Trying to make a difference.

Although the schools are closed at the moment for the long end of academic year holiday, I have been kept busy!

One (of several) projects I am now involved in, is trying to set up a National Deaf Children’s Sports Competition!

It all started as a spin off from a visit I arranged between two Deaf Schools, one in the East and one in the West of the country. The long bus journey between the two necessitated travelling through Kigali, and as I know another VSO volunteer who is working with NPC (National Paralympic Committee) at the Amahoro Sports Stadium in Kigali, we arranged for the 8 children and 7 staff to stop off there to see it. They had a great visit.  These children are from poor rural families and had never even been to Kigali before.

Trying out the track at the Amahoro Stadium in Kigali.

To stand in the Stadium and look round at all of the seats, the huge lights, the football pitch, the running track was a fantastic experience for them.  We got them to line up and run 200m just as if they were in a competition!

That gave me an idea!

We then went for lunch at a local Restaurant (another first for these children) with Celestin, the NPC Director.  I shared my thought with him, only to find that it coincided with one of the activities that he had on his ‘wish list’.  To bring Deaf children together in Kigali for a Sports Day.  So the planning began.  The first step was to decide on the activities and do a rough financial estimate.

I mentioned it to the sponsors of one of the projects I am involved in, ‘Chance for Childhood’, a small English charity, and they have offered to be the main sponsor!  Their new President, Sophie Christiansen, is a triple Paralympic Equestrian gold medallist in the 2014 Games, and is coming to Rwanda in February, so we are hoping to coincide the event with her visit.  The provisional date is February 25^th.  Here is their website address.  http://chanceforchildhood.org/

My dream is now for some trainer here to identify some potential athletes to compete in the next Deaflympics in Turkey in 2017.  It would be Rwanda’s first team.  Why not?  There is time to train them.

Of course, none of this is part of my VSO brief, which is to improve teaching methodology in Deaf Schools here.  Also it will be a lot of work!

Is it worth it?

At this time of year, many of us go through an emotional roller coaster ride.  I know that I do.

In the West, we are surrounded by so much – affluence, advertising, presents to buy, presents we receive that we didn’t want and don’t need, people to send cards to that we hardly see, greed, everything is more expensive because ‘they’ know we will pay at Christmas; eating too much, drinking too much, sleeping too much!

But then, some things about the Christmas period are very precious, – family traditions, having time to spend with people we don’t see enough, relaxing with friends, showing them how much we care, having fun, seeing the lights, the Xmas tree – whatever makes you feel safe and secure and loved.

Underneath it all are the messages that Christmas brings to us.  These are probably different for all of us, because they depend on our beliefs and our upbringing, but for many, they include messages of helping the poor and giving more time to the things and the people that we really care about. In our busy Western lives, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters to us.

And here I am experiencing Christmas in Rwanda; a Christian country where most people go to Church on Sundays, though the cynic might question the depth of understanding of the vast majority of those people.  There will be family and Church celebrations on Christmas Day, but there is no hype here.

Some children outside of their house.

Children are not making lists for Santa Clause, or dressing up for some production that has little to do with the Christmas message.  They are not wrapping presents, or decorating Xmas trees or having Xmas parties at school. For most of them, life will just continue in the same way, – a struggle for survival.

 What I am doing here?  

The effort needed to get here in the first place, the effort needed to live here now, the things and people I am missing back at home, the people who are missing me back home! – is it worth it?  Also, in the face of the needs here and the lack of resources, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. If I am making a difference at all, it is only to a few teachers and children in one small country in a vast world of millions of people.  Teachers who feel a little less abandoned because someone cares.  Teachers who now have someone to ask – ‘How can I help this Deaf child to understand this concept?’ Children whose lives at school have improved because I have been able to help the teachers make lessons more fun, the discipline less harsh, the water less scarce.

Westgate school’s advertising campaign that started the fundraising for the new water tank at Umutara School.

Learning about money by playing ‘shops’.

It is so little in the face of so much need. The only way I can make it meaningful, is to believe that each individual person on this planet is of value, and if I can do something to improve the life of even one person,

The P1 teacher, learning that teaching can be fun for the teacher too!

then the effort has been worth it.

We don’t need to go to Rwanda to do this, of course.  We can do it wherever we live.  Each person we meet, everyday, will take away an impression of us that will either be positive or negative.  Even the person sitting opposite us on the Underground whom we will never meet again, will notice whether we smile at them or ignore them.

All this is a bit heavy.  But it is the time of year when we have time to stop and think about who we are, what we are doing, and why.

I will be celebrating Christmas on the shores of Lake Kivu with some members of my family.  Needless to say, I am very excited about seeing them at this special family time and touched that they are spending the money, time and effort to visit me.

Lake Kivu. Not a bad place to spend Christmas if you can’t be at home.

I have also decided that, although my placement is until Xmas 2015 (January 10^th 2016 to be precise), I will come back to the UK in July.  Maybe, if I was 20 years younger, I might stay longer.  But I am not, so have to weigh up what my place is in my world at this time, with the people I care about most.

So – if you want to come and visit me – you had better hurry up – I am rapidly running out of slots!

 

 

Isobel

December 2014.