Moto Adventures

The quickest, cheapest, and most effective way to get around Rwanda is by taking motos (motorcycles). They drive around the cities, gather in villages, and take passengers wherever they need to go. Motos are definitely not the safest mode of transportation, but all Rwandan moto drivers are required to have a specific license that is apparently very hard to obtain, and to carry an extra helmet for their passengers to wear. In our 5 weeks here so far, we've probably taken hundreds of motos. We take them to get from our little town of Gasima near the GHI farm to Kigali, we take them to get around the city, and we take them to all the homes of the mamas we visit to interview.

This is how they work. Because we are muzungus (white people), whenever we look like we might need a moto, a whole swarm of them come over, offering us their helmets. I think this is because they think they can swindle a more expensive price out of us than local Rwandans, which is probably true, although we have gotten pretty good at negotiating and bargaining. But essentially, you call over a moto driver and tell them where you want to go. Hopefully, they know where you are talking about, but oftentimes they don't, or they just cannot understand what you are saying. In the latter case, we usually just repeat where we are going a bunch of times hoping they might understand eventually, but as you can imagine this usually doesn't work. So, we are forced to get creative and talk about landmarks they might be familiar with located near our destinations. Either that or we find someone nearby who speaks a little English and can translate. Next, we negotiate a price. If communication is an issue, we often resort to typing a number into our phone calculators where they either agree, or grab our phones and type in a different number. This interaction goes back and forth until we both agree on a price, then we hop on the back, put on our helmets, and the driver zips off (usually way too fast) to wherever we are going.

I have never felt unsafe while riding on a moto, and have actually found them to be quite fun, but we have definitely had some interesting experiences while riding them. We take motos from the farm to Kigali and back all the time. This ride is always questionable as the road is full of dust and holes. We often find ourselves airborne on the back of the moto, holding on to the small bar behind our butts for dear life. But, this ride is a breeze compared to some other roads we have experienced while riding motos. We have literally been taken up and down mountains until the drivers could go no further, and we were forced to walk. We have been 'harassed' by a large friendly gang of moto drivers in Musanze who were so excited to see three white girls in their tiny village, that they all wanted to be the one chosen for the ride. They all had good intentions, but the amount of helmets that were shoved into my face and forcibly placed onto my head was quite overwhelming. We have been taken to the wrong location several times in remote villages with the GHI communications team on our way to home visits, and even in Kigali when Caitlin is just trying to get to the grocery store 5 minutes from our house and her driver takes her halfway across the city...

Moto-ing on the edge. The fact that I was taking a picture
and not holding on is definitely a cause for concern

This post was inspired by our most recent moto ride, however, to a home visit in Gasabo, about 20 minutes away from the farm. The GHI mama that we were going to see gave Lucie, our wonderful translator, some questionable directions, and we found ourselves descending a steep mountain ridge that should NOT have been accessible by any vehicle, including these agile motorcycles. All the drivers were struggling, which was understandable with the rocky decline they were trying to maneuver. All of a sudden, I find myself flying off the back of the moto onto the ground. The front wheel had gotten stuck in a small ditch and both me and the driver were wrenched off, although he was able to catch himself and his bike, while I took a much less graceful tumble. Luckily, I was totally okay, with only a few small scratches to mark the occasion, but we were still in the middle of this random road (if you could even call it a road), with no idea where we were going. Eventually, Lucie realized that we were in the complete wrong location, so we turned around and entirely retraced our steps. Finally, an hour later, we got to the site of our home visit. We had a really successful interview, and a very nondramatic moto ride back to the farm.

Before I end this post, I've got to amend the statement I wrote earlier. I have never felt unsafe while riding a moto, until today, but I appreciate the thrill nonetheless.

Weekend 5: Kigali/Akagera

While this weekend wasn't a weekend where we traveled crazy distances for a weekend of adventure, we still managed to have a good time with a trip to Pili Pili on Saturday and a trip to Akagera National Park on Sunday. For those of you who may not know, we moved out of our homestay on Friday into a house in Kimihurura in Kigali, where we will be cat sitting for a UNHCR worker named Martina. Her cat's name is Fatty and we have had a great time so far, though we are looking forward to spending more time there as we settle into our last 2 weeks.

Fatty the cat in our new home!

Friday
We both stayed at our homestay for our last night. Food was delicious and it was wonderful to spend time with the family before heading into the city. We will be hosting a dinner at the farm for them and for the fellows that live on the farm next week.

