Cyicaro secondary school

This is Cyicaro secondary school. On the left the staffroom; on the right the single classroom for the 43 pupils. You don't get any more rural than this! I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to this little school and its pupils were wonderful.

The scenery in this part of Mushushiro secteur is simply stunning. Round every corner you get a different view, all as good as this one. I could spend all day here just looking at the play of light across the mountains and listening to the distant sounds of animals, or of people working their fields. To me as an outsider it's breathtakingly peaceful and beautiful. If you have to live here it must feel more like a prison camp in the middle of a green jungle!

You can just make out the school in this picture. To get here, barely half a mile as the crow flies, we had walked a good mile and a half round the contours.


Mushushiro village centre. Remember that this is just the shops. Nobody lives in the village except the shopkeepers. The entire rural population lives scattered across the mountainsides as if someone had sprinkled their houses over the land with a giant salt shaker.