It's been a few days.
Saturday there was a teacher's meeting at my school to plan out how the trimester grades were going to be handled and to recap what went well and not so well. Every subject had a report, and the directors all made reports afterwards. It was a pretty standard meeting.
Directly after the meeting, though feeling some nausea and loss of appetite, I headed off to a site near the coast in a very rural area. Phillip, one of the volunteers there, is making the video for bicycle maintenance and safety. We did some shooting, including some stunt work, and hung out for a bit in a very quiet and lush area of Mozambique. It seemed like a different world from where I've been living.
In fact, it seemed a lot closer to the image I had of Peace Corps - living without water or electricity, teaching at an old dilapidated school that kids have to travel great distance to get to...but this isn't to say I don't like my site. Having the creature comforts comes along with living in a busy city where opportunities come and go every hour and anonymity is slightly more possible. What you do as a volunteer depends upon your circumstances as much as your desire and motivation.
So I caught a chapa back to site on Sunday after looking for a lift for about 20 minutes. It was worth the wait as this was one of the most comfortable chapas (it resembled its original state) I've ever been in. I didn't even fall asleep because I wanted to enjoy my relative luxury. That and there was still a creeping nausea in my stomach that hadn't entirely gone away.
When I got back here, I flopped down on the couch (a two-seater) and stayed there for a couple hours, until I prayed to the porcelain god. Not feeling much better, my other end spoke for the rest of the night, alotting only a few hours of sleep before taking care of grades this morning. All told, I've had an egg sandwich, some biscuits and four liters of Gatorade/water in the last 28 hours.
I'm actually looking forward to being sick in the States. Not only will it be infinitely more comfortable, but my immune system is being exposed to such a spectrum of illnesses, American diseases will be cake.
And since I brought back peanut butter that Phillip's embrogada (maid) makes, I think I'm going to try a PB sandwich. It's actually somewhat appetizing.
It's hard to justify the important of teaching the difference between HIV and AIDS to people here. Health professionals here are 100% behind me and understand exactly why, but it's not obvious or even clear to most people.
The way the HIV/AIDS epidemic started here in sub-Saharan Africa, the conventional wisdom was that something - anything - needed to be done, fast. Which was and is true. And all that was done was helpful to some extent, but to turn the tables on the epidemic, the approach needs to be changed slightly.
The successful HIV/AIDS programs focus on understanding of the problem and why it needed to be avoided. There are many people here who can tell you that they need to use condoms, sterilized needles and new razor blades, but couldn't necessarily tell you what these things mean.
And so they have the information memorized, but have never been presented with applying it.
If you teach the difference between HIV and AIDS, they begin to see what's going on inside your body and how HIV gets in. It's the missing piece of the puzzle, and sets up the rest of the information you can present on the topic.
Peace
John