Saturday
In the morning Caitlin was up early to meet our friend Yves for Umuganda. Umuganda is a service morning on the last Saturday of every month from 8-11am. Across all of Rwanda, people wake up early and participate in a variety of community service in their communities, whether it is farming for older members, building a house for a friend, or working on the roads that run through their villages. Caitlin and Yves joined Impact Hub Kigali for a morning of mural painting, a lower key version of Umuganda, but still very fun. (picture will be added once Impact Hub posts them!). Ryan hung out with Naomi and our family for breakfast and then continued on to the farm, where she worked on her DIS essays. Eventually, we met up at our new digs in Kigali, and caught motos to Pili Pili, a bar/pool/restaurant/lounge with amazing views of Kigali. Caitlin stayed there and hung out with Jared and Erin while watching a couple of soccer games, but Ryan ventured to Havana to meet her friend Emma, who we were going to Akagera with the next day.

View from Pili Pili featuring a Tusker Lager (Kenyan beer)

Sunday
We were up bright and early for our day at Akagera National Park, a 120,000 km national park that is home to a variety of wild life, and was one of the first protected park lands in Africa. We made the 2.5 hour there, trekked 6 hours around the park where we saw a variety of wildlife. We saw: impala, baboons, an elephant (that charged at the car...), zebras, giraffes, water buck, water buffalo, hippos, and LIONS! It was super exciting to see the lions, because they don't normally come out during the day. Our guide said we were the closest she's ever been to the lions, and that we were her first group in 2 years to see all of the animals. Lucky day to say the least!

Hippos!

Lions!

Zebras! He was uncooperative in our photo taking...

Week 4

This week we focused on gathering content for our Back to School fundraiser. We went on 4 home visits, where we had the pleasure of meeting with Mamas who had graduated from GHI's program. It was absolutely incredible to see how far they had come. Most of the mamas we visited had beautiful gardens, healthy children, and spoke of how GHI had truly helped their family become and remain so much healthier. Most also spoke of how so many of the lessons taught in the trainings they still use, especially the One Pot One Hour and Listening & Communication trainings. The One Pot One Hour training is a cooking demonstration that shows Mamas how to cook a healthy, balanced meal for their families in one pot in one hour. This trainings saves many of them firewood, fuel, time, and provides them with more time to sleep every night. The Listening and Communication training focus on how to have difficult conversations with family and friends. While we would love to provide more details on these visits, we will be using the content we gathered in our fundraiser! So check out the GHI page in the coming months to check out what encountered!

Here's a sneak peek from one of our home visits in Rubungo though :)

Egidia and Emmanuel with 2 of their 5 children (Henriette and Samuel)

This week we are focusing on 4 more interviews (3 with home visits, 1 with a teacher), and are also working on our blog posts for the GHI blog.

Side note: Ryan also had the pleasure of going to Immigration/the Ugandan Embassy twice this week, because visas are fun! Thankfully, the Ugandan Embassy is much more helpful than the Rwandan Immigration office! Thanks to them, we will be headed to Kampala/Jinja this weekend for the long weekend (there is a holiday on Friday and Monday)!  

Weekend 4: Lake Kivu!

For our fourth weekend in Rwanda, we travelled up north to the town of Gisenyi, which is about 3 and a half hours away from Kigali. Gisenyi is a popular weekend location because it borders the beautiful Lake Kivu, so our Friday afternoon bus was especially crowded. One of us luckily got a window spot, but the other was stuck talking to a perfectly friendly Rwandan gentleman who unfortunately did not understand the concept of personal space while conversing. We arrived in Gisenyi around 7, and journeyed to our hostel for the night: Discover Rwanda Youth Hostel. Discover was right on the lake, and it was bustling with travelers like us. We ordered dinner at the hostel, and while we were waiting for our food (which was quite a while) we met several people who all had cool stories. We met two women who were staying at Discover for the night before they headed into the Congo to hike the live volcano, Nyragongo, the next morning. We told them to look out for our two GHI friends who were doing the same hike that very day! We also met a consultant from England who was approaching his last week in Rwanda, a microfinance volunteer from Canada who was about to continue his journey around Africa, and two American bikers who were about to embark on the two-day trip down the Congo-Nile trail from Gisenyi to Kabuye, another Rwandan town along the coast of Lake Kivu. We told them about our kayak trip that we were about to start in the morning (more on that in a minute), and everyone was very jealous. I guess we all had pretty cool weekend activities!

We had booked a two day kayak trip along Lake Kivu with Kingfisher Journeys, which involved starting in Gisenyi and ending in Cyimbili, a town 10 km away, and then completing the return trip the following day. We were very excited, but when we woke up on Saturday morning, what did we find? RAIN! It is the dry season in Rwanda, and there hadn't been a single drop of rain during the day in the entire 3 weeks that we'd been in the country. But of course, the one day we are planning to spend our entire day kayaking on a lake, it decides to be rainy, gloomy, and cold. At our start location, we met the other members of our group: Hilary, Leah, and Francis. Francis was our guide, and he was awesome. Hilary was a Peace Corp Volunteer and had been living in Rwanda for a little over a year. Leah was her best friend from college who had come to visit her. Together, the 5 of us made up a really fun crew.

