As a Peace Corps Volunteer of color, I experience unique challenges during my service. One such challenge is when host country nationals question my nationality as American. My skin is not white; therefore, I don’t fit their stereotype of what a “typical” American looks like.

All Maternal and Child Health Volunteers in Rwanda work on behalf of the First 1000 Days Program, which addresses the issue of childhood stunting that results from chronic malnutrition. This includes a wide umbrella of target areas such as preventing childhood illness, improving levels of nutrition, and increasing attendance levels of antenatal care visits.

Over the past few months, my counterpart Xaverine and I have visited each of the 25 villages in our health center’s catchment area.

At the end of each term, all Rwandan schools have a marking period.

"Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking."
― Wangari Maathai

The room was silent, the head judge was announcing the third-place winner in Advanced level for the second annual Speak Up! competition. It wasn’t her.

This is a story of the transformation of 15 milk mothers to 15 community health leaders.

I recently finished reading former First Lady Michelle Obama’s stellar memoir, Becoming. In it she expressed her feelings about being an African-American in Africa when she visited Kenya with President Obama. Mrs. Obama writes: 

In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, in the Voyages of the Dawn Treader, to be precise, Aslan the Great Lion declares: “You have returned for a reason.  Your adventure begins now.”