The Field Work Begins!

Things are going really well! We’ve been out all day yesterday and today so I don’t really feel like writing much. Instead I will make a photo blog. More to come!

1.       This is the courtyard of St-Joseph. This is just outside my room looking towards the restaurant. I’ll try to take a video soon!

2.       Day 1 of surveying in Kazo Sector. This is my team: Violette and Obed.

      This is our whole team minus Bosco. We had a stranger take the picture and he had a hard time trying to fit everyone in. That’s why everyone is laughing!

 Cloudy sky! It’s been raining every day. Not ideal for surveying in villages. We almost got stuck in a village the first day because it was so hilly. The bus was fish tailing all over and i was worried we would go right into a house. But we managed after half of the bus got out to push!

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6.    This is a very common scene as we drive through the villages! I took it from inside the bus so it’s a bit blurry.

    This is what happens when we stop and they catch up to the bus. They will just stare through the windows until you do something. No one knew rock paper scissors so I decided to entertain with the camera.

                            Then I got in the picture J

Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! We had 2 friends over  for dinner last night to celebrate. They were very excited to be able to celebrate ‘Canadian Thanksgiving’ with us. We had our usual buffet dinner at the restaurant but there was spaghetti so that was a treat. We also bought a loaf of bread and ordered the “special omelette”. It’s just like an omelette at home in that it has peppers, onions and cheese in it--The Rwandan touch is the addition of beef and French fries...special indeed! Dessert was fresh pineapple and Rwandan cake (kind of dry and not very sweet...but still delicious). 

I will post a picture here soon...

The blog post below is new too! And i have a few more stories in progress to post later today or tomorrow :)

Week 3

Busy busy busy! We’re getting down to crunch time so there has been lots to do! We have officially made our team or students from INATEK and we had 2 meetings with them last week. There are 8 INATEK students: 3 are from the previous team in May, there are 3 girls, and 3 or 4 of the students are from the Faculty of Education as opposed to the Faculty of Rural Development.  We really wanted to make sure that we had girls on the team because for our Sprinkles project the focus groups will be with women so they might be more comfortable if a female is asking the questions. We also wanted to branch out to other faculties and since we’ll be working on a new methodology called “participatory action research” we thought it would be useful to have some students who know more about psychology and such. The team seems to be really enthusiastic and we’re all getting along really well. Like us, the INATEK students aren’t being paid for this. The commitment is pretty big so it’s quite commendable of them! In Rwanda I think there is more of a variety of students. Some start right after high school but from what I’ve gathered it seems like the majority of students start first year when they are 22 or 23. And there are also a lot of adult students. The schools offer day, evening and weekend programs so that people can study around their work schedules. One member of our team is actually the head master of a primary school, and is in year 4 at INATEK (The bachelor’s program takes 5 years).

 Previously, schooling was paid for by the government up to year 6, but they have recently changed this to year 9. Another big change--school used to be taught in French, but last year they changed the curriculum to English. That’s HUGE! I can’t imagine how hard that must be for the teachers and students, but it seems to have been a successful switch. They brought in some English teachers from other East African countries to facilitate the change. As a result it isn’t uncommon to find a person who speaks 4 languages: Kinyarwanda, French, English and Swahili. One guy that we have befriended speaks those 4 languages and has asked me to help him work on his Spanish! Very impressive. Another result from the English curriculum, whenever we walk past a group of school children that normally stop what they’re doing to stare at us, and eventually one of them will call out “good morning!” (even if it’s the afternoon or evening) and then proceed to ask “how are you?” with perfect pronunciation.  Yesterday we attended Language Day at INATEK. It was a huge competition for secondary students to use their English. The categories were song, poetry, public speaking and skits. It was quite entertaining! From what we heard in the poetry and public speaking sections, the students are quite passionate about learning/practicing their English because they see it as the key to the development of the country.

This week we have a meeting with the district office to go over the survey (we’ve been making many changes to it to adjust for the rainy season), and we hope to finalize it tomorrow. We have 2 more training sessions with the team and hope to do a pilot run at the health centre to get some practice in before the real deal.  Then we will have to go to Kigali to print off over 200 copies of the final survey, we have to arrange for a taxi-van to take us into all of the villages (4 villages a day for 6-8 days..TBD), we have to organize a picnic lunch to bring into the field for 11 of us (most likely samosas, chapatti, cake and fruit), and we have to pick up 200 bottles of oil to give to each household that we interview. We are also hoping to meet up with UNICEF so we can start making some decisions about the Sprinkles project.

