my last days in East Africa
Yoy everybody,
A few days ago I arrived in Kampala, quite happy to be back in my beloved Uganda. The weekend I enjoyed the city’s nightclubs, introducing the one and only DIRTY SANCHEZ to East Africa ☺
Ruth and all the children say thank you too all the donors that helped us to overcome the crisis, thanks to your generosity we were able to collect 601 Euro, enough to buy food for the next 5 month!
I really appreciate your trust in me. Some people told me that there are many sites out there in the net, claiming to collect donations for some good cause while in reality there is no one benefiting from it but themselves.
Be assured that your 100% of your donations go directly to the kids.
I will try to set up a follow up system for the money with Ruth but hopefully you will understand that this will take us some time.
In any case me and Ruth are always available for your questions!
As I had no internet connection back in Rwanda I will put on now some of the photos from the last week, enjoy ☺
(sorry, somehow the conection lags terrible right now, I will uplod the pictures later- sorry for the inconvenience)
Mara muzze everyone,
it is a wonderful morning here in Gisenyi – Rwandas little Nizza at the south of lake Kivu and a stone throw away from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Last weekend the Internet connection of the clinic broke down and with it my only web access in the range of a one-hour motorbike trip.
It was surely bad timing with the call for donations just being sent, but it’s amazing that you people helped us anyways!
Thanks to your contribution the children will have enough food for the next three month! Of course we are far from a stable situation and I hope that anyone of you who is considering it will overcome his doubts and help us out.
(here you find a pdf with all neccesary information to make international transactions:
how-to-donate-to-another-hope)
In the orphanage I became friends with Innocence, a 20 years old boy who grew up there after loosing his family in the troublesome Rwandan history. Together we use the free time during the weekends to travel around lake Kivu.
Last Saturday we rented a motorbike and drove southwards, following the invitation of some engineers to visit their project.
After a stopover in Cyangugu -a small city in a triangle between Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo- we drove into the Nyungwe national park. It is one of the oldest jungles in Africa, crawling up a group of high mountain slopes.
Not really aware what was waiting for us we drove as we were directed: “just follow the nicely paved road up to the sign to the Banda primary school, then it’s a small way down the mountain…”
A warning that the “small way” was in reality nothing but a tiny track, going down a steep mountain through a wild tropical forest would probably let us have rented a dirt bike. But so we were driving a street machine down the slippery slopes, thankful that the rain started only after we had reached the village. The weather became so bad that we happily accepted the invitation of staying over night and so I had a lot of time to learn all about the project.
“Kageno” (www.kageno.org) was started by a New Yorker orthodontist with the aim of helping remote living societies in the developing world. His first project in Kenia went quite well with reaching self-sustainability by selling craftworks and so he decided to start something in Rwanda.
Provided with energy by a hydropower station (the project the engineers worked with) they are building a Community Center, a Nursery School and a Clinic. As the remote village lacks opportunities to sell stuff (nobody around to buy it…) they are building a Eco Lounge to gnerate sustainable income and I am quite excited to follow the project over the next years.
The next morning we learned that the other road out of the village got blocked during the storm in the night and that the only chance we have is driving up the exact way we came down yesterday. Adrenalin filled two hours later we arrived the paved road again and it was sheer luck that our front wheel went flat just there and not on our way up! After an hour of driving with a flat tire we reached a village where they repaired the damage and wished us good luck for our 4 hour drive home through the purring tropical rain.
In the clinic I spend most of my time in the pediatric ward and the maternity where I assist women giving birth, either naturally or by cesarean section.
Hygienically the conditions in the hospital are one of the hardest I ever experienced and its not always easy for me to feel myself comfortable working there. Sterility is something quite relative here and I won’t forget the moment when I opened one of the drawers in the OR to find a several days old umbilical cord establishing its own microbiological cosmos in there.
Non the less I really learn a lot and whenever things are going to bad in the hospital I go over to the laboratory and spend my afternoons leaning over a microscope to check some blood smears for malaria.
As it was quite an exhausting week so I wanted to spend a relaxing weekend.
I was also in the urgent need of getting an Internet connection (no one knows when the one in the clinic will be repaired) so I reserved a room in a recommended hotel in Kibuje, the closest (1h) city to the orphanage.
We arrived at a beautiful place and were mentally all prepared to jump in the water – just after the check in – when we were told that our “reservation” was never written down by anyone. Now all the rooms were occupied and there was no place to stay for us. Very frustrated we walked back to the city center (no motorbike taxi available), crossing a small harbor. Here a man walked towards us and asked if we wouldn’t like to come aboard his ship, leaving for Gisenyi that evening.
