Work and Projects

This post is long over-due, I know, but here is what I do at my health center (or should I say what I'm trying to do).  Things are moving, but I must admit, the progress is painfully slow.  I have officially been here one full year and my primary project has yet to get off of the ground.  In case you're wondering, no I'm not sitting around on my derriere all day; it has just been tough getting the people in my community to work without receiving money for what should be community service.  I am often awe-struck at how money hungry the people around me are, but in all fairness, I will say that they are no more (or less) money hungry than Americans.  Somehow I thought things here would be different, but nope.  People are people and people like money.  And money (or lack thereof) is making my job a living hell right about now.  Maybe I'm being a little extreme because I'm so darned frustrated...then again, maybe not...

I digress.

My day to day work consists of

me doing capacity building on the topics of nutrition, hygiene, the prevention of HIV/AIDS, and malaria.  The larger issues within my community are with that of hygiene and malaria so these are the two problems that I have decided to tackle first.  I recently hosted various Malaria Day activities at my village primary school for somewhere between 100 and 200 students.  The details of this extremely fun, successful day are in the next post, titled International Malaria Day.  I had the best time playing with the kids and teaching them allll about Malaria! <3

In the meantime, when I'm not planning or carrying out a smaller secondary project, I am working to make my primary project a success...hand washing stations!  As I said before, hygiene is a HUGE problem in my community, as my health center receives  many daily visits (too many) for stomach worms, parasites, and other hygiene related illnesses.  So as a project team, myself, my counterpart, and the community health workers have decided to tackle this problem by way of promoting hand hygiene behavior change.  The plan is to increase the number of hand washing stations in our community by 20%.  This means we must build 657 hand washing stations in village homes, outside of village restaurants, and in village schools to supply community members with the tools they need to change their hand washing behaviors.  In addition to building hand washing stations, we will teach proper hand washing practices.  Hand washing is something that has become kind of second nature for many people in America, but in Rwanda, it's not so simple.  To wash their hands, most people here just splash their hands in a small basin of water and believe that that is enough to remove all of the germs and dirt from their hands; not knowing that the rubbing of soap between your hands is what creates the friction that  lifts the dirt from your hands, allowing running water to then wash the germs away.  As a result of all of this, millions of children in the developing world are hit with stomach infections, diarrhea, respiratory infections, malnutrition, and yes, even death.  Poor hand hygiene is a much bigger problem than it seems and I will attempt to tackle that problem right here in my community! (Go mee!!)

So in short, this is what I have been working on for the past year.  Most volunteers (at least in Rwanda) don't usually begin their primary project until their second year anyway so I'm not really behind, I'm just ready to move forward.  As I said before, things are moving, just much too slowly for my taste.  At any rate, I will continue to do my best to do my job of planning projects within my community, implementing them within my community, and building the capacity of community members so that when I leave, they will be able to continue what projects we have set up together and even carry out new ones on their own.  Wish me luck!

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea

PS. We currently have all of our supplies for the hand washing project! Yayy! 657 small jerry cans, 657 bars of soap, string, hammers, nails, training supplies...EVERTHING!  We're just waiting for this funny money business to be over with.  With that, please keep us volunteers in your prayers: for continued patience and personal growth; great success with our projects; and for the health and happiness of our village communities...and for the people to drop this darned love for money!