Last week was all meetings and planning, and one trip to Kigali...Actually it was a trip to a new area for us (Nyamata), to visit a contact we have from World Vision. Nyamata is only about 60 km West of Kibungo, whereas Kigali is 90 km NW of Kibungo. However, the only way to get anywhere is through Kigali. So we left at 10am, go to Kibungo just after 12. Went to the national bank to transfer money to register for a conference in November, had a rushed lunch and then caught another hour-long bus ride to Nyamata. We had a meeting for about 1.5 hours which was very helpful for us, and then we had to face the long ride home. We had heard that there was a bus from Nyamata to Kibungo at 5pm, but apparently that information was wrong. We had the option of returning through Kigali or taking a new route through Sake. Everyone was VERY helpful and we drew quite a crowd in Nyamata while waiting for the bus. We heard that there would be a bus from Sake to Kibungo, but when we got on the bus I started talking to a guy who informed us that there wouldn’t be a bus until the following morning. This guy, Linny, was very helpful and actually called a friend of his in Sake and had him come with 3 taxi-motos to drive us back to Kibungo. The bus ride into Sake was great! It was very different from the ride into Kigali. With each turn we got onto a smaller and smaller road until we were on a one lane dirt road going through a banana field. It was really neat to be going through such small villages. As soon as we arrived in Sake the bikes were waiting for us. I think they were quite excited to be driving 3 muzungus to Kibungo on a Thursday evening (and we were quite excited too). I think i mentioned in a previous post that I’ve taken quite a liking to taxi-moto rides. I’ll get some pictures from Kathy to post on the blog. This moto ride was like none other. It was evening so the sun had just gone down, and were quite far from any cities so it was dark and just cooling off a bit. I put on my scarf and strapped my bag on tight ,and before getting on took out my ipod to further enjoy this experience. Once we had started moving my the driver took off his helmet and motioned for me to give him an earbud. I really enjoy sharing music so I of course conceded to his request and we continued along for 40 minutes happy as clams. I was singing into the wind and he was bobbing his head along to the tunes. His favourites were Vampire Weekend and Hawksley Workman...good taste. It was an exhilarating experience right up there with late night swims in Peachland or at ‘Hippie Point’, ATV-ing through a jungle to arrive at a cenote, or standing at the end of a pier during a wind storm... J

Sprinkles

Sunday, Oct. 3

We are in Kigali again today because Sung Kyu had a booth at an agriculture exhibition to present his compost tumbler machine. It’s a project idea that he came up with when he discovered that the use of organic fertilizer in Rwanda is very low. This week he built a big (6 ft x 3ft diameter) metal cylinder that can hold up to 1 tonne of organic material. It has two doors on it so you put food scraps or foliage into one door and give it a few spins everyday and in about 2 weeks you should have soil coming out of the second door. INATEK gave him a budget for the machine, and in the next few months some students will conduct research to see how successful it is.

I have some time before getting the bus back to Kibungo so I thought I would give more details about the Sprinkles project. Sprinkles is the brand name of a micronutrient powder that a Canadian, Carl Zlotkin, invented about 10 years ago. It’s meant to be a short term intervention to alleviate micronutrient deficiencies in children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years. It comes in a little package that mothers put into their child’s food (such as porridge) once a day. It contains many micronutrients, but one of the main ones of concern in Rwanda is iron. In previous studies, children that received Sprinkles once a day for 2 months remained anaemia-free for the following 7 months. This intervention has been found to be successful in many countries and there is a big interest to bring Sprinkles to Rwanda. So how do we fit in? Well, Judy has been involved with the discussions about this intervention in Rwanda, and the previous team in May asks several questions about the willingness of mothers to use Sprinkles during their survey. One such question was concerning the packaging design. In the past, Sprinkles implementation has failed because the child depicted on the package had big rosy cheeks and the mothers took this for measles and wouldn’t use it (however, the very same packaging was used in another country and was very successful). In May there was a girl working on the project that works on design for social change, and she created several different package designs to see which one the mother’s liked the most. So we already have some data concerning Sprinkles and it will be our job to conduct more formative research (in the form of focus groups with mothers, fathers and other caregivers, as well as key informant interviews with health workers) to gather data on what the current infant and young child feeding practices are, how Sprinkles should be distributed and advertised, and what potential obstacles might be.

