I am not even sure where to begin after almost two weeks away from this little blog-a-roo. Many many crazy things have happened and I am just going to brain dump quickly in no particular order:
Our project has been going very well. For the past two weeks, FORGE has held focus groups on HIV/AIDS and health care in all 7 zones of Meheba. Each day, we spend an hour or so talking to 5-20 adult women, then an hour or two with adult men. It has been incredibly insightful and also very sobering. Lots of cookies and candy handed out, lots of slow slow back and forth with translators, lots of amazingly informed people, lots of myths and misconceptions. These people have almost no access to health care services more sophisticated than painkillers. Transportation into Solwezi, the town with slightly better facilities, is erratic to impossible.It's tough. In retrospect, my other volunteer experiences all have involved close (or inherent) proximity to health facilities and as such I have never had to wrap my head around a set of challenges like this. It's hard to articulate and it's hard to not be utterly depressed every day and it's hard to understand if our project makes a difference at all. But I think it already has in small ways, and I think it will continue to do so in the coming weeks.
People in all zones were practically begging to learn more about HIV/AIDS, condom use, PMTCT, ARVs, etc etc etc. It feels good, on a small note, to have serious confirmation of what we anticipated over the past months. We've hired 4 men and 1 woman to comprise the FORGE AIDS Awareness Project (FAAP). They will lead a series of educational workshops in each zone of Meheba. The first phase is targeted at educating parents about ways to discuss sexuality and HIV with their children. Hopefully then they can target young married girls, religious leaders, youth, etc etc. The FAAP team is awesome....lots of collective experience working with other NGOs in Meheba on health education/outreach.
We had a big week with the Community Sports League, too. Yesterday was their big annual tournament. 140 youth players from 5 zones of the camp came together in Zone A for a day of soccer games. It was really cool! The teams were wearing the soccer jerseys we provided them, and everyone had a lot of fun. It was super stressful in terms of logistics....transportation almost ruined it....but we made it happen. Zone F boys and girls won the tournament....very cool. Got some great photos and video. The girls totally run around in a big cluster of flailing limbs.....hilarious. The whole event made me a little nostalgic for my days of youth soccer. Awwwwww....
FORGE head honchos have been around for the past two weeks. Nick and Kjerstin came to share details of their exploratory trip to southern DRC. UNHCR invited them there to investigate opportunities for FORGE expansion in the coming year. The details of their trip were incredible....the geographic and economic challenges to working with displaced persons or repatriated refugees in that area are staggering. No American NGOs are working in the Moba area
N & K also arrived with two documentarians working on a film project in Kala, Mwange and Meheba camps this summer. One of them, Jamie, is actually working as a Project Facilitator with FORGE in Kala Camp this summer. She is interested in cultural anthro/social justice through film, and her project involved hiring a cinematographer, Barney Bloomefield (sp?), to shoot footage in the 3 camps. So they are hanging out with us all the time, and they have identified a main character of sorts for their film here in Meheba. Good times. Except that their camera batteries eat all our solar power and we're having to ration a lot more now.
Nick and Kjerstin also decided to hold a Meheba wedding ceremony while they both were here in the camp at the same time. It was pretty awesome....they had a small ceremony on top of an ant hill at sunset. Very moving, very beautiful. Then we threw a very large celebration. Good times, until we all were sick the next day. Something weird in the veggies.
There have been major bummers in the past few days, too. We had a frustrating encounter with the one lab technician in all of Meheba who is trained to do VCT. We went to talk to him because several people (some of them rape cases handled by our refugee advocacy project) have told us that they have gone to the zone A clinic (the only place in Meheba a person can access HIV tests) to get a HIV test, but were unable to do so because the lab tech was out for the day. He basically told us he cannot commit to a fixed schedule (not even one day per month) because VCT services are not his primary job responsibility and he only can do them in his spare time. (Meanwhile we see an open notebook of his homework on the lab counter....he's not working THAT much) He could not understand why it is so important for there to be consistency in the availability of VCT.....it makes us sad, because if someone actually gets up the courage to walk anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours up to zone A to get the test, we would really like to guarantee that they will actually be able to get the test when they arrive. He indicated, finally, that if he were PAID for VCT services specifically, he would be more willing to do them. Booooooooooo.
