Yesterday truly was an extraordinary day. I woke up at 07:55, as usual and rushed up in 5 minutes for breakfast. I had a few pieces of toast with an enormous portion of Nutella. Although I was still peckish only a half hour later, of course eye roll.

It was our second full day at KHS’s partnership School Group Scolaire Bumbogo. We were welcomed with smiles, waves and high fives – as usual. Definitely going to miss the Rwandan welcomes the most.

We picked up Jean and went to a satellite school which was a couple of kilometres away from the main site. This was built to host nursery and P1 children who would find the journey to the main site extremely difficult. The children were happy to see us, which was pretty obvious from the big smiles and waves. I had a fantastic time seeing the children – our visit began with singing and music and ended with a huge game of agati. Our team lost both times – although, we did compensate for this later.

After losing both games, we headed to the local genocide memorial which holds the seven thousand victims lost from the local community. This reminded me how big of an impact this genocide has had on soo many lives and how important it is that we remember and respect all the innocent lives lost.

We then went along to ‘Love with Actions’, this was not too far from GS Bumbogo. We met a young girl who is disabled and was receiving free physiotherapy which is paid for by the charity, she was the sweetest little girl! We learnt more about the project from the founder, Gilbert, who highlighted all the important work the charity does and how our school and we as individuals could help.

We then headed to the main school building where we, students, took part in a few games of agati with the school children. My team won, thankfully, and took back our deserved glory.

After school, we came back to the guesthouse for lunch and then headed out to to meet some genocide survivors in Kabuga. They were orphans and widows who survived the horrific effects of the genocide. They welcomed us a with a beautiful song about hope and happiness and then got to give the survivors 12 goats. I named my cute, little goat Renee – he truly was a handful. I was running up and down the hill with him as his new owner laughed. It was nice to see where the goat was going and how much the survivors appreciated it.

After all of this, I was extremely tired, so I had dinner back at the guesthouse and went straight to bed.

Truly, an extraordinary day.