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| Julie and I on our way to work one morning |
Much has happened in the last two weeks. The first weekend of May was designated Girls Weekend at Nyungwe. I hadn't been there since October and it was so nice to go and relax. May 1st was a Rwandan Holiday, Labor Day, so we actually cut out of work early since there were few staff around and headed on the twisty drive. Stacey, Vanessa, Julie, and I from Butare and Becky, Pat and Ellen from Kigali had a grand time, despite the girls weekend being crashed by Jim and Ramon. Then as it turned out Jenny and Beth brought the kids out for the weekend too and while they didn't stay at our hotel they came for dinner and it was lots of fun. We didn't have great weather, but there was some swimming, drinks, lazy afternoons, and I even did the much anticipated Waterfall Hike.
I'd been wanting to do the waterfall hike since our first trip to Nyungwe. We were actually on our way to the meeting point for this hike when Julie slipped and fell, breaking her rib. While I was perfectly happy to take care of Julie that weekend, I was excited to hike. On Saturday morning it was sunny and cool. After a big breakfast I was ready. Jenny, Beth, Katie, Liam, Molly, and Garrett--a visiting medical student, all joined me on the hike.
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| The gang! |
It was beautiful. The jungle here is amazing. Our guide explained to us that right now the park is in dealings with other African nations (I think he said Cameroon, but I can't remember exactly) to reintroduce mountain elephants into Nyungwe. Currently, there is an overgrowth of a type of vine that chokes the trees, but not only do mountain elephants eat the vine, they would also help to trample it. We saw a little wild life on the way down, including mountain monkeys, a non-poisonous snake, and ants. Millions upon millions of ants. They fascinated me and also scared me a little bit. We were informed that the ants could eat an elephant. Or that's what I thought I heard. I was wrong. Apparently the ants could kill an elephant. Flash to the last (horrible) installment of Indian Jones and you can imagine that I very carefully stepped over the ant trail.
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| They were still crossing the path on our return hike! |
The rain from the previous night made the waterfall absolutely enormous and loud. The spray from the force of the water crashing down was soaking us before we had even reached the end of the hike. The water takes on the color of all the iron in the surroundings so it's not the most beautiful color, but lovely nonetheless. What always amazes me is the size of the flora that is all over the hillsides in the jungle. The trees are skinny but hundreds of feet tall and the ferns are on steroids with diameters of 2 meters at least. Fortunately, Beth is quite knowledgeable about plants so she could satisfy all of my curiosities.
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| Pensive Liam |
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| Hiking along the first falls |
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| Almost there! |
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| I made it! |
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| Jenny & Liam |
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| Me and my favorite kiddos. |
We had just gotten back to the lodge when the heavens opened and we had an absolute downpour. I ate a delicious lunch and then headed down to my room and took a ridiculously hot bath, then a shower and climbed into the most comfortable beds in all of Rwanda (naturally, I'm biased seeing how I currently sleep on essentially a box spring). I popped in a movie, set an alarm for dinner, and before I knew it, I was fast asleep. It was glorious.
We were quite sad to leave the next day, but work was unfortunately calling our names. It was a busy week last week and I'm not even really sure why. Jenny came down to give a lecture and I gave her the grand tour of CHUB. Then I had lecture with the April audit results and I am happy to report that my staff had fabulous improvements in our three worst categories (documenting pain, patient turns, and ventilator settings). I bought them all some really good cookies we've discovered here as a treat in celebration. I am very proud of the improvements they have made. Furthermore, the responsibility and accountability they have slowly started to take on is quite remarkable. I almost fell over when two of the ICU nurses told their colleagues that they must check each other's work to make sure they were completing it all. Nine months ago I would have never imagined something like that coming from the staff. They realize now that they must do the right thing even if some mzungu isn't around. I hope that they will keep up the incredible improvements they've made over the three years of the HRH program.
Wednesday morning of last week I opened my junk mail and discovered that I had an invitation to attend an end of the year meeting with the Honorable Minister herself and give feedback on the program from the USI Faculty perspective. Naturally, the email had been sent 40 hours before the scheduled meeting. Not all of us from Butare could attend, but a bunch of us were able to leave work after 2 hours or so and make the haul up to Kigali. The meeting was fine. Initially, not many people seemed to want to say anything because I don't think anyone was really sure what to expect from the Honorable Minister. But she indeed did want our feedback and I think she took some of the USI faculty into consideration at least. I was antsy throughout much of the meeting because Scott, my friend from university that I had just visited in South Africa was attempting to make it to Rwanda that Thursday.
He messaged me about 5:15 in the morning that he had left Kigoma, Tanzania and was on his way. Due to the political instability of Burundi, his car insurance company would not cover him in Burundi (and technically Rwanda too, but he still came to see me anyway). So what would have been a 5-6 hour drive turned into a 15.5 hour drive. I told him that I had been called to Kigali for the meeting and that he might actually hit Kigali as we were finished and to call. Unfortunately, Scott didn't get my messages and while on the bus ride home (Julie and I couldn't catch a bus until 5:30 pm) I received a phone call from a Pennsylvania phone number.
Apparently the GPS coordinates I had taken from a website put Scott in the rice paddies behind our neighborhood. I'd told him not to trust them and I was actually impressed that it got him so close. Naturally, being a boy, Scott hadn't read my email that I'd sent a few days earlier with directions directly to the house. So I explained the best way to get to the house, where I'd hidden the keys and that sorry, but I was still over an hour away from home. He texted when he found the house and Rupert apparently didn't give him a hard time (great watchdog) and he made himself comfortable despite the electricity going off and on. The minute Julie and I hopped off the bus at 7:50 pm I jumped on a moto and dashed home. I was so excited to see Scott and glad that he'd made it in (almost) one piece. I couldn't believe that he'd done the drive in one day and was still awake in all honesty.
We stayed up gabbing before we both finally needed to call it a night. The next morning he came into work with me (I was later informed that he would be depressed to have to go to work at a place like CHUB everyday) and I showed him around before we finally got an answer on whether or not we should get an x-ray on his shoulder. In the first week of Scott's road trip from Johannesburg to Nairobi he had gone kayaking with friends in Zimbabwe and managed to roll in a rapid and hit his shoulder on a rock. I rolled my eyes when I got the email asking for medical advice. But almost two weeks later and it wasn't feeling much better I was starting to wonder if he'd fractured his clavicle. After much texting back and forth, the general consensus between the HRH doctors was that he most likely had an AC joint separation and it would heal on its own.
With it decided that x-ray wasn't necessary, I directed Scott to the new coffee shop in town where eventually Jared met him and they went off to do boy stuff. They picked me up for lunch at the ice cream shop and I pulled a sports Friday from work. Scott and I watched a rainy afternoon movie before he napped and I continued to do some work before heading to Chinese that night. In one day he had visited all the highlights of my little town. I'll have to come up with some other things for us to do next weekend.
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| Scott in his fleece onesie because he finds Butare oh so cold. |
Lessons Learned:
1) Men will never read directions, but on occasion they will follow them.
2) It's really great to share my town with friends who are not from Rwanda. It's very difficult to explain to people who can never see it.
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