My Last Blog… In Africa

I feel like I accomplished time travel. I was able to travel back in time to when things were simpler, people humbler, and life easier. As I look out the window as we drive through the many hills of Rwanda I see goats grazing, kids playing, and women carrying large buckets of fruit and vegetables on their heads. This is Africa.

Visiting a health center... in Africa.

Perspectives, it’s all about how you look at something. Some people may say that I’ve changed lives of the people in Rwanda, but it was really they who changed my life. Working in a developing hospital is the most rewarding thing I will ever do in my life. I can’t even being to explain the emotions I felt after repairing a piece of equipment, no matter how large or small.

Assembling a dental chair... in Africa.

After we wrapped up our end-of-the-program conference, we were given some statistics. Between the three different EWH SI programs in Nicaragua, Tanzania, and Rwanda, we were able to save millions of dollars on medical equipment. My team alone was able to repair 27 different devices and perform preventative maintenance on another 40 devices. We helped organize the BMET workshop and took inventory at 14 different health centers across the northern province of Rwanda. Furthermore, we completed our secondary project, which was to secure the oxygen tanks in the oxygen room to make it safer or as the COO of EWH put it, we diffused a ticking time bomb.

Protecting the hospital from a giant, potentially exploding oxygen tank room... in Africa.

Looking back, though; Rwanda gave me more than I gave it.

I will never forget the people I’ve met, the places I’ve been, or the things I’ve learned, and I’ve learned many things throughout this journey.

1. I’ve learned that the most important things in life are family and friends. They will carry you through tough times and be there for you for all the merry moments. Never take them for granted.

2. There is a difference between being philanthropic and being a volunteer. The main difference between the two is the experience. You can donate millions and millions of dollars without ever knowing what your money really goes to. When you volunteer, you are donating your time and effort and you know exactly what all your hard work is going towards. It gives more meaning to your contribution.

Learning how to repair a patient monitor... in Africa.

Finished product of our PPM... in Africa.

3. The only things worth spending money on are experiences. I spent about $100 each on my trips to the rainforest in Nyungwe and the safari in Akagera but those experiences were once in a lifetime and things I will never forget. On the other hand, I spend so much money on clothing and shoes back at home and at what price? I used to believe that I needed new clothes or shoes to feel good about myself, but do I really need to spend money on new clothes or put on a ton of makeup to feel confident in myself? If I do, then that is really sad. In the past two months I’ve been makeup free, lived on seven different outfits and three pairs of shoes, haven’t straightened or curled my hair and I’ve never felt more good about myself and the things I’ve accomplished here.

Having fun on a safari... in Africa.

4. Giving is always greater than receiving. I receive the greatest joy when I help others.

5. The key to easy packing is to just donate all your clothes after your trip.

Rwanda is truly an enigma. Staying in one country, you can climb a volcano, you can go on a safari, you can hike through a rainforest, and you can go boating on a lake. It has a sad history but a bright future. After a genocide that occurred less than 20 years ago, people can still forgive. I’ve seen the happiest kids play with trash, the most beautiful women wearing rags, the strongest men eat nothing but rice and beans, the friendliest people living in the loneliest places, and the humblest people living in mansions on mountains.

This experience would not have been possible without the help of some very important people, and I’d like to take the time to formally thank them and their contributions to helping transform my lifelong dream into a reality…

Thank you to my family and friends who have been supporting me throughout this journey. A special thanks goes out to my parents, who paid for the majority of my trip and who have supported me and my extravagant dreams since my childhood.

Thank you to the Delta Iota chapter of Gamma Phi Beta at Purdue, who also helped sponsor my trip through the Dorothy McCaw scholarship. Love, labor, learning and loyalty are constant bearings that I keep in mind at all times and these values help me to remind myself to best version of myself.

A Gamma Phi... in Africa.

Gamma Phi Beta also gave me my best friends, who have kept me company throughout this entire trip via emails, iMessages and Snapchats. I seriously cannot wait to return to Purdue for my last semester so I can see their beautiful faces and relate all my stories to them over some Baltimore Zoos at Harry’s.

Thank you to the Purdue Global Engineering Program, the International Program, and the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, for graciously donating to my dream. Attending Purdue University has honestly been the best decision I have ever made. Purdue has opened so many doors for me and I am so immensely proud to be a Boilermaker.

Thank you to Irwin for writing the most thoughtful letter of recommendation and for supporting me throughout my application process. I am fairly certain that your recommendation was the reason why I was accepted into the program or at least it was the piece de resistance of my application, so thank you for your extremely kind words. I am thankful to have worked with you during my co-op and also thankful for our continued correspondence.

