What I Do

My Nutrition Mamas after class

In July 2012 I waved goodbye to the shining white Peace Corps vehicle as it left me in my new home, a rural survivor’s village in the north east corner of Rwanda. Cyabayaga was located forty five minutes from a paved road and town via motorcycle.  The area was flat, dry, barren, dusty, and what I suspect most Americans to think of when they hear the words ‘African village’.  My concrete tin roof house was minimal, without electricity and complete with a concrete latrine and outdoor shower. The area had problems with water, but thankfully our village had it due to massive tanks installed by another PCV’s project. The tanks allowed us to fetch water in jerry cans morning, noon and night.  It was unlike the entirety of Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills; food was hard to find, the land was flat, the sun constantly on your back, and I would often break a sweat before eight am.  

I am a health volunteer and was placed at a village health center. The health center too was minimal with concrete rooms, tins roofs, and latrines, yet fairly expansive with two outdoor pavilions for waiting patients.  My assignment, to work in: maternal and child health, nutrition, hygiene, water sanitation, HIV/AIDS, and malaria. Oh boy. I lived there for over six months before I was moved for security reasons.

In February 2013 the shinny white vehicle arrived to hastily take me off to Kigali and away I went. After several touch and go meetings with Peace Corps staff it looked like Global Communities would be my new home. Global Communities is an international non-profit organization (NGO) that works closely with communities worldwide to bring about sustainable changes that improve the lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable. (That was taken from the website. http://www.globalcommunities.org/ Why reinvent the wheel when it’s right there for you.) Specifically, I work within the Ejo Heza project (http://www.globalcommunities.org/node/37053) loosely translated to “brighter future” in Kinyarwanda. Ejo Heza focuses on women’s livelihoods.

Okay, so there’s the back story and fancy jargon of the NGO community. But what do I actually do?  

Simply put, I am a nutrition and health teacher. About every third week I was going “into the field” or visiting villages and doing nutrition trainings.

 Most often, I teach the rural poor population with a Rwandan co-teacher in Kinya about nutrition. Other times, I teach nutrition and health trainers how to teach nutrition in a more effective manner. I have learned to call these things TOT (training of trainers). Other times, I am developing Ejo Heza training resources and teaching methodologies; right now we are working on finalizing a tailored cookbook for our Mamas to help them eat a balanced diet. The cookbook is aimed at meeting the needs of the mamas and uses what is available to them in the villages.

When I am not preparing for or co-facilitating a nutrition training, I am working with the Behavior Change and Communications (BCC) Officer to create the best resources to generate the most behavior change in the villages. Most PCVs work heavily in BCC no matter what they do. After all, you can build 600 hundred hand washing stations for your entire community, but if people are still not washing their hands what was the point?

There are some days that I miss village life, other days not so much. I work in the villages often, which helps with the missing-the-village part, and live in a village in Kigali (the Capital City) which is interesting and presents its own set of challenges. *Both situations have their pros and cons; some PCVs would love to be in the position I am in, while others would hate it. It is completely individual, and I’ve learned here that most things are a gamble.  

To sum up what I do is complicated and yet simple. I am a nutrition teacher, and work in BCC but PCVs generally wear many different hats doing many different things, or as we call them: secondary projects. At my former site I was developing projects, but the majority of my time there was spent figuring out how to survive daily. As dramatic as that sounds, I spent hours fetching water, finding food, and washing clothes so that I could look smart at the health center, an incredibly important cultural entity.

In this world where monitoring and evaluating is everything, I find it increasingly hard to simply sum up what me and fellow PCV colleagues do. There are labels, objectives and indicators, but the descriptions never feel right; it always feels like something is left out, missing. Maybe I took one too many abstract/modern art classes at school, or am just too much of a right –side-of-the-brain thinker. The way I see it is we are people who are just trying in many different ways and forms.   




My counterpart, Jeanne d'Arc (left), and Mama Mutoni (right) discussing kitchen gardens. Jeanne d'Arc is my strength, my backbone, my confidant.  





I'm Still Here

Every once in a while life gets in the way, and every once in a while you get in the way of yourself. In the case of this blog, both are true.

To my faithful and loyal readers: I am sorry I stopped writing for what the World Wide Web would consider to be an eternity. The past months have been the most challenging and changing of my life. Let me be clear, when I say changing I do not mean that I have been changed, although I am sure I have, but rather that change here happens often and quickly (or so it seems in respect to my service). Nothing seems to be permanent or fixed.

I have been moved from a tiny village without simple amenities like electricity and water, to the capital city of Kigali. I’ve had support systems, supervisors, counterparts, projects, and expectations come and go.

I have been terrorized by more living things than I ever could have imagined: bed bugs, fleas, bats, mice, and intestinal worms. I found two snakes in my house on separate occasions. And then later discovered one of the snakes was a black mamba. I have lived without electricity for ten months. I've been stolen from, lied to, taken advantage of, and stared at for hours that seem to turn into days. I have been treated (in a good and bad way) like a unicorn from the forbidden forest, whose blood has magical healing powers.  

I have also been instantly accepted by individuals who have received me like their own daughter. I have connected and felt connected not in a networking-for-a-job way, but in a real humanistic way. I have learned a culture, shared a culture, and had many laughs in between. I have been cared for, received, looked after, understood and loved.

I am still here with 11 months left in service, and with the determination to not only finish but accomplish a few more tall order tasks that I’ve gifted to myself. And within these tasks is the idea of maintaining this blog.

In the past 7 months I’ve seriously contemplated the point of Peace Corps blogs, and why I should revive mine. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t partly for selfish reasons. What a wonderful way to document this experience. But there are other factors, reasons, motivators for me getting back into blogging.

I’ve been hearing a lot of misinformation lately, and two things have been really getting under my skin. 1 – The single story - buying into it, trusting it, living by it. 2 – The male perspective. (The two, more often than not, go hand in hand.)  

The single story, be wary of it. We have too much faith in one story, and are too willing to accept that, take it in, and serve it up for dinner night after night. It is comfortable for us as human beings to write things off, or rather put things in a box or category and make them more logical for ourselves. And while this is comfortable, it is also problematic. “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete.” – Chimanda Adichie. There are multiple sides to everything. 

Let me provide an example. Recently, I had the opportunity to take a vacation to one of three African countries. One of these countries was Ethiopia and it was a front runner in the decision making process. While mulling it over with some loved ones I was STRONGLY encouraged not to go for unclear reasons; something to do with the civil war and famine that happened in the 80’s, that I was well aware of. I was very taken aback by the negative reaction I received, partially because Ethiopia is one of the safest places to travel in East Africa. And especially because this rational made no sense considering Rwanda had genocide in the 90’s and I live here. Ethiopia is safe, you need to be smart about things but it is comparable to NYC, and is a Peace Corps Post. It was sad to me that people’s impressions were still a media based story from long ago. A single story; and probably one of the only that the U.S. has told about Ethiopia.

I have been a victim to the single story many times as well, and am still a little unsure about people from L.A. But the more I experience, the more I learn that everything is…complicated. I am complicated, you are complicated, Rwanda is complicated, the U.S. is complicated. Most places, people and things are complicated in one way or another. If there is anything I have learned here, it is to keep an open mind and be wary of the single story.  

So, here it is the revival of my blog. And what is the point? Well, this is my story and I want to give my perspective as a 24 year old single female in a developing country. But it is also one story of many, and I’d like to encourage readers to keep an open mind, understand the complicated nature of everything and join me until this thing is complete (if that’s even possible).