February 2020 – Rwandering around with Joanna

The coronavirus is making headlines. We have been getting a lot of email updates from our Country Director (CD) about potential action plans regarding the outbreak and if it gets too close to Rwanda. Peace Corps volunteers and staff are given a travel ban to specific countries to reduce the risk of contraction, while some countries are given more severe measures.

Peace Corps Volunteers in China and Mongolia have been evacuated. These countries have been recalled, but will be resumed once the outbreak is contained. A similar protocol occurred when Ebola was at its peak in West Africa circa 2014. A a total of 340 Volunteers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea were sent home. If the coronavirus comes to Africa and threatens volunteers, a similar protocol will take place. As of February 25, there have been two confirmed cases in Northern Africa.

One of my fellow volunteers pointed out that it’s easier to confirm cases in developed countries, and much more difficult to do so in underdeveloped ones. There are likely more cases in Africa that haven’t been confirmed.

The benefit of the Ebola crisis is that many African countries have been diligently screening travelers upon arrival. So, there’s already a process in place to counteract the coronavirus and Rwanda is no exception. In fact, WHO even commended Rwanda’s preemptive measures against Ebola. Rwanda borders the D.R. Congo and Uganda, both of which have multiple confirmed Ebola cases. Despite its proximity, Peace Corps Rwanda is still operating because of the preventive measures and hopefully it will continue to do so even as the coronaviruses creeps closer.

That’s all I know for right now, but our email updates from our CD keep on coming.

I must be the luckiest Peace Corps Volunteer because my mom is here! She came with Partners In Health (PIH). PIH is a non-profit organization started by Dr. Paul Farmer and Dr. Jim Kim to help developing countries improve their health care system by making it more accessible to everyone. For a wonderful read, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder beautifully illustrates their challenges making healthcare equitable and accessible in developing countries, such as Rwanda.

The first week she and her PIH group were traveling around the country, visiting health centers, hospitals, and a medical university that PIH supports. I met up with my mom and her group in Kigali last Saturday for lunch. I typically go to bed around 9p, but I was so excited to see her that I was up until 2am. This has been the longest I’ve gone without seeing my family (5 months) and it was such a happy and emotional reunion. Many people on the PIH trip are parents (especially moms) and seeing my mom and I together hit them a special way.

I wasn’t the only guest at the PIH lunch, we were joined by Dr. Anges Binagweaho. She’s Rwanda’s former Minster of Health, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, to name a few of her titles. She is credited with turning around Rwanda’s health care system by insisting that health – in its physical, mental, and social facets – is a human right. She implemented national projects to encompass the fuller picture of health, ones that we are continuing at our health centers at the ground level. I felt like I met a celebrity!

My Mom and I spent our weekend in Kigali together – I thoroughly enjoyed leeching off the hotel room’s running water, hot water, showers, air conditioning etc. I loved every moment of it before I brought my mom back to my village life, where I don’t have any of those luxuries.

I showed her my house, health center, and market. Everyone was so eager to meet her! Vendors who I loyally buy all my fruit and vegetables from were so happy to welcome her. One of them gave us a papaya as a welcome gift. It brought my mom to tears seeing that in a few short months I’ve built these relationships. I’m happy that she got to see my life here. I think she’s a little jostled by how rough it is, but I’m glad I can share a small sliver of my life with her here.

Left: Me and my Market Mamma! Her name is Mamma Fiona and she’s incredible. She has a stall at the market closest to my home and health center. Her vegetables are always so fresh, she’s the first person I go to whenever I need something. She knows how much I love those small bananas and always helps me find them from other reliable vendors.
Right: These are two other vendors from the big market in the city who I go to for my fruit.
My mom really wanted to take photos of me with them to send to my dad back home.

We made the most of our time together, despite the fact that I still have work at the health center. On our way from Kigali to my village, we stopped by the Nyanza district where the King’s Palace is. Rwanda’s royal family lived in Nyanza, until 1960 when they transitioned out of the monarchy. We learned that penultimate king was overruled by the Danish because he didn’t accept Catholicism and the Christian Church, but his youngest son did. He was appointed as the next king of Rwanda, while his father was forcefully removed, because he allowed the new religions to wash over the country.

We’re at the King’s Palace. These replica hut was where the King lived. My Mom is sitting where the King would sit while I’m holding onto the Forgiveness Pole.

We also made a day trip to the Nyungwe Rainforest and a neighboring Tea Farm. Nyungwe is one of the most protected rainforests in Africa, it attracts tourists with its beautiful hikes to see Baboons, Colobus monkeys, and to do the Canopy Walk. It’s a 90m cable bridge suspended 60m above the ground in the rainforest. It wobbled so much!

Fun fact: The source of the Nile River comes from all the rainfall in Nyungwe!