Making Boxes for Two Years

“Muzungu Mania” may be coming to an end in the village. Gone are the days when children run away from me in fear. No longer do groups of women talk about me for hours after seeing and greeting me at the health center. When I enter meetings now people don’t stop and sing a song thanking me for coming. It’s a surprisingly difficult transition. To go from the center of attention, the one who is practically held up as a savior for the community to being a guy who knows a few words in Rufumbira and isn’t coming with a bag full of funding is something I was utterly unprepared for. Much of this I believe has to do with my knowledge of the language; people around me are constantly testing the outer limits of my Rufumbira. Much of this has to do with the presence of large tourist attractions in the area. I am constantly trying to separate myself from tourists in the eyes of the community and the best way I know how to do that is through learning the language every single day. To help this I recently hired a tutor to help me, I’ve only had a few hours of help but I think it should make a difference in the long run. I also don’t take any pictures outside the walls of my house, and I never display any sorts of wealth (after waiting months I just bought a place to sit in my house for this exact reason). Even if I am able to separate myself I still struggle to define my job here to others in the community. There is no translation for capacity building and it’s understandably hard for many to understand why I cannot help a children hunched over vomiting blood at the health center. One of the most difficult things I have had to deal with here is seeing so many sick people at the health center and not being able to help them immediately. Since there are absolutely no prevention activities in my area it’s not even enough to “think outside the box” (there are none). I have realized that my job over the next two years will be making boxes. Ryan, my friend in town, said it best after coming back from a training seminar in a village close to me, “I really felt like a Peace Corps Volunteer today; my hands were covered in dirt, bike grease, and dry erase marker.”

I must say that it is nice to work at a health center. Without a doubt people are getting help here. There are semblances of structure, and it is nice from a research standpoint to have a giant, if extremely unorganized and unreadable, stack of records tucked away in a filing cabinet. The people I work with are fantastic. My counterpart, insists, “I must work hard because all of these people are my uncles, cousins, and family.” Although the work is slow and irregular I have had times where I have felt productive. There is no doubt a ton of opportunity for great projects that I think could really make a difference. The Post-Test Group will begin a microfinance program this January, and I am hoping to implement an income generation activity/mosquito net distribution program and home based care program with them shortly thereafter. I have begun to organize some of the hospital data into meaningful and useful information to direct outreaches. After a painstaking process of going through hospital records to organize malaria cases by village I found that outreaches were being conducted in some of the less malaria prone areas instead of areas producing an overwhelming majority of cases. Although it’s hard to make conclusions without census data, I think it’s still a step in the right direction. I worked with my colleagues to produce a 2009 work plan for outreaches, and we have begun a monitoring and evaluation system for the health center’s public health and prevention activities. Probably the easiest and most successful thing I have done since being here is training villages to make hand washing stations (Tippy Taps). I plan on mobilizing support from school officials, and local leaders to make this a sub-county wide program. If nothing else I’ll leave here having helped to make hundreds of these little contraptions made of 4 sticks, a meter of rope, and an old vegetable oil can. I’ve also tried to boost strategic planning within the health center to forecast potential epidemic months of malaria and direct outreach campaigns accordingly, and to initiate action plans for accomplishing goals. We’ll see if it catches on, but I’m in the process of making action plans for the prevention of the three of the diseases that I am focused on: Malaria, Diarrhea, and HIV. Many projects, including mosquito net distribution, will require funding and it’s been extremely hard for me to see where it will come from. Since there is no electricity (and internet) in the village, it makes my time for searching grants wedged between riding my bike to town and buying food for the week all in an internet cafe that loses connection every 10 minutes. The grants I have found related to the projects usually have applications about 60-70 pages long (which would costs 35,000 shillings to print…roughly 1/5 of a nursing assistants monthly salary at the health center) and are directed more for organizations looking for millions not hundreds of dollars.

