officially a charity!

It took almost a year and there were times when we thought it was never going to happen and felt like giving up but from the 1st December, ABANA is officially a charity in law!

from now on this blog will become the ABANA charity blog and through its pages i hope to keep you informed about exactly what we are doing to raise money and how we are using the money we raise, or rather the money you have donated.

I will also use these pages to write more about Rwanda which has never ceased to tug at my heart even though we left just over a year ago.

Firstly - ABANA - we are starting as a small charity and our target is to raise £5,000 a year.

We are now registered with http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/ and for every £10 you donate, a further £2 is added via gift aid.

you can read our mission statement on Charity Giving but i will repeat it again here:

ABANA has been set up to promote the Education of young people in rural Rwanda by sponsoring individual students through secondary school and on to further education by paying school fees and providing school uniforms and necessary writing materials.

Selected students would otherwise be unable to access Education as a result of their desperate poverty.

ABANA also intends to advance the education of young people in the Groupe Scolaire Notre Dame de la Paix in Cyanika , southern Rwanda by assisting in the provision of facilities and resources.

By assisting in the provision of education and training and providing the necessary support to enable individuals to generate a sustainable income, ABANA will also help in the relief of poverty and financial hardship which is a terrible fact of life for most young Rwandans.

Why should we help?

Imagine if through no fault of your own, you were born in a country where abject poverty was the norm,you are extremely intelligent and desperate to get on in the world, you want to learn all there is to learn, you are desperate for Education. If you are lucky, your parents will be able to find enough money to buy you a school uniform so you can attend primary school; you have one writing book and the school is so overcrowded you have to attend school in shifts but you are learning and you want to carry on learning. Unfortunately, secondary education costs the equivalent of £120 a year - maybe your parents will never find enough money to send you, or they may be able to send you for a term or a year and then the money runs out and you go back to helping your family cultivate their tiny bit of land but you never give up hope.

This is how we can help!

£140 is nothing to us but it can do so much for a young rwandan and as i am sure i have mentioned many times in this blog, Rwandans are such lovely dignified people, despite having nothing and the children are always smiling!

What we have done already:

even before becoming official, we held a couple of fund raising events- a car boot sale, a cross bay walk and a talk and we have already received generous donations from friends and family. As a result of this, we are already helping and will continue to help quite a few young people and you cannot believe how we have given them hope that their lives could change.

Now we will be able to help so many more!

Since becoming official we have had 2 succesful christmas busking sessions, 1 in lancaster and 1 in Preston.

Our lovely daughter did a 10k run on Sunday 9th jan and persuaded lots of her friends to sponsor us - thanks again

thank you

thank you to everyone for sponsoring our cross bay walk! it was worth the cold and rain and river channels and deep muddy gullies to be able to raise money for our very worthy cause. this money is going to mean so much to so many young people who have no one but me to help them. the money goes directly to those who need it there is no one in the middle!
you have been so generous

ABANA

Since returning to the UK in January, we have been trying to set up a charity devoted to helping young Rwandans who cannot otherwise afford to go to school and also to helping my former school in Cyanika to provide an effective learning environment by enabling the school to carry out essential repairs or to renew decrepit buildings and to buy essential materials such as books, pens and even chalk.
Although we have been turned down twice by the charities commision, they have told us that the charity will be accepted as charitable at law if we use the correct wording in our governing document and we are confident, having sent off our application a third time, that we will be accepted.
Our charity has a name ABANA which means 'children' and we have already done quite a bit of fundraising and sent the money directly students;
We sent out flyers asking for donations for a car boot sale and explaining exactly how any money we made would be used. the reponse was good - we made enough money to send one child to school for a term.
As a result of the car boot sale, we were approached by the local Rotary Club and asked to give a talk on Rwanda, they also gave us a generous donation.
We have received other donations from people who have been moved by our stories.
When we become an official charity we will be able to undertake lots more fund raising activities, but we have to help people now!
On the 18th september we are doing an 8 mile walk across Morecambe Bay (and through some very deep channels!) to raise money for ABANA
If you would like to sponsor us the ABANA account number is 93605027 the sort code is 20-47-61
any money you donate will go directly to the people who need it.

