A better post : )

I am in Swaziland right now taking a little break, so I will try to do a few posts with pictures : ) I am working on health education posters, which I am mostly drawing freehand with some tracing, and then coloring in with my trusty crayola 24 pack. This is me with the first poster I finished. Its about dental health, the other ones that I am doing are nutrition, fire safety, baby care, keeping your body safe from HIV/AIDS, and not getting an infection when you get your head shaved....so several topics of which I am now an expert!?!?!?

Here is a picture of a chicken, this is for my mom, because before I left I told her that there were no chickens in Africa, because I wanted her to make eggs for breakfast one morning. She believed me, so just in case there's any confusion there are plenty of eggs and chickens in Africa!

Below are two pictures of my baby and my baby mama. I love them. She is due to graduate high school soon, but she needed a scientific calculator so we got one for her : ) I wish I could take this baby home. I have cried twice just thinking about leaving her.This next one is a picture of princess she is Mama Bongiwe's daughter and she's the boss of me. Don't let her precious face deceive you, this child is the boss of everyone who comes around including her own parents and her sister. She is a benevolent dictator, though, and usually allows me to hold my baby (who she thinks is her baby), and she does have a very precious face
: )I love her. I am so sad to leave all these kids, but at least I will be leaving them worm free!! I purchased 100 deworming pills and I'm going to enlist some of the team that's coming from the USA next week to help me deworm all the children!! I'm sooo excited.

This is not an exciting post

Sorry, I'm not on my laptop so I don't have any fun pictures, but on Wednesday or Thursday I'm going to try to go to the internet cafe and post some exciting stories with pictures! I am still busy checking the children at the 4 ministry sites, we are contemplating deworming the kids in Clau Clau (the feeding scheme) and Msokwaba (the church without a roof), so thats something to look forward too : ) Deworming is actually less gross than it sounds, as it involves administering an oral medication (sorry to dissapoint those who were hoping for pictures of me wrassling a worm!!)

Lets see...what else? On Sunday in one of the churches we attended the pastor complimented me for singing along when they sing in their language, so that was funny. Whats really funny is I have no idea what I'm singing....the songs are just easy to follow and I'm used to hearing them : ) Honestly we could be singing Anti-American propaganda and I wouldn't be the wiser!!! That is the church that meets under a tent, and there is a precious kid at this church who always winks at me : ) He, apparently was impressed with my willingness to talk sports with him at length when we first met, and now I can do no wrong in his eyes!!! Maybe I should try this with eligible bachelors??

I've spent the most time with the kids in Clau Clau, so they are especially precious to me, and I find myself thinking about them a lot! I can picture each of their faces and their crazy names!! My favorite crazy name from last week was Events....I wonder what it was about his conception or birth that earned him that name?? I was reading in the paper today about some criminals convicted on some crime or another, and one of the names was Innocent!! I found that to be deliciously ironic, and have already started filing away names for my own future children!

Well, this post is getting too long without pictures so I will sign off for now, and I promise I'll have some good stories in a few days for you : ) Thanks for all the comments, I LOVE them!!!

Sorry it has been so long since I’ve written a good blog! I’ve been busy checking the children in all of our projects. Mostly at Good Hope feeding scheme, which is another way of saying feeding program, I guess. This is a village project run by a woman and her husband, Mama Bongiwe. They feed over 90 children each week, one meal a day after school. Mercy Medicine brings supplies when needed and looks after the health of the children. Once weekly on Fridays the children have a bible based program which is taught by Mama Thule, Mama Bongiwe also holds services each Sunday in the small “church” building. These children are either orphaned or abandoned and from poverty stricken homes.

Here’s a picture of Mama Bongiwe, that’s not her baby, she looks after this baby while the baby’s mom is in school. Whenever we go there they say to Janice and I “Here’s your baby”, because one of us is always holding her while we are there! Here’s a picture of me checking one of the children, his name is Doctor, which I didn’t realize until they handed me his assessment sheet, and I thought people were calling him Doctor as a nickname!

There’s another boy named Surprise at this project, and a girl named “Pretty”!! I think that’s very cheeky to name your kid Pretty, especially if she ends up growing up to be ugly!! So far I’ve checked almost 100 children. This week we are going to Good Hope a few extra times so I can finish assessing all of them, and then I will have the 2 churches to finish and Msokwaba, which I’ve told you a little about already! The goal is to have a baseline assessment for Janice to build on once she gets the mobile clinic, and also to kind of know what sort of health problems she will be dealing with, and what kinds of treatments she can have on board.

On Saturday we went to Moholoholo nature reserve which is basically an animal rescue program and I got to pet a cheetah! Janice and I were in line together so I didn’t get a picture of either of us petting it, but here’s a pic of some random South Africans petting it!

