Queen V

  It’s been over a month since I’ve blogged, so here’s a much delayed post! A snippet of South Africa I visited South Africa for 10 days for a dental procedure. Although my med evac fell at an inconvenient time for me to leave site, I definitely won’t complain that I got a free trip to South Africa! Because I had a few appointments spread out over a 10 day span, I had a lot of free time. I spent the week seeing some of Pretoria, eating delicious food, taking hot showers, hanging out with some South Africa PCVs, enjoying a comfortable bed with multiple pillows!!!, visiting a family friend, eating grapes, and just enjoying my fakecation. I was hoping to be able to visit Johannesburg as well, but because of a last minute change in plans I wasn’t able to make it there this time around, but am planning to stop in South Africa as part of my COS (Close of Service) trip so I’m not too disappointed. Ndi Umunyamerika When I returned to Rwanda I was hit with a sudden case of Se

This past week, my cohort and I attended our long-awaited mid-service conference (MSC). This conference originally scheduled for August was delayed because Peace Corps decided to combine parts of our conference with Health 7s In-Service Training.  Health 7s focus is on maternal and child health, specifically the first 1000 days of life, and they wanted us to be a part of those sessions so we could incorporate this new focus into the rest of our service. I would like to say that I gained a lot of knowledge from this conference, but to be honest, the benefits mainly included a nice hotel, a hot shower, a TV (I watched at least 3 hours of E! everyday, no shame) endless amounts of food and tea, and quality bonding time with my fellow volunteers. I’m generally positive about my experience in Peace Corps, however as I’m learning in this experience, you can’t please everyone and not everything will be perfect. Our cohort has felt somewhat overlooked in the past few months, especially sin

Senegal Last week I returned from a two week trip to Senegal, where I attended the Stomp Out Malaria boot camp with a staff member and fellow volunteer. I had been looking forward to going to this training for awhile and was very thankful for the opportunity to do so. This training brought together volunteers and staff members from 16 countries in Africa who are involved in malaria work. We were able to receive technical training relating to malaria in more detail than I could ever imagine! There were a variety of guest speakers from different organizations that talked about their role in malaria work. One of these organizations, CommCare, is currently working in 4 districts in Rwanda to roll out a health surveying app with the IRS (Indoor Residual Spraying) team/ community health workers, and it turns out that my sector is one of the target areas for this program! In addition to full days of malaria related lessons, activities, and delicious food, many other volunteers and

  Hello! I got back to site yesterday after 3 weeks away. If you keep up with my blog you're probably wondering when am I ever in my village and the answer is  not enough! I've essentially been living out of my backpack for the past two months. This time around, pretty much half of my community thought I was in America-which I am pretending I am as I eat these cheez-its (thanks Grace!) My time away was all in country, which included the following stops: Kigali (Meetings)--> Rwamagana (Assisting at PST)-->Ruhango (GLOW/BE Camps)--> Kigali (Health 7 Swear in). Although I was looking forward to all of these events, I was a bit nervous about leaving site for that long-it was the longest span of time I'd been away since moving here. With ongoing weekly projects like the WASH lessons and the community finance classes,  I had to put all my trust in my counterparts to ensure everything would continue smoothly, which it did! On my way to the health center this morning

Muraho! I spent the past 4 weeks split between time at site working on some projects and activities, followed by a family vacation with my Mom and two sisters in Rwanda and Uganda!  Here are the highlights in photos: WASH Village Chief Meeting- June 10: My 3 WASH facilitators, Vestine, Venuste, and Ally orienting the 9 village chiefs to create hygiene clubs in their respective villages. Kids Club, Nutrition Day- June 13: My monthly kids club met to learn about nutrition and how to make a healthy plate, followed by a sports day and a hat giveaway, courtesy of my Titulare!  Library Project-June 19: 10 boxes of donated books from the book drive were shipped from Philadelphia. Thanks to my family for the organization and shipping!  Library Project-June 23: Health Posters (Malaria, HIV, Hand Washing) courtesy of Peace Corps are finally up!     WASH Village Training- June 22-26: These 63 people make up the 9 village

This week marks one year in Rwanda!  Here are my ramblings about what I've been up to this past month:   Musanze I spent a long weekend in May visiting a volunteer in Musanze (the main town in the Northern province)  with some fellow volunteers. In addition to spending at least a quarter of the trip at this amazing restaurant, we went on a 4 hour hike with some visitors from the states. These pictures don't do it justice!  All Volunteer Conference After our weekend in Musanze we traveled to Muhanga (yes, this is where 90% of peace corps trainings take place) for the All Volunteer Conference. Before heading to the conference Tracy and I spent a night at Graces' site in Muhanga. We enjoyed the luxuries of tacos (with meat!!!), candy, and the best 90s playlist ever before heading to the conference the next day. All vol brought together all volunteers in Rwanda from both the health and education programs. About 50 of the 70ish volunteers in country

A lot has happened here in Rwanda since my last post. If you've seen any of my Facebook activity, you may have some idea of why I can truly say that April has been the most challenging month for me and many of my fellow PCVs, since the beginning of service. A friend and fellow health 6 volunteer, David, passed away last month while on vacation. He left behind an innovative project to bring water bleach dispensers to his community to improve water sanitation.  Fortunately, PC Rwanda will be continuing his project through his memorial fund, which you can donate to here, any support is truly appreciated. This past month I also had a few friends and fellow volunteers end their service early for different reasons, so my cohort became a lot smaller in a matter of weeks. Despite all that happened, I was lucky enough to have my Dad in town for part of this difficult period. He had a business trip to Nairobi which is just an hour flight from Kigali, so he was able to visit