Roughing It

Hi everyone – sorry I have been out of touch for a little while. I have been working in Nyabiheke camp for the past week or so, and there is no internet connection there, nor is there any cell phone service. The only landline phone is solar powered, so at night we are pretty much stranded. The power in the house runs via generator, and this week, wouldn’t you know it, the generator was not really working. We spent a few dinners and evenings using our headlamps and torches (flashlights). It turns out that a headlamp is a muzungu thing.

When I spoke with Barry Wheeler, the Country Director for ARC Rwanda, about coming to Rwanda and volunteering back in May, he asked me if I minded roughing it. I don’t really mind at all, and sometimes think it is sort of nice to live without everything at my fingertips. He mentioned that I would be living without electricity or running water, and I thought, no big deal, I can deal with that.

Well, as I said, the electricity is intermittent. As for water, every morning, I take a shower by pouring cups of water on my head from a bucket (full of water that has been heated up on the gas stove). And because there is really no running water, the toilets don’t flush. We have to flush them manually, which means after you are done, you have to pour water into the toilet from a bucket, and gravity pushes everything out. It’s not bad, unless of course you go to the bathroom and then realize that there is no water in the bucket. Even at that point, I guess it is worse for the next person than it is for you.

Then when I go to bed, it often seems like there is a whole ecosystem of creatures waiting for me in my room. The first is a gecko type lizard that crawls up the wall. I have been telling myself that it eats bugs and that it is helping me, so that one is fine. The second is what I call a “man-eating spider.” Yes, this is an unusually thick and quick spider that is sometimes on the walls. In fact, there is one directly above my head where I sleep that I think is dead, but I am not sure. If it falls down, it will seriously fall right onto my face. I saw a national geographic commercial last week when I was in Kigali that said every person eats about 10 spiders in their lifetime; I thought well I guess it is not that impossible if you are sleeping in Nyabiheke, on your back, with your mouth open. The third creature is what Hillary calls a “sausage fly”; I think of it more as a flying worm. These intelligent insects fly directly into lights at full speed, and hit them so hard that they fall to the ground and move in circles on the ground as they try to lift themselves up. A few nights ago, one flew into the light right above the dinner table (genius idea), and plopped down right into the small space between my cup and my plate of food. It squirmed and wriggled until finally it got away. The fourth creature is either a rat or a mouse I have named Harold. I thought that if I named it something that it might think we are friends and consequently not eat me in the middle of the night. I would name the spiders too but I have already killed one, and now I am sure they all know about it and are hatching a plan to get back at me. Also, we all know that spiders are inherently evil and don’t believe in making friends anyway. And of course, how could any of this be complete without this final creature; the malaria carrying mosquito. Thankfully I have a mosquito net, so these guys can’t really get me. And, I have that lizard on my side to eat them (I think).

Last night as I was lying in my bed waiting to fall asleep, I heard Harold rustling and squeaking somewhere in the room or in the walls. I thought to myself that I could live with these animals in peace (or rather, I really have no choice so I might as well). As Barry told me when I interviewed on the phone, I would be roughing it. He wasn’t kidding. But, I hope this doesn’t sound like complaining or anything; it is sort of nice to be living in such proximity to nature. This will be my attitude until of course one of these creatures crawls into my face or takes a bite out of my finger.

Anyway, I want to give you all an update on how work is going down here, especially since I haven’t had the chance to explain to a lot of you what I am actually doing. Hillary and I are the HIV Program Interns, and we are generally responsible for getting the HIV Program off the ground, and making sure everything goes smoothly in the process. The four program areas in which ARC is working right now within the HIV Program are Abstinence/Be Faithful Messages (AB), Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT), Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT), and Palliative Care for those people living with HIV.

This is all funded by the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is an initiative started by President Bush in 2004 to give $15 billion to AIDS relief in the world. They usually only give to villages or communities; ARC is the first organization to receive money for AIDS relief in a refugee camp. Quite an honor, but also a lot of pressure for ARC. ARC believes that refugees have the same rights as the millions of other people living with HIV in the world. Their political status should not restrict them from receiving US dollars for AIDS relief. In fact, you might see that many refugee populations are at a greater risk for HIV infection than populations in more stable environments. Fortunately, PEPFAR sees this and has given ARC some money to see what they can do. It is not a lot, but it is a start.

The controversy with PEPFAR is that it will not give money for condoms or condom promotion in most cases. I think this is a tricky way of sort of doing the right thing by giving so much money to AIDS relief, but also a sly way of pushing the agenda of evangelicals and making them happy. A smart political move by the Bush administration. It is unrealistic to expect that an HIV program that preaches only Abstinence and Be Faithful messages would be successful. We have to work around that.

