South Africa redux: medevac

On April 4 I returned to South Africa thinking I was there for a root canal, which cannot be performed in Rwanda. When the dentist (who's worked on Bono!) took a look, it turned out no root canal needed - but he did have to repair some shoddy dental work done in Rwanda. Aside from the dental appointments, it was basically a second vacation to South Africa. I enjoyed many of the same foods, still marvelled at drinknig tap water and taking hot showers with pressure, and brought even more varieties of cheese back to Rwanda at the end of the ten days.

Partly because I'd told them about my vacation in February, I couldn't bring myself to tell my village I'd gone too South Africa to have my tooth problem addressed. People in my village were aware of the problem and knew I was having trouble, for example, eating corn. Their suggestions for this ranged from having the tooth/teeth pulled to theorizing that my wisdom teeth must be coming in (my wisdom teeth are long gone). I just could not figure out how to explain to a village full of extremely poor people, many of whom have never even been to Kigali and whose only recourse for toothaches is rudimentary extraction, that I went to South Africa on an airplane because of a toothache, all expenses paid. The inequalities there boggled my mind.

Malaria prophylaxis: did you know?

There are three common types of malaria prophylaxis: Mefloquine (a weekly hallucinogenic, see below), doxycycline (daily, also an antibiotic, and with the ironic side effect of increased sun sensitivity) and Malarone (daily, few side effects outside of the hit to your wallet).

Prophylactic pills keep you from getting sick with the symptoms, but malaria is likely still in your blood. After you leave a malaria zone, one type of malaria goes away after each time you have it while the type that lives in your liver should be flushed out with a dose of drugs (which cannot be taken if you have a G6PD deficiency, explaining why Peace Corps requires that obscure test).

The mefloquine (brand name Larium) that I’m on is a weekly pill that is known to cause vivid, sometimes hallucinogenic dreams and/or sleeplessness. I have trouble sleeping the night I take it, but I’ve gotten used to it, dreams of fires and murders aside. Anxiety, depression, psychosis or neurological symptoms such as walking crookedly have been known to develop, in which case you can switch to doxycylcine, a daily pill which has the ironic side effect of increased sun sensitivity. But guess what’s worse than side effects? Malaria.

IST in Kibuye!

There was a gorgeous view, great company, redundant sessions, swimming on an island with several varieties of birds and almost sinking a boat carved out of a tree, and lots of lizards.

It's amazing how they cling to the ceiling! The two guys chasing the one with the moth in his mouth pursued him right up to the ceiling as well.

Big Changes!

There’s some big changes to announce for me! I’ll be changing jobs and moving sites. Although it’s a bit unusual in the Peace Corps, Rwanda is a new country with new placements and it’s fairly common here for volunteers to move around a bit. I’m glad I’m doing it now, 4 months into my service, rather than after a whole year. This way I’ll still have 20 months at my new job.

Although I loved my coworkers at my old job, there wasn’t a lot of space for a Peace Corps Volunteer to work with their office. They were very diligently fulfilling donor requirements,  or making it look like they were fulfilling donor requirements, and added projects I was discussing would have been outside that scope. I was also frustrated by the relationship with the inefficient NGO funding my project, and with all of the waste (see Jen’s blog for more http://jeneambrose.blogspot.com/2010/08/ngos-wasting-money.html). Mostly, I was frustrated by the fact that my office didn’t even work in Gisenyi but in surrounding sectors. My job involved sitting on the back of a moto, riding through the beautiful country to visit groups for an hour or a morning in order to fulfill donor requirements and give “trainings” and pay out per diems before returning to town. I joined Peace Corps to do grassroots development work in the community in which I was living, but I felt like an outsider doing a modified version of the NGO-worker-in-a-Landrover activities I wanted to avoid.

In July I met an American who is here with Iowa-based Great Ape Trust and their local Gishwati Area Conservation Program, based in Gisenyi (my current city) and Gishwati forest, where they are trying to reforest and where they look after 15 or so chimps. They were vaguely interested in a PCV to do more broad community engagement work in the villages around the forest. After my hike in Gishwati LINK and some discussions with GACP and Peace Corps, I’m switching jobs. I'll be doing a broad-based needs assessment with my new counterpart, working with their environmental clubs in schools around the forest (and I hope to start health and girls' clubs), working with the local health center a bit, and trying to combat diseases shared between humans and chimps (meaning community-based education on sanitation, safe drinking water and good hygiene), and perhaps trying to bring bio-briquettes to the villages because they currently cook with wood which is bad for both the forest and their health.

