Guidelines suggest keeping blog entries short and sweet. I feel like I have so much to share after only 5 days here-all extremely positive- but will do my best to edit!
By way of introduction, my name is Sarah Farrell. I am 25 years old, from Dublin. I completed my ACA training with Deloitte Dublin recently and am now based in Rwamagana, Rwanda working for 9 weeks with an organisation called DIZA (which means "Friends of the Children" in Kinyarwanda). I will explain more about the organisation at a later stage. In the meantime, their website is http://www.rwandanorphans.org/ if anyone wants to check it out. I arranged my placement through London based "Accounting for International Development"(www.afid.org.uk).
The Rwandan people are unbelievably friendly and welcoming, I can't get over it. The fifteen minute walk from my hotel to the DIZA office is an experience- as a "mzungu" (white person!) I am instantly noticeable. I get plenty of stares from all and children regularly come up to shake my hand and say good morning. I'm constantly waving and returning smiles. The odd person even stops to chat.
The children at the school run by DIZA are just adorable. Due to funding restrictions the school is being built classroom by classroom. (As it happens, the school building project is funded primarily by an Irish charity called the Rwandan Children's Project http://www.thercp.org/ - another plug!) At present there are two classrooms which are used by 38 nursery students. I visited them on my first morning and they were SO excited to see me. Most rushed over to hug/examine me and they sang me some English songs they've been learning- one a chant "we know English, we know English" and another about "the biggy biggy moon in the biggy biggy sky and the biggy biggy sun in the biggy biggy sky and the smally smally stars in the biggy biggy sky"!
I'll come back to explaining a typical day in the office when I'm settled in but so far we've installed Quickbooks accounting package and are in the process of transferring over information from excel. A tedious process but once the groundwork is done it should speed things up for the long run. We've also done some net to gross payroll calculations- a personal favourite as I like a bit of algebra and trained in the personal tax department!
I work with DIZA's coordinator, Eric. I can't speak highly enough of the reception he's given me. He has shown me all around the town, helped me organise accommodation and even taken me to watch an Arsenal match in a local bar- premiership football is hugely popular here. I'm learning lots about Rwandan history and way of life from him.
I will leave you for now with a quick note on the food here-a specialty is brochettes - kebabs of goat meat and onions. They are just delicious! On most menus they come with a choice of "chips, sweet potatoes or Irish potatoes". When I saw this and exclaimed at the "Irish" part Eric just said "why, what do you call them?".......they're just regular, boiled potatoes to me; we're not sure where the "Irish" came from!
Photos to follow soon….promise!