Thoughts about Rwanda

Its exactly 2 weeks now since we left Rwanda and already it seems like a world away,although a piece of my heart will always remain in Cyanika. If you have been reading the blog regularly you will know about the terrible poverty that is everywhere in rural Rwanda and especially in the area where we lived. Progress is being made in Rwanda but it seems to be concentrated on Kigali, places like Cyanika remain forgotten and yet the villagers work so hard - they have to to survive!

You will also know about the plight of students who must pay for ther education - the equivalent of £40 a term and yet most families could never raise that amount of money and so many many children never go on to secondary education and for those that do, the students i was teaching, its touch and go whether their parents will find the money for next term and often they never finish their education. My lovely headmaster, calixte tries his best to keep the students at school for as long as possible but if it comes to exam time and they havent paid, they cant sit the exam. They are bright intelligent young people, desperate to get on in life and they know that it all depends on them finding enough money (a large amount for them, nothing for us)to get through.
At the end of this term, my school ran out of money and the students had to go home a week early because there was no money to feed them.

I just want to tell you about one or two of the students who became particularly dear to me:

JOHN DAMASCENE 21 is an orphan who spent his early years in a refugee camp in the Congo. He has been in orphanages and boarding schools all over Rwanda. He wants to become a musician.

JOHN MARIE VIANNEY17 - his mother left him and his 2 younger siblings when they were babies, now his father is in prison (denounced for genocide crimes)and he is bringing up his younger sister; He receives just enough money from the red cross to pay his fees but not enough to buy school materials. Unless he finds a sponsor he wont be able to go to university and he is very intelligent and a talented musician.

VALENS M 24 supporting himself and younger sister, very proud that he has his provisional driving licence and wants to become a moto driver but needs £45 to join the moto drivers' union before he can do anything

VALENS N 23, another brilliant student who wants to become a journalist.

JOHN BOSCO 16 a lovely boy and one of the youngest in year 10 but very bright, has so many plans but no money

and then of course there are the absolutely destitute families living near us and their starving children!

I have worked out that if i could raise £5,000 a year I could make a significant difference to these peoples lives. I am looking into starting a charity but you need a minimum of £5,000 to do that.

If any schools who read this blog would like to sponsor a student - one of the above or a younger child, or if any individual would like to make a donation, I can assure you that the money will go immediately to where it should. Callixte is my contact in Cyanika and he is one the nicest and most honest people I have ever met.

Akagera and the gorillas

AKAGERA

At 5.30 in the morning,just as a beautiful dawn was breaking over Kigali, we set off for Akagera national park;its very small by african park standards and until 1994 was almost twice as big but it is still an amazing experience. It took us just over an hour and a half to get there in the massive land cruiser (with 2 petrol tanks) that picked us up;( the sort of vehicle that we had always sneered at because they cost a fortune and were always full of muzungus) but once in the park it really came inti its own as we went completely off road, only such a vehicle could have managed the terrain and we really felt we were on safari as we stood with our heads out of the roof looking at giraffe, buffalo,; many different types of antelope, baboons, wart hogs - you name it.Unfortunately the zebras were on holiday in Tanzania that day! There were so many different kinds of birds and a real highlight were the hippos basking in lake Muhazi; we actually got out of the vehicle to look at these creatures - how amazing and to think that that they live on grass, cant really swim but spend all day in the water only coming out at night to feed. Who thought that one up!! There are elephants too in the park and lions and many other animals but they are very elusive. Poaching is still a big problem in the park as traditionally rwandans have always hunted some of thes animas for food and skins; We saw a picture of a hippo trap in the national museum.

On the return to Kigali our pwerful vehicle broke down. A million people tried to get it going again but to no avail so we were eventually rescued by two lovely men with a lot of bananas. They gave all four of us a lift back to our hotel in Kigali, they told us that it is a rwandan belief that if you see someone in trouble and you dont help them, your daughters will never find husbands.

GORILLAS!