Things at home are good. I have started falling into some routines, and slowly it is beginning to feel like home. To give you an idea of an average day: I wake up every morning around 7, do a little reading, collect water, wash a few clothes, turn on the BBC to hear news, heat up some milk, make breakfast, play soduku while I eat, shine my shoes, dress, off to work by 9. Once at work I greet all the staff, make some jokes with friends, greet some patients, and then go off to the office to do whatever. I usually go back home to make lunch around 1230 and immediately start cooking since it usually take a good hour and a half. I read while food is cooking (I’ve been doing a ton of reading here). Then I eat, read for a little bit and go back to work around 230-3. Yes I know a 2 and half hour lunch break sounds long, but it is the norm here and I wouldn’t be able to eat if I was expected back in 30 minutes. In the afternoons I’ll usually go on outreaches, have meetings with the Post-Test Group, or study language. I usually leave work around 5-6, sometimes I play soccer, other times I have a tutoring session. I’ll start making dinner around sun down (730), light my lantern, wait for the milk man shortly after, lock up the gate, eat, boil water for drinking the next day, bathe, and off to bed just in time for more reading. I have 1 CD of music and every now and then I’ll play a song, but that’s a treat. The other day “Sexual Healing” came on Voice of America and I don’t remember dancing or singing so much (thankfully it was raining so no one could hear me over the extremely loud noise that rain makes when it hits an iron sheet roof). I mentioned shining shoes. For some reason this practice is extremely important. Every small store in the village will have shoe polish, even if they don’t have anything else. A man wearing scraps for clothing will have polished shoes. Oddly the exercise of polishing shoes is quite soothing and rewarding and has become a pretty good coping mechanism for me out here.

I am really beginning to bond with my coworkers and have really good discussions with them after work. We talk about everything and anything; from local politics, to interesting patients, to why Americans eat snails and frogs. One of my coworkers one day started telling the group of a movie she just saw– Home Alone. It was amazing to see how enthralled the group was about her story, that a child so young could have done all those things. One even proclaimed in America we start everything very young because we are very smart, and declared that we begin driving at the age of 4. I dispelled the myth. One of my main jobs here is dispel alot of theories about muzungus and Americans. The one that never fails to astonish people here is that, yes, America does have people living on streets, people that go hungry, people dying from HIV/AIDS. It has become a cliché among the volunteers here but Peace Corps is a job you work 24 hours a day 7 days a week and it’s hard as hell. Just when you think you can relax or just be another person in the community someone comes to you asking if you would give them ten cows in return for their daughter (thankfully I’ve only had to deal with this situation once). One day I was going for a walk not thinking I had anything to do, but was soon approached by a man asking for help. I followed him to the health center where he told me a story in Rufumbira of which I could only understand bits and pieces. I learned his wife was in the hospital and that he wanted her to be treated and go home. I asked my supervisor what was going on and it turns out that he had bitten and beat his wife in a drunken rampage. He has 11 children and lives in a one room house and was angry that he could no longer have sex with his wife when he pleased because there were too many children in the house (is that irony or illogical?). Unfortunately abuse is not uncommon here. A child came in a few weeks ago that was beaten by a machete because he told his father not to have any more wives. Despite many similarities in the culture here, things are very different. One time when I was speaking with a colleague I was surprised how similar American and Bafumbira culture was; just then I heard three booms coming form the distance. I had heard the noise before but just attributed it to thunder. She said, “That’s the fifth one this week,” the fifth what I asked. “Bomb blast from Congo.” I don’t want to worry anyone because I really am in no danger whatsoever but I think things like that should be known. Not only am I far away from any sort of rebel activity but the rebel leader Nkunda is well liked in the area, and actually has a lot of family around (I’ve been told that he often stops in for tea). Besides in Africa, today’s rebel is tomorrow’s President.

In the middle of January we have our first in service training. I’ll be going to Kisoro for a week to get additional language training from Peace Corps. It’ll be nice to stay at a place with a hot shower. I hope all of you had good holidays and that 2009 brings you peace and happiness. On New Years I’ll be able to say “I’m coming back next year.” If any of you have Skype it’s pretty cheap to call me if you wish. The time difference is 11 hours from the West Coast. My number is +256779304568. I really hope I don’t regret making my telephone number available to the whole of the internet. Talk to you later.