Day 1 in Gisenyi at the ka

At around 9:30 in the morning, we set off into the gloom (luckily it had stopped raining), and kayaked along the coast, with Francis pointing out key features. We stopped at a hot spring, which Francis explained has a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius, and can boil an egg in 3 minutes. There were many shirtless Rwandan men hanging around the hot spring, and many of them were excited to see us. Hilary can speak pretty decent Kinyarwanda, so she would respond to them and call them out on some of their comments. They were pretty surprised, and it was very funny.

                     

We spent the rest of the morning paddling and getting to know one another. Francis told us funny stories about uncooperative tourists that he has had to deal with, Hilary told us stories about her village and her job, and Leah told us stories about her and Leah's college experiences. We stopped at an island for lunch and had delicious vegetable sandwiches, coffee, and cookies. We hung out on the island for about an hour before continuing on our kayak journey. Soon, we had reached the coffee islands. We paddled around these massive islands completely covered in already-harvested coffee trees. One of Rwandan's main agricultural products is coffee, so it was really cool to see the trees, especially in such a beautiful setting. Right at the end of our trip, with the guesthouse we were staying at for the night in sight, it started to clear up and the sun came out. Hilary jumped in the water, which looked really nice, but Caitlin and I were tentative because Lake Kivu has parasites (apparently you're safe if you are deep enough, but we weren't convinced). Finally, around 3, we arrived in Cyimbili to a very, small welcoming guesthouse.

Exploring Lake Kivu on kayaks

Hilary and Leah were in the mood for some beer, and they didn't have any at the guest house, so we ventured out into the surrounding villages. After about a 15 minute trek of steep uphill incline, we arrived at a tiny opening which had one small bar. Luckily, we had Hilary's Kinyarwanda to help us, and we got beers and became friends with some friendly local guys who thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world that they were hanging in their local bar with a couple of white girls. When we eventually walked back down to the guesthouse, the sun was setting, and we had the most incredible view of Lake Kivu and the coffee islands. The rest of the night involved a delicious Rwandan buffet (Leah's first one), good conversation, and an early bedtime. This proved a little difficult for us because right before we were about to go to sleep, Caitlin saw a mouse in our room, which freaked us both out a solid amount. Other than that, everything was great!

The beautiful sunset overlooking Lake Kivu and the coffee islands in Cyimbili

The next morning, we set out in our kayaks at 8:30 am to try to make it back to Gisenyi to catch a bus back to Kigali at a decent time. We passed a bunch of fishermen in large boats and kids along the shore. They called out to us and a couple of them jumped into the water and started swimming after our boats. We were too fast though :) It was a lot warmer and sunnier today, and we kayaked a lot faster, so it was definitely a workout. We arrived back at our starting location in Gisenyi around 12:30. After exchanging contact information with Francis, and thanking him profusely for an excellent time, we left with Hilary and Leah to grab lunch and then a bus.

At the cafe, they were extremely busy and they told us our takeout sandwiches would take 40 minutes. Although that was not ideal, we decided to wait. While we were waiting, we ran into the two women who we had met on Friday at Discover who were hiking the volcano! They told us about their trip and showed us pictures. Then we asked if they were driving back to Kigali, which they were, and through that exchange we managed to get offered a ride back! Unfortunately our sandwiches did not take 40 minutes, they took double that time, but at least we had secured a means of getting back to Kigali. Melanie and Ailee, the two women, were both really awesome. They were both ex-Peace Corp Volunteers who were now living in Rwanda, so Hilary and them had a lot to talk about. It was a great car ride full of conversations about Peace Corp scandals, experiences with traffic police, Rwandan and other African adventures, and more. It was a great end to a great weekend. We were sad to say goodbye to Hilary and Leah, but luckily we might see them next weekend because we both happen to have the same travel plan to Akegara National Park. Stay tuned!

