Muraho! -- by Zach S.

Zach Siddall

ED3 -- Muhanga District, Southern Province

Muraho! My name is Zack Siddall and I am one of the three new GAD representatives from the most recent Peace Corps group Education 3. I, along with my fellow ED3’ers Chinelo Nwosu and Sarah Epplin, are very excited to join the already sterling line up of PCVs on the GAD committee. We look forward to bringing an onslaught of new ideas and fresh energy to the nationwide GAD meeting this month in Kigali. 

Before working with the Peace Corps here in Rwanda I was blessed to have amble opportunity to do gender equality work with my previous employer Habitat for Humanity. Through Habitat I worked with a program called Women’s Build which focused on breaking down the stereotypical gender roles so often associated with the construction field of work. With the exception of a few males, such as myself, providing moderate amounts of technical support the entire Habitat house was built by women. The comradely and confidence that blossomed between the women I had the opportunity to work with over that 2-3 month window of time it would take to build each house was amazing. At first these female volunteers would hang on my every word. By week two I was demoted to the coffee and donuts errand boy. Then I recall one time while working on a house (about a month in) I reached down to grab my hammer only to find it had been stealthy stolen from my tool belt by a female volunteer who not a month earlier confessed she had never touched a hammer let alone even thought of building an entire house. Now she was swinging away, knocking 8 penny nails into hard pine like it was a hot knife through butter.

I hope to bring some of that Habitat mentality here to Rwanda. Rwanda is a beautiful country and now, here in 2012, is the best time to be doing gender work in this rapidly developing country. Every day women are breaking down the traditional gender roles in Rwanda. You see more and more women entering the work force and obtaining higher degrees of education. However, Rwanda (and the rest of the world for that matter) still has a long way to go before everyone is truly treated equally. That’s where we come in. During my service I intend to focus my GAD work on building partnerships. Whether that be on a nationwide scale by building relationships between Peace Corps Rwanda and other NGOs/the Rwandan Government. Or simply working on the village to village level by connecting people through cooperatives and creating gender equality dialog sessions. I’m very excited to join this wonderful project and I look forward to the good work that will happen in the weeks to come.  

We're hard at work!

This weekend, we had our quaterly meeting at the Peace Corps Office in Kigali, the capitol of Rwanda and most beautiful and cleanest city on the continent of Africa.
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Past Successes:

*Creating the committee and writing the by laws

*The GAD Blog and regular SOMA contributions

*Having GAD represented at all Peace Corps trainings and writing lesson plans for each training 

*Creating the GLOW/BE Committee to support GLOW/BE Camps

*Creating the GLOW/BE VAST Grant Workbook

*Conducting and analyzing the results of the all volunteer GAD survey

*Coordinating the field testing of the translated Life Skills Manual

Current Projects:

*Creating a GAD Manual focused on project ideas for adults

*Forging a partnership between Peace Corps and Ni Nyampinga magazine

*Promoting and updating the GAD blog

*Collecting stories from volunteers to make senior staff aware of the prevalence of sexual harassment

*Working with PSN to support volunteer who experience sexual harassment by designing a yearly retreat

Future Project Ideas:

*Working with PC GAD committees in other countries to create an international PC GAD forum

*Making GAD resources more accessible to volunteers through an online forum

*Creating ways to help volunteers celebrate International Women's Day in their communities

*Creating discussion questions for volunteers to discuss monthly at their regional meetings.  Encouraging inter-regional dialogues once or twice a year to discuss GAD related issues.

mackenzie's eyes are naturally that piercing (L to R: Alma, Lucy, Mackenzie, Chinelo, Gelsey)

resident jokesters (Zach and Chinelo)

awkward candid (L to R: Zach, Joel, Tashiya, Hope, Sarah D, Sarah E.)

all good! 

pamela's happy face, very happy face :)

Gelsey gets down to business

we are serious (L to R: Joel, Pamela, Tashiya)

HPV Vaccinations and Women and Girls' Health by Tashiya G.

Tashiya Gunesekera

Education 2 -- Rubavu District, Western District

During the examination period last term, I noticed there were a group of my female students in a classroom listening to the Animatrice and another woman who was talking very seriously. The boys were sitting outside on that rare sunny day. Out of curiosity, I asked one of my male teachers as to what was going on.             

“They are checking the girls over 16 to see who has SIDA,” he replied. I nodded and went along my way. By SIDA, he meant AIDS. I was a bit confused and questioned myself as to why only the female students were being checked for HIV/ AIDS, but thought it was more likely they were checking to see which girls were pregnant. I had heard of this being done from other PCVs. Later, I saw female students coming out of the classroom applying cotton swabs to their upper arms, meaning a Vaccine. Weeks later, I brought it up with my Animatrice, Veronique. After I refreshed her memory, I asked her what the meeting and vaccine was for.

            “It’s a type of vaccination,” She said trying to find the name of it, “for Cancer.”         

“For what type of cancer?” I asked, surprised thinking the only type of Cancer that I knew of that women got vaccines for was HPV, Cervical Cancer. Veronique couldn’t remember and referred me to Vestine and Immacule, two nuns at my site, who were nurses at the Health Center.

Later that evening, after some debate as to the actual name, I came to the understanding the vaccine was indeed the HPV vaccine, which prevents infection of certain species of human papillomavirus. This virus is associated with the development of cervical cancer, genital warts, and some less common cancers. Many women in the developing world that get cancer do not receive proper medical care. Therefore, this vaccine can contribute greatly to stronger women’s health in the developing world. 

All female students over the age of 16 at my school were given the first dose of the vaccine in March of 2012, and they were told the next dose was to follow around the time I was asking questions, in May of 2012, two months later.

I found this news compelling as this vaccine in the United States has not been made compulsory due to the high cost of the vaccine ($120/ dose for a total of $360), and also due to some conservative groups who argued that the vaccine would cause girls to start engaging in sexual activity at a younger age following the vaccine. There is also some discussion about how effective the vaccine is because it does not protect against all the viruses that can cause Cervical Cancer. For all these reasons, I found it interesting to know that my school in Rwanda, which even for Rwanda is under-developed, was choosing to vaccinate many of their female students.

Later on, I found out through one of my students, that each student was also given a small booklet in Kinyarwanda that explained the vaccine, the purpose for it, and what it protected against. This was from the Ministry of Health and it was complete with diagrams of the women’s reproductive system and photographs of smiling Rwandan girls.

Coming from the United States, I have seen many differences in regards to the way women are treated in Rwandan culture. For example, I know that many female students have to do a lot of housework after school, which prevents them from being able to study and attend clubs. This is not always the case for boys. In my classes, overall the better performing students are boys. It’s almost impossible to get the majority of girls to talk loud enough to be heard because they’re taught to be quiet. There are obvious Gender Inequalities, even though Rwanda is considered by some to be an Africa success story for Gender Equality (See Note at end of post). Yet, to me this is a sign that the Government of Rwanda is trying seriously to promote women’s health issues and roles in society.

Note: A good article that looks at the discussion of Gender Equality in Rwanda, both how far it’s come and how far it has to go: http://thinkafricapress.com/rwanda/women-gender-equality