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Rwanda – August 4th 2008

South East

Apologies for the briefness of tonight’s instalment. All I can say is that it’s not my fault. Nope, the blame lies firmly at the very hospitality door of Henry, The Boss, who very kindly again took me for supper to meet the rest of the family, who had just come back from a missionary conference / holiday camp get together on the shores of Lake Kivo. Many thanks indeed for making me feel so at home, and a great supper indeed!

Once again we had a longish journey today, right down to the bottom right hand corner of the country, to a very hilly area, and very poor too I would say looking at the size of the houses. Apparently, Henry was telling me, that only around 15% of the workforce are employed as such, the other 85% are “Self Employed” and probably pretty much surviving on sustainable farming methods and other odd jobs like motor taxis and the like I assume.

The area we visited had a group which just received their animals last year and was good to see how they were getting along. One farmer we saw had a Jersey cow, or a Jessie cow, as I thought they were saying, which was giving 24litres a day, and he said his whole family felt better and stronger, and he had plenty to sell on also to neighbours. His gardens, again were full of greenery, despite the dryness round about, showing the benefits of the KeyHole gardens.

As we came out of that little farmstead there were a group of kids (as always!) one was carrying a homemade football and would take his photo with it. The cries of joy from the kids was something special, as I guessed this boy was their hero, and he gave a great display of ball control and juggling. Nearly, just nearly as good as me I thought unselfishly.

I managed to get some good pictures of erosion issues and ways of combating it, as it is a big issue in Rwanda, with so many farmers on the hills and steep bankings, there is a massive risk of the top soil getting washed away in the wet season. Send a Cow have developed some ditching techniques along the edges of the “Contours” that are farmed, combined with the planting of Fodder trees, which as well as putting nitrogen back into the soil, they help prevent further erosion too, doubling the benefit.

It’s my last full day here too, which is bitter sweet, as there is so much more to photograph, yet I feel it is time to get back home too, you know the edgy feeling you get at the end of a holiday or trip, you just want to be moving!

I have 2 places to go tomorrow, one of which concerned me when I first saw it on my itinerary. It had the name of the place and what I would be doing. It read; Belize, Disable people. I wasn’t really expecting to be doing that to be honest, but it turns out it is a project for disabled people, which I am greatly relived!

I hope I can get another chapter done tomorrow if I can, if not I will give a summary when I eventually get back to sunny Cumbria.

Cheerio

Wayne

Find out more about Send a Cow on their website

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