First Week as a PCV

Written on July 25, 2012

All week I’ve been in search of a teacher to teach me Kinyarwanda two times a week. I’ve asked everyone. And it is particularly difficult right now because Rwanda just went on summer vacation, so there are no teachers around. Also a large amount of the teachers in my community are Ugandan. They speak about as much Kinyarwanda as I do. Awesome. So I’ve been asking everyone that works or lives around me. Clearly I need to practice my Kinyarwanda more, because when I ask “Uzi umwarimu azagisha ikinyarwanda, kuko ndashaka kwiga? Ariko arashaka kuvuga icyongereza, rero ndashobora wiga” (Translation: Do you know a teacher that will teach me Kinyarwanda? But she/he needs to speak English, so I can understand). The response in return: they smile and raise their eyebrows twice. What does that mean?!? Is that a yes or a no. And I will go further and say “yego cyangwa oya” (yes or no). And the eyebrow raise happens again. What is that!? I have never been more frustrated in my life.

The other response I get is: “You speak good French, everyone here speaks French, why do you need Kinyarwanda, speak French.” Because Peace Corps is making me! I also will travel to other parts of the country where French is not popular. I will need my Kinyarwanda then.

Okay I think it is time to explain the Rwandan Health Care System, you know, since I am working in a Health Center and all.

It is organized in the shape of a pyramid. I would use visuals, but my illustrator program isn’t working, and I can’t use Word because the design is terrible and unattractive. So imagine a pyramid. At the very top:

Rwanda Ministry of Health

(then)

Regional Health

(then)

Provential Health

(then)

Distric Health

(then)

Health Centers

(then)

Community

Rwanda is organized in a system or provinces, districts, sectors, cells, and umudugudus (villages). For example: I live in the Eastern Province, in Nygatare District, Sector Akagera, I don’t know my cell, and my Umudugudu is Cyabayaga.

During training we had a representative from the Ministry of Health, explain everything to us. This is what we were told. There are five providences in Rwanda. Four regional hospitals, that work at a national level. Forty one district hospitals, out of thrity districts. And four hundred and sixteen health centers in Rwanda.

Most people in Rwanda do not have any sort of transportation, besides their legs. Therefore Health Centers were set up around the country to provide health care to Rwandans at an umudugudu level. My Health Center is in the middle of three villages, Cyabayaga, Bushoba, and Gatchtrilliage. The next closest Health Center is an hour away by motto, and walking there really isn’t a possiblity. The district hospital is thrity minutes away by motto. This is very very rare. Most things are not that close or convient.

If you are sick, have a tooth ache, a broken body part, or anything else wrong you go to a health center. After seventy two hours if your condition is not better, you are sent to a district hospital. If the district hospital cannot treat you, you are then sent to a Province hospital. So you slowly move up the pyramid, and hopefully get better.

Health Centers are free for everyone, but if you skip the first step and go straight to the district hospital, they bill you. And as far as I understand, health care is free as long as you follow the pyramid system.

Not every health center has a doctor, they’re not required to have doctors. Nurses are required to run the health centers. But, mine does, because it is an awesome health center.

These are the ratios for hospital staff, to Rwanda population:

1 Medical Doctor to 16,000 people

1 General Practioner to 10,000 people

1 Nurse to 200 people

There are eight to twelve general practioners in every District Hospital.

Nurses:

There are two types of nurses. A1 and A2. A1 has the equivilent of an associates degree in America, A2 has the equivilent of a high school diploma in America. Once they have been an A2 nurse for five years, the Ministry of Health pays for any higher education they wish to achieve.

In 2007, seventy seven percent of Rwandan’s live an hour walking distance away from the health center. The representative did not have the updated statistic. The goal is for one hundred precent of Rwanda to live in walking distance from an H.C.

A Health Center treats on average 25,000 people in one year.

This past week I made a map of my Health Center. The map was more for myself, but I thought I’d share it to (hopefully) give a better understanding.

