I found this on one of my flash drives and though it may be repetitive (I haven't read through it), it is yet another entry even better-written than the last (but most chronologically intact) entry.
Friday 26 February
Hiya! It has been an incredibly long time since I’ve written but no problem, or hakuna matata, as the Tanzanians really do like to say, or kusi intazi as the Mambwes say, I have written down what I’ve done. Unfortunately, I do not have that info at the computer with me right now. So, as a result of poor planning, I will try to write the basics, the highlights if you will, of what has happened since second site visit during training (which, if I remember correctly, is the last time I wrote). When/if finally I get to a computer with both my flash drive and my calendar, it will be explosive! Or at least there will be some repetition.
I am in Lusaka now, about to head up and I got to ride down with the newest intake. They are all really nice and cool and I think they’ll be great. Also, en route, I saw two Zambians on bicycles with helmets. Apart from the professionally training cyclists that are sometimes seen around Lusaka, I have not once seen this occurrence and I just stared as many people often stare at me. One didn’t have a real helmet, just a batter’s cap type thing but the other had a proper helmet! So proper that I thought he might be Peace Corps but he was just riding what we popularly call a “Zambike” and not a standard issue PC bike.
Work relatedly, this unscheduled trip to Lusaka cost me my first village inspection, which is occurring today in my village, a village which has struggled with actually having an active NHC, to the chagrin of many a past PCV and some others in the community who are in fact doing a lot of work (my counterpart). Otherwise, I have not been at site for a while but at the beginning of the month, I worked once again with the women from Chele, the village between mine and the road, on my first soyaday. It was really fun and because we were mostly cooking and not having too in-depth a health talk, my language skills were not challenged. The women had done a soyaday before with the previous PCVs and had fun. We cooked delicious sausages, mediocre porridge which the children ate up, pumpkin leaves with soya powder which I thought was delicious, and something else that currently escapes my mind. Not breads, not milk. Maybe something sweet? Or spicy? Anyway, though there was far less health talk about the benefits of soya than I would have liked, I counted the day as a success.
These Chele women work well together and are very enthusiastic about learning and working with me. Sometime in December or January, I did a WASHE talk and activity. I was lucky enough to have a guy back from college to translate for me because that would have been horrendous without him. Though the women asked me to come for this, they were not very interactive until my little puzzle activity where they get a topic (say ORS) and must explain it and then put their piece into the puzzle. I even had fun at that part.
I have worked with the schools a fair amount. The happiest story from there is when I went to Lumi school, a school I happened upon because I was bored. I had a meeting with the teachers about clubs and activities such as anti-AIDS and nutrition. I mentioned the importance of those clubs and that it is also important to keep records, make both short term and long term programs, and to get children interested. The next time I visited, there was a list of students who wanted to be in the anti-AIDS club and a program for the term week by week, as well as a general program idea for the year. They were working on a World AIDS Day activity and the third time I went, I saw the rehearsal of the WAD activity. It was amazing. There was singing and dancing and poetry and drama. Very, very serious drama more about incest than about AIDS but nonetheless effective. I was really excited about it but was unable to attend the actual event because it was child health week in Zambia and my clinic was doing outreach.
That was a busy week. Each day I went down to the clinic and we drove somewhere in our catchment and conducted baby-weighing, de-worming, vaccinations, antenatal and family planning and a host of other health-related thrusts. It was interesting and kind of sad because they are supposed to do outreach every month but usually end up only doing it twice a year when the government does child health week, and I saw many children who hadn’t been to their monthly weighing since the last health week six months previous. And some of the days, I was working with one of the clinic staff who doesn’t seem that committed to her patients. One day, she refused to give family planning because she didn’t feel like it, she made me do all the work one day when she wasn’t feeling well (and I must say that having two hundred women pressing forward with hundreds more children crying and all speaking a language I don’t really understand didn’t make me feel very well but I worked anyway…) and she turned women away for antenatal care. However, the other staff I worked with (the one who is sadly on leave until April and then plans to take retirement in June) is great and the mayos love him. He makes jokes and laughs and gives family planning advice, antenatal care, and general information about health. He is wonderful and his absence is further aggravated by his continual presence at the market which is taunting me, making fun of the fact that I am stuck with someone else.