Also, we were asked several weeks ago to give a talk about HIV/AIDS at a youth church conference organized by two pastors in the community who also work with FORGE Microfinance Institute. Joe and I were pretty excited about the opportunity, until the morning of our talk when we were informed that an elder pastor at the church does not believe that HIV is a problem in his congregation and did not want us to even mention it at all. So our talk was cancelled. The reasons for it really broke my heart, because we personally know HIV+ individuals who are part of the specific congregation. It's not that we were not anticipating opposition from religious leaders about certain aspects of HIV education, specifically condom use, but it just was really tough to know that some of the younger, more progressive leaders of the church were unable to communicate the importance of informaion to an older leader. Boooooooooo.
Okay, my chair at this internet cafe is not too comfy so I am going to move on. Tonight we are picking up two trainers from Grassroot Soccer in Solwezi. We're running a training course for our 11 Community Sports League coaches Mon-Wed this week. Should be fun. Lots of loose ends to tie up in terms of reports and craziness before we leave Meheba on Saturday for Lusaka and Livingstone.
Thinking a lot about my family and friends and how absolutely lucky we are. Lots of love to everyone.
4 comments:
You seem adjusted, Von...
The realities of the world in Zambia sound overwhelming in many ways, good and bad, but mostly not so good.
It seems that, in the face of these realities, while your emotions may be widely variable, that you are feeling grateful for your life, and that seems right to me. And I'm sure that the people you've helped on an individual level are grateful for you, even if it seems like the fundamental problems over there are so far from being solved. Is that un-profound, even if its true? Depends how you look at it, I guess.
One thing I wonder - if that one lab technician is the only guy trained to do a certain test, why ISN'T he getting paid to do it, 8 hours a day? I mean, I'm sure funds are tight, but that strikes me as a high priority.
Well, I wish you the best of luck with all the crap-shoot logistics that seem to dictate the day to day effectiveness of these sorts of projects for the rest of your mission. And have a heady time collecting all that perspective from over there.
Looking forward to seeing you sometime sort of soon,
Robby
Yes, incredibly grateful for friends and family. We are so fortunate to have each other and for loving each other and for having others to support us in all the ways we can only begin to imagine. But in spite of how frustrating your moments are there, or how hopeless the situation may seem, it is great that you are there. I am proud of you for being there and whatever you are doing is important, for your own learning and for the folks that you are interacting with there to know that there are others in other places that believe that HIV/AIDS is real, and is a big concern and something worth investing in. I love you a lot. And I can't wait to see your face while you are talking about your experience.
morty, cheers for reading. i very much wish the lab tech was being paid to conduct VCT exclusively. zambian ministry of health runs the clinics in meheba. at some point in the past, each zone had its own clinic but the majority are now closed due to lack of staff/equipment. our focus group research revealed a lot: the clinics that are "functional" operate with very small staff (1-3 people), inconsistent hours, and frequent medicine shortages. most people are given an over-the-counter-type painkiller called Panadol for every complaint. in comparison to the situation in the other 8 zones, the clinic at zone A is doing relatively well...they have a more sophisticated lab, 3-4 people working, occasional electricity (before the generator went missing).
anyways, my point is that the very existence of a lab technician is (relatively) a pretty big deal, and zone A clinic is considered one of if not the best clinic in the entire settlement. our perception of the clinic is very different, however, but our ability to negotiate changes to the staffing/pay structure is unlikely. all the zambian ministries are suffering from lack of funds....salaries are often witheld for weeks or months. there just isn't any more money for anything, it appears. this man has other job responsibilities in the lab that appear to take priority over VCT. we can't step in and dictate any changes to his role for obvious reasons, and the process of gaining approval for anything involving multiple organizations is a very long tedious process of sending dozens of formal letters, chasing officials to confirm meetings, and occasionally getting a fair bit of runaround. however, we are in the process of organizing an all-Meheba HIV/AIDS consortium in order to communicate some of these problematic structures to the relevant actors and authorities in the camp. who knows....
it's not all horrible news. a tiny summary of these issues was communicated during our final meeting with UNHCR in Lusaka. to connect people in Meheba with testing as quickly as possible we're using the remaining few hundred dollars in our project budget to pay a mobile VCT unit called New Start to come into Meheba and provide a few days of quality, confidential VCT in the 4-5 zones that are farthest from zone A. ZPCT should begin improvements to one or more clinics (with the specific purpose of improving HIV/AIDS care and improving staff training) in Meheba starting in October.
nay nay: much love to you too. ran into shlacter last night in nyc. we are very excited about our housing situation and very grateful to you for making the connection.
Post a Comment