Weekend in Kibuye

Friday afternoon, after finishing up our interviews, we left the clinic a little early to head back to the volunteer house to pack for a weekend trip to Kibuye. We had heard from other volunteers and RVCP members that Kibuye, which borders Lake Kivu, is beautiful and a good place to vacation for a weekend. Lake Kivu is located in the Western province of Rwanda and extends past the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is considered one of the Great Lakes of Africa and is also one of the three “exploding lakes” in the world due to volcanic activity. For more information on the lake, I recommend wikipedia as a scholarly and reliable resource.

So Friday afternoon, tickets in hand, we walked over to the bus station and attempted to board a bus to Gitarama (where we would catch another bus to Kibuye). As we approached it, we were pushed to the side and told to wait. At that point, an older Rwandan man approached me and told me to buy a bus ticket (apparently I looked lost and confused to him). I tried to tell him as clearly as I could that we had already purchased them, using a series of simple gestures to emphasize my point. He insisted on directing me towards to station office, uttering, “buy ticket, buy ticket there,” at which point I responded that I had one and was waiting to get on the bus. After about five minutes of this exchange, I gave up, and walked back towards the rest of my group members who were clearly amused by my how unaware I was that my message had been lost in translation right as the conversation had began. Admittedly, it was not my first attempt of the trip to “converse” with someone who knew absolutely no English, all of which began and ended awkwardly and consisted of mostly desperate gestures. 

The bus to Gitarama arrived shortly after and, upon boarding, I was surprised by how comfortable and spacious it was (we realized shortly after this leg of the trip that this mode of transport was a false hope for what was to come). The bus glided effortlessly over rolling hills and I watched the dusty, flat roads of Butare morph into paved streets, overlooking coffee and maize farms that extended as far as I could see. As I stared out the window, I lost myself in the scenery as the undulating melodies of Rogue Wave and the Shins on my ipod harmonized with the movements of the bus over the hills. 

Abruptly we came to a stop, and I heard the murmur of passengers in the front and some faint laughter. A woman practically jumped off the bus and ran over to the woods. In case we hadn’t picked up on the fact that the woman was carsick, a man to the right of our group said in a very model sounding French accent, “she’s going to vomit.” We burst out laughing, as the situation was pretty clear to us without the English translation. Some things always translate. 

As soon as everyone was back inside, the bus continued to Gitarama. We were dropped off on the side of the road at what looked like a strip mall with no buses in sight. Using gestures with a couple of the shopkeepers, we managed to find our way to the station which was filled with old 1970s tour buses, refurbished to act as taxis to the neighboring villages.   We were directed towards a bus that was already filled (or so it appeared) with passengers. Regina and Caleb were lucky enough to locate one seat and the guy motioned for them to share it. I was directed towards the back of the bus (where 4 people were already seated) into a small space that could not have been larger than 6 inches. Sitting in the back of a tour bus for 3 hours in a quarter seat was not exactly the experience I was hoping for so I managed to get myself out of the bus, hoping to get at least a third of a seat if I waited. Sure enough, Amanda and I were directed into the seat with Caleb and Regina as two boys climbed through the open window into the 6-inch seat I was previously directed towards in the back. I have no idea what the capacity of that bus was but I’m pretty sure it was less than the 22 people we fit into it. As the last of the passengers struggled to situate themselves on top of other passengers we shut the doors and the driver headed out for the main road.

After about 2 hours of winding streets and bumpy, unpaved roads we arrived in Kibuye. We were greeted by a motorcycle driver who offered to take us all to a nice hotel for a very cheap fare. The driver, whose name we learned was Ignatius, was kind and spoke English very well. After dropping us off at the hotel, he gave us his cell phone number so we could call him whenever we needed a ride into town.

The hotel, called the Bettany, offered two types of rooms. The first type for 10,000 Francs a night was very similar to what we had in Butare. The second type, for 30,000 a night was like a palace. The expensive rooms were situated in a large four-story house, overlooking the lake. Walking into the building, I was greeted by marble floors and air conditioning, both of which seemed foreign to me after a week of what I considered, “luxurious camping,” in the volunteer house. The bathroom itself looked like something fit for Paul Kagame and I smiled at the thought of being able to use a real shower. It all seemed too good to be true, but we decided, without “reservations,” to book the room for two nights.

As you can probably already see from my last post, the room was too good to be true. While we were there, the hotel experienced a problem with their water and the lovely marble and granite shower served no other purpose but as something to admire. Because half of our room was useless to us, Amanda and I decided to move into the 10,000 RFW room on second night, trading our tempurpedic mattresses for cushioned boards and air conditioning for a mosquito nets.

Side note: I would like to admit something that most people reading this would never imagine of me. I managed to fit everything for three days into one backpack. One small Northface backpack, nothing else. I understand that packing light is not exactly something that most people associate me with, so I just had to throw that one out there. 

