Week Four

We started the week by a couple of us working in the Biomedical Engineering Technicians Lab here in Kicukiro. This is a program developed by Engineering World Health, that trains many East Africans on how to fix medical equipment. We inspected oxygen concentrators, incubators, and ventilators. In the afternoon, we spent it traveling around downtown looking for souvenir shops and then headed to an Indian Restaurant nearby. My first Indian Restaurant and I loved it! 

Tuesday, we spent the majority of the day in Kanombe, a military hospital near the Kigali Airport. It is a hospital that is still being developed, but for the most part it is very up-to-date! The hospital staff takes pride in their brand new equipment, and in their Biomedical Engineering workshop(that is very spacious)! It is more than what I expected from a hospital in a third world country. We spent the day doing preventative maintenance on Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Ventilators. That afternoon, a small group of us decided to go back downtown to find the Rwanda's version of a mall. After walking around in circles, we ended up finding a 5 story high building, filled with a supermarket, shops, and a movie theater. After a little retail therapy, I went to the movies and watch Malificent. Nice plot twist, btw! That evening, my roommates and I went to our friend's homestay to watch the Mexico vs Brazil Game. Every bar/restaurant that we passed was filled with people excited to watch all the soccer games! Nice to see how truly universal soccer is. The homestay gave us African Tea, which is basically tea mixed with hot milk and a couple of spices. Pretty delicious! Needless to say, I was the only one rooting for Mexico! And they did not let me down!

So on my birthday, Thursday, I was asked to go speak at the US Embassy to Rwandans about colleges in the US because of the Gilman Scholarship that i received for the study abroad. Unfortunately, the embassy does not allow any cameras, phones, computers, or anything electronic. Regardless, we received a tour of the embassy and finally had a good cup of coffee! Then we went to the library to talk to around 20 Rwandans who are in the process of taking college admissions standardized tests and applications. There were three of us, David(one of my colleagues), Dr.Pishko(our professor for the trip), and I. Each one of us bringing a different point of view. The students asked questions about majors/minors, being a part of the university, application process, and many other topics. Among us three, we were able to answer all of their questions, and at the end they asked us for our contact information to be able to answer more! Its a great feeling! We then headed to the lunch at my favorite Italian restaurant in town, we shared a jug of red wine, fried calamari, and two authentic thin crusts pizzas. However, we were caught in the rain, so besides great food, company, and scenery, we had the beautiful smell of rain! My favorite lunch thus far! 

After wandering around town for a couple of hours and grabbing dinner at a small cafe in the trading center, a group of us headed home to get ready to go out for the night. But when I got home, all of my classmates jumped out and yelled SURPRISE!! It was my first surprise birthday party, and i loved it! They were all stacked up on drinks and little snacks. There was even a cake, but my candle was just a match (which does the trick hah)! After mingling for awhile, we went to celebrate some more at night club called K-club. Honestly, it is to the standards of clubs in downtown dallas. Definitely, a "muzungu" (non-african) club! We ended up dancing the night away! One of the best birthdays ever! 

On friday, we said our goodbyes to our wonderful French and Instrumentation teachers! No more classes, now for the remaining five weeks we will be sent to different hospitals all over Rwanda. We leave sunday and i can not be more excited for my location! Butare, Rwanda. Sara and I are stationed at the teaching hospital of the college town in Rwanda. We hear nothing but good things, so wish us the best!

Until next time!
XOXOX
Melanie

 The view from Sole Luna

 Our calamari and red wine

 Our pizzas!

An obligatory birthday lunch picture! 

Ben, On The Ground Coordinator, explaining how to an Oxygen Concentrator works.

The view from a burger joint, called Mr.Chips

The view from the edge of downtown, or in other words "Memuji" 

Week Three

So week three started with the first two days working at Chuck, Kigali's main hospital. Sara and I started off working with an incubator. At first we assumed the fan wasn't working because the air circulation alarm kept going off saying there was none, causing the heating mechanism to shut down. But after trouble shooting, and taking it all apart it was decided that we do not have the spare parts to fix it, it basically needed a new motor to spin the fan. So, while Sara continued to tweak it, I moved on to fixing another who had a missing filter (i ended up using old chair cushions that were in the junkyard behind our building), installed a fixed incubator in NICU [which was in great need, because they had plenty where there were two tiny babies per incubator], and attempted to fix an ECG but determined that it was only the lack of the proper paper to use. Till next time!

Monday  afternoon, most of our group got together to play games of ultimate frisbee, soccer, and cricket. BTW. cricket is harder than it looks. The highlight of the evening was when my partner Sara was attempting to do handstands and she fell on her face. we thought she was going to have a black eye, but it was only scrapes! still pretty gruesome! [P.S. she wanted me to insert this]

On Tuesday night, we went to watch an independent film about entrepreneurship hosted by the French Institute here in Kigali.  It was about three Nigerians trying to expand their business into Germany, and how they manage to do it. It was very interesting! Afterwards, we went to a fancy restaurant called Heaven, and i fell in love all over again with the city. We were there as the sun set and hundreds of fruit bats flew out of the trees. We only ordered appetizers for 7 people, but they were amazing! It was guacamole with banana chips, flatbread, and simosas.

Since we moved into the apartment, we have been eating out a lot. And on Wednesday we found an African bagel company that serves the best bagels ever! Better than Einsteins! NOM NOM NOM. I will definitely be returning often. Its amazing how many good quality restaurants we have found so far. Rwanda is more developed than i imagined! My two other favorite restaurants are this Italian place called Sole Luna and a Chinese place (that i do not know the name of). Both feel like home to me by now. Sole Luna has more than 40 thin crust pizza options and it has a very beautiful view of Kigali. Well, almost from everywhere you have a great view! Nothing like Texas. 

The rest of the week during class we spent learning french and how to prepare for working with people in our hospitals in two weeks. How to get over the language/cultural barrier, what our game plan was going to be, and what to expect. We received our assignments, and Sara and I have been assigned to work at the Teaching Hospital in Butare, the old capital of Rwanda. We have heard nothing but good things about this place such as: its a college city, great markets, lots of souvenir places, close to the jungle, and close to Burundi(which we cant visit, because we cant leave the country). Happy to say, that I am excited!

Friday night, we went to get authentic African dresses made for us. I ordered a long skirt and a Sunday dress in the prettiest African cloth that i could find. We are going to pick them up on Thursday so hopefully they come out really nice! Crosssing fingers. 

Saturday, we had a very early morning! This weekend we went to a safari to Akagera National Park. The jeeps picked us up at 4am. and it was around a 3 hour drive to the park. Most of the excursion, we spent sitting on top of the jeeps, holding on to dear life. But we ended up seeing:

Giraffes

Zebras

many sorts of antelopes

baboons

hippos

buffalos

crocodiles

many different birds (including the Great African Eagle)

Many of these animals traveled in packs, we would see around 20-30 baboons at a time, there was an instance where one was hiding in a near by tree (like 3-5 feet away) and completely scared us when it jumped away! We thought it was going to jump into our car! 

Now i can check African Safari off my bucket list! YAY!

Until next time! 

XOXOXO.