Gorilla Doctors

Category: About MGVP, Inc. | Date: Dec 16 2008 | By: Dr. Jan Ramer for gorilladoctors

One of our project’s main goals is to promote a healthier environment for people as well as gorillas.  This is the one-health medicine concept.  We can prevent medical problems in the gorillas by preventing problems in other species, including domestic animals, other wildlife, and humans–even entire ecosystems.  As vets, we can deal with the animals, but in order to reach out to people, we need partners with expertise in other areas, including human health.  Toward this end, MGVP has three partner projects: the Art of Conservation (AoC), CCHIPS (Comprehensive Community Health Initiative Projects), and Farm Health.

Our hope is that one day these partners will operate independently as separate non-profit organizations.  But for now, MGVP serves as their administrative home base, which means I play a coordinating role.  This is something I enjoy, though there never seems to be enough time to keep up with everything that’s going on.

Eric Mutabazi and Julie Ghrist with children at AoC art class.

Julie Ghrist runs Art of Conservation.  She started down this unusual path about a year ago, offering free art classes to both adults and children who live near the gorilla park.  She wanted to encourage artistic expression with a theme: one-health.  MGVP doesn’t have an outreach program, so Julie focused some of her classes on what the gorilla doctors do—and why.  The artwork produced in these classes taught us all something new.  For example, I was impressed that the local community had such a clear idea of what it looks like to protect or destroy nature.  Protection means planting trees or taking tourists to see gorillas.  Images of destruction include guns, wildfires, and snares.

AoC staff member Valerie Akuredusenge dances with class.

Julie had an uphill battle at first.  She hired a small team of Rwandans to help her administer the program and offer art instruction.  Her classes were not about job training, meaning their focus was not on earning money.  Adult students were reluctant at the start, while children expressed themselves more readily, though it took several weeks before they felt comfortable experimenting with different art media.  Before long,  however, even the adults were producing imaginative, interesting art.

Art of Conservation director Julie Ghrist sets up a community art show at Kabwende School.

After hosting several community art shows displaying samples from her classes, Julie’s project caught the eye of park and school district officials.  They asked her to write a proposal for integrating her work into the curriculum—a major task.  Now Julie and her Rwandan staff will bring their unique art-based approach to conservation education, conservation learning through art, to the schools near the gorilla park, starting in January 2009.  For more, check out her blog, Art for Gorillas (link) and website, Art of Conservation (link.)

CCHIPS project director Heidi Reukauf with friends at Shingiro Health Center near Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda.

Heidi Reukauff runs the Shingiro Health Clinic rehabilitation project for CCHIPS, which is funded by Wyman Worldwide Health Partners.  I visited Heidi at work few weeks ago with two friends visiting from the U.S.  The three of us were much impressed.  I hadn’t been to the center in many months, and it was great to see the progress that had been made.  I noticed a number of pleasing improvements to the facility–brightly painted walls in the wards, cheery curtains, an expanded vegetable garden for mobile patients and their visiting families.

 Shingiro Health Center in March 2008.

I also sensed a positive atmosphere and attitude among the staff.  We met two women who coordinate nutrition every day for a hundred malnourished children.  They were all smiles, even after hours of cooking. Heidi explained that mothers with malnourished children visit the clinic each week to learn how to combine available local foods to create a balanced diet.

 Shingiro Health Center in November 2008.

Like anyone helping out in Rwanda’s health clinic system, Heidi faces a huge challenge.  Historically, people here avoid health centers, preferring instead to visit    traditional healers.  If they go to a health center, it’s as a last resort.  The level of healing in most of the centers is reputedly very poor: many people don’t leave alive. One big problem is that Rwanda lacks trained nurses, as well as ambulances to take seriously ill people to a hospital served by a doctor.  The CCHIPS approach is to develop a model for rehabilitating small clinics like Shingiro, both physically and functionally.  The project supplements the salaries of key staff and supports training for all.  Heidi’s job is to carry out the improvements in a way that meshes with the bureaucracy of the district health care system, builds confidence among local people, and raises the overall standard of health care.

Musician at Shingiro Health Center.

As we toured the clinic, Heidi chatted in Kinyarwanda with various patients and staff.  There were three women with new babies in the maternity ward, a place that was both empty and filthy the last time I visited.  We learned that the number of people participating in family planning—also a government initiative—has been increasing steadily.  In addition, there was a full house in the classroom devoted to the weekly HIV-AIDs awareness program.  As we left, a young man played a song for us on an oddly-shaped hand instrument that sounded like a guitar.  Though he may have been hoping to be paid for his music, he seemed happy enough with our smiles.

Farm Health project director John Huston takes a blood sample from a cow on a small farm near Volcanoes National Park.

In contrast to Julie and Heidi, John is just beginning his Farm Health project.  He’s a new instructor at the agricultural school, a perfect base of operations for extension-type farm work.  John’s overall goal is to help Rwandans and Ugandans live healthier lives by improving their farming practices.  In turn, he hopes to help protect the gorillas by adopting a one-health approach.  John has experience running agricultural extension programs for farmers in Mississippi, and he’s visited Central Africa several times before, so he has some idea of what to expect.  Right now, he’s thinking of setting up a series of demonstration units whose subjects range from biogas production for energy to small-scale dairy farming for cheese production.  He’s also planning on starting a blog soon.  It will be fun for all of us to learn new things as he gets going.

Example of artwork banner from AoC class.

I’m often asked how it’s possible for the community of people living around the gorilla park to protect an animal they’ve never seen, and probably never will.  I think one-health medicine is part of the answer.  If our programs work, people’s lives are will be healthier because of the gorillas, and they’re more likely to want to help protect them—or at least refrain from actions that hurt them.

New mother in the maternity ward at Shingiro Health Clinic, November 2008.

There’s also the fact that gorillas are ingrained in local culture and economy.  Gorilla logos are everywhere.  Tourist lodges and hotels provide jobs and support local trade.  Trackers, rangers, and guides live in the community.  The drawings from Julie’s art classes demonstrate that children not only know what a bamboo and rope snare looks like, they also know gorillas get caught in them.  So although the local people may never see an actual mountain gorilla, they do understand something about them.  Now it’s important that all who share their habitat feel the benefits of mountain gorilla conservation.