What a trip

So...it's official: I think I might be the worst blogger there ever was!  I'm fully prepared for no one to read this, so maybe I can be a bit freer with my words...  

We've had the most precious time these last ten months.  They've been trying, oh so trying, but our new friends and colleagues have made our time in Rwanda so fruitful.  Dan and I are leaving Rwanda in just a days to head back to the US where Dan will begin business school at Duke.  We're also expecting our first little baby in December, so lots of changes for our teeny family.  We will miss Rwanda immensely.

Our last few months have been chock full of meaningful friendships, good time just the two of us, great sightseeing, hosting dear friends from home, and a little bit (make that a lot) of morning sickness.  We head home with a few fewer suitcases than we came with, a little doggie who's become a member of our growing family, and most importantly, lasting friendships with Rwandans whose life stories we couldn't have dreamt up.  

A visitor from home...

My work at King Faisal Hospital since January has really paralleled our experience in Rwanda--tough but rewarding.  Hospitals aren't easy places to manage with the mix of clinicians and administrators, all working for their patients but on completely separate tracts.  I was asked to come to the hospital to help publicize our care nationally and internationally, but realized when I got here that there was some "tightening up" to do from the inside out before we started blasting the hospital's story to the world.  Don't get me wrong--there are MANY great things going on here (we just facilitated 35 cornea transplants last weekend) but I don't think that any KFH staffer would disagree with me when I say "we need better patient care in the hospital."  

So far, my favorite project has been teaching customer service classes here.  Dan drew up a National Customer Service Campaign for Rwanda, and we've simply followed his lead.  Rwanda's customer service stinks.  In these classes, I always say "Do we have diamonds?  No.  Do we have oil?  No.  We don't even have wood.  We get it from Congo.  Then what do we have?"  People are stumped at this point.  "OUR PEOPLE!" I say.  And they cheer.  The importance of good customer care in a country where tourism will float the economy for decades to come isn't really measurable.  Kind of weird that we're starting at a hospital, but you gotta start somewhere.  Our staff has responded in noticeable ways that make me so happy--you can see them saying "Karibu" ("Welcome") and smiling at patients where this didn't happen before. 

  

Some of KFH's wonderful faces

Other really interesting projects include starting the organ donation "conversation" with a country so foreign to the subject, connecting US-based companies and hospitals to King Faisal, bringing over some great interns from the US, a LOT of policy-writing and editing, and helping to build general capacity among staff.  And soon, we'll have a great new website here (this project began the moment I got here and has taken a full 6 months to even begin to choose the designer because of the procurement process).  So stay tuned in the coming months for that new website (and don't even think about checking out the existing website...).

Enough about my fun job.  What will we miss about Rwanda?  We'll miss gorgeous weather all the time.  Simple, witty truths spoken by good friends like Chantal who, in an African way doesn't need many words at all (she told me recently that "money itches her" when it's in her pocket).  We'll miss the long, lazy Saturdays that we'd never had before we came to Kigali, and the conversations that come with them.  The 2-inch gecko that hides every time I walk by the guest bathroom--I hope he makes it to adulthood when new folks move in.  Smiles of the children who realize you're actually smiling at them first.  And the giggles that come after our saying "good morning" or "good afternoon" (or anything!) in Kinyarwanda.  I'll miss the wonderful mix of humor and strength of the women here--those women who bear babies, hoe the fields, cook over charcoal stoves, and take care of their little ones while their men are doing God knows what.  Laughing with Dan about the absurdities of life here for a muzungu.  And much, much more.  We love this place, and there is surely something more special about it than meets the eye.  You just have to stick around for a little bit and get into the nitty gritty with folks to see it.

So we go with heavy hearts but knowing we'll be back very soon, God willing.  We're so, so thankful for the opportunity to have been able to learn much, when we thought we were going to give much, over these short months.