Day 4

Today we were doing house repairs so I thought possibly a bit of painting or tidying up but house repairs in Rwanda is a bit different. After carrying long batons of wood down a long winding rocky, dusty track we came across the house, it became very clear we had a big task ahead. We formed a line and passed cement around the house and after a short demonstration on how to render a wall we got stuck in. For the next 5 hours in the hot sun and a bit of rain I can honestly say I worked harder than any other time in my life. The hard work paled into insignificance when at lunch time when the owner of the house Sephina shared a small part of her story. She had lived in this house during the genocide with her husband who wasn't rwandan. All her other family were killed. Two weeks before the end of the genocide the perpetrators found her. They raped her and infected her with HIV and she in turn passed it onto her husband who later died. Being a widow and a sufferer of HIV living in a small community is very hard and being able to making her home water tight and a little more comfortable cost us a few hours of hard team work, but it will make a massive difference to Sephina. Today's picture is of us hard at work with no health and safety in sight.