Ready...Set...Update!!

Ok, so I know that I have been SUPER bad at updating over the last couple of weeks so here is an attempted synopsis of some of the exciting, routine, and amazing things that happened in that time.

Trip to Kayanza to assess a community outreach project aimed at increasing prenatal care and deliveries supervised by skilled birth attendants:

This part of the project is just getting underway, and it would appear (to my admittedly immature skill set) that there is a lot more work that could be and should be done with this project.  Here is a picture of me, and a community health worker, interviewing one of the women with whom we spoke that day.  We ended up talking to about 8 women, all of whom had had more than 6 pregnancies each.  Some were 45, and on their 10th pregnancy, and with very little information or access to family planning services. 

In a way, it is great that I have had the opportunity to experience several different activities underway here, each with its own intricacies, strengths and weaknesses.  I was supposed to write an article on this project, like I had done for the positive deviance/mamans lumieres project of muyinga province.  Unfortunately, I had to tell my boss when we got back, that I really felt a lot more follow-up had to be done before we would truly be able to sing the praises of this intervention.  This is certainly true if a 'cause and effect' relationship is to be demonstrated between this outreach and the increasing use of services at the health center.  Tanou (the boss, and luckily for me an M&E guy himself) understood entirely what I meant, and set me upon a new assignment: writing the quarterly report!!  

Here is a picture of the Community Health Worker of Matungo Health Center, charged with educating the community about the importance of pre/post natal care and hospital delivery.  Not sure if this picture does it justice, but I call your attention to his t-shirt.  It reads "FBI: Female Body Inspector".  I wonder if he recognizes the irony of his attire.  Kept me laughing on the hike, I can tell you that much!!  

The hike was pretty good though I will tell you and we got to see some great scenery while we were clambering about.  

Miles and miles of tea farms, interspersed with banana plantations and coffee fields.  

As usual, we gained quite a following out and about, trekking around the hillside.  Not much weirder that watching a white woman hike around in a skirt, particularly in backwoods Burundi.  

Day at the Beach:

Getting back from this trip, I had the weekend to relax before heading back to work.  After a long night on Saturday, I slept away much of Sunday morning, but managed a nice trip to the beach during the afternoon.  Beautiful place, and a lovely place to spend a day with a couple of different clubs and restaurants to go to.  Here are a few pics, worth many thousand words, I'd say :)

Writing the Quarterly Report:

The next big assignment when I got back from up country was to begin work with the M&E specialist writing the quarterly report.  At that point I had indeed only worked for the project for three weeks, so you can imagine the difficulties and frustrations that arose with trying to capture the last three months' worth of activities. Two days, countless phone calls, myriad frustrations, translations, and computations later, a final version emerged with which I was relatively content.  It only took a couple of edits and revisions before Tanou was happy with it too.  Unfortunately, having completed that, I appear to have left myself open for another demanding assigment: the complete rewrite of our family planning/gender based violence work plan...fun fun fun.  But before that: Annik and Ramillo's wedding!!

Annik and Ramillo's wedding:

This is the couple, friends of Diane's, who I had met during my first week here.  Their wedding had finally arrived and I, along with the dress and shoes I had had to buy here, was ready to go!!

The mass was sooooooo long! 

Even for Burundian standards, it was long apparently.  Like, almost 2 hours long.  Then there was the reception, with its 500 guests.  Receptions here are a bit different than in the US, consisting mostly of speeches and gift giving, by all kinds of different people, while family and friends watch on.  There are also the inevitable dancers and/or drummers to celebrate the new couple.  I have to say though, this was a pretty impressive wedding!

That's you caught up until about a week ago.  Will see if I can find some time tomorrow at the office to catch up the rest.  Spending the day at the beach today, enjoying my last weekend here!

A la prochaine,

Amy

xoxo

Bon Appetit

Alrighty, so here it is, the skinny on the food here.  I am finding myself getting tired of traditional fare and my preoccupation with finding alternative food sources and types is largely responsible for this post.  I have been finding more restaurants to go to however, and, with the help of new friends, have been able to deviate slightly from my routine.  Yes I will update you further on what I have been up do for the past week, but this is a little 'taste' (haha, get it?) of my every day life.  

Throughout Burundi, Brochettes, are a local delicacy and seem to have garnered as much community adoration as the Tambouriers (what I thought was Burundi's only claim to fame).  These meats on a stick come in the goat, beef, chicken, fish and sausage variety, although true nature of the meat is sometimes questionable.  In all honesty, these are pretty yummy, although eating what is basically a kebab every night can get a bit tiring.  Other than this, people eat a lot of eggs and peanuts, available for very little from street vendors throughout the city.  Coming soon to a car window near you.....

Here are a few ideas to give you an idea of our typical lunch:  

I usually go to a nearby restaurant with Raissa, or alternatively, we sometimes have Violette, our office assistant go for take-out. Regardless of where we eat, the food remains relatively the same.  Rice (also sometimes called pilau if it has yummy spices in it, peas, and bananas (the savory kind, which are super delicious) are often on the menu. 

Also, variation on the same theme: 

pilau with a leafy vegetable/manioc mix known as linga linga.  The manioc is pretty much for texture and to give the linga linga a bit more substance.  In all, it looks like sloppy canned spinach, but I really like it!!!

Beignets:  A food that is probably not too far fetched if you have been to New Orleans, or other former French colonies.  These are amazing as a snack and are pretty much African donuts.   We have these with tea, as a frequent afternoon treat.  

