here we go: destination TBD: an (un)showered summary of community health, millennium villages, and "pasta mush"

Editor's Note: As part of my summer field assignment, I am required to submit a minimum of 6 posts to a class blog, so some of the posts on my personal blog may sound a bit technical or more formal in tone if they are one of those posts that is serving double duty. This will be one of those posts...

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life so far

I'm near the end of my second week in Rwanda.

With three other MDP girls (Le, Janice, and Malak), I'm spending the summer in Nyamata, about 40km south of the country's capital, Kigali. We're living in a 5-bedroom, 5-bath house (6, if you count the squat toilet in the back of the house!), on a huge lot with lots of grass, a couple trees, and swimming pool! Okay, the swimming pool is actually just behind our house at the hotel that is both our neighbor and our nightly DJ--we drift to sleep each night around 10 or 11, tucked into our little country beds (complete w/ mosquito nets), to the dulcet sounds of Rihanna, Andrea Bocelli, Eminem, Celine Dion, Beyonce, and the odd old chanson a la francaise.

And the 5-bedroom, 5-bath deal probably sounds pretty luxe, but notice that I mentioned nothing about a kitchen... or hot water... or even regularly available running cold water. We've all become very good at sponge-bathing Monday through Friday, though last night we finished negotiating a deal with the hotel to combine our pool subscription with access to hot showers so we don't have to worry about coming to blows every weekend when we finally arrive at a place with hot water showers. One of our (regularly showered) friends in Kigali has assured us that we don't smell, but there's a good chance he's just trying to be nice. I don't think anyone in my office will ever see me with my hair down as it's safe to say that my weekday look would not be out of style in a production of The Sound of Music.

the hiiiiiiills are aliiiiiiive...

with summer hair

Despite the minor disruptions to our regular bathing schedule, we're all still glad to have elected to live in Nyamata rather than deal with the hour "bus" commute each way from Kigali. The inside of the "bus" looks like this:

And that was after we'd let out a bunch of people along the way. Before that, I couldn't move my arms to get my camera out of my bag. The guy on the right with the hat had to have been over 2 meters tall and was pretty muscular, yet he was able to squeeze into a flip down side seat, with his knees pressed up into his chest.

Our house is a couple minutes walk down the same clay dirt road that the Millennium Villages office sits on. We have begun to meet our immediate neighbors, which include so far a home for the physically disabled that is run by 5 nuns; an orphanage full of sweet, runny-nosed toddlers and children under-5; and the Palast Rock Hotel (of Eminem and Celine Dion-playing fame). This afternoon we are planning to visit the orphanage and the nuns to get to know them better--the hotel knows us pretty well considering we ate there for dinner almost every night when we first arrived thanks to various mishaps with our attempts at fixing our own meals (those stories will come in another post).

pasta mush

The other night we finally remembered to take a photo of dinner. We invited Daniel to eat with us since he'd been around while we were cooking.

family dinner in our living room (that's pasta mush in the bowls)

Our dinner consisted of everything but the kitchen sink... and the only reason that wasn't included is because we don't have one! We had to be creative with what were able to put together for dinner and made use of all the food we had left from our weekend shopping--we've learned that we need to start buying more food for our family of four. We combined eggplant, tomato pasta sauce, onions, 2 eggs, honey, curry powder, salt, water, oil, and vermicelli pasta to create what Janice not-so-ceremoniously called "pasta mush."

We tried to fancy up the marketing of this dish and renamed it an Asian-Italian fusion dish since it reminded me of almost every Chinese dish I ever tried in France AND every pasta dish I ever tried in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately for Daniel, this was his introduction to American cooking. We ate our cucumber, almond, and egg white salad out of plastic mugs. We stressed over and over that this is not the normal way that Americans (or Chinese) eat, but who knows what he really thought of our muzungu (foreigner/white person) eating habits.

Another funny "muzungus have weird habits" story: The first night we moved into the house, we decided it was best to put the trash outside so we didn't get ants in the house. We didn't yet have any trash cans, so Le put her paper bag full of cookie crumbs in the middle of the lawn so it was well away from the house and we would remember to throw it out in the morning. About an hour after she put the bag out, I went outside and noticed it was gone. Daniel had picked it up to throw out and I can only imagine he thought muzungus put their trash in strange places.

mayange

This summer I'm working in one of Millennium Promise's Millennium Villages (MV). The one in Rwanda is called Mayange and it's located about 15 minutes' drive from our office in Nyamata. I'll be focusing on assessing various aspects of the community health worker (CHW) program. I'm still finalizing my Terms of Reference (TOR), but I'll mostly be focusing on an assessment of the operational gaps of the CHW program, especially looking at their post-2015 sustainability/longevity, when the MV offices will shut down and the management of the MVs will be turned over to the communities themselves. I'll also be working with the Health team here to determine whether it would be useful to run a Senior/Lead/Supervising CHW training program here this summer. Basically, I'm going to be walking around the community doing household visits with CHWs, interviewing members

Last Friday, at the monthly Morbidity and Mortality Round (MMR) with the CHWs, my big boss, Dr. Felicien (the Health Coordinator for the site), and my CHW boss, Maurice (the CHW Manager) introduced me to all the CHWs and Senior CHWs in the community. They gave me a little welcome chant--it was pretty cool, but I didn't have my camera in my hand when it happened. :(

Maurice (left) and Felicien (right) discussing the new renumation program for CHWs -- their individual earnings will now go toward saving for a cow... see next pic for the CHWs' reactions to that news