I move to the village of Kinihira into the GACP field station guest room on Friday. I have my in-service training in Kibuye September 13-18, and then hopefully my tiny little house will be ready (they are doing things like knocking windows into the mud walls and building the latrine). I'm going to have a huge yard for gardening, sloping downhill with a view of Kivu on a clear day. Although I love Gisenyi, I’m getting what I wanted originally- to live and work in a rural village. There's no electricity (there are poles, so it’s coming) and I'll pay someone to fetch my water. There's an American woman who's been there a few years researching the chimps, and the local research staff live in the town, so I have a welcoming community already.

My blogging frequency will definitely decrease without electricity, but I’ll try to update in batches whenever I’m in Gisenyi. Kinihira is 75 minutes from Gisenyi on the road that goes to Kibuye. GACP has a car that goes back and forth to Gisenyi on Mondays and Fridays, and bedrooms in their office, so it will be free and easy for me to get back to Gisenyi 1-2 times a month - the best of both worlds! I’ll have the same address and I still appreciate mail, email, and phone calls.



As for the blog, I have quite a few entries written but I'm out of time! I'll be posting them from IST on the 12th, backdated, so at that point be sure to scroll down for older posts if you're not using an RSS reader.

Peace Corps TV

Materials: one iPod with video, one pair of extremely loud headphones, one clip case attached to one tshirt tied around one bent leg.

Some things that make me happy

- Discussing how difficult Kinyarwanda noun classes are…entirely in French.
- Hearing people point me out and say aracizi, “she knows the language,” when I walk down the street, before I’ve said anything to them – I’ve got a reputation!
- Greeting people, enjoying their shock and delight when I speak not French but Kinyarwanda, and hearing them say as I walk away that I’m umunyarwanda kazi, Rwandan.
- Kids on my street running up to me and hugging me, even if some still call me muzungu. Kids all over town calling me Agatesi and not muzungu, as far away as the bus station and down by the lake.
- Watching over-sexualized American music videos with Rwandan adults who have no idea whatsoever the context of these videos – the S&M imagery of Rihanna’s Disturbia was to them “ghosts.”
- “Cooking dinner” last night with two colleagues. Which meant that we grilled some corn (think: half-popped, grilled non-sweet corn, it’s pretty good!) and sat there eating it while watching our host’s umukozi cook.
- Getting fed dinner every time I watch the world cup with my colleague who has a satellite. And in general, the bonding that’s occurring over the World Cup.
- I have grown to love Rwandan tea, which is actually hot milk with plenty of sugar and a hint of tea or Nescafe. Similarly, I really do enjoy a cold Fanta Citron – it’s like a refreshing carbonated lemonade.
- Serena’s real actual delicious coffee in a huge pot, served with steamed milk, for $2.25 – just over half my daily budget and totally worth it. Plus the wireless there is really fast. And I can take a hot shower. And the view of Kivu and Congo with the sound of the waves really is serene.

Checking in

A few notes:

1. I got a postbox in Gisenyi, so my mailing address has changed:
Trude (last name)
B.P. 304
Gisenyi, Rwanda, East Africa
I’ve updated my contact info page accordingly. I’d love packages – especially with food. Nuts, dried fruit, candy (rease’s pieces), canned treats (jalepenos, peaches)… Also magazines (New Yorker, Atlantic, etc) and new movies and whatever else might surprise me. But packages aren’t necessary – I’d love mail or even just email!

2. I’ve been a Peace Corps Volunteer for one month as of tomorrow. They aren’t lying when they say there’s lots of ups and downs, often within the same day! There are countless frustrating moments, but I’m getting very good at keeping my emotions in check – and I've learned that many things that are frustrating one day might get resolved the next day, or the next week. As Rwandans say, ihangane (“ee-hahn-gahn-ay”), have patience.