The second picture connects to the first on the the left side where it says path to my house. If you have a Mac I strongly recommend holding the command button and the plus sign button together and zooming in.  

The services provided at my H.C. include:

General Hospitalization

Medicine Distrubition

On call Doctor

Vaccinations

Pharmacy

Maternity Ward

Laboratory

Family Planning

P.T.M.T.C.T. or Parent to Mother to Child Transmition

Nutrion Classes 

Social Worker

I think I covered everything I can think of for now. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to contact. 

Week 10 - Swear In

Say hello to the twenty-one new health volunteers in Rwanda, Africa.

So I am now a Peace Corps Volunteer officially. I thought this day would never come. Literally. On Tuesday I said goodbye to my host family, and sat at the hub for many hours before boarding a bus to Kigali. I’d been sick since Friday, and with all the stress of my LPI and moving out, my condition worsened.

As I walked to a boutique to get bananas with my friend Christina, she said “Caitie, I don’t remember you sounding like this yesterday.” My voice had taken on a new life, and I sounded like the girl from The Exorcist. Again, not an exaggeration. My fellow Peace Corps colleagues were begging me to say lines from the movie. I also scared people when I spoke. 

Our doctor’s office is in Kigali, so when I arrived I stopped in at Dr. Laurent’s to see what’s up. Apparently I got some African virus similar to Bronchitis. He gave me some antibiotics, and said it is nothing to be worried about. Unfortunately the side effects of the antibiotics were drowsiness. So for Swear In, and most of my time in Kigali, I was fighting to stay awake.

Swear In was great, everything I expected and more. There were many speeches made, and of course, we all had to raise our right hands, and repeat at after the U.S. Ambassador (Swear In was at his house). And then we were sworn in. The highlight of all of it, of course, was the food. After eating, rice, beans, and plantains for ten weeks, there is nothing quite like eating mini pizzas and quiche. There was even cheese! And cake! And cookies! While sugar is extremely popular here, Rwandans only use it for tea. The reasons for all this are unknown.

Wednesday, and Thursday were spent setting up my smart card (debit card), and buying things for my new house. In small villages (like mine), most things aren’t readily available, so in Kigali you have to buy them to bring to site. Unfortunately, I was not very successful at this because I was on antibiotics that made me want to sleep twenty four seven.  

Friday I got in a car, with all my things, and with my good friend Rachel. Everyone is taken in pairs with the next closest PCV. Rachel is the closest one in my group to me. She lives about an hour away via motto ride, so we got dropped off together. I am extremely grateful that she is somewhat close to me. She is an awesome person to have around; I got very lucky with this arrangement.

I arrived at my site, extremely anxious to see my house. During training we go on a site visit, and live there for three or four days. I did not get to live in my house during site visit. I was told a number of different reasons why, but I recently discovered the truth. My house was infested with bats. This is common in my area, but I have inspected my house thoroughly, and fully believe the bats are gone.

My house is cute. It is a brick two-bedroom house. There is a front door and a back door. I only use the back entrance because there is a mudroom, and I like to leave my shoes there. I have a good-sized backyard for Rwanda standards, and twenty feet away there is a brand new latrine, and shower room. I am most excited about this. It smells of cement, and looks extremely clean. This is worlds away from what I was going to the bathroom in. My host family’s latrine was two logs, that you stood on and went to the bathroom in between them, enclosed in a hut made out of cow poop. There were also tennis ball sized spiders that usually made me too scared to go. I am using the second bedroom as a studio, which is lovely, and slowly but surely will turn it into a guest bedroom as well. Come visit me!  

From left to right: Claire, Justin, Me, Rachel. For Swear In we had traditional Rwandan clothes made, with the exception of Rachel, she is wearing a dress from America. 

Address Update!

Dear Friends,

Here is my new address:

Caitie Gibbons, PCV

United States Peace Corps, RW

PB 47

Rwamagana, Rwanda, Africa

In an earlier post, I put a list of things I’d love if you were looking to send me something for my birthday (August 6^th). Note: you may want to consult my Mom before sending something, or just send something generic. You can never have too much chocolate! Not trying to be to forward or anything, but here is the list again if you are still interested.

