Almost off

Towards a first workshop
Tomorrow at 7.30 a car will come to take me to collect Musafiri for the first of three days with a group of 30 18-30 year olds. I speak maximum of 5 words of Kinyarwanda, M has very little English, our common language is French but my vocabulary is rusty and his accent is challenging.


This morning, thank goodness, we both went to view an organic farm training school, where I had permission to visit thanks to my friend Ann, a Send-a-cow stalwart. (Ann, your laminated teaching sheets are already proving invaluable for explaining my techniques.)


We saw bag gardens and keyhole, or mound, gardens. (You can see similar examples at cowfiles.com.) We saw calves and pigs and rabbits – no chickens since the bird flu alert – and composting toilets for the resident students. We saw muck going in to the bio-gas plant, and the covers over the gas collecting tank, and heard the gas is used for cooking. (It is national policy to use this resource and collection has already started in prisons, to be followed by schools.)



Tomorrow we start a 3-day workshop together. I hope the French holds up. The group is 30 18-30 year olds. They do Rwandan song and dance as a peace activity. I am to teach some of my dance and songs, and start bag gardens and a compost heap: the compost should be ready for my next visit.

I compile a list of what is needed:
for the bag gardens, bags (to be bought this time, since used ones can't be gathered in time), hoes, spades, posts, a knife for slashing the bags, seeds which I have brought.

And there, dear friends, I must leave you. I have an appointment up the hill in 10 minutes. I'll get back when I can. There has been power for around 20 of my 60 minutes available. Oh yes, the new method of translation between computers works. Praise be.