Week 4 and 5

Week 4
I was awoken Thursday morning by rain on the tin roofing and flashes of light through my window. I was facing the wall away from the window with my drapes drawn and the lightning woke me! Tin roofing is not the best idea for a place with torrential down pours… the sound is almost deafening. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and watched through my window for a while. I counted the amount of time a thunderclap lasted rather than how much time between the lightning and the thunder because I was amazed at how long the rumbling lasted. It was over half a minute most of the time. We are currently learning how to tell time and talk about illnesses. On Monday, we learned the different calls for help and what to do if you need assistance. We usually have a dialog to read to begin each new section and this one said “Help me, help me! I’ve been attacked!” and my “classroom” (it’s a hut with a chalkboard and chairs) is right by the fence and people walking to town stopped and were listening to us because they heard us calling for help! It was pretty funny and I think they realized it was just a class, but there was a pretty nice gathering for a while. Wednesday we went to health clinics around town and were shown around and what services they offer. Rwanda is a very Catholic country and many clinics are run by nuns, so they do not offer any modern family planning methods. The clinic we visited was Catholic and did not have any family planning, but it did have a nice maternity ward and it had a garden in the back for malnourished children. While we were there, a group of mothers with malnourished children were meeting and working together on providing more nutritious food for their children.

Week 5
Sunday we went to the national forest Nyungwe and tracked Colobus monkeys! It was amazing! The forest is by Lake Kivu and is an absolutely beautiful place, so lush and green with rolling hills. We had to make our own trail to find the monkeys, so needless to say it was extremely dirty and difficult, but totally worth it. While trekking through the jungle, I thought of home because there were ferns and there was moss growing on some trees. I have decided to go back at some point to walk to waterfall trail and track the chimpanzees. And…. It’s going to be really easy for me to do it because I will be living right near it!!! I found out yesterday (Friday) that I will be living in Nyamasheke province which is near the forest and right by Lake Kivu!!! It’s such a beautiful spot. While driving to the park, I kept thinking, “I hope I’m place near here”. On the other side of the park from me are all the tea plantations and the drive is just breathtaking. I am so happy I am by the lake, I love being near water! Even schisto-infested water is fine with me! I will be working with an organization called AIDS Relief providing support to their clinics. I will find out more details on Monday. I am meeting my org. in Kigali and then spending a week with them at site seeing where I will be and getting my emergency plan together (we have to write down where the closest clinic is and how we can get there if we’re sick, etc), then I have to find my own way back to Butare for training by Sunday on public transport. Luckily, I have another volunteer working at the same site as me, so we can just go together.