Finally a Real PC Experience…sort of

It’s Sunday, March 15, 2009, and I am back at my Training Site. Lots of things happened this last week that I am dreading even writing this blog entry because I know it will be long…bear with me if you can. We were told last Friday which District each of us will live in and the Agency we will work with for the next two years. The Agency I will be working with is EPR, which stands for Eglise Presbyterian Rwanda, and it’s a Faith-Based Organization. Can’t say I was too ecstatic once I found out it was an FBO, but we learned more about our respective agencies at a Health Fair they set up for us in Kigali this past Monday and I was very impressed with how many different services they provide to the communities they serve (including Family Planning!). It was also the first time we went back to Kigali since we first arrived to Rwanda over a month ago. On Monday we met our counter-parts (people who will be working with us in their organization) and we had an all day conference of getting to know you type of thing. My counter-part is Dr. Paul (Rwandans present themselves Last name first, then their First name and its appropriate to call them Dr. First Name) He is a very interesting guy and he is the Director of the Hospital that I will be working (and living in…which I’ll talk about in a bit) with. He is 50 years old, has been practicing medicine for the past 5 years (not sure why so late, but he said he’ll explain to me the entire story sometime) and he would like to teach me Karate! Real cool guy. He speaks French, Kinyarwanda and a bit of English. He wants me to help him with his English, but really everyone’s counter-part expects the same thing. Everyone is really eager to learn English here and I it makes sense that the next group of volunteers coming here next year will be English Teaching Volunteers since its in high demand (Actually, I got more information about this before I posted this blog entry, so I’ll just include it here: A new group of Volunteers will be coming this October!). The next day, we had half a day of orientation, but my counterpart is usually extremely busy I learned and had a meeting with the Ministry of Health. Sleeping in Kigali that night wasn’t great. It was cold, noisy and we were right next to a Mosque, so we heard the call to prayer around 530am and it went on for about 30 mins. I also heard 2 loud bangs during the night like some cars had crashed, but I don’t know what it was. It was just a rough night all around. That Tuesday morning I woke up with a sore throat, runny nose and my allergies kicked in all morning. I must have used 3 rolls of tissue paper from sneezing so much. Each of us were leaving with our counter-part that afternoon, but some of us lived too far from Kigali and had to travel through dirt roads that it was going to take 6-9 hours, so they stayed overnight. I was told that my site was 30 mins outside of Kigali, so I thought was leaving that afternoon, but my counter-part had a meeting all afternoon, so I was going to stay at the hotel with others. We planned to walk around the city and go to the mall (UTC) that people have said is pretty amazing. Well, none of that happened for me since my counter-part called me late that afternoon and said he was out of his meeting early and able to pick me up so we can go to my site. He said he’ll pick me up in 30 mins, but he didn’t come till almost 3 hours later (My first experience with the infamous African Time everyone talks about). Regardless, I was looking forward to walking around Kigali and seeing how much random things cost so I can compare with prices back home. We left Kigali around 630pm and by this time, it’s already dark. The drive to my site was somewhat scary since I thought for sure the driver of the car was going to kill some people on the road with all these crazy turns. We travelled on the main road for about 30 mins, then we turned on a side dirt road and drove for about another 20 mins (rural!) until we got to the hospital I’ll be working and living at. It’s a pretty big hospital and patients are everywhere you look. They have housing for staff (Doctors, Nurses, etc…) in the back of the hospital. Before I even got to my room, the Director took me to his office and said right off the bat that he wants me to help start an Cyber Café (Internet) because the closest place for internet is Kigali (yikes!). My initial thought was “Uhhh…my brother should be here for that, not me…I’m a health volunteer” but I told him that I will try to help in any way I can. I’m assuming he wants me to write grants to get computers at the hospital, but not actually do the setting up of the internet and modem stuff because that is not something I know. We usually just asked my brother to do all that stuff since he knows it very well. So by this time, my tasks are to teach English to staff (which he said he would like me to do on the drive to the site) and create a cyber café….Basically be a Teaching Volunteer and IT Volunteer. We haven’t even begun to talk about health, but I reminded him and the staff at a meeting the next morning that I am a health volunteer and I will be working with the community regarding their health primarily and teaching English in a school setting as a secondary project. I know I’ll be doing more than that, but I just wanted to remind them that my primary job is health related. Once I spoke with some of my friends over the phone, they were all told to help teach English and do IT