Thank you to Lorin for your generous contributions to EWH and for sponsoring my participation in the summer institute. You have inspired me to help future EWH-SI participants through continued donations.

Thanks to Josephine for being an awesome seamstress and a great friend in Rwanda. I am going to wear my new jumpsuit all the time! If any of my readers find themselves in Rwanda someday, you HAVE to go to Kimironko and find Josephine. She can make you just about anything your little heart desires and there are tons of beautiful prints to choose from. Going there and picking out fabric was one of my favorites things that we did in Africa.

Trying not to buy all of them... in Africa.

Thank you to Dustin, Sarah, Ben, Dr. Coté, and Dr. Maitland for having our best interests at heart and for planning this program in Rwanda.

Thank you to Avit and Agnes for inviting us into your home and acting as our guardians for a whole month. Thanks Bob for also helping us get settled into life at IPRC and Kicukiro.

Thank you to Jean-Claude, for putting up with us for a month. I know we were lost and confused in the beginning but with your help we were been able to accomplish everything we have done. I learned so much from you (especially the importance of PPM!). You have been a great leader and I admire your dedication to your job.

The best boss... in Africa.

Thank you to Alex for all your help. This trip would have been much more difficult if we had never met you. You and your family are some of the kindest people I have ever met. Your kindness makes me want to be a better person myself and the impact you have had on my life is immeasurable. I know we will be friends for a long time and I hope to see you again some day in the future!

Thanks to the other Rwanda SI students: Kristen, Jamie, Romi, Jami, Lindsay, Astride, Mason, Alvin, Ibukun, and Taylor. You guys have been my family for the past two months and I am so thankful to have gotten to know each and everyone of you. I wish you all continued success in your engineering careers and I know you all will accomplish great things in this world.

Group photo... in Africa (courtesy of Mason).

And finally, thank you to Engineering World Health for believing that I could have some sort of impact on the lives of people across Rwanda. EWH and I have shared the same goals since I realized my dream of helping people using my theoretical knowledge and technical skills and I was ecstatic to be part of the program.

I know I will look back on my life and carry a fondness in my heart for the two months I spent in Rwanda. I have always been a firm believer in “everything happens for a reason,” and I am so thankful that by some stroke of luck I was able to participate in this amazing program.

No one knows what the future may hold and I still have no idea what I’ll be doing after I graduate in December, but as for now, I am excited to return home to my family and to return to Purdue in August for my final semester.

Murabeho, au revoir, goodbye, see you again, and thanks for following along!

A Typical Day... in Africa

6:45am: We wake up and eat breakfast. For breakfast, we eat a banana and a piece of bread with Nutella, peanut butter, or jam. We drink a cup of coffee and then get ready for work.

7:30am: We leave the house and walk to the hospital.

7:55am: We arrive at Ruhengeri Hospital and head straight to the workshop.

Our work area... in Africa.

8:00am: Jean-Claude is nowhere to be found so we use this time to jump on the Internet and check our emails.

8:30-9:00am: Jean-Claude appears and either A) tells us which department needs PPM (planned preventative maintenance) or B) tells us which health centers we are traveling to so that we can take inventory.

9:00am-12:00pm: PPM consists of us cleaning different medical devices and doctors/staff members will usually bring out broken one every now and then for us to fix. We’ve cleaned infant incubators, infant warmers, oxygen concentrators, aspirators, and anesthesia machines just to name a few. For some of these devices, it’s critical to perform PPM. For example, oxygen concentrators have filters that need to be changed often and their usage needs to be monitored because over 20,000 hours the oxygen concentration output may not be sufficient. The grossest thing I’ve had to clean was an infant incubator, which had baby poop and/or throw up caked onto the bottom. Sanitation standards are not the same in developing hospitals.

PPM! in Africa.

Installing a newly repaired infant incubator... in Africa.

This past week, we have been traveling to different health centers around Musanze to take inventory. It has been nice getting out of the hospital and seeing the different clinics. They are usually off the beaten path and concealed on a mountain or hidden in a valley. They are all set up similarly and the only medical devices they use can be found in the laboratory or in the maternity ward.

A health clinic... in the middle of nowhere... in Africa.

Triage... in Africa.

A health clinic hidden on a mountain overlooking a lake... in Africa.