Our trusted driver, Ignatius, met us the following morning and took us around town. He ended up staying with us the whole day, and we all really enjoyed talking to him and hearing his stories. We learned that he was a Congolese refugee and had recently come to Kibuye to work in order to provide for his wife and five kids. He and his family had spent a significant amount of time in a refugee camp near Kibuye and he told us that the living conditions there were horrible and that he was funneling all the money he could make into getting his family out of the camp. I was so amazed that, despite everything he had been through, Ignatius was constantly smiling and willing to show us around while expecting nothing in return except for a small motorcycle fare. During the day he took us out to a small island where we were able to swim. All I could think was that it was three hours he could have been driving people around and he chose to forgo that to help us out. After taking us around, we invited him back to the hotel to have lunch with us. It was the least we could do after all of the help he had provided and we knew from before that he would rarely be able to eat more than one meal a day after buying food for his family and paying the rental fee for his motorcycle. Listening to him talk and hearing his stories of how he was rejected from jobs because of his refugee status (even though he knew five languages that he had taught himself and spoke English better than anyone else I had met from Rwanda), I felt like I had entered into a movie or a novel. His story seemed unreal, and yet the experiences he spoke of were so incredibly potent.

On Sunday we had breakfast in the morning and headed back towards Kibuye to catch the bus home. Ignatius was at church, so we decided to walk to the town instead of taking a motorcycle. About a mile outside of the town, we saw him approaching us on his motorbike, grinning. He told us that he had his family and wife with him in town and that they wanted to personally thank us for the little bit of money we had given him the previous day for all of his help. He even brought us a picture of his family with a thank you note written on the back. Receiving that note and all the gratitude that was behind it was one of the most incredible experiences of the trip so far, and something I will always remember.

His five children were very shy but incredibly sweet. We took a couple of pictures with them but his youngest child, Norbert, was very afraid of the camera (you can tell from the pictures- he is hiding behind the motorcycle). Even though they were young, I could tell that they understood how far the little bit of money that we gave him would go. We all have Ignatius’ email address now and I hope that he continues to update us on his life and it progresses, and hopefully, becomes easier.

I can’t say that the ride back to Butare was that eventful after a crazy weekend. Again we were crunched in the back of the van and again the driver drove so fast to the point where I was almost convinced we were going to drive off the edge of the curving road. We did come across a van, similar to our own, that had flipped on the side of the road. Our driver pulled over and people began to murmur things quietly and stare. Nervous that some people might have been hurt, I asked the first person that passed our bus if everyone was Ok. “No one been died,” he replied. It was good enough for me. Our driver continued at a much slower pace towards Butare. 

Pictures From Week One

   

                         

 

1,2,3) Motorcycle ride from Huye to Butare

4) Outside the RVCP orphanage

5) "Muzungu!"

6) National Museum of Rwanda

7) Amanda, Regina, Caleb and I outside the health clinic

Thursday and Friday- Week One

Traveler’s Guide- The Rwanda Edition

-   Always negotiate the price of an item before hand (food, transportation, lodging, etc.). Rwandans charge foreigners double and will purposely not understand you if you attempt to negotiate a discount after. 

-Make sure to ask the hotel staff if the rooms have running water before you pay. If they do not, kindly ask if you can be directed towards a hotel that does.

-   Keep orders at restaurants simple (for example, if you order a turkey burger cooked medium rare with no tomato and a side of fries instead of chips, you will end up with a taco. Short orders work best- “burger, fries”). Forget about embellishing basic menus.

-   If you are walking down the street and you notice that a group of 30 children are following you, do not be alarmed. They are just curious and generally harmless.

After a week, I finally feel like I’m getting adjusted to life in Rwanda. I’m covered in mosquito bites, I’ve forgotten what a warm shower feels like, I eat avocados in some form for almost every meal, I’ve experienced food poisoning (twice), and I’ve finally met people who are on the save wavelength as me with respect to time (7:45 means 8:30 here, etc.).

            It’s been a while since my last blog so I’ll do my best to update you on the last couple of days (and hopefully be able to provide some sort of narrative to explain the travelers tips I listed above as, believe it or not, they all relate to events of the past week).

We continued with our survey on Thursday and Friday at the health clinic. On Thursday the clinic offered free vaccinations for newborns. A ton of mothers were passing in and out of the clinic so we were able to interview about 40 women within 3 hours. I was amazed that a health clinic in rural Rwanda with very few resources was able to provide vaccinations at no cost to the family of the children. I also learned through the survey that individuals in the Huye district could pay 1000 Rwandan francs a year for health insurance (less than $2) and receive prenatal care and other checkups and treatments for only 220 Rwandan francs (about $.50). A majority of the women we interviewed told us that the services they received were well worth the cost of the insurance and the clinic consultation price. Many also offered good suggestions for improvements that could be made to the clinic. We will use these suggestions to set goals for our fundraising campaigns next year, and also provide RVCP with a written report, outlining the results of our survey by the end of the month.