related stuff as well. Health seemed to have taken a back seat in our counter-parts mind it seemed. No matter though, we know why we are here and we’ll manage to do it I’m sure. So I’m finally led to my living quarters and it’s a compound (not a house really) that has a nice sized yard, so that’s a plus, and as I entered with my bags, I see there is a table, couches, a tv, a dvd player and I see food is on the table. My counter-part tells me that we can eat dinner now and as we both start eating, another Doctor joins us and she is called Dr. Lydie (but pronounced Lidia like my mom!). It’s then I realized that this compound isn’t only for me, but it’s where the doctor’s live also. I’ll be sharing a living room, bathroom, shower, a cook/house worker, yard with them. At this point, I assume it’s just the 3 of us in this place, but nope! I find out the next morning that there are 4-5 doctors that live there. There are 4 rooms, but one room is mine (it has 2 beds in there – only 1 had a mattress, a built in closet, a blue table and chair, and curtains for the window) and the other rooms are for the doctors (since there is only 1 female doctor in the entire hospital, she has her own room as well) and the other has 2 male doctors in each. I was hoping I would get my house like so many other PCVs, but nope, denied! Lame! I’m hoping I can work something out with the Peace Corps Staff at this point, but we’ll see. It’s not terrible, but I was really looking forward to having a home which I can call my own and have people over. With this one room, I can just have one person over really and it’s not private. To top it off, the doctors are from neighboring countries and they all mostly speak French and Kinyarwanda. Dr. Lydie does understand English and speaks with me, but the other doctors didn’t really bother to speak to me in English and when I spoke to them their responses were short. They just spoke French to each other around me. At this point, I think ‘Fantastic, there is going to be so many awkward meal times together.’ *Quick Side Note – I took my weekly Larium (Anti-Malaria) pill about an hour ago and my stomach is killing me right now. It’ll be fine in a couple of hours, but it still sucks. It’s better than getting Malaria though.* Needless to say, they are probably wondering why I am here if I am not an American Trained Doctor, but yeah I didn’t exactly feel at home. When I go back in a month to live there for the next two years, I’ll make the situation work out, whether they like it or not, hahaha. I’m just not overly happy that I’ll be living where I’ll be working. The perks are pretty good there (electricity most of the day, a toilet as opposed to a hole in the ground, a cook/houseworker who prepares meals 3 x a day and will wash our clothes, tv that has some English channels, a fridge (very rare!) and bars on my windows for extra security), but I am willing to give it all up just for my own place. I need my own space and be able to have a home to myself some days. This is the Peace Corps and I won’t be able to learn how to cook traditional meals since the kitchen area is a mess and the cook will always prepare food for us. Numerous PCTs were told that they should all hire cooks and not really cook, but all of us want to learn and support ourselves. I don’t know, but yeah, my living situation is good, just a little too good from what I imagined it would be like. Also, the first two days, the water didn’t work, so the toilet didn’t flush and the doctors didn’t really bother getting a bucket to flush down their stuff with water (gross, I know, but it’s true…plus their aim is just not great at all) and when water did come out of the faucets, it was brown. Water is a big problem in my district I learned from my counterpart and from another volunteer who is about 30 mins away in another town. So I will be living in a small rural town an hour away from Kigali by public transportation (In private car, it takes about 45 mins). When I say rural, it’s rural for real! I asked where I can go to buy snacks like crackers, cookies, chocolates, etc… and they told me Kigali! I need to travel an hour just for snacks, internet, bank and the post office. When I said rural, I expected at least a convenience store and a cyber café. Oh well, just things I will need to help get off the ground (not build a bank or post office of course, but help create a Coop with a group of women to build a store for income and of course the cyber café). So the hospital itself is pretty impressive and I am actually quite surprised at how many services they provide and some of the actual services itself. I’ll just list the departments they have so you can see; A Clinical Laboratory, Mental Health, HIV/AIDS & PMTCT, Family Planning, Radiology – X-Rays (!!), Pediatrics, Maternal Health, Pharmacy, Nutrition, Surgery, Physical Therapy, ER, Tuberculosis Center and Housing where patients can rest and recover in. Then they also have a morgue and sterilization room as well. Yep, it’s better than I thought a rural hospital would have. I know I will be busy here working with each department trying to see what I can do with each one. One of the things I first noticed occurred at the staff meeting every morning at 8am (right after 715am prayer time) when they do the rounds of what happened the previous night. The Nurses discuss cases in front of their colleagues and the Doctors and as soon as the first nurse speaks, I am barely able to hear her and she is like 3 feet in front of