Days 2-3 in Kigali

1/9/09 - Day 2
Well after sleeping almost 11 hours (interrupted only by the sound of thousands of birds chirping at 6am with the sunrise) I think perhaps I made the timezone adjustment in only one night (knock on wood). I woke up at 10:30 and got myself ready for a big day exploring Kigali (I'm being a bit sarcastic here since I was told ahead of time that the center of Kigali really only consists of two main streets). I headed out with Eunice and Lara first to the WE-ACTx clinic to meet with Dr. Eugene Mutimura who is the in-country clinical director for WE-ACT. The walk to the clinic takes about 20 minutes and takes you by the home of President Kagame (a large blocked off compound just 3 blocks from our house), as well as the Chinese, Belgian and Swiss embassies. Since we live in such a swanky neighborhood I've been told it means that usually our electricity doesn't go out. Anyway, my meeting with Dr. Mutimura was just a short introduction and it seems that training for the cervical cancer research project will begin on Monday morning at 8am. I'm still not 100% sure what my role will be (and he didn't seem to be sure either) but I'm just going with the flow and I'm sure it will all work out in the end.

From there we explored a few shops and then headed to the UTC (Union Trade Center) which is the mall at the center of town. The main stores for MTN and RwandaTel (the two cell phone service providers in Rwanda) are there and I went with the hopes of buying a SIM card for the phone Steve Torres so generously lent me. Only problem is that AT&T locks their phones so unfortunately I now need to go in search of an unlock code. More to come on that later I suppose.

We also hit up the big grocery store in the UTC (Nakumatt) which is lovingly referred to as the MuzunguMart - Muzungu is the local term for white people and it seems that most of the foreigners in town do their shopping there. It is much more than a grocery store really - perhaps more like a WalMart since they carry treasures such as slurpie machines and electric ovens (each for only $1,000,000rwf - about $2000 dollars). From there we went to quite a few more cell phone stores in search of a technician to unlock the phone with no luck.

I was feeling the effects of the high altitude (1,500m or about 5,000ft) by the time we got back to the house around 3:30. Rwanda is known as the "land of a thousand hills" and I'd say there's at least 1,000 hills just in Kigali itself so a walk anywhere involves doing a good deal of climbing. So, I took a nice nap and at 5:00pm, Eunice, Logan, Claire and I (Lara wasn't feeling well) headed out to an Ethiopian restaurant in Rimera (a neighborhood of Kigali). Getting there involved a walk to the central bus-station (and by bus-station I mean a line of minivans along a crowded street with people screaming their destination out of the window until enough people pile in to fill all the seats). We all piled in and took a 15 minute ride to Remera while feeling a bit like a sardine. Once there we met up with several of Logan's friends (Cassandra and Kate who are fellow Canadian interns as well as Penny who is a Rwandan student Logan knows through her program here). It was my first experience eating Ethiopian food and I was promptly scolded for using my left hand (also known as your poo-hand apparently) to scoop up the food. After some interesting conversation about dexterity and personal hygiene we went on to enjoy a delicious meal. Thus far everything I've eaten here has been vegetarian (Elisabeth aren't you proud?) but I've been assured Brochette (goat kebabs) is a Rwandan staple so I'll let you know how that is. I've also been warned not to order chicken at a restaurant because they are underfed and basically all you get is bones with no meat.

So we left dinner and made it home around 9:30pm after passing by a clearly starving dog sleeping in the gutter which led to Logan telling a story about finding an injured child in the gutter recently - so sad... She said that several other people stopped to help though and in the end the police came to help. ANYWAY, we were expecting to find Lisa, Daniel and Marc at the house when we got back but only Lara was here. I suppose their flights are delayed or else will be getting in late this evening... Eunice and I made up their beds and I left out a note so we shall see.

I've just finished purchasing an unlock code on eBay thanks to Shauna's much appreciated help since apparently you can't use an American credit card to purchase stuff online while in Rwanda. They are supposed to e-mail me the code in 1-3 hours but it's now almost midnight so I'm going to bed and will finish this post in the tomorrow. Goodnight all!

1/10/09 - Day 3

Lisa Nathan and Marc Sklar (OB-GYNs running the cervical cancer screening program) both arrived late last night from NY with Daniel Murokura, a physician from Uganda. So there are 7 of us in the house right now... a little like big brother since there is no TV or any other distraction except internet! There are some issues with delivery of materials from Quiagen (the pharmaceutical company sponsoring the cervical cancer study I'm working on) in order for training to start as scheduled on Monday so it sounds like things are totally up in the air right now. Such is the nature of research in Africa I suppose. I think we're going to go ahead with training the nurses and staff in how to do visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) and cryotherapy for any identified cervical lesions and just hold off on the training for HPV testing (the part Quiagen is providing). It looks like I may also get involved with another project Lisa is working on to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes in a rural province of Rwanda... we'll see what happens with that.

Anyway, enough technical stuff... I finally got the phone unlocked (again thank you Shauna) and got a SIM card today so I have a functional cell phone! The number is 011-250-0750329933 and you all can feel free to call me (it's free for me to receive calls) but I'm also on Skype so that would most likely be the easiest and cheapest way to contact me.

Marc treated Lisa, Daniel and me to dinner at Republika Lounge which is a really nice restaurant/bar that was started by a brother and sister that came back to Rwanda after the genocide with the goal of creating a fun space for Rwandan youth to come and enjoy their time together. It felt like we were in a dance club with all the loud music they were playing but it was fun and I got to try the traditional goat Brochette with a Kenyan beer called Tuska. Once we got home we got to work on the power point presentations we'll be using this week for the training and now it's already after midnight so I'm headed to bed.