The Wifi #struggle

We are not impressed

As we are halfway through week 3, we thought it would be nice to include a piece that characterizes a struggle that we have experienced...having no wifi in an environment where wifi is a necessity. The Gardens for Health office in Gasabo is a strange mixture of Rwanda and the U.S. with both running water (most of the time) along with a squat compost toilet, an indoor kitchen with most American amenities and an outdoor kitchen with a wood burning stove, a staff that consists partly of Rwandans and partly of expats. That being said, the office is relatively modern, with working wifi. However, during our first 2 weeks here, the wifi basically didn't work. At first we thought this was just Rwanda being Rwanda...like "oh the wifi will be really bad/slow/spotty," but in reality it was like "you cannot send emails" bad. So more or less for our time in the office, we were doing what we could without access to the internet. The problem with this was that all of our work involves research, collaboration, and communication with the Boston office. For 2 weeks we were pretty lost, unable to do work...basically sitting in the office pretending to be doing our projects. I kid you not, for a good 2-4 hours of our 9 hour work day, we just complained to each other about the wifi not working, along with the rest of the staff. Finally as this week began, the Wifi became SO bad that the Deputy Director, Kamanda, took action. This is not surprising, as on Tuesday 14 out of the 20 people who work in the Gasabo office left work or did not come to work to work from cafes in Kigali. We were included in that. In the 6 hours we spent working on Tuesday in a nice cafe in Remera...we got more done than we had basically in the rest of our office time. With plans to budget for going to Kigali for internet twice week from that point forward, we returned to find nobody in the office, except a man in a jumpsuit messing with wires. Low and behold, the answer to our prayers had been received. The man in the jumpsuit was a man from Tigo, a wireless/internet/phone/you name it carrier (GHI had previously worked with MTN). We now are not only able to actually accomplish tasks during office hours, but can actually stream live sporting events once work is over (wild!). Stay tuned for an instagram post depicting our wifi struggle of Monday June 13th.

Weekend 3 in Musanze

As we were staying and working in Musanze all this week, observing health and agriculture trainings and attending home visits with GHI mamas, we were able to take advantage of the area for our weekend activities. We received some advice from fellow GHI staff members on what to do, and planned our weekend accordingly. Our first adventure was our hike of Mt. Kabuye, which was about 40 minutes from where we were staying. The Musanze district includes Volcanoes National Park, where besides from hosting gorilla and golden monkey trekking, facilitates hikes up the 5 beautiful volcanoes within it. However, each of those hikes are pretty pricey, so we settled for Kabuye, which is an unofficial hike (it doesn’t have an established trail), but it is extremely beautiful, and more importantly for us, free! Mt. Kabuye is the tallest non-volcanic peak in Rwanda, yet many Rwandans live along it at its high elevation, and travel up and down the mountain daily. We were excited to take on the challenge.

            First we took a bus from Musanze to Gakenke, but we got off a stop too early and had a little difficulty communicating with moto drivers where we were trying to go. Eventually, we hopped on the motos, hoping for the best, and ended up traveling for a while along this extremely steep, bumpy road until the motos could drive no further. Here we met a snazzy young man named Jean Paul, wearing a bright red sweat suit, a red beanie, and red flip flops (pretty inappropriate for the beating sun and the difficult uphill climb we were about to embark on, but as stated, he was a snazzy guy), who was very eager to lead us up the mountain. We didn’t actually know where we were going, and others had recommended trying to get a guide, so we agreed. Jean Paul spoke a decent amount of English, would play Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” out loud from his phone every so often, and even in his flip flops compared to our hiking boots, was speedy quick. We were sweating within minutes. All the way up, the view was absolutely spectacular, although we couldn’t quite capture it on camera because the sun was so bright that the distant hills appeared hazy. After about an hour and 45 minutes of steep uphill ascent, we arrived at the top, 8,8000 feet up. We stayed up here for a while taking in the beautiful scene and regaining energy, and then reluctantly began our descent, which was just as hard as going up because it was steep and slippery. Finally, we made it back to the Gakenke town, caught a bus back to Musanze, and celebrated our first true Rwandan travel adventure with a big meal.

Ryan and Caitlin at the top of Mt. Kabuye!!!

            

Our second highlight of the weekend was visiting the campground Red Rocks. Ryan had seen this place online, but Danielle, one of the GHI fellows, had recommended we go visit the campground because her friend ran it. We took motos to the campground, which was not too far from where we were staying, not really knowing what to expect. Harriet, Danielle’s friend, welcomed us with open arms and told us all about Red Rocks, which was beautiful and extremely cool. The goal of Red Rocks is to provide a way for tourists to genuinely interact with the cultural Rwandan community. Harriet recruited the surrounding community’s most vulnerable women to run the camp, and she works with them to run their own cooperative of farming and activities that they can do along with tourists in order to make money for themselves. Some of these activities include basket weaving, making banana beer, organic farming, beekeeping, and more. Harriet does not provide handouts for these women, but merely facilitates their business activities through Red Rocks and shows them that they possess the ability to better their lives. We talked with Harriet for hours and she gave us a tour of the entire campground, which is amazing. We really want to go back and stay there, and we recommend anyone who is planning to visit Rwanda to do the same. Regardless, however, everyone should check out Red Rocks and the work that Harriet is doing, because she is genuinely awesome.
http://www.redrocksrwanda.com/            