me. The entire conversation is in French, but I am still able to know if I am hearing words or not. I thought maybe she is just very shy or intimidated by me being in front of here. While she is presenting the cases, the doctors begin to ask questions and they are speaking loud and very audible as opposed to the nurse. They joke (not sure of what) and they all laugh, but I notice none of the women are laughing, just the guys. The following nurse comes up and this continues on for over an hour. I saw 4 nurses present their cases and each time, the women were quiet and shy while the guys were loud and joking around. It was obvious to me that I will definitely need to do some type Women Empowerment Session with all of them. The first night I got there while eating with Dr. Lydie and my counterpart, she was speaking to him in French and I heard something about Women’s Day (Femme!) and I said something like, ‘oh yeah, that happened this past Weekend and there was a parade at the stadium near us’. She said she was asking my counterpart how come the hospital didn’t have an event planned celebrating women since it was International Women’s Day and he said (in English) that there was no time to plan it and maybe next year they’ll do it. She just smirked yeah right and I could tell that he wasn’t serious about it either. So after the staff meeting, that conversation really stood out to me and I am going to have to create a session about Female Empowerment. I am not sure exactly how right now, but it’s in the planning stages.
So I took a break from writing the rest of this blog, but to quickly summarize other things that I saw or found out while at my site: I’m living next to two schools (Primary and Secondary schools) which is really great because I can teach English (my ideal secondary project) and this is especially awesome since I signed up with the WWS – World Wise Schools Program. I’ll be working with an English High School teacher (Hey Jessica!) who happens to teach in New York City and we’ll hopefully be working on various projects together with the students here and back home in NYC. I have two resource families (in addition to the one I have at my Training Site) and I met one of them before I left my site yesterday. He is a Pastor for the local Presbyterian church and his English is great, so that makes me feliz to have someone around who has a good understanding of the English language. He said he will introduce me to his congregation during service when I come back in April. I hope they don’t expect me to be at church every Sunday, but I’ll definitely go for at least the first month or two. Now that I think about it, I am pretty surprised that nobody asked me about my religion while I was at site. 60-70% of the population here is Catholic and I think it’s less than 10% that is not religious (Our Language Training Facilitators call them Pagans…). Anyhoo, site visit went well, but I really hope the housing situation can be changed because that is a lot of people I will be living with and I expected at the very least my own house. I wanted to be able to invite friends/family over when they come to visit me and have a place to call my own. Sounds crazy to be complaining considering I have a very safe room and perks (fridge!), but just having my own place would top all of that. I definitely see myself traveling throughout the country whenever possible just so that I can get away from the same environment and seeing friends in different parts of the country.
It was great speaking to my folks (also my uncle, aunt and little cousin from California) and amigita last night through Skype. It’s the first time I have been able to use it to communicate with someone from back home. One of the sacrifices of being here is missing out on special events back home with family and friends. My dad had a surprise 60th Birthday Party this past Saturday and family from all over the U.S. (even Ecuador!) came out to be there to surprise him. I had made a short 2 minute video with my flip camcorder but for whatever reason I couldn’t upload it onto my youtube account or email it even though I broke it up into 6 small files. From what I heard it was an amazing time that included a PowerPoint file with pictures of family and me. The only other special event coming up is my brother’s wedding next year, but I wouldn’t miss that for anything. I don’t know when it’s happening yet (Summer 2010?), but whenever it is, I’ll be there.
And lastly in Peace Corps Related News…Not sure if anyone else has heard but a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin died within the past week I believe. I don’t know the details and it’s too early to know for sure, but I checked the official Peace Corps website and they had a brief article about it. The #1 cause of death among Peace Corps Volunteers is automobile accidents. We also found out this week that the political climate in Madagascar has become unstable and they are pulling Peace Corps Volunteers out of there. They began pulling PCVs this past Saturday and they were suppose to have a new group go into that country last week, but that was cancelled due to current events. We were told PC Staff will remain in country in case things become stable again, but they didn’t know how long that would be.
Alright, I believe this entry is long enough…thanks again everyone for continuing to read my blog and/or leaving comments. It is definitely one of the first things I check out when I get access to the internet here.