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It was a national holiday on the Tuesday just gone for the celebration of Ede. Therefore we had the day off school which meant a lie in - rarity here! Mid morning myself, Matthew (an Australian 26 yr old guy we're living with who is volunteering like us), Daniel a 19 yr Austrian doing the same as Matt, Agnes's our host and our two friends Tedison and Mark took a walk up a massive hill to collect wood to build a new fence around our home. When Agnes invited me for a 'walk' I thought she just fancied a stroll. Little did I know she meant an absolute trek up a mountainous hill to cut down trees, de-branch them then drag them back home. And that's exactly what we did! The tree was about 3x the size of me and had the width of a tuna tin. When Agnes's asked if I could carry it home I laughed in shock as I thought she was joking because I'm so weak... She wasn't, I found a comfortable (ish) way of holding it and dragged it the whole way home. Even though at the time I wanted to moan so much I just thought of my Dads voice saying 'oh Roberta stop moaning' and didn't bother. Once we got home. Felt so proud that I'd managed to do it. I'm slowly turning into a true strong African haha.
The following day on Wednesday we returned back to nursery teaching. In the afternoon we had arranged to walk to the 'magic tree' with our two village friends mark and Tedison. The magic tree is a giant tree at the top of one of the biggest mountainous hills in our village. They call it the magic tree because its believed that the ancestors spirits live in the tree and apparently at night time you can see the trunk burning in flames but in the morning you won't find any ash or trace of fire. It's one of the villages old tales.
The walk up the tree in the hottest heat was by far the hardest walk I've ever done. Georgia and I were sweating huge amounts and using massive sticks to hike up the steep mud track. Tedison called us"mukeekros" which means old woman in rukigga. He also said that English people are weak because us girls made several stops to pant and winge at how hard it was. Once we finally reached the top the land was lovely and flat and I took tonnes of picturesc photos which I shall upload when I get the chance. We managed to see the view of Rwanda and our village. There was a refreshing breeze and peaceful atmosphere.
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