The dense darkness of night-time in rural northern Rwanda completely obliterates the immense hills that surround the village of Muyanza. But piercing this complete darkness a few times a week are two pinpricks of light, from the headlights of the village’s lone ambulance. When someone needs immediate evacuation to the hospital, the ambulance races up out of the valley, bumping over a poorly maintained dirt road. Faustin Musabyimana, the driver, prays that heavy rains haven’t washed away the makeshift bridges made of wooden planks laid over deep ravines.
This ambulance is the strongest link between the isolated villages scattered across the green hills and the government regional hospital on the main road. Four Kenyan sisters from the Little Daughters of St Joseph Congregation run the Muyanza Health Centre for the Catholic Diocese of Byomba.
Sr Margaret Ekali Londung’a manages the health centre, along with Sr Margaret Wanjiku Njuguna, a nurse, and Sr Rose Wanjiru Kimani, a pharmacist, while Sr Martha Chebon Jeptarus runs a Catholic nursery school. Raising funds to buy the ambulance from their international congregation was one of their first projects when they took over management of the health center in 2001. “There are regions [of Rwanda] where there is good communications and fertile areas, and they are easy to reach, and there are also difficult areas,” said Londung’a, a nurse who is also the community animator, or community director. “Our spirituality as the Little Daughters of St. Joseph is going to the needy, the poorest of the poor, the marginalized. After Mother [Superior Licia Rebonato] visited many places, she chose the hardest, the most difficult, the most marginalized, and that’s why we ended up in Muyanza.”
