first impressions

kigali is clean! there are no animals in the main streets nor are there teeming masses of people. the house we live in, at projet san francisco, is suuuuuuper nice. running water (hot and cold), seven bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 minutes from where I’ll be working, and with some really great house-mates (taylor and tyronza, who are interns at psf). there is a housekeeper who comes by every other day, who makes my bed (!) and does our laundry. i haven’t worked much in the last 3 days. we’re in the middle of rotating through the different departments at the project – data, medical (the clinic), lab, and admin. there is a lot going on here, and we’re supposed to get a taste of how things work before we jump in to what we are actually doing for the summer. stay tuned for what that actually is (we start in a little less than two weeks).

my second impression: i'm still in a developing country. you just have to step off the main street into one of the alleys, where there are houses (which double as vegetable stands), to realize that kigali is still the capital city of a country which is in the lowest tier of the world’s economies. there are still kids dying here from malnutrition and diarrheal illnesses. and, you still rejoice when an HIV-negative two-year-old comes in with parents who are HIV-positive.