Getting a little work done...Finally

Well I suppose it is about time for me to write a little bit about what I am actually doing out here in bush Africa, eah?

I've spent the last stretch of 4 weeks in my village only and actually had a fair number of meetings. It is hard to describe exactly what my job is here without going into immense detail about the decentralized health care system that Zambia has in place, but I guess I'll give it a whirl and try to make a long story short!

I am working primarily with the Rural Health Center(RHC) in my village, which is the only health center in the catchment area I work in that covers about 35km. The way that the health system works is that the RHC reports to the district, which reports to the province, which reports to the national. Anyways, in the area I work in, there are about 8 villages who have voluntary health "clubs" called Neighborhood Health Committees (NHC). These NHC's are the groups that I meet with most often. In an ideal world, the government would train the NHC's on all sorts of health issues, since these groups are the ones the government says are in charge of realizing their own health problems and reporting back to the Health Center (RHC). Anyways, this often doesn't happen due to how remote the villages are and how far behind the rest of the country Northwestern province is. SO this is where I come in!

My job is to meet with these NHC's and help them become trained on the major Health thrusts that are prevalent in their regions; Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Family Planning, TB, Water & Sanitation, & Child Health/Nutrition. The idea is to teach these NHC's everything they need to know in these health areas, so that the NHC can teach the rest of the community and also start to develop ways to prevent & treat certrain problems that arise. Alot of my job requires motivation and encouragement to the village, so they can realize that there is actually alot they themselves can do.

Anyways, over the past 4 weeks I've met with all my villages and have been pretty pleased that they are all at least on the same page as I am now (*for the most part). I was a little weary that the meetings would never happen, because I had bad luck trying to get my first 2 meetings underway. Lucky for me this time, all the meetings happened (granted they all started 2 hours late, haha) and now I'm off to a good start. Some of my groups need to be reformed, some retrained, and some are even a little more advanced and ready to start working on small community projects, such as health education. Which is nice for me, because it is very interesting to see how each different villages NHC's evolve differently.

But enough about work for now...I'm sure there will be plenty more on that later. An update on village life: Not much has been going on in the village lately. It is burning season here, where they burn all the bush grass, and one windy day they were burning behind my house and the kids accidentally lit my bathing shelter on fire..oops. I wasn't mad at first, but when they didn't fix it for 2 weeks, I was getting a little stinky (literally)! But life is better now that I am able to bath outside again! I also cemented the floors to my hut, which entirely changes the atmosphere in my hut, I now feel like I live in a mansion! haha. Except for my "pet" chicken that sleeps in the corner of my living room! One of my friends gifted me a chicken and I've yet to build him a house outside and the villagers tell me the bush animals could eat him at night, so I have to keep him inside!

Well I'm sure my next update will be more entertaining. I am fixing to attend my first big Lunda festival in the beginning of July. It is going to be at a giant cave and there is supposedly going to be alot of singing and dancing and eating. They even built me my own grass shelter out there and told me that I will have to kill some bush meat for the ceremonies! Could be antelope, or maybe even a bush baby (*they look like little furry monkeys, but I've yet to eat one)! SO be looking forward to details on this up-and-coming event!