Ruhengeri June 2

After a 28+ hour journey through Washington DC and Brussels, we landed shortly after sunset last night. The plane was full, possibly because the annual Gorilla naming ceremony –Kwita Izina- is being held this weekend. The baggage claim appeared overwhelmed by our passenger number, and the small carousel was soon full of bags and unable to accept more from the conveyor belt. Steve and I watched – only slightly amused – as the baggage workers added a bag to the circulating loop, once every 1-2 minutes, whenever a new spot made itself available. We got our bags about an hour into the process and left many tired, worried and likely frustrated, people from our flight staring at the spinning, but otherwise unchanging carousel.

From the airport, it was a ride by car first through the lively streets of Kigali (full of young, well-dressed people out for the night) and then into the hills and mountains that separate Kigali and Ruhengari. The road was remarkably well-paved, and flanked by a steady stream of pedestrians. It wound up the side of multiple steep, forest covered hills (Rwanda is known as “the land of a thousand hills”) with Kigali disappearing far below us in the valley. Slowing down each time we came upon a pothole (not that infrequently) and passed an oncoming vehicle (a bit less frequently), it took us a bit over 2 hours to travel 96 km. We arrived at our new home around 11 pm and everyone was already asleep.

I awoke before sunrise and the surrounding town appeared to awake soon after. Children could be heard laughing in the distance and the birds were occasionally deafening. We are staying in a "compound" which really consists of a U-shaped house, with a beautiful tropical flower filled courtyard, that serves at HQ, lab, offices and some housing for the Mountain Gorilla Vet Project. There is a gate, with a guardhouse, and three workers who take turns doing laundry, landscaping and guarding the house. Being that this is a veterinarian-run home, there are at least 6 dogs that have found refuge here.


Craig and Steve in front of the gate to our "Compound" at the Mountain Gorilla Vet Project.



Our courtyard

Our morning today began a walk around Ruhengeri, down the main street to the nearby textile market which full of booths selling used clothing from the West and, hidden further down, fabric for traditional Rwandan clothing. Next, we crossed town to the food market, which is composed of hundreds of little stalls selling tomatoes, fresh green peas and colorful purple-white beans, peppers, dried fish, flour and tropical fruits I knew little about. The market was packed with women (buying and selling goods) and their young children, who excitedly ran up to us, asking for their picture to be taken.





The response of children here to the Muzungu (white people) may leave many foreigners feeling uncomfortable, and yet it quickly becomes absolutely disarming. While most adults just briefly stare as we walk by, the kids approach, enthusiastically practicing their English and often asking to have their pictures taken. While driving on a road rarely frequented by cars or foreigners, the children would drop whatever they were doing, yell “Muzungu” and run up towards the car, grinning and waving. I felt silly waving at first, like some royalty waving at the masses, but it seemed cold and rude to ignore their enthusiasm. While still at the food market that day, I took a picture of a particularly invested young boy, who followed us around all the stalls. He said “See you tomorrow” when we left, and I hope to give him a copy of his photo (yes, bringing a little printer here is not a bad idea) when we return.



After our walk through town, we had a delicious lunch prepared by our cook Leon, a Rwandan chef apparently “trained by Belgians” (I plan to eventually find out what that means), who prepared a two course dinner of tomato soup, browned potatoes, cooked cauliflower, breaded and fried tilapia, green beans, and tofu in a tomato sauce (No, I have no idea where the tofu came from!). This was then followed by a dessert of fresh cut, remarkably sweet pineapple.

Barely able to walk after our huge meal (most Rwandans eat only one, large meal a day), we set out to meet the staff of the Wyman group, one of the several NGOs here in Ruhengeri, living in a compound half a mile away, with their own guard, tall walls and barbed wire fence. (All this security seems far overdone given the current climate here in Rwanda – after all, many of the female NGO staff can be seen on the residential streets jogging at all times of the day- but given Rwanda’s recently turbulent history, clearly no one wants to take risks.) The Wyman group was set up to help organize and bring better health care to the rural communities of Rwanda. Currently, they have set up two clinics, staffed by local nurses and community health care workers, and supervised by a young and brilliant, Kenyan raised, Rwandan woman in her 20s, simply called “Dr. Nathalie” by everyone here.

The Wyman group, probably as many of the hundreds of NGOs scattered around Africa, is run by a surprisingly young staff. No one there looked older than 25 and in between conversations about the best local bars to frequent at night and the best volcanoes to hike, they had a surprisingly sophisticated discussion on the difficulties of eventually turning their clinics into Rwandan –run and self-sufficient systems.

We left them behind to travel to one of the local clinics in Shingiro district with Dr. Nathalie. The 16 km drive took about 20 minutes, as we circled up to the top of another tall ~1000 meter hill, and then along a winding dirt road lined by enthusiastic waving children. It was clear from the way people stopped to stare at us that not many cars take that road every day.

The clinic consists of a group of small buildings, including one which houses the “inpatient” wards. The patients are seen by nurses and volunteer community health care workers who staff and run the clinic, with Dr. Nathalie providing supervision and teaching. Outside the clinic, the grounds are filled with people – patients awaiting tests or treatments and the families who brought them there. The patients, nurses and community health care workers all speak Kinyarwandan, so our communication with them was limited. However, we did get to watch Dr. Nathalie present one of our teaching PPTs on diarrhea (in Kinyarwandan) to the nurses, and they were a remarkably interactive and curious group of students.

On our return trip home, we packed 18 people into our Land Rover, with several of the nurses sitting on each other’s laps, dropping them off in small groups as we progressed back down the hill. We got home around 5, and I was in bed by 6 or 7, jet lag and several days of naps without sleep having finally caught up with me.