Dinner, Sunset and Leap Frog

This week we had our first dinner guest. Aaron happens to live across the street, but we met him at the UN where he is doing a fellowship for the summer. He's a Harvard Law student, 25, and single (for anyone interested). Okay, he might kill me for saying that, but oh well.

We met Aaron on Tuesday as we were about to leave the the UN for the day and soon found out that he lived near us. I think he followed us home because when we got off the tram he came running up behind us. Okay, maybe not. He was carrying a bag of groceries, after all. Anyway, we figured out that he was actually in the building next to us, and since our apartment is much larger than his, we took him home for dinner. Oh, I mean we invited him over for dinner.  

We are all on tight budgets since food is SOOOOO EXPENSIVE, so we combined what we had and came up with the following: 

• Grilled chicken (Jess is Vegan so she wouldn't eat it - and it cost nearly $14 for two chicken breasts, so I may not have any more while I'm here either!)
• Spicy risotto rice cooked to disaster (sorry Aaron)
• Baked asparagus with mushrooms, onions, and carrots (this was the best part of the meal - thanks Jess)
• Bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (we can't possibly have a meal without bread here)

It was a clear and beautiful night, so we sat on the back patio and shared this view as we chatted:

Not too shabby, huh? We have had some beautiful sunsets here and our apartment is positioned perfectly to watch them every night if we want to.

I bet you are wondering how Leap Frog comes into this dinner party. Well, since Aaron was our first guest here in Geneva, I told him that I would need a picture of him for the blog (I know, I'm such a nerd!). He wasn't happy with just any pictures, so he some how convinced Jess to play leap frog with him, so...

Great form, right?

I'm not sure why it went from leap frog to muscle poses, but it did, so here are a few of those:

The dinner was mostly good, the conversation was great, and the evening was hilarious!

The Orchid Project

***WARNING: This Post Contains Sensitive and Disturbing Information and May Not be Suitable for all Readers***

I decided to include the above disclaimer because, although this is an important and far reaching issue, not every one will want to read about this. And, since I haven't yet decided how much detail I will include in this post, I thought it best to begin with a disclaimer.

Last week the WOW GEO students had the great opportunity of meeting Julia Lalla-Maharajh, founder of the UK based non-profit Orchid Project which has the simple vision of "a world free from female genital cutting."

Jess and Julia

Me and Julia

Before going into detail about our meeting with Julia, let me explain what Female Genital Cutting (FGC), or sometimes called Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), actually entails. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), FGM "comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons." There are different levels of FGM, none of which have health benefits to the woman, and they include the following classifications:

• Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and, in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).
• Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are "the lips" that surround the vagina).
• Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, or outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.
• Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

 Here are some key facts provided by WHO concerning FGM:

• Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
• The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.
• Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later, potential childbirth complications and newborn deaths.
• An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.
• It is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15 years.
• In Africa an estimated 92 million girls from 10 years of age and above have undergone FGM.
• FGM is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

 
I have read about this practice several times, so to have the opportunity to meet someone who is working tirelessly to end this practice was a great honor. As one can imagine, we had many questions about the practice itself, why it happens, who is most at risk, and what we could do to help end this horrible treatment. Many of the answers to these questions can be read on the Orchid Project website (click on the project name to be directed to their home page), so I will only share a few here.

One of our first questions what "why does this happen?" The short answer to this is that "women lack empowerment and status" within the communities in which this is most prevalent. Here are some other reasons FGM is practices:

• Beauty/Cleanliness: 
Female genitals are unhygienic and need to be cleaned, female genitals are ugly and will grow to become unwieldy if they are not cut back, FGC is a fashionable thing to do to become a real woman
• Male Protection/Approval:
 FGC is an intiation into womanhood and into the tribe, the noncircumcised cannot be married, 
FGC enhances the husband’s sexual pleasure, 
FGC makes vaginal intercourse more desirable than clitoral stimulation
• Health: 
FGC improves fertility and prevents maternal and infant mortality
• Religion:
 God sanctifies FGC
• Morality: FGC safeguards virginity
, FGC cures “sexual deviance” i.e. frigidity, lesbianism, sexual arousal.”

Where is this done? Here is a short list but includes some of the highest rates of FGM:

• Indonesia: 225 Million
• Egypt: 75.4 Million
• Ethiopia: 74.8 Million
• Sudan: 41.2 Million
• Tanzania: 40 Million
• Kenya: 34.7 Million

Unfortunately because of the widespread and traditional use of this practice, there is insufficient data so much of the information available are only estimates.

To see more about this cause and view a CNN interview with Julia click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-KS--CL2T8

Get Involved today to help end this disturbing and pointless practice.

Bill Gates and the WHO

Written by: Jessica Burnham and Nicolle Johnson

The General Assembly

The General Assembly Room

The General Assembly Room

The WHO, in this case, is not the 1960's English rock band but the World Health Organization and for our first meeting at the United Nations (17 May), Jess and I were able to sit in on the Invited Speaker session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) where Bill Gates addressed the assembly about the importance of preventative care in the form of vaccinations.

