Dinner at Heaven

Today was our academic day with the residents. After a hot and sweaty walk to work (all help hill) ,we settled in to a day of teaching. The residents are very keen to learn but it is often difficult to know if they are truly understanding with the language gap. Paulin (4th yr) is great to help with translation.

Tonight, Anita planned to cook a curry dish (she had been saying she will do this since we arrived :) ). After she had all the vegetables cut and ready to cook she put the rice in a pot. She quickly noticed multiple bugs floating in the rice. The rice was a brand new bag, completely sealed so we are not sure how the bugs got in. After much debate about the merits of protein in the bugs, it was decided to abandon the curry dish and go out for supper. We ended up eating at Heaven and it was wonderful. Tripadvisor has listed it as the best place to eat in Kigali. The food was very good, reasonably priced and the view was fantastic. The couple who runs the restaurant are from the US and moved to Rwanda 4 yrs ago. He teaches public health at Columbia but now just teaches students when they venture to Rwanda. He also mentioned that he is the executive chef. They have done a nice job with the restaurant ensuring that everything is from Rwanda. All the table, chairs, placemats etc are all made locally and all the food is local as well. Overall, a great impromptu night out! (plus I love that it is November and that I am eating outside and there is no snow!)

Janice and Anita

Steve Arrives

Hi everyone!

Just a quick update. Steve (our biomed technician) arrived yesterday morning. Anita went to the airport with Esperance to meet him and take him back to the apartment to get settled. When she returned, we walked into centre town and discovered a great little restaurant (Bourbon cafe) with very good food even by Western standards. Thanks for the tip Patty although we did feel like we were cheating on our Rwandan experience by eating there :)


On our walk home, we got bumped into a fair bit in a crowd and then I realized our phone was missing - stolen I suspect although I can't rule out it being lost. We have been so careful with our money and passports but never imagined the phone being stolen since it seems that everyone has one. Talking to locals at work they said it is very popular to steal phones for the minutes. Now we know. Anyway, bought a new phone last night and are in the process of loading in all the numbers we need.

Today we worked at King Faisal hospital. Steve seemed to be having alot of fun exploring all the different types of equipment. When we got home, we had the bright idea to go for a run even thought Rwanda is the country of a Thousand Hills. Our short run turned into 47 min of some of the biggest hills I have walked let alone run. Anita and Steve led the way while I dragged my butt up the hills. Luckily there are many things I can blame my fatigue on inluding the hills, the altitude, the recent flu, etc and continue denying that I'm out of shape:) Regardless of the difficulty, it was still a lot of fun to run through the neighbourhoods. All the little kids chased us, laughing - I think they thought we were crazy english people....they might be right :)

All for now as we have to work on our teaching for tomorrow.

Janice

Saturday morning we drove up to Akagera National Park to go on safari. Our driver, Youssef was very entertaining and informative on the ride up. Our guide for the first day was Francois, who was very good at finding animals, but had virtually no French or English. This led to many questions being directed to Youssef, who would sometimes translate, but more often attempt to answer from his own expertise. We began to notice a trend towards the end of the afternoon, as most questions about why the animal were acting in different ways (ie. Giraffe butting another, impalas chasing each other) led to the answer “Oh he is trying to make love to the girl”. Often the animals in question were both male or female. We think that we may have been misinformed along the way…. Our guide today, Emmanuel was truly excellent and found us hippos galore.

The animals were spectacular, especially the giraffes. Janice teased me since I didn’t even bring a camera to Rwanda, but stole hers and took about 30 giraffe pictures, I was so enamored with them. What a beautiful and graceful animal! Our guide found us a group of at least 15 together, and we were able to exit the jeep and get within about 20 metres of them. (Please note that for the buffalo, hippos, and crocodiles we stayed a safe distance and often never left the jeep). We also saw zebras, although mostly zebra behinds. They were very shy and ran away. We lost count of the types of antelope and birds we came across. We felt very fortunate to be witness to such a beautiful place.

We stayed at the lodge at the park, which had spectacular panoramic views of Ihema Lake and the surrounding countryside. It was wonderful to relax in the sun by the pool, especially after hearing from Patty that it was snowing in Halifax (sorry, small dig there…). They had made a valiant attempt at a Western style menu. Janice ordered a burger that was quite tasty, although a little overwhelming, weighing in at a full pound. I ordered the chicken sandwich: I’d been having a craving given our near vegan diet that we’d been following since arrival. I found it quite crunchy, but it improved once I removed the chicken knuckles inside. Mmmm… chicken knuckles…

On the drive back, we saw many banana plantations, as well as coffee and beans. We stopped for lunch at Jamba beach and got to see a bit more of the local culture. There was lots of dancing, and I must say, the Rwandans know how to shake it!
We’re back home in Kigali tonight, and it was great to walk in and feel like we’re home. We’re thinking of everyone back home, and Happy Birthday to Janice’s mom!