The main partners in this project will most likely be UNICEF and World Vision. We aren’t involved in that side of things and I’m not really sure if anything formal has been decided. But as far as we know UNICEF will be using World Vision to run a pilot study because World Vision has offices all over Rwanda. We will be doing research in 4 different areas so we will probably have to spend a few days overnight in some places. World Vision will most likely be able to cover these costs. We have a contact (a former UBC student) who has been using a certain methodology to conduct her focus groups with women in Rwanda. It is called Participatory Action Research and the idea is that the researcher isn’t just extracting information from people because they will be learning something during the focus group as well. I don’t know much about it yet but we will be getting together with her to learn how to conduct these focus groups.

That might have been kind of boring… I will post again soon. We’ve been really busy this week meeting up with the students that we will be working with!

Week 2

It’s been a long week! It’s strange not having a routine—the days feel longer, and more relaxed than at home but looking back on what we’ve done since Monday I feel accomplished. We might not actually have many concrete things to show for it, but the project plans are becoming more clear and things are falling into place. We went into Kigali on both Monday and Thursday for meetings with World Vision to discuss our Sprinkles project. It was pretty exciting to be at the national head quarters! Kigali is a treat for us because of the food options, the coffee, the shopping and the taxi moto rides J On both days our meetings were in the morning, we would go somewhere for lunch and then we would debrief and do some work before heading home. Normally I really enjoy going on long drives and even sitting on long greyhound rides (I find it rejuvenating to just sit and look out the window while listening to music), however the drive on Monday was far from rejuvenating. I think I have mentioned the city buses before. They are the size of a Volkswagen westvalia and they squeeze 19 people into it! So you are squished up against the people beside you and there’s really no way to move around or shift your weight. So I found myself having an internal debate the whole way home trying to decide whether I should start eating even more French fries so that my bum would get more padding…fortunately for my health, we discovered that there are bigger buses that go into Kigali and certain times, so we planned accordingly and left at 530 am on Thursday!

On Tuesday we had a full day of meetings (the Kibungo Health Centre in the morning, the Dean of the Faculty of Rural Development, and then a team meeting with Sunk Kyu to write a report and hammer out some details of the project), Wednesday was a relaxed morning and then meetings in the afternoon and evening (we had our first meeting to recruit some INATEK students to work with us), and Friday consisted of more meetings! Even today, Saturday, we spent much of the day using our brains to work through the survey, plan some student training, meet with Judy on skype (the professor heading this project who is currently working in Cambodia) and meet with an INATEK staff member. I also had to do laundry today (hand washing 5 shirts, underwear, two pairs of pants and a scarf takes some time!), and I finally felt up to doing some yoga. It felt very productive.

I discovered a few things in the past few days…the first was a GIANT spider in my bedroom! I tried to handle the situation on my own and spent several minutes planning and practicing my execution using a tin mug and some postcards, but when it came down to it I couldn’t do it on my own. I texted Kathy to see if she was awake because I needed support. To my surprise she got out of bed and came equipped with a headlamp, a glass and some paper and as soon as I pointed to the spider she went at it without hesitation. In my opinion that might not have been the best way of going about it as it took her about 5 attempts to actually capture it. Picture Kathy hitting the glass against the wall over and over while the giant spider is dancing around, and I’m screaming and yelling “I thought we were going to talk about this first!” over and over…not my finest moment. Once captured we took a picture, and then left my room to find many people staring at us…not unusual in Rwanda, but this was especially awkward given the circumstances, as well as because it was a big group of academics that had been at a conference at the university and were spending the evening in the courtyard outside my door. I have to admit that I had only used my mosquito net once since arriving at St-Joseph’s, but seeing that spider has been a better incentive than the risk of getting malaria, and I plan to use it for the rest of the trip. The second discovery was the tell tale signs of bed bugs, the 3 bites in a row commonly referred to as “breakfast, lunch and dinner”. Some of you may know that I became quite the bed bug expert when my roommates and I got them while living on campus 2 years ago. At UBC they had an employee that specifically dealt with bed bugs…he even had a big office so you can imagine that this must be quite a big issue on campus. The UBC bed bugs were taken very seriously and our rooms had to be completely evacuate of all our belongings and fumigated 3 times. It was quite a hassle, but looking back on it now I wish I could have the same treatment here. I have no idea how they would handle this situation here…so I think I’ll just have to deal with it. The THIRD discovery was a joyful one! We were walking back from our meeting today and saw 2 empty yogurt containers outside. We immediately went into the St-Joseph store to inquire and found out that they have yogurt available! I’m sure this will become a regular treat for us. My morning porridge just keeps getting better! I bought a kettle, mugs, a spoon and Rwandan honey…I also brought almonds and cinnamon from Canada, so my breakfast feels just like home. For dinner today I was mixing fries with my pasta (that definitely did not feel like home)…and the sad thing is how exciting it was to have the plain pasta noodles! We have resorted to mixing all of our various starches (fries, rice, sweet potato, banana) together to increase the flavour. Today there was a pureed soup that Gurjeet poured all over her starch..she was able to pretend (Hook style) that she was eating “alfredo pasta, cheesy fries and curry rice”. It’s good to be creative!

