SOR Children’s Day-Trip to Gisenyi

At 5:30am on Sunday 29th April, as the sun crept up from beneath the horizon giving birth to a brand new morning, thirty-three of Sisters of Rwanda’s children stood outside the Treasure Centre, eagerly awaiting a Belvedere bus. The thirty-fourth child – the oldest – had already left on a motorbike-taxi with two American girls in order to catch the 6am Atraco departure.
We began to get a little anxious as 6am rolled around and still no bus. But turning, we breathed a sigh of relief as a shiny white bus cruised up the street past Amahoro Stadium towards us. A surge of thirty-three children forged their way towards the door in a chaos of screams. I enforced a semi-orderly line and counted them as they climbed up. Jane, my teaching partner and our Director of Education, was the last to arrive; struggling to find a motorbike at this early hour.

Excitement filled the vehicle and we were soon on our way - first past Kacyiru and Nyabugogo, and then out and up into the winding wilderness of hills that is Rwanda. The meandering rivers were laced with low clouds that hung deep in the morning valleys. The fun of Tom and Jerry whirled before us on the television screen, followed by a slap-stick film in which the men kept getting hit or burnt, or quite simply fell from the top of skyscrapers. In fact, the characters engaged in the craziest affairs and the children’s laughter proved they were pulling entirely the right moves.

Three sheets of paper baring the title “Day Activity Sheet” were handed to each of the children, and an explanation given for the procedure to be taken in completing it. But the sheer excitement and wonder of the day seemed to push this task far from their thoughts, and thirty-three sets of paper became either scrumpled or lost as the day progressed.

“What is this?” – “It is a hill. - It is a house. - It is a cloud. - It is a river. - It is grass. - It is a tea plantation…”

Things were pointed out along the way as we passed them: women carrying large sacks on their heads, men riding heavily-laden bicycles. Or rather until they began throwing up that is – the twisting roads causing havoc in their stomachs. We managed to buy some small plastic sachets and they collected their vomit there within.

By the time we arrived in Gisenyi it was already almost ten o’clock – one hour late. We headed for the Scout Centre where forty children from PASSEVU - another NGO – awaited us. We shook these forty sets of hands on our way in. We began the day with a name-swapping activity, but being so numerous, it was given up as an impossible mission. Instead we organized ourselves into four groups mixed between the two sets of children, each group headed by one or two adults. Once the Treasure Hunt activity had been explained, off ran the separate groups excitedly in search of the answers to the twenty clues. My shoe broke just ten seconds into this activity and I was lucky that one of the girls was sweet enough to offer me her shoes in exchange for my own.

People go to this place to pray to God
People go to this place to buy exercise books, pencils, pens…
People go to this place when they are sick
People go to this place if they need their shoe repairing
People go to this place only if they are Muslim…

The aim of the game was to visit each indicated location within one hour – we had a lot of fun running through the town, led by the more knowledgeable children of Gisenyi. It was an adventure and we roused a lot of attention in the process; unfortunately some of that attention leading to negative effect – at some unknown moment, my wallet containing SOR’s money being stolen from my shorts pocket. Very disappointing.

Back at the Centre once more, exhausted from all the rushing around, the children of PASSEVU performed some Kinyarwanda songs and dances for their fellow Rwandese. Everyone was glad for the pause and delighted by the performance – I however missed the whole spectacle; stuck instead on the back of a bicycle scouring the town pointlessly for my stolen wallet.

I rejoined the group as they scuttled along to a restaurant situated between the Scout Centre and Gisenyi’s largest mosque. We gratefully sucked soda through straws, quenching our thirst, and then contented ourselves on a brimming plate of local food: rice, spaghetti, chips, cooked bananas, beans, and tomato soup-sauce. Very satisfying.

We skipped now back through the town and down towards the shores of Lake Kivu. Removing our shoes (mine now fixed), we padded along the hot sand and down to the water’s edge. PASSEVU’s children wore swim-suits and swam around in the water; our children, non-swimmers, happily paddled their shy ankles in the cool water. Activities that had been prepared soon became forgotten as our children became more and more confident, dipping themselves in this huge bath.

As they became more at ease in this mass of water, so their bodies became more naked and more wet! Soon they were all splashing around merrily in their underwear or even their birthday suit, their smiling faces shining with joy at this new experience; screaming out for me to take their picture.

One hour and a half – and about a thousand photos – later, we began dragging them out of the water, obviously a troublesome act now that they had decided they wished to remain there. The hot sun dried their soaking garments as we walked slowly back towards the Scout Centre and our impatient bus driver. We were thirty minutes late, and then another thirty as we found the classroom containing our sweaters and exercise books locked. One child climbed in through a missing window pane, as the others yelled their commands through the glass. Finally a key was retrieved and all our items reclaimed; our bus reloaded with children, and our departure made.

Thirty-three glowing children sang out at the top of their lungs as the giant volcano of Goma (Congo) and the sparkling waters of Kivu slipped further and further behind us. Halfway home, the thirty-fourth child managed to escape from his parked Atraco taxi and rejoin his friends in our own bus. Just twenty minutes from home, as we descended on the twinkling lights of Kigali city, we all had to disembark from our bus and climb instead into a replacement coach; ours experiencing the beginnings of a mechanical problem. This new bus was equipped with a television that worked perfectly, unlike ours which had died during the morning’s journey.

We were met at the Treasure Centre at 8:30pm (one and a half hours late) by a crowd of eager mothers. Just one glimpse at their jubilous children was enough to convince them that the day had been a success. More than a success in fact: this day had been a milestone in these children’s lives.

Tonia Kaufman (co-Director of Education, Sisters of Rwanda)