Land of 1000 Hills

After 3 years of calling Rwanda my home, I can confirm

that Rwanda is indeed the Land of 1000 Hills as it says on a popular Rwandan tea brand. It is also the land of variety, beauty and peace. What a fantastic and awesome country, and seemingly undiscovered by so many! Since arriving in Rwanda I have developed a love for coffee and lakes, as there are plenty of both of these. These past 3 years have been a time of renewal, growth and strengthening after my time in Dodoma. It has been an incredible experience to be part of the early stages of the life of Virunga Valley Academy (VVA), a place where heaven meets earth. When I joined VVA in 2018, the school was hosted in a house and the building of the school that we are now in had just started.

Musanze is the city where VVA is located, and where I call home. Its in the Northern Province of Rwanda, also known as Ruhengeri. Ruhengeri is also the name of the Volcanic mountain range that surrounds Musanze and straddles both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This mountain range is the home of the endangered mountain gorillas. Recently, Nyiragongo a volcano in the DRC that borders Rwanda erupted. Although we are around 65km/40mi from the volcano, for 2 weeks we felt the earth shake with tremors in Musanze. Many people were evacuated as the lava flowed towards the city of Goma. The tremors were very few when I left Rwanda for summer break 2 weeks ago.

The world has been shaken these last 12 months with Covid19 and nothing has been normal. My experience of the pandemic has up until now been from my home in Rwanda. I watched the world unravel from my veranda with my two dogs and an amazing intern from Switzerland, back in March 2020. She had just arrived for 3 months and ended up quarantined with me a few days into her trip. Rwanda closed down as soon as news of the pandemic started, borders closed and foreigners scrambled for flights to their home nations. The pandemic also greatly affected our community when we were in lock down with many people facing starvation in Musanze and across the country. VVA was able to raise funds during this time, in collaboration with many people in Rwanda and also across the world, to purchase rice and other basic necessities which were distributed to the most needy.

Schools closed and our team started planning for remote learning. As most of our students do not have computers at home, teachers put together packets of work which contained two weeks worth of resources. Parents then sent daily photos of the students work via whats app and teachers graded and responded via whats-app. This was a very new experience for me and extremely exhausting for all involved. Many students, and parents struggled, however we all did our best considering the circumstances. VVA was very blessed in that we were able to reopen in person, in October 2020. There were a lot of changes we had to implement to make sure school was safe, such as social distancing, separate lunches for classes, handwashing stations, masks and not to mention we were understaffed this year. This meant that as well as art, I also taught Science and Social Studies this year. Science was very challenging, however that is how we grow, through challenges and it was a privilege to be with my students daily and to grow together. In the midst of all this however, we have all been praising God for his faithfulness in keeping us safe and keeping us all learning together.

I also got a new dog called Maple this year, and she is great friends with Ned. My rabbits however, Flocki and Ragnor are despised by Ned, as he daily drools over them, dreaming of what they would taste like. I am also very blessed to have had some small pockets of time when restrictions eased where I was able to enjoy Rwandas natural beauty in its hills, mountains and lakes.