Flower Power and Operation Smile, by Lucy S.

Lucy Sung
ED 2 - Gicumbi District, Northern Province

The Education 2 group is known as the “Big Group.” We started with 70 doe-eyed strangers at staging, some were lost along the way, and we gained some when Niger was evacuated. I’m not too sure where we’re at but it’s fifty-something, which is pretty darn good.

A weekend before in Kigali, some of us were bouncing off song ideas that we would blast in the background as we walk into the plane and take off into the blue blue sky. We had several good ones, ranging from “In My Life” by the Beatles 

Or of course, “Africa” by Toto. 

Our Close Of Service (COS) Conference is coming up and perhaps a song for our last conference  would be “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” by the Clash. This is a thought on many PCVs minds: should I stay? Should I go? What should I do?

For me, I’m ready to go home. My projects are wrapping up, most of my students will be graduating, my shoes are tied. I’m working on my graduate school applications and with it, the inevitable soul searching and replaying memories in my mind. Two memories come strongly to mind.

GLOW Club

Josee (GLOW Club member) and and Flaviah (aka Flavour Princess, GLOW Club President)

For one the earliest lessons in my GLOW Club at my school, College de Rushaki, we talked about self esteem. I’ve been dying to get some creative expression out of these students so after a quick lesson, we did a fairly common exercise called Flowers of Power. In the center of each flower, students wri te their name. Then on each petals, they write an adjective about themselves and glue it to their name, their Flower of Power. I showed them an example that I made for myself. Lucy: smart, creative, caring, etc…

I instructed the students to first write their adjectives on a piece of paper and show it to me or the GLOW President, Flaviah, before getting markers and construction paper.

At first, there was some confusion. Lilianne, brought me her paper and on it she wrote:

I am a girl.

I have hair.

I have eyes.

I have hands…

“Lilianne,” I said. “You must think of adjectives, words that describe you, that you are proud of and is true. For example, Lilianne, you are very intelligent.”

Lilianne grinned and rushed back to her seat and continued to write. I monitored the students until I realized, some had taken the example flower I had made and were copying the words I had written.

“Oya! Oya! (No! No!) These words must come from YOU. From your mind and from your heart.” I took the papers of these students and made them start again.

Many students now had a great first draft and I began dispensing the craft materials. Lilianne comes back with her new draft.

I am intelligent.

I have eyes.

I have toes.

I have black hair.

I stifle a groan and sit down with Lilianne for round three.

Operation Smile

The best helper! She's 4 years old, was teaching her how to write her name.

In March, I volunteered with Operation Smile, an international organization that surgically repairs cleft lips and palettes.

First a disclaimer, any opinions said here about Operation Smile are opinions of my own and not of the Peace Corps.

There are many offices of Operation Smile around the world and the South Africa chapter did a mission to Rwanda. It was sadly ironic when I was posting up flyers in my village announcing the dates when a neighbor came up to me.

Neighbor: “Umutetsi wa college afite uwana w’ibibari. Yapfuye uyumugitondo…” The cook of the College has a child with cleft lip. He died this morning.

Me: Hari umuntu undi afiti ibibari? Is there another person who has cleft lip?

Neighbor: BENSHI! Bara hari! Many people! There are many people!

I’ve never seen Rwandans in the village with cleft lips so I was surprised to hear that it was very common.

During the dates of the mission, other PCVs and I helped to register incoming families, get their meals on schedule (which was very difficult), and advocate for the Rwandans to the foreign staff. I do not want to criticize the work of Operation Smile, because it is so important in more ways than one can imagine, but there was some nonsense that left many PCVs frustrated. It was then I realized how the PC experience is so different from that of a summer intern or expat working for some multi-acronymed organization. We called the staff asking for basins, heated milk, clean water, all sorts of items that would not come to mind immediately to someone who didn’t live in the village like us. We talked to the patients and their families, many of them subsistence farmers from the Southern providence. It was the growing season so we talked about the corn in our gardens and plans to plant beans next.

While groups of patients were taken to the hospital, the other PCVs and I stayed behind and assisted the best we could. Even while sitting on the grass, or coloring books, I was always asked the same question, over and over: “What causes cleft lip? What causes cleft palette?” The other PCVs and I asked the staff, consulted the ever reliable Wikipedia, and could only tell the Rwandans, “No one sure, but it is a combination of genetics and environment.” It is very difficult to describe genetics in Kinyarwanda, but we managed by saying family history and biology.

The Rwandans had their own hypotheses but one thing was for sure, for a woman to have a child born with a visible deformatity like that is ostracizing. There was a teenage girl with a baby, she was kicked out of her home and shunned because her baby had a cleft lip and palette. There were many mothers who were they by themselves, not because the father had to work or be somewhere else, but because they were alone, completely. No wonder I never saw anyone with a clef lip in the villages, they are hidden. 

 One afternoon, a middle aged man accused all women for being at fault for giving birth to child with a cleft lip, that the woman had sinned.

“A woman’s body is like a garden, and her garden was not taken care of,” said the man.

A weathered looking mama stood up from her plastic lawn chair. “Well, every garden needs a farmer to grow plants, and if the garden is not good, then it is also the fault of the farmer!”

Oh snap.