Nyamata, Rwanda Tuesday, March 30, 2010

I have to start this with how absolutely wonderful this week has been. On Sunday, we all left Nyanza to head to Kigali to meet our counterparts/supervisors and then visit our sites. We arrived in Kigali to learn that we were staying in a very nice hotel… we had our own little bungalows with two of us in each one… running water, a pool, and a very good restaurant… well, at least by our standards these days! Our standards for food are pretty low these days… so garlic on the fries, fresh vegetables, french toast at breakfast, and a fruit salad that was amazing one night… so good! And we had African tea, which I just love (it’s more like hot spiced milk), for breakfast and tea time. So on top of all of that, we met people from Access Project (my organization) on Monday. Dr Blaise, who is the country director for the project here in Rwanda, is also my supervisor… although he is a bit up the chain. I had heard great things about him, and I had also heard that he has very high expectations… and I heard right. He was very excited to meet the six of us who will be working for him, and was excited about our backgrounds. But at one point in time he pulled me aside and filled me in on what he expected of me. He told me that he had heard my name long before I was placed with Access because our APCD (Assistant Program Country Director for Health) and the other volunteers I met that work with him had told him about me and highly recommended me for this project. One of the volunteers recommended me specifically for Gashora Health Center. So Dr. Blaise told me that Gashora is their “baby” and he expects me to help turn it into a model to show the Rwandan government what a health center should look like. He wants to put everything we can into it and said that he would support me in any way I needed. There is already the books and supplies to start a library there, it has electricity, running water, and within the next month or so it will have internet. They want to put in a greenhouse to help with nutrition programs, and make the health center an all-around model for overall community development. It’s an AMAZING project… and it’s my project for my Peace Corps service!!! I couldn’t be happier.

I also met Dr. Jean Marie, my direct supervisor and my district’s health advisor for Access. He’s incredible! He speaks English, he’s well-educated, he’s been to America, and he understands that we have questions about integrating culturally. So between him and Dr. Blaise, I have the best management that I could possibly want. I also met the Titulaire (head) of my health center, Lando. He speaks very little English and was introduced as my counterpart. He is very nice, but also very busy. So while Dr. Blaise was talking to me about his expectations for Gashora, I asked who my contact in Gashora would be that could help me with translations in the beginning to get started… since Kinyarwanda is such a slow process. Dr Blaise actually told me not to waste my time worrying about the language, he said that it is very hard, and it will come as I use it more. So he said that he and Jean Marie will ensure that I have a counterpart/community guide at Gashora who speaks English and can work hard with me to better the Health Center… and also help me with my Kinyarwanda. That took so much stress away form me because it assures me that they don’t expect me to be fluent when I arrive in May, AND they think I can still do my job effectively in the meantime. I can’t say enough good things about this organization and it’s people.

So for our site visit, myself and the two other girls in my district left Kigali with Jean Marie today to go to Nyamata (which is where the district “headquarters” of Access are, and where Jean Marie works), where we are staying in a guest house attached to the hospital. We went out, saw the town (this will be the closest town to me… 20-30 minutes away by car… probably closer to an hour away by bus), had a drink with Jean Marie and a couple of his colleagues, came back, ate dinner, and now I’m here, super excited about tomorrow, when we’re going to visit Gashora, the health center, community, and my potential house!

And did I mention that it’s beautiful here?! We’re only about 30 minutes away from Kigali by car, but it’s still very rural, green, and there’s huge rolling hills… and a river running through the district… which just happens to be the source of the Nile. It’s so pretty I can’t even describe it. The only drawback… there are definitely more mosquitoes here… the scary malaria mosquitoes… but I have my anti-malarials and my mosquito net, both of which are highly effective. And the dry season here is supposed to be horrible… it gets much hotter here than in most places. But with that… I still feel lucky to be placed here!


