Safe arrival

A picnic at the road side

Prisoners working on a road project

Here we are in Kamembe after a most enjoyable journey through the beautiful hilly countryside of Rwanda. This country is called the ‘Land of  a thousand hills’ – it most certainly is!

A number of images stand out from today’s journey – hills, hills and more hills; prisoners in orange clothing working on the road and the paddy fields; women carrying heavy loads on their heads (some at the same time carrying babies on their backs); men walking heavily loaded bicycles up steep roads; picnicking at the side of the road on what we thought was a quiet spot only to find ourselves in the company of children who seemed to come from nowhere; sharing our food with them; a monkey on the side of the road; acre after acre of tea plantations; and, above all, the Murambi Genocide Memorial. Here again, we were confronted with the horrors of the genocide – brutally brought to our attention in room after room of victims, their bodies lying as they died but now laid out and covered with lime to protect them. The graves here hold over 50000 bodies, many of them killed when they thought they were in a place of safety.

This evening, we have been very busy unpacking all the things we have brought with us and preparing for ‘Open the Book’ tomorrow at St Matthews School.

Tea picking -taken from a moving bus!