It was an amazing trip, shipping slowly between the Congo on the left and Rwanda on our right with our load of empty bottles and a goat illuminated by the stars of the Milky Way.
Here in Gisenye we stay in a nice little hotel, situated in an old colonial house constructed by the Germans some 156 years ago. One of the modern hotels directly at the border to the Congo has wireless internet and so I am finally able to write this blogpost, answer the eMails that accumulated during the last week and send my thanks to the donors 
(Sonja K. and Johannes K., please send me a mail to hesse.sebastian@gmail.com as I dont have your contact, thanks)
Thank you all very much and with the best wishes to wherever you are
Basi
letter from Ruth
I am called Nambowa Ruth Bulyaba, the Director of Another Hope children’s Ministry in Uganda.
The situation at the children’s home is right now in an alarming situation. There is no food simply because the money planned for food had to go on rent because the land lord wanted 4 months payment else we would be thrown out of the house. Secondly two of the children fell sick and we had to spend much money on treatment for the two children.
So paying all those left us with no money for food and the children all are looking to me for food.
The major source of funds for this project is my salary and now I have a loan that I got to buy a piece of land where I would like to build the children’s home. So in that case I get half of my salary, the other half goes on the loan.
So I appeal to all of you to send us any amount of money to help us buy food and feed the hungry children.
Our website is www.anotherhope.org
Thanks very much.
This is the budget of the money we need for food:
item quantity amount how long it lasts
cooking oil 5litres 22,000.00 (14 $) One month
posho 100kgs 125,000.00 (77 $) One month
salt 4 packets 2,000.00 (1,5 $) One month
wheat flour 2 packets 3,800.00 (2,5 $) One month
beans 50kgs 77,000.00 (50 $) 2months
sugar 50kgs 71,000.00 (45 $) 1.5months
total 300,800.00 (190 $)
Raising for Another Hope
Yesterday I received a very sad and alarming massage from Ruth that the orphanage was forced by its landlord to pay the rent for 4 month in advanced.
As it is almost impossible to find a new place to rent for the orphanage there was no other chance than paying.
The problem is now that Ruth has no money left for food any more!
The Pocho supply (the main food, some kind of flan made of maize) is going to end today and there is barely enough other food to survive for the next 2 weeks.
Normally I planned to raise the money for the home via concerts but facing this crisis I have to beg all of you reading this blog: please donate money for food!
As there are literally no chances of sending smaller amounts of money from Europe to Uganda the easiest possibility is transferring the money to my german account. I will travel back to Uganda at the 12th of September, get all the money from my account and give it to Ruth.
If you request it we can write you a donation recite which I will bring to Germany with my return on the 17th of September. (Please indicate on the transfernote if you would like to get the recite and that this is a donation for the orphanage)
My account details:
Name: Sebastian Hesse
BLZ: 700 202 70
Nr: 46774876
IBAN: DE39700202700046774876
Swift (BIC): HYVEDEMMXXX
note: Name, Donation, recite yes or no
I wont ask you for any specific amount of money, just send as much as you feel comfortable with. But please tell others from this site and the food problem and hopefully we will solve this crisis together!
Thank you very much for your help
Basi
P.s. if you would like to make a bigger donation (above 150$) you can send it directly to Ruth via Western Union, please contact me or Ruth by mail or phone in case you want to do so:
Me: 002503726133 / hesse.sebastian@gmail.com
Ruth: admin@anotherhope.org
peace of mind
As we have no electricity in the orphanage my rhythm gets quite adjusted to the natural one. At 7pm the sun is down and this means total darkness here;
most nights we have clouds so there isn’t even the moon to shine.
After some reading (the Zanzibar chest, I highly recommend it!) with a petroleum lamp I go to sleep around 9. Together with the healthy food and swimming in the lake everyday its really giving my soul and body some rest; I enjoy it very much!
The kids rise with dawn at 5.30 and this is mostly the time I wake up as well.
Then I check some medical cases in my books, have breakfast and take the half hour walk to the clinic to arrive there at 8 am.
At first there is a one-hour staff meeting and then we start our rounds.
I work together with a young Doctor who is quite eager to teach me all about tropical medicine and at the end of the day I have a list of things to check for the next morning.
