Muraho!

Muraho!

It seems that between being a father, teacher, friend, travel agent and police officer for 18 people, I have hardly had a chance to write in my own personal blog. I have also been responsible for updating our trip blog for families, so feel free to check that out to discover some of the activities we have been involved in as a group:

It has been an interesting journey returning to Africa thus far. I feel that coming back here and looking at health issues, i have been able to see the research that I had done in the new light of development. It is interesting, however, because the work i did focused on using african cultures as a departure point. Western medicine is the realm the most resistent to identifying folk medicine as legitimate medicine. It is easy to understand such resistance, because it is dealing with life and death issues. One of the problems, however, is that western medicine will only identify as illnesses, those diseases already catelouged in our own medical dictionaries. Among different africa cultures, however, one finds many psycho-social illnesses that touch deep in the physic of a person. On the fast track to modernistion, i haven't heard of any efforts here in Rwanda to integrate traditional healing and western medicine.

I have also really enjoyed stepping back into the role of facilitator for group reflection. It is very different doing this with a group of highschool students rather than college students, because the seriousness isn't always there, and the background training in the issues isn't as extensive, but my group is able to offer nugets of wisdom based on their own experiences here.

Mel, my co-leader, is amazing to work with. She gets the short of the leader stick at times because as a doctor she is a approached by the majority of the students whenever they are ill.

It is a very different transition going from traveling solo, to being responsible for 16 youth. At times, like when walking down a road, and I am trying to keep everyone from walking anywhere near where traffic goes by, it is just too much. There are great rewards though. Seeing how students are dealing with the discomfort of powerlessness and seeing how they respond to that is great. I feel like there is a lot of learning and reflecting to be done, and many of the students are very faithful to their journals.

Anyways, I am also updating the putney blog on a regular basis, so feel free to check that out: http://pstgarwa.blogspot.com/