Site visit! A snippet of the near future

This past week,  I traveled to Gikonko sector in the Gisagara district in the southern province for site visit! This is where I'l be moving to in August after swear in, and living for the next 2 years.

My site supervisor/ titulare is a German Doctor that has been living in Rwanda since 1995. She is the doctor/ head of Gikonko Health Center.  She was extremely helpful and enthusiastic about me being there which made my trip very exciting. She is fluent in  English (as well as Kinyarwanda, German, and French) which will definitely make my transition to site a lot easier!  On tuesday night she drove us from the supervisor conference in Rwamagana to Gikonko, which ended up being about 4 hours since we stopped in Kigali for health center supplies and groceries on the way.

Gikonko is about a 25 minute drive from the main road, so as soon as we turned off the road we went down a very bumpy dirt road to the health center compound. I was able to stay at the house where I'll be living permanently as of August, which is with 2 nurses and the nutritionist of the HC right on the health center compound.  They are all older, in their mid to late 30s so they often leave Gikonko on the weekends to go back to their families if they aren't working. I was at first apprehensive about living with others, but after spending 3 days at my site I'm really looking forward to living there. My room was fully furnished with a bed, desk, wardrobe, and cabinet, which is will make my moving in process a lot more easier (and cheaper!). My house also has electricity and the water tap is just on the other side of the compound! My roommates were all extremely helpful with showing me around the health center and the community.  There an umukoze (maid/ house worker) who does the cooking for the house. All the meals were prepared by her and I was told that I could just contribute to paying for food, although I told them I would want to cook on my own at times as well.

I was able to shadow the nutritionist on wednesday and thursday. On wednesday morning I introduced myself to the mothers (and their babies!) that were waiting for their growth monitoring appointments. I explained to them (in kinyarwanda!) that I was a health volunteer from America that was here to help with programs in maternal and child health starting in August. One of the best parts of my trip was when all the mothers cheered for me and seemed happy I was there! After introducing myself I assisted the nutritionists in weighing the babies and recording the information which was a lot of fun. I was also given a tour of the health center which is extremely beautiful! This health center pretty much serves as a hospital with around 50 overnight beds for patients and 50 staff members ranging from nurses, to technicians, to bookkeepers. There are departments for surgery, maternity, laboratory, and pharmacy among many other areas.  One of the nurses I live with took me around the health center to introduce me to many of the employees. 

In the afternoon I went with one of the lab technicians on a home visit that was just about a 5 minute walk from the health center (which is a 10 minute walk Rwandan pace lol). There were 2 women and a boy living at this house that had to be tested for Malaria using a RDT (Rapid diagnostic testing) kit. After the home visit we went back to the lab and I assisted the technician in recording the results on a malaria investigation form. I spent the rest of the afternoon talking with some of the nurses at the HC, and was invited to a nurse's wedding in september!

On thursday I went back to the nutrition center to help assist with growth monitoring follow-ups for malnourished children. Most of these children that we weighed were still either severely or moderately malnourished. Based on their weight relative to their age we distributed nutritional supplements in the form of fruit bars to the mothers to give to their children throughout the upcoming weeks. In the late morning the nutritionist and I traveled to another village in Gikonko for a cleaning, nutrition and hygiene lesson for the mothers, and to check out the communal kitchen that the community health workers set-up every month. I recognized a few of the same mothers at this session and was also able to introduce myself to this  group as well! On friday morning I met my community liaison- the manager of the 90 community health workers in Gikonko, and we discussed some of work we'd get to do together in collaboration with the CHWs. At the end of my visit my titulare and I discussed some ideas for future projects like  creating programs/classes for teaching mothers, creating clubs/ activities for the disabled child patients, doing home visits for HIV positive patients that have low adherence to HC visits, and also helping out in the nutrition center with the at risk children. I'm really excited for site especially after hearing about all the different areas they would like me to get involved in. 

When I wasn't at the health center I walked around my village, and was introduced to the catholic priests, the executive secretary of the sector. the police commander, among others. One thing I'll definitely miss about Rwamagana is the convenience of the market, since Gikonko's market is pretty much two tables of random things, and not much produce besides avocados and tomatoes. My closest 'market town' is Musha which is just about a 15 minute moto ride from my site, and the biggest city to me is Butare which is a 45 minute moto followed by a 10-15 minute bus friday. On friday I traveled to Butare with the closest PCV to me who lives in Musha, and experienced my first moto ride which was at first terrifying and then a lot of fun! All volunteers in the south met up in Butare on friday where we hung out, and got to experience the luxuries of ice, ice cream, iced coffee, and chinese food!!! On saturday morning the southern province health group trekked back to Rwamagana, and after  2 buses and 5 hours we were back with our host families!

After an awesome week at site I  found out that my entire family (parents, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts) will be meeting in The Gambia for Christmas vacation! I'm so glad that I'll get to see everyone sooner than expected. It has been a wonderful month here in Rwanda and I hope it continues to get better from here!

Until next time,

Vanessa 

Gikonko Health Center

Me and my Community Health Liaison