Prepping in Kigali for Camp

The TechKobwa leadership team met in Kigali on August 1^st to finalize some logistics and split into shopping teams for camp materials.  Peace Corps team members Elisabeth, Alexa, Scott and Rusty hosted the meeting at the Peace Corps building in Kigali.  Gaspard from Creation Hill Rwanda and Simon from Kepler both from Kigali along with Blair, Laurie and Rodney from Michigan State University, Michelle from Peak Research, and Louise from IBM all from the U.S. also participated in the meeting.

Since most of the TechKobwa partners participated last year, the pre-camp meeting went very smoothly and quickly, leaving an entire afternoon for pre-camp shopping expeditions.  Pre-camp shopping included buying needed office supplies, soap and toilet paper for all campers, recreational materials and making numerous copies for handbooks and handout materials.  Here’s a picture of Blair balancing recreational materials in a crowded taxi with other team members and camp supplies.

Speaking of the handbook, below is a picture of the Facilitator Handbook.  Each ICT teacher attending the Training of Teachers (ToT) week of camp receives this book with all the lesson plans used during TechKobwa with the girls and additional material for their own skill-building such as a checklist for maintaining a computer lab.

Shopping also includes buying igitenge (cloth) which is used to denote “families” of girls.  Each girl and family leader wears a matching strip of cloth to facilitate identification of family groups.  If a girl is the only one in a room with a particular igitenge, then we know something is amiss.  Buying cloth involves negotiating with the vendor.  Here’s a picture of Elisabeth bargaining in Kinyarwanda to buy igitenge.

All supplies to be secured in Kigali in hand, we crammed two leaders and all the gear into a Toyota Prado and headed to IPRC-West outside of Kibuye…near Lake Kivu on the Rwanda / Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) boarder.