I Carried the Watermelon

Actually, it was stones. Up a mountain.

The last Saturday of every month, Rwandan community members dedicate their mornings to Umuganda, or Travaux Communitaire. It’s a pretty incredible concept – the able-bodied members of a nation coming together on a monthly basis to improve the community. The flipside for visitors or others not participating is that public and private services are unavailable until after noon on umuganda days.

In Byumba, my current field location, this month’s umuganda was dedicated to providing materials for the foundations of a new classroom. Everyone in the umudugudu (the neighborhood), including me, went to a nearby site where men were hammering away stone from the mountain, and carried the stones up a steep incline to the school.

Here’s me on my first trip.



I was not looking so cavalier when I got back to the top of the mountain. The second time around, I chose a stone that was twice as big -- and walked twice as slowly -- after seeing what the others were transporting.

For Rwanda's Coffee Farmers, Radios Can Save Lives

Michelle, Emily, and I just completed our two-month Empower internship at the Freeplay Foundation, a London-based NGO that distributes solar-powered Lifeline radios to some of the most vulnerable populations in sub-Saharan Africa.

While the Freeplay Foundation distributes its radios in 14 countries, I was particularly impressed by their Coffee Lifeline project that provides Rwandan coffee farmers with radio access. Coffee Lifeline demonstrates just how much of a positive impact information access can have on poor communities.

A coffee farmer listening to her radio while harvesting coffee

While coffee farming represents more than half of the Rwanda’s export income, many of Rwanda’s 500,000 farmers live in poverty because they are unable to access information needed to best grow their crops, including weather reports, news on farming techniques, and the world market price for coffee. Without the necessary information to produce better coffee, farmers cannot afford to feed their families or send their children to school.

A group of farmers listening to a coffee-washing lesson on the radio

Through the Coffee Lifeline project that distributes radios to farmers, today more than 35,000 Rwandan farmers have radio access and can tune into Imbere Heza, a radio program co-created by the Freeplay Foundation. Each month, more than 200,000 coffee farmers tune into the program to listen to important information, including the daily market price for coffee, how to harvest better quality coffee, how to join coffee cooperatives, and health lessons for their families. Thanks to Imbere Heza, many farming communities that once suffered are now prospering. They are able to harvest better quality coffee and sell it at a better price.

While Coffee Lifeline is just one project, it illustrates how far information access can go in helping improve the quality of life for the poor. In the future, the Freeplay Foundation hopes to expand the Coffee Lifeline model into other coffee growing countries in the world.

Limited Resource

In many of my interviews with public officials, a common concept will eventually come up: In Rwanda, when you speak of land, you speak of agriculture. One cannot discuss land ownership without discussing agriculture. The country’s economy is heavily dominated by its agricultural sector, but with an already high population density and growing population, there isn’t any excess land lying about.

Hence the focus on land reform, and the need to be as productive as possible with every bit of land. Despite this, there are some areas of the country where the land remains unused. In contrast, there are some areas where the land appears to be used to its fullest possible extent.

One notices it almost instantly. As soon as you are outside Kigali, the landscape shifts to farmland. It seems that every inch of land is cultivated.



In several of the areas I've visited, the land is cultivated right up to the road, and houses are given only as much clearing as necessary.

Seeing this really underscores how crucial an effective and appropriate land policy is here.

Fighting Energy-Poverty One Girl at a Time

Me, Emily, and Gillian at the Freeplay Foundation Office with Lifeline Radios

It’s a surreal feeling sitting in London fighting the monotony of reading project proposals and budgets, while knowing that it will ultimately be helping adolescent girls in Burundi. Until recently I didn’t know much about Burundi other than as the country on the map of East Africa. But since working at the Freeplay Foundation I have learned quite a bit about Burundi—it’s political history, cultural practices, and systemic problems.

Freeplay Foundation's Solar-Powered and Wind-Up "Lifeline Radio"--the first radio ever created for humanitarian use.

The Freeplay Foundation is an international NGO which works to alleviate "enegy-poverty" through the distribution of clean energy technologies, such as wind-up and solar powered flashlights and radios. During my internship in London, with Gillian and Emily, I have worked closely with the Freeplay Foundation’s Project Manager. It has been a whirlwind experience, from reporting directly to the Foundation’s CEO to brainstorming potential project ideas to adjusting to the surprisingly numerous cultural differences (who knew a dish called “Bangers and Mash” could be so delicious?).

A picture from a Burundian Village Savings and Loan Group Meeting in Gitega.

One of my favorite projects so far has been the Burundi project, where the Freeplay Foundation is working with other international and local Burundian NGOs to help adolescent girls create savings and loans groups and learn microfinance skills. My favorite part of the project is watching it evolve through various stages from an initial proposal, to a discussion at a partner meeting, and ultimately an implemented project which will help the lives of 20,000 girls. I look forward to watching it develop and how the Freeplay Foundation’s contribution will impact the lives of the girls.

Masks and hand sanitizer at the ready: Encounters with A H1N1

One other exciting event that occurred during my internship: A positive case of A H1N1 was discovered in an American tourist in Las Salinas on June 16, 2009. In response to this finding, we, the staff at the clinic, had to manage the situation in order to ensure that the patient had not infected others in his hotel or anyone in the community. Since I speak both English and Spanish, I served as an interpreter when the team was visiting the hotel of the patient. Additionally, with my training as an emergency medical technician, was able to take down necessary health-related information. I also visited individual houses with my supervisor to notify the population of the positive case and to educate them on prevention methods.

