no electricy, no problem (ok, a little problem)

Last week, I learned the word ntakibazou, which means "no problem."

The most common response I get to almost any request I make is "no problem" and now that I've learned how to say it in Kinyarwanda, as Janice pointed out, I'll probably start hearing it everywhere in conversations around me.

We had no electricity at the office last week from Tuesday afternoon until Friday morning. Little mini-shutdowns that last for a couple minutes aren't uncommon at the Millennium Villages office, but usually either the generator kicks in pretty quickly or the breaker is fixed and we're back in business in no time.

But since Tuesday, we were out of "cash power," the prepaid system Rwanda uses for electric and water utilities. Wednesday morning we were running on the generator, but by the afternoon, the generator was out of battery too.

Most of the office was in Kigali last week for the Millennium Villages annual meeting/retreat, so the power outage wasn't too disruptive. Those of us left at the office already had a lot of downloaded research to go through anyway, but no electricity meant no wifi and no wifi meant no blogging and no blogging meant... lots of picture taking and processing.

Thursday morning, we had a surprise site visit from Jeff Sachs (of MDG fame), Sonia Sachs (health director for the MV project and J-dog's wife), and their family, so there was a bit of scrambling in the morning to get ourselves set up for their tour.

the agriculture info sign drew the attention of both young...

and old co-op members

me and the president!!! chantal is the president of the basket-weaving co-op board

this other president is popular here too

yes you can... be ready for your close-up

Once we had everything set up at the cooperative, we were able to socialize a bit with the women and men working there and worked more on our Kinyarwanda fluency and basketweaving skills.

"how's it going?"
"amakuru"

"good morning!"
"mwaramutse"

(photo taken by Malak Yusuf)

(photo taken by Malak Yusuf)

 

the co-op president formally welcomes jeff sachs

I talked to Sonia for a long time about the health system in Rwanda and at the site. I told her that overall I'm pretty impressed with how things are working here. I'm very interested in how the mutuelle de sante (national health insurance) system is working here and how that is incorporated in the community health system/policy that Rwanda's Ministry of Health has made the core of its national health policy.