             Our final, and greatest, highlight of the weekend was gorilla trekking. Gorilla trekking is a staple of Rwandan tourism, as Volcanoes National Park holds over 800 gorillas, 2/3 of the world’s population. There are 20 different gorilla families—10 are used for tourism and 10 are used for research purposes—that range in size from 12 to 33 members. In order to go trekking, you have to secure a very pricey permit several weeks in advance, as they only allow 80 individuals to go each day (up to 8 people in each group trekking each of the gorilla families). On Sunday morning, we woke up early and were driven to the RDB (Rwanda Development Board) Headquarters in Volcanoes National Park, where we were split up into our trekking groups. We chose a “medium” trek, which indicates the difficulty and time spent trekking to find the gorilla family, and were assigned to the gorilla family called Umubano, which means “friendly” in Kinyarwanda. Our guide, Loyce, told us about the family, which consists of 14 members who live within the jungle around the volcano Mt. Bisoke. After this briefing, we were driven to our starting location to begin our trek. Our group was very diverse and interesting. Besides from the two of us, it consisted of a Korean UN Peacekeeper stationed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo along with his two friends, an HR consultant from Canada and her Rwandan tour guide, and a Japanese woman who was currently living in Rwanda.

We all followed our guide, a gorilla tracker, and a separate porter who held a machete and cleared a path for us as we trekked through the jungle. It was hard work: a very steep incline, a lot of ducking and climbing over things that obstructed our way, and lot of pricks by thorns and nettles, but it was all completely worth it. After about an hour and 45 minutes of trekking, we arrived at the gorilla family. We saw the dominant male first, the silverback, who was extremely striking, before seeing two women gorillas and a baby. The mom and child would play, hug, and groom one another, and we couldn’t stop watching. We were so surprised by how human-like they were, which makes sense as we share 98.5% of our genes. We had both seen gorillas before in the zoo, but seeing them in their natural habitat and being close enough that we could touch them was an absolutely incredible experience that we will never be able to forget. They are such friendly and magnificent creatures. We saw about 3 more gorilla family members as we moved around the area, but before we knew it our hour was up.

Our trek back down the volcano was much easier than the incline because we were moving along an established trail, and before we knew it we were back at our starting point. We headed back to Musanze where we collected our stuff, had lunch, and then finally boarded a bus back to Kigali. On the two hour, beautiful bus ride, we were able to reflect on our awesome weekend of adventures and prepare for our upcoming week of work back at the farm. We are excited for what’s ahead!

Gorillas are pretty cool

Health and Ag Tranings: Musanze

Week 2: Musanze

Most of GHIs trainings are now taking place in Musanze, where they partner with all 18 health centers. In our week in Musanze, we were able to go to 2 health trainings, 1 agriculture training, and 2 home visits. It was our first time working in the field, and we can't wait to go back and get more content for our fundraising campaign.

Tuesday
Our Tuesday started early, 4:45am to be exact, as we had to get motos from Ndera to the Nyabogogo (the bus park in Kigali). Unfortunately, there are no motos in Ndera until 6am, which we did not know. So naturally, we wait for an hour as everyone stares at us wondering what the heck we're doing standing around at that hour. Eventually we catch motos and make it to the bus park for the 7:00 bus to Musanze. The 2 hour drive is absolutely beautiful as you wind up and down the hills as you leave Kigali and begin to see the volcanoes that characterize Musanze. We arrive at the Musanze bus park and walk to the GHI office in Musanze, a small room in the Ministry of Health compound, with 1 table, 6 chairs, and 1 wifi modem. There is no bathroom; you have to knock on the door of this room where a bunch of Rwandan men in business suits work on something, I'm assuming health related, to ask for the key. We leave the GHI office for Busogo, where we will see our first health training. We take motos and are again blown away by the views throughout the ride. We arrive at the health center, where we are greeted by a nun who takes us to where the GHI training is happening. The health center is less a health center and more of a health compound, with multiple one-story buildings with 3-4 rooms that open up to the center. It is relatively quiet. The topic for the day is prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. We are greeted by women singing, breastfeeding, and getting situated for the 2 hour training. We did not have a translator, so we weren't sure what was happening most of the time, but we did have an outline in English. Surprisingly, we actually learned a thing or two from the training..who knew. The women are taught about how HIV/AIDS is spread, how to prevent HIV/AIDS, how to use a condom, the importance of getting tested, and how to protect their children during childbirth and breastfeeding if they are HIV positive. As the health training ends, we think it is time to leave, but we are wrong. We are going with Naomi, the same women that we stay with in Ndera. She is a field educator supervisor, so she attends trainings every day to assure that the field educators cover every topic in depth, answers any questions they cannot answer, and provides feedback to the GHI office. It was week 5, so most of the children appeared much healthier, according to Naomi, but there was one child that did not. He barely spoke or cried out during the training, and appeared to be quite sick. Naomi sat and spoke with the mother and the hospital nutritionist for a while after the training. What we gathered from Naomi was that the child was sick, but the mother did not have the government health insurance, so she was unable to take the child to the health center. Naomi assured her that with the help of the Turi Kumwe fund at GHI, she should stay at the health center with her child until he was better...as far as we know, that is what she did. The Turi Kumwe fund was created for situations like this, where GHI staff encounter a situation where they need to act but have no funding to do so. Staff contribute part of their salary every month to a fund, GHI matches the amount contributed, and a committee allocates the money to different situations that occur over the month. Situations range from sick children or mothers to flood damage or robbery. We will definitely blog more about Turi Kumwe later, but it was good to see how the fund works first hand in a situation where it was needed.

