"So, what do you do here?"

Ah, that comforting phrase.  The ice-breaker, the silence-filler, the guide to first impressions and social stratification in the expatriate community.  As bartender on-the-side in Washington, D.C., I usually started conversations with customers by asking about their favorite local restaurants, the neighborhood in which they lived, or their opinion of H Street Northeast - an up-and-coming area of the city and where our cocktail bar was located.  Asking about work, especially when many people were actually unemployed, was something I usually avoided unless the customer mentioned it.

In Kigali, though, it seems that 95% of conversations between expatriates - whether at a restaurant, in someone's living room, or even at a bar on Friday night - begins with an inquiry into what you "do".  My sassy side wants to respond that I am training for the Kigali Marathon next year, taking an online course in microeconomics, enjoy visiting the market to buy my produce, and am studying for the GMAT.  Call me a cynic, but the NGO social scene in Kigali seems frequently akin to high school.  

Burera District within Rwanda

Do you work for a big nonprofit or a small start-up?  Are there famous people attached to your organization?  How famous?  Are you in health, education, economic development, or maybe genocide reconciliation?  Maybe you don't even work for an NGO - you're here to export coffee.  Perhaps you're faith based?  Yet again, maybe you work for the U.S. embassy.  Micro-finance?  Or no, journalism.  Newspapers or radio?  Are you on a fellowship?  Analyst?  Program director?  Country director?  Or possibly you're at the bottom of the totem pole - a lowly intern who is here for "the summer" even though the only seasons in Rwanda are "wet" and "dry".  Did I mention that the longer you've been here, the more street cred you have?  A year is a somewhat respectable amount of time to have been "in-country", but three years is better.  I make sure to mention that this is my fifth time to Rwanda, lest someone think I'm a pitiable newbie who's just arrived.

Of course, not every inquiry about work is an attempt to pinpoint your standing in a complex hierarchy of good works and development.  "I just like to hear about what other people are accomplishing," said a fellow Global Health Corps colleague over dinner last weekend.  There is, of course a lot of interesting and important work going on in Rwanda.  I just don't like to be wholly defined by mine.  With that being said, and in the spirit of my friend who just likes to hear what other people are accomplishing, here's what I "do".

Rwanda is divided into thirty districts and each district is furthermore divided into sectors.  These districts provide the organizational structure for local government as well as the health system.  Within the health system, each district is required to have a district hospital, a district pharmacy, and at least one health center per sector (sometimes more, depending on the population within the sector).  My work will be primarily with the district pharmacy in Burera, one of the northern districts that border Uganda.  The district pharmacy is responsible for the timely and accurate ordering of medicines and supplies for all the health facilities within the district, as well as monitoring the supply chain and stock activities in those facilities.

Throughout this year, I will be providing technical assistance to the district pharmacy as it works to improve ordering, monitoring, supervising, and collecting data from the health facilities within the district.  The different projects will each be interesting within their own right, so I'll write in more detail as the real work gets underway and there is interesting information to convey.