12:00-2:00pm: We have a two hour lunch break. Yes. Two hours. People back in the states will think this is ludicrous, but they do not understand Rwandan time. Rwandan time is much, much slower. We’ve come to learn that when Jean-Claude says he will be back in an hour, it really means two. One drink after work takes three hours. After you place your food order, you can expect the food to arrive an hour later. Then when you’re done eating, you can expect the check to come another 30 minutes later. This is why we need two hours for lunch. We always go to the same place for lunch. It’s a small bakery/restaurant called La Paillote or known locally as, “the Muzungu restaurant” because locals think it’s too expensive and because they serve American food (pizza, sandwiches, and fries). It’s actually not that expensive (in terms of American money) and my meal usually costs $3-4 USD. I like their vegetable toast, which is like a panini, with chips (a.k.a. French fries). I order a Fanta Citron to drink, which tastes like Sprite but better. All drinks in Rwanda come in a glass bottle and even in America I think soft drinks taste better in a glass bottle. They also use real sugar, which makes it even better.

2:00-5:00pm: We return to the workshop and repair any broken equipment that we come across. We’ve been able to fix an X-ray machine, several oxygen concentrators and blood pressure devices, an infant incubator and warmer, a microscope, and an electro-surgery unit just to name a few. The feeling I get after we fix something is indescribable. It’s a mixture of elation and disbelief. After we fixed the X-ray machine I wanted to cry from happiness and every piece of equipment we fix helps in an enormous way. The X-ray machine had been broken for four months. Patients were deferred to a nearby clinic for simple X-rays and after we fixed it we couldn’t even check up on it because there were so many patients using it throughout the day. I can’t even begin to explain how happy I am finally being able to use my skills to help people in need. It is for this exact reason why I wanted to become a biomedical engineer.

Fixing an X-ray machine's power supply... in Africa.

5:00pm: We walk home after a long day of work.

5:30pm: We stop at the store down the road from our house to buy some more bread and water (if we need it) before heading home.

5:45pm: We buy a roasted corn from the lady right outside our house for 50 francs ($0.08 USD).

5:50pm: We arrive home and greet our night guard, Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul is a student during the day and our guard at night. He sits in front of our house from 6pm to 6am to make sure we are safe. He also has a machete. Needless to say, he is a great guy.

6:00pm: I take my Malarone (anti-malaria) pill.

6:00-7:00pm: We read, take showers, make phone calls, and just relax before…

7:00pm: … our power usually goes out.

7:05pm: Jean-Claude will text one of us to see if we want to meet up for a beer in town.

7:10pm: We determine if we are too tired or not to go out with him because we know we won’t be coming home until 10pm at the earliest if we do go out. Jean-Claude is an exuberant, little man. He goes out almost every night after work and stays out until who knows when. We usually leave him around 10pm but sometimes, especially on the weekends, he will go to another bar and go dancing. He is an excellent dancer by the way.

Dancing with Jean-Claude... in Africa.

7:15pm: We leave our house to meet Jean-Claude or I stay in and just read if I’m too tired.

7:30pm: If we do go out, our favorite bar to go to is Skylight. I’ll order a Skol, which is a lighter beer and Jean-Claude will order us food. Skylight has the best goat brochettes and potatoes in town. I don’t know what they do to their potatoes, but they are the best potatoes I have ever eaten. Not only are the potatoes fresh, we think they bake them and then fry them before slathering on salt, rosemary, and some special sauce that we haven’t quite figured out yet. It is delicious. Also, is it weird that I like goat meat? It’s really tasty but a little chewy. I hope my family and friends don’t find that too exotic/gross…

Dinner... in Africa.

10:00pm: After convincing Jean-Claude that one beer is quite enough (a bottle of bear in Rwanda is more like one-and-a-half in America), we leave the bar and head home.

A beer bottle... in Africa.

10:15pm: We get back home and get ready for bed.

10:30pm: We tuck in our mosquito nets and go to sleep. If I can’t sleep I usually read a book on my iPhone. We’ve had a lot of downtime and I’ve been able to read several books. I’ve finished The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, which is now my favorite book, and I’m currently reading Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Thank goodness for iBooks and its free downloads.

6:45am: Wake up and repeat!

Testing Our Boundaries... in Africa

In one of my previous blog entries, I wrote about how it was hard to believe how far Rwanda has come after the 1994 genocide. You would have never imagined that such a tragedy ever occurred because of how friendly the people are and how well developed the country is, even though it has a low Human Development Index. I would soon learn that not everyone was so easy to forgive and forget and Hutu rebels still exist…

This past Saturday we visited another group of SI students working in a hospital in Gisenyi, which is about an hour west of Musanze. Gisenyi is right along Lake Kivu and is known as the “Martha’s Vineyard” of Rwanda. Its reputation lived up to my expectations and for a while I had to remind myself that I was in Rwanda and not Southern California.