More posts about my ongoing adventure coming soon!

Birthday Wish List:

Chocolate

Peanut Butter (chunky or smooth)

Ked’s (not white, size eight)

Yoga mat (not pink)

Yoga Dvd

Yoga tune up balls

Drawing Charcoal

Artist erasers

Pads of drawing paper/watercolor paper

If you are looking to spend a lot of money on me:

Whiskey

Red Wine

Week 9 – Eat, Sleep, Drink Kinyarwanda

This post was written on July 15, 2012:

                                         










Me and my host family, Mutoni (9), Fabreze (4), and Prence (eight months)

Another week has gone by in the blink of an eye here in Rwanda, Africa. It is the eve of week ten tonight, and tomorrow I find out whether or not I am sworn in. They dropped a bomb on us this Saturday. After our final LPI (language exam), we were informed that if we weren’t at the intermediate language level we would be doing another two weeks of PST (pre-service training). This was news to all of us. While I am okay with doing another two weeks, I am not okay with missing swear in. Missing swear in means you don’t get to swear in with your group at all. Swear in is a huge deal, we go to the ambassador’s house and have this really cool official ceremony.  It would honestly break my heart not to be there. Good news is: tonight, Justin and me were talking with the Training Manager and he said two people were being held back. He looked me square in the eye and said “you are not one of the two.” I responded with “do you know my legal name is Caitlin but everyone here calls me Caitie” (this causes a lot of confusion), he said “I am aware.” So things look good? Tomorrow we have one on one interviews with a bunch of the official head honchos of Peace Corps. I am still very nervous about all of this.

 Last Saturday I had a progress check LPI. On Monday the Language Coordinator, Esperance, came to visit us to tell us how we did. She informed me that in one week I had jumped an entire language level to intermediate low. She was super impressed by this, and didn’t know it was possible for someone to do that in six days. I honestly think I am just getting a lot better at testing under pressure, and understanding how to control my own LPI (you can control it a lot, once you understand how to). This news was completely rejuvenating, and motivated me even more to jump another level to intermediate mid by Saturday for our final LPI.

So with that news I was studying every moment of every day I could, and speaking to everyone in the entire village, in order to get more practice in. I think jumping to intermediate mid might have been a bit of a stretch. But I did the best I could in the amount of time I was given. Ever since Saturday I have been replaying my LPI back in my head and remembering all the mistakes I made during it. This is a tricky, and not fun game to play.

Last week I also discovered a new, and very excellent umwarimu (um-mwar-e-mu)/teacher. My nine year old host sister Mutoni. Mutoni is not a loud child, she doesn’t seem to be overly outgoing, but she is not shy either. When it comes to Kinyarwanda, she turns into a drill sergeant. I had made hundreds (legit) of flash cards and would go over them every night with her. I’d say “Umukorepesho” (mop). Mutoni: “oya Caitie” (oya is no). The sound of disappointment in her voice was unreal. Then she’d get all up in my face, loudly, and say: “umu-korre-paaay-sho”. And make me repeat it till I got it right. This would go on until dinner was ready, or she’d get bored or tired, which is rare because Rwandan’s seem to never get bored or tired of anything. This week everyone commented on how my accent seemed to change and improve over night. I fully blame Mutoni for that, and told Esperance that Peace Corps should hire her.

I studied, studied, studied, and studied some more. Then on Saturday morning I woke up and had my LPI. As I said above, I think I did the best I could have done. Unfortunately when I woke up the day before my throat was on fire. I called the doctor, he told me to take this and that (they give us a med kit with everything you could ever want), and drink lots of fluids. My throat did not improve by Saturday, and so for my LPI, I sounded more like a dying frog, and less like a Rwanda then I would have liked. But that is just the way it goes sometimes.

