Rwanda Vision Trip: Day 8

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Today was a “down” day since I did not have tons of meetings and tons of information fed to me through a fire house.

Breakfast was great - thick breakfast tortillas (I forget the Rwandese word) and an egg scramble with coffee, etc. I did not have to rush off, so I was able to get ready leisurely today.

The first stop today was the genocide memorial. Simon had a meeting last night with some missionaries in Kigali and spent the night there. I am not sure how he pulled together a meeting last minute. He was planning to return to Gisenyi yesterday afternoon, but did not realize that we had a full day planned for us. He went with the flow like it was nothing and managed to plan a meeting and a place to spend the night on the cell phone evidently while we were coming back form Kayonza. So Pastor Simon picked me up and dropped me off at the memorial.

The memorial was very well done. There are mass graves where over 250,000 people are buried. They are still finding bones of people when they are digging and they move the bones to the mass grave. Most do not have names, for the wall of names has less than 1-2,000 names on it from what I could tell. There were so many heart wrenching parts of the memorial, but I think the most heart wrenching of all was this: The one side of the memorial has the mass graves. This has a brick walkway covered by a trellis with vines and the large concrete mass graves. Outside the actual memorial the steps go down further to an area where there is only dirt, and - MORE mass graves. It is almost as if they thought they could contain all the bodies in the memorial area, only to find out that they needed to expand further just to give a “proper” burial to the bodies that keep being found. And, unfortunately, the graves are still accepting new members. The thought of being lain into a large concrete crypt with thousands of other bodies does not seem quite like what we as Americans would consider a “proper” burial, but it is better than being only 6 inches under the dirt in someone’s back yard or alongside the road. I do not know exactly where they are finding the bodies, but the recording said that they are still bringing bodies to the memorial for burial that have been found.

I then did a little shopping (very little) - can’t tell y’all what I bought. Where I went was more store front shops. I understand that there is a market place where locals compete for your business, but that was not where Pastor Simon took me.

I came back to the guest house for lunch and then actually logged on to my work computer for the first time during the trip. Kinda boring, but if I don’t do some work I will be overwhelmed on Wednesday when I return. Tomorrow and Monday are travel days, and Tuesday is recovery day. (A time to get caught up on bills, work and sleep.)

At 3 pm (actually a little after) I met with Dr. Patrick Kyamanywa who is the director of the residency programs and Butare and Kigali. He is very interested in having us do some lectures for the residency. I will need to firm up dates with Dr. Chris as to when the team (or sub team) will be back to Kigali so that we can do the lectures. (Non-medical types may want to skim or stop here - or read on, but don’t say I did not warn you!) We talked about a cooperative that the residency program has with Canada, called CASIEF, where anesthesiologists from Canada will come for 4-6 weeks and help run the Anesthesia residency. His hope is to build relationships with other specialties in other countries to do the same. They currently have programs in Medicine, Surgery, Anesthesia, OB-GYN, Pediatrics, and Family and Community Medicine. They are soon to be adding ENT. The medical school is 6 years long and has been operating since about 1963 (all teaching stopped in the Genocide and it was not until 1997 that the school got back up and running. The Residency program has only been up and running since 2005 and the Family and Community Medicine residency just started last year. Patrick would love for our trip to result in the start of some more formal relationship with programs in the U.S. I will have to talk with Dr. Jim Smith in Portland about that. Dr. Steve will be excited to know that Patrick is attending a seminar on laparoscopic surgery this weekend in Kigali. If I understood him correctly, they have equipment being shipped, right now they are taking a course over Skype, and then there is an ongoing 6-week internet based training program. Then they will be certified to start doing laparoscopic surgery. This is being done with cooperation from Belgium (?). As you may be able to tell I do not feel as overwhelmed by this meeting as I have by other meetings this week. I think that is because there are no great expectations today or tomorrow or even when we come in the summer. There is a plan to grow the program and build relationships, and the goal is to have mostly Rwandese physicians teaching at the school and residency program in 6-10 years.

Patrick had to leave to avoid the rain. It was sunny this morning and I may have gotten a little too much sun at the outside part of the genocide memorial, but now it is raining and there is thunder and lightning. The weather here changes rapidly, a lot like Portland, except that when it rains it REALLY RAINS. Reminds me of the thunderstorms we used to get in Phoenix, except it is not as hot here as in Phoenix.

Well it is just after 5 pm and I am done with my “blog”. Today was more of a restful day. Tomorrow I will be attending the Africa New Life church service. It sounds like 9 am is the English service, and 11 am to 1 pm is the Kinyarwanda service. I will likely go to both. Then it is just a matter of getting packed up and I am off to the airport.

Doc Jim signing out from Kigali, Rwanda

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Comments

[Glenn Nelson]

Note to "White Dude"
Jim, A lot to digest, I've got a lot to think about. Sounds like a pretty rigorous trip and exhausting schedule. I'd love to see some pictures also. I copied the list of needed equipment and will see what resources I might put you on to. I'll also mention this to Dr. Marath, but expect he'll not want to part with much of the good things we've managed to get donated. But this is all about God's work and if I can help in some way I'll be blessed to do so. God Bless, Glenn