March 10, 2009
Clinic at Gashoro
Today Trip accompanied us to the clinic at Gashoro. This was a very basic clinic with no water and very little electricity. Right next to the clinic they are building a new hospital and Dan tell us that the whole project—start to finish is accomplished for about 200,000 US. It looks like it will be a beautiful and modern facility—a main center area with wings spreading out. They are finalizing the roof structure presently and there was a man sitting on the top of the roof welding with a tiny little welding iron- looks like little more than what you would find in a craft store.
We taught 3 nurses and got through the training very quickly. Not really sure how they liked us, they weren’t very expressive, but Trip said he thought they were engaged with the teaching. We taught in a dark, little brick room, with no power. We then toured the facility and the delivery room. There were cobwebs in all the corners of the narrow, dark hallways. The birthing room had an extremely old bed with a bucket underneath it and nothing else—no linens, no tools, etc. There was a tiny little locked cabinet that they told us was for keeping supplies—not much could fit in there for sure. We started cracking up on the way home thinking about the Jacuzzi tubs, birthing balls, tennis balls, chap-stick, aromatherapy, etc, etc that is seemingly necessary to have a baby in the US.
After we left the clinic we asked if we could visit the little school nearby—I had pencils and supplies to hand out. As we began to walk down the dusty road to the school we were soon engulfed in children of all ages. We entered the main courtyard and they were finishing lunch break and lots of kids were playing soccer with one of the leaf and twine soccer balls they make here. There were little heads everywhere- the pictures from that day are amazing!
We walked through the courtyard, trying not to step on the little people gathered around and made our way to the main office to meet with the headmaster. Trip talked with the headmaster, as well as some of the teachers and we gave them supplies and one of the alphabet books made by the kids from Deer Park. It was hard to be in the midst of such a crowd and carry on a conversation—especially with some language difficulty. It turns out there are 1200 students in this little school.. the average class size in Rwanda is about 65! I’ve shown the picture of Grey’s class around a bit and people are shocked at the small class size- which is not small by our standards. Trip loved the time at the school, but we had to move on quickly—we were way too much of a distraction!
