In the News

Below are some (hopefully) entertaining excerpts from the Leisure section of the August 18^th edition of The New Times: Rwanda’s First Daily. I’ve clearly been sitting on this post for a while, so I hope it’s still funny.

Some decorating advice from the article ‘Make Your House a Home to Stay:’ “Have you ever imagined sleeping in a bedroom with roses and scented candles, enjoying the fresh colourful flowers and atmosphere in your room? The thought seems interesting!” Indeed it does.

Pop culture shock: did you know there was a Big Brother Africa competition? Said Kenya’s Deputy Prime Minister of one of the finalists: “You did Kenya proud in the BBA house.” This show must be very different than its American counterpart in which contestants lie to and betray each other for money. Although below this article was a story about a Zambian contestant entitled ‘Talia apologizes for her public fornication.’ Maybe we’re not so different after all!

I make fun. But in all seriousness…

While The New Times might not be winning any journalism awards any time soon (although it’s also possible that it already has), it is an indicator of the growing culture of reading here. The New Times isn’t even Rwanda’s only newspaper. While the design section will never give Good Housekeeping a run for its money (at least not based on the above advice), the growing culture of literacy is only a good thing. (A public library even opened in Kigali this year.)

Other topics covered in the newspaper include: the graduation ceremony for students of a two-year hospitality program at Kigali’s Akila Institute for Women; the need for more intellectual property patents in Rwanda; condom use and HIV/AIDS rates amongst youth; the construction of a new teachers’ college; a shooting in South Africa; the end of the UN observer mission in Syria; and Indian investment to improve the quality of Rwandan-produced processed food. Also: lots of articles about sports.

What most caught my eye was an article in the Features section entitled “New farmer films help spread the word about weeds”, about interventions being supported by ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in sub-Saharan Africa. In coordination with farmer field schools and other rural agricultural trainings, ICRISAT produced a series of short videos on how to improve crop yield and fight the most common problems in African farming.

The article went on to list the languages in which the videos are offered, and imagine my surprise at the following list: Bambara, Bomu, Fulani, Hausa, Mooré, Zarma, and Swahili.  For my readers not familiar with African languages, let me elaborate. Bambara: the most widely spoken language in Mali. Bomu: the language of my service in Mali. Fulani: with all its dialects, the most widely spoken language in West Africa. Hausa: the most widely spoken language in Niger. Zarma: the language I studied in Niger. Swahili: the second most widely spoken language in Africa, including Rwanda. (Educational moment: Did you know that Arabic is the most widely spoken language in Africa? And do we all remember the beloved lion king, Simba? Only upon moving here did I learn that ‘simba’ means ‘lion’ in Swahili. Clever on Disney’s part until you realize that naming your cat “Cat” is actually kind of dumb. “Asante sana, squash banana,” on the other hand, remains funny.) In any case, this list of languages read like a history of my African life. (And Mooré, if you’re wondering, is another West African language, spoken mostly in Burkina Faso.) To see a connection between my former current homes was an unexpected joy. I’m glad that people in Rwanda are being educated about the problems of West Africa by people other than myself—on a grand scale by the national paper, no less. You’d have to talk to a former Peace Corps Mali agriculture volunteer to fully understand the difficulties of farming in West Africa, but pests, lack of rain, erosion, and soil overuse are just the tip of the iceberg.

I went to the website named in the article to watch the Bomu video for a touch of nostalgia. If you were ever curious what Bomu sounds like coming out of a native’s mouth, or want to see some images from Mali, watch here (no copyright infringement intended):

Boys Excelling to Fight Malaria

It's been awhile since my last post. I owe a lot of explanations, and I hope to give some soon. But for now, if you're interested in learning more about my work with Peace Corps' Stomping Out Malaria in Africa initiative, below is an article I wrote for their website.  It chronicles my work with youth through camps. If you're interested in learning more about Peace Corps Rwanda's contributions to the fight against malaria, visit www.stompoutmalaria.org/rwanda. Thanks for reading!

“Boys! Excelling! We are boys excelling!”

Roughly once an hour, the chant rang across the grounds of HVP Gatagara, a school for the visually impaired and the site of one of Peace Corps Rwanda’s most recent youth camps. The first Camp BE—short for Boys Excelling, in explanation of the cheer—was held in 2010, and the program has been growing ever since. This camp, held last month in the city of Rwamagana, invited 69 secondary school students from across Rwanda’s eastern region for five days of activities and lessons deigned to instill life skills in participants. Upon their return home from camp, students are encouraged to start BE clubs at their schools, becoming peer educators by sharing their newfound skills with friends and peers.

