Photo of the Week

Pardon the vanity, I just really like this picture.  Dancing at dusk by a pool (which explains my wet hair).

Thanks to Hez Holland for the photo.

The world as you've never seen it before.

5.82 million children die each year from swallowing tainted gum.

Did you actually read that statistic?  I made it up.  But did you read it, or did your eyes effortlessly glide over the horrifically large number of children killed by contaminated candy, already looking through this post for something more stimulating than black and white digits in a row?  The incredible website Worldmapper has come up with a compellingly simple way to convey the dizzying number of statistics associated with development work.  In short, they re-size each country according to the variable being mapped.  You should really poke around the array of maps on their site.  I chose five maps primarily related to development as examples, but there are also categories for everything from fuel and education to religion and pollution.  Because the images speak for themselves, I've presented the maps without comment.

Nurses Working

Cholera Deaths

Living on $1 Per Day

 

Maternal Deaths

Vaccine-Preventable Deaths

So, loyal readers, what do you think?  About the maps themselves, the numbers they convey?    Anything surprising?  Intriguing?  I could talk about this stuff all day long.

Kids are the same all over the world.

I was a meanie head and secretly videoed these kids as they thought I was waiting to take their picture.  You don't have to know Kinyarwanda to know that the boy who put himself in charge of getting all the other kids in place for the picture is saying something along the lines of, "You over here, and you stand here, and you move over and ME, riiiight here in the middle."

Who Owns Development?

I think it was Willie Nelson and then much later, Donkey from the Shrek movies, who extoled the virtues of being “on the road again.” 

In America, we have made it quite clear to whom the roads belong and whom they serve – cars.  Or rather, the people in cars.  Even the few walkable road spaces outside of cities often prove treacherous.  Americans, for the most part, move from house to car to parking lot and back.  Even in those organized and peaceful communities, the suburbs, you may be able to walk to your neighbor’s house down the street, but you’ll likely have to pass over a mini-highway to get to Harris Teeter or the local oyster bar.  We have, through our city planning decisions, solidified streets and roads as mediums through which cars and trucks may pass, but not people.

I spend a lot of time in cars.  On Monday morning, I travel from Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali to my worksite in rural Burera district.  Throughout the week I visit the district hospital and health centers for meetings and supervision visits.  On Friday, it’s back to Kigali.  For most of this time, I sit in silence, looking out the window as we wind through the mountains of northern Rwanda, taking in the awe-inspiring surroundings, and thinking about the people at work in their fields below.

As I gaze out the window at the images that pass, I can’t help but recognize how different the roads are from those back home.  Packed with life, they overflow with people carrying out the necessities of the day.  A man pushing a bike heavily laden with potatoes, a throng of children streaming from a school as they head home.  Two women with matching skirts, matching babies on their backs, and matching baskets on their heads laughing as they make their way.  A man switching the back of a plodding cow.  A different man shouting at his flock of goats as they skittishly trot along.  The images never stop – at every minute there are bicycles, women, animals, piles of fruit, bags of vegetables, old men, young men, carts full of charcoal, buckets full of bricks, boys carrying water and girls playing tag.  I can’t help but think that these roads belong to the people; the cars and trucks only borrow them.  From the perspective of the vast majority of those on the road, vehicles are only a temporary disturbance in their otherwise very wide sidewalk.

If the people of Rwanda own the roads and the SUVs of the development elite are only a passing interruption, it makes me wonder – who owns Rwandan development?   As we - expatriates like me and native Rwandans - go about the mind-bending task of attempting to improve the health and economic situations of people in this country, who are we serving?  To whom does the process of development belong?  When we plan a training, write a proposal, conduct a supervision visit, collect and analyze a set of data, hold a meeting, or present findings , do we ask ourselves - who benefits?  While people may have the ability to walk in the middle of the road and force my company’s driver to swerve from his lane, they do not have the ability to walk into the middle of a government meeting  and demand that things be done more efficiently.  As Rwanda, arguably the favorite “development darling” of Africa, continues lead through progress, it is crucial that those of us hoping to continue that progress – from NGO expats to district officials – constantly ask ourselves:  who owns development?

