So instead, my Thursday night dinner consisted of rice, a vegetable medley and some roasted potatoes. They don't really do stuffing here.
Thursday I had a long talk with the volunteer coordinator--and by long talk I mean cry--and all of a sudden she heard for the first time (though I have mentioned this a number of times) that I am a trained HIV Educator. So that afternoon I wrote an overview lesson, and taught it on Friday to 22 kids ranging in age from 9 to 16.
It actually went really well! I started with an icebreaker activity to address stigmas, myths and misinformation that they might have...a shocking response was that about 75% of the group responded "yego" or yes to the staetment "People with HIV/AIDS are dirty and/or sinful. So...that's a hurdle to overcome.
We discussed the basics--transmission, the ABCs of prevention, the general anatomy of condom use (without getting too explicit for cultural reasons)--and began to discuss stereotypes and myths. Some of the students had incredibly compelling questions.
Claire, the volunteer coordinator, decided it would be most effective to teach only those students 14 years and older (NOT my decision). So next week and the following week (I only have two weeks left!!!!) I will teach two lessons a week for about 1 1/2 hours each on HIV to Rwandan teenagers. I'm thinking that for Thursday I will prepare a stigma discussion, and then maybe an anatomy and sex-negotiating lesson for Friday.
SO EXCITED!
Today, Rachel (one of the other volunteers) and I went to Butare, a University town about two hours south of Kigali. It is apparently the most "US-like" town in Rwanda...I tend to disagree. It looked like a very large African town. On the bus ride there, the man sitting next to me quoted scripture at me in a discussion of why Jesus is clearly the Messiah, but was quite nice otherwise. The little girl sitting on his lap threw up on my pants, though. She coughed on my arms and then puked on my leg, and immediately thereafter I saw a skinned goat carcass out the window. Not quite as nice.
I will leave you with the DUH sentence of a lifetime, from the Thursday edition of the New Vision English-language newspaper here in Rwanda: "The 1994 genocide against the Tutsis really messed up the education sector of this country." Yes...thanks.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Kevine came to visit!
For those of you who don't remember, Kevine is the little girl I met at the Center Sante who called me Mamazungu and made me fall in love. She came to visit at the Centre Sante yesterday!!
I was in the backroom of the ARV filing office and she stormed into the main office and demanded, in Kinyarwanda, "where is my muzungu?!" That, alone, made me die. She found me and hopped into my lap and gave me a bunch of hugs and offered me her cookie. Once I got over my minor cute-overload-heart-attack, we went outside and played for a bit until her mom said it was time to leave.
About thirty minutes later, she came bounding back into the office! I was worried that she ran away from her family, so I stuck her on my back like a good African mama and wandered around the clinic looking for her mother. All of the mamas waiting for ARV consultations really enjoyed the visual of a muzungu with a baby on her back. Eventually I found her mother, which is good, because as much as I've fallen in love with this little girl, I'm not sure I'm ready to be a full-time mama.
The whole time Kevine and I played together, one of the nurses, Zena, whom I adore, kept asking Kevine how she felt about me and whether she loved me; Kevine continually replied, in Kinyarwanda of course, that she loved me and I was her muzungu. I died again.
I want to maintain some sort of contact with Kevine after I leave. Obviously there is a language barrier, but I would like to be able to mail her Christmas gifts and goodies from time to time, and maybe keep in touch once she gets a bit older and heads to school, where they are now required to learn English anyway. Did I mention that she's only three years old?! I thought she was just a small five or six year old--she is so lingual and sassy and bright!
Enough gushing.
Monday night, I went to see a German hip hop group, Massive Tone. It was awesome. They were great, though they barely used any of their own beats--almost everything was sampled, and after the show a bunch of local rappers (everyone here is either a small-time rapper or a small-time gospel singer, I swear) hopped up onstage and began a freestyling competition!
