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).