The four Grannies from Rwanda have recently returned from The Barefoot College in Tilonia, a small village in the desert regions of Rajasthan, North India. The Barefoot College has for more than 35 years worked to improve the lives of the rural poor by addressing basic needs for water, electricity, housing, health, education and income. The College helps rural artisans market their products in India and around the world. With new markets for their crafts their livelihood is improved and the production of the traditional crafts and their source of income is continued.
Throughout their stay we were in regular contact with the ladies in India. For them it has been quite a learning experience and took a while to getting used to the life in Tilonia as they had never left the timy village of Karambi let alone Rwanda!! Since Tilonia is in Northern India the climate is not too different from Rwanda which is not too hot due to its high altitude. The main challenges were in the food and language. The food is generally vegetarian with a combination of rice and pumpkin soup, and since there was no common spoken language the communication was in a form of sign language which has been developed over the years at Tilonia with many and various nationalities who have studied on the 'solar grannies projects'. Unfortunately. all the ladies suffered in some way healthwise in the early weeks but did recover and eventually became accustomed to the new lifestyle.
The fortunate thing was that, being in a group from Rwanda, they were able to support each other both in day to day living and studying. They were given mobile phones when they first arrived although very little credit for calling but they managed to phone their families at the beginning with what little credit they had to let everyone know they were OK and check how thier families were too. Afterwards they received Skype phone calls from Mike and Colette Hughes' family in Rwanda (Mike is Chairman of RUGO), being able to converse in their native language Kinyarwanda, to share their experiences of India and to catch up on what was happening back home.
They worked very hard in their studies and regarded it as source of their pride to prove that our confidence in them to succeed was well founded. They spent their time building solar lanterns and assembling the various components to build the solar systems and for them it has been quite a learning experience and are now more than capable to light up the Village of Karambi.They were very excited and energised by their visit and on their return at the end of September had a great welcome in Karambi Village from both friends and family.
We would like to thank the Barefoot College and the Government of India for their great support and making the ladies feel at home, having them involved them in many cultural activities and the ladies singing to the others!
The ladies are now awaiting the equipment so they can start on the work of electrifying the village.The list of equipment needed has now been finalised and is in the process of being ordered and, just as importantly, all the necessary documentation required to get to Rwanda is being prepared and invoices etc.for payment raised.