Lucy teaching mamas about compost at the Ag Training in Bisate

Mama demonstrates how to use a condom at HIV/AIDS Training in Kinigi

Wednesday
We had a translator! Lucie! On Wednesday, we went to the Kinigi Health Center health training, which was also on HIV/AIDS, but this time we knew what was happening! We were greeted this time by women singing and dancing, which we were pulled into. The field educators at Kinigi were incredible, the women watched closely, as they demanded their full attention. The women participated in the condom demonstration, asked questions, and talked about myths and facts surrounding HIV and AIDS. It was a very different atmosphere. We were able to speak with the ECD mamas at the training, where we learned about what they wanted to know more about and what they loved about their jobs. Following the health training, we went to an agriculture training in Bisate. The agriculture trainings are much smaller. The women who live close together are separated into groups of 8-10 mamas, they decide on the best house for the trainings, and the field educator comes to that house and trains them in smaller groups. The training topic was composting, which we also learned a lot about. Following the training, the women are going to organize themselves into groups to gather green material (grass, leaves, kitchen waste) and brown material (animal manure) and at the training this week bring it with them to create a compost pile. They also talked about soil degradation and how to prevent nutrient loss during the rainy season. We were able to speak with some of the mamas there after about what they love most about GHI and what they love most about their children.

Thursday
Thursday we attended home visits with Danielle and Lucie to work on their piece for pro-poor growth, agriculture, and how they interact. One home visit was in Busogo and one was in Kinigi. The visit in Busogo was a mama currently enrolled in the growing season, who showed us her garden and her cow and explained how already GHI has taught her how to cook better for her family and sell more products at the market. In Kinigi, we actually met with a GHI papa, who had a crazy story. He was born in Rwanda, but fled to Tanzania during the genocide, when he was very young. He was separated from his family, though he knows most of his family did not survive. He spent the rest of his life in Tanzania, where he got married, and had 5 daughters. Eventually, Tanzania decided it was time to move some of the Rwandans back to Rwanda, as the Rwandan government had land and built houses for them. He was forced to leave his wife and family, with the exception of 2 daughters that he was to take with him. He was moved to Kinigi, where he knew nobody. In 2014, he was enrolled in the GHI program, and fortunately, Lucie had interviewed him then. She was shocked at how much his life had improved. He had moved to a new house, participated in a savings cooperative, grew onions for profit, fed his family almost entirely from his garden, and rented a plot of land where he grew Irish Potatoes (very profitable). He had plans to grow garlic soon (the most profitable at 3,000rwf per kilo). While we haven't seen how different families have been impacted from GHI, we could tell that this was not entirely uncommon. Unbelievable progress, all from giving someone the tools to do it themselves.

Cow from the home visit in Busogo 

What an eye-opening few days in the field.

Weekend 2: Kigali

Our "first" weekend in Rwanda!! *we technically were here last weekend*

Friday night:
     We spent our first Friday night doing as colleagues do...going to Happy Hour at the local bar called Podium. GHI is big on fostering friendships between staff with events like sports fridays, happy hour, and inclusion of one another in weekend trips or events. Most of the staff walked down from the GHI office to a bar called Podium, and by bar I mean place with cold beer and some chairs. Ryan and I were able to hear about 'the fun part of the job,' sorts of stories...crazy things that happened that nobody would believe if they didn't experience something remotely similar too. Laughing, talking, enjoying everyone in such a relaxed environment was wonderful...and was that tone that set our whole weekend. After leaving Podium, we caught a ride into Kigali with the staff truck all the way back to our friend Eric's house, where we stayed for the weekend. We proceeded to go out for Thai food with him, grab some groceries for breakfast, and just relax in the house after a long week. Going to bed early was a good call considering how busy our Saturday was.

Saturday:
     We both started Saturday off with what honestly was probably one of the best showers of my life...minor detail, but seriously was awesome. We then walked up the street to RDB (Rwanda Development Board) where one of us obtained our gorilla trekking permit for next Sunday quickly as the other had a bit more of a hard time...we won't go into detail, but it was quite a process.

Wall of Names at Kigali Genocide Memorial 

      We then made our way on moto to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which was definitely not what we expected. There as a big event happening there, and it was pretty crowded. We persevered though, and were able to explore the memorial and museum. It is pretty astounding being in the country yet being reminded that just 22 years ago such an atrocity occurred on the same streets you can walk on at any hour of the night now. We ate at the museum cafe, as we were in a bit of a hurry, but were introduced to Rwandan salad, which basically is a better version of American cole slaw.

