Visit of a lifetime

Before I actually start this entry I would like to thank the makers of smart phones and Google Maps because it has helped us find places in this city (round of applause for Google Maps)!!

Last week was indeed a long week! I don't even know where to start (but I guess I should start from somewhere).

We haven't conquered our morning tasks of trekking up our 2 hills to get to work--but at least we are getting our daily dosage of cardiac workouts. Although, I think whenever we stop midway and are out of breath and panting, passerby's probably wonder "What in the world is wrong with these two girls?".

But anyway, back to the long week issue.

A non-communicable diseases (NCDs) survey was carried out in the earlier part of this year. The data analysis was started the first week of our internship. Since most of the data analysis is important in the field of epidemiology, my supervisor asked me to join him in the data analysis process which is going on. It has been a pretty interesting experience so far to work in collaboration with Ministry of Health, CDC and RBC (Rwandan Biomedical Center). My week was spent with the different collaborators reading through tables of results and helping with the interpretations of the data. Hopefully when this report gets published, our names will be featured as contributors (wishful thinking maybe?).

The highlight of this internship by far was actually meeting the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon and the World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim. They arrived in Kigali Thursday night and met with the head of agencies and Pres. Kagame. Since their time was limited, a staff general meeting was scheduled for 7am Friday morning (way too early--7am is when I start thinking of waking up lol). They both had interesting points to raise in terms of peace in the Great Lakes region, as well as the importance of collaborative work between all UN agencies and the World Bank. They both were actually funny individuals which made their talk even more interesting to listen to. They were both impressed by development efforts in Rwanda and commended the agencies on their hard work  towards working as a one UN. Since they were enroute to Uganda, questions were limited and the meeting ended at 9am. Life bounced back to normal immediately after with myself and Carmen going back to our rendez-vous spot to work more on our NCDs survey. Many key players were present at this gathering, including the UN Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region, Mary Robinson (former Irish President).

After work, we ventured into the centre ville (downtown) to window shop at the grocery shops (but we actually ended up buying some amazing pastries from Simba supermarket) as well as visiting Nakumatt (your one-stop grocery shop) and lastly, an African shop to purchase some Rwandese souvenirs. A much needed night of sleeping was far from the question. It was Ama's last night in Rwanda so we just stayed up chatting and goofing around.

Saturday, we could barely wake up. Well, turns out that we missed out on Umuganda--communal cleaning. Every last Saturday of the month, members of the community come out to clean their surroundings! How neat is that? So this is a custom that goes way back in the history/culture of Rwanda that has been preserved. If all other African countries could adopt this, it would be utterly amazing (I'll keep praying for that)!

The rest of the weekend was pretty much just spent relaxing with church service on Sunday as usual. I met more Ghanaians which made me pleasantly surprised.

Tomorrow will be the beginning of another looooonnnnggg week. I cannot believe the weekend is over already :(.

I wish you all a blessed and productive week! :)

L-R: UN Resident Coordinator (Momodou Lamin); UN Sec. Gen. (Ban Ki-Moon); World Bank Pres (Jim Yong Kim);  

With the Senior Economist for  UNDP,  Amata Diabe

Our co-workers from the WHO Country Office

With Diane the Health Economist at the WHO Country Office

Serena Hotel

Our mini send-off for Ama :(

Midweek Report

On Sunday, I forgot to add that we went to this Indian Restaurant, Khana Khazana. Though the food was really good, I found it awkward that the sauces weren't served with the normal side of rice--we had to order the rice separately and pay for it.

So far, this week has been equally as busy as last week. Our days have been filled with more meetings concerning the post 2015 development agenda for Rwanda as well as helping some epidemiologists clean up data from a non-communicable disease survey which ended not too long ago.

I find it interesting that all the meetings we have had in collaboration with the ministry have been held at a hotel. The group leader for our data workshop this week explained that the different hotels enter a competition to host the different seminars, workshops, etc based on the size of the place, the hotel paying taxes, etc. The ministry then at the end of the year assesses the quality of services received and if they give low scores to the hotels, they become disqualified for a certain amount of time. Sounds like a system that works and creates healthy competition!

Yesterday evening (Tuesday), a friend decided to take us to KGL, a fast food place close by our area. We had some nyama choma (goat meat) which was pretty good and since I was craving some fried rice, tried their Shanghai rice which was really good. However, "fast" should be taken out of the name of this restaurant. We sat there for about 30minutes before getting our food!

Our energy levels these days is approaching E--when 5pm rolls around, I am excited to get home and just relax. As I am writing this, I am partially sleepy and Carmen is supposedly "napping" at 8:23pm (I think she's gone for the night).

To be continued...

By the way the Sec. Gen. is addressing the general staff 7am on Friday so I can't wait to write that post!

Goodnight and stay blessed :)

Khana Khazana - Dinner's served!! 

Downtown Kigali

KGL - Ama, Theo, & Carmen from LR

MTN Center - Ama & Carmen from LR

Nyama Choma at KGL

Safari trip- Akagera National Park

Friday marked the end of our first week as interns. I already feel like we've been here for about a month. Our week ended with more meetings concerning the finalization of the preliminary report to be submitted to the Secretary General next week. It also included going for a meeting with the Expanded Program of Immunization (EPI), a division of the Ministry of Health. A survey had been conducted earlier about the efficacy of immunization programs and how well such programs were utilized. It was pretty interesting to listen to the presentation as well as witness the useful contributions that were made, as well as the finalization of said work.

