RWANDA

Rwanda is a fast becoming GREEN country.  I have found many organisations promoting Organic farming also with a "having heard of" knowledge of Biodynamics.
I met Richard Munyerango who for many years has been promoting Organic farming and who has trained over 700,000 farmers in the past 17 years.
He began a project "One cow for each household"  A family especially those widowed women and women whose husbands had been imprisoned after the genocide, would be given a cow (pregnant) and when the cow delivered a calf, the calf would be given to the next family in line, and so on, thus providing milk and manure for the compost in an affordable way. In this way the UK,s SEND COW, an expensive import of cow into the country rather became feed a local cow with a financial  donation
I went out to the GAKO farm Training Centre and was hugely impressed by the gardens. An enormous piece of land with every part used for fruit, vegetable, medicinal plants and livestock.
The cows manure and urine creating the biogas which was used for cooking, research into improving organic fertilisers using organic micro-organisms and enriching the soil and plants. And on the premises a School from Kindergarten to high school headed by Richards wife.
I also met Jean Marie Irakabaho, managing director of POSADA - Promoting Organic Sustainable Agriculture Development in Africa, and his wife Lisa-Chantal Dusabe who trains farmers in a Organic Agriculture Curriculum - Organic Leadership Course. They are also involved in a SAFE WATER PROJECT.
I have been impressed by the clean and beautifully green city of Kigali.  The people have been hospitable and welcoming and always ready to help in whatever way they can.
I even attended a Mass in the beautiful Cathedral where the singing of the choir was celestial - such lovely voices throughout the service. Most of the Mass was in song.
And best of all - I never saw a plastic bag in Rwanda!!!!
WAY TO GO
Photos to follow

                                                             THE COMPOST

                                                            THE SCHOOL

                                                                          BIOGAS

Madagascar

A day in Antananarivo where many meetings took place.  Firstly Kathy Lucking from Canada, who had met me the day before, having walked for hours to make this meeting, took me to an organisation which promotes Organic AND BIODYNAMIC Agriculture  where I met Razafimahatratra Rajorosaono, who grows trees e.g. Rosewood and "flamboyante" , then on to meet two young doctors, Ranaivozanany Faliana and Randriamiary Andry Faniry, who have almost completed their Medical Training.  Thereafter we met a Madagascar woman, Vololoniainar Rakotoarivelo, an engineer who works with renewable energy and plays an important role in the school I was about to visit.
We travelled out to this school that Kathy has been supporting for the past ten years.  This is a school out in the rural countryside up into a mountainous and very beautiful part of Madagascar which is striving to become Waldorf. The children walk for about 6 kilometres, over an hour, to school each morning and then home again later.
As we travelled along a somewhat bumpy road past rice paddies and other fields of vegetables, the children walking home from school waved with big smiles in welcome.
I must not forget my meeting with a young man, Felix, from Germany who had just ridden a bicycle from north to south through Madagascar, about 21,000 kilometres.
All this within 24 hours of my arrival.

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            The view of one of the 18 villages who send their children to TENAQUIP SCHOOL

                               
                                                                    MAKING HOUSE

                                                       Another view of vegetable garden

                  The long walk home - up to 6 kilometres one hour to school and home again

  MY STAR WILL ALWAYS SHINE FOR ME COME WHAT MAY IT WILL ALWAYS STAY              AND GUIDE MY WAY LITTLE STARS TWINKLE LITTLE STARS SHINE BUT THE BRIGHTEST STAR IS THE STAR OF MINE  -  HOW THEY SHINE !!!!

                                                                        The rice paddies

                       
                           My arrival at TENAQUIP SCHOOL striving to become WALDORF

                                           
                                           A view of a small part of the vegetable garden

And the journey continues

To those who have followed my BLOG - thank you. Your support has helped me along the way.
Now I head off to Madagascar, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia and hopefully the Pan African Teachers Conference in Johannesburg on route.
If you have any contacts in any of these countries that I could call upon PLEASE LET ME KNOW
0027 76 904 7632 I leave Cape Town on 18th March

In the meantime the registrations for IPMT AFRICA 2017 are pouring in from all over Africa.
WE are attempting to raise funds for this so that we can host all these delegates. If you are able to sponsor or help in any way please contact me at juliaoleary021@gmail.com

The Phoenix Waldorf School Hawzien Finks Foundation Ethiopia

This is a school I referred to in one of the first blogs after meeting Dr. Atsbaha Gebre-Selassie.
As I was to fly home from Ethiopia, I took the opportunity to go to Hawzien and I am so glad I did. Maybe Hawzien was a high light in the whole journey or maybe it was that I had to experience a special ending and blessing on this journey to date.
Hawzien was bombed and turned into rubble and in this rubble a school arose - The Phoenix - Finks Foundation. Dr. Gebre- Selassie had been involved in Waldorf /Steiner Education in Germany and now began this school.  Everything about this school was beautiful.  Cows grazed on the meadow, children played in the sandpit, and the gardens were scattered with medicinal plants and herbs, fruit trees and other greenery.  The entrance to the school, beautifully  painted in delicate colours and architecturally formed to invite you to enter. The classrooms spacious, well designed even though there were 40 to 50 children in a class.
I was so well looked after by Tsigab - who seemed to be the head of the school and Asqual who performed "Coffee ceremony " for me every morning and every afternoon.
My visit to the St. George (stone carved into the mountain 4th century) Church, the flat stone  bells that were rung to call the priests which in sounding them I discovered were the tones of the TAO in Eurythmy, the opening of the veil curtain for me to reveal the tabernacle - a most humbling and honoured experience especially on this day of St. Michael (the curtains are only drawn for priests on Holy days) and on this day seeing the people with their livestock following, donkeys, cows, sheep and goats all walking to the village for market day and then the pure silver coin which Asqual got me to purchase being transformed by a silver-smith into a beautiful cross for me -  all this on my last day of this journey - ending in buying my very own Ethiopian coffee pot and cups and beautifully woven basket and "hoodie" for the pot.  I hope that last sentence makes sense but that is how it was, and even more, and can maybe describe how special Hawzien is. Natural, Rural, Devotional, Kind and Caring.
Sorry, most regrettably, no pics - by this stage I had no camera and no phone.