Earthquake

So I experienced my first earthquake here in Rwanda (third in a life time)!! So the country of 1,000 hills were formed through a series of earthquakes that continue on regular bases. The earthquake registered 6.1 and was about 200 miles away. the quake was strong but short it lasted about 30 seconds. By the time I realized what was going on it had stopped. but it sure was interesting.

Kinyarwanda Vocabulary

Due to popular request here are some vocabulary for your reference. In general, kinyarwandan words end in e and is pronounced like in spanish (muramutse is muramutseh)

Murakaza Naza Welcome
Muraho Hello
Muramutse Good morning
Mwerewe (pronounced Merewe) Good afternoon
Bite se? (beates) What's up?
Beragenda? how's it going?
Murabeho Good bye

Yego Yes
Oya No

Sawa Ok

I'll continue to update this on regular bases but feel free to ask me

My Assignment

So I have two more weeks left on my training then we go to Kigali, the capital for 1 week. Peace Corps has a graduation ceremony followed by a swearing-in ceremony for Peace Corps volunteer at the ambassador's house, which is awesome.

Following the swearing in, we all move to our sites. Mine is at a place called Gankeke (pronounced Gashenhh). It's a small village about an hour north of the capital and about 30 minutes from the second largest city in Rwanda, Musanze. Gakenke is known for some attractions mainly mount Kaboye, the tallest in Rwanda and one of the tallest in Africa it sits about 12,000 ft. My plans are to hike mount kaboye every chance I have. Musanze is actually a tourist attraction with many hotels and cool spots. The main industry is focused on the national parks and the forest where the gorillas reside. It's a popular area and was featured in the national geographic. They also have other large mountains and popular trails.

I'm looking forward to it for sure. Gakenke supports 2 district hospitals and 19 health centers.

The NGO I'll be working with is called Access Project (www.theaccessproject.org). They're affilisted with Columbia University and work in 4 regions around Rwanda in addition to their office in Kigali. They provide management and technical support to health clinics in meeting operations and quality indicators, improving services and access to care. One of their latet projects involves building a new health clinic and a youth center. The NGO staff is amazing and I'm very excited

My Weekend Adventures I

In a previous post I gave a picture of a typical day for me in Rwanda. Some people inquired about how I’ve been spending my weekends. Here’re some weekend activities:

Friday, March 20, 2009 – The Rwanda Music Awards took place at the National University here in Butare. The tickets were 2,000 RWF ($3.5). A group of us decided to go that night and I’m glad we did since it ended up being a cool event with the big shots from Rwandan pop culture present. We managed to find our way to the front row of the theatre hall. The atmosphere was full of vibe with hip hop and pop performances. The awards ceremony was a mini MTV music awards with the best teen artist for 2009 seated two seats down to my left. Next to him was the 2009 best Hip Hop Female artist! Right behind here was the P Diddy of Rwandan music (2009 producer of the year). It was fun being in the presence of celebrity without all the hype…the performances were great especially hip hop. The sense of fashion of celebrities is worth mentioning. Bling bling is well presented here with thick jewelry around their necks. Animal print shirts (leopard, zebra) with flared cuffs is big here I came to notice.

Saturday, March 21, 2009 – Part of our three months training involves culture exchange in addition to Language and technical healthcare lessons.

The culture exchange lesson this time involved Rwandan Kitchen. The day before, for one of the language lessons the teachers focused on words and phrases common to cooking. This past Friday we broke into 4 groups. Each group had a shopping list and were tasked to go to the market and purchase the items on their list (all in kinyarwanda). My list consisted of:
- 5 kg of meat
- 20 kg of potatoes
- 5 kg of sweet potatoes
- 2 kg of bone!!

The full list included live chicken (5), fish, greens, various vegetables, and more. On Saturday morning we started our day at 8:00 to start cooking Rwandan food in a Rwandan kitchen. A quick note on Rwandan kitchen, Rwandan kitchen has no stove or any of the electronics commonly found in the US which made for a fun and long cooking experience. The highlight for me was slaughtering two of the five chickens. I must say that a sharp knife would’ve made it less of a horrifying experience but the chicken died in peace!! Others were in charge of peeling and chopping 44 Ibs of potatoes for the frensh fries!! Others scaled the fish and prepped it to be fried! Overall it was quite a cultural experience!!

