My first non-vacation trip abroad was to Cambodia 3 years ago. Volunteering abroad was something I had always imagined would be both fulfilling and exciting, perhaps because of the countless missionary trips I saw happening in church growing up. Which is why I jumped at the chance to go on a 2-week volunteer trip to Cambodia in the summer following my first year of undergrad. Due to scheduling conflicts though, I wasn’t able to go until the summer after my third year. At this point, I would like to think I was a little less naïve and slightly more woke. I realized that what I had signed up for was in essence, voluntourism, which I now understood as problematic. I had already paid for the trip, which was non-refundable, so I ended up having to go because African dads don’t play with money like that. Over the course of the two weeks, we built a house for a family of four, taught English lessons in a few random schools, planted a bunch of trees, and fed & bathed some elephants. I interacted with locals and got to learn a little about Cambodian culture, but I had some serious cognitive dissonance about my place there. I don’t discredit the work that we did, the family really needed the house we built but for the most part, I felt like what I was doing was serving this internal need to ‘make the world a better place’ instead of contributing to the community in a sustainable and meaningful way. I felt a lot of that ‘saviour complex’ I had read so much about. After this trip, I still pictured myself doing international work in some capacity, but I knew I didn’t want to do it this way.
Growing up in Nigeria for the first 9 years of my life really shaped the kind of medicine I wanted to practice. Even as a kid, my motivations to pursue medicine was never about money, prestige, or career stability. At most, these things were an afterthought or better yet, the icing on the cake. To me, medicine was about serving people at a point in their lives where they are unable to help themselves - “medical education does not exist to provide students with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community” - Paul Farmer in Mountains Beyond Mountains (a great read by the way). As a medical student here, I know that there are Canadians who are struggling and don’t have access to adequate healthcare when they need it most. I know that advocating for the needs of these Canadians is absolutely necessary and that it’s right at my doorstep. I know that as a future physician, I will advocate for these needs, but that my career will also inevitably involve medical humanitarianism outside Canada, the majority of which I hope will be in sub-Saharan Africa.
Recognizing that I wouldn’t be able to do such work until I was a fully certified physician, which for me, would most likely be in the next 8-9 years, I wanted to at least start somewhere. I wanted to start to get an idea of what life would be like living and working abroad so that down the line, I can hopefully approach such work with less idealistic views. Which is why I was really excited about the opportunity to intern in Rwanda for 3 months this summer. I and 5 other Canadians are working with an organization called Ubumwe Community Center (UCC). The focus of my work has been to develop an effective way of educating children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) at the center.
The term ‘center’ doesn’t really do the organization justice as it’s pretty extensive. There’s a primary school with about 600 students, a daycare, a rehabilitation center, a vocational skills wing (sewing, music, computer skills courses, etc.) and another wing for children with IDD, called transitional classes. ‘Transitional’ because students with IDD would initially start here before being transferred to the primary school or vocational skills program. Clearly, I had a lot of choices as to where I wanted to spend my time and I actually had no idea what I was going to commit to prior to arriving. I had been leaning towards doing some work in IDD though, especially after some exposure to the topic during my second semester in my first year of med school. I got here a little later than the rest of my teammates so after chatting with them and doing a little exploring around the center, I decided that I would be most useful in the transitional classes, mostly because no one else had really committed to working there yet. I spent the first few days observing the routine of the class, what subjects were being taught and how. I spoke with the teachers for some time to get a sense of what they felt they needed the most help with. Initially, I was asked to teach on my first day, as had a lot of my other teammates, but I really didn’t know anything about teaching children with IDD, so I opted not to. Even though I felt like I was letting the teachers down, I thought it would be better to watch how things were done first. This way, whatever I gathered from my observations would not only inform the initiatives I hoped to develop but would allow them to be relevant and sustainable in the long run.
While a substantial amount of our time is spent at the center – 8 am to 4 pm, five days/week – given that we’re here for 3 months, we have had several chances to explore Rwanda and get acquainted with her culture. All 6 of us live with Rwandan host families, which has allowed us to quickly get used to the cuisine and lifestyle. My host family has been very welcoming, and I have two adorable host brothers. We’re based in Gisenyi, a city located near Lake Kivu, which allows us to spend some of our weekends by the beach feasting on brochettes (skewers), chilling, or playing volleyball (which I suck at terribly). We’ve also taken a few trips to Kigali (the capital) and Nyamata (a city in the eastern province) mostly to check out a new branch of the center.
There has been a lot to get used to – transportation (we mostly get around on moto taxis which was a little scary at first but now I’m cruising), a few cultural norms (it’s rude to eat on the street, you’re expected to pay the full bill for someone if you invite them to come out with you, wait to negotiate with your moto taxi until after you have gotten to your destination), that the electricity will go out every once in a while, bucket showers (mostly cold), having to hand-wash some of my clothes, and the non-existence of Wi-Fi at home or at the center (we all ended up having to buy unlimited monthly data for $34 CAD, which honestly isn’t bad considering what it would cost in Canada). Despite having to get used to a few things, I actually feel like I settled into things quite quickly and this is mostly thanks to all the heads up I got from my other teammates and also maybe partly because of the familiarity of having lived a similar lifestyle growing up in Nigeria.
Although 3 months seems a little long sometimes, I feel like being here for this long makes it feel less like a vacation and more like home. The first time I realized this was when we went to Nyamata overnight and I found myself missing my home and host family back in Gisenyi. The other members of my team have been great, which is honestly such a blessing. We all get along so well and having each other allows us to sometimes escape into the comfort of social interactions we’d have with friends in Canada. There are times when I miss being back in Canada with friends, family, and my SO. Times when I crave certain types of food. Days when I feel exhausted. Days when I’m not so motivated to go to the center and work an 8-hr day. Initially, I sort of just forced myself to mentally push through, later realizing that it’s completely fine to feel this way, after all, I am living on a completely different continent with a relatively new lifestyle. I do occasionally have to remind myself of why I decided to intern abroad for 3 months which is to start becoming familiar and informed about the region I hope to work in some day.
It’s only been a little over a month and I have already gained a wealth of knowledge – a little bit of sign language, some Kinyarwanda (one of the languages spoken here), how to communicate with teachers, and how to initiate and implement projects with input from those who will benefit most from them. With a little under two months left, there is still a lot to contribute and even more to learn and I hope to share more in a subsequent post.