Aside from the program areas, we are really trying to increase the number of people tested for HIV by positive messaging and other forms of encouragement. In hand with this is reducing the stigma of HIV in the camps, as well as providing the necessary assistance to those people living with HIV (nutritional support, as well as emotional and economic). The end goal is to empower the staff to do all of these things on their own when we are gone; Ann Kao told me one of the most valuable things she learned from Barry while here was that she was supposed to “work herself out of a job,” and that is what I am trying to do.

So, where are we then? At Nyabiheke, we are trying to finish the construction of the VCT center so that people will come to be tested for HIV. However, Rwanda deals with all of its HIV/AIDS issues through a central governing body called the Treatment and Research Center for AIDS (TRAC). TRAC mandates that all health staff in the camps go through a three week training regarding issues in PMTCT and VCT. They do need to go, but it is a logistical nightmare. We have to take 90% of the health staff out of the health center for three weeks. Nyabiheke will not be a certified PMTCT/VCT site until TRAC has seen that all these instructions have been followed. This is our main priority right now, but it has been a slow process so far.

In other news, I talked to Barry the other day and he told me that he hopes I can use this time in Rwanda to figure out what sort of issues I am interested in regarding public health (i.e. water, sanitation, appropriate technology, children’s rights, etc). So, he wants me to get involved in other projects, and I am glad to be invited. As I have already mentioned, I am working now on starting the soccer league for the kids. But I am also starting to work on another project regarding cook stoves. Every month, people are issued a certain amount of firewood to use to cook by a separate NGO. Still, they scramble to make it last the whole month, and you often see kids and women carrying big bundles of wood back to camp. The refugees use this wood to make open fires, and small children often stumble upon them or get too close and burn themselves.

So, about 20 years ago, Barry worked on this new type of cook stove that is made of clay, I think it is called Efficiency Cook Stove (if you want to google it). It is round and holds a metal pot on top. Wood burns slowly underneath the stove, and is consumed much more slowly than an open fire. It saves a lot of firewood, and kids don’t burn themselves on it. They use these stoves in the nutrition center, but most of the people in the camp do not use them. So, my job will be to find out why people are not using them, if they even know about them, and how I can teach people about them and help people build them. I think it is a cool appropriate technology project.

So, everything is going well down here. I was sick last week a little, but I am better now; I think I caught strep throat from one of the kids coughing all over my hands. But, as is the case whenever you get sick here, I had to be tested for malaria and other stomach bugs. Thanks to everyone for keeping in touch, I really appreciate it.

I’ll be back later this week. I'm trying to put some pictures up now - I hope it works.

A Goalie in Search of a Pen Pal

Yesterday, I was driving with one of the camp managers for ARC and, as usual, all the kids were yelling “muzungu! muzungu!” I was laughing and repeating the phrase, and the camp manager turned to me and said “yes it is this way for white people here, but isn’t it that way for black people in the US?” I laughed and told her “No not really, not really at all.” I tried to explain that it is not really appropriate or acceptable in the US, but it was too hard to do in French. She’ll have to find out for herself if she ever visits.

Anyway, I am still a muzungu to most of the kids in the camp, and to some of the adults. But having been here for almost a month, some of the kids have started to remember me. When I drive in, it usually sounds like “muzungu! muzungu! muzungu! Nicola! muzungu!” It’s nice that some are starting to remember me, even if it is only as the guy who gave them a new pen or an empty water bottle last week (they go crazy for both of those things).

But two days ago, one boy named Sammuel, about 8 or 9 years old, called to me from across the medical center in Nyabiheke. He chased me down, and when he caught up, he said “Bonjour Nicola.” He gave me a letter (written in French) and just stood there to see what I would do. I put it in my pocket and told him that I would read it later, in private. In the car on the way back from camp, I read it. Here is what it said:

“Hello – Greetings and I hope you are doing well.

I am a 3^rd year student at primary school in the camp, and I like to play soccer, and I am the goalie for my team at school. I would like for you to find a kid in the US so that we can correspond with each other (read – be pen pals).
I would like to ask you for a ball that can help me improve my game or something else to help me. Thank you.

Your friend,
Sammuel”

During lunch I could not stop thinking about this kid. And when we drove out of the dirt driveway from the house, he was standing at the end of the path, having walked probably 4-5km from camp. He was waiting for me to see if I had read his letter. I asked the driver to stop the car; I got out, and told him that I was going to find him a friend, and that maybe I could get him some goalie gloves for soccer. I could tell that he was happy that I had even read his letter.