Out for a Run

Here are two stories that I would like to share with you:

The first one was earlier today. While I was out jogging from the training center at Taba (the village town we're staying in) I came across school kids who were heading home from school. As they saw me heading down hill, one kid turned around and yelled "Umuzongo" which is the word for white people, and all at a sudden a group of kids turned around and started running in front of me. I greeted them and kept on my way but turned around to find 8 of the kids keeping pace with me. it was such a fun experience and they continued with me for the next mile and half. It was inspiring indeed.

The second story was related to a site visit to one of the clinics around Butare. The clinic I visited was at the umodogodo (village) of Murkazi. The purpose of the visit was to learn about the health care system in Rwanda at the community level. The clinic we visited had about 25 beds and served a population of about 11,000 some people travel 2 hours to reach the center. Some of the services provided there are geared around maternity and pediatrics. They had a small lab with one microscope, a centrifuge and simple tools for urine and preliminary blood tests. They also had a small pharmacy. We toured the facility including the Labor and Delivery ward. We then walked into the post natal room to find a 1-day old baby. It was a humbling experience but inspiring at the same time. The quality of the clinics here despite the simplicity and lack of automation exceeded our expectations in terms of some of the patient registration practices and quality of care. The dedication of the staff in assisting patients and making sure the community members receive the medical attention they need was visible and is worth highlighting.

Perhaps in a separate entry I’ll touch on the health insurance system they have here in Rwanda and far exceeds the US…

Until then, love you and miss you all.

p.s. I wish I could post some pics but the connection here is too slow.

A day in my Life in Butare

Things are great here so far. Rwanda is a beautiful country and the people are amazing. The weather is great too since it's on high altitude. The scenery is like being out in California, it is that beautiful with hills and all.

So I spent two days in DC for orientation and got to meet the team there. This is the first Peace Corps group back in Rwanda in 15 years so there's a lot of excitement around it. They had a reception for us at the PC headquarters with the Rwandan ambassador to the US and the Director of PC so that was nice. The trip out to Rwanda wasn't bad, we had two 7 hour flights to Brussels and then to Kigali, the capital to Rwanda. We spent two days in Kigali. the first day we had a meeting with the Minister of Health who shared with is the vision and the country goals related to healthcare. They're excited here as well and we were featured in the paper twice already. the second day we went to the Genocide memorial and museum which was very emotional.

We are now in Butare, 2.5 hours south of Kigali. Butare is known as the intellectual capital of Rwanda with the national university and museums. We're staying at a campus that's run by a group of nuns as part of an NGO. It's nice here. We each have a room with a bed and desk. We share bathrooms but they keep things clean. We're also served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. PC also set this up as a training center for us so they have classes for us in the shape of shacks outdoors. Each class is 4 people and we each get a teacher that teaches us Kenyarwanda. A typical day for me is:

My alarm goes off at 6:00 AM. I take a nice bucket shower (very weak water flow) and now they installed water heaters so at least it's not cold showers!! Breakfast is served from 7:00 to 8:00. Sometimes we get eggs, bread rolls, avocados!!, gebna roomi, nutella, as well as coffee and tea. At 8:00 we start our classes. they broke us into groups of 3-4 with a Rwandan teacher (they speak English) the classrooms are outdoors and in little gazebos in a courtyard garden which is amazing and inviting environment for learning. at 10:00 we get a tea break which they serve with local deserts. 10:30 we’re back in class. Lunch is served at noon. lunch consists of soup (lentil or mixed vegetables), rice or pasta, greens, and some type of meat (usually goat meat). We continue again with classes till 5:00 PM (the afternoon session today involved community activity so we went to the market and practiced our kinyarwandan with the locals) 5:30 we go to a place nearby for some sports activities (volleyball, basket, and soccer) Dinner is at 7:00 Pm after that we either chill outside. Two people have guitars so they play some tunes and we study. I'm usually in bed by 10:00.

It’s amazing how fast we’re learning the language we’re already going out to town and interacting with the locals in the local language.


Murabeho

First two weeksin Rwanda

Cheers from Rwanda, Muraho, Amakoro?

This is my first blog entry since I got here. The internet connection is not the best so it's been a challenge signing in.

We're now into our third week in Rwanda and it's been an amazing experience so far. We're in Butare, 2.5 hours south of Kigali the capital. Butare is not as large of a city as I thought it would be but it's beautiful. The university campus is nice and the surroundings are full of greenery and hills.

Rwanda is known as the country of 1,000 hills and being here I can see why that is the case. We've been going through some extensive training in the local language and culture. the local language here is Kenyarwandan and it's amazing that I'm picking up the language and able to communicate after two weeks here.

I'll keep this short but will post two more entries one related to my daily routine and another on foods in Rwanda. Feel free to post questions or leave comments.

Miss you all