June Updates

Well, in a week we will have been in Swaziland one year! We are actually planning a little get together for all the volunteers- CHRISTMAS IN JUNE!!!! Since June 25 is exactly one year since we entered Swaziland, it is six months from the actual Christmas, and a pay day, and it will be cold (unlike the real Christmas was), we thought a little party would be appropriate. Lets see, that is the fun stuff we have planned…now about work.

We just finished a workshop with our rural health motivators, who are women selected in the community to do home visits and teach health and hygiene. These women have been working since the eighties, and they have yet to receive any in-service training, so we worked with World Vision, another Non-Governmental Organization in the area, to provide them with some lessons. They learned about Child and Patient Rights, the Child Growth and Immunization card, Home Based care, HIV/AIDS and TB (signs/symptoms, transmission, drug identification, and how to protect themselves) and PMTCT (prevention of mother to child transmission). It was a lot of information. We met with them again a few weeks ago and have started to introduce solar disinfection, since gas is very difficult to get here, and we are backed up to a nature reserve, making firewood collection difficult. They were so happy to hear of a use for old bottles! We are now starting to work with the primary school teachers to answer their HIV questions and give them resources so they can better explain HIV to the children. With Swaziland Government paying for free grade one education, the schools have been very busy trying to accommodate all these new students. It has been a bit of a challenge getting all the teachers at each school together, but once the dialogue starts, we hope to really help clear up any issues/misconceptions. We are also hoping to do the book project again- this time with the primary schools.

Another project I worked on with two other volunteers that was finished up in April (I left for Cape Town, and they had to finish up the tough work without me, sorry guys!) is the Welcome Video for the new group coming the end of June. If you would like to hear about Swaziland and a bit about what Peace Corps is like here, you can find these videos on www.youtube.com Just search for Peace Corps Swaziland. There should be about 24 or so videos up on different topics ranging from what a homestead is to teaching at a school. I hope these videos will be interesting to you.

Well that is an update if I have ever seen one. Sorry we don’t update more often…rumor in our community has it that we might be getting electricity soon, which would make it much easier to update, so maybe then you will see more, but I won’t make any promises!