Phil visits Muhazi

Yesterday I joined up with a small Seattle-based NGO to visit some “Potter” families in Eastern Province. The group, called Pigmy Survival Alliance (PSA) works in partnership with a local health NGO improving the conditions of Batwa, especially in the community of Bwiza, on the outskirts of Kigali (see May blog, Visiting Bwiza).

But this morning we are heading further east, about an hour’s drive from Kigali on the road to Tanzania, to initiate a health intervention for the poorest children of a Twa community at Muhazi, providing de-worming medicine and a low-cost protein supplement PSA has developed using local peanut butter and dry cereal. Mothers of the most vulnerable children will be given a month’s supply to build their infant’s strength and chances for survival. We’ll also be taking the weight and height of all the children, taking photos so they can be issued health cards under the government health program, and distributing plastic sandals to the kids who need them to be admitted to school.

On the way to Muhazi we stop at a small crafts and trades school started by COPORWA, the national organization of the Batwa. The school teaches basket making, sewing, carpentry and driving, and has a small primary school attached as well. Outside the school, children gather around us.

Here’s some of them with Claude, who is a field worker and translator for the local NGO.

The sewing class is all women, using treadle machines – “Butterfly” models made in China and ancient Singers. PSA is giving them an order to sew gift coffee bags, providing the fabric and thread – scarce materials for them – and making a donation to the school.

Here’s the primary class, all very well behaved, after reciting a welcome to us and singing the Alphabet Song.

This is the carpentry class.

And an attentive young student.

Eventually, after a couple of misses, we turn up at the right community. The oldest man there pulls out the photo he had from a previous visit, showing him and Claude.

When I greet him with a respectful “Muraho” the man points to his stomach and says something in Kinyarwanda – I don’t know if he’s sick, or hungry. But from the condition of his feet, his housing, the children and scant pile of sweet potatoes outside his door, this community of Potters is very, very poor.

The PSA folks get a meeting happening with the elders and decision-makers. They encourage women to participate, telling them how the people of Bwiza have found it useful for men and women to work together. While they talk, the littlest kids encircle me in awe, tentatively touching my fingers and nails, stroking the hair on my arms.

I go off with Claude and another Rwandan to find the local mayor, who will help in identifying the poorest families in his area – and not only Potters. On the way back we meet two young women on the road, one carrying a bundle of grass fodder on her head, the tangled mass drooping two feet out on either side of her head and almost entirely obscuring her face. Her friend, by contrast, balances a firm green avocado on her head. I ask Claude to ask if I can take their photo, but they become shy and turn away, and Claude tells me, No, they say they are dirty.

A short time later we set up our “clinic” inside a classroom at the nearby school, starting with the littlest kids – some of those who’d been fondling my hands – and babes in their mothers’ arms. My job is to get them onto a set of bathroom scales and use a carpenter’s tapemeasure to take their height, calling out the numbers in Kinyarwanda to my Rwandan partner. It’s good practice for me, both using the numbers and telling the kids to get on the scale and then to move off to the de-worming station. During a lull one of the young teachers approaches the scales shyly, weighing little more than a girl herself.

As we’re packing up to leave the doctor with us says there’s one more baby in the vulnerable category that we need to de-worm, to give the supplement to and to document. The group’s photographer being occupied elsewhere, I use my own camera to grab the final photo.

The white stuff around the baby’s mouth is the worm medicine.