And last night, the woman who drove me home from Gisenyi had me over for dinner with one of her colleagues and his wife! It was very ex-pat-in-Africa. Her driver picked me up and her cook made special vegetarian dishes just for me. But it was awesome and I absolutely loved it!
Today I had Association visits in the morning, and visited for the second time the HIV+ woman whose husband likes to come home drunk and declare that the house smells like AIDS. I found out today that not only is he verbally abusive and a shmuck who refuses to get tested because he 'knows he's negative' despite fathering four children with an HIV+ woman, but he is also abusive on many other levels. Before she joined the Association, he used to beat her. Thankfully, though, now he does not do so for fear of retaliation from the strength of the Association. So instead, he locks his wife and four children in the house from the outside every night while he works a graveyard shift. This is especially fucked up because the bathroom is an outhouse. Visiting with this woman and her beautiful, sweet children (one of whom has a positive HIV diagnosis--they suspect two others are also positive but do not have definitive results yet) makes me so frustrated and furious. I just want to slap her husband across the face a thousand times. It makes me wish that the Rwandan culture wasn't quite so family-oriented, because the idea of leaving him and protecting herself and her children is not an option that would even cross this woman's mind. Aside from the fact that she is HIV+ and unemployed with four children at the age of 27, she would never betray the binds of family that are so intrinsic to Rwandan village culture.
I was in the backroom of the ARV filing office and she stormed into the main office and demanded, in Kinyarwanda, "where is my muzungu?!" That, alone, made me die. She found me and hopped into my lap and gave me a bunch of hugs and offered me her cookie. Once I got over my minor cute-overload-heart-attack, we went outside and played for a bit until her mom said it was time to leave.
About thirty minutes later, she came bounding back into the office! I was worried that she ran away from her family, so I stuck her on my back like a good African mama and wandered around the clinic looking for her mother. All of the mamas waiting for ARV consultations really enjoyed the visual of a muzungu with a baby on her back. Eventually I found her mother, which is good, because as much as I've fallen in love with this little girl, I'm not sure I'm ready to be a full-time mama.
The whole time Kevine and I played together, one of the nurses, Zena, whom I adore, kept asking Kevine how she felt about me and whether she loved me; Kevine continually replied, in Kinyarwanda of course, that she loved me and I was her muzungu. I died again.
I want to maintain some sort of contact with Kevine after I leave. Obviously there is a language barrier, but I would like to be able to mail her Christmas gifts and goodies from time to time, and maybe keep in touch once she gets a bit older and heads to school, where they are now required to learn English anyway. Did I mention that she's only three years old?! I thought she was just a small five or six year old--she is so lingual and sassy and bright!
Enough gushing.
Monday night, I went to see a German hip hop group, Massive Tone. It was awesome. They were great, though they barely used any of their own beats--almost everything was sampled, and after the show a bunch of local rappers (everyone here is either a small-time rapper or a small-time gospel singer, I swear) hopped up onstage and began a freestyling competition!
And last night, the woman who drove me home from Gisenyi had me over for dinner with one of her colleagues and his wife! It was very ex-pat-in-Africa. Her driver picked me up and her cook made special vegetarian dishes just for me. But it was awesome and I absolutely loved it!
Today I had Association visits in the morning, and visited for the second time the HIV+ woman whose husband likes to come home drunk and declare that the house smells like AIDS. I found out today that not only is he verbally abusive and a shmuck who refuses to get tested because he 'knows he's negative' despite fathering four children with an HIV+ woman, but he is also abusive on many other levels. Before she joined the Association, he used to beat her. Thankfully, though, now he does not do so for fear of retaliation from the strength of the Association. So instead, he locks his wife and four children in the house from the outside every night while he works a graveyard shift. This is especially fucked up because the bathroom is an outhouse. Visiting with this woman and her beautiful, sweet children (one of whom has a positive HIV diagnosis--they suspect two others are also positive but do not have definitive results yet) makes me so frustrated and furious. I just want to slap her husband across the face a thousand times. It makes me wish that the Rwandan culture wasn't quite so family-oriented, because the idea of leaving him and protecting herself and her children is not an option that would even cross this woman's mind. Aside from the fact that she is HIV+ and unemployed with four children at the age of 27, she would never betray the binds of family that are so intrinsic to Rwandan village culture.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Gisenyi
...is Paradise. Literally. I stayed at a hotel that would have easily cost $300 per night for my room: a bungalow alongside Lake Kivu, about twenty feet from the beach. It cost about $54 a night.
