The Drums of Change: December 2011
We noticed the change immediately as we turned onto the road going up the mountain to the Village Health Works Clinic. Gone was the deeply and dangerously rutted curved road that sometimes veered perilously close to the edge of a steep downward slope I remembered from our visit of two years ago. The road was now smooth and welcoming. It took a mere 20 minutes instead of the hour it had previously taken to traverse the eleven kilometers to the clinic.
As we traveled up this recently restored road, I thought how soon the old road would be forgotten. 160 villagers built the old road with nothing more than hoes, pickaxes, machetes, and their bare hands. The villagers’ work had made it possible, with extraordinary effort, for people to drive and push trucks up the mountainside laboriously transporting construction materials, a fifty-thousand-liter water tank, a generator, medicines, medical equipment, and many other necessities required to build and operate the clinic.
We took another and final turn and saw a long row of trees, bright flowers, and two flagpoles one flying the Burundian flag the other the American flag. We had arrived at the Village Health Works Clinic.
Over the next couple of days I watched men, women, and children filing into the clinic seeking medical attention. I thought back to November 7, 2007 when a telephone call came to Deo in New York from Kigutu. It was his co-founder, Dr. Dziwe Ntaba, who had taken time off from his work as an emergency room physician here to help organize the clinic in Kigutu. The purpose of his call was to tell Deo that the clinic was now open and that he had treated their first patients. Now five years later, the Village Health Works Clinic has over 180 employees and seen more that 60,000 patients. This view reminded me of the words of a Burundian villager when he showed up at the clinic in good health and was asked why he had come. “I have come to see America,” he said.
On December 28, 2011 the two day second annual Community Forum opened. I watched the village men, women, and children along with the Village Health Works staff and invited guests gather together in the Community Center summoned by the beating of the Kigutu drummers.
The focus of the forum this year was education and the improvement of the schools for the children of Kigutu. In my presentation to the forum I talked about the importance of art in education and society. I have often listened to the young drummers and girls’ chorus in Kigutu and looked at the beautiful Burundian baskets. 
I argued that these children’s talents and skills should be developed in an art program within the school’s education curricula. The performance arts in the schools will continue to unify the community through singing, dancing, and drumming as the performances at the clinic are now so successfully doing.
As a visual artist I also argued that it is also important to offer classes in drawing and sculpture. These programs will encourage a continuity of Burundi’s rich cultural traditions as well as encourage the children’s talents and individuality.
One of the most meaningful activities during my two weeks in Kigutu was accompanying Louise Braverman, the architect for the Women’s Health Pavilion, and her Burundian assistant, Arnaud Niyongabo, as they visited local quarries looking for indigenous stone for the Pavilion. Her design for the pavilion has been influenced by traditional Burundian architecture that “grows out of the landscape and aligns to the contours of the earth.”
We also spent a morning with Deo as he showed Louise around the land owned by Village Health Works. He discussed with her the master plan and his dreams for the future. I looked out over the beautiful hills and mountains that lead the eye down to Lake Tanganyika and I thought about the new road and the plans to provide a hospital, good education for the young members of the Kigutu community, and meaningful employment for the villagers of Kigutu. With extraordinarily hard work, determination, courage, and vision I believe that all those who work and support Village Health Works will make these new drums of change become a reality.
Nancy Wolf