After my LPI I rewarded myself with my dress. For swear most of the people in our group had traditional style African cloths made out of igitenge (African fabric). Last Saturday I took a forty-minute walk, up and down hill, to the neighboring village to see my friend’s host mom. Rachel’s Mom makes beautiful dresses, and I wanted her to make me one for swear in. After waiting around for three hours, her Aunt finally showed up at the shop ready to take my measurements. This is very typical in Rwandan culture, and I anticipated this happening on my way there. I explained, and drew out what I wanted, then crossed my fingers and hoped she understood.

The dress is exactly what I wanted! This woman completely read my mind, and I love it. It could not have been better. I got to meet her today for the first time, and thanked her tremendously for doing such an amazing job. Hopefully I will be at swear in and able to wear it. So as a reward for finishing nine weeks of language class, and doing the best I could I saw my dress. And was unbelievably happy with the results.

****

Today we had a host family farewell party. It was awesome. Yesterday I did laundry and washed a dress I bought at a market in Kigali. I had known about this party for a while, and had nothing nice to wear. So while in Kigali I made it one of my main goals to find a nice dress for this event. I found a great dress, and was so excited to wear it.

When I hung it on the line, my host Mama and Mutoni fawned over it. I explained to them that I am wearing it tomorrow. Mama responded with an, “oh no you are not” and whispered “I have a gift for you.”

At dinner I was presented with another dress, which my Mama had bought for me. This was extremely sweet, and completely unexpected. The dress also fit me like a glove, which is particularly unusual. I have a very abnormal body type, and things don’t normally work out this way. The dress is not something I would ever wear in America, but it was perfect for this occasion. It had a pink, black, read, yellow and white striped and flowered pattern on it, and went to my ankles. I got many many compliments at the Host Family Farwell Party today.

That about sums up this week! Keep your fingers crossed for me please!     

Week 8 - PEPFAR

Week Eight – PEPFAR

A quick and selfish note: It is now less than a month away from my birthday (August 6^th). I do not have my new address yet, but once I get it I will post it if you’d like to send me a birthday card. If you would like to send me a birthday present here are some ideas:

-       Chocolate

-       Peanut Butter (chunky or smooth)

-       Ked’s (not white, size eight)

-       Yoga mat (not pink)

-       Yoga Dvd

-       Yoga tune up balls

-       Pumice stone

-       Drawing charcoal

-       Artist erasers

-       Pads of drawing/watercolor paper

I   If you are looking to spend a lot of money on me:

-       Whiskey

-       Red Wine (there are no fridges here)

     

     Hope this helps!

Week Eight –

I absolutely cannot believe it is the start of week nine already. I also cannot believe that I have completed eight weeks of training. This has been the slowest and fastest process I have ever been through.

This week has been pretty incredible. Language class was good. Typical. On Tuesday (hub day), we all got on a bus to a neighboring town and went to “AIDS Day.” This is what Peace Corps called it. It was an entire day of training set aside just for HIV/AIDS.

I’ve been really excited about this, and waiting for it for a while now. Every Tuesday and Friday we go to the Hub to have health, safety, and community based training. We have learned all sorts of things at this point, but nothing about HIV/AIDS in Rwanda. Also, when we asked questions about it we were told we’d get to it later. That was a bit unnerving. Especially because when I got my assignment in February they told me I’d be working with HIV/AIDS specifically.

This is true and untrue. There is a huge disconnect between Peace Corps in Washington, and Peace Corps in Rwanda. I hear that this is true of most countries. Let me explain, in about a week and a half I will be dropped off at my Health Center, and be expected to do whatever the Health Center needs. Even though I was told I was doing HIV/AIDS work. I do have control over projects I want to implement, but for my first three months at site I will be doing a Community Needs Assessment. This mainly involves me observing and shadowing various people at the H.C., interviewing and noticing what my H.C. needs.  So if my H.C. does not need anything involving HIV/AIDS then I won’t be doing that type of work. Also my Health Center has a compound for people living with HIV or AIDs. This is very rare in Rwanda, and I find that very cool.