Before Rwanda lost and fans threw trash at their own team...

After the memorial, we returned to Remera for the Rwanda vs. Mozambique soccer game. We began by meeting friends from work at a bar across the street from the stadium, where we encountered quite a variety of people...from men in pressed Armani suites to people painted blue with polka dots all over them...in the same half mile radius. As we all began to approach the stadium, we were greeted by uniformed men telling us that we had to separate between men and women because we had to be patted down to get into the game. This situation was quite honestly one of the only times I was glad to be a woman at a sporting event, because there was quite literally no one in the line for women (a first for anyone who has waited in line at the women's bathroom at a stadium). The stadium is separated into shaded section and a non-shaded section; tickets in the shaded section cost 1000rwf (roughly $1.25USD) and tickets in the sunny section cost 500rwf (roughly $0.60USD)...we were in the sunny section because we are all broke people working for a non-profit. To be honest, watching the Rwandan team play soccer was like watching high school soccer, but all in all a really fun time.

BUT WAIT, Saturday isn't over yet, because it's only 5:30pm. We then return to a different bar where they played many 'throwbacks' like Destiny's Child, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, and Afrojack...We also had snacks there, brochette and chips (goat kabob with french fries). We eventually left our post there and went to another bar where they were playing MTV music videos from the 1990s, an experience to say the least...but it got cold there, so naturally we had to go to the 514 (Montreal area code). 514 is a Canadian club with a patio with live music, and a downstairs club with a DJ. We stayed on the patio but it was lively enough...eventually it hit midnight, and we had to get snacks there, cheese pizza and an omlette, which everyone enjoyed. We began our short trek back to Eric's house, following Eric and his friend Katie. Thank goodness they were there, because a very tall Ugandan man decided him and Ryan were going to get married. This man, who is unnamed because we genuinely don't know his name, literally would not leave. Eventually Eric and Katie resorted to shouting at him in a mixture of Kinyarwanda and English until he finally left. The things people do for love ya know...

Before the bad milk hit at Sole Luna :) 

Sunday
We get a bit of a late start, which is good because nothing is open yet HA. Good thing we didn't get food for breakfast for two days. We chilled at Eric's with the dog that lives there (Max) until returning to RDB (because one of us still didn't have a permit). Then we made our way to Bourbon (don't worry, not another bar), a chain coffee shop that sources their coffee from Rwanda. We'd been to one before, knew they were good, had wifi, the works. We hung out there until the Italian restaurant we wanted to go to opened. Unfortunately, Ryan got pretty sick from all of the cream in her coffee there and was unable to enjoy the delicious pizza at Sole Luna (10/10 would recommend). We got a ride back to Ndera on the staff truck, hung out at the farm for a while, and then returned to our homestay.





We're in the office today, but we're headed out really early tomorrow to finish our week out in Musanze!

*side note, Ryan is doing much better now*

Days 4&5

Thursday and Friday

Thursday was a day full of activity, as Ryan and I started our day off with an early morning, hilly run through Ndera. We were greeted (and stared at) by many locals trekking to work, getting water, or ushering children to school. We were also covered head to toe in dust, as there is a company moving a lot of dust throughout Ndera...as they drive by, dust is kicked up from the road and the wind blows dust from the back of the truck everywhere.

Once we cleaned up and began our workday, we met with the Communications Team, Danielle and Lucie, who had been working on pieces in Musanze earlier in the week. It was a very in depth meeting, as we were able to discuss what exactly we would be doing here (finally). Soooo *drumroll* we will be writing an Early Childhood Development Curriculum to be used by the ECD Mamas (women who care for the children while the mamas are receiving their health and agriculture trainings), and creating fundraising campaigns for the ECD curriculum and One Pot One Hour training for Community Health workers. More information about our projects follows:

