Day 1 - Arrival in Kigali


Well after 36 HOURS of traveling we finally made it to Kigali! It was a smooth trip from Salt Lake City, we made all of our connections just fine. The flights were really really long but luckily I was able to sleep for parts of them. Other than that I just read some material for the internship and watched movies! We got through customs quite fast and when we went outside Solange was waiting for us! She is a Rwandan native who is one of our coordinators here. She is very nice and bubbly. She helped us exchange our money for Rwandan Francs and we were off! She led us to a big white bus which will be our transportation for this trip! As we enjoyed driving by the beautiful hills and city life in Kigali, Solange told us all about the culture, foods, and activities that we have to look forward to! After about 25 minutes of driving we arrived at the guesthouse we are staying at for the duration of the trip. We were surprised to find out that the guesthouse is connected to a catholic church. So do you know what that means? We are rooming with the nuns! They are so nice and welcoming. They are a little older so most of them speak french (the older generation speaks french and the younger english but both speak the native language Kinyarwanda).Our rooms really aren’t bad! There are two of us to a room and we have a sink and mirror in our room. The bathroom and “shower” are at the end of the hallway but it shouldn’t be a problem! The second surprise of our living quarters was that the showers only release freezing cold water. And its not very hot here (it is winter in Rwanda) so taking a cold shower to cool off from the sun isn’t really an option. Luckily there is a faucet in the bathroom that has scalding hot water. So what we were instructed to do was to fill a bucket provided to us 1/3 full and then to fill the rest with the cold water from the shower. Needless to say showering tonight was very interesting and awkward But I am so grateful we have running water and a place to shower after long days. I just need to find the best method to go about it! The last thing we did today was our welcome dinner. Our leaders took us to the nicest African restaurant, the view was absolutely stunning. The restaurant was on a hill so you could see the whole city while you were eating on the upstairs patio. The food was super good! They served a wide variety of chicken, beef, and fish. For an appetizer they served these little fish that looked like they were just thrown in the frier! You could still see their eyes! I tried one but i didn’t like it too much. I couldn’t get over the eyes staring at me! I am super jet-lagged and falling asleep as I type this so I am going to end it here! I can’t wait for the plans we have tomorrow!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to My Blog!

Hello! Thank you for following my journey in Rwanda as a global health intern. I am so excited for this opportunity, I am constantly pinching myself because it feels like a dream that I get to travel to such an amazing place and learn about what I love most... medicine and public health! First of all I would like to thank my family, friends, professors and anyone else who has helped make this internship possible, it really is a dream come true. I am extremely excited to apply what I have learned thus far in my studies as a public health student at BYU and to be pushed and challenged in brand-new and unfamiliar situations. I have created this blog to document each day during the internship for myself as well as those who are interested in what my day-to-day life is like for the next month (hi mom!!). Whatever your reason may be for visiting my blog, I am so excited to have you here! Please feel free to leave comments if you feel so inclined. I would love to hear from you! Thank you ...
Read more

Biryogo Health Center - Day 4

Image
T oday was a pretty simple day! We started the day by meeting with the cleaning staff at the health center. We talked to them about their cleaning procedures and practices. The cleaners are a really important part of the IPC healthcare team that are often forgotten about. We were a little bit hesitant about this meeting because we hadn’t really witnessed any cleaning during our observations and we didn’t smell any cleaner anywhere in the health center. We were pleased to find out that the few members of the cleaning staff were very serious and passionate about their work. One of the workers said you “have to have a heart of perseverance to be a cleaner at a clinic”. Haha he was right! It is so important for the staff to be passionate about their work so it is done right.They explained in detail all of their procedures for cleaning and they showed us all of their cleaning supplies. I was a little sad to see they didn’t have much disinfectant and their stock of supplies was very sma...
Read more

A Day in the Life of a Global Health Intern (Part 2) - Biryogo Health Center Day 3

Image
Today was an amazing day!! I felt like a real public health official! We began the day by presenting our IPC observations and solutions with the IPC coordinator, Cecille and the Health Center director, Veronica. Suzanna, Elise and I presented our findings in the nutrition and vaccination area. They seemed to take our feedback very well. There were a few misunderstandings that took a little while to talk out but I think those were mainly due to gaps in translation. We were talking about how nurses should never recap their needles and they ran out and got sharps boxes and showed us how to assemble them. We knew they used sharps boxes and they did a great job at it! It took us a while to calm them down and explain that we weren’t talking about their sharps box use. They were extremely gracious in taking our criticism and very happy we were there to help them out. Some of the issues we observed, such as drying hands, required more money and weren’t very possible for them to fix. So we ...
Read more