A Day in the Life of...

Lakeside at Gisenyi

Instead of writing about my travels, for a change I thought I would tell you a bit more about my day-to-day life volunteering at FCYF.  As a side note, I’m writing this in Gisenyi, sipping delicious Rwandan coffee (grown locally) and overlooking the northern end of Lake Kivu on the border with DRC.  Another stunning place in this beautiful country.  Anyway, am diverting.  The objective of my volunteering assignment, arranged by AfID, is to help FCYF build their financial capacity.   This broadly means I am here to coach and provide advice and recommendations to FCYF’s director, Elie, and his team on financial management to ensure that their financial practices are not only at a level that can ensure the continuation of their programme activities but also support expansion.  For example, this might involve developing better management reporting information for decision making or ensuring that the financial accounting routines are at a level required by international NGOs and other organisations that might provide funding.   I’m also coaching various folks around the organisation on computer skills, primarily MS Office.  I’ve had (too many) years of crunching spreadsheets and multiple training courses – some of the team here have only recently had access to computers and never had any training nor used them at school.

Elie & Bernadette at Wisdom Primary

I’m half way through my assignment now and (sort of!) in a routine.  My day-to-day life is pretty simple, compared to the chaos of life in London.  I am living at the lovely home of Elie and his wife, Bernadette, which is a short walk from Wisdom Nursery and Primary Schools.  My colleagues at work are a great group of people including the teachers at Wisdom (who are mainly from Uganda); teachers and vocational skills trainers at the Nyange centre (5km from Wisdom on the road to Volcanoes National Park), where the Deaf Children’s Centre (DCC) and Child Headed Households (CHH) programme are based; Jacky, who is the social worker for CHH and Becky, who is the other volunteer at FCYF.   My closest work colleagues in addition to Elie are Pelagie, who is the accountant for the primary school and Angelique, who is the accountant for the nursery school.  Both Pelagie and Angelique studied in French at school (Rwanda swapped teaching in French for teaching in English in 2009). They both learned English at school but were a little shy using it with me at first, but now they chatter away in English.  They’ve both welcomed me into their team and are keen to learn new things – also there is lots of laughter.  It’s a fun place to work.

With Children at the Deaf Children's Centre

Elie is keen to make some changes to how the accounting and finance works, so I’m mainly working by creating new spreadsheets and processes, reviewing with Elie then coaching Pelagie and Angelique on how these work.  Then we follow up continually to ensure these are working effectively and then move on to the next thing.   I’m the first AfID volunteer at FCYF and AfID looks to build long term relationships with its partners so there will be volunteers at FCYF next year and they will adapt the coaching as required.   One of the reasons that working with AfID was so appealing is the long-term commitment – I will do whatever I can, then hand the baton over to the next volunteers.  When I worked in London, my day was broken up by meetings and calls, and to avoid too much time at a PC screen here (and because I also want to spend time with the children), I break up my week by spending a morning and an afternoon at Nyange, coaching computer skills to Louis, the director, and helping out in the classrooms with the deaf children and also when I go to Nursery a couple of times a week I usually get there for 7.30am when the children do songs and play before class (yes, even the 3 year olds in “Baby Class” have scheduled lessons!).  It’s so cute to watch the nursery children sing – a great way to start off the day.  I spend more time at the primary school than other sites because that is where Elie is based, and usually have lunch with the primary school teachers, where they frequently engage in lengthy and lively debates about all sorts of topics.  They are a great crowd (and no wonder, the primary school children are doing so well at debate practice!)

 It’s rainy season here at the moment, which means frequent heavy downpours in the afternoon and I usually head back into town late afternoon between rain showers if possible then if I need a break from work, I might go to town and grab coffee (there are a few nice little cafes in Musanze) or do some more work.    The evenings are pretty quiet and for some reason that I haven’t yet fathomed out, I usually feel exhausted in the evenings so go to bed embarrassingly early.

I love the time I spend with the children.  Most of the CHH speak no English or only a little and since I speak hardly any Kinyarwanda we have to find other ways to communicate.   So this week we were playing around with the video on my camera – the children were taking it in turns to dance for the video, then they would watch the images and laugh hysterically at themselves!!   But it’s a double life for these children, which was brought home to me this week when I heard that the home of one of the CHH girls had pretty much been washed away and she and her 2 younger siblings were effectively sleeping outside.   Her home is a 1 room hut and the roof has almost completely disintegrated, the walls have big holes in them, she is being harassed at night by folks poking her with a stick through the holes in the wall (Elie thinks maybe to see if she is awake as they want to steal the goat that FCYF provided to her) and she has no lock on the door.  This leaves her family exposed to all sorts of risks.  It's rainy season and there is torrential rain daily; also she is at risk of rape.  Also I found out that the 3 children have no mattresses and share 1 blanket. It was heartbreaking to see the photos but at least Jacky, the social worker, found out about the damage and Elie has arranged for it to be fixed urgently (new metal sheet roof, special sealing mud for the walls and new lock).   At least she has FCYF supporting her.  One minute loads of laughs and smiles at the centre and next misery at home. But I guess that's one of the reasons that the centre is so amazing - for one part of the day the CHH can relax and enjoy being children, hanging out with their friends and getting some training for the future.

Unfortunately FCYF has limited funding and there are other CHH children with problems at their homes, plus many other needs for FCYF projects.   So sorry for the plug, but if anyone would like to help by donating money, please visit my fundraising page at Just Giving.  I’ve been working with FCYF for some time now, and can assure you the money will be well spent and will go directly to where it is needed.

Right, time for me to leave the Gisenyi lakeside and get the bus back to Musanze.   Hope everyone has a good week.