We got into Gisenyi, which is literally a five minute drive from the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at Goma, Friday night just before dinner. It was dark and raining outside so we had literally no idea what the beach and the hotel looked like! After checking in and sitting down to dinner, we were lucky enough to see a cultural dance-and-drum performance that was leased for the thirty-odd Canadian Christian Missionaries who also happened to be at dinner.
The next morning we got to actually see Lake Kivu, and it was worth the wait. It looks more like a sea than a lake. It is immense and deep (the 15th deepest lake in the world!) and sparkling blue, and has a beautiful rock beach. My words will not do the lake an inch of justice, so you will just have to wait to see my photos when I upload them. And you will. I took approximately 100 landscape shots of the lake. Seriously. Anyway, the most beautiful part about Kivu is that it's a lake among the milles collines (thousand hills) of Rwanda, so it is flanked by hills both nearby and in the distance. The hotel has a small island property less than a mile off-shore, and it dots the landscape in a very charming way.
Saturday, I spent the morning sunning and swimming in the lake, which is admittedly not always safe to swim in. Kivu is an "exploding lake," which means that it contains methane and CO2 (because of the very active volcano right across the border in Goma). It is one three known lakes that have these limnic eruptions in the world. The concentration of CO2 could also cause tsunamis. Anyway, now that I've terrified you, I hasten to note that Kivu is normally incredibly safe, and a great swim. The methane in Kivu is also, believe it or not, an environmental and economic boon to Rwanda. A brewery alongside the lake that produces local Primus beer and several Coca Cola products is extracting the methane to produce energy to run the plant's boilers.
I met a number of really interesting people in Gisenyi. I met two students--one from Yale and one from Virginia Commonwealth--who are studying abroad on an SIT program in Gulu, Uganda and Kigali. It was so nice to have college students to talk to for once...I felt more like myself than I have in quite a while. I also met this awesome expat from London who is contracted in Kigali for the year working with the government on capacity building, and her friend Jean-Paul, a local from Kigali. They drove me home last night from Gisenyi, which is about a three hour drive. It was so incredibly generous. I also met the son of the hotel owner, a Rwandese man who was born in Burundi and has lived all over the world and speaks five languages easily. He now does marketing for the hotel. He took me and several other guests, including the ex-pat and Jean-Paul, on a boat trip to the hotel's island property, which was absolutely gorgeous.
This weekend was a blessing and a half. I really needed to meet people outside of my volunteer group, and to spend some time in a different environment. I'm sunburnt on my back from the boat trip, but I feel more content that I have in quite some time.
We got into Gisenyi, which is literally a five minute drive from the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at Goma, Friday night just before dinner. It was dark and raining outside so we had literally no idea what the beach and the hotel looked like! After checking in and sitting down to dinner, we were lucky enough to see a cultural dance-and-drum performance that was leased for the thirty-odd Canadian Christian Missionaries who also happened to be at dinner.
The next morning we got to actually see Lake Kivu, and it was worth the wait. It looks more like a sea than a lake. It is immense and deep (the 15th deepest lake in the world!) and sparkling blue, and has a beautiful rock beach. My words will not do the lake an inch of justice, so you will just have to wait to see my photos when I upload them. And you will. I took approximately 100 landscape shots of the lake. Seriously. Anyway, the most beautiful part about Kivu is that it's a lake among the milles collines (thousand hills) of Rwanda, so it is flanked by hills both nearby and in the distance. The hotel has a small island property less than a mile off-shore, and it dots the landscape in a very charming way.