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This blog entry also appears on the Global Health Corps blog.  You should head over there and check out some of incredible stories and ideas my fellow corps members are discussing!

Photo of the Week

Quittin Time.

Africa Isn't Hot

When you think of Africa, you think of this -

- right?  Searing heat, beating sun, all that.  Wrong.  It is SO cold in our little remote area of Burera that I have apparently developed something called chilblains - ulcers caused by damage to capillary beds in your extremities.  Your toes swell up, making it difficult for them to bend (and thus, to walk) and get super itchy and sensitive.  My feet right now don't look too different from this:

This is not my foot.  I have cute painted toenails.

I've had this problem in the States before, usually right around Christmas, when I come home to my mother's freezing house, but I never thought that it could possibly be a problem in Africa.  I guess altitude makes a difference - we live at over 5,000 feet.  I came here with no closed-toed shoes - only sandals and strappy heels.  I guess I'm headed to the market tomorrow to look for some steals on real shoes.

PS - Wikipedia says that having a history of these can be a sign of connective tissue disorder.  Am I dying?  Someone who knows a doctor please help me out!

Uri and Pearly Get Married

When I found out that I’d gotten this fellowship with the Clinton Foundation through the Global Health Corps, the first thing that raced through my mind was that I’d be leaving my boyfriend, Alex, my mother, my brothers, Taylor and Blake, and good friends for a year.  The second thing I realized was that I’d miss the wedding of my cousin, Uri Ferruccio, to his fiancé, Pearly Shah.  They’re getting married tomorrow, September 17, in Charlotte.

Uri and I grew up together, running around Kerr Lake and his parents’ cabin in the deep woods of Afton, North Carolina.  A little more than a year older than me, we – along with our cousin David – were always together when we were young.  When they got old enough, his sister Kyra (herself now married) and my brother Taylor (a Park Scholar at NC State – love you bro) brought up the rear of our little crew.  Although we spent our fair share of time battling monsters in Sonic the Hedgehog on the old Sega Genesis, we were usually found outdoors – tromping through the sandy gullies of our Aunt Laura Bennie’s  land, swinging from thick vines in the woods surrounding his house, or playing literally all day in the warm July water on the lake.

 

When the time for college came around, he enrolled at UNC Chapel Hill and kicked its ass, traveling to India and China and learning Mandarin and Arabic.  He won a Fulbright to go study in China for a year, writing Facebook updates from a remote, unguarded part of the Great Wall.  He’s just that kind of guy. After the wedding, he’ll be beginning his graduate degree in Asian Studies at Harvard – on a scholarship.  His fiancé Pearly is extremely remarkable in her own right.  A graduate of UNC’s dentistry school (the best in the country), she’s preparing to start clinical work in Boston.  I wouldn’t be surprised if, in five years, they’re on a local Boston magazine’s cover as “Most Fascinating Couple of the Year”.

Throughout the time I’ve known Uri and Pearly as a couple, I have always been incredibly impressed by their steady and unwavering commitment to each other, even when they’ve had to live apart.  And lived apart they have; after college, Uri moved to DC to pursue job opportunities, only to win the Fulbright and move to the opposite side of the globe for a year.  Throughout it all, they have made it work.  And I am thankful they have, because not only is Pearly an amazingly smart, accomplished, kind, and beautiful addition to our family, their year apart is serving as the model for my own year abroad.  “If Uri and Pearly did it, we can do it.”  “Uri’s year away is almost over and it’s like he just left – it won’t be so bad!”

 

I know they likely won’t have time to read this before their wedding tomorrow, but I’d just like to say:

Uri and Pearly, you two are wonderful together, right for each other, and an inspiration to Alex and me.  I wish more than anything that I could be there tomorrow to lead my family in the baraat – you know I’d be the first in line!  I can’t wait to see the incredible things you guys produce in your life together – from amazing careers to beautiful babies.  I love you both and wish you a joyful, exciting, and prosperous life together.