The climax of our stay in Rwanda was definitely our visit to the mountain gorillas last week. Although it is hideously expensive it really is a once in a lifetime experience.It involved another early start; we were picked up from the "hotel" by a 4 by 4 and driven to the volcanoes national park HQ where guides were waiting to put us into one of seven groups of eight people. We were given a short briefing by Ignace, our guide as to how we should behave in the presence of the gorillas; no pointing, no touching, no showing you are afraid as this can make them aggressive. After a 40 minute drive to the lower slopes of the Virungas we then had a 3 hour climb, very steep and slippery in places, through very difficult, thick jungle. Ignace was in constant touch with the trackers who were tracking the movements of our group of gorillas, the Amohoro ( peace) group, a family of 16. At last we reached the trackers and had to leave all bags and sticks behind and minutes later we were in the midst of the gorilla family, all of whom were enjoying their mid morning nap. They soon woke up and we were able to observe them eating, playing, climbing and occasionally insisting upon their right of way on the narrow jungle trails and ever so gently pushing us aside if we were in their way. We saw mothers with small babies, juveniles, and young adults and the highlight was right at the end of the visit when Ubumwe, the massive silver back and leader of the group moved off and the rest of the group had to follow him. It was a breathtaking experience and we felt we were greatly priviliged to be allowed to spend an hour in the company of these noble creatures.Back down the mountain in the pouring rain, slipping and sliding all the way but totally elated and then just time for a bite to eat and a well earned primus before getting the bus (filthy as we were) back to Kigali.

leaving school

The last week at school was a very emotional one for me, I had to say goodbye to my beloved pupils, some of whom I had become very attached to. Seb and Kate being there made the week extra special; as they are the same age as most of the students, they were absolutely adored and made to feel very special (which they are) One evening, the students arranged a special demonstration of wonderful intore dancing and drumming just for us. We were all dragged up to dance with them - the rest of the school went wild! Seb was taken on stage to show his talents and all I will say is that he di'dnt disappoint them! Many speeches were made and I was made to feel that my presence in the school over the year had been greatly appreciated. I had to make a return speech and John gave a speech entirely in Kinyarwanda; the school loved it. what a night!!

Eventually,in the last few days it was time to take leave of my special students; the 5 or 6 I have taken under my wing and who have been coming to the house a couple of times a week to play guitar, sing or just chat. We intend to carry on helping these students in the future (more of this project later) We were so sad to say goodbye to them and they to us. Impromtu concerts were given, the house had never been so full of music and light!

Finally it was the turn of John Damascene who has been coming to visit for longer and more often than anyone. He is an orphan who spent the first 7 years of his life in a refugee camp in the Congo. Now he lives in an orphanage on lake Kivu and is sponsored to go to school in Cyanika. he plays the guitar so well, writes his own songs and knows congolese music. we decided to give him the guitar and when we said goodbye he hugged and hugged me and didnt want to let go. I felt all the love that he has never been able to give to anyone else and I wished i had done more for him: but we will carry on helping him.

Nyungwe

Last weekend we went to Nyungwe forest; it is the largest rain forest left in Africa which is amazing when you consider that Rwanda is so small. We had been through it a couple of times on the bus but this time we did it in style -our wonderful friends th Medical Missionaries of Mary lent us their four wheel drive jeep for the weekend plus Bosco their driver! We could stop wherever we wanted to admire views or look at animals. We stayed on lake Kivu where we ate lots of SAMBAZA - a wonderful tiny lake fish that you eat whole - hot and crispy mmm!

The first day we did a 10.5 kilometer walk with a guide, to an incredible waterfall. It is expensive to do the walk but so worth it. We started off walking through tea plantations and even before we entered the forest we saw blue monkeys; The forest is marvellous, magical, magestic, magnificent! you feel you have stepped back thousands of years. You are surrounded by strange and sometimes ancient trees and plants; The guide,David had told us not to touch any green plants in case they were hiding green vipers and then suddenly there was a green viper in all its green glory slithering across our path! its bite is poisonous but not fatal!

the waterfall was worth the very difficult trek down to and up from - so incredibly powerful and so alone, it was wonderful! There are many animals in the forest but they remain so well hidden or only come out at night that we were very lucky to see the large group of rare blue monkeys and colobus monkeys and also a blue turaco and many other birds. You can go on a special chimp treck but that is even more expensive.

The second day we went on a shorter walk, it had been raining very hard so going was treacherous. The guide told us to tuck our trousers into our socks because of the driver ants which attack anything that disturbs their activities, but because of the rain he didnt think they would be about - he was so wrong!! We spent at least 5 minutes pulling them all off. Again we were struck by the majesty and timelessness of the forest. The last elephant was killed in Nyungwe in 1999 and the plants that only they eat have become rampant and are choking other plants; there is a plan to reintroduce elephants into the forest, I hope they do it soon