Saturday, I spent the morning sunning and swimming in the lake, which is admittedly not always safe to swim in. Kivu is an "exploding lake," which means that it contains methane and CO2 (because of the very active volcano right across the border in Goma). It is one three known lakes that have these limnic eruptions in the world. The concentration of CO2 could also cause tsunamis. Anyway, now that I've terrified you, I hasten to note that Kivu is normally incredibly safe, and a great swim. The methane in Kivu is also, believe it or not, an environmental and economic boon to Rwanda. A brewery alongside the lake that produces local Primus beer and several Coca Cola products is extracting the methane to produce energy to run the plant's boilers.
I met a number of really interesting people in Gisenyi. I met two students--one from Yale and one from Virginia Commonwealth--who are studying abroad on an SIT program in Gulu, Uganda and Kigali. It was so nice to have college students to talk to for once...I felt more like myself than I have in quite a while. I also met this awesome expat from London who is contracted in Kigali for the year working with the government on capacity building, and her friend Jean-Paul, a local from Kigali. They drove me home last night from Gisenyi, which is about a three hour drive. It was so incredibly generous. I also met the son of the hotel owner, a Rwandese man who was born in Burundi and has lived all over the world and speaks five languages easily. He now does marketing for the hotel. He took me and several other guests, including the ex-pat and Jean-Paul, on a boat trip to the hotel's island property, which was absolutely gorgeous.
This weekend was a blessing and a half. I really needed to meet people outside of my volunteer group, and to spend some time in a different environment. I'm sunburnt on my back from the boat trip, but I feel more content that I have in quite some time.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
BLACK AMERICAN COMEDY
One thing that has surprised me about Kigali is how little of an obvious black market it has. Kampala, in Uganda, has a HUGE black market that dominates the sidewalks. When I was there last summer, you could buy the Sex and the City Movie on DVD next to a copy of the last Harry Potter book and several of Michael Jackson's albums stuffed with printed album art on any street corner. There are no blankets with bath soap and CDs for sale in Kigali. The only black market that I have noticed is the DVD market, and it is very bizarre.
Usually, enterprising street salesmen carry DVD packages for Biblical films and Gospel performances, but a unique one caught my eye yesterday. Among the tales of Mary and Joseph was a DVD package that screamed "BLACK AMERICAN COMEDY." I assumed it was the title of a satirical film, perhaps made here, in Hillywood, as the Rwandan film industry is called. Upon closer review, it revealed itself to be "The Fighting Temptations," of course, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s seminal work, costarring Beyonce. The words "BLACK AMERICAN COMEDY" were literally ten times the size of the film's actual title on this DVD case.
Beyonce's body of work aside, I have had a very interesting week since we last spoke. This weekend I got very sick, and stayed in most of the weekend through Monday. Almost everyone in the guest house got whatever I had. I will spare you the details. Saturday, however, I went to my first ever football match!! Rwanda vs. Zambia! And it was an African Cup semifinals game! The game ended 0-0, though, and Zambia moved onto the next round. The Rwandan National Team (the Amavubi Stars) fought hard, and it was actually very fun, for a girl who doesn't give two hoots about football.
As for work, it's been pretty slow at the Centre Sante this week. I stayed home Monday for fear of infecting babies with whatever it was that I had, and Tuesday I administered polio vaccines as usual. Today there was absolutely nothing to do there. Yesterday (Wednesday) I had a home visit in the morning way way out in a rural area adjacent to the military camp. There was this great AIDS awareness poster up in one of the towns along the camp border: a man in camoflage and a woman are looking at each other with confused expressions, and the text screams "USE A CONDOM!" Anyway, the home visit yesterday required that I help this woman with AIDS do her washing. So I washed her family's clothes with some other members of the association. It was interesting. Rwandans use more soap than I have ever seen in my life.