Anyway back to “AIDS DAY”. I was very excited to really dissect the role and impact on HIV and AIDs in Rwanda. Also, two people from my Health Center were there as well, which was super cool. They don’t speak any English, and it was nice to practice my Kinyarwanda.

The day was long, informative, a bit overwhelming, but good. I want to use this post to talk about PEPFAR.

PEPFAR is an acronym for President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. It was started by George W. Bush in 2003. Between 2003 and 2008 it had a fifteen billion dollar initiative, and eighteen billion was committed. The goals of PEPFAR include: the treatment of two million HIV-infected people, prevention of seven million new infections, and care for ten million HIV-infected people. How much of this actually happened is still unclear. This is called PEPFAR I.

PEPFAR II was started in 2009, it’s a five year program subjected to end in 2013. There is thirty nine billion for bilateral HIV/AIDS programs and global funds. The goals of PEPFAR II: Treatment of three million people living with HIV, prevention of twelve million new infections, care for twelve million people living with HIV, including five million OVC. Agencies participating in PEPFAR include: State, USAID, Health and Human Services – CDC, HRSA, Peace Corps, The Department of Defense.

So, Peace Corps is an implementing agency contributing to PEPFAR goals through its volunteers. How are we going to do this? Prevention: promoting AB and OP among youth, educating the community of the proper and constant use of prevention. Creating life skills among the community, like G.L.O.W. and B.E. for example (Peace Corps summer camps, Girls Leading Our World, Boys Exceling). Developing an institutional capacity for HIV and AIDS. Many of the Health Centers don’t have the resources to collect and analyze data, or keep records (most everything is hand written here). Therefore we find a way to update their resources, and keep them up to date.

So that is a bit about PEPFAR, which I am very excited to be working with. I had little knowledge of the program for “AIDS DAY”, and was extremely impressed by the presentation and the implementation of PEPFAR within Rwanda.

My good friend Erin Maurer recommended a book to me before she left for Senegal. Erin is a friend from high school, and start serving as a PCV in Senegal in March. The book is Invisible Cure by Helen Epstein. There are tons of resources to seek out about HIV/AIDS as well as relief efforts. Though I found this book to be one of the best sources for education. Enjoy.   

Job Description

Dear Friends,

I’ve been getting requests and questions about posting my job description once I complete training. Unfortunately this is not as cut and dry as some jobs in the U.S. I was lucky enough to get a job description when I was visiting my site (week five). This is something my supervisor, and Markey (site mate, and Education PCV) put together before I arrived. This is unusual for many PCVs, and I am probably one of the only ones who were lucky to get something like this. So to lessen my duties of explaining things I am going to share it with you all.  

Community Health Volunteer Job Description Form

Cyabayaga Health Center

Nyagatare District

A Community Health Worker will:

-       - Help the director manage various projects for the betterment and development of the health center.

-      -  Help the director educate the community on healthy living skills by assisting effective communication between the health center and the community.

-       -Provide bi-weekly English lessons to staff.

-       -Provide family planning information and lessons to nearby schools and local youths. 

-       -Assist the nutritionist with increasing proper nutrition knowledge in the community.

This is an abbreviated version. Wanted to keep it short and sweet!

Week 7 - Jumbles, Mumbles, and Fumbles

A few notes before I begin:

Thank you to everyone who has sent me emails, and facebook messages in the past couple of weeks. Your support is incredible, and it is wonderful to hear from you. PST (Pre-Service Training) is very tough, and I always enjoy a quick message from America.

I’ve been getting a few emails about people unable to post on my blog. I think I have fixed this problem. But if you are still unable to post to my blog please let me know. Internet is very slow here, and it can be difficult to figure out what’s going on.