Each day presents new challenges, new vocabulary, new discoveries, new confusions, new triumphs. Some days I’m pumped about my awesome coworkers and working with cooperatives, other days I’m not sure how I fit in with my assigned organization – but then I’m excited about all the other potential projects in the community. Some days I’m down on having a housemate, but then I love my neighborhood and view LINK. Particularly when I see tons of other white people, I still get bummed about not being rural and isolated, but then I love the opportunities and bustle and character of Gisenyi. Cries of “muzungu” irritate me one minute and the next I’m smiling because I’ve introduced myself and made a new neighborhood friend who’s impressed with my infantile Kinyarwanda.

I’m celebrating small victories, like when the Congolese woman who lives in one of the other two houses in my gate fed me dinner of cassava “bread” and delicious greens on Tuesday. Speaking of food, yesterday I ate a mango the size of a (slightly flattened) football (it was expensive, but well worth it). The daily views of lake Kivu and the Congo beyond, the nightly volcano show, my wonderful (and funny) coworkers, text message exchanges with my fellow volunteers, the proximity of the beach, lots of worthwhile potential projects, and never being bored: I’m mostly happy, and always happy to be here.

3. I’d like you guys to comment with your questions about Rwanda, Rwandans, or my life here. What topics should I cover in the future? Is there anything you want to see a picture of? Who’s reading this?

On development, empowerment, and my responsibilities as a Peace Corps Volunteer

A few months ago, Texas in Africa wrote a post on celebrity humanitarianism. As fan of U2’s music, performance, and politics (I refer to the band’s general political outlook, not Bono’s specific policy stances, because I don’t much care for Jeff Sachs), I cringe a little every time this comes up. From the abstract of Riina Yrjola’s original article on the subject:

The article argues that, while Geldof and Bono do push for economic changes for Africa, the spatio-temporality of their imaginaries and interpretations on Africa elaborate a colonial imaginary by (re)producing Africa as a specifically Western project and calling. By repeating and circulating the vocabulary of humanitarianism as a moral duty in combination with the engagement in power politics, these discourses not only serve a purpose in the maintenance of hegemonic Western activity in Africa, but are also instrumental in constructing consensus for the existing world order, where the global South is, and remains, in a subordinate position to the West.

I haven’t had a chance to read the whole article, but the above paragraph eloquently clarifies why I feel such revulsion when Bono talks about this issue (in contrast to the joy U2’s music brings me). Bono’s heart is in the right place, but good intentions are not enough (the author is an RPCV) if a development actor's actions worsen a situation or entrench bad conditions.

It’s an important thought to keep in mind as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Our communities do not exist so that American volunteers can develop professionally and as individuals, see the world, and get some culture, even if these things are personally rewarding and motivate many PCVs (myself included).

Not all Peace Corps projects are successful, and I expect to blunder through my share of failures before I succeed. It’s incredibly scary to step into a community as a development worker knowing I’m stepping into a minefield of problems I might exacerbate. No matter how small my projects, I have a responsibility to ensure positive outcomes, and I don’t know that I’m qualified for or deserving of that responsibility. If anything I work on perpetuates or worsens a problem, fosters dependence, or creates negative unintended consequences that outweigh positive progress, I might as well go home now.

How will I attempt to avoid these pitfalls? Before I start any projects, I will conduct a variety of community needs assessments. As per Peace Corps philosophy, all of my projects should be planned in collaboration with my community and implemented in partnership with members of the community. Ideally I will merely be a facilitator for sustainable projects, a mentor and capacity builder for my already-quite-capable counterparts.

Post script: Last week, after I had written the above, Texas in Africa wrote a series of posts about the “savior complex” versus the “empowerment paradigm” (her final post on donor governments and aid politics is also worth reading).  As dictated by Peace Corps philosophy but also my own beliefs on development, my job should be defined by many of the elements included in her empowerment paradigm. It all boils down to a core Rwandan development value, embodied by the oft-heard phrase “kwiteza imbere,” or “to better oneself.”

Ndi umukorerabushake wa Peace Corps!

Translation: I am a Peace Corps Volunteer! Yes, the word for volunteer is eight syllables long. That's "oo-moo-core-air-ah-boo-shah-chay."

I was sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer yesterday in a lovely ceremony at the US Ambassador’s residence. After months of training, I was incredibly happy to take the oath. And eat the cake, lasagna, mac and cheese....

