New adventure, new eyes.

Dear all,

On Thursday the 23rd of April I'll be leaving for the land of a thousand hills, Rwanda.

I'll be volunteering at Gahanga, a local center for children and adults, just outside of Kigali. Some of them were abandoned at birth, others at an older age, due to their physical and/or mental disability. Normally I'll be working as a caretaker, but there are always a lot of other possibilities if things change. For example: some of the children, if they are able to, go to a nearby school and the ones who aren't are being educated in a room at the local center itself, so maybe I'll be teaching a bit as well. Also, there's a woman who has already worked out a program which would create a farm on which they would be able to provide vegetables, fruit and meat for all the residents and caretakers at Gahanga. My West-Flemish farmer roots may be of some use here!

The center is being lead by nuns, but not the same nuns with whom I will be staying for the next couple of weeks. The Sisters Bernardinnen in Kigali have been so nice to give me a place to stay during my volunteering. I'm really looking forward to meeting them.

As I've been very busy preparing for my trip, I got to see a lot of generosity from family, friends, colleagues, even people I've never met before. We've been collecting a lot of materials such as pens, pencils, paper, booklets, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, clothes, toys, teddybears, etc. to give to the local school Mana Mfasha, the local centre Gahanga and SOS Children's Villages. This is the ideal way to thank ALL of you for taking the time to go through your stuff and to see if there was anything you could miss. Thank you! We'll try to fit everything in our luggage, but I must admit, this is going to take me a lot of Tetris skills.

That's about it for my first Rwanda-blogpost. I'm too excited to continue. I'll keep you all updated once I've arrived in Kigali.

See you soon.