On the bus to the home visit town yesterday, a woman got on in front of me with a very light-skinned baby in her arms. She turned around and feigned handing the baby off to me, saying "this one's yours!" That happens a lot. At the clinic, whenever we get a light-skinned baby in the vaccine room, the nurses tell me they must be my children.
Tomorrow I am leaving for a trip to Gisenyi, near the DRC border, to spend the weekend alongside Lake Kivu. It is supposed to be a beautiful lake beach, and I am super excited!
Also, World AIDS Day is coming up (Dec. 1st)!! I can't wait to see what Kigali does in terms of awareness events and campaigns.
That's all for now!
Usually, enterprising street salesmen carry DVD packages for Biblical films and Gospel performances, but a unique one caught my eye yesterday. Among the tales of Mary and Joseph was a DVD package that screamed "BLACK AMERICAN COMEDY." I assumed it was the title of a satirical film, perhaps made here, in Hillywood, as the Rwandan film industry is called. Upon closer review, it revealed itself to be "The Fighting Temptations," of course, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s seminal work, costarring Beyonce. The words "BLACK AMERICAN COMEDY" were literally ten times the size of the film's actual title on this DVD case.
Beyonce's body of work aside, I have had a very interesting week since we last spoke. This weekend I got very sick, and stayed in most of the weekend through Monday. Almost everyone in the guest house got whatever I had. I will spare you the details. Saturday, however, I went to my first ever football match!! Rwanda vs. Zambia! And it was an African Cup semifinals game! The game ended 0-0, though, and Zambia moved onto the next round. The Rwandan National Team (the Amavubi Stars) fought hard, and it was actually very fun, for a girl who doesn't give two hoots about football.
As for work, it's been pretty slow at the Centre Sante this week. I stayed home Monday for fear of infecting babies with whatever it was that I had, and Tuesday I administered polio vaccines as usual. Today there was absolutely nothing to do there. Yesterday (Wednesday) I had a home visit in the morning way way out in a rural area adjacent to the military camp. There was this great AIDS awareness poster up in one of the towns along the camp border: a man in camoflage and a woman are looking at each other with confused expressions, and the text screams "USE A CONDOM!" Anyway, the home visit yesterday required that I help this woman with AIDS do her washing. So I washed her family's clothes with some other members of the association. It was interesting. Rwandans use more soap than I have ever seen in my life.
On the bus to the home visit town yesterday, a woman got on in front of me with a very light-skinned baby in her arms. She turned around and feigned handing the baby off to me, saying "this one's yours!" That happens a lot. At the clinic, whenever we get a light-skinned baby in the vaccine room, the nurses tell me they must be my children.
Tomorrow I am leaving for a trip to Gisenyi, near the DRC border, to spend the weekend alongside Lake Kivu. It is supposed to be a beautiful lake beach, and I am super excited!
Also, World AIDS Day is coming up (Dec. 1st)!! I can't wait to see what Kigali does in terms of awareness events and campaigns.
That's all for now!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
My Daughter, Hoes, and Fun Facts!
I have resolved to become a better blogger. I swear I will continue to update this somewhat regularly.
Today I was very nearly adopted by a four year old sassypants named Kevine. She latched onto me after we danced together to bide the time at the clinic because I didn't have any work to do, and began calling me Mama Muzungu, which eventually condensed into the dear Mamazungu. Eventually her mother needed to leave and quite literally dragged Kevine by the arm because she had decided that she now belonged to Mamazungu.
Today's work at the clinic wasn't the standard polio vaccination, because they do ophthalmology exams instead on Thursdays. So I helped Alphonsine, one of the nurses with whom I usually speak French, manage the ARV (anti retroviral medication) pharmacy requests. She taught me how to enter the patients' information and their prescriptions. The cutest thing was that she decided to work on her English today, and when she indicated gender in the pharmacy log, rather than "female" she would tell me "wife."
In other clinic news, on Wednesday one of the nurses brought me to see a newborn baby. And I mean NEW. BORN. Like, gray and covered in blood with the umbilical cord waving in the wind and its momma visible and spread-eagle in the background. Birth is gross, y'all.
