Hello again! The last month or so
has been pretty busy which is always a nice change. I returned from my vacation
for the holidays like I said before, and I jumped right back into working. I
continued with my health club at the girl’s high school, and decided to go to
boy’s high school and see if they would like to work together with me. The
boy’s high school is much MUCH larger than the girl’s and when I went to
introduce myself to the students in order to see if there was interest, the
entire student body was there, which was over 1000 boys. I had to use a
microphone to talk to all of them! But over the next few weeks, I returned and
started having health club meetings with a small group of boys on Tuesday
afternoons. I gave lessons to both the boys and girls clubs on HIV/AIDS, STI’s,
and relationships.
Another event I started to work on
was planning an HIV/AIDS Health Education Day in my village. I talked to my
community health workers and some of them had participated in events like this
before, and agreed that it would be a good idea to do here. So we began the
planning. We had meetings together to decide how we wanted the day to run, and
we agreed on a type of round robin education system. The day was held at our chief’s
center, because the dispensary I work with is faith based, and family planning
services are not permitted on the compound. We created “booths” for different
topics, such as HIV/AIDS, STI’s, wound treatment, HIV stigma, prevention of
mother to child transmission, nutrition, condom demonstrations and family
planning. The word “booths” is put in quotes, because here, that really just
means a table or maybe just a chair, underneath a tree. But it’s the education
that matters. I also had several meetings with the district public health
nurse, and the district public health officer, to keep them informed of the
work I was doing, and they were also able to provide me with certain supplies.
I received over 9000 condoms to distribute, as well as family planning
materials for the women, such as pills, shots and implants. They also provided
us with several testing kits for HIV and the necessary supplies to screen women
for cervical cancer.
So over the month’s time, I
met with them as well as put together education materials for my community
health workers and created flyers to advertise for the day, which was on
February 9th. I wanted my health workers to be the ones doing the
majority of the education, and I also brought in nurses from my dispensary and
a friends local “mama” to assist us with testing and giving out the family
planning services. They were super awesome, counseling the people, testing them
and advising them on what to do whether they were HIV negative or positive.
Mama Margaret, my friend Lori’s mama, was the nurse giving out family planning
services and she was also wonderful working with all the women. Besides working
my CHW’s I also had some of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers to help me for the
day. My neighboring volunteers, Joy, Breezie, Lori, Rachel, Amy and Rachael
(not actually a PCV but still awesome) came to help me out with the day and
they were amazing! They each either had their own booth or helped a CHW with
one and I couldn’t have appreciated this more, because it let me move around to
supervise and answer any questions my health workers had.
The welcome sign to the health day!
Amy and Racheal running the condom demonstration and family planning tables with Rosemary my CHW! awesome job ladies =)
My CHW Fred, teaching about HIV/AIDS!
In
my opinion, the day turned out very successful. We had over 150 people attend
the event, with 67 of them being tested for HIV and only three turn up
positive. We distributed over 6000 condoms, and showed several people how to
use them properly. Many women were given family planning services, four were
given the implant (and more wanted it but that’s all we had!), 16 got the shot,
and many more received pills to take home. We referred women to the dispensary
on that Monday to receive screening for cervical and breast cancer, and 37
women were screened in one day! My supervisor is one of the seven qualified
nurses to screen for cervical cancer in the county and this was definitely a
number to be proud of. Three women came back positive, and we referred them to
see the district doctors. This was my first big Peace Corps project, and I’m
really glad how well it turned out. Several people asked me when I was going to
be doing it again, and wanted to know where they could get tested or receive
more family planning services. I know people also went away with a great deal
of knowledge that they didn’t have before this, and by teaching my CHW’s I can
try to ensure some amount of sustainability with that knowledge and hope that
they can pass it forward to those that they know. I was also told that the
turnout might have been even higher had their not been two funerals that day.
Traditional funerals here usually involve the whole village, and the burials are
an all day affair on Saturday’s. There is often a big feast, with a lot of
people, there’s a viewing of the body, and the person is buried in the
afternoon. So maybe next time there will be a higher attendance rate, the more
the merrier!
With
the health day under my belt, I was now off for another short adventure to the
beach! Same place, Diani, a bit of a different crowd, but it was still a great
time! A small group of us headed down there for a few days and just basked in
the sun at the pool and the beach, and went out for seafood dinner, and to the
bar at night. It was a nice little break after putting in all that work for the
past month and half.
Breezie and I when we went out to dinner in Diani =)
After
a few days we headed home, and in true Kenyan fashion, travel was a disaster.
The first half went smoothly, but the leg from Nairobi to my village in Western
Kenya was definitely not. My friend Joy and I hopped in a shuttle, which should
take about 7 hours to get us back to our bigger town of Bungoma. Well for
starters, the journey took about 9 and ½ hours instead, because of ridiculous
traffic and construction. This left us with the dilemma of getting to our
villages, but thankfully we had a friend in Bungoma who put us up for the night
since no matatus were traveling towards our sites at that hour (it was about
9:30 pm). Also during this lovely ride I made friends with the baby next to me.
The poor mama was all alone and traveling with several bags and the 2 month
old baby, so for a while I offered to hold her and relieve the mom. She was
actually adorable and not fussy at all, so that wasn’t really a bad part of the
trip. What WAS a horrific part was the LIVE chickens the man behind Joy and I
had brought on the shuttle. Usually when people are traveling with live
chickens, (yes its common, rarely phases anyone here at all), they put them in
a box with a cut out for their head. Instead this man just had them out and
placed a paper bag (in Kenya the word paper bag is used for plastic bags, that
price chopper bag, yup they’d call it paper). Well half way through the ride,
they started to move up towards our feet, peck at us and proceeded to poop
under me, where my feet were supposed to go. Needless to say I kind of had a
little fit at the man, and had to sit with my feet up for the rest of the ride.
With
all that behind us, we did finally make it home back to our sites safely. It
has been a busy month or two, and now I am just relaxing and cleaning up my
house, and getting ready for whatever’s next. The Kenyan elections are coming
up, and due to past events, the Peace Corps will be taking precautionary
measures to keep all of the volunteers safe during that time period. Please
pray that things are safe, and the election goes smoothly. Who knows what will
happen, but I’m glad to be in good hands here. There is no reason to worry I
will be fine!
As
always, I am missing all of you so so much, and I hope things are well wherever
you might be! Keep in touch, I know African mail is slow, but it is always
appreciated! =)
Current Entertainment:
Books: I just finished Wanderlust, A love affair with Five
Continents by Elizabeth Eaves and I am now reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.
TV: HOMELAND! I only had up
to season 2 episode 5, but I’m hooked! And I got some of the new season of
Glee, but only up to the Christmas episode, so hopefully I can get more of both
soon!
Love and miss you all!
Xoxo
Lindsey Rae
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