Later in the afternoon, Caleb, Amanda, Jean Claude and I visited the National Museum of Rwanda. For the most part, we had the museum to ourselves, and unlike the Smithsonian museums in DC, we were free to touch whatever we wanted (security was pretty loose to say the least). The coolest part of the museum was a replica of a traditional Rwandan house that visitors could walk inside. The museum was built in 1989 and had not been updated since then, but it was still cool to see the history of art, architecture, and agriculture in Rwanda. Jean Claude acted as my personal guide as well, explaining every artifact as if he had used it himself. 

RVCP Meeting and a Visit to the Huye Health Center

“You can change a culture by giving its girls the tools to grow up educated so they can help themselves.”  -Amartya Sen

 

            I came across this quote in the book, “Three Cups of Tea,” and it resonated with me. The book describes Greg Mortenson’s failed attempt to reach the summit of K2, but also shows how a series of events inspired him to return to Pakistan and build schools for children. Through these experiences, Mortenson began to understand how important women’s education was in societies where religious law created barriers for this type of empowerment.

 

            I feel that our group is trying to incorporate this philosophy by creating a maternal health program at the clinic. One of the broader, long-term goals of this program is to make women feel as if they have more control over their lives by showing them that they do have options when it comes to healthcare. Our goal is to determine what needs to be improved in the clinic by listening to the people the clinic serves. Hopefully, after we compile the results, we will be able to design a program that is catered to the women’s needs. 

 

But enough analyzing, let’s get back to Rwanda…

 

Sunday afternoon after sleeping in until 12pm (yay jet lag), we met with five RVCP members to go over our project proposal for the health center. Our plan was to conduct a needs assessment for the health clinic, directed towards women of childbearing age, so that a maternal health program could be designed and implemented. We designed a survey last year that we presented to the members Sunday at the meeting. The survey was in questionnaire format but we proposed conducting it “interview style,” so that our group would be able to interact with the women who were participating. We proposed traveling to the clinic in the morning, accompanied by two RVCP members who would translate the survey into Kinyarwanda orally, and then back-translate the responses into English so that we could record them.

 

The group seemed excited by the idea of the assessment and members were eager to offer their assistance with translation. However, we had to limit our interviews to the mornings because most RVCP members had classes and exams at the University in the afternoons. Although this meant our sample size would be smaller, we would have more than enough time to complete the survey and reach our targeted number of 150-200 participants.

 

At 7:45am this morning a caravan of motorcycle taxis, which served as our transport to the Huye Health Center, greeted us at the international participant house. It was my first experience on a motorcycle taxi and I put my nerves aside (despite the fact that the helmet was huge and largely ineffective) and took in the sights of Butare on the way to the Huye District. Holding on to the back and attempting to keep my balance was exactly the dose of caffeine I needed this morning (and way cheaper than coffee). Some people waved as I passed by and smaller kids stared, most likely baffled to see a Muzungu (“white person”) riding on the back of a motorbike.

 

After paying 700 Rwandan francs (less than $1.50) each for the ride, we walked into the health clinic and were greeted by Jose, the coordinator. She took us on a tour of the clinic, which consisted of a waiting room, pharmacy, a small maternity ward (2 beds), and a couple of patient rooms. Putting an image to the clinic that our organization had been supporting over the past year was such an incredible moment for me, especially since we were able to see the direct results of our fundraising.

 

We set up a table and our two computers and began to “recruit” patients for our needs assessment survey. The women were quite shy, but most were willing to participate in the survey. I was surprised by how much detail they went into, especially on questions where we asked what services they would like to see provided by the clinic. Even questions that I considered to be a little intrusive, the women answered thoroughly (for example, we asked what methods of contraception they use, which in the presence of a male interviewer, might make some women feel uncomfortable). By 11:00 we had interviewed 18 women. We plan on interviewing women each day for at least two weeks, and plan to get involved in RVCP’s other initiatives (they also have income generation and hygiene programs, along with an orphanage).

 

  

Kigali and Butare- First Day (Saturday, June 20, 2009 1:30PM)

We arrived this morning at the Kigali International Airport in Rwanda. After passing through immigration, we located our bags and headed out of the airport to meet our ride. Leaving the claim area, I was grabbed by a man with what looked like a security badge. He claimed that he needed to inspect my bag before I left (although I was the only person who he had grabbed on the way out). As he was looking through my bag he smiled at me pulling out and inspecting my lantern, hairbrush, sports bras and other seemingly un-suspicious items in my suitcase. As he was “inspecting” he gave me a very sly smile and casually asked me in broken English if I had a boyfriend. I laughed at the randomness of his question and subtly closed my bag and headed towards the exit as he laughed. My first interaction with a Rwandan- definitely one I will remember.