Ok let’s get to week 7 –

Sunday was Rwanda’s Independence Day. This is unrelated to the Genocide. Independence day is when Rwanda became independent from French colonialism, mid twentieth century. I watched a parade with my Parents in the morning. We have a television in my house but no electricity. I believe the tv is hooked up to a car battery right now. It kind of looks like a science project from Middle School. The parade on tv was awesome, but besides that there was not much celebration, as far as I can tell. My parent’s left me after the parade to visit my Mom’s brother. Being all by myself, I walked to the hub (about an hour and twenty minute walk), which goes through the center of town, and there was absolutely nothing going on. I am thinking that there maybe celebrations going on Kigali.

This week has been one of the most stressful weeks here. The first week was maybe a bit more stressful, adjusting to the new environment and all, but that is debatable. On Monday I got my LPI test results. There are nine levels of language proficiency: novice low, novice mid, novice high, intermediate low, intermediate mid, intermediate high, advanced low, advanced mid, advanced high. Before we swear in we are supposed to be at the intermediate mid level. For the mid LPI, we had last week, we were expected to get at lest a novice high level. I set a personal goal for myself as well, which was novice high. And I got novice high on my LPI test results!

Good right? No. Peace Corps was not happy with my performance. Let me rephrase that, I believe the exact words were “we know you did your best, but you have a long way to go in three weeks.” Awesome. Apparently I did too well to be in the novice mid group, but also barely scratched the surface on novice high level. Story of my life.

Peace Corps also decided to rearrange the language groups according to skill level. I like this idea, I think it makes a lot of sense. Before this we were doing language groups according to who lives in the same village. There are twenty four of us spread out into four different villages. Some of the villages are thirty-minute walks from each other, others are two hours. So they would arrange language groups according to who is near you. It is also expensive to pay a driver to bus us all around six days a week. But this week they’ve decided to change that because some of us are almost fluent, while others (like me) are still struggling. This system has worked out, for the most part, except I had to switch language teachers again. This is the third time that it’s happened to me, and I really do believe that it is one of the many reasons why I’ve been struggling. Every language teacher has a specific teaching style. Likewise, I have a specific learning style, and it takes about a week to convey that and for our language teachers to truly understand how I learn.

So I’ve been upset with my test results, trying to learn with a new teacher that I don’t know very well, and I’ve been slightly stressed because I have to take the final LPI in two weeks (to date). My teacher is a great person, I like her a lot, but she speaks in English during class, and my main issue is speaking. I do amazingly well with reading, and writing but that doesn’t count for anything because we need to be able to speak it. Peace Corps doesn’t really care if you can read and write in Kinyarwanda well.

On top of the stresses of language, the bugs have come back. Week two I woke up in the middle of the night with over fifty bites on my body. This is not an over exaggeration. I counted. After speaking to the doctor (we have two doctors on call 24/7), we determined they were either bed bugs or fleas. By the time the week was over I determined that they were fleas. I know what bed bugs are, they are not bed bugs, and I have seen fleas all over my house. I was also told that they like chickens, and travel by chicken, and the chicken coop is next to my bedroom window.

So after spending hours getting rid of the bugs, they came back this week. I think they are gone now though, it’s been two days since I got a new bite, so things are looking up. But when I have them I can’t sleep at night because I am freaked out about all this. Overall it’s been a very stressful week with the bugs, the language, and the final LPI is just getting closer and closer.

Yesterday (Saturday), there was umuganda (omu – gaa –nda). Umuganda happens the last Saturday of every month. It’s a community service day, in which the entire community gets together to do something for their village. President Kagami put this in place a couple years ago, and as far as I’ve seen it works really well. They last for only two hours, eight to ten, and usually involve fixing the roads. The weeds grow insanely fast here so umuganda is usually spent hoeing weeds, and making the roads wider. We are required to participate, as it is extremely important for integration.

I have participated in two umugandas in my village, and for the most part they are fun. Yesterday Peace Corps wanted us to finish building a garden at the hub, so that was our umuganda work. It was fun and nice to be together with everyone, and was a pretty good end to the week. The garden is looking good too, and I took many pictures, when I wasn’t working. Hopefully they will be up on my blog soon!