My Experience During the Internship

During the internship, I had the opportunity to choose very freely which areas I wanted to be involved in. I was also repeatedly able to work with different psychologists or visit projects run by Prison Fellowship in other parts of the country. I gained insights into other therapeutic approaches that do not exist in Germany in this form, as they were adapted to Rwandan culture and history, but whose approaches I took a great deal home with me. I was also allowed to participate in therapy groups, counseling sessions, and training courses, as well as support a research project and the administration of patient records and reporting. I found the exchange with the clients of Prison Fellowship particularly valuable, as they always spoke very openly about how Prison Fellowship’s programs had supported them. In my experience, the great freedom I had in shaping my internship also required a lot of personal initiative in order to make meaningful use of it.

My Experience with Everyday Life and Leisure Time On-Site

Daily life during the first few weeks was very exhausting for me, because I had to process so many new stimuli and also learn anew how everyday life works in a different culture. However, my first host parents were very caring and introduced me to their culture, showed me traditional food, took me along to a traditional wedding, and dressed me in traditional clothing. With my flatmates, I did more tourist activities in the city and also visited a national park. Kigali also offers a great deal of leisure opportunities, as quite a few expats live there. After a few weeks, I also settled into the Rwandan everyday routine quite well: I learned a little Kinyarwanda in order to communicate better with the locals, shopped at the markets, traveled a lot by moto-taxi, and also grew fond of the simpler lifestyle (washing laundry by hand or more often having no electricity or running water). I am very grateful that I was able to immerse myself in the culture in this way.

My Conclusion

Through the internship in a different culture, I gained a great deal of valuable insight into psychological work, but also into other values and ways of life. The insight into the country’s history, as well as the personal stories of the people I met there, were particularly moving. From a psychological perspective, I also found it especially remarkable to see how the recovery process can succeed at both the national and personal level after such a genocide. However, an internship abroad alone would not have been particularly meaningful in my case, since the psychological approaches differ in part considerably from the German system. For this reason, I would definitely recommend completing an additional internship within Germany for career preparation. Furthermore, I was very grateful to have also been supported and prepared by my German partner organization. This meant I was prepared for crises abroad and was not left to fend for myself there either – I always had a point of contact with intercultural experience.