The event was filmed and aired on TV that night, and I’ve received multiple comments from other muzungus, the ladies at the bank, etc saying they saw it. Today’s New Times has an article including a picture I’m in – check out my tailor-made dress.

Now I’ve got the weekend in Kigali to enjoy the food (Indian! Ethiopian! Pizza! Burgers! Ice Cream! Mutzig Draught!) and shop for my house, plus build a pantry of goods from the Indian stores and Western supermarkets (cous cous, lentils, spices, chick pea flour, healthy oil…)

Then it’s off to Gisenyi Tuesday to get to work.

The envelope please...Gisenyi!

I’m headed to Gisenyi for the next two years! I spent 4 days this week visiting my future home. My hosts were unbelievably kind and my future coworkers are wonderful. The work will be more along the lines of community and business development than health work: my primary project will be helping cooperatives develop capacity and find markets for their projects.

I’m still coming to terms with being an urban volunteer and mourning the loss of the extremely rural Peace Corps experience I so badly wanted. But, urban development issues are complex and interesting, I think I’ll have more work to do in an urban setting, and there are some great perks to Gisenyi (beach, fresh fish, hotels with internet and beach and hot showers I can “borrow,” a daily market with fabulous produce and fabric and shoes).

PC training notes

This will be a long one. For anyone who’s curious about my day-to-day activities during training, here’s a brief rundown.

In a few days I’ll find out my permanent site, and next week I’ll meet my supervisor and visit site for 4-5 days. I’m incredibly excited.

Aside from the week of site visit, the 36 trainees live together in 4 houses in Nyanza, which is a mid-sized town. My house just might be the luckiest – we have padded furniture in our living room (we may or may not have fleas), it’s a very reasonable 8 minute walk to the center where we have classes and meals, and most of the time we are spoiled by running water and electricity.

LCFs (Language and cross cultural facilitators) live with us, and I want to take a moment to acknowledge how amazingly helpful they are. In addition to being great classroom teachers, they are always willing to take time to answer questions about language or culture, so are pretty much on the job 24/7. Plus they are all really great people and it’s a pleasure to get to know them.

A kitchen staff prepares our meals, and I understand that the previous group’s requests have paved the way for our relative variety. Breakfast is bread, butter and fruit, sometimes with peanut butter or avocados or omelets. Lunch and dinner are either Rwandan (some combination of meat or fish, greens or carrots, rice or plantains or cassava or potatoes prepared in innumerable ways, occasionally salad with mayo, and almost always with a runny tomato sauce that I love) or Rwandanized American food (onion-heavy guac with beans and rice, pasta with ground beef but no tomato sauce). From Sunday dinner through Saturday lunch, we receive an allowance to buy food for ourselves (brochettes!).

Breakfast ends at 8. We have 2 hours of class, a half hour tea break with samosas or chapatti, and another 1.5 hours of class. Then we get 2.5 hours for lunch, 2 more afternoon classes that end at 5pm, and either free time or practical lessons (e.g. how to do laundry) before dinner at 7pm. Sometimes the afternoon is set aside as “language application,” either with our resource families or wandering around town. Curfew is 10pm, and in evenings I can be found either studying, grabbing a beer, or with my computer.

We have class Monday morning through Saturday lunch. About half our classes are language classes with 3-4 students. Tech sessions inform us about the Rwandan health system and health challenges here, tools we’ll use as health volunteers, and projects such as kitchen gardens. We also have medical sessions (e.g. food and water safety, causes of fevers), safety and security sessions, and cross cultural sessions.

Other general Peace Corps Rwanda news: Our excellent PCMO is leaving, and being replaced by an expat PCMO and a local hire to accommodate PC’s growth here. The new Rwandan doctor is named Doctor Elite, so I’m clearly in good hands. The next staging class in October with have 70 (!!) education volunteers, both TOEFL and math/science. Rwanda has a huge need for English-speaking teachers because they switched the instructional language from French to English at the beginning of the 2010 school year. The health stage that follows us will be pushed back to the summer of 2011; PC doesn’t want to continue holding training during the genocide memorial period.

Peace Corps Rwanda!