Lastly, a Burundian classic: Bugali.  Not to be confused with Ugali, found in other regions of East Africa, Bugali is made from Manioc rather than from wheat flour.  I don't particularly like this difference, as the manioc gives a bit of a weird aftertaste to the whole experience.  If you have never had Ugali/Bugali before, just eating it is a process.  The actual Bugali, the beige colored mound in the middle, is really elastic and you have to separate a lump of if, roll it into a ball and then use it as a sort of spoon (think Tosito's Scoop Chips) to eat the sauce (aptly named, sauce) and linga linga.  The other stuff...fine...bugali...not so much...

Other than these few things, I buy a lot of fresh fruit: papayas, pineapples, bananas, marachuja (no idea how to describe this), passion fruit, and, of course, avocados as big as my head. 

 On a final note, the French word avocat means both avocado and lawyer...food for thought?

Laissez les bons temps rouler...

Things are picking up here and getting quite busy!  I am learning a lot about both the administration of public health in resource poor settings, but also much about office politics; both are experiences that will no doubt serve me well wherever I end up working in the future!!

  Last week I week I was given my first actual assignment, something that I am working on finalizing today.  I went up to Muyinga, the province that is closest to the Tanzania border, and also at the highest elevation in Burundi.  There, I was charged with assessing and reporting on the process of a MCH nutrition project that has been in place for 4 months now.  The Mama Lumière project identifies indigenous helpers within the community - women who have demonstrated a capacity to raise well-nourished children.  These women are trained and are then charged with training other mothers within their community.  Over an initial 12-day training, they learn basics of nutrition, i.e. the 3 (yes, 3 here) food groups, basic food safety and general hygiene.  After that, they meet about once a month to review and cement the things they have previously learned.

  Of course, none of these meetings take the shape of what we might consider educational meetings in the US.  In fact, I have to say, the Burundians really know how to run a meeting! They internalize their lessons through a combination of song and dance that are a pleasure to both watch and participate in.  You can truly see the joy on the women’s faces as they recall what they have been taught; pride that comes not only from having learned and remembered information that will help their children, but also because of the growing bellies and happy faces of those children themselves.  How they mnage to dance with their children on their backs, I have no idea.  

So now, I am charged with writing a compelling article to demonstrate both of these things, to show the success of the project in pounds, confidence, and healthy years gained.  

Overall the trip was great: 

I got to carry a baby on my back, a nerve-wracking but surprisingly secure means of carrying one’s young ... 

... I danced (a lot) with the mothers, a move that gained me some street cred with the group...

... and also got to go to the Tanzanian border:

 Although I will be back there in just over three weeks, it was still pretty cool to be at the border between Anglophone Tanzania and Francophone Burundi.  Perhaps the most interesting, and laughable part of that experience was the transition that takes place at the border, from driving on the left in Tanzania, as per English tradition, to driving on the right in Burundi, as is done in France.  

This is not, however, facilitated in any organized manner, and the signs are in the language of the country you are going to, which doesn’t really help if you don’t (as many don’t) speak English or French.  Let’s just be thankful it isn’t a very heavily traveled road…and remember that sometimes we just need to shake our heads and laugh.

This weekend was the busiest one yet, and hard to believe sometimes that I had so much time on my hands at the beginning of my time here.  On Thursday night, I went with my boss, Tanou, to an Independence Day party at the US embassy, albeit a little early.  Pretty low-key event and not much to report, except that, of course, I was asked to rub elbows with some of the higher-ups in the US government and USAID staff here.  Then, on Friday and Saturday I went out in the evening with some people from work and had a great time, except for the mosquitoes and really late nights!!  

Raissa and I at a really cute outdoor bar with a stage, band, and billiards to boot!

Below find a picture of a sign posted at the club we went to afterwards, right in the entry way no less.  I have no idea, really what this means, but apparently this is the kind of place where whatever he says, goes, ladies!   HILARIOUS....

Also, a highlight of this weekend, was the manicure/pedicure date that my new friend, Claudine, and I had this weekend.  I know I am supposed to be roughing it, but come on, a 2-hour manicure/pedicure for less than $10?  Yes please!!  Also got to go over to Tanou’s house to watch both Wimbledon finals, a welcome break from my usual fare of CNN, CNN, and more CNN.  The William’s sisters rather lack-luster match was more than made up for today by the nail-biting, albeit heart-wrenching men’s final between Federer and Roddick.  All in all a rather patriotic weekend, as I celebrated Independence Day and watched the Williams sisters and Roddick at Wimbeldon. 

This week is shaping up to be a relatively busy one.  I have been pegged as the local translation service, so no doubt there will be more of that, as well as finishing this article for the USAID website.  On Wednesday, I am going up-country again to begin work on my next article, on a project looking at advanced strategies for antenatal care.  

If you are confused by what that means exactly, you are not alone, and I will be sure to fill you in as soon as I understand what exactly I am doing there.  My neighbors, Lillian and Josh (whose wedding I went to last weekend, and are pictured here) are moving out on the 8^th as he returns to the US and she awaits her visa and can join him there.  Looks like things might quite down around the apartment, but they are picking up elsewhere, with more people to hang out with and places to go.  

All in all, having a great time here so far.  Have found a couple of places to go and eat that are close to my house, so I don't have to walk around much alone at night.  Safety was the first thing I was concerned about when I found out I was going to be coming to Burundi, but I have to say, it is like any other place in the world that you travel too: you just have to be careful and mind what you do and where you go.  There are very few reminders of the civil war, and most people are very friendly, even to the strange mzungu, for there aren't a whole lot of us here!

Lots of love, until next time....

xoxo