I cover the pediatric and internal medicine ward till noon and assist deliveries or operations after lunch. (if possible cesarean sections as I got somehow hooked on them)
right now I got the information that there are 2 babies waiting to get cut out so I better scrub in ☺
See you soon
Basi
a small step for the NASA…
..might be a giant leap for an Rwandan orphanage
Dear friends,
Thursday noon I received the ok from the orphanage to come and took the next bus to Kibuye. After 4 hours by bus it took another one-hour ride by motorbike along the shores of lake Kivu till I arrived at the “les esperance” orphanage.
This part of Rwanda (southwest) is very influenced by the 7th day Adventists, a Christian society that developed from the Protestants. They live according to rules that are a Jewish-Christian mix (no alcohol, no meat, Saturday is Sabbath, praise Jesus) and do most of the humanitarian aid-work in this region. If you have red “WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW WE WILL BE KILLED WITH OUR FAMILIES” you know the region; it is the Mugenero hospital (described in the first chapters) were I will work during the next weeks.
(I don’t know if I should recommend the book as it is pure violence and horror; describing real stories of Rwanda in ‘94)
The orphanage’s director, Victor- from Guatemala by origin, spent several years living in Germany. Running “les esperance” since almost 3 years now, his plan is to make it self sufficient within the next six. Caring for 101 children, it is mostly important for him to become independent from foreign donations, as they hardly offer a sustainable income.
Provided with a lot of land he wants to start exporting dried fruits, serving a good running marked in the western world. Situated in one of the most beautiful landscapes I ever saw, his second project is building a hotel at the lake’s beach.
This is a perfect example of how important it is for one to realize and use the potential of the given situation in Africa. This man is quite special in the way he thinks and acts and I am very happy to have the chance to learn at this place.
A second unique circumstance at “les esperance” is the cooperation with EWB (engineers without borders). Since 6 years they regularly visit the place, constructing and enhancing their inventions to make a living at a place without electricity and running water. During my stay the group from the NASA was around, currently working on facilities to dry fruit.
It was very inspiring to discuss with those guys the technical solutions for the problems we will face in Uganda and they were all willing to help our project.
One of the first things will be to build their water purification system.
It would be too big and powerful for “Another Hope” right now (providing a maximum of 5000 liters of clean water daily), but it will be a fine solution for the place to build. I also made contact with a Rwandan engineer (“one of best you can get in Africa” according to NASA sources studying in Uganda who was eager to visit our place and help with the construction.
Besides the awesome technology, the cooperation with Huston brings such nice circumstances as the recorded CD from the orphanage spinning around the earth in the ISS with the team of international astronauts dancing to it.
update
YoY and thanks for visiting my Blog
Anyone keeping up with this site will have noticed that I didn’t write as much since staying in Kigali and there were no new photos for a while.
The reason is that this city actually doesn’t offer too much so write about or take pictures of. Everything is quite sterile. I meet a lot of very interesting people though (Engineers, a psychiatrist helping traumatized people, all different kinds of NGO workers and of course: Rwandans and their life-story)
After spending some time in the hospital here in Kigali I learned that it isn’t really what I came to Africa for. It’s a pretty big and decent institution, offering high class medicine. In my department of Gynecology I probably see the same things as I would in any European clinic; excluding the case of a prolaps that has been untreated since 1956…
So with being not really happy with my current situation I took a look around.
Staying in contact with a American group from “Engineers Without Borders” I heared about their project in western Rwanda.
They are helping an orphanage near lake Kivu with technical improvements and this is a nice opportunity to get known to their inventions.
It will help me to learn about technical solutions for a lot of the problems we will face when building the orphanage in Nansana. (The also offered all their help once the project reaches the stage of construction.)
There is also a hospital near by and according to them it is offering a lot of what I would be interested to learn.
So now I wrote a bunch of mails and wait for their answers, keeping up optimism I think it will all work out…
I am very much looking forwards to get out of the city, in any case I will do so!
If its this clinic or another, there are loads of intersting projects out there
About current politics in Rwanda: this Blog is about my journey and to help the orphanage in Uganda, politics isn’t really the point.