Peace Corps Volunteers organize numerous youth camps each year targeting motivated and promising secondary-level students across the country. Education and health volunteers alike run all aspects of the camps, from arranging lodging and buying supplies to leading sessions on HIV prevention. While I’ve never helped organize a camp, in the past month I have had the great fortune of participating in two boys’ camps in the eastern region. The first was in Rwamagana, and the second in the district of Bugesera. Both areas have some of the highest malaria burdens in the country, with camps being the perfect place to deliver relevant and needed information to a captive audience. The lessons included information on the history of malaria, its effect in Rwanda, its transmission, and methods of prevention and treatment.

Most students came into the lessons with a basic understanding of malaria, acquired from school biology lessons and public service radio announcements. Many knew that the highest malaria burden in the country is found in the eastern region, but they were surprised to learn that the district with the highest number of deaths last year was on the other side of the country. Students were curious to know who “discovered” malaria, which led to an interesting discussion of the identification of plasmodium and the discovery that mosquitoes were the sole transmitters of the disease.

The most stimulating question I fielded came from a student in Rwamagana who defended the use of traditional medicine in curing malaria. I explained, while it may relieve your symptoms, it cannot kill the parasite. A statement like this may not have been convincing without a prior explanation of the parasite, its lifecycle, and how it affects the body. But thanks to the science-driven information delivered in the transmission section of the lesson, the students left convinced that the best way to recover from malaria was not to take an herbal bath but to visit a health facility for diagnosis and treatment.

The students took advantage of the informal class setting to ask as many questions as they could. I often had to ask them to hold their questions until the end of the lesson for the sake of time. But unfortunately, for some of the campers, the content of the lessons was all too relevant. In Bugesera, a student was sent home soon after his arrival at camp because he was sick with malaria. And during the treatment section of one of the lessons in Rwamagana, a student surprised me by pulling out a sheet of Coartem from his pocket. Turns out, he had arrived at camp sick with malaria and was taken to the health center for diagnosis and treatment. After receiving his medicine he was asked to go home, but declined, so he could participate in the rest of camp.

During the lessons, I asked students if they knew that malaria kills about 650,000 people each year, and that most of these deaths were of children in Africa. They did not. I continued, “Did you know that in 2011, there were more than 208,000 confirmed cases of malaria in Rwanda, and 380 deaths?” These facts were met with groans, tongue clicks, and hisses, indicating students’ surprise at (and disappointment with) the realities of malaria in their country. “Do you think malaria is a serious problem in Rwanda?” I asked. The answer was an overwhelming, “yes.” I hope the students left the lesson with the drive to become malaria fighters in their communities, newly aware of the burden it has on their communities. I certainly believe in their potential.

A combination of exhausting and inspiring, these camps provide a great opportunity to work with curious and motivated youth, an often untapped resource in the fight against malaria. Adolescent outreach is frequently absent from national malaria control policy, despite the lack of proper education on malaria in most school curricula, and the great effects the disease has on school absenteeism, as evidenced by the students above.

While camps are held for students, and are arranged by PCVs, they also require a significant commitment from the adult teachers and facilitators who participate. Each lesson at camp is taught by a PCV and a Rwandan facilitator. By involving these adults as much as possible, we hope that both they and the students learn more. At both these camps, I had the pleasure of working with facilitator Simon Niwemugizi. No stranger to camps, having facilitated at six and counting, Simon has seemingly limitless energy and patience when working with students, welcoming their questions and their challenges.  By our third lesson in Rwamagana, Simon had become so familiar with the lesson content that he led the lesson almost entirely by himself. In Bugesera, he did lead the lesson by himself. Having come into our first lesson with only a basic knowledge of malaria, he reported that his participation in the camps expanded his knowledge and gave him the confidence to continue doing malaria outreach well after the end of these camps. 

In all, three camps included malaria lessons this year. I am sad to have participated in the last camp of my service, but I hope that the program will expand next year, and that PCVs begin using the lessons in camps as well as in their local clubs. Because Peace Corps volunteers and youth are often peas in a pod, this collaboration has a lot of potential for success. Through the outreach being done by PCVs and their Rwandan supporters, adolescents are becoming more involved in the fight against malaria in Rwanda.

First Rwanda Photos

Here's a snapshot of my new life here in Rwanda (and a few pictures from the Stomping Out Malaria in Africa Bootcamp in Senegal):

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100432966762932.2511940.124748&type=1&l=bb8b72bc07

 

The links are public. Enjoy!