What's new in Nyamirambo?

What's new in Nyamirambo? New Muzungu is in the neighborhood! I came on last Wednesday, we landed in the mid of the night. It was cold, wet, windy, misty... Muzungu in the mist.

So, the first week is behind me. And what a week! First impressions - it's great! There are no mist, rain, wind or mud anymore, people are nice and friendly, children are so cute, basic words in Kinyarwanda are not that much difficult to learn, NWC is doing a remarkable job for the community. Biryogo rules!

I've started giving English and computer classes. There are 5-8 women in the group, sometimes more. Everyday, Facebook is the lesson number one (when our Internet provider let us)! We can't start a class without checking our profiles first, laughing at the pictures, sharing and posting things at the walls, sending "we miss you" messages to Marko (previous volunteer from Croatia)...

Then more serious things are coming; we started with basic Excel features and formulas, so girls are now capable to create simple tables and charts, calculate their incomes, track the number of handicraft produced, their share in percentage, and things like this. They've learned how to import those spreadsheets and charts in the Power Point presentation as well. We are going to take s small exam next week to check what they have remembered. :)

IT course

The problem with computer classes (besides very lousy Internet connection) is that we have only one laptop that we can use. It is hard to explain things when everyone can't see the screen and follow you. We could use my laptop too, but it's run on Linux and I'm sure that Ubuntu and OpenOffice would cause more problems and confusions in the group. So, we stick to that one owned by NWC. But we should definitely consider including more computers (and possibly a beamer) when applying for the new funds or approaching possible donors for the equipment.

As for the fund-raising activities we've started to work on application to The African Women's Development Fund and to answering on additional questions from The Global Fund for Women. These are small scale projects, but could provide necessary funds for regular activities for some months, though. 

I've also wrote to the Hesperian, asking for donation in kind - their printed and CD guides could be a great health information and health education source for the Nymirambo community.

On Sunday we had a regular meeting here in the office. There were 8 members present and they were discussing the current financial situation (the ongoing project will finish by the end of September), plans and activities for the near future, how to increase the visibility of the Center, and so on... 

After the meeting we went to visit NWC's president Maria Aimee and her 8-days-old baby. Girls bought her a tone of things and Jacqueline took all of us there by her car. Nine people squeezed in the car, bumpy dirt road, Muzungu carrying a huge sack on his shoulder through the labyrinth of Nyamirambo's alleys - the fun was there! 

We've spent couple of hours at their house, eating, drinking, making jokes. It was funny, although I haven't understood much of it! Nevertheless, congratulations, Maria Aimee! You and (no-name yet) baby both look great! Isabukuru nziza!

Yesterday there was a workshop on sexual and reproductive health. Over 20 women participated and topics covered were family planning, sexual and reproductive health, safe sex and contraception, sexual transmitted diseases.. The Center will continue to give a lectures and organise this kind of workshops for the local community. 

Sexual and Reproductive Health Workshop

And, at the end, I have to share the incident we had. Few days ago a bunch of kids drop by asking for the empty bottles of water. While Eliab was reaching for the bottles under the table, one of the boys took his phone! We've tried to catch him, looking for them around the neighborhood, asking people and other kids, but there was no use – the phone with all contacts is gone...

Healthy Nutrition

On Sunday we held the long awaited workshop on healthy nutrition. Why do we need it, you ask? Well, even though the food here is delicious and locally grown, with few artificial ingredients, the people here seem to like fried food, mayonnaise and a lot of sugar in their tea. Also, large portions are the norm.

So, our task was to educate the members on some simple rules of healthy nutrition and put the knowledge into practice. On Sunday we started with a brief presentation, followed by the actual cooking. The ladies gathered in the backyard and started peeling potatoes, slicing carrots and tomatoes and our cook Aminatta put all the ingredients together, using as little oil as possible and cooking instead of frying. When the food was ready we invited almost 40 local children to our backyard and served them the food – rice, meat and lots of vegetables. The kids were on their best behavior and surprisingly quiet – probably because they were eating. After the meal we served fresh fruits and milk.

All in all, the workshop seems to be a success, though only time will tell if the members really start putting their knowledge into practice. 

Eat, play, learn.

A workshop on healthy nutrition will be held on Sunday which will include a lecture with power point presentation, small leaflets on eating healthy food will be distributed and afterwards a degustation of healthy food and drinks will follow. The meals and beverages from freshly squeezed fruits will be distributed among the most malnourished children, who live near NWC, approximately some 20 of them. The aim of this workshop is to raise awareness on healthy nutrition, especially make mothers aware that their children need more healthy food every day. The problem here is that a lot of healthy food loses its value in the preparation process, since they prefer to soak everything in oil and fat, rather than cooking food without oil or even boiling it in water with limited usage of salt. We've also noticed that local cuisine includes too much carbohydrate per day. We will try to introduce them to a better way of preparing food and present the long-term risks if they do not change their cooking style soon.

