Queen V

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 wher...

This week we found out our site placements, so where we will be moving to after we are officially sworn in as volunteers at the end of August! I'll be living in the Southern Province near the Burundi border in the Gisagara district  in a sector called Gikonko. I'll be working at the Gikonko Health Center and my primary job assignment will be to create programs to teach children and pregnant mothers life skills. Additionally my assignment focuses on assisting the community with hygiene, HIV/AIDS, and malaria. I'll be living in a village called Rugarama.  I am less than 3 hours away from Kigali- a 2 hour bus ride to Butare and then about a 45 minute moto ride to my village from Butare. Butare is the closest big town to me. This is where I'll be going to get the foods/ supplies that I can't find in my sector. Rumor has it that Butare has the best (and 1 of only 2)  Chinese food and ice cream places in the country! Although I was at first apprehensive about being...