Muraho! (Hello.)

This blog will chronicle my time in the Peace Corps in Rwanda and potentially beyond. I'm not sure how often I will write (due to limited internet access or limited desire). I'm sure this will not be my ideal blog, which would contain dynamic and original posts of topical content in a digestible length and would receive regular links from bloggers I admire. Peace Corps is all about adjusting expectations and working with constraints, so we'll see how it turns out.

My job title in the Peace Corps will be Community Health and Organizational Development. The specifics will depend on where I am assigned to work, but the job will likely focus on capacity building and assisting with health and HIV/AIDS treatment, support and prevention services. I will also engage in secondary projects that fit my community's needs and may include teaching English as Rwanda is currently switching the national language from French to English.

Rwanda is in many ways a perfect placement for me. I have an academic foundation in central African history and African economics, and in peace and conflict studies and transitional justice. My career interest is in working with refugees or in a post-conflict setting. Rwanda also offers opportunities for me to further my background in women's empowerment. It is a country in the midst of fascinating political, economic and justice developments. What I am more apprehensive about is the rumor that Kinyarwandan is the second hardest language in the world to learn.

Here is my obligatory Peace Corps timeline:

2005-2008: Debate whether I should apply to the Peace Corps after college.
Summer 2008: Meet a bunch of great PCVs during my travels through the Balkans. Saw the program first hand, and decided to apply, but had trouble figuring out how to time it. I was living in Geneva, Switzerland at the time.
Dec 19, 2008: Submit online application. Immediately contacted Boston office to request an interview during my limited time at home in Boston.
Jan 7, 2009: Interview. I pushed for French-speaking Africa and not teaching. No open programs for fall of 2009 fit these criteria and my qualifications, so we wait until the next quarter of nominations open up.
Jan 23, 2009: My recruiter offers me a nomination in Community Development, French Africa, March 2010. I agree, but she is out of office and the program fills up.
Feb 12, 2009: I am nominated for Health, French Africa, leaving late January 2010. I immediately do some online research and figure out that it's probably Rwanda, which was reopened in January 2009.
June 19, 2009: I submit my medical papers after a complicated process due to my living abroad. My mother was invaluable in running around to the doctor and dentist and printing and organizing the scans I emailed her. She got the paperwork filled out based on the physical and cleaning I'd had while in the US in January. I had to go to France (cheaper than Switzerland and a 20 minute bus ride from work) to get various blood tests done and then translate them to English.  Nobody from PC could tell me what I needed while I was in the US in January because I hadn't officially been nominated yet. For others in a similar situation, you can find medical papers on Peacecorpswiki.org, a site I found too late.
Aug 2009: My internship with UNHCR ends and I return to Boston to wait. Knowing I'm leaving in January, I couldn't get a job, so I take on another refugee-related internship and volunteer with an AIDS-related youth program to satisfy Peace Corps's request that I gain more HIV/AIDS volunteer experience. 

Aug 27, 2009: Dentally cleared.
Sep 21, 2009: Receive notice I was medically cleared Sep 17. Speak to a placement assistant and send an updated resume and cover letter. (At this point I had fantasies of getting bumped up to an earlier departure. Haha.)
Fall 2009: Continue to send resume updates as I attend trainings and start new volunteer positions.
Nov 9, 2009: Email placement assistant asking if I am still on track for a January departure. She informs me that the program I was nominated for was delayed a month. This conforms to what I've seen online regarding Rwanda.
Dec 2009: Call a few times to ask what's up. I am practicing my self-advocacy skills rather than my patience. On Dec 7 they tell me 2-3 weeks, and on Dec 31 they tell me my file is on the placement officer's desk.
Jan 6, 2010: Get an email, log into the online toolkit, and see "Congratulations!" My invitation was mailed on Jan 5.
Jan 7, 2010: Rwanda it is! My job title is Community Health and Organizational Development. Send a mass text and a lot of emails. Read the information and call to accept my invitation.

Expected dates:
Feb 23-24 2010: Staging in Philadelphia
Feb 25 - May 11 2010: Training in Nyanza, Rwanda on topics including language (Kinyarwandan), technical (health and organizational development skills), cultural, safety and security, and personal health.
May 11 2010 - May 2012: Service!