Anita and Janice

On the Mend

Above: View from inside the Butare hospital

We had a very relaxing day today. Janice and I have both been sick with fever and cough but are finally on the mend today!! On arrival to the ORs today, it turned out that on Fridays they normally do Neurosurgery and OMF on Fridays, but they had no surgeries to do. We decided to come back to Kigali early, and go to Akagera for a safari tomorrow instead of visiting the chimps of Nyungwe this weekend. We had a lovely drive back from Butare. The countryside is idyllic: green and lush with children and goats frolicking through. We’re constantly amazed at the size and weight of things that people are able to carry for miles on their heads. It’s quite a talent. Some irony too- we saw 2 different people carrying backpacks on their heads. I guess it’s easiest to do things the way you’re used to!

Anita and Janice

Above: Main street of Butare

Arrival to Butare

We arrived in Butare this morning after an incredibly beautiful drive through the country. I'm not sure a camera will capture it well but I will have to ask the driver to stop for pictures on one of our trips here. We checked into Credo hotel (very basic, buts seems clean, safe and has hot water!) and then went to the hospital.

Of the three hospitals, this one is probably the least well equipped although the residents get more teaching from the staff in the ORs. We had a scary moment when we put a young girl to sleep and the ventilator would not work. Luckily we found an alternative ambu bag but very disturbing for Anita and I as the equipment seemed so foreign (really piece of multiple machines put together) and we are not sure that there would have been a good outcome if we were not there.

Dinner was at Hotel IBIS. Our pizzas were OK but the chocolate crepes were awesome. The Belgians definitely had at least one good influence on the country.

We are both off to bed early as we having been feeling a little bit under the weather. I'm on the mend but it seems that Anita is just getting the worst of it. Hopefully she will get better as fast as I have so that we continue with our plan to hike to the monkeys and chimpanzees on Saturday.

Janice and Anita

The Day of the Safe

View from King Faisal

We have had an interesting two days. Yesterday we spent the day in the OR at King Faisal hospital - the private hospital. It is quite modern and is much better equipped than CHUK. There also seems to be some organization to how the ORs function so it makes for a much better teaching and learning environment.

Last night we went to the airport to collect Anita's bag that had been delayed. It arrived as expected so all was well. Driving here at night is an interesting experience. There are hundreds of people walking with or without sidewalks and no streetlights. I am amazed that we haven't killed anyone yet. We are not sure when people sleep. No matter what time of morning or night, there always seems to be a lot of people hanging out outside.

When we returned from the airport we noticed that our safe was not functioning. All of our extra money, passports, and computers were in the safe. We tried all of the troubleshooting ideas that previous volunteers had suggested but with no luck. Needless to say, we were a little stressed at not being able to access our valuables. This morning we had the public relations person, Esperance, take us to the store where the safe was bought. We picked up our chinese technician and went back to the apartment. I'm sure we were an interesting sight - 2 white girls, one chinese guy and a local. After an hour of looking at the safe and several calls to China (incl the manufacturer) we were told the safe was not fixable. So this afternoon while Anita was teaching I travelled back to the apartment with a hospital driver and maintenance technician (neither of whom spoke english and very little french) with equipment to cut open the safe. Just as we were to start cutting the safe, I looked at the keypad and saw that it was working again. Obviously I was very excited about this but not sure what my guests thought since they had taken time to help us and we didn't need them.

Despite all the stresses over the safe, teaching went well today. The residents seemed keen to learn and participated actively in the discussions.

Tomorrow morning (really early at 6am), we are off to Butare. We will stay an extra night or two, to hike and see the monkeys/chimpanzees in Nyungwe park.

Janice and Anita

Rwandan time

Above is the view from our apartment balcony.

Sorry for the lack of updates but we were having troubles with our internet. After many hours of trying to sort it out, we have learned a lot, not the least of which is Rwandan time - no one seems in a hurry. Our internet actually comes from a USB drive that has a sim card connected to the mobile and now that we know how to add more minutes to the card we are golden (it did cost us a $30 cab ride to get it all sorted out).

Yesterday was spent trying to get set up. Fred, one of the first year residents, met us and took us into town to Simba (local supermarket). We took a common taxi to get there and it was quite an adventure - didn't know so many people could fit into one little minivan. We spent the evening relaxing and working on presentations. We couldn't get the stove working so lived on peanut butter and bread for the day. If this keeps up, I could come home a lot skinnier :) We also spent an hour doing our P90X workout. We had to close the drapes as we suspect the neighbours would think we were crazy.

Today was our first day at CHUK, the public hospital. We met all of the important people and then spent the morning in the OR with Fred. Poor Fred - Anita and I had lots of advice for him and he may never want to see us again. The cases were challenging ENT airway cases but so far everyone survived. The good news is that they now have 4 new Datex- ohmeda anesthetic machines with all the best monitors (pulse oximeters, end tidal CO2 etc) so we felt at home. Not sure it made up for the fact that we didn't know any of the drugs and that there was no succnylcholine.

Lunch was at the local buffet restaurant called Karibu. The food is a little bland but will keep us satisfied. (still thinking this may be a good weight loss experiment). We walked into the center of town and spent hours sorting out the gorilla permits but are ready to go on Nov 14th. This was followed by more shopping - Anita and I are single handedly supporting the Rwandan economy.

Above - Anita cooking supper. The light is dim so we use our camping lights

The guys came to fix the stove and Anita cooked an excellent vegetarian pasta - the first flavorful meal we have had.

Overall things are good here. The people are very friendly and we feel safe. It is fun exploring a new culture!

Janice and Anita

PS. uploading photos is very slow but we will keep trying