Busy...

My first week in Rwanda has really flown by. After arriving late last Saturday night I spent Sunday settling in because Monday morning we (meaning my boss and I) left bright and early to drive up north to Musanze (previously know as Ruhengeri – name changed because of some political reason that no one seems to know or want to tell me: “It’s political”). This is coincidentally the same place that I visited in Rwanda the last time I was here as it’s the staging point for all the trips to see the gorillas (see previous post: "Uganda 5: Gorillas in the Mist"). This time I didn’t see the gorillas, or actually much of anything – in fact I didn’t leave the hotel grounds the whole 3 days I was there. We were too busy.

The Ifema Hotel is a very nice hotel if you ever happen to be in Musanze…

The reason for this visit was a training program for all the people that are administering the survey on which our evaluation is based. We had to talk about sampling and such as well as reviewing all the documents that they’d be using. It was tricky because of the language issue. The survey will be done in Kinyarwanda, the local language, so had to be translated. Kinyarwanda, like all the Bantu languages is apparently extremely complicated grammatically, and so there were numerous discussions about the language. Unfortunately mostly in Kinyarwanda so neither I, nor my boss, could follow them. We persevered however and organized logistics and actually did the random sampling. Busy, but fun - if you’re into that kind of thing, which surprisingly I am.

I did see some wildlife - in the garden beside the hotel…

The rest of the week was spent back in Kigali at the office working on more organizational stuff. We’re trying to computerize the data entry aspect somewhat so we’re going to trial a program on Pocket PC Creations, we’ll see how it goes. This next week is the actual survey week so we’ll do some trial data entry then as well. A lot of public health work is office stuff so not so exciting to blog about; in fact, here you can see my boring little office…
Yep, not very exciting but the whole point of this evaluation is to make sure that the program really is making a difference in the lives of Rwandan children – and I think that’s the really exciting part.

Saturday was spent wandering about the main part of Kigali and trying to find places to shop besides the big expatriate shopping centre. Due to the huge influx in development and aid money to Rwanda as well as the associated influx of large numbers of expat aid workers in the last several years, things are hugely expensive. Food, both at expat-type restaurants and at the expat shopping centre is as expensive or more expensive than in Boston. My roommate (another girl who’s working for the same organization) and I are finding alternative options.

Today, Sunday I went to church, which turns out to be about a 40-minute walk from my house. Well, in the interest of honesty, it was 40 minutes one way but on the way home I tried to take a shortcut, which turned into a very long and hot walk. It’s alright, probably the best way to learn the city is to get lost and then find your way home a few times. (It’s the only way I’ve ever learned my way around cities that don’t really have maps).