I have more to write but not enough time! I will post this now and try to add more about the project later. And I’ll put up some pictures…

A Great Weekend!

So I’ve been very busy lately and I’m getting over a cold so I haven’t been keeping in touch. I did a lot of interesting things this weekend though! On Friday afternoon we were invited to a traditional Rwandan wedding, on Saturday morning we participated in Umuganda, and on Sunday we were invited by a prof at INATEK to go on the first-year field trip to Akagera Park.

The Wedding

                One of the students that we have been in touch with is Eric. It was his friend’s sister that was getting married this weekend and he made sure that it was ok to invite us. Kathy and I took the bus to Kayonza (40 minutes from Kibungo) on Friday afternoon. The bus stops right at St-Joseph’s so it was very easy for us. Eric met us at the bus stop and his friend Patrick picked us up to bring us to the wedding. We made an unexpected stop before going to the wedding because Patrick had brought 2 traditional dresses for us to wear. He pulled into the place that he works at, and a lady from the kitchen came out to help us put them on. We were very thankful to have the traditional outfits because the dresses we had brought only just covered our knees which would have made us feel even more uncomfortable at the wedding that we were crashing.

             

          We learned that there are 3 events involved in a Rwandan wedding. First is the civil ceremony where you get your certificates at the district office, then the traditional wedding, and then a church wedding/reception. At the traditional wedding the families meet formally and negotiate the dowry and such. It was all in Kinyarwanda so we didn’t really understand what was going on, but there were many of gifts given to the bride’s family (including a cow...but I never found out if there was actually a cow or if it was just an exchange of money. The men of the bride’s family did however leave the ceremony to ‘go look at the cow’). There was also a lot of traditional dancing and singing. It was great! The ceremony took place in the yard of the bride’s family. There were several tents set up, and the one for the wedding party was decorated in a lot of leopard print. The leopard print was also incorporated into the outfits of the wedding party. This is because traditionally the people would have worn the hide of the dangerous animal for special ceremonies.

Umuganda

Umuganda is a very interesting tradition in Rwanda! It is kind of like mandatory community service for everyone is Rwanda that takes place on the last Saturday of every month. It’s always different every month, but the whole village, or several villages, will all work on a project together. The umuganda closest to us was in a sector called Karenge, where several villages from the area came to start building a primary school. We got there a bit after 9 am and there were already several hundred people there with hoes, picks and rakes to flatten out a foundation. Apparently the building of the school is some sort of deal between the government and the village where the construction has been contracted out to a private company but the village also needs to help out and be involved. At first we just helped out by getting rid of large rocks, but then we each took a turn hoeing. Hard work! It reminded me of the few days last summer where I was working out in the field planting lettuce at Agriculture Canada. I didn’t last that long...10-15 minutes before taking a break that didn’t end. I sat down for about 10 minutes, and then when I stood up to go move some more rocks I felt very light headed. This went on for quite some time until I finally got up to let someone know that I was going to go home and I almost fainted! So I sat in the shade for about 20 minutes and Kathy gave me some Gatorade powder from her first aid kit (very smart!) and I then I felt well enough to walk home.  I think it must have been a combination of my cold, the hard work (albeit for a short amount of time), and of course the sun. I must have really looked like a weak/lazy muzungu...hopefully it goes better next month!

Akagera Park

                

             Kathy, Sung Kyu and I joined the first-year students from the faculty of rural development on their field trip to the national park. We spent 9 hours on the bus traveling to the park, and then driving all throughout it with a guide trying to find some animals. We heard from people that had already been to the park before that our trip was relatively quiet as far as animal sightings go. But I had a great time! The geography of the park was quite varied so it was really interesting to see. At the start it was really dry and SUPER dusty, then we came upon several lakes. The land was very lush around the lakes, with papyrus and palm trees and lots of hippos! Towards the end of our trip when we were way up North in the park the savannah became a lot greener and there were many more animals. It looked like The Lion King! We saw a lot of baboons, a variety of antelope, hippos, crocodile, buffalo, zebras and water buck. Sadly no giraffes this time. The guide told us that “sometimes they can hide”. Here are some pictures. We were extremely dusty, hot and tired after being in the bus for so long but it was worth it.

