lately

Things are good. The holidays have been good. The rains are here, so things are slowing down a bit. Mushrooms are in season, which is awesome!! I love a change in diet from time to time ;)

I got in a small bike accident. Nothing major. Glasses are a little crooked now ;) Mostly just a brusied spirit ;) It's beginning to be rainy season and so things are very muddy and slippery. I fell right by a school with the kids outside, embarrassing ;)

We went to Zanzibar for our first big vacation. It was beautiful. The water and sand was amazing! It was weird to be tourist though. So many people asking you to buy things, etc- just strange and expensive! We had to go to a nearby village off the tourist beach to feel a bit normal. I got real sunburn, I forget how amazingly pale I really am ;) During the trip we met with a friend here and lit Chanuka candles, and made latkes and chanuka cookies, super fun!

We are in Chipata now, celebrating Christmas with some other volunteers. We did stockings and I made eggnog from stratch for the first time in life ;) Gotta say, Safeway probably does it better ;) But it was good and nice hanging out with people. Hope you all had a great holidays!!! Write me and tell me about it, i miss you all!

A few weeks ago, our house was hit by lighting ;) We are totally fine! But craziness. Apparently the humidity here when it's raining lends to a lot more lightening. And we didn't know that you are supposed to turn your radio off in a thunder storm ;) ooops, so we had our radio antennea connected to our clotheslines for better reception and thus a great pull for the lighenting :( So the lighting found our tree, which was connected to our clothesline which was connected to our antennea. Needless to say, we do not have a radio anymore, it's fried ;) But everything else same and normal. Just learned a good lesson in turning things off when it rains ;)

I've been doing some monthly education trainings with my NHCs, on community planning and mobilizing things, it's going ok. And I did a mini training with my community health workers and my environmental health technician (EHT). It went well and I want to do more teachings on things they can do, but we will see. My EHT is going back to school, great for him, but sad for me and my community, he's an amazing asset that we are losing :( I'm also working with the traditional birth attendants (TBA) on making visuals for our upcoming TBA training with the district health office. I hope it goes very well. I'm excited to go to births with them in preparation to see how they do it here so I can add more to the curriculum on pointers on womens health, etc. It's been a while since my doula days in AmeriCorps, so I'm excited to see some babies be born ;) For world AIDS day, we had a HIV/AIDS tape viewing at my clinic and Q & A. I got the tapes from an NGO at the district and my midwife set up the battery and TV capacity, very nice. The NGO, Health Communication Partnership is great and I hope to partner more with them later.

not as advertised

So, there are many reasons why things don't go asa planned here. Largely due to resources! Sometimes lack of education/awareness about a certain issue also plays a part. Then there are other things, I could wax about, but I'll save you, and say something funny kind of ;) So in the past few weeks I have seen some things not used as where planned/advertised.. .

On transport, which is always interesting, we were in a minbus when one something in it malfunctioned. So we pulled off the road or better yet coulded go any further ;) And the conductor and helpers begin to try and find and fix the problem. And yes, I saw them use a condom to try and work as a make shift car part ;) Now it didn't work, not a shock. And we had to seek other transpot. But wow, I never thought about that use in school or in my trainings on safe sex or really anytime ;)

Another day, Rob was biking from a school he works with to our place and he saw some men fishing. Rob is always interested in wildlife so he stopped to chat and observe. And he happened to observe that the fishermen's net was in fact a mosquitoe net :( Yup, it happens here. Now not only have I never have or would suggest an insecticide treated net to be used to anything other than sleeping under to ward off the big problem of malaria here, but also I am proud to say in talking about nutrtion, I have never mentioned the helpful use of possibly ingesting insecticide either. But alas, it happens. And again resources lacking all the time, like food and income, fishing with a net (whatever you have) its understandably, but not good for health really, blah blah blah. Won't wax like I said, but also like I said, not as advertised.

There was more, but I forgot, sorry sorry. I hope all is well and I think I might try and journal so I remember my thoughts more for you in the future ;) Regardless, we are well, work is going along, and we are going on our first big vacation out of country. Zanzibar, here we come ;) Maybe we can load pics of us and water soon enough.