Yesterday I did a home visit with a woman from the Association (of HIV positive people and their supporters). We had to take bicycle taxis--literally bicycles with seats above the rear tire--to her home because it was rural and not really accessible otherwise. I hoed the area outside her home to ensure that she would not be attacked by snakes hiding in the grass. I've never held a hoe before, and all of the Rwandans made fun of my hoeing stance, but I got the job done!
Now for some fun facts about Rwanda:
The day I arrived was the last Saturday of October. That is significant because the last Saturday of each month is cleaning day! Cleaning day is both your civic duty and a legal mandate. Kigali is incredibly beautiful and well-kept, and that is largely due to cleaning day and the civic culture it is a part of. On cleaning day, citizens of Rwanda take to the streets and the roads and clean and prune the hedges and trim the grass and pick up litter. The culture of respecting our city is pervasive; it is illegal at penalty of I think $75 to walk on the grass on the neutral ground (medians) of the roads here. Apparently, if you litter by President Paul Kagame's motorcade, he will get out and personally chastise you. Also, plastic bag are illegal here and have been for a couple of years now. Pretty progressive for a third world African country, no?
Today I was very nearly adopted by a four year old sassypants named Kevine. She latched onto me after we danced together to bide the time at the clinic because I didn't have any work to do, and began calling me Mama Muzungu, which eventually condensed into the dear Mamazungu. Eventually her mother needed to leave and quite literally dragged Kevine by the arm because she had decided that she now belonged to Mamazungu.
Today's work at the clinic wasn't the standard polio vaccination, because they do ophthalmology exams instead on Thursdays. So I helped Alphonsine, one of the nurses with whom I usually speak French, manage the ARV (anti retroviral medication) pharmacy requests. She taught me how to enter the patients' information and their prescriptions. The cutest thing was that she decided to work on her English today, and when she indicated gender in the pharmacy log, rather than "female" she would tell me "wife."
In other clinic news, on Wednesday one of the nurses brought me to see a newborn baby. And I mean NEW. BORN. Like, gray and covered in blood with the umbilical cord waving in the wind and its momma visible and spread-eagle in the background. Birth is gross, y'all.
Yesterday I did a home visit with a woman from the Association (of HIV positive people and their supporters). We had to take bicycle taxis--literally bicycles with seats above the rear tire--to her home because it was rural and not really accessible otherwise. I hoed the area outside her home to ensure that she would not be attacked by snakes hiding in the grass. I've never held a hoe before, and all of the Rwandans made fun of my hoeing stance, but I got the job done!
Now for some fun facts about Rwanda:
The day I arrived was the last Saturday of October. That is significant because the last Saturday of each month is cleaning day! Cleaning day is both your civic duty and a legal mandate. Kigali is incredibly beautiful and well-kept, and that is largely due to cleaning day and the civic culture it is a part of. On cleaning day, citizens of Rwanda take to the streets and the roads and clean and prune the hedges and trim the grass and pick up litter. The culture of respecting our city is pervasive; it is illegal at penalty of I think $75 to walk on the grass on the neutral ground (medians) of the roads here. Apparently, if you litter by President Paul Kagame's motorcade, he will get out and personally chastise you. Also, plastic bag are illegal here and have been for a couple of years now. Pretty progressive for a third world African country, no?
Monday, November 9, 2009
I am the Worst Blogger Ever
Hello.
Since we last spoke I have been in Paris with Janis, Cedric, Lauren and about a third of the Tulane population, Versailles, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest with my Dad (and Mira, briefly!) and back to London.
Now I am in Kigali, Rwanda.
Some interesting travel observations, briefly:
1. If I never see another Impressionist or Post-Impressionist painting in my life, I think I'll be good.
2. The Charles Bridge in Prague was made of sandstone, but the mortar was mixed with eggs and wine to keep it strong.
3. Entry in my travel journal from Vienna: "VIENNA...eh"
4. There are a lot of Neo-Nazis in Budapest and Hungary as a whole. I saw a Jobbik (the political party) rally and it was scary.
