My Assignment

I’ve been given a post in Rwanda! I will be working as a Community Health Volunteer at a Health Center in the Southern Province of Rwanda.

My first month at site will also be the last month at site for another PCV. The culminating project of her two-year service (which I am technically taking over) has focused on maternal and child nutrition.

View from my front door

Have I mentioned how important nutrition is? It’s important. Arguably the most important factor in keeping children healthy in developing countries. Stay tuned for an Alma-rant on nutrition/malnutrition to be posted soon…

This PCV and her counterpart coordinated a nutrition program based on the Positive Deviance/Hearth model, a program that has been implemented in various countries around the world with great success rates. Here, the nutrition program has already been realized in twelve imidugudu (villages).

As part of the project, mothers with malnourished children attended NERS (Nutrition Education and Rehabilitation Sessions) everyday for two weeks in their villages. A local village volunteer taught the sessions, which focused on nutrition, hygiene, family planning, etc. At the end of each class, mothers prepared nutritious foods with local ingredients (some donated, some brought from homes), and fed them to their children.

I’m leaving out a lot of details about the project and definitely not giving this PCV the credit she deserves, but overall what you should know is that this is an incredible project that I’m really excited about working on.

At the same time, I am pretty nervous about walking into the middle of someone else’s brainchild. Right now I have neither the language nor the technical skills necessary to pick up exactly where it’s been dropped off. I’m also a little anxious about starting off with such a narrow focus. The Health Center I’ll be working at has a staff of 40 and serves over 12,000 people with all sorts of strengths, weaknesses, needs, and ideas that I know absolutely nothing about.

Luckily, I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Many frustrated individuals call the Peace Corps disorganized… I like to think of it as a flexible. (A note for anyone considering becoming a volunteer—there’s a reason the recruiter asks you “how do you deal with unstructured and/or unsupervised work environments?”).

After speaking with some PC Rwanda staff members and the PCV I’m replacing, I’ve clarified my concerns and my expectations. My first priority is learning the language and the community. Once I feel comfortable, and my supervisors and co-workers feel confident in my abilities, I’ll begin/continue work on the HEARTH project and hopefully help start projects new projects in the community as well.