Literally March, April and May Madness....

Howdy all....so life has been super crazy and busy for me, sorry for the lack of blog posts. Hope all is well back in the wonderful U.S of A!!! I miss you all so much and thank you a million times over to everyone who has been so great at writing/sending me things, it is much much much appreciated!!!! Special shout out to Cucco and Noreen for the fabulous packages I received yesterday-it made my week!!! Thanks so much.

So I will give brief updates by the month, considering a lot has happened since I've written on this thing...but you all will be happy to hear that work has actually taken place, and very few vacations so be forewarned...a blog entirely on my work projects :-)!!

March saw me in Lusaka for the first week due to unforeseen medical tests...it was not the way I wanted to start out considering I had just returned from a fabulous holiday in Zanzibar. Luckily though the medical team fixed me up, put me on a new malaria medicine and I was sent back to Mpika-land on March 8th-International Women's Day. I was sad to miss the day in Mpika because the women's groups had organized a great event but at least I was returning to site, so could not complain. Later in March, I had a meeting in Serenje-Central Province-for Camp Glow-Girls Leading Our World because the Mpika volunteers want to put on another one in December so it was more of a planning meeting. It was really great and we were able to get some good feedback and suggestions on ways to improve the camp, so yay for that. In March, I also worked with Chita/Bufuba Neighborhood Health Committee to plan a Malaria Day event for April. I also trained this NHC in IGAs because they wanted to raise money for their group. They decided on making and selling Amabuns so we will see how that goes. And basically that was March in a nutshell...

So it is said that April showers bring May flowers....well not in Zambia. Luckily the rains passed in April and the weather was quite beautiful! My site is so perfect now...my garden sprouted, I enjoyed fresh pumpkins, cilantro, carrots and hot peppers it was amazing. I never thought I had a green thumb, but luckily my neighbor does and it was basically his garden in which I was able to enjoy the fruits :-) So for Easter weekend, I ended up going to Lake Tanganyika with Kate, Meera and Angela. It was such a fun and relaxing weekend, we certainly enjoyed our little R & R. Lake Tang is in Northern Province in Mpulungu district...it is about 350 km from Mpika but well worth the travel. When I returned to site, I continued to train my NHC on IGAs and planning Malaria Day event. In the middle of April, I had a one week PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDs Relief) funded training on HIV/AIDs and it was absolutely amazing. One of the best parts of Peace Corps trainings it that they require us to bring a counterpart from the village to be trained as well so that they can go back to the villages with the volunteers and help spread the message. I brought my Health Center Committee (HCC) chairperson who also is a psycho-social counselor who does VCT. He was really good and really knew his stuff about HIV/Aids. The training was so interactive and informative, probably one of the best trainings I've been to so far in Peace Corps. During this training, we worked with our counterparts to develop plans for returning to the village and educating the community on HIV. So Ba Endie (my counterpart) and I decided that we would develop plans to do outreach twice a month to the different villages in my catchment to talk about HIV-about prevention, stigma, and living positively. Should be interesting so I'll keep you posted. When I returned, we had the malaria day event with my NHC and it was a great success!!! So many people turned out from both villages, as well as a drama group from another NHC which was really good. They performed a play on the importance of pregnant women attending antenatal clinic so to prevent malaria by getting fansidar. The NHC chairlady did a great job organizing it...I had to do very little, it was fabulous! And they even managed to do mosquito net retreatment demonstration which was nice. So yay for a successful event :-) At the end of April, all the newbies (the new Agriculture and Education volunteers) were sworn in so I'm officially no longer a newbie-yay! So in Mpika, we got five new volunteers-three education and two agri volunteers and they are a great addition to our crew here. I helped them shop for their sites-which was fun, but stressful and an event I hope never to have to repeat haha. It was quite overwhelming as they all had tons of questions, but wow, crazy to think I'm not in their position any more and now I'm the senior...time is just flying...

And onto May....can't believe it's my tenth month in Zambia-crazy!! I am almost at my one year marker...how did that happen??? But life is certainly great...I LOVE Zambia and am so incredibly happy here. I think my home-sick phase is long gone...sorry all those back home, and I just wish you all could venture out this way to get a glimpse into my little corner of the world...I know for a fact you'd all fall in love with it, like I have! Anyways...so with May came more trainings. Yep, last week I was in Lusaka for a training on Behavior Change and Communication. Only eight health volunteers were involved in this training and I was one of the chosen few :-) I brought my EHT-Environmental Health Technician who works at my clinic because he has been very active and works with me on a lot of events. So we both decided we wanted to partake in this training because we have seen effort in my community for villagers wanting to change their behavior. For example, in January we conducted village inspections and everyone built a tippy tap. Although it is a small step, it was a sign of willingess on the villagers part to improve their every day life so we decided we could build on this enthusiam to tackle bigger problems in the community. This training was conducted by the Program Training Officer (PTO) of Peace Corps Benin who is an expert in this field. She did a great job and the training was so interactive and engaging, we really walked away well equipped with the knowledge to conduct our study. Basically, during this week training, we worked with our counterpart to identify a behavior that we would like to change and then develop an action plan for implement a behavior change strategy. My EHT and I decided that we would like to focus on preventing teen pregnancy and early marriages since this is a very common problem in our community. So now we will go to our village, conduct surveys and interviews with school age girls, find out what prevents them from using protection or abstaining from sex, how they think we can help, etc and then we will help develop some activities that will prevent them from getting pregnant. My EHT and I came up with the idea of creating a girl-friendly corner at the Rural Health Center so that girls can come to the clinic and get protection without being harassed or questioned. We also decided to do mother/daughter education programs so girls have more support from the parents on the importance of staying in school and delaying marriage. So this is a trial experiment that PC Zambia is starting, but I really think it has potential to turn into something really great as it is an activity that one can devote an entire service too. I am interested to see how it goes...but keep fingers crossed for the best! We have a follow-up training in August after we gather our data to implement the activities so that should be very helpful as well. So yes, now I'm back in my village ready to work on collecting the data with my EHT for our study. It is pretty complex, and I may not have explained it very well but if you are interested in finding out more, email me and I'll share more.

So there's my life in a nutshell. Things are busy, work is busy and life is great. My villagers have fully embraced my presence and I feel so so so at home here. I really don't think I've been this happy in quite some time...it just feels so amazing. I'm truly blessed and could not have asked for a better site, PC country or assignment.... :-)

I will try to be better at updating this blog...but please please continue to write me, email me, send me packages as I love hearing from all of you back home!!!

Miss you all so much.

p.s. CONGRATULATIONS SABITA!!!! so excited and happy for you, wish I was there to see you walk across the stage and receive that well-earned diploma on Saturday but know that I'm thinking of you and am so so so proud of you!!! LOVE YOU!!!