Jambo everyone! Last week ended pretty uneventfully work wise. We finished up two articles that we were writing for Kelley in the US Walter Reed office. One article looked at the improvements in the care and treatment center since it was moved to the COE. It was a fun article to write because we were able to interview Mama Martha and we also managed to talk to a patient who had a lot of good things to say. The other article focused on the Saturday pediatric clinic and the new toy area which meant we got to take lots of pictures of the kids playing. Apparently Friday we were supposed to begin teaching the HIV/AIDS awareness course but that message was not relayed to us so it didn’t happen. I think Dr. Tambukwa wasn’t happy about it but there wasn’t anything we could have done...oh well. Over the weekend we went to Tunduma, the Zambian border town, with Juliana (she’s the secretary-ish person at work), her son Stephen, and Ajabu, one of the drivers. The weather was pretty nasty but it was still fun. We managed to walk into Zambia without showing passports or talking to a single authority which was very strange seeing as we had to walk under a gate thing, through a customs parking lot and then through another gate. If we had wanted to, we could have gotten on a bus and gone pretty much anywhere in Zambia we wanted. I have now been in 5 African countries (Ghana, Burkina Faso, TZ, Malawi, and now Zambia) and if there is one thing I’ve learned about crossing borders it’s the importance of the word no. No I would not like to exchange money, no I would not like to get in your bus, no I would not like to buy a tie, no I do not want any bananas/peanuts/etc.
Monday we taught our first HIV awareness course. By taught I mean I gave basic guidelines to Mama Martha and she told them everything in Swahili. Instead of addressing the whole waiting area, we decided on taking a smaller group to a room to talk. Having fewer people meant everyone was paying attention and also allowed for a sort of open discussion about things. Since everyone is HIV positive, the point of the course is to answer questions, highlight the ways to prevent transmission to others, let people know about services for the HIV positive population, and encourage everyone to spread their knowledge to others. I think it will take a few weeks to really get the hang of things but so far so good. Ultimately we will take the HIV fact sheet we have made and translate it into Swahili so that it can be handed out to patients and healthcare providers here and at the other Walter Reed sites. Tomorrow we are going to get underway with the nutrition assistance survey. We are now the proud owners of a fancy scale and soon to be owners of a height measurement thingie (all to calculate the body mass index of people on nutrition assistance). It finally feels like we are doing things that are useful and which will have a positive impact even after we leave. Hey it’s only taken 2 months to get to this point! Slowly slowly/pole pole.
We have a new German, Monika, staying at the house for 3 weeks. Norbert, another German who has been staying with us for a month, leaves Thursday or Friday and we are getting two more people. I had no idea we’d be staying in such a busy little guesthouse. Today or tomorrow we will be getting two dogs at the house—they were found by Elizabeth, Jeni (we finally know how spell her name thanks to an invitation we found on the counter!), and Juliana in an empty compound. Jeni has been feeding them and while they are guard dogs and won’t be allowed in the house I’m still excited. I want to name them Snorklebert and Humdinger but Melissa has vetoed these names and we have yet to settle on any. Not a whole lot else to report...the weather the past few days has been icky with lots of rain (yeah yeah I know we are in rainy season but it’s been especially bad). Tomorrow everyone in the office is supposed to return from Dar so after 2.5 weeks things won’t be so quiet around here. 2 months down, 2.5 to go...