A lake... in Africa.

We began the day relaxing on the beach under the bright Rwandan sun. It was nice to be near a large body of water again since everyone knows I thrive off the coastal breeze and warm sand. However, I was reluctant to get in the water after watching too many River Monsters episodes featured in Africa. I had no desire of being pulled to the bottom of the lake by a giant prehistoric catfish or eaten alive by a swarm of bloodthirsty piranhas.

Testing the water... In Africa.

We only stayed at the beach for a couple of hours, though, because, like most places we go together, we began to attract a large audience. I was laying out on the beach with a couple of other girls, but I soon had to get up and leave because I was so uncomfortable with the large group of Rwandans just staring at us. Some people were even taking pictures! Now I know what it feels like to be a celebrity; however I’m not getting paid millions of dollars to put up with it.

After our visit to the beach, we hiked about five miles to the hot springs on a small island off the coast of the lake. The hike was long and, not to mention, mainly uphill, but the views were well worth it.

A waterfall... in Africa.

An island... in Africa.

Perfection... in Africa.

Fishing... in Africa.

On the island, a group of kids led us around and in return for their help we paid them in candy. We tried to distribute the candy in the most civilized way possible; however, these children were straight out of Lord of the Flies and fought each other for all our lollipops and jawbreakers. It was annoying but also really sad how they acted.

Making friends... in Africa.

Hot springs... in Africa.

Goats... in Africa.

Following the leader... in Africa.

Another beautiful sunset... In Africa.

We returned home to Musanze at the end of the day and it was just in time because a few days later, we received the following warning from our EWH coordinator.

Hi All,

Just got this travel alert. Things may be heating up a bit near the border of DRC and Gisenyi. Please do not travel there for any weekend trips as a group. I know you all went last weekend, but please do not make any plans to visit again for the remainder of your time here. As the email states:

“Despite Rwanda's alleged support for the M23, the fighting between the M23 and the FARDC is very unlikely to spread to Rwanda, because the weak and poorly-equipped FARDC are unlikely to challenge the much superior Rwandan army by launching crossborder raids."

On Sunday, the day after we left Gisenyi, the Congolese army allegedly fired mortar bombs at two Rwandan villages about five miles outside of Ginsenyi. As mentioned previously, we hiked about five miles outside of Gisenyi, but thankfully it was in the direction opposite the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border.

Google maps... In Africa.

After receiving this email, I was curious on the background behind this long prevailing dissention so I did a little research like a good little nerd would do. The main conflict is between the FARDC (the Congolese army) and March 23 (M23), which is a Congolese rebel group who is situated near the DRC-Rwandan border. The Rwandan government is accused of helping M23 and the FARDC is accused of helping the FDLR, which stands for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. The FDLR is a Rwandan Hutu rebel group situated in the DRC near the Rwandan border, as well. They consist of Hutu refugees living in the DRC and their goal is to overthrow the Rwandan government. Right after the genocide in 1994, the FDLR was very prominent and consisted of about 15,000 troops. Today, they only consist of about 1,500 troops due to UN/FARDC military operations.

Even though the majority of Rwandans have forgiven but not forgotten the genocide, there are still some who have not forgiven, like the FDLR. It would be naïve to say that the entire country could cast their differences aside and live peacefully as one nation when even in America racism and hate crimes persist. The genocide was only 19 years ago, which I feel to be a short amount of time relative to the 40 or so years it took for the tension to finally culminate in genocide. 19 years is barely the difference between two generations. The Rwandan government has done a lot to restore peace, almost to the point of forceful propagation with its “week of remembrance.” The government also has zero tolerance for displays of violence and has law enforcement equipped with large rifles stationed throughout the country. I’m not sure if I feel more or less safe with people carrying AK-47s walking casually down crowded streets. Hopefully, the tension will continue to subside in its rapid pace and the safety of Rwandans, regardless of their tribe, will no longer be in question.

Friends and family should fret not, for Musanze is far from the conflict and a series of volcanoes separates us from both the DRC and Ugandan borders. This weekend we are also planning on returning to sheltered Kigali to visit our old host family one more time. Furthermore, I only have about a week left here before I begin my journey back home! USA, see you in 11 short days!