I am posting this blog from the Bourbon Cafe in Kigali as we had to come in for the day to have a meeting with World Vision to discuss the terms of our partnership. We have a lot on our plate! I will post more details about the project soon but I think it’s getting off to a great start.                                                                                                      

Getting settled at St-Joseph’s

It’s definitely the rainy season in Kibungo! We just arrived at our permanent residence in Kibungo, Rwanda—we’ll be staying at a motel style guest house called St-Joseph’s. I’ll attach pictures, it’s really beautiful! Kibungo is about a 2 hour drive from Kigali so we took a station wagon taxi loaded up with all of our bags. It was a struggle for the driver to fit all of our suitcases in the back :S maybe I shouldn’t have brought so much? I think my back pack full of rain boots, 2 kg of quick oats and a costco bag of almonds might have been a bit much. But I’m here now and I’m sure I’ll be happy for the porridge in the mornings. We had our first lunch at the restaurant here and it was really good! It’s a buffet style so there was rice, beans, fried bananas, cassava, potatoes, cabbage and carrots, and some meat. No French fries yet! But I am to understand that they will be a staple here so I’ll have to be careful.        

Gurjeet took Kathy and I on a quick tour around St-Joseph’s.  We are right across from the university campus and right beside an elementary school and an orphanage. We’ve already had lots of kids waving at us and calling out greetings in English. We’re planning to visit the orphanage later. It’s beautiful here! I’ll have to post some pictures. You’ve probably heard that Rwanda is called the land of a thousand hills and it’s true! I think we’re on the top of a hill because we can look out across the street from St-Joseph’s and there’s a beautiful valley with more hills in the background.  After our tour we decided to rest a bit in our separate rooms and unpack. I was part way through when it started to rain REALLY HARD, so I was inspired to sit down and blog. It didn’t rain like this in Kigali. Apparently the rains are late in Kigali, but came early in Kibungo. Someone also told us that in the places that the rains have been late in the recent past, when they do come it is so strong that it washes out the crops. Climate change... To give an idea of how hard it’s raining right now, I’m listening to music on my computer at its loudest and I can only just make out the lyrics! I had opened the door of my room to look out into the courtyard and watch the rain come down, but I had to close it because it was splashing in even though it’s covered for about 4 feet outside of my door.  And now there’s thunder! I’m sure this won’t be as exciting in a few days but it’s great right now!

I’m not sure how people back home are picturing Rwanda so I’ll try to describe it throughout my blog as best I can. I’ve already mentioned the hills—from wherever you are it seems like you can see probably 5 hills when you look in any direction. Kigali city itself is spread out over several hills. It’s pretty big! We definitely didn’t see all of it, and I wouldn’t say that I know my way around at all. But I’m sure by the end of the 3 months, after staying in Kigali a few more times, I will know it pretty well. I had thought that on our drive from Kigali to Kibungo we would go through some forested areas similar to what I had experienced driving through Costa Rica. Not the case! As far as I can tell there are no forests or jungles that I could get lost in. Most of the land is being farmed. There are trees on the peaks of some hills, but over the years they have been cut down to be used as fuel and to make more agricultural land. Along the roads there will be houses lined up, and behind them all of the farms. It’s very fertile so everything is extremely green, and the soil is red. There are lots of trees, big and small, as well as plants along the roads but nothing very dense.

The power just came on! I think that they must turn it off for most of the day at the guest house. Same with the running water so I have a jerry can of water in the bathroom for washing my hands. Gurjeet said that the water might only be on for a certain amount of time in both the morning and evening. The showers will take some getting used to! There’s no curtain or anything, just a shower sized indent in the ground with a drain. I’ve ended up making quite a mess each time I’ve showered so I’ll have to work on that. The room is very nice though! I have my own bathroom and a double bed, two chairs and a closet with shelves in it. There are two big windows and a mosquito net of course!

It’s hard to believe that we’re finally here. After unpacking everything it feels more real than it did before. 3 months! Tomorrow we’re going to start some project planning and probably get more acquainted with Kibungo.