P.S. It now being January, he is back, my EHT. He has returned.
Friday 26 February
Hiya! It has been an incredibly long time since I’ve written but no problem, or hakuna matata, as the Tanzanians really do like to say, or kusi intazi as the Mambwes say, I have written down what I’ve done. Unfortunately, I do not have that info at the computer with me right now. So, as a result of poor planning, I will try to write the basics, the highlights if you will, of what has happened since second site visit during training (which, if I remember correctly, is the last time I wrote). When/if finally I get to a computer with both my flash drive and my calendar, it will be explosive! Or at least there will be some repetition.
I am in Lusaka now, about to head up and I got to ride down with the newest intake. They are all really nice and cool and I think they’ll be great. Also, en route, I saw two Zambians on bicycles with helmets. Apart from the professionally training cyclists that are sometimes seen around Lusaka, I have not once seen this occurrence and I just stared as many people often stare at me. One didn’t have a real helmet, just a batter’s cap type thing but the other had a proper helmet! So proper that I thought he might be Peace Corps but he was just riding what we popularly call a “Zambike” and not a standard issue PC bike.
Work relatedly, this unscheduled trip to Lusaka cost me my first village inspection, which is occurring today in my village, a village which has struggled with actually having an active NHC, to the chagrin of many a past PCV and some others in the community who are in fact doing a lot of work (my counterpart). Otherwise, I have not been at site for a while but at the beginning of the month, I worked once again with the women from Chele, the village between mine and the road, on my first soyaday. It was really fun and because we were mostly cooking and not having too in-depth a health talk, my language skills were not challenged. The women had done a soyaday before with the previous PCVs and had fun. We cooked delicious sausages, mediocre porridge which the children ate up, pumpkin leaves with soya powder which I thought was delicious, and something else that currently escapes my mind. Not breads, not milk. Maybe something sweet? Or spicy? Anyway, though there was far less health talk about the benefits of soya than I would have liked, I counted the day as a success.
These Chele women work well together and are very enthusiastic about learning and working with me. Sometime in December or January, I did a WASHE talk and activity. I was lucky enough to have a guy back from college to translate for me because that would have been horrendous without him. Though the women asked me to come for this, they were not very interactive until my little puzzle activity where they get a topic (say ORS) and must explain it and then put their piece into the puzzle. I even had fun at that part.
I have worked with the schools a fair amount. The happiest story from there is when I went to Lumi school, a school I happened upon because I was bored. I had a meeting with the teachers about clubs and activities such as anti-AIDS and nutrition. I mentioned the importance of those clubs and that it is also important to keep records, make both short term and long term programs, and to get children interested. The next time I visited, there was a list of students who wanted to be in the anti-AIDS club and a program for the term week by week, as well as a general program idea for the year. They were working on a World AIDS Day activity and the third time I went, I saw the rehearsal of the WAD activity. It was amazing. There was singing and dancing and poetry and drama. Very, very serious drama more about incest than about AIDS but nonetheless effective. I was really excited about it but was unable to attend the actual event because it was child health week in Zambia and my clinic was doing outreach.
That was a busy week. Each day I went down to the clinic and we drove somewhere in our catchment and conducted baby-weighing, de-worming, vaccinations, antenatal and family planning and a host of other health-related thrusts. It was interesting and kind of sad because they are supposed to do outreach every month but usually end up only doing it twice a year when the government does child health week, and I saw many children who hadn’t been to their monthly weighing since the last health week six months previous. And some of the days, I was working with one of the clinic staff who doesn’t seem that committed to her patients. One day, she refused to give family planning because she didn’t feel like it, she made me do all the work one day when she wasn’t feeling well (and I must say that having two hundred women pressing forward with hundreds more children crying and all speaking a language I don’t really understand didn’t make me feel very well but I worked anyway…) and she turned women away for antenatal care. However, the other staff I worked with (the one who is sadly on leave until April and then plans to take retirement in June) is great and the mayos love him. He makes jokes and laughs and gives family planning advice, antenatal care, and general information about health. He is wonderful and his absence is further aggravated by his continual presence at the market which is taunting me, making fun of the fact that I am stuck with someone else.
P.S. It now being January, he is back, my EHT. He has returned.
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