VHW Goodbye

Friday, the 19th of June marked my last day participating in our weekly village health worker
trainings.

This past year I've taught lessons, helped write curricula, created the schedules for the days, and played with adorable babies while their moms take exams. So, at the end of that final training day, Sam -- the hospital's senior Clinical Officer and our close friend and colleague -- brought me in front of the group to announce my imminent departure. Sam orated in Rufumbira as only he can and then opened the floor to me, standing by to translate.

Nearly twenty adults sat in front of me who had devoted the last two years of their life to public healthcare. They had given up their Fridays to hitch rides into town for eight-hour trainings; they gathered at twice-monthly tutorials to review topics they had learned; they put their domestic and professional lives on hold whenever one of our staff came to their village to conduct a census or check up on their work. They are, in short, incredibly committed individuals. I felt, standing in front of them, suddenly very small but bursting with appreciation.

I told them that this year in Kisoro, working with them, has been one of the best years of my life. I  told them how proud I was to have worked with them, to watch them grow as healers and teachers. I thanked them for welcoming me so warmly. Then Naomi, the VHW from Mugwata, stood to address me on behalf of all the VHWs. Sam translated for me her words of effusive thanks and kindness and well-wishes.

I don't like goodbyes and minimize them whenever at all possible. But standing in that training room that we had all grown so used to together, there was nowhere else I would have rather been. It was one more clue (and they have been mounting these past few weeks) that I will miss Kisoro more than I ever would have guessed. This place and these people have shaped themselves into a home for me our of sheer kind-heartedness.

When these VHWs graduate from their training later this August, they will each be outfitted with a well-stocked "doctor bag" and vested with the authority to care for their neighbors' aches and pains, dress their wounds, counsel them through difficult times, and refer them to the hospital when a situation is serious. Their villages are lucky to have them.

Afterwards, I received more warm thanks and wishes for a safe journey. I was also made to promise that I would greet all my family from them. So, family, the VHWs of Kisoro send you their best. And I can tell you that their best is outstanding.

Back:Jane, Sam, Agnes, Emma, Naomi, Me, Domitira, Emma, Amos
Middle: Jovia, Juliana, Jesca, Dorothy
Front: Oliver, Ben, Amos, Nathan, Benon

Fresh Beans

Katrina, tireless advocate for her patients that she is, received recently an enormous sack of white potatoes as a “thank you” from a patient. In the sack, resting on top of the potatoes was a plastic bag full of long, cream-colored bean pods and so the gift was that much sweeter. The next night, one of our good Kisoroan friends came for dinner and brought with her a bag of more beans as a gift. We were suddenly rich.

The next day, home from hospital work, I decided to try to make food from these bursting bags of plant seeds. Our friend, Charity, had shown me the method of shelling. You hold the pod with both hands and use your thumbs to split along the seam, then run one thumb down the open pod to push out each bean into the pot in front of you.

When I sat down to the effort, I remembered a woman I saw in a village called Buzeyi, a long ride from town spread on the rising slope of Mount Muhavura. She saw in her courtyard, a tangled pile of bean vines studded with crisp, dry pods within arm’s reach. As we spoke with her husband about managing his Parkinson’s, her gaze was fixed gently on the horizon and her hands automatically took pods from the tangle and, with easy fluid motions, split and spilled the beans into a woven basket.

I tried to emulate her that afternoon as I shelled my own beans, affect her unconcerned gaze into the far-distance, and work my hands in a series of quiet, efficient movements. It takes practice, years of it no doubt, to work with a bean harvest as deftly as this woman and each bean requires a slightly different effort.

Some pods are fresher and firm with moisture. They split, in my maladroit hands, in rips and flakes. The drier ones open willingly with light pressure from your thumbs and reveal the 5 or six bean fruits inside. Each bean – I was delighted to discover pod-by-pod – was unique and colored from a prismatic palette. Large zebra-striped beans, small ones white as teeth, mottled purple ones, grey ones bruised with orange, a few dusky blue, and one perfectly golden bean. Their dark, withered pods gave no clue as to the quality of these precious stones.

To cook them, I sautéed a base of shredded carrots, onions and smashed fresh tomatoes – all from the previous day’s market. Splashes of balsamic vinegar (one of the imports we implored Katrina’s parents to bring over), stirred in with our sturdy wooden spoon, deglazed the pot of the sweet carrots’ burned caramel bits. Four pinches of homemade chili seasoning from Ben and Molly’s wedding went in and a few shakes of salt. I dumped all of this into the huge pot of shelled beans with cups and cups of water.

This simmered for most of the late-afternoon and by eight in the evening, we ate the beans over rice. The pigments had cooked out of them, but the beans were tender, and suffused with the rich, red broth they had bubbled in for hours. We ate on the porch under candle light, ate our fill without reservation. The simple market ingredients were all we had needed.

Mood Lighting

We had our friends Robert and Charity for dinner

We've had three lovely second-year medical students staying with us -- Madeline, Sarah, and Hope. We welcomed them with dinner on our porch the day they arrived. On that night I had a vision.

Our porch has one high-wattage fluorescent bulb that gives off a powerful, cold glare -- not dinner party lighting. For months we have been amassing a small battalion of washed-clean glass jars, presumably awaiting re-use. I was almost sure we had twine tucked away somewhere, and long candles can be had in town for 8 to the dollar.

The next morning, I sat down to cobble my vision together. I found twine -- inexplicably knit into what must have been a rude fisherman's net or a hammock for a kitten -- and spent an hour untangling it into usable pieces. I removed the labels from all our glass jars in soapy, scalding water and stared to bind their necks with twine and take measurements for the lengths that would hang them from our porch rafters. By mid-afternoon I had ten glass lanterns neatly hung.

We've so far lost one to a tilted candle that burnt into the glass and shattered the jar, and lost another to a flame that licked too eagerly at the hanging twine until it snapped and crashed to the porch. No one was injured :) I've trimmed the candles to keep their flames just below the lantern rims and filled the jars with sand to keep the candles straight.

For the past week or two, we've all gathered on the porch for dinner under the twinkling glass lights, pulling the couches close to eat and talk into the night. Most nights we light a fire of charcoal in our clay stove and watch the embers crackle and settle into deep oranges and astral whites and, of course, we roast marshmallows.