The most mind-blowing bit of this journey so far was our trip to Akagera National Park on Saturday. I have never been on a Safari before so I was very much excited about this. We left Kigali City about 6:30am to the Western Province of the country. It took us about 2 hours to arrive at our destination. The  ride was rather smooth as the road leading to the place was a relatively straight shot. We got to the game park and found out that supposedly we were supposed to have brought our passports in order for them to determine if we had visas or not. Since none of us had our passports, we talked it out with them and settled on paying the fee for residents (residents pay $20 and non-residents pay $30). Our tour guide, Charles, was really nice. He gave us a little history of the park and we started our trip.

Our first agenda was to see the buffalos. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the part of the park that would lead us there.  The path leading up to this part of the park was a rather marshy terrain but the guide said we could drive up the path. 5 minutes later, our car was stuck in mud. Pierre (the driver) kept on changing gears and the different terrain modes of the 4-wheel. The car did not budge. The guide started to push the car as myself, Carmen and Ama sat uselessly at the back of the car. We offered to get down to push but the driver didn't think it necessary. We spent about 30 minutes stuck in the mud with the driver trying multiple ways of maneuvering the car out of the mud. After 30 minutes and our white car now covered in brown mud, we slowly made it to the buffalo site. It was soo serene and breathtaking to just watch nature in action. A couple of antelopes happened to be passing by so we witnessed that as well. Took us a while to find the zebras but we did and that was fun as well. We were not able to see the elephants--none of the other tours did.

Interestingly, the giraffe that we saw was a Masai giraffe. We were told a couple were brought in from Kenya. Plans are being made to re-introduce lions as well into the park as all the lions that were present prior to the genocide had been killed off. Moreover, the park is now being fenced off so it will help to contain the animals in the reserve.

In passing, we saw baboons just hanging out. I was quite happy to see them because we are told it costs quite a bit to see the gorillas so seeing their not so distant cousins made up for not being able to see the actual gorillas. The park has a number of lakes which were absolutely divine. From one of the lakes, we were told we were actually looking at the Tanzanian border.

The 6 hours we spent at the park was worth every minute!!!

Skull of an elephant

Map of the park--it is now smaller than its original size as some land was given to Rwandans who returned after the genocide.

Getting our history lesson from Charles the guide

After we got out of the mud..you can see specks on the rearview mirror.

Antelopes

Buffalos

Dominant male antelope

Tanzanian border beyond the lake

Weekend lodge of former president Habyarimana

Haute Couture safari edition

First week of work...so far

So I have not been able to blog since Sunday night because our supposed 3.75G internet provided by Airtel has been acting up. Also, we started work on Monday and have been quite tired since then--I think it's a mixture of still getting adjusted to the time and having to read country reports at work!

Monday, we started off our day with a meeting to get to know the key players within the WHO country office as well as to be debriefed about the ongoing and completed projects. It was fun to learn all the exciting projects that we might get to work on whilst we're here.  We spent the rest of the time reading the official demographic reports for Rwanda.

Lunch time, Carmen and I ventured to explore the options Kigali has in terms of restaurants. Well, we didn't really have to walk far because we spotted one just 3 minutes away from the office. It was a nice lunch buffet that cost 3,900 RWF (800 RWF for a bottle of soda; 1USD=640 RWF). The food was good and the proprietor was really friendly. He even gave us coupons for half of pizza!! I think this is going to be our new lunch spot.

Tuesday, we pretty much continued with the country report review as well as reading other articles about mortality and reproductive health in the context of Rwanda. It was interesting to find out that HIV prevalence was 3.0% and the contraceptive use was above 90%. We went back to our lunch spot, Orange Courts Bar & Grill to enjoy some curry chicken (it seems its the lunch spot for quite a number of UN personnel in our building).

Today (Wednesday) was by far a long day. We decided to walk to work this morning (about a 30 minute walk). I underestimated the steepness of the hills in the neighborhood. I have officially concluded that if I keep climbing these hills to work every morning, I will have the perfect body by the end of this summer (lol). We got to the office and continued with the articles we had been reading but we had to attend a general meeting at 10:30 to take minutes (the life of an intern). The UN Secretary General is coming to Rwanda next week and all the UN agencies have to present a joint survey that was conducted to assess the needs of the Rwandan people. This executive summary is also to tie in the country's efforts in attaining the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Another meeting was held at 4pm. Though both meetings were long, it was fun to sit in on such a vital decision making process. It was nice to see and be part of the behind the scenes process of producing the executive summaries and reports published by WHO. I definitely cannot wait for the finished product.

For now, I have to go to bed because I have a feeling tomorrow will go just as long as today did as we have another meeting.

Stay blessed y'all :)

Our new lunch spot!!

Lunch: take 1

Lunch: take 2

The American Embassy--it's right along our walking path

Road infront of WHO. The president's office and American Embassy are right down the road!

WHO meeting to discuss the preliminary report.