5. In Budapest, you can not ask for directions to "The Synagogue." You must ask where the "Jewish Church" is.
Now for Rwanda. It is the most beautiful place I have ever been, in terms of natural landscape. It is a lush, hilly (Milles Collines means 1000 hills, after all) region that doesn't really fulfill any Western stereotype of Africa. The people here would not be out of place in New Orleans or other homey cities in the American South. Everyone is immensely friendly and will go out of their way to be helpful and nice. My placement is with the organization's "HIV/AIDS" program, but there is very little program to speak of. I am working at a health center, the Centre de Sante Kimirongo (Kimirongo is the district--it is the health center for the whole district). At first they didn't really have a job for me, but after several strange days of placements that included weighing women during their family planning consultations and sitting in a room for three hours listening to doctors and HIV+ patients talk about ARV (anti-retroviral medication) results in Kinyarwanda, a language of which I speak about thirty words, I have finally found something that I enjoy doing and actually helps: today I administered Polio immunizations to about two dozen babies!!! It is possibly the best job ever. I sit in an immunization room with these brand new babies--I'd say none are more than 7 months old, and a couple were quite literally born yesterday--and I smile at their moms and administer the immunizations (which are not shots, but liquid drops that they swallow) and hold the babies sometimes and play with their fingers to keep them from swatting away the vaccine. BEST JOB EVER.
The other component of my placement is home visits and consultation with the "Association," which is a UNAIDS CHAMP (Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project) group of community members comprised both of people living with HIV/AIDS and their negative-status neighbors and friends. The group I'm working with has 81 positive individuals, and an additional 25 or so community members who merely wish to lend their support to their friends. The people in the group (I met only with women last week but men and children also belong) struggle through so much, but they asked me question after question about HIV/AIDS in the United States and whether people in the US suffer the way that they do. They were shocked and frankly appalled that the US Government does not provide free ARV treatment as Rwanda does, and wondered aloud how Obama and his colleagues could "leave people to die." I assured them that it wasn't quite that harsh, though definitely a shame.
I don't quite know how well I will be able to help the Association, unfortunately. Visiting with women confined to their homes by the side-effects of ARVs coupled with a lack of sufficient and nutritious food (which is especially important to people on ARVs) and an advancing syndrome is interesting for me and, according to my translator, assures the women that people care about them and that they are not isolated from the rest of the world, but I want to give them something real and tangible. I am kicking ideas out with my translator (a woman named Claire, who is one of the warmest people I have ever met) regarding proposals and income-generating projects that I could endeavor to help them create.
On a lighter note, here are some fun notes about Rwanda:
Learn Kinyarwanda!
Muraho - hello
Mwaramutse - good morning
Amakuru ki? - how are you? (what is the news?)
Ni Meza - I am well/the news is good
and, as in all East African countries, Muzungu - whitey (not a diss, just a manner of addressing you)
I have been able to use a lot of French here, which has been tremendously handy, especially in the Centre de Sante. Rwanda taught French in schools along with the native language until LITERALLY this year, when the government decided to switch over to English. Therefore, many teachers are immensely confused and all of the better-educated people over 15 know French. My Frenglish has progressed immensely.
Another note: the Backstreet Boys are strangely popular here.
Finally, a breakdown of some prices here:
Avocados- $0.18 each
Pineapples- about $0.90 each
A plate of spinach, beans, rice, potatoes and french fries at the hospital- about $0.90
A $10-at-CVS jug of Carlo Rossi wine- 20,500 RWF, or about $36
Since we last spoke I have been in Paris with Janis, Cedric, Lauren and about a third of the Tulane population, Versailles, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest with my Dad (and Mira, briefly!) and back to London.
Now I am in Kigali, Rwanda.
