Day 3 – Kigali, Rwanda

Wow!  What an amazing day. There are nine of us traveling from the foundation and then a few people from our local grantee, JSI. Today we had meetings with the ministry of health, learning about their health, vaccine and essential medicine programs.

Our first meeting was with the Minister of Health, she is awesome!  If I had the chance, I would intern under her. She seems demanding, funny and energetic…just like my boss now J. At one point in the meeting she ran out of coffee and signaled to one of her staff that she needed more. Her staff started to get up to tell the secretary that we needed more coffee and the minister said:

‘Sit down. What is this technology of using the foot? Send an SMS’ (an SMS is a text message)

This was so funny to me it took all my effort to not laugh out loud.

The ministry of health has been working with vaccines since 1998 and they are at iover 90% coverage!  This is completely unheard of in most countries. We got a chance to visit their vaccine storehouse; 4 large refrigerators and 1 large freezer that keep all of the vaccines for the country. They also have a huge back-up generator to keep the fridges going when the electricity cuts out (which happened 3 times when we were there for 15 minutes).  They are even already starting their HPV vaccination campaign for all girls in high school. This is soooo far ahead of most developing countries.

Rwanda is one of the only countries that are on track to meet all of their MDG goals.

While meeting with the minister she told us that she is personally responsible for answering to the president about the health goals. The president takes two entire days out of each month to meet with his ministers. Wow!  That’s a lot of time.  The CEOs of companies rarely meet with all of their leaders more frequently than once a month, and they’re just running companies, not entire countries.

Another interesting thing about the Rwandan government is that it has the highest percentage of women in office than any other country in the world. After meeting the minister of health it is obvious that women can be just as rigorous and hard hitting as men.

We also got a chance to visit the central warehouse of all of the medical supplies for the entire country.  The fact that they even have a central warehouse for the country is fantastic. We saw antibiotics, latex gloves, family planning supplies and many other things.  The districts of Rwanda put an order in every month and the supplies are then brought to them by a truck that drives all the way to them, which is also extremely unique. The warehouse is efficient and well organized, more so than most places I’ve worked.

After our meeting for the day, we had a 30 minute break and then we hosted a reception for the Minister of Health and 35 other partners in the area. It was a good event and after it was finished my stress level went down about 105%

It’s a good trip so far!!  Woohoo!

Day 2: Kigali, Rwanda

Please note that this post is just my thoughts.  If you would like to confirm the facts, please do your research.  These are my feelings and how I interpreted what I saw.

I woke up at 8:30am after getting 4.5 hours of sleep.  It was already warm out (actually it never quite got cool) and there was some humidity in the air. I headed down to breakfast and met up with two of my colleagues who were also already here.  The three of us were the first of the group to arrive.

After breakfast, we got out of the hotel for the early part of the day to explore the city a bit.  We started our day at the National Museum of the genocide that occurred in 1994. This is when the Hutu tried to exterminate the Tutsi from the country of Rwanda. The museum was really well done, informative, but not too gory (it’s always a fine line of how much the public can actually handle). Two sections of the museum stood out to me, in particular. 

The first was a video of one of the Hutu perpetrators who had been a ‘genocidaire’ in the massacre.  It was a video of his trial. He was explaining all of the murders that he had been involved in, including the names of the individuals.  He was so matter of fact, and even continued to crack jokes as the judge tried to get information from him. As far as I could tell (and I have about 2 hours of training on this…just what I saw and read in the museum) the way they dealt with the ‘genocidaires’ was in the culturally appropriate method of public confession and forgiveness.  This means that the Hutu who were involved in the killings are still in the same cities and towns where they committed the murders…living right next to the family members of those they had killed.

The second section that hit me hard was a room that was dedicated to the children who were killed in the genocide. The information provided was given by the living family members of these children, mothers, fathers, sisters and grandparents. There was a picture, the age of the child, some small facts, and the way they died.  For instance:

**Age: 4

Favorite food: Chips and soda

Favorite activity: singing and dancing

Best friend: His mum

Death: Hacked by a machete

This made it so real to me.  This little kid sounds just like my niece or nephew!  How awful to watch someone you love killed right in front of you. And the reason? They were born into the ‘wrong tribe’?!?!?!

Some other things that I learned, which I had not known are:

·         These groups were one people until Rwanda was colonized.  The Europeans were obsessed with differentiating social classes and therefore separated these groups into tribes that they created, the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa.

·         Many of the people killed knew their killers personally.  They were neighbors, priests and ‘friends’.

·         This only happened 16 years ago!  Meaning that people my age were teenagers when they witnessed their families being murdered!

