Huye Talking To? Week 10

Week 10 – Community Service, Huye Team Party

Week 10 was a pretty big week for the Huye Team, as well as the regularly week-by-week activities that both the Adult’s and Children’s Team are involved in, all of us had the opportunity to be involved with the monthly community service that takes place across Rwanda, known as “Umuganda”.

The Huye team spent the Saturday morning planting trees in the local area, the trees were provided by the local council all we had to do was dig the hole, and plant the seed around various locations.

Umuganda, can be translated as ‘Coming together in common purpose to achieve an outcome’. In traditional Rwandan culture members of the community would call upon their family, friends, and neighbours to help them complete a difficult task.

As part of efforts to reconstruct Rwanda and nurture a shared national identity, the Government of Rwanda drew on aspects of Rwandan culture and traditional practices to enrich and adapt its development programs to the country’s needs.

Modern day Umuganda can be described as community work. On the last Saturday of each month, communities come together to do a variety of public works. This often includes infrastructure development and environmental protection. Rwandans between the ages of 18 and 65 are obliged to participate in Umuganda.

Later in the week we were invited to the home of the team leader’s Bryony and Messi, who live with the head of AMU Huye, Jean D’amour. To celebrate our achievements and hard-work the whole team enjoyed a lavish meal of Brochette (goat meat on a skewer), fish and chips, salad with salad dressing (might I add), mangos, passion fruit, bananas, roasted peanuts, corn on the cob, biscuits and to wash it all down we had soda pop and African tea.

The evening was a perfect chance for everyone to reflect on the last couple of months, to appreciate how far we have come, and how much each and every one of us has grown. What started off as a few volunteers coming together to change the lives of other people, blossomed into a closely knit family ready to change the world for the better.

Jean D’amour and his wife Mama Bebe closed the evening with a very touching and deeply warm speech expressing gratitude and voiced how much they loved and cared for us, that almost bought me to tears (not even joking).

All in all week 10 has been pretty amazing, stay tuned for week 11…