For children from the neighbourhood we organized one event, where we sang and danced to children songs and they taught us their traditional dancing moves, it was very amusing. Even today when we pass some children on the street they start dancing in front of us, regardless there is no accompanying music. We are going to organize a couple of more events for them, where they can be creative in drawing, colouring and playing.

At the beginning of our computer classes Nina and I tested their skills in Microsoft Office Word, which were very good. That is why we decided to concentrate more on Microsoft Office PowerPoint as they can sometimes prepare presentations for NWC visitors, which will be quite helpful for the NWC president. We divided them in two groups because we only have two computers available and each group made a short ppt about Rwanda, including basic facts and pictures and each student made at least one slide.

Inzogira ishuri or school bells

In the last two weeks I was more or less in charge of English lessons with the ladies from the NWC as Nina was taking care of the NWC technical matters. I must say that I was sometimes surprised by their excellent knowledge of English, however the pronunciation proved to be a bit more problematic, so I focused the lessons on the correct pronunciation. We started off with simple sentences as I wanted to find out at what level of English each individual was. Some were brilliant and some still need more exercise. That is why Nina and I are encouraging them to use as much English as possible, even among themselves on Mondays, which are usually reserved for handicrafts. We did devote one whole class to prepositions of time and place as they were troublesome for some of the students and wanted to improve their knowledge.

During the classes we try to read at least one English book (for children) in order to practice reading and pronunciation and I even gave them some books to take home and repeat what we've read. They are very happy when I ask them how certain words are pronounced in their language, Kinyarwanda, and they seem to enjoy their role as teachers. They are absorbing new English words really fast, which is helping them to extend their basic English vocabulary. To help them overcome the fear from talking in English (I think they are afraid of making mistakes and sometimes some women become more silent when we are in a bigger group) I ask them at the beginning of every lesson about their previous day or weekend and they put sentences in correct tense. I've noticed that younger girls are usually more talkative. Then we have role play, which includes dialogues from everyday life and sometimes described situations are so amusing that we simply have to laugh.

Due to the ladies' preoccupation with the handicrafts before our project coordinator left, we had to postpone English exam to this week. We even had a small test, where I dictated some sentences and some of them did very well whereas others did not perform that well. However I believe that a small progress can be seen if I compare their pronunciation and some sort of fear of speaking English they were having at the beginning of our classes and now. Classes are now running in a more relaxed environment.

Web design for dummies

In the past week I have been tirelessly working on updating and improving the NWC website. The biggest challenge was the “News” section which never really took off. Hopefully it will be livelier from now on as I added pictures and current news. Feel free to judge for yourself: http://www.nwc-kigali.org/.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday two journalists from BBC's Fast Track visited the centre. They took the tour of Nyamirambo and conducted interviews with the members and the president. It was an interesting event for all, though our pregnant president was a little tired after a whole day of filming.

On Tuesday morning our lovely project coordinator deserted us to return back to Europe, taking with her most of the first batch of fabric earrings the girls made the previous week. Hopefully, they’ll make some more before we leave in two weeks.

This week we will hold the English exams and start English classes for children who are now on holiday.

New Earrings

After seeing a new kind of earrings in many of the handicrafts shops in town, we thought we would try to make them with the ladies attending the handicrafts course at the NWC. To our delight they figured out how to make them in a few minutes and soon colorful peaces of cloth were turning into extravagant earrings. Here are some of their first attempts, we expect more in the following weeks. 

The new Muzungus in town

We arrived a week ago after an arduous journey from Slovenia through Venice and Doha. Our team includes Maja, the project coordinator from the Peace Institute and two volunteers – Indira and me, Nina. This is my second visit to the NWC, so I was prepared for what was in store.

Our work started the next day with a workshop for the local kids – the coloring books and crayons we brought were a hit, so soon the porch in front of the office was way too full. We had some success in teaching the children not to call us Muzung but instead use our names – now every time we walk down the street we hear them yelling Maja, Inga or Nina (or some variation of that).  

On Friday Indira and I held our first computer class with the ladies. Fortunately, we can use two computers – NWC’s and Indira’s laptop, so we can get more work done. We started the class by testing their knowledge of MS Word with basic exercises which they were able to complete, so our predecessors did good work. Our next task is making a presentation in PowerPoint, which is coming along nicely. The same group also attends our English class where we work mostly on conversation. Our first class was interesting – though timid at first the conversation quickly turned to dream jobs, marriage and even religion. In the coming weeks we will work mostly on conversation and real life situations, where the girls can utilize their knowledge of English.