Saturday, March 12, 2011

belated half a post

**I wrote this around the 2nd weekend in March. Looks liks I never got around to finishing it. And looks like I'm failing at my new years resolution to blog. oops. figured I'd just post it.

Look-i'm blogging again!

The work stuff I wrote about last time is pretty much the same now. Still going but slowly slowly.

The week before last we had our PEPFAR training in Central Province. It was a great week! The group of volunteers from my intake and the one after mine in central is just awesome. We had a great time together, and the training was good, too. PEPFAR is President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. Started by W Bush and the provider of funding for PC's HIV work and lots of NGOs in Zambia and Africa, at least. So each PCV brings a counterpart from her community for a 5 day training. We talked about transmission, prevention, stigma, the disease itself, and teaching in the community. Trying to get Zambian women to open up and talk about sex was like pulling teeth, even with women only. But that's what we have to try to do, get people to talk about sex, since that's how you get HIV. Some of the female counterparts were teachers who were from a city or had at least been to school in town so they were much more free to talk. It's amazing the many differences between "town Zambians" and "village Zambians".

My counterpart was the community mentor I'm working with on the girls club at school. So even if we don't go out and start "sensitizing" the community all the time, at least we're both now better equipped to teach about HIV/AIDS at the girls club. hopefully.