Here’s a pic of a baby rhino too, he can’t poop, poor thing. It’s a very cool place and you can look it up online, the founder spoke to us, and it was really cool to see the animals that close! When the team comes we are going to take them there, and I’m already looking forward to it! Make sure to scroll down, there’s another blog under this one! I'll be adding pics tomorrow when I have a better internet connection, for now you'll just have to use your imagination : )

Elizabeth’s story

Elizabeth is an HIV+ woman who Janice has looked after for a while she has 4 kids, 2 older boys who are not infected, and then 2 younger children Sizwe and Charmaine who are infected. The picture above is her and her 2 youngest. They are 14 and 6. Elizabeth works 12 hour days 6 days a week (it used to be 7, but she has recently been able to take Sundays off to go to church.) They pay her 500 Rand a month, that’s around 71 American dollars, which is basically crazy.



She and the 2 children go to ACTS clinic, which is dedicated to the care of patients with HIV/AIDS; they have over 25,000 patients, whom they care for on a monthly basis. There are adult and children’s clinics, and OBGYN services for the infected as well as a Hospice. They also have a Home Based Care service, where they provide care for patients in their homes. They provide regular check ups, lab work, support groups, ARVs (Anti Retro Viral drugs), and testing at their facility. They have several doctors on staff, as well as nurses and social workers. Janice takes Elizabeth and the kids there every 3 months to get checked as well as to get their ARV supply. This last time they were short on ARVs, and apparently the entire nation is also short, so we’ll be going back at the end of this month to hopefully get the rest of Elizabeth’s meds.



Anyway, Mercy Medicine usually subsidizes the meds and Elizabeth gets a small stipend for the children, but still $71 is not nearly enough to even begin to feed 5 people! It’s not like she can get another job either, as basically all her time is spent on this one. We are trying to get some supporters for this family so that they Elizabeth can stay home and take care of her kids, and take care of herself!



It’s a very sad thing, Elizabeth is not an IV drug user, she didn’t go out and have crazy sex with multiple partners (I’m sure that last sentence will give some lovely sickos courtesy of Google!), she was faithful to her husband, and he gave her this disease in return for her faithfulness. He’s probably off infecting other women or dead so he’s not there anymore to provide support for the woman and 2 children that he infected. I think of Sizwe a young man who doesn’t seem bitter about the disease that he didn’t do anything to get, but whose whole existence will always revolve around his HIV status.



It doesn’t help that in Africa being HIV+ is still considered a shameful thing that is not talked about, which is crazy because the majority of people are infected. When I’m at home, I don’t really think about these things except in abstract conversation, but here it’s so present, it’s a part of almost everyone’s life and nobody is talking about it! Don’t even get me started on the PSCA (poor starving children of Africa); it is so hard to even begin to think of solving these problems because they are so vast and so common here. I just have to know that I am helping one Mama and her children who are HIV+ to survive, to have a decent life, and to not be hungry this month. While the solution isn’t Americans throwing money at the problem, because eventually the money will run out, it also isn’t we who have so much abandoning those who have nothing to their own devices. I agree with Obama that it has to be Africans gaining the tools they need, and the courage they need to do something about their own nation! I struggle with how to do this, the balance of feeding someone for a day or giving them the tools to feed themselves for a lifetime. It is impossible for me to allow someone go hungry in the meantime, though.



Incidentally, if you would like to throw money at Mama Elizabeth, please be my guest, e-mail me, and we will arrange it. She’s a good woman who works hard and is trying to help her family. I guess I will step off my soapbox now and get back to work! My time here is already half way over! I'll leave you with a picture of Elizabeth and I, she isn't so sure about having her picture taken : )

Promises promises

Hey guys, I promise I'm going to post some proper stories with pics sometime this week (maybe even later on today). The stories about church and Mama Elizabeth will have to wait until next week, as we didn't make it to the village churches this Sunday, not to worry I have some nice pictures for you with great stories!

My mom wanted me to clarify what a "feeding scheme" is, and I don't blame her as it sounds a bit shady : )

So, the Clau Clau feeding scheme is called to Good Hope Centre and its a mama who feeds the children of her community once a day every day. She has gotten some funding from several sources, and she has some ladies that work with her and helps her to prepare the meals for the kids. About 100 kids are fed there, and for most of them its their only meal. I will post some more pics of that soon, I promise!! They are hoping to buy some land near where they are now, and build a more permanent structure! They also have a little service with a story and coloring and such once a week, we are going to try to get them to do it more often, because the kids enjoy it so much!

This week and next I will be working on getting baseline assessments of all the children in all our projects, so that when we finally get our hands on the mobile clinic we will be ready to serve them! Very exciting!

Also, I lost my camera for a few days, but now I have it back, thank goodness!!! Don't worry nothing exciting happened during that time!

Love to all, and thanks for the comments and e-mails!

Have a great day, and keep your eyes peeled for more posts! (that is kind of a gross figure of speech.....keep your eyes peeled, yuck, now I have a disgusting mental picture of peeled eyes.......)