Nyamata, Wednesday March 31, 2010

We spent the morning at my site today! Amazing! It’s about 20 minutes outside of Nyamata by car, and it is VERY rural. And beautiful… there is a very small market that sells fresh foods, a small bank, and a few very small shops… and that’s about it for the town. Then there is the health center, which is gorgeous. Running water, electricity, very big and very clean! It has four wings, one for in-patient stays, one for maternity, and I think two for HIV/AIDS treatment and counseling. Plus there are areas for patient consults, a conference room, and a room for nutrition education and demonstrations. And there’s plenty of administrative space. It should be getting all of the new equipment and be fully staffed in the next two months. The staff is mostly already there, because right next to it is the very small, very old health center, which is currently operational.

Now, the town of Gashora is right between two lakes, so there is also a very nice hotel on the lake there that people in Kigali come to on the weekends in order “to get away.” It’s a very nice place… rather upscale for such a small community. And guess who is also getting a house on the same lake?! Yep, I have a house in the umudugudu (village) that is on a dead end road, and at the dead end, you’re on a hill overlooking the lake. The house actually has electricity, but no running water, it has three bedrooms I think, and the “kitchen” is in a small building out back, right next to the “bathroom” (just a room with a drain), which is in the same little building as the pit latrine. And I have quite a large yard (don’t picture grass here…) where there is currently a chicken running around (belongs to the neighbor), a banana tree, and a bunch of cassava growing. So I’m definitely going to have a chicken of my own and a garden! I’m so excited about the entire situation. Oh, AND I have a tin roof! Which I love in the rain. And did I mention that there are hippos and crocodiles in my lake?! This is going to be such an amazing experience!


Nyamata, Thursday, April 1, 2010

Sidenote: This blog entry contains yet another visit to a genocide memorial. And while it can get rather graphic, I feel the need to relay the stories just as I hear them during my visits. It seems that we should be aware of exactly what happened… and do what we can to spread the knowledge, as horrific as it may be, to do what we can to make the world aware… and do what we can to make sure it never happens again.


We visited the site of one of the other volunteers in my district today. She was placed at the other new health center and is about 40 minutes outside of Nyamata by car. Her town in even more rural than mine, but it’s very nice… So we have some very exciting project going on in my district.

We also took part of the afternoon to visit the genocide memorial here in Nyamata, and that was certainly intense. It’s a very small Catholic church, and when you walk in the front gate, they show you where the grenades were thrown in and blew apart the gate. All of the clothes of the 10,000 people killed there are laid on the pews, and there are bloodstains all over them, all over the walls, the ceiling, and covering the white altar cloth that is still laid on the altar of the church. There are holes in the tin roof where the grenades blew through it. The machetes that were used to finish killing the people that were spared by the grenades are still in the church., laid out on the altar next to the rosaries of those killed. In the basement, there are bones stacked on display with a single coffin. In the coffin lies the body of one woman who managed to survive the grenades just to be raped repeatedly, and then killed when they shoved a long stick from her vagina all the way through to her head. Absolutely horrifying.

Outside of the church, there are two mass graves filled with the bodies of 41,000 people killed in the area during the genocide. There are multiple coffins stacked inside, each filled with the remains of many people. And in one grave, there is a section of stacked bones… just shelves and shelves of human bones. And I know all of this because on the surface of the graves, there is an opening with a stairwell that descends down into the graves, where you can pay your respects. It is disturbing, and sad, and just all-around heartbreaking that such a thing even happened. And it was cases like this one here in Nyamata that allowed more than 800,000 people to be killed in one summer. 10,000 people sought refuge in this one, very small church. And they stayed there for a week before they were ALL killed. It is still astonishing that such a thing happened here and it was only 16 years ago.


Nyanza, Saturday, April 3, 2010

Back in Nyanza! A group of us from the East returned to Kigali yesterday, and then made our way back to Nyanza last night. It’s good to be back… but I’m definitely looking forward to returning to my site in May! In just over a month, we will all be sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers! It’s so strange to think that training will be over in just a month… I really need to work on this Kinyarwanda…