To make the story even more heart wrenching, I ran into Sammuel again the next day. We started talking, and he eventually told me that his parents have passed away, and that he now lives with his grandfather. Sammuel said that if it is possible, he would also like a new shirt (the t-shirt he was wearing had a rip in it, and was covered in dirt). He forgot to include that in his letter. Later that day, I ran into his teacher, and he lamented that Sammuel does indeed live with his grandfather because his parents are dead.

So, I thought that there must be someone reading this entry that knows an 8-10 year old who would like to have a pen pal in Rwanda. In the meantime, as you know, he could also use a pair of goalie gloves and a new shirt. These things are hard because there are so many kids who need so many things, some of them as basic as school fees or their first pair of sneakers. But in this case, I think you’ll agree that this boy has an especially difficult situation as an orphan. I think there are some things we can do for him before my mom reads this and decides to adopt him.

If you are at all interested in the pen pal situation, please email me and we can work something out (nicholas.rizzo@gmail.com). And if you would like to send the goalie gloves or shirt, you could always call my mom (Mary) or dad (Mike) at home (781-582-2508) and they can give you instructions, or they could just put it in the next package they are going to send me. Either way, this kid could really use someone’s help.

In other news, I have taken a lot of pictures. Rwanda is a beautiful country, and very different from most images we have of Africa. It is mountainous and green all over. I just have to get back to Kigali this week to get my cable so I can put the pictures online. I promise they are coming soon. Thanks to everyone for reading – I’ll be back sometime late next week.

On Death and Leopards

A few nights ago, we had dinner at a friend’s house in Kigali. The dinner was spicy rice mixed with some meat (goat, I assumed), which is a pretty typical meal here. Right before dinner was served, the power went out, and we ate by candlelight (also pretty typical here, but I don’t mind it at all). Because the power was out, we couldn’t watch a movie or TV after dinner, so we got to talking. We started off with religions common in Rwanda, moved to our own personal takes on religion, but eventually shifted into more magical ideas.

What I mean by magical is this – the friend was telling us a story about a leopard that had frequented his yard about a month ago. The guard at the house would sometimes see the leopard strolling alongside the house at night. My friend said it is not all that uncommon to have animals in the yard though, because he lives right next to “the bush.” Sometimes a few monkeys will just walk through the yard, no big deal. But, he added to the story, maybe the leopards were just people who had transformed into leopards. He said it as if I would nod in agreement that that was a possibility, but I didn’t; I had no idea what he was talking about.

So, my friend went into a very long explanation about how there are some things in Africa that I just won’t believe. One of these things is that select people can turn themselves into leopards whenever they want. Other examples included people turning themselves into birds and flying to different countries in the night, and people taking part in a type of magic called Juju (not sure on the spelling) that renders them invincible to bullets or other harmful things. Potentially the most important element of this story is the credibility of my friend; he is a working man like I am now, and is probably one of the most intelligent and reliable people I have met here. I was especially interested in what he was telling us because of what I have learned in my anthropology courses so far and how this applied to what I have learned. I told him after he was done that I wish I could do those things.

But even more interesting than this was his perspective on death, and I thought many of you back home would appreciate it. He told us that when someone dies before they are meant to (read – before God has determined they should), they disappear from our eyes at that moment. But, they don’t disappear from the earth; rather, they travel around the world and do whatever they please, going wherever and meeting whoever. They are visible, perfectly normal looking to other people in the world, just not to the people in their lives before they died. Then, when the time comes that God had determined for them, they are disappear from the earth. Even if you are not really religious (I include myself in that category), I thought it was nice to think of people we have lost traveling the world, finally having the chance to do everything they had always dreamed of.

In other news, my bag has finally arrived, and everything is intact; not a single thing missing or broken. When I told people at the office that I got it and everything was there, they couldn’t believe it, they were sure that everything would be stolen. I was glad they didn’t share that attitude with me when it was still missing. Also, USAID (the US Agency for International Development) in Rwanda has enthusiastically volunteered to pay for the donated soccer jerseys to be shipped here – the soccer league for the kids should be off the ground soon. As a last note, Gotshalks Soccer (in Raynham I think) donated all the balls and jerseys; if you are going to buy soccer equipment, you might as well buy it from good people (wegotsoccer.com).

I will be in the field from now until Friday – talk to you all then.