            Casian from the Rwanda Village Concept Project and the president of GW GlobeMed, Caleb, met us at the airport. After struggling for a few minutes to stuff four large suitcases into the tiny trunk of the sedan, Regina, Amanda and I stuffed ourselves in the back of the car with Casian and headed for the bus stop in Kigali. Staring out the window, I noticed hundreds of people walking down the road with large buckets of water and logs on their heads, their faces stern and determined. The streets of Kigali were decorated with shops and restaurants, and in the distance hundreds of houses lined the horizon, precariously stacked on steep hills.  We waited for a bit in Kigali and were definitely the only Westerners. Rwandans came up to me and started speaking in Kinyarwanda and offering me phone cards and fruit for purchase. I smiled and shook my head, saying in the clearest English I could that I did not have any Rwandan francs. The streets were incredibly crowded with people passing in and out of the bus station, causally glancing our way before returning to their business. Because our bags were so big, we had to buy separate bus tickets for them, which wasn't a huge deal. With the exchange rate being 560 francs to the $, it only cost us a couple of bucks for both tickets. 

I talked with Casian almost the whole way to Butare. As a pharmacy student, he was very interested in how the US school system worked. He was also really interested in American life was like since he had only been outside of Rwanda once, when he traveled to Uganda during the genocide. The Rwanda Village Concept Project, the organization we will be volunteering with starting tomorrow, was started by students like Casian- students interested in applying their studies in a purely beneficial way, giving back to the town they grew up in. They have started several initiatives in addition to the work they do in the Huye Health Clinic (where we will be spending the majority of our time), including an Orphanage and Income Generation Project.

Butare is such a great place to live! Its tiny but it has all the essentials and again, we are probably four of twenty westerners here. It was so interesting just to walk down the streets yesterday, realizing how far away from Washington I really am (in every aspect)!

We are living in a volunteer house that RVCP provided for us at no cost. The house, although basic, is very quaint. We have a little kitchen with just a sink and a small water boiler. We have to boil water every morning (as the water is not safe to drink). I took my first "bucket shower" last night which was...interesting. Definitely not a bad place to live- we're in the center of Butare but it feels like we're living in a remote paradise! I even slept the best I have in a while in the bunk bed last night. 

  The best part of the night was the party that RVCP held for us. Regina, Amanda, Caleb and I were a little skeptical when they told us about the party since we were still really jet lagged and exhausted. We walked outside to see about 14 Rwandan RVCP members conversing, and a few dancing to music a DJ was mixing on his computer. We kind of stood there awkwardly for a bit until members started coming over and introducing themselves. Everyone spoke English to differing degrees of fluency (all people here who pass through secondary school learn English and French). It took a little while to get used to the accents though and I felt badly having to ask people to repeat themselves. We were greeted by one of the leaders of RVCP who told that because were international volunteers, we were essentially heroes and had to drink the "heroes drink." We all winced as he proceeded to pour the most disgusting looking banana beer into our cups. Learning that it was rude to refuse drink offerings, we all drained the cups. The coordinator of RVCP, Jean Claude, grabbed me and started to teach me Rwandan style dance (similar to hula minus the hip swing). Pretty soon everyone was dancing to music from all over the world. Singing lyrics in English, Spanish, and French, it was the ultimate cross-cultural experience. My entire group thinks I'm this crazy dancer now (and I tried to convince them I'm NOT at all like this in DC, but for some reason in that moment, I had lost all inhibitions). We have a nice little video of me dancing (aka making a complete fool of myself). I had a blast and by the end of the night everyone was hugging me and saying how excited they were to have me there with them. I'm so excited to begin working with them tomorrow. They are seriously some of the nicest people I have ever met! 

Until tomorrow, Muraveho!

When in Rome… (Saturday, June 19, 2009 1:23AM)

            After about 10 hours in the air (the longest flight of my life) we have finally touched down in Rome to refuel before flying to Addis Ababa. I can honestly say that the moment we took off this morning was the first time it really hit me that I was going to Rwanda. Sitting in the airport, I was in the company of a very diverse group of people, all traveling to different parts of Africa for extremely different reasons. I met one group of students traveling to Zambia to do volunteer work, another man traveling to Rwanda to start up an outward bound program, and a very exuberant couple traveling to Ethiopia to adopt their first child. All of the people I talked to seemed fascinated by the work that my group is doing in Rwanda. I felt an instant connection to the people I met today, and their enthusiasm and interest in my work provided the justification I needed to prove to myself that I had made the right decision.

  Our flight to Ethiopia will be about 6 hours, where we have about a two-hour layover before flying into Kigali later this morning. My conception of time is already completely off and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel tired right now considering it’s only 5:00 pm in the states. I will post again when we have landed in Rwanda (hopefully somewhat rested by then).