Some interesting travel observations, briefly:
1. If I never see another Impressionist or Post-Impressionist painting in my life, I think I'll be good.
2. The Charles Bridge in Prague was made of sandstone, but the mortar was mixed with eggs and wine to keep it strong.
3. Entry in my travel journal from Vienna: "VIENNA...eh"
4. There are a lot of Neo-Nazis in Budapest and Hungary as a whole. I saw a Jobbik (the political party) rally and it was scary.
5. In Budapest, you can not ask for directions to "The Synagogue." You must ask where the "Jewish Church" is.
Now for Rwanda. It is the most beautiful place I have ever been, in terms of natural landscape. It is a lush, hilly (Milles Collines means 1000 hills, after all) region that doesn't really fulfill any Western stereotype of Africa. The people here would not be out of place in New Orleans or other homey cities in the American South. Everyone is immensely friendly and will go out of their way to be helpful and nice. My placement is with the organization's "HIV/AIDS" program, but there is very little program to speak of. I am working at a health center, the Centre de Sante Kimirongo (Kimirongo is the district--it is the health center for the whole district). At first they didn't really have a job for me, but after several strange days of placements that included weighing women during their family planning consultations and sitting in a room for three hours listening to doctors and HIV+ patients talk about ARV (anti-retroviral medication) results in Kinyarwanda, a language of which I speak about thirty words, I have finally found something that I enjoy doing and actually helps: today I administered Polio immunizations to about two dozen babies!!! It is possibly the best job ever. I sit in an immunization room with these brand new babies--I'd say none are more than 7 months old, and a couple were quite literally born yesterday--and I smile at their moms and administer the immunizations (which are not shots, but liquid drops that they swallow) and hold the babies sometimes and play with their fingers to keep them from swatting away the vaccine. BEST JOB EVER.
The other component of my placement is home visits and consultation with the "Association," which is a UNAIDS CHAMP (Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project) group of community members comprised both of people living with HIV/AIDS and their negative-status neighbors and friends. The group I'm working with has 81 positive individuals, and an additional 25 or so community members who merely wish to lend their support to their friends. The people in the group (I met only with women last week but men and children also belong) struggle through so much, but they asked me question after question about HIV/AIDS in the United States and whether people in the US suffer the way that they do. They were shocked and frankly appalled that the US Government does not provide free ARV treatment as Rwanda does, and wondered aloud how Obama and his colleagues could "leave people to die." I assured them that it wasn't quite that harsh, though definitely a shame.
I don't quite know how well I will be able to help the Association, unfortunately. Visiting with women confined to their homes by the side-effects of ARVs coupled with a lack of sufficient and nutritious food (which is especially important to people on ARVs) and an advancing syndrome is interesting for me and, according to my translator, assures the women that people care about them and that they are not isolated from the rest of the world, but I want to give them something real and tangible. I am kicking ideas out with my translator (a woman named Claire, who is one of the warmest people I have ever met) regarding proposals and income-generating projects that I could endeavor to help them create.
On a lighter note, here are some fun notes about Rwanda:
Learn Kinyarwanda!
Muraho - hello
Mwaramutse - good morning
Amakuru ki? - how are you? (what is the news?)
Ni Meza - I am well/the news is good
and, as in all East African countries, Muzungu - whitey (not a diss, just a manner of addressing you)
I have been able to use a lot of French here, which has been tremendously handy, especially in the Centre de Sante. Rwanda taught French in schools along with the native language until LITERALLY this year, when the government decided to switch over to English. Therefore, many teachers are immensely confused and all of the better-educated people over 15 know French. My Frenglish has progressed immensely.
Another note: the Backstreet Boys are strangely popular here.
Finally, a breakdown of some prices here:
Avocados- $0.18 each
Pineapples- about $0.90 each
A plate of spinach, beans, rice, potatoes and french fries at the hospital- about $0.90
A $10-at-CVS jug of Carlo Rossi wine- 20,500 RWF, or about $36
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