Over the weekend I went with two of my colleagues and four of my former students to a conference in Kibuye, a nice little lake town in the west of Rwanda. A lot of the conference was information – HIV/AIDS, Sexual and Gender Based Violence – that most Peace Corps Volunteers could recite in our sleep, but it was undoubtedly an exciting and informative experience for most of the Rwandans there.
Health volunteers have trainings and conferences like this somewhat frequently, but this was my first time to go to an event with people from my community. For most of the people with me it was their first time to Kibuye so part of the excitement for them was just getting to see another part of their own country. We stayed in a nice centre right on the lake and spent a couple afternoons teaching students to swim and sending them off on their first boat rides. The food was delicious and frequent, and one colleague joked that he finally understands now why I’m always so hungry.
In addition to all of this luxury, though, I’m confident that my colleagues and students left the conference armed with information that just a few days before was almost foreign to them. We discussed HIV/AIDS in numerous contexts, and it was incredibly eye-opening to see how our community members have interpreted information and come to conclusions about such a prominent issue. Some attendees, for example, understood for the first time that a person can be born HIV positive. This small and seemingly simple realization could ultimately lead to a new outlook and reduced stigma about people living with HIV/AIDS because it means that they may not have willingly engaged in any behavior that so many people associate with contracting the virus.
We also discussed Sexual and Gender-Based Violence. Unfortunately SGBV is very common in Rwanda and often goes unreported and/or overlooked. One woman at the conference was extremely persistent in getting an answer from the presenter and the attendees about why any woman should report her husband for sexually abusing their children when she knows that he is the breadwinner and all of their lives will become more difficult if he isn’t able to work and bring money home.
On one hand I think if I were a Rwandan student leaving that conference, I would be more afraid than before of what might happen to me if I chose to indulge in any of the activities that are associated with curious, hormonal teenagers all over the world. Throughout numerous discussions, declarations ranged from school leaders insisting they would expel students if they publicly announced that they were in a committed relationship, to girls saying they felt would be at least partly blamed if they were raped after consuming alcohol, to an attendee insisting that infidelity is a result of men not being legally allowed to take multiple wives.
On the other hand, though, I’d like to think that if I were a Rwandan student leaving that conference, I would see that while my community may not yet be a collective organism I could turn to, Peace Corps Volunteers are. I know my students made connections with other volunteers at the conference, and I would like to think that they left it knowing they have our support. I would also like to think they left it feeling motivated, responsible, and most of all informed and able to make a difference within their communities.
Peace Corps above all is a development organization with the aim of sustainability. Essentially anything a volunteer does – from individual tutoring to building community wells – is done with the intent that in a relatively short amount of time that same project could be maintained whether a volunteer was around or not. And that, in itself, is what the conference was for me. It was a weight lifted off my shoulders and a liberating reminder that I am only a tiny fraction of a small part of the changes that will happen in this community. It was an opportunity to watch my colleagues and students take on the social responsibility of improving people’s lives that I have unnecessarily been carrying alone. I’m back at site now feeling, probably for the first time, like maybe I’m finally starting to have the relationship with my community that Peace Corps wants me to have. Not bad for a 17 months into service, right?
All of us at the conference!