So now I am waiting for the responses to my mails and look forwards to see new places ☺
With the best wishes to where ever you are
Peace,
Basi
P.s.: There was a quite interesting discussion with a doctor at the clinic:
He told me that it is his aim to introduce in vitro fertilization here in Rwanda – home to approximately 10.1 million people it supports the densest population in continental Africa. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda)
His arguments:
1) we should use the advances of modern medicine everywhere in the world, not only in countries where people can effort it
2) it is highly important for gaining a social status in Rwanda to have children; families without are excluded from society and suffer badly from it – besides from the grief of not being able to have a child
3) people all over Africa don’t use contraceptives fearing that this would unable the to have children for ever. With showing that medicine can help against being infertile it could encurage people to use contraceptives, letting them know that there is a “cure” for their anticipated side effect
I would love to hear your statements to this topic, please leave your comments in case you have a opinion.
new plans
Hi there,
after getting some rest I spend the last days with some administrative tasks.
Blaise came into the city to help me finding a spot in the university hospital of Kigali. Starting from Monday I will work in the department of Gynecology and Obstetrics as a intern doctor, nightshifts included! ☺
(before more people ask: nope, I haven’t completed my studies of medicine. But me and Blaise had a talk with the professor and he was convinced that my knowledge will be sufficient to start in this position… for that I just love the Department of Pathology in Pécs, its really amazing what they taught us there.
Anyways, I organized some reading material about Gynecology to work through)
First thing this morning I went to the clinic to hand over all kind of documents they asked from me. As only some of the doctors and almost none of the patients speak English, I bought an audio course in French and will spend the following days studying it. (My week of speaking Spanish in Uganda pays of here as it got me back in the system of roman language)
My plan for the weekend is to travel with Blaise up to the north of Rwanda to visit his family and the national park “des volcans”. It is the site where Dian Fossey was living with the Gorillas for many years and tourists are invited to track those big apes – for the insane price of 500$!?!
DAMN… but as I red there is a cheaper possibility of Gorilla tracking – how and where I won’t publish before I did it ☺
The rest of the day I will spend searching a better opportunity to live in Kigali, so far I stay in a Hotel and even though they made me quite a good offer for the month I would like to search some cheaper place. (…which isn’t easy as Kigali is a really expensive city)
I am also thinking of visiting the genocide memorial here – but as I know that those things tend to touch me quite intensively I don’t know yet if I should really do it.
…I head of into the city center now to see what the day will bring
US bureaucracy & Rwandan friendship
Wow, what a day!
For the first time in my life I was allowed to be part in the wonder of birth.
It is simply amazing to see a very small but very real human coming freshly into this world.
My approach of simply taking the chance and going to the Rwinkanwavu Clinic of Partners in Health found different kinds of approval.
On the one hand there is the Rwandan staff who welcomed me exceptionally friendly. Especially Dr. Blaise, who invited me not only to work with him but also to live with him in his house was a pure pleasure to meet!
On the other hand there was the American staff that was quite critically about my arrival. Somehow they couldn’t handle the idea of someone just coming to learn. They considered it highly offensive that I didn’t go through the “normal” ways of applying through their headquarter in Boston.
(Well… its not like I never wrote to them, I just never received an answer before actually coming here)
Even though the chief of medical staff (a Rwandan) allowed me to stay and work in the clinic, I was told this afternoon that they (the Americans) don’t want to see me around any more.
Of course I understand their worries about patient care and that’s actually the point I appreciate most about the work of Partners in Health.
I respect their wish to keep things in the right order and not to let potentially dangerous and harmful influence enter their system.
Any organization has to fight a lot of problems, especially when working here in Africa. Partners in Health is really doing an excellent job with providing health care in the developing world and that was my reason why I wanted to see it with my own eyes. Their organization has become quite big and famous nowadays and they probably tons of requests from people with the desire to work with them. Of course they cant just invite anybody, but common – we are here right in the middle of Africa! Its not like anyone would travel to the far out eastern region of Rwanda. As I was told this is the bloody first time that someone really comes here! For gods sake, when we really want to help those people living here we should work together and appreciate everyone’s willingness to contribute.
And its not like I would need anyone’s care or time. I came here on my own, have my own accommodation and get along perfectly with the local staff.
I have found very nice doctors who would really like to work with me and I wouldn’t disturb any American with anything but the fact that I didn’t take the official way. I didn’t even eat with the Musungus here! So what the f*** is your problem? And by the way, Dr. Farmer didn’t write any mails to Haiti…
Anyways, as I don’t feel walking around here as a persona non grata I will leave them tomorrow.
Blaise helped me to find a place in the department of Gynecology & Obstetrics in Kigali and I am really looking forwards to work there!
So good night world and please search for any sticks up your ass and remove it in case you find some
