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June 10, 2007
Kacyiru: Can a sewer be beautiful?
I have moved from the downtown neighborhood to a place called Kacyiru, a mixed-class neighborhood tucked on the side of the hill under many of the government ministries. The road is soon to be paved, and thus the roads have been torn up and rained on. The mud forms thick cakes on the bottom of my flipflops, making them snap heavily against my heels and spray me with dirt. Rwanda’s compulsory community service program is funding the materials for a sewer system, and everyone comes out on the weekend to make solid and surprisingly beautiful stone-walled sewers. The sassiest women take part, wearing green caps and pants, straddling the edge of the sewer with their masonry tools. They shout “Muzungu! Witwande?” (Hey Whitey, what is your name?), and are surprised when I respond “Nitwan Caitlin” (I am called Caitlin).
I live on the same street as the national network of people living with HIV (RRP+). Most of the work I will be conducting for the rest of the summer is in collaboration with this association. I am happy about the move because of this proximity, and also because it will allow me to move out of the gated neighborhood I was in before, to a place where people make samosas and beans, offer to braid my hair, and try to sell me pushup bras on the side of the street. The disadvantage of this neighborhood is the constant attention, the distance from the city, and the less-than-ideal bathroom/water situation (I stand in an orange bucket in my room and try not to splash while bathing). From my courtyard I can see the whole expansive hill of downtown rise out of the valley and the “Avenue de Poids Lourdes” (Heavy Weight Avenue).
I live with Vincent, an 18-year-old orphan whose mother died of AIDS, and Deborah, a newly-wed Rwandan who had lived in Uganda until 1998. Vincent is teaching himself English, and he loves cooking cabbage stew and teaching me how to describe the ingredients in Kinyarwanda. These are often the French word with an “ama” or “igi” tacked on the front of the word. Deborah is a gossip, and I love the relief she provides from my otherwise incredibly serious and emotionally-taxing job. She teaches me a lot about Rwandan sexual practices, particularly a practice called “Kunyaza”, which has the added benefit of helping me with the curriculum I am writing.
So far my internship has mostly involved computer work: cut-and-pasting photographs of seeping gynecological infections and cartoon representations of t-cells into the outline that I made of a peer education curriculum. The 5 modules loosely fit under the category of “Gender and AIDS”, though I am including information on community mobilizing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and general reproductive health. This week I am meeting with the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) and the national center for fight against AIDS (CNLS) to assure that the curriculum with fit their needs and priorities. Eventually I will test these modules with the women at the RRP+ and hopefully do a community anti-stigma campaign with the women of the clinic I work with (WE-ACT).
I have also taken on another minor campaign: there are no SSRI’s available in Rwanda. (Prozac, for example, is an SSRI. As I mentioned in my prior post, there are no good PTSD medications in a country where practically everyone has suffered some trauma). Rwanda also has four psychiatrists, only one of whom was present during the genocide. I am hoping to work with WE-ACTs psychologist to obtain enough SSRI’s to treat 180 of WE-ACTs HIV+ genocide survivors, including my friend Delphine. We hope to pilot the program and convince the Rwandan government that the cost of the generic medications is worth the investment. I will write more on this soon.
Posted by Caitlin Lee Cohen at June 10, 2007 05:03 AM
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