• ECD Curriculum
• Currently there are 22 trainings, 14 health and 7 agriculture, each take place for 2 hours in which the children are dropped off to be taken care of by 2 women who have already been trained by GHI during previous seasons. There, the children eat breakfast (fortified porridge), and these two ECD mamas watch and play with them until the training is finished. This allows for an optimal intervention in ECD, because the children attending with their mothers are 0-5 years old. By creating a curriculum for the ECD mamas to use, the children will be stimulated with song, poems, toys, and will have (ideally) learned some numbers and letters before attending primary school. Most children receive little stimulation before attending primary school due to lack of knowledge and resources. This disallows cognitive development imperative to positive performance in later school work. By teaching these ECD mamas, they will not only be able to help foster that positive growth, but teach the mamas how to foster that same growth in their homes. 
• ECD Fundraiser
• Fortunately, GHI has received some funding for ECD in the past that has allowed for the ECD mamas, fortified porridge, and minimal training for the ECD mamas. This is not enough to make a big impact though. We will be fundraising during 'back-to-school' season in the states. Money from this fundraiser will go to training the ECD mamas in the more in depth curriculum we create and will go to purchasing books, toys, and other teaching/training material that can be used on-site. Currently, each health center has only 3 toys to be shared by 40-50 children. Ideally, many of these toys will be household items, or items easily attainable in resource poor households, so that mothers can replicate activities in their homes or in their gardens. This fundraiser will take place on the GHI website and on various forms of social media like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. 
• One Pot One Hour Fundraiser
• One Pot One Hour is a lesson taught to all mamas about how to prepare a delicious and nutritious meal in 1 pot in 1 hour. We can speak from experience that cooking dinner is quite an ordeal here...usually taking 2.5-3 hours. Many mamas spend a significant portion of their day cooking. This training teaches the mamas how to cut down their time in the kitchen, allowing them more time to work in their gardens, play with their children, and attend to other household chores, go to church, spend time with friends, and the list goes on. Many mamas have said this training has been the most valuable and life-changing for them. Unfortunately, only 40 women are trained per health center, per district, per season. While this is a large number of women trained, it does not come close to all of the women in the entire country of Rwanda or even all of the women in the districts GHI works in. To expand their reach and share such valuable knowledge, GHI has partnered with Community Health workers throughout Rwanda, training them in One Pot One Hour, allowing them to share the information with women in the communities they work in. There are currently 45,000 CHWs in Rwanda, though the number is growing as more and more are trained. Rwanda has pledged to have 3 CHWs per village, essentially 1 CHW per 50-100 people. To give an idea as to how many CHWs this totals, if there at minimum is 1 CHW per 100 people and Rwanda has a population of 11.78 million, there would be 117,800 CHWs in the country. GHI has taught 5,000 CHWs in One Pot One Hour with surplus budget, but with extra funding, GHI can train many more, rather than relying on leftover funding. 

This is what we'll be up to for the rest of our time here, with an additional 2 blog posts we are writing for the GHI website! 

We spend Friday diving into the ECD Curriculum development and began research for 1 of our 2 blog posts, which will be about amaranth. Amaranth is a crop native to Rwanda (as well as many countries in Central and South America). In plant form, it is highly nutritious; the leaves are cooked to form a spinach-like dish called dodo. However, you can also grind it into high protein, vitamin-rich grain and flour used in just about everything Americans use wheat flour for. We'll post a link to the blog on the GHI website once we finish it, but basically everyone in Rwanda loves and uses amaranth, so we want to feature it! 

We'll be posting later about our adventures during our first weekend here! 

Day 3

Day 3

Day 3 at the farm we completed some random assignments. First, we finished up our edits of the translations of the Turi kumwe newsletter, and redesigned it a bit. This took a while because we all know that messing around with formatting on Microsoft Word always works out exactly how you want it to…

There have been a lot of new visitors at the farm besides from us. Caitlin and I were the first to arrive on Friday. On Saturday, a Monitoring and Evaluations (M&E) intern named Shannon arrived. On Tuesday, a volunteer accountant named Erin arrived. Today a pair of artists who have been travelling around the world for the past year arrived and will be staying for the next week working on a project for the farm. Finally, the last newby, Jamie, an agriculture intern who will be working on the Biochar with Jared, will arrive tomorrow. Clearly, the GHI staff has a lot of new people to accommodate and adjust to, but this also means more new friends for us! We have gotten to know many people through just general run-ins in the office and the farm, as well as the daily community lunches.

GHI is organization based around determining sustainable solutions to food security and childhood malnutrition, so in order to practice what they preach, they hire community mothers to cook a large community lunch every day for all staff, visitors, and community members. Using GHI’s four-color approach to a simple balanced and nutritious meal, there is always a carbohydrate/starch (white), a protein (brown), a fruit or certain type of vegetable (red), and some sort of green vegetable (green). The food is absolutely delicious. Everyone brings their meal down to the farm table, which is a long, beautiful table in the middle of GHI’s farm, and enjoys their meal together. It is a wonderful tradition and even after our 3^rd day, it is one of our favorite aspects of work here at GHI.

The GHI farm table, featuring Prince, the baby goat.  

In the afternoon, we took on the important role of organizing books and going through the stacks of paper in the Health and Agriculture Office. We ended up getting rid of about 20 pounds of paper that Jared is going to use for his fire pit, because despite the fact that plastic bags are illegal in Rwanda, there is not an effective recycling system set in place. The Health and Ag team was very grateful after we finished.

That was Day 3! Tomorrow, we are meeting with the Development and Communication team to talk about the eventual fundraising campaign that we will create based on our time here! We’re excited for the rest of this week, and the rest of our time here.