As Covid-19 has swept around the planet, Africa for the most part appears so far to have escaped the worst of the pandemic. Even so, Rwanda has seen a number of cases with intermittent outbreaks and deaths.
For the past several months Rwanda has been under a lockdown comparable with what has been experienced in Europe. Travel has been restricted and shops have been closed. This has had a particularly large impact on the poorer families in the population who, even in normal times, live from hand to mouth. Even where a family has been able to earn some income by finding work each day, this has now been cut off and many are struggling to buy food.
Working through Inkurunziza Church outside Kigali we have been supplying food to families whose children have been attending our day-care project. Before the virus, the project provided daily care to young children along with a meal. The additional benefit was that the mothers were able to go out to find work in the fields.
The lockdown in Rwanda has closed the day-care and confined the children and their families to their homes. With our help the church has been able to buy rice, beans and maize flour in bulk for distribution to the families. 25kg of each lasts a family two to three months.