Good afternoon vis'tors!

Sorry I haven't updated you for a while - we have been SOOO busy… haven't been in the house long enough to write anything!

Well, it turned out that I wasn't required to say a right lot when we met the Bishop, which was just as well because the conversation was very serious. We were struck by just how seriously Bishop John takes every decision that he has to make, and just how many decisions he is making for so many different groups of people. He is a friendly man but thinks very carefully through the implications of every decision for Rwanda as a whole.

After we had met the Bishop we went up to Sonrise School - where Tracy will be teaching - and Pam gave us a tour. The amazing thing was that because it was so near the beginning of term there weren't any teachers in the upper primary school classrooms and yet the children were all sat in their places quietly waiting. That would never happen in England! As we walked into each room, all the children stood up and greeted us, in English "Good afternoon vis'tors!" - the second i sound must be really hard to pronounce for them. Pam told them they could sit, and then went on to introduce each of us. When she told them that Tracy was a teacher from the UK coming to teach them for six months they spontaneously burst into applause and showed such excitement we were really touched. I got nearly as big a round of applause when Pam said I would be helping with Tubakunde. I think Tubakunde has quite a reputation in Ruhengeri already (Oh, incidently the 'g' sound in Ruhengeri is a soft one). There are some fifty names already on the list of people needing help when it opens. They are going to have to devise some kind of selection procedure which is going to be very hard when so many people are in need of support. Sorry, I digress. We saw inside the kitchens at Sonrise. Everything is cooked in a massive vat over a coal fire - there was a vat of bean stuff and a vat of rice and it would feed the whole school at lunch time. They also gave us some freshly baked bread which was delicious. Later in the afternoon we helped Pam and two men dismantle and move some bunk beds because the dormitaries needed shifting about a bit, and then waited for the children to finish classes at 4pm. They only had an hour before prep started and a lot of them were transporting buckets of water (which probably weighed nearly as much as they did in the case of the little ones) up a flight of steps in order to wash their clothes. I think a certain amount of washing is done for them but socks and so on they have to wash themselves. Once again, they just got on with the job with no-one instructing them or watching over them…though with some "muzungu"s distracting them! They were very shy but the ones who would talk to us actually spoke pretty good English. The rule in the school is that during lessons they must talk either French or English, though a lot of the teachers are French so I think they might be better at French.

One little girl told us that her name was Jennifer and I think she understood me when I told her my sister was called Jennifer, and she came and sat with us holding my hand for some time. She was very sweet. We asked them if they had any games they could teach us, and two of them did a hopping, clapping dance for us! So, we showed them the clapping game that English children play…and one of them tried it…the others were too shy. It's bizarre that anyone on the street will come up and talk to you, but the children in the school are a lot more shy. However, after singing to them in English (they joined in 'Give me oil in my lamp' and 'Kumbaya' because they knew them) for about twenty minutes, they finally started a song in Kinyarwanda after one little girl had very bravely done a solo. Unfortunately we had to leave just then so we never heard the end.Anyway, we're not quite up to date yet here, but I have to go to school now - we have to measure the children for uniforms today, while Tracy has an interview with the Headteacher. I will try to write some more as soon as I have time. We are moving into our new house later today!!