Love,

ali

Blog Reactions - Easy Feedback

I really appreciate it that you're reading my blog!  To be honest, blogs can be kind of boring and self-serving and sometimes just dumb.  I'm trying to make mine none of the above so that you'll keep caring enough to read it.  I've enabled these nifty little "reaction" buttons at the end of each post so you can react to the blog post without actually having to leave a comment.  You can choose any or all of "funny", "interesting", "cool", or "more like this".  The first three come standard from Blogger and I added the last one because I'm interested in finding out what kinds of posts people enjoy the most - pictures, political commentary, daily life, work-related, etc.  It's my understanding that you don't have to have a username to be able to react - so please do!

Thanks!

(PS - I also considered adding reaction buttons for "Boring", "Useless", and "Cringe-worthy", but that would just get cluttered.  Besides, I'm trying to be less of a sarcastic bastard these days.)

Language Ventures - The Gayz

I have a whole entry brewing in my head on language and the experience of living within a language that is not your own, but I'll leave the philosophical ponderings for another time.  This time, I just want to tell a funny story. 

A piece of information crucial to understanding why this story is so hilarious is that Lake Kivu, the lake that separates the western border of Rwanda from the eastern border of the Congo, is known to have large amounts of methane and carbon dioxide gas under the depths of the water due to volcanic activity deep below.  This gas has sometimes bubbled up in large quantities to the surface of the lake, gruesomely suffocating or drowning unsuspecting swimmers.  Because the gas is less dense than water, if you happen to be unlucky enough to be swimming over a gas bubble, you drop into the gas layer and then drown.  (If this sounds like a bad horror movie, you're not too far off.  Here's a creepy-sounding BBC News Story on Lake Kivu entitled "Killer Lakes")

So then.  On to the story.

The scene: The kitchen of our Burera house, a coworker and I are cutting vegetables for pasta sauce.  He had visited Gisenyi, a lakeshore town near the Congo border, over the weekend.  I was telling him about an experience I had once in Gisenyi.  He is a native Francophone, but speaks English well (better than my French).


Me: "So there we were in Geiseny, just eating lunch, when this huge naked man floats up, face down in the water, dead."

Him: Thinking for a moment.  "Ahh, yes, that's because of the gayz."

Me: "The gays?  Really?  I know homosexuality is illegal here, but do you really think they would kill him because he was gay?"

Him: Confused look.  "No, the gayz, you know, from the water."

Me: "OH!  The GAS!  You think the gas killed him?"

Him: "Yes, of course."

Me:  "Then why was he naked?"

Him: Pondering look.  "Aha.  Now this is a very interesting question."


Endnote: The naked dead body story really did happen to me in Gisenyi in 2007.  It was truly a surreal experience.  The general conclusion at the time was that he was likely a thief or a cheat and somebody had taken out their own retribution.  Of course, he had clearly floated all the way across the lake from the Congolese side because they "do these things".  The possibility that he could have come from the Rwanda side was roundly dismissed.

Photo of the Week

I'm in the mood for starting weekly blog features that may or may not actually get done on a weekly basis.  In any case, here's a picture from our old house in Burera (the field).  Last week, we moved to a brand new, shiny, fancy house which is definitely nicer, but does not have the view of the old one.  Enjoy!

A Hint of Red

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PS - Thanks to Alex for buying me my fantastic Canon camera as a congrats gift for getting this job.  I can take such fancy pictures now!

Shout-out of the Week

Something I'd like to do here is every week send love or thanks to a particular person or people.  Because I spend a lot of time thinking about my family and friends and you're great to me!

This week's shout-out goes to my boyfriend Alex (I know, kinda lame to start with the obvious) because he's been so great during my first seven weeks here.  Not only is he diligently putting together a box of goodies for me (including a new keyboard for my laptop when I broke my L key attempting to clean underneath it), but he happily spends time working through practice GMAT questions with me, walking me through how to reset my wireless internet router (it's not easy!) or a hundred other things.

He's da bestest!

Kigali House Tour

Hi!  Thanks for coming by.  I've had lots of requests to see my house in Kigali, so here it is!  I'll also do a video of our house in the field in Burera, but we're only just moving into it, so we need to clean up a few corners before I put it out for the world to see.  And please leave a comment to let me know that you've been here!  Love you guys!