A lot has been happening since I've been back....including some good news that a research project I'll be doing has a firm start date, about 10 days from now. Yay!! I am very thankful. More on that in a future post.
One huge event that took place last week was the official launch of the child survival program I'm working with. (You may wonder why the program is launching now, since the program is currently in its 18th month of implementation. I asked the same question, and someone explained to me that there needed to be some established activity underway in order to have something meaningful to present to the community. In case you wanted to know.)
While the mortality rate is improving (i.e., going down) in Rwanda amongst children under five, research still indicates that 1 of every 7 children dies from a preventable illness. And more children in rural areas (i.e., poor areas) are dying than children who live in urban areas. The purpose of the child mortality program is to help educate communities so that children will stop needlessly dying of sickness that could be avoided with a little hand-washing or an early trip to the health clinic.
"Launches" may be different everywhere, but here the launch was a well-planned event ("more planning than a wedding!" my colleagues told me). Program staff have spent hours and hours over the past month planning and prepping. The community health workers put together a program of singing and dancing, as well as staging a drama about how to prevent and treat malaria, and the children who are the beneficiaries of the program participated as well. A small "army" of children did a marching routine, at one point, and everyone was charmed! There was hired entertainment (drums, dancing, and singing), and the songs revolved around child illnesses and how there is hope for all children to be healthy. There were also speeches by the program director, organizational directors, and government officials.
The event was a success! Here are a few shots:
The name of the program is "Kabeho Mwana" in Kinyarwandan, which means "Life for a Child." There were a lot of children involved in the event, and they wore their t-shirts proudly (above).
The culture here is one of singing, dancing, drumming....it's awesome! Here's a shot of some of the hired entertainment performing a "basket" dance where the women move in extraordinary ways without ever toppling the baskets from their heads:
After the event was over, while I was waiting for the local media to finish interviewing Melene, I had a digital camera and was showing a crowd of children their pictures. They rarely get to see images of themselves; most probably don't have mirrors in their homes. It's strange to think that these children may not even really know what they look like! So it is easy to become the Pied Piper as long as you don't forget your Canon 470:
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