As we were going around to other hotels, we discovered that none of them had gotten wind of this news. This situation needed to be rectified immediately, as the tourism industry is the interface with the most potencial for the transmission of the virus. A) Tourists could bring the virus into the community and possible infect the workers at the hotel, who are mostly locals. B) If there were a local case (for example, if someone got infected whilst traveling from Managua, where a majority of the cases have been), they could likewise transmit the disease to tourists. Thus, I traveled with Ministry of Health officials to give the same public health workshops and to fortify the communication between the clinic and the hotels (with my project mini fund, we were able to buy a cell phone for the clinic - before, there was no way for people to contact the health workers)
The Ministry of Health also received donations of flu vaccines from the government of Venezuela, which were designated for the teachers. As we gave out these vaccinations, it was interesting to hear the mixed emotions towards this donation - a cross between relief for this preventative measure (although this vaccine is not specifically for A H1N1, it was meant to fortify the immune system against the disease) and the skepticism of the political motives for this donation.

Whilst it was very exciting to work on the frontlines against this epidemic, this work proved extremely challenging for a variety of reasons; The A H1N1 case was discovered at end of the month, when the clinic has to make all sorts of reports... so although the ministry of health thought that visiting the other hotels to spread this news was a good idea, they refused to provide transportation for us to go to these hotels (and these hotels were about 40 minutes drive from our clinic) Therefore I had to look to other sources of support. I ended up collaborating with a private clinic on this undertaking, but the contact we had there acted as if it were only a project that concerned the PUBLIC clinic, even though wouldn't it make sense to think of it as public health work that is in the interest of everyone? In any case, we have to make the best of the resources that we can access and not dwell on the things that we lack, which has been an invaluable lesson.

Baby steps in improving obstetrical health

Here I am, looking back on my 2-month internship with the Foundation for Sustainable Development in the rural community of Las Salinas in Southwestern Nicaragua. My internet access these past two months had been fickle and flighty at best, so I had not been able to update this blog until now.
For this internship, I was working at a public clinic which is staffed by one doctor and two nurses, and is in custody of five communities (some 4,000 people). the provider:patient ratio is quite staggering... on top of the fact that we do not always have the medicines that we need - we did not have acetaminophen for a good month and a half, which is sobering, considering fever is one of the most common afflictions in the community. During my last week here, a 23-day-old baby girl died of high fever in her home in the middle of the night - there were other complications, as she was born with sepsis - but even if she HAD been brought to the clinic, we wouldn't have had the medication to treat her. The community is a two-hour bus ride away from the nearest hospital, and the roads are really horrible, especially in invierno, or the rainy season, (which started about the time I arrived). The locals here tell me that in October and November, the roads are impassable; the water levels get so high that some have to leave their homes in search of higher ground (not to mention that the water is contaminated by all the garbage that is strewn all over the place - there is no garbage collection system, nor a landfill). A plethora of other problems plague the community - they only receive 8 hours of running water every day (on some days, there is no running water in the clinic)

In addition to helping with the daily functions of the clinic, I am pursuing a project called “Plan de Parto,” which aims to reduce the incidence of maternal and infant mortality in the community. This is an extremely important topic, as well over 80% of pregnant women in the communities have at least one or two risk factors for pregnancy complications (e.g. mothers younger than 19 or older than 35, high blood pressure, lack of access to health care facilities). We mobilized community members to form committees that oversee the organization of various activities concerning the health of pregnant women in the community. They are responsible for conducting a census of all the pregnant women in their respective communities and creating a map, so that local community health workers and midwives know exactly where the pregnant women live, in case of an emergency. We held educational workshops on nutrition during pregnancy, possible complications during childbirth, breastfeeding etc. I thought it would be more engaging to couple the health lectures with more tactile activities such as making our own healthy refreshments that were rich in the nutrients we had discussed during the workshop.

We also wrote a letter to the municipal office of the Ministry of Health in Tola to request visits from Ob/Gyns to give consults to the pregnant women in the community at least once every two months. Without this service, most women go without sonograms and other “standard” prenatal care procedures – they can get these at private clinics, but this expenditure is well out of the reach of almost all women in the community.
In order to make the activities of these committees sustainable, we have also been holding handicraft sessions, where the women share their skills in knitting, crocheting, embroidering and other crafts. Even before my internship ended, we were already selling these products in the community, and we hope to extend our market to local fairs and nearby hotels in order to generate a fund that will fund future activities of a similar nature (buying materials, etc) and serve as an emergency fund, in the case that a pregnant women needed to go to the hospital in Rivas but did not have the economic means to do so.

To integrate other community members into this endeavour, I also created a sign up list where people who could provide transport to the clinic/hospital or girls who could help out with domestic chores during the last trimester of the women's pregnancies could put down their contact information. Ideally, this would also generate some employment within the community..
All in all, I hope that these activities can build community and systems of information sharing between the people of all these different communities through the activities of "Plan de Parto"

Compiling our final report in New Delhi

Coming back from Jaipur, to be completely honest, I really did not think our sample size of some 100+ interviews was going to be enough to create a solid report and analysis. I'm now not entirely sure what made me so pessimistic then about how the final report would shape up, because we certainly couldn't have conducted more interviews than we managed within the time frame we had been given and well......100 isn't exactly a small number for the amount of questions we asked each participant.

Happily however I was completely and utterly wrong. Our analysis and tabulation is showing the numbers we recorded for all our indicators are quite strong and relevant to the circumstances and conditions we witnessed while being out on the field. Of course, there will always be regrets about other indicators we should have incorporated in our study - but on the whole now that I'm actually getting a sense of the data we managed to gather and its implications for the field operations of Sahayata....lets just say I'm really really looking forward to completing and presenting our final report!