thursday:

yesterday we drove to Kayonza again and upon arrival continued with our digging for the morning. we managed to almost complete the foundations of the building and by the end of it our hands were blistered and some were bleeding. we hopethis showed the Rwandans how hard we tried!

while digging Will Ayles got out his Bagpipes much to the amusement of the gathering crowd. he gave us a version of Clocks by Coldplay and they could not work out what the strange thing will was blowing in was. when we finished digging there was a great roar from us and the crowd around us. we felt that we worked hard and with the people there. a good two day's work we thought...

in the afternoon we had the opening of the unfinished football pitch and the youth cntre hall. a marque was set up and two banana trees had been uprooted and then placed in the ground in front of the plaque which we had rought out from england. what we all found amusing was that a piece of our own Upper (the pitch in Rwanda will be called 'The Upper, Sherborne'), and we had laid the piece of turf at the base of the plaque. we know now that there will always be a bit of Sherborne in Kayonza.

we were given many speeches from the local representative of the government and from Philbert and a couple of prayers in Rwandan. unfortunatly we didn't really undersdtand this. the government man then cut the ribbon between the tree's, unveiled he plaque and told people about the grass. throughout the ceremony there was a crowd of about 150 and whatever was said was translated into Rwandan or English. The rev also laid the corner stone of the building.

After this we went to the football match where we had an interesting match to say the least. it was certainly competative, and Harry Edwards 'put in a sterling perfomance, with nearly a hat trick.' many compared him to Wayne Rooney. unfortunatly despite all of our best efforts the opposing team was just too good. they had been told we would be as good as Arsenal or Manchester United (or something like that). so they had been training for a long time (unlike us!). the team we were up against ranged from the youngest at 17 until the oldest at 27.

more later....