At my site i have my own house complete with outdoor kitchen room, shower room and latrine. Despite this being the first time I've lived completely alone it's finally starting to feel like home, buhoro buhoro (slowly, slowly).
Some insight into my everyday life so far:
Every morning I get up hopefully workout and have breakfast, (its so nice having my morning coffee back!) and then head to my health center staff meeting at 0730. It may seem early but since I now wake up with the sun at 0515 its starting to feel normal. I then help one of the nurses with the education session they do each day, the topics range from HIV/ AIDS to TB to Breastfeeding and Nutrition. This also has been giving me a chance to ask questions to the patients about community health which helps me with my CNA which I will get to explaining soon! Then I do small jobs here and there like being a pharmacist (counting pills and putting them in bags) or inputing data or just sitting talking with other workers but I try to keep myself busy. I then go home for lunch and come back in the afternoon to do activities like school visits or home visits in the community. I finish my day off at home where I cook ( or attempt and then just eat ramen when my stove won't light which is a lot...) I eat, and lately a group of kids coming over wanting to do sport which is so cute and then I do some chores and then read and head to bed. So there you have it a very general view of everyday life in the village. It changes every now and then with market day thrown in there or spontaneous visits from co workers but its all starting to feel just like normal life.
One thing I've really been doing a lot of is reading. In those longer periods of time where I have free time I just read and so far I've read 3 books in one month! I have read 6 books since being in country which is more than I've read just for entertainment's sake in a while! Heres my list so far:
~The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
~ Looking for Alaska - John Green
~Red Rising - Pierce Brown
~ Golden Son - Pierce Brown
~ Paper Towns - John Green
~ The Poisonwood Bible -Barbara Kingsolver
All were incredible books and I would recommend them to anyone! They were all recommended to me by amazing sources as well!
Finally a little about my actual work. So right now, I am completing a Community Needs Assessment where I learning about the community itself, what it's creates needs are in terms of health, and how I can eventually start to implement projects to improve those issues. I have been interviewing groups of patients at the health center, school officials and teachers, local officials, and your everyday village citizen. I will be completing a report in the next couple of weeks to present to my health center staff and then my fellow Volunteers in our Health 7 group during our In Service Training the second week of October. There we will have two weeks of technical training to take back to our village in order to FINALLY start getting our hands dirty.
In my next post I'll update you on what I've found in my village and tell you all the things I learn in IST but until then here are some pictures I've taken lately from hikes to visit community members thinking for work is a pretty awesome thing !!! None of these are from the internet. I promise this is real life and I get to see it everyday!! Also, I would love to hear if there is anything in particular you want to know about Rwanda, Peace Corps, me, anything! My internet connection is next to nothing but I can answer emails and FB messages very easily and would always love to hear from you!
Take care!!