Bill Gates Being Welcomed

The inability of many individuals, particularly vulnerable children, to access adequate healthcare is a persistent global problem that has yet to be strategically addressed and solved.

Bill Gates addressed the existence of diseases such as polio, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, meningitis, rotavirus, and pneumonia and proposed the solution of increasing access to vaccines.

“I had built my life around the idea that innovation is for everyone. When I began to understand how billions of people are deprived of its benefits, it made me angry. That's when I decided that my personal wealth would be used to help confront that inequity,” Gates said of his determination to alleviate the global poor of preventable diseases.

In the clip below, Gates expresses his reason for dedicating his full-time work to the Gates Foundation and will continue to do so for the rest of his life.

He proceeded to discuss the important role vaccines have to play in disease eradication. “They can be inexpensive, they are easy to deliver, and they are proven to protect children lifelong from disease,” Gates said.

Bill Gates Addressing the WHA

He confidently termed this the “Decade of Vaccines,” calling on world leaders to make improving access to vaccines a top priority. This calls for further investment he explained, but this investment will pay off. Through it, countless lives will be saved and economies will thrive.

“As we free billions of people from the relentless burden of sickness and death [we] will unleash more human potential than ever before” Gates said.

Gates called for at least 90 percent coverage at the country level and 80 percent coverage at the district level. Global actors must do what it takes, he said, to reach the most vulnerable children in order to effectively achieve zero cases.

After His Address

Therein will the world realize that global health is essential to global prosperity.

“It might be the most difficult thing we’ve ever done, but it will also be the most important,” Gates said.

For more information or to read the full speech visit www.who.int/en/

This was an interesting session to sit in on, especially for my first, because I (Nicolle) have been an advocate of preventative care for many years. I became aware of the need for preventative care during my years working with Sentara HealthCare in Virginia Beach, VA, and see the benefit of this from both a personal and business point.

The lack of standard preventative care, such as vaccinations, results in more than 8 millions preventable deaths each year, and this is just for children under 5 years old. For Americans or others in developed nations these deaths rarely happen anymore, which means that 90% of these preventable deaths occur in developing nations. Vaccinations are an inexpensive way to decrease morbidity in the regions of the world that need it most.

Find out how you can help this cause by clicking this link http://www.gatesfoundation.org/vaccines/Pages/decade-of-vaccines.aspx.

Adventures in the Lift

On our first night here, and in a desperate attempt to stay awake for a little longer, Jess and I decided to explore the Avanche complex and look for a place to eat dinner. Since we couldn't understand exactly what Mrs. Bonny was saying, I can't really tell you why she came with us, but she did. Their apartment is on the 12th floor so we summoned the lift to take us down.

When the lift arrived there were five other people heading to a party (that's what I gathered from my limited French, anyway). It started wonderfully, but then between the 5th and 4th floors it stopped. We still don't know why since the capacity sign said 10 people and it worked just fine later. In any case we were lucky enough to be stuck in a narrow lift for 25 minutes with 6 French speaking Swiss people.

Jess and I were so tired that we were giddy and laughed most of the time. Of course our first response was, "this is going in the blog." Unfortunately, we didn't take a picture while we were stuck. I'm not really sure how well that would have gone over with the other passengers anyway, especially the semi-angry man next to me. We will have to go back and, at least, take a picture of the infamous lift.

Thankfully we did have the semi-angry man in the lift with us, though, because he called the emergency services, rang the bell, and banged on the door until someone got us out. The lift had stopped about two feet above the 4th floor so we had to jump out after the doors were pried open.

I've always wondered what it would be like to be stuck in a lift. I thought I would freak out in the small space, especially if there were a lot of other people in it with me, but I think being delirious with lack of sleep was helpful in this case because I really didn't care, and I couldn't even force myself to care. All I wanted to do was sleep and if I had to push people aside and sleep on the lift floor while we waited, I would have been glad to do that. So, in the future, if I ever get stuck on a lift I will try to be deliriously tired so the small spaces won't freak me out. Unfortunately, since these are unplanned events, I will just have to pray that I never get stuck in a lift again.

Housing Headache

Finding suitable housing has ended up being the second most challenging thing for this trip (the first, of course, has been funding), and even when I got off the plane in Geneva I didn't know where I was going to stay, and neither did my program coordinator actually which is not the best feeling in the world after traveling for over 24 hours.

It didn't start out being such an issue. In fact, we were lucky because within a week of both of us being accepted into the internship program we were placed with a family within out budget and for months we were comforted by the fact that we knew where we would be staying and how much it would cost. In late April this all changed.

By the third week of April, about three weeks before our scheduled departure, we found out that the family who had originally agreed to house us had forgotten about some of the summer obligations and would not be able to keep us after all. This is not a great thing to hear just weeks before take off. Our program coordinator worked to find others to replace them, and about a week later sent an email letting us know about two options. One was within our budget and one would only be within our budget if we shared a room. One issue, however, was that Jess was only planning to be in Geneva for the first month because then she would be heading to do her grassroots project in the UK for 6 weeks.

