Day 9

After an early start the group was split into two and the first 8 made their way to Kibogora Hospital. Due to the lack of transport the group were required to walk part of the way there. Once there, the first group were greeted by a nurse by the name of Julie who is a missionary that has been living and working in Rwanda for 3 years. On the tour we were able to see all sections of the hospital such as the maternity ward, physiotherapy unit, isolation unit. Also, the womens and mens ward which covered most problems from minor to major. It was interesting to see the diversity of the conditions of their hospital compared to ours in England. Each room was small, beds were pushed together and three to four patients were squashed onto two beds. We were told that this particular hospital in Kigali is very well supplied, medicine and materials are quite advanced compared to others in the area. We noticed with each patient that there were a number of family members around them and we learnt that whenever someone does get admitted to hospital a family member must come and stay with them to look after their every day needs such as changing their bed, bed pans and general personal hygiene for them. At 3 on the afternoon we all did a holiday club for 73 children. They welcomed us by singing a few Kinyawanda songs and then taught them two English songs, one of which was head, shoulders, knees and toes. We split up into groups having 12 children each. We organised a number of different activities for them such as making friendship bracelets, prayer bracelets, jointed people and decorating notebooks. They thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon and found it particularly exciting when we took pictures of them. After a long we were on our last journey back to the campsite but we had a puncture on the jeep about 3 miles away. It had just started to get dark so our walk back wasn't too enjoyable but we all made it back in one piece.