Written by CorpsAfrica/Rwanda Volunteers Mr. Jean Migambi and Mr. Alexandre Rurangwa

Cyungo, Mukaka, and Kariha villages are remote areas in the Ngororero district where their populations’ daily activity is subsistence agriculture and to a small extent rearing of domestic animals like cows, pigs, goats, etc.  This community lives below the poverty line and they don’t have enough food supply as a result of infertile soils caused by the terrain of their area. The topography of this district is mountainous and there is a lot of soil erosion during the rainy season.
As CorpsAfrica Volunteers based in Ngororero District Kageyo Sector, Kageshi Cell, Cyungo, Mukaka, and Kariha sites, we have reached there at the end of November after one month of training in Kigali where we have learned many things regarding how to help communities using CorpsAfrica approaches, which are ABCD and HCD and other basic knowledge such as how we could live in the villages.

After reaching the sites we went to live with our host family where we spent two weeks helping them in daily activities such cooking, going to fetch water, cultivating, attending parties like weddings and other daily activities.

When we were at our host family, we attended Community Meetings (Inteko y’Abaturage) led by different local leaders like Executive Sector, Executive Cell and local leaders of our sites. We made our presentation to tell the community what we came to do and most of them were happy to see us.

At our host family we visited different sites, looking at different areas, meeting different people and chatting with them, helping them in their activities. We have attended also the dowry wedding of our host family and we shared food, drinks with the community we met at the event.

We met also with learners and other young people who don’t study and we conversed on school drop-out. We gave them advice to make efforts in their studies, also those who are not at school try to return to school. We also played with kids in the street in the center where many people were happy to see us enjoying with those young people. We also tried to look for a house for rent as it was hard to get it. Finally we got it and we made it clean so that we can live in a good house.
After getting our own house, we have started visiting our communities and helping them to do different activities such as cultivating, cooking, harvesting different crops like Irish potatoes, tea.

We visited different families trying to make our presentation to those who don’t attend meetings and trying to converse about their daily life in order to know exactly their problems and try to give them different advice on how to overcome those issues if we work together.

We also set a day where every week we meet the community in a weekly meeting in order to conduct different activities and share different ideas in what we are going to do together.
In meeting the community, we have done mapping in order to know exactly their assets, what they want, their problems and what are their priorities.

SOME ACTIVITIES WE HAVE DONE IN THE COMMUNITIES

• We have helped the community to build ten Kitchen Gardens and we are still building others.
• We have helped the community to build toilets and we are still doing it
• We have attended many community works such as helping the community to build the houses.
• We have attended a football competition called “UMURENGE KAGAME CUP” and we have played
• We have created savings groups in our community and they have started
• We have elected leaders of our community according to CorpsAfrica Project
• We have helped our communities in their daily activities such as harvesting crops