All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [181]
I spoke for a while with this amazing, special woman (who has since become a close friend and collaborator), and then, when the moment was right, she took me over to meet the First Lady of Rwanda. Jeannette Kagame is a physically imposing presence and somewhat stoic, perhaps even dour. We exchanged a few polite words, but I couldn’t really pay attention because I was having an attack of static cling, and my silk dress was naughtily climbing ever upward! I know this because the First Lady’s aide-de-camp was on her knees behind me, pulling my dress down and off my backside. Hmmm … was it to protect my modesty or the decorum of the entire event? After all, I was smack dab at the front of the room, back turned to the crowd, a movie star chatting with the First Lady. What a lousy time for a bad case of hungry bum!
Better events followed. The most extraordinary drumming and dancing began, performed by the Inganzo Cultural Troupe, and I could feel the pain of earlier in the day being vibrated out of my chest. I was absolutely in awe. This is the Africa I believed in, its traditional culture and arts preserved and shining amid educated, empowered people talking smart about gender equality and development with an eye on seven generations ahead. Even though we were in a hotel’s spiffy ballroom, when I closed my eyes I was in the bush, around a fire, the sounds of the wild engulfing me. It was fabulous beyond description. The senator narrated each dance for me: Ah, this is the dance about millet, teaching and celebrating agricultural practices, valuing production to keep everyone fed. Ah, this is the dance for the herd, the grass at the end of their sticks is to dust off the herd. Ahhhh, this is the dance of women, celebrating their beautiful bodies! My gosh, I live for this stuff—it’s what I dreamed of in college!
That night when I closed my eyes and visions of broken skulls and bloodstained dresses welled up in my thoughts, I let the drums beat them out of my head. I slept pretty well and woke up curious about another day in this lush land.
At first light, we drove out to the airport and boarded a heifer of a government helicopter, a giant military thing with bench seating lining the length of the cabin. Some old Russian Mi-17, Dario later explained, rather confounded that I’d signed a release saying that a) I would fly in it, and b) neither I nor anyone in my family would be mad if it crashed. I was joining Rwanda’s minister of health, Dr. Jean Damascène Ntawukuliryayo, crisscrossing the small country to celebrate World Malaria Day with a tour of clinics and programs. The people here need them so badly. One in twelve children born here will die before age one, then an additional one child in seven will die before age five (that’s why our child survival program is called Five & Alive). Malaria, preventable and treatable, is cause number one.
To take this on, PSI socially markets Tuzanet, which is pretreated with the appropriate insecticide and lasts for three years. It is available at a very small price or for free in many areas as well. This blended approach of private sector availability combined with recent free distribution of three million bed nets to caregivers of children under age five, pregnant mothers, and the HIV-positive helped achieve a stunning 60 percent reduction in malaria cases in 2007. This is the greatest reduction of malaria rates in the world, something Kagame’s government can be very proud of doing for its people. There was a lot to celebrate on World