Momentum!

The work in Rwanda continues, perhaps even more so than when I am not there. Because now we have started to gain momentum!

Over the past year, our ambassadors have held meetings for young women in their villages where they live, together they have met over a hundred young women. They have been talking about a healthy lifestyle, that is, the importance of exercise and also doing fun things, so they have been running games and playing soccer and more. Then they talked about healthy food, why it is healthy and which ingredients are good to eat.

But what they missed was being able to practice their new knowledge of healthy food. So now the ambassadors have taken turns cooking together with their students and then eating together.

First up was Francine, who two weeks ago was allowed to borrow a school hall to cook ratatouille with about forty young women. She was helped by the other ambassadors and Mudi was also there. He brought his acrobat partner from Rwandan Acrobats, Faradji, and when the participants realized he was an acrobat, he got to show off some of his skills to everyone's delight!

Mudi said that even the local leaders came and were very happy with the activity. They promised to be of support in the future.

The following Sunday it was Ledivine's turn and she was also allowed to stay in a school hall, both of these days were on a Sunday. She had about thirty participants and they also cooked ratatouille and ate together! Everyone thought it tasted good and also this time a local leader came (young. like a local municipal politician) who also praised the activity. But unfortunately Faradji didn't come like that, no acrobatic display this time....

But what was so fun to hear was that all the participants have started to greet each other with our motto;

Happy bodies – Happy people! The ambassadors call out Happy bodies and the participants answer Happy People! It's starting to become a common greeting between them all!

We provide the ambassadors with new knowledge, now we have added information on dental health, Keep Rwanda clean and what alcohol and smoking do to the body. We also talk about advice on why it is not good to hit children, which is very common in Rwanda.

All ambassadors come from different villages so we have a wide spread!

When we last met, they told us about the disease kwashiorkor, which is quite common in Rwanda. It is a disease that affects children who do not get enough protein and then develop edema and swollen bellies. The children then receive help with nutrition, but unfortunately the mothers receive no further training on how to avoid malnutrition in the future!

Below is an extract from The Guardian from 2012, but the problem of malnutrition is still great.

https://www.ncda.gov.rw/updates/news-detail/rwanda-launched-a-two-year-multisectoral-plan-to-accelerate-stunting-reduction

https://www.who.int/about/accountability/results/who-results-report-2020-mtr/country-story/2022/empowering-rwandan-communities-to-reduce-chronic-malnutrition

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/19/rwanda-malnutrition-children

Dr Agnes Binagwaho, the charismatic Rwandan health minister and a paediatrician by training, says that in many ways her country is a victim of its own success. "We have much better child survival, but in the poorer, less educated families we have less uptake of family planning. The result is that there is not enough food for all those children who a few years ago would not have survived."

There was, she says, also a problem specific to Rwanda. "We do not know why, but for many years our measuring charts were simply wrong. Those children shown as fine were often malnourished, those as malnourished were acutely malnourished, and so on." She noticed only in 2008, when she was comparing Rwandan growth charts with those from Europe. In Rwanda the crisis was literally hidden.

But Binagwaho is optimistic. "It is not about food aid. We do not need food in Rwanda. We need education." However it is, she says, about what is being grown. Cassava root, ground to a flour and cooked up as a doughy paste, is a traditional staple. It fills children up but has almost no nutritional value.

"It's also about how they treat vegetables. Families cook carrots too long, for example, so there is no vitamin A left." Along with charities like Save the Children, the government is running kitchen-garden projects to educate the mostly female farmers in how to get the best from their land. They are distributing new seed strains that are fortified with particular vitamins.