After a week of confusing emails and me not wanting to agree to anything above my budget, I decided to start looking for other options as well. I thought this would be helpful since they didn't seem to have too much time in their busy schedules to work much more on the search. This was my first mistake.

Housing in Geneva is EXPENSIVE, and by this I mean that most apartments of less than 1000 sq/ft run for at least $2,000. If you want a place with 4 - 6 bedrooms you will pay between $3-7,000 each month. I tried to find my own housing and found some student housing that was under $800/month, but the school semester doesn't end until the mid-June, so NOTHING was available.

The first place I stayed, The Bonny family, was actually for Jess, because we weren't able to get in touch with my family so they let me stay with them and helped me reach them. The Bonny's are the nicest people, and they only speak Spanish and French, so we had fun playing charades with them to try and communicate with our limited French and basic Spanish. Here are some pictures of their home and the apartment complex, Avanche, that they live in:

Part of one of the buildings in the Avanche apartment complex

Our View from the Bedroom

The fountain in the apartment park

One of the main roads leading around the complex

The Bistro/bar in the complex;

This is a better view of much of the complex

The living room

The view from the kitchen patio

The hallway leading to the bedroom

The bathroom we used most

Jess packing in the bedroom - this really is how wide the room is!

We spent two night with the Bonny family and then moved into a room at the home of Mary Balikungeri who is the founder and director of the Polyclinic of Hope in Rwanda (www.rwandawomennetwork.org). She is an amazing woman who has done great things to help Rwandan women after the genocide that happened in her country. Unlike many humanitarian organizations, she works from a holistic approach.

Mary's apartment is smaller than the Bonny's but it is closer to the UN and she has better space for us, so we really like it. We will be living here until the end of June because Jessica will leave for the UK at that point and I am supposed to spend two weeks in Zurich and then the last two weeks of July in the UK. Here are some pictures of her place:

Our bedroom

The Sitting Room

Sunrise

Our first sunrise

A view of the outside

A view from our tram stop

The street where we live

Blessings and Frustrations

Over the last few weeks it has surprised me to learn that it is possible for me to feel so many different emotions at once. With the excitement, fear, anxiety, joy, worry, etc., I kept thinking that the only thing holding me together has been my skin!

Three weeks ago, I wasn't sure if if I would actually make it to Geneva because I didn't know how I was going to raise the last few thousand dollars that I needed, and then I found out that my host family forgot about some of their obligations, so they wouldn't be able to house me. What could I do? I went into crisis mode and started working through a problem solving plan and said A LOT of prayers!

Things slowly (or so it seemed to me) started coming together, and now I have been in Geneva for three days. Thank you Mom and Digicert.com! Since beginning my trip on Sunday, I have already had a few adventures.

Jess (www.asummerofintellectualdiscovery.blogspot.com) and I made it all the way to London without a hiccup, and we relaxed in Terminal 3 for several hours while we waited for our connecting flight. For some reason we never saw it on the board, so about an hour before departure we asked the ticket agent why we weren't seeing our flight information and she let us know that the airline used two terminals and we happened to be in the wrong one. We rushed out of Terminal 3, had to take a 15 bus ride to Terminal 5, and was stopped at check-in because the flight closed right after I was scanned into the system, so Jess wasn't going to be given clearance to board. After several phone calls, that was cleared up, and the ticket agent told us we would have to ask for priority passage through security (for the third time in this airport) and we would have to run for the plane because they were doing last call for boarding. And that is exactly what we did!

 But wait, that's not all! When we arrived at the gate, I was stopped because they said Nicole Johnson had already checked into the flight. That, of course, wasn't true because Nicolle Johnson was standing in front of her. They pulled Nicole Johnson out of her 6F seat and compared the boarding information with Nicolle Johnson from 16F and found that in fact there were two of us-both American and both sitting in a row with a 6 in it. Unfortunately, by this time, my luggage had already been removed from the belly of the plane and was in some security office.  Thankfully they found it, put it back on, and thirty minutes after our scheduled departure we were on our way. Yippee!


For those of you who haven't flown in a while, here's a video and some pics of our landing in London:

I'm still shocked that I'm here. When Jess and I walked up to the gate of the United Nations on Tuesday we had to pinch each other because it seems so unreal. I feel so blessed to have this opportunity and have already learned so much.

Come back soon because you won't want to miss the "Adventures in the Lift" and "Bill Gates and WHO."

My Sponsors - UPDATED 5.18.2011

My UN experience this summer will cost nearly $11,000 USD, and there is no way I would be able to do it without the generous support of these sponsors:

UVU Woodbury School of Business

Dr. Susan Madsen and the Utah Women & Education Project

DigiCert, Inc. in Lindon, Utah

UVU College of Humanities and Social Sciences

UVU Internship Scholarship

Jon Ostenson and Family

Nancy Tobler 

Peter Robinson

Vernon and Shannon Fuller and Family

And, of course, all of my family and friends who have been so supportive and encouraging throughout this process. Thank you all!

If I have forgotten someone, please let me know, or if you would still like to make a contributes, small or large, it can be done through the Utah Valley University Foundation scholarship that has been set up on my behalf. http://www.uvu.edu/woodbury/scholarship.html