Being a Peace Corps Volunteer vs. Feeling Like a Peace Corps Volunteer

One of the many goats that hangs around my house.

Hello everyone!  I apologize for the hiatus I think finally after being here for 10 months I've gotten the when and where I can get decent internet down... as well as the patience to wait for the slow connection.  I could write this post like a general update of what I've been up to, and I will but I want to speak to something I recently felt and someone put into actual words.  Being a Peace Corps Volunteer versus Feeling like a Peace Corps Volunteer.

As of this Monday I will have been an official PCV for 8 months!! It feels crazy that the year mark is right around the corner.  This past week two of the nurses at my health center, our data manager and myself went into one of the cells in our area and did HIV testing for the mothers who attend the malnutrition screenings each month.  This event was organized and made possible truly by one of our Community Health Workers.  Ever since I have arrived he is always motivated to improve the health in his community and is always working to help individual families or large numbers of population like this event.
The CHW consolidated what is normally 6 screening sites into two in order to make the HIV testing possible for the most amount of people.  Our first site was at the Cell office which is a one room building with benches and chairs and then a side office.  At that site alone we tested about 60 people, mainly mothers of children under 5 but also some community members who wandered in.

My two nurses testing mothers for HIV

One nurse and myself walked about 20 minutes up the hillside to reach the second site.  We were guided by another CHW to her local shop and she took us to this back room where we set up shop. It was here in this back room where the nurse was struggling to find enough light to draw blood that I had this moment where I really felt like a Peace Corps Volunteer.  It was exhilarating taking all the supplies to draw the blood of over 100 people up to the remote villages to test them for HIV and it made me realize that this is what I'm here to do.  Get out in the village and bring them the resources that are already available but maybe not right in their backyard or maybe they haven't been motivated or educated enough to know how to get them.

I know you're probably wondering why it has taken me so long to have this feeling and here's why I think.  These past 10 months have been a period where I'm trying to find my bearings, where I fit in, what the community wants from me and what I can actually give them.  I've gone out into the community with my counterpart plenty of times, I've even spoken in Kinyarwanda a number of times introducing myself and attempting to help do some education, but I still wasn't confident in my ability to make a difference.  I was labeled a PCV, that's how I introduce myself etc. but I was stuck in this "new kid on the block" feeling and I think I finally feel like a true PCV, integrated, confident, and on the path to making a difference in my community.

Visiting a CHW in the Village.

Lately I have been doing the usual things work-wise.  Every weekday I help in the pharmacy in the mornings after a short education session and return in the afternoon to help with reports or just hang out with the staff.  I have also been planning for all of the projects I have coming up in the next few months starting the very first week of May.  Here is what I have planned!

• Permagarden Training for all of my Community Health Workers: I am doing a training like I did with my group of pregnant women but the goal is to train the CHWs so that they can then go out and train the community.  We're going to be building gardens at the village malnutrition sites first in order to help with cooking demonstrations and o actually show mothers what is possible,
• WASH Training: This is my hygiene project that myself and some other health volunteers will be doing.  The training consists of 2 weeks, one in Kigali to train the trainers and one in my village to train the committees of the hygiene clubs that will be formed in 6 villages.  I have been planning and talking about this project for months and I'm excited for it to finally get started!



My friends new baby! 

• Prepex: Prepex is a non surgical male circumcision procedure that was developed for countries with limited resources.  This procedure is free for all patients and is a method to help prevent the transmission of HIV.  Circumcision has been shown to help prevent HIV transmission and this procedure makes that possible for even more men than before.   Me along with the HIV committee I am a part of are organizing a campaign for the end of June.  This campaign will consist of trained nurses coming from my district hospital to perform the procedure on men at my Health Center for a week.  I am also hoping to get my nurses trained in the procedure so it will always be available in my area.  I'm really excited by this and the local officials are just as excited which makes me feel like it's something they truly find valuable.  

This is what I have going on so far in terms of work but that's only half of my life.  The other half consists of baby naming ceremonies, baptismal ceremonies, random baby ceremonies where I didn't even know it was a ceremony until the speeches started.  There are also my band of neighborhood kids who visit me daily.  These kids even locked other kids out of my compound and told them that I was their "umuzungu" and I had to go and open the gate before we had a true Mean Girls situation on our hands.  I've really come to love my community more than I ever would have expected.

My friend and her husband and the new baby at the baby
naming ceremony
where I got to help name the baby :)

They found my books and wanted to read...
that also included magazines

Laundry Day!
A day like this is rare in rainy season.

With that being said, I actually have a lot more to share including introducing some of my close friends and co workers and some other really amazing experiences with you all and now that I've figured this internet thing out I plan to post if not weekly every other week.  I love you and miss you all and stay tuned because I'm not going anywhere! :) Turi Kumwe (We are together)

My Community Health Workers!!!