Health Workshops

Participants in a first aid workshop study anatomy diagrams

For the past few weeks, I have been assisting a volunteer, who is a retired nurse, with workshops on a range of health topics. She has been running two workshops per week since her arrival three weeks ago, and will continue right through November. The first workshop series is on the topic of first aid. As I was trained as a lifeguard, I have been really enjoying these workshops. It is great to see the women learning something and asking good questions.

Counseling sessions

I have been sitting in on weekly group trauma counseling sessions at the Centre since my arrival. These have been very eye-opening. Although I do not yet understand Kinyarwanda (to my frustration), I am certainly able to understand the level of emotion of the sessions’ participants, and to observe the compassion with which Tubahumurize’s counselor conducts them.

Also, I amazed at how interactive the sessions are. Typically, one woman will share her story, and other women will listen and then will comfort her, encourage her, and advise her, based on their own experiences.

The content of the two-hour discussion is translated for me after each session by the counselor, and I am baffled by how complex these problems often are. From the outside looking in, one might have a tendency to reduce problems like those of these women to HIV, poverty, and violence. But that is not how they are experienced by the women I have met here. Rather, each woman’s experience is incredibly complex and deeply personal. She will never say, “like many Africans, my problem is poverty and HIV.” She will say “my husband has been sick lately and so we have not been able to work our fields. Now I am worried because we do not have enough money to send my eldest son to school this semester.”

Sitting in on the counseling sessions has opened my eyes to the myriad ways in which the challenges of development actually play out at the level of the individual.

Most of all, this experience has tuned me in to the other half of the development story: how those individual people call upon their families, communities, and inner strength in creative and courageous ways to meet the challenges that they face. Even though many of the stories that I have heard since being here are nothing short of horrific, I cannot help but feel hopeful about the capacity of people to transcend their past and their circumstances.

I assist a Tubahumurize volunteer in delivering a first aid workshop

Category: On location, Rwanda // Add Comment »