Saddling Up!

February 3, 2010
Kigali, Rwanda

Hi there, SHE companions,

It’s been an interesting week – sad to see Elizabeth leave Kigali for New York, but I’m comforted in knowing that she’ll be back in a month!

So it’s me and Julian, Julian and me, me and Julian. This week, I made progress on setting up a monitoring and evaluation system – did a lot of research and prepared a bunch of documents that we’ll be taking to the community health workers later this week. We want input in two areas: the pad sales, and the health and hygiene education. We visited the community health workers in Kigali last Friday, and got a lot of great feedback from them. Ghras stood out as the leader in the group – articulating positive feedback, as well as concerns. The interesting thing is that Ghras and the others didn’t just say such and such is a problem; they also told us how they think we could address it. Spending time in the field is invaluable, and I’m glad I’ll be doing a lot of that in the coming weeks.

And the other thing on my agenda is finding banana farmers all across Rwanda. Wouldn’t you want to give up your banana fibers for the making of pads? Tell me if you know any farmers with banana plantations please!

Fatima