Progress

I will not write this post like I am typing on AIM. So first I want to say that the headband lights and the light hat which I received from Uncle Tom and Aunt Clara and Mr. and Mrs. Bunting are awesome. They are so amazing, if you lived in an area of the world with 24 hour sunlight and in a house with motion sensor lighting, I would still suggest you buy 2, with extra batteries. Last week I spoke in Naholossa again with people in two churches, it was nice. Afterwards, I stopped by the wedding of the guy who built my fence and I did not see the easter eggs, and I also forgot to ask about them. It was fun, I danced and apparently the rest of the town heard about it because this last week in the market the 'folks'(is this trademarked by Bush?) were requesting a dancing session whenever I walked by. Last monday we had 51 people do HIV tests, a remarkable number. I can onnly imagine the increase when 31 health volunteers are giving speeches in numerous schools, churches and markets for 8 straight weeks. During consultations, we had a mother with HIV, whose sister was also infected by her husband. The husband died a month ago, and left sisters and 1 baby infected. The baby was with her mother last week, he has HIV, TB, had Schingles and was going to get a test for Malaria. The child's breathing was heartbreaking. The man who built my house lives behind me and his wife and son I have not seen in atleast 2 months. But now he has this young girl living with him, she is 18. She is rather attractive and I saw her with a baby at the hospital. I questioned her about the baby and she told me it was her's. Not unusual. But I asked who the father was and she named the man who built my house, but the odd thing is, because some men are known to move onto younger ladies, that this same girl told me she was staying with her uncle. So i asked, "esse filho e o filho teo tio?" Which is that child is your uncle's? And she replied yes. Still unsure if it is his niece through marriage or blood, I will keep you updated. My maid killed a goat a few weeks ago and it was pretty brutal, the throat slitting sure does bring a lot of blood and a slow, grueling death. Once again, my neighbors are changing houses, and now this real scary guy lives by me. Has an old wife of above 50 and a young wife in her mid-20s. Last monday he stabbed his wife (old one) in the foot and gave her a laceration on the head, I prolly should let Peace Corps know about this guy because I am terrified of him. When I was going through the PC application process, it was especially long because I did Grad School first. This allowed PC to bother me numerous times with phone calls and I always though that there must be a way to reduce the amount of time it takes for the interview/application process. Not anymore. I fully believe in the need for a long interview process. One is to weed out the people who really aren't dedicated and if they don't have the patience in America, they ain't gonna have it for the pace of African life, or any other country where PC serves. Also, I couldn't imagine the damage some people could do (read below reference about idiots on the show COPS) in a small, rural village in any region of the world. The inherited power you have once you arrive (money, color of skin, access to resources) is incredibly persuasive and the respect which you earn through hard work and cooperation is culturally powerful (included in meetings with community elders, access to community leaders whenever i need) gives a PC Volunteer an unsubstantiated amount of leverage with the community. Whether they use this for good or not is determined, because of the autonomous character of Peace Corps, by the volunteer. That being said, PCV's have used this to do innapropriate things in the past, obviously many, many more have done good. My point is, you can't send a man with the character of Tom Berenger from Platoon to a place like Mugulama. Since these volunteers do so much for so little, I thought it would be good to make them food one day after a meeting. I don't want to be the money volunteer, but I think a nice gesture every now and then is acceptable. I had beans and rice made for 30 people a few weeks ago. I bought everything and then paid a small amount to a lady who lives close to the hospital to cook it all. I spent a rather large some of money for a place like Mugulama, and the volunteers had known for 2 weeks that I was going to do this because I told them to bring plates. Nobody offered any help, which was fine, I was planning on doing it my way. But the night before, the President came by and said that I should not do this kind of stuff because every will think I have all this money and next time ask for help. I simply stated that you had 2 weeks to offer your help in any way that you wanted to and you did not. But the most annoying part was he didn't want my neighbor to do the cooking, he said it is the volunteers food and the lady volunteers could do the cooking, the VP, a lady was also rather impolite towards my neighbor. But I had to take a stand and say we were doing it my way because I offered them plenty of time to make suggestions and the night before was the worst time. And since I bought all the food, my neighbor is going to cook, you are going to eat and everyone is going to have a good time. Everyone did.
We received posters about vertical transmission of HIV, with colors, pictures and words. For those that understand the bush of Africa, or prolly other "developing" nations, written things are the truth to them. One quick thing, USAID made these posters, but only posters recognizing women with the virus? Really, I mean all those people in Washington and nobody thought about fighting the stigma and gender part of HIV with these posters? That's what you get when we continously send Ivy League silver spooners to run the government. But it is easy for them, because they enjoy the fact more people watch an episode of American Idol than the Presidential Debate. But we only have about 60 of these posters and I was explaining to Paulino that we must use these wisely because we prolly won't receive many more after this, we need to disperse them throughout Mugulama. He said, sure, but in 3 hours he put up 12 posters, 4 pairs of the same thing in the same area of the hospital so one person can read one poster 3 times. Horrible utilization of scarce resources. So the father of the baby I named left his wife for another woman in the city. It was disheartening. The governor visited Mugulama on Monday and he was about 5 hours late and it was really hot. I think I got an idea of how leaders who preside over countries that are really treated like the top down and rule through party politics, not so much election...I am trying to be delicate here with my observations, ask me about them at another time.
So I will close with more about my job and organization. I work for University of Vanderbilt and they are a part of the PEPFAR program in Mozambique. Their job is to revitalize the health infrastructure, create a sustainable process for ARV treatment, testing, adherence, orphans, counseling and other health related activities. Their plan is to be able to leave the country and the ARV program in the hands of the ministry of health after I believe is 8 years. Ask me about my thoughts on that later. Really what I do is bring our message into the community and attempt to build the communities capacity to development and implement health programs to the point where they do not rely on the dependence of a foreigner living in their community. I am much more optimistic about the potential of my job than that of Vanderbilt's. Ok that is all, I will be sending pictures in the email, some are from December, the more recent ones of my house with the fence and inside of it are from last monday. Take care. Bryan