We are Africans not African'ts

Given and I at home-based care.
Richard and I swimming with the children.
Rainbow at Victoria Falls.
HIV education at the football tournament.
Eating African crackers.

August 17, 2009

Mwa uka bwungi! Good morning! My morning projects last week included more clinics and home-based care. On Thursday we visited the house of a grandmother, father and son that all had HIV. The boy, named Given, was only 3 years old and taking anti-retroviral medications. He sat in my lap the whole time. I think I might look into sponsoring him after I get home.

On Wednesday I found myself back on a farm, although I must say it was quite different than home. Instead of massive fields they have a relatively small plot of land. Instead of giant tractors and combines they have handheld tools. The watering system is also very interesting. The water is pumped from the river and up the hill via a machine that works like a mix between an elliptical and a stair stepper. So as a person is working out on this contraption, the workers at the top of the hill can water the crops.

I also got to teach an adult literacy class. They are working on mathematics right now so it was right up my alley. I took the beginners along with Alicia. We worked on multiplication of 2 and 3 digit numbers. Some of them understood it quite well, some could do it when you helped them and others were a bit lost. The adult classes are a lot of fun because they really do want to learn, but it can also be frustrating because of things they don’t understand. I’d really like to take a class and teach every week. It would be nice to see the progress and I think it also gives the students more consistency.

On Saturday I went to Victoria Falls with Richard, Alicia and 13 local kids aged 15-18. We swam at the top of the Falls (not Devil’s Pool yet, but I will get there), climbed down to the Boiling Pot and got some great photos of the Falls. The kids were great and I’m really glad I went with them instead of just other volunteers. The rest of the weekend was spent finishing up the medical information sheets and sitting by the pool at Zambezi Sun.

Tomorrow we are putting on a football (soccer) tournament. We are combining sports with HIV education. The medics are setting up quiz stations and the teams can earn points in the tournament by doing well on the quiz. HIV education is really, really important here. 1 in 3 people have HIV here and there is a lot of false information out there.

August 18, 2009

I just got back from the football tournament. It was a bit unorganized. We were supposed to register teams from 8:30 to 9 and start playing at 9:30 but most teams didn’t show up until 10 and some didn’t show up at all. The owner of the pitch (field) we were supposed to play on said that we hadn’t talked to him and charged us 150,000 kwatcha ($30) to use it. Plus there was a slight misunderstanding about food. We were not providing it but some thought we were so a lot of the kids didn’t eat all day. To hold themselves over they ate something from the trees they call African cracker. I tried it. Not a fan. Anyway, once things got going the tournament went well.

The power is going to go off in about an hour so I have to keep this short. I’ll post more next week.