After our time at the museum we headed over to have lunch at the Hotel des Milles Collines. We know this as the ‘Hotel Rwanda’, where Paul Rusesabagina boldly saved many from the genocide.

We were sitting at the ‘Hotel Rwanda’ in the beautiful sunshine.  All of a sudden the dark clouds rolled in and the downpour began.  There we sat, under the bar with a grass roof eating our lunch and watching the massive drops fall into the nice clean pool. The rain comes and goes.

While eating lunch our colleague told us of his experience in Rwanda just after the genocide.  He was here in 1995 to help put organizations back together after the tragedy.  I heard stories from him of colleagues who hid in the ceiling of their building for weeks, waiting for a chance to escape.

It’s amazing to think that it was only 16 years ago that this country was torn apart by the genocide of the Tutsi. Today the streets are so clean and crisp, all motorcyclists wear helmets (which is unheard of in Africa).  The rain comes and goes.

**This is a fictional child.  I did not write down the information of one particular child, but I did see all of these entries on at least one plaque…these are just jumbled.

Day 1: Rwanda/Uganda

Lufthansa has been trying to get on the foundation’s good side for years.  Which is why we get free upgrades to first class all the time.  Crazy, I know. 

The super crazy thing is that today I was sitting in the first class lounge in Frankfurt and who sits down across from me?  Will.i.am.* I didn’t get a photograph or autograph to post, but I DID get a conversation and a hand shake, which I very much prefer.

During my short layover in Addis I quickly remembered two of my favorite lingual things about the Ethiopian language: (not that I speak or understand it, but these are small things that you can pick up if visiting for a week like I did last summer). 

Their way of saying ‘Okay…yep…I get it…uh-hu’ is:  ‘Ishee…ishee…ishee…ishee’

They say it constantly and I love it. 

Another thing that makes me laugh every time I hear it (which is often) is when Ethiopians make short, sharp and audible inhalations during a conversation (similar to the sound an American makes if they hear something that surprises them).  This is like saying, ‘Oh, yes, I see!’ The first couple of times I heard it I thought that the person I was speaking to was shocked by something I had said, but then I realized that this is just to acknowledge that what was said is important and understood.

Flying out of Addis at 11pm local time I noticed that the ground looked like the night sky.  Some of the ‘stars’ were even twinkling.  After a couple of seconds to process it I remembered that the electricity is not consistent in Addis, and these lights were twinkling because they were blinking on and off randomly with the electrical inconsistency.

*When he first sat down across from me I had no idea who he was.  I had to wikipedia Black Eyed Peas after they mentioned that band name in their conversation.  Then when I was writing this post I first wrote 'sam.i.am' hahahahahah...what a dork!

Flight path

I’m currently flying from Frankfurt, Germany to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and then after a short layover will continue to Kigali, Rwanda. It will be difficult for me to keep myself in the airport in Addis, rather than running out and finding the friends that I made the last time I was there. We could do an impromptu dance party at and Ethiopian restaurant like last time…only many of my dear friends from around the globe will not be in Addis…so I suppose I will stay in the airport where I belong.

Just as we entered African air space I looked out the window and saw a glowing pink-lemonade patch of clouds, surrounded by the normal lamb tails (which are also beautiful). What is it making that beautiful patch? Just before the pink-lemonade phenomenon, I was looking down on the mountains of Athens.  I’ve never been to Greece, but after seeing those beautiful peeks from above, it’s been added to my bucket list.

Once when I was flying over the mid-west of the United States I saw out my window a billowing black/grey heap of clouds.  The rest of the sky was a blanket of pale gray and then there was one huge nob of black clouds rising higher into the atmosphere.  While watching this mound and contemplating, I suddenly saw the entire heap flash with light and turn completely white.  It continued like this for many minutes, I could even see the individual streams of lightning make their way down the cloud.

It was a seriously amazing thing to see a lightning storm from above. I could actually SEE the lightning where it was being created…AMAZING…and couldn’t help myself from picturing a mini-Zeus standing on a cloud forming the little bolts and plummeting them down to the Earth below.

I love to fly.  The sunrises and sunsets are always beautiful from the vantage point of a plane. This is why you will find me in a window seat on every single flight I take (unless it’s completely impossible and the person at the check-in counter is immune to my most pitiful pouty face). Learning how to fly a plane is on the verge of being on my bucket list but I hesitate to include it because I have such a big bucket already.

My bucket runeth over.

If I could choose a super power, it would definitely be flight.  And I would build some sort of a side car for Sophie (her super power would be getting over her fear of heights) J