Not so brief report from Rwanda

Bon Jour, Readers!

I am writing you with muddy shoes from the Tulane University office in Kigali, Rwanda. I was delayed in arriving today because of the presidential motorcade of Paul Kagame. The fastest form of transportation here, besides presidential motorcades, is a “moto” which means riding on the back of a Japanese motorcycle. My moto driver saw the president coming our way and immediately drove us into a muddy ditch.

I've been in Kigali for a little over a month now. It is an exceptionally easy city to live in.The images in my mind of life in Sub-Saharan Africa are quite incongruent with my daily routine.I live in a beautiful house with a guard, cleaner/cook, and a gardener.The city is kept in immaculate condition by street-sweepers (actual people, not vehicles).Great pride is taken in wearing crisp business attire.

I spend my days in comfy internet-cafes and offices behind fortressed walls covered in flowers. Last night I had a hand-made pizza with capers, feta, basil, and smoked salmon alongside a glass of California chardonnay while watching 20-something Rwandese salsa dance. I had heard Kigali was the second most expensive city in Africa, but did not fully comprehend the cultural implications of that statistic… until I tasted the bruschetta and Mutzig at Republika Lounge. The quality of interactions with people almost always carries a sense of graciousness, warmth, and light-hearted humor. In the city of Kigali, it is nearly impossible to imagine what happened here 15 years ago.

With that said, I don’t wish to paint too rosy of a picture. Everyday I also pass houses with dirt-floors and children with distended bellies… and rural living is a much different tale. The evaluation project I am working on has revealed pretty intense data. I am evaluating an HIV/AIDS Case Management/Linkages Program in Nyagatare District (which is in the northeast corner on the Tanzanian and Ugandan border). Food security is an absolutely dire problem for many People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and drives a lot of other quality of life indicators. The data revealed 75% of PLWHA in the district meet the criteria for clinical depression.

My social work training has kept me up at night trying to interpret the implications of the depression data. We have just finished designing a round of qualitative data collection protocols that include some questions probing at the depression. The current theory is something like this… HIV adds to biological causes of depression, combined with starvation, little possessions, financial burden, sick kids, PTSD, and a lack of connection to services in a country with minimal psychosocial capacity all makes it pretty hard to want to get out of bed in the morning. I guess I didn’t really need two graduate degrees to figure that one out.

I didn’t know this about myself, but I like to ask people about their family as a way of building report and establishing a warm connection. The way I discovered this about myself was by asking new friends in Rwanda about their family. I have since learned to establish connection in a different way. When asked about their family, many people (not all, of course) will say something like “I lost them in the wars,” or “My parents and siblings were killed in the genocide, but my cousin lives an hour away.” If you ever find yourself in Rwanda and want to make new friends I recommend asking someone what their Kinyarwandan name is, what it means, and how it was given to them. This is not to say that people don’t want to talk about the genocide. Most people are open about, if you ask them.

Over the next few weeks I will be spending quite a bit of time in the field. I am looking forward to the challenges of coordinating focus groups and meetings. This means mostly sitting in the Land Rover and hanging with kids while meetings are conducted in nearby buildings in the local language. After the meetings I look over forms that I can’t read to make sure they are properly filled out, answer questions that come up, and, of course, fulfill my racial stereotype by handing out cash.