After setting off in sunny London on Saturday evening we arrived tired, but excited in wet Kigali (via Nairobi and Burundi!). The first hurdle was completed as we managed to get all off the cricket kit through check in without having the ‘CWB’ shuffle of balancing out kit and we arrived safe and sound with all the bags in Kigali. Job done! After successfully changing our cash, the ‘new’ volunteers (and Martin) went to the Genocide Memorial Museaum. Its a hard and emotional thing to do especially on not much sleep, however its vitally important for the volunteers to understand the tramatic recent history of the country and how it has rebuilt itself to the modern African state it is now. The group have returned to the lovely new apartments and tonight sees us join the ‘big dogs’ of the Rwandan Cricket Association (including new head coach Colin Siller) for the traditional welcome curry.
4 comments
Tim Marrion says:
Mar 4, 2012
Terrace 1 Booth 0 on project leadership skills then if no shuffle required! Glad everyone arrived well and enjoy zaaffran if you can find it! Would be interested to know mode of transport home?
Bob Hopkins says:
Mar 5, 2012
My one taxi-bike ride after a curry is still a fond memory!
Jonathan Todd says:
Mar 5, 2012
It has to be Taxi bike. There is no other way to go around town 😛
Gareth says:
Mar 6, 2012
Hope the rain stayed away for the cricket sessions; from what i remember it can come and go very quickly – one can go from soaked to sun-burnt in about an hour. Do you plan to visit some of the even more harrowing genocide memorials? I couldn’t face them, but there’s churches where bodies have been left as they were found following a massacre in an attempt to stop any future attempts at holocaust denial. What struck us about this particular genocide is the number of barriers to moving on; no therapy, no money to move away, certainly no Israel-esque offer of a state for the Tutsis. So you carry on living next door to the people who killed your family. Not difficult to understand why we felt Rwanda had such a different atmosphere and character to the rest of east Africa. I hope you’re able to spend a bit of time in Kenya or Uganda as I’d be interested to know if you notice the same things we did. And if you do have some spare time in nairobi on the way back, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with my friends and colleagues at Action Network for the Disabled; they can show you some of our work giving young persons with disabilites the opportunity to take a full part in the social and economic life of Kenya. Great sports to work programme, funded by comic relief. Or they could just take you for a beer and a dance, although there’s nowhere like heebiejeebies in Nairobi.
Keep it up.
GW