Everybody Dance

Today we moved on again, this time heading south to Shyogwe Diocese where we were to meet Bishop Louie Pasteur for the first time following the retirement of Bishop Jered who had been our partner and friend for many years. We were due to be picked up at 8.30 by Leonard, our main contact, and a driver. As we sat finishing our breakfast a very smart car pulled into the compound, Leonard jumped out to greet us followed by ‘the driver’ none other than Bishop Louis Pasteur himself, what an amazing honour.

We had a very smooth journey on the much improved main road, complete with a stop at a new, very modern coffee shop. Imagine our joy to find they served iced coffee.

A visit to their facilities revealed another very forward thinking initiative!!!

In a country where such things are rarely discussed, and many girls miss a week of school every month for the lack of hygiene items, we were very encouraged.

The 2 hour journey provided an opportunity to discuss many things with the Bishop including about his family. He told us how he had 4 biological children and adopted twin girls who were his sister’s children. Having been raped during the genocide she had contracted HIV, later she married and had healthy babies, however subsequently she and her husband had died when the girls were very young.

His passion for assisting communities to become self-sufficient and achieving long term sustainability that does not require outside support is obvious. This is our first, and so far, relatively brief meeting with the Bishop, but already we feel encouraged that his aims and values align very closely with ours.

We appear to be the only guests staying here and a 12pm lunch was provided by the guest house staff, they had obviously tried very hard to produce a two portion traditional lunch which was beautifully presented, we did our best, but sadly we could still not do it justice. We ate what we could and offered our apologies, hopefully the staff had a good meal today.

A short break in which we attempted to start our notes and begin writing the blog and it was time for a meeting with the bishop and his staff. The Shyogwe team are a young and cheery group who sat patiently while our itinerary was reviewed and reorganised, as always they want to fit in far more than it is possible to achieve. Then a slide show of some of the projects we have supported in Shyogwe Diocese, why haven’t we seen these pictures!!!!

Already running over an hour late we headed off to St Peters School, but first a detour to see the coffee plant nursery, a diocesan initiative to provide work for the women and youth and income generation for the communities. What an amazing sight, with a 90% germination rate there were around 100,000 healthy seedlings growing and almost ready to be potted on. We are told they have 9 such nurseries across the diocese, that’s an awful lot of pricking out and will provide a significant amount of work. Coffee growing is obviously going to be a huge thing here very soon.

Eventually we arrived at St Peter’s School, the usual introductions and then the tour, some of the construction students were taking their Practical National Exam but no one seemed to mind our interrupting. The considerable number of tools being used had been provided from donations to our School Partner Funds.

The original workshop is being converted to a classroom due to the increasing number of students applying to the school, we were delighted to learn that the construction students were undertaking much of the work.

Last year CHI provided 4 pigs as an income generation for the school, they were rightly very proud to show us the extended pigsty now housing 17 pigs, some have also been sold to help five of the poorest students with their school fees.

On leaving the last classroom we were greeted by the sound of traditional drums, the path to the next classroom was flanked by two banana trees, a traditional gesture to welcome special guests, the drummers played enthusiastically as we entered and a guard of honour danced us in, breaking with protocol once again, we joined in.

We were beautifully entertained with traditional song and dance, the electronic music from the equipment purchased with funds from CHI managed to compliment the voices of the singers well.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/c710bc_3073c54fce8f4ba2bf9a45e8408bb130/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

There followed a full Rwandan meal, this was somewhat unexpected as we were due to have dinner with the bishop at 6pm, we did our best!!!

Meal over we were presented with gifts by the school staff, the hospitality we are shown here is humbling and we always feel uncomfortable that so often we must rush off. Unfortunately, the bags were whipped away before we opened them and put safely in the boot of the car where they have remained, we are sure we will get them back tomorrow and discover what is in them.

Formalities over and with the sun setting we bade farewell and promised to try and return before too long.

Next stop, the bishop’s home where we met his lovely wife, Rose and one of his daughters Noella who is taking a degree in hospitality. After sharing the meal which had been so carefully prepared for us it was time to take our leave and start on our reports.

This is much more like the schedule we are used to and we anticipate the next couple of days being busy but productive.