaganda was to help a school with their ‘gardening’ as you could put it. Our task was to dig up the old dry soil and turn it over, cover it with compost and plant greenary. Although the sun was hot we all did our part and plowed through the hard soil with our shovels and rakes.
After we had finished our plot we went on to play multiple games revolving around cricketing skills. We did this to about 100 students with only 2 tennis balls! Within the session we did some catching and throwing, some relay drills as well as songs and popular dances from back home, including the hockey cokey and heads shoulders knees and toes.
Once the morning festivities had finished we set off to one of the genocide memorial. This site was one of the places that was attacked during the 1994 genocide against the tutsi’s. The memorial was very hard hitting and touched many of us including a few tears from the very graphic sites to the memorial wall. We all spent time afterwards reflecting and writing in the guest book.
From leaving the memorial we went to meet one of our ambassadors to watch a short amount of girls cricket before taking some of them back to their school to allow them to practice whilst we entertained the locals with cricket drills and games.
After a long day we got settled into our new hotel followed by a trip to the local fast food establishment ‘Meze Fresh’. Which make gourmet Mexican food. With full bellies we went back to the hotel for an early night, ready to start the safari in the morning.
Meg
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