The past few days have been VERY good. Thursday was great because I was able to go into a nearby village and conduct one-on-one community mobilizing with two of my co-workers. It was such a rewarding and interesting experience. It was pretty amazing to me that within just a 2-3 minute walk from town (Mikindani) we were in, what looked like, a VERY rural area with mud huts/thatched roofs and dirt roads. My co-workers, Jonathan and Carol, and I went to people's homes and just sat and spoke with them about whether or not they had been tested and what they knew about HIV/AIDS. The responses varied a great deal from; "No, we haven't been tested because we (this was a couple) trust each other" (these same people thought HIV/AIDS was only transmitted through sex), and "yes we've been tested, we know our status and we know how to prevent becoming infected." I was actually surprised by how many people had been tested. I think that may have something to do with the past work of Hope Worldwide, but also that they live in a relatively developed area (i.e. not very "rural" because they are only a couple minutes walk into town). I plan to work more with Jonathan on educating the local community about HIV/AIDS and mobilizing them to get tested and know their status.
Friday was also an awesome day because I spent the whole morning developing my work plan for the remaining months. My main project will be to develop some sort of income-generating activity for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) in Likoni. During our needs assessment last weekend we found that one of the main reasons PLWHAs go off their medication (ARVs) is because they don't have enough money to buy food, and taking ARVs without food is not good because the ARVs will be less effective and it oftentimes makes people very sick to take them on an empty stomach. I have scheduled a meeting with a micro-finance organization in Likoni, called Likodep (where Amanda works). I look forward to working with them to develop a sustainable solution to our problem.
So...on to the FUN stuff :) This Saturday Amanda and I took a beautiful matatu drive up the coast to Malindi. The city/town was very beautiful and surprisingly clean. There is a HUGE Italian influence in the town, which was nice for meals :) Apparently Malindi is supposed to be a crazy tourist town, but since we came during the off season, it was pretty barren (except for the locals). While this made our night a little less exciting than we'd hoped, it was a perfect situation for a relaxing sunday morning. When we arrived in Malindi we checked into our hotel, Eden Rock, and had some delicious lunch of crackers, cheese and red wine (a meal I have been longing for, for a couple of days☺. When we finished, we immediately changed into our bathing suits and went for a long walk on the beach and then into town. There is much more craft work in Malindi, than in Mombasa (this is probably because more tourists go to Malindi than the actual downtown Mombasa)…so we perused over some of those crafts and then headed back to the hotel for a swim in the ocean. At night we went to a restaurant/bar called “Stars and Guarders”…a very strange name (not as strange as some of the other names we saw there though; one restaurant was called “Baby Marrow,” hmmm…and a boat was named “Trani”…when I saw that I was like; “I’m home!!”). Apparently that was the place to be that night, so we stayed for a while. But we went home relatively early when we noticed that we were definitely the youngest there and were surrounded by disgusting old white men with their young African girlfriends. Old white men “dating” young African women seems to be a “trend” here…i.e. Sex tourism is big on the coast, which is very strange, and slightly uncomfortable to witness.
We woke up this morning, had a delicious (western) breakfast (of fruit and toast ☺ and then hung out at the pool for a while. It felt SO good to swim!! After a couple of hours of swimming and reading/tanning by the pool, we went for a walk on the beach and then headed into town to grab some lunch and catch a matatu ride home. All in all, it was a successful weekend and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I definitely needed to get away for a bit and relax.
Well, I’m off to bed now. I hope everyone is well. Know that I’m thinking of you all ☺
Oxoxoxo Anna
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Anna, I know a guy (Frank) in San Diego who manufactures a super low tech water purification device which relies upon the principle of pasteurization. As you probably know clean water is especially important for people on ARV's so they don't expel the meds.
ReplyDeleteCheck it out at www.solarsolutions.info. Frank also wanted to set up manufacturing in developing world communities so that people could benefit from both the clean water device and the income from its local production. It's a relatively simple process. I haven't talked to Frank in over a year but was planning to get back in touch with him.