Sunday, November 3, 2019
7:58PM
Somewhere in Rwanda, Africa.
I have just completed my first full day in Rwanda. The day began promptly at 4:48AM as I woke up and found it impossible to fall back to sleep.
Breakfast at 7:00AM was a light meal of various kinds of exotic fruit, including pineapple, a miniature banana, a small ball-shaped fruit that split open to reveal a mushy inside of snot-colored flesh and tear-drop shaped black seeds.
It tasted better than it looked.
I met Dr. David Fryman, a family medicine doctor who taught at Indiana University School of Medicine, at breakfast and learned he had first visited Kibogora Hospital as a fourth-year medical student and had been returning ever since.
We boarded a RwandAir plane (the Dream of Africa was painted across its side) and Dr. Fryman regaled me with stories of how, back in the day, the flight from Kigali to Kamembe was a life-endangering adventure. Not trusting the commercial plane with a poor safety record, he flew by missionary plane directly to the hospital during his first visit.
Fortunately, the safety record had improved by then.
We waved goodbye to Rwanda's capital city of Kigali (pronounced kee - GALL - ee) and flew over the Rwandan countryside for the next 25 minutes to Kamembe, where we disembarked and grabbed our luggage from (I kid you not) a one room airport. Dr. Green was waiting for us in the parking lot.
After paying a parking attendant 1,000 francs (~1 US dollars), much gesturing, myriad attempts at sign language, and three attempts, we finally escaped past the gate and motored down the road to Emeraude, where we had a second (real) breakfast of eggs, toast, tea, the vomit-yellow-and-green fruit which, incidentally, turned out to be passion fruit, and completed by
a spectacular view of sapphire-blue lake studded with emerald-green islands.
After breakfast, we then motored through the countryside, which seemed composed of small-to-medium-to-largish-sized mountains, eucalyptus trees, tea farms, banana plants, goats, long-horned cattle, Rwandan farmers, small Rwandan children walking right on the painted lines of the side of the road, bright red soil, and farms planted on the impossibly steep mountains.
Dr. Green narrated to me when he asked how a farmer had broken his leg who, they replied that, "I fell out of my farm."
The day passed after that in a kaleidoscopic blur of short memories: a tour of the mission compound, set high on the hill above the blue-roofed hospital; a short trip to the nearby town of Cyazo (pronounced Chaz - oh); playing 21 with a hoop set on a red brick wall with Dr. Green's son and another missionary family, the Cobb's son; kicking off the wall like a parkour ninja to throw down some monster dunks; a short dance + gymnastics performance of the Green/Cobb children to Black Eyed Peas' I Gotta a Feeling with a spectacular backdrop of the Rwandan mountains and lake behind them; and culminating in a meal of fancy Ramen Noodle soup laced with jalapeno oil called akabanga.
The Green family record was 21 drops of akabanga, so I naturally put in 30 drops and proceeded to breathe fire for the rest of the evening.
I left for my home for the next 28ish days, a little guest house located right by the Green's house, found a small frog hanging on my door, and killed a spider in my bathroom, only to find about 50 baby spiders were beneath the first spider.
After reading up on bile ducts, bed soon followed, and I curled up beneath the mosquito netting to get a good night's sleep before the bile duct obstruction surgery scheduled for the next day.
7:58PM
Somewhere in Rwanda, Africa.
I have just completed my first full day in Rwanda. The day began promptly at 4:48AM as I woke up and found it impossible to fall back to sleep.
Breakfast at 7:00AM was a light meal of various kinds of exotic fruit, including pineapple, a miniature banana, a small ball-shaped fruit that split open to reveal a mushy inside of snot-colored flesh and tear-drop shaped black seeds.
It tasted better than it looked.
I met Dr. David Fryman, a family medicine doctor who taught at Indiana University School of Medicine, at breakfast and learned he had first visited Kibogora Hospital as a fourth-year medical student and had been returning ever since.
We boarded a RwandAir plane (the Dream of Africa was painted across its side) and Dr. Fryman regaled me with stories of how, back in the day, the flight from Kigali to Kamembe was a life-endangering adventure. Not trusting the commercial plane with a poor safety record, he flew by missionary plane directly to the hospital during his first visit.
Fortunately, the safety record had improved by then.
We waved goodbye to Rwanda's capital city of Kigali (pronounced kee - GALL - ee) and flew over the Rwandan countryside for the next 25 minutes to Kamembe, where we disembarked and grabbed our luggage from (I kid you not) a one room airport. Dr. Green was waiting for us in the parking lot.
After paying a parking attendant 1,000 francs (~1 US dollars), much gesturing, myriad attempts at sign language, and three attempts, we finally escaped past the gate and motored down the road to Emeraude, where we had a second (real) breakfast of eggs, toast, tea, the vomit-yellow-and-green fruit which, incidentally, turned out to be passion fruit, and completed by a spectacular view of sapphire-blue lake studded with emerald-green islands.
After breakfast, we then motored through the countryside, which seemed composed of small-to-medium-to-largish-sized mountains, eucalyptus trees, tea farms, banana plants, goats, long-horned cattle, Rwandan farmers, small Rwandan children walking right on the painted lines of the side of the road, bright red soil, and farms planted on the impossibly steep mountains.
Dr. Green narrated to me when he asked how a farmer had broken his leg who, they replied that, "I fell out of my farm."
The day passed after that in a kaleidoscopic blur of short memories: a tour of the mission compound, set high on the hill above the blue-roofed hospital; a short trip to the nearby town of Cyazo (pronounced Chaz - oh); playing 21 with a hoop set on a red brick wall with Dr. Green's son and another missionary family, the Cobb's son; kicking off the wall like a parkour ninja to throw down some monster dunks; a short dance + gymnastics performance of the Green/Cobb children to Black Eyed Peas' I Gotta a Feeling with a spectacular backdrop of the Rwandan mountains and lake behind them; and culminating in a meal of fancy Ramen Noodle soup laced with jalapeno oil called akabanga.The Green family record was 21 drops of akabanga, so I naturally put in 30 drops and proceeded to breathe fire for the rest of the evening.
I left for my home for the next 28ish days, a little guest house located right by the Green's house, found a small frog hanging on my door, and killed a spider in my bathroom, only to find about 50 baby spiders were beneath the first spider.After reading up on bile ducts, bed soon followed, and I curled up beneath the mosquito netting to get a good night's sleep before the bile duct obstruction surgery scheduled for the next day.
sounds like a very interesting place!! Hope the OR is going well. Karleigh is posting your blogs for the other volunteers to read. let Joel know Exalta says hello to him too
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