March

Taking a break from writing my 2009 PEPFAR grant for Peace Corps. We are going to a build a health education center on the hospital grounds; mostly to give the group of volunteers a place to develop and implement community health programs (but according to Sarah Palin, community organizers do not actually have responsibilities). We are going to paint a world map on the outside of the health center and I decided to paint each country according to their HIV prevalence. I think it will be good to put Mozambique and Sub-Saharan Africa in perspective for the village members. As our first community health program, the group of volunteers will be traveling and visiting their neighbors in their respective zones to identify as many orphans as possible, along with their caretakers. Many will be from parents, or just one, who have died due to AIDS, but also will cover children who lost parents during our latest cholera outbreak in January, among other reasons for children becoming orphaned. We would like to eventually put a number of orphans and their caretakers through a perma culture training to provide these families with the opportunity to try a low-cost, high-benefit type of farming. Perma culture seeks to utilize a small area of land and yield a large amount of food; and since food security is incredibly important for large families in rural, Sub-Saharan Africa, we believe this is a good opportunity to experiment with this new method of farming/gardening. We will also be teaching these community members how to make fertilizer, only using locally available, free resources, enabling them to improve the quality of their soil. In January, I began a garden and compost pile at my house, and the results are mixed, but I learned a lot for the next pilot project I’ll do with the orphans and their caretakers.

At site, nothing really is new. I got a new cook/maid. It is the lady whose son I named Rosario, and she is doing well. Her beans are wonderful. My American doctor, Pamela, is leaving this week for the states and just wanted to thank her for everything she has done for me, from allowing me to use her computer for work, to bringing me cookies on Mondays at my site. I will miss you and Riley and hopefully run into you two in other places around the world. Good luck with your next adventure.

So the Pope went to Africa, said condoms promote promiscuity, and left. Laura and I have a dog, her name is Maddy, when we are getting ready to leave the house (and I think Laura now does this) we stop, turn to Maddy, tell her we love her and “don’t be stupid!”. Apparently, I will now have to stop, turn to Maddy, and tell her and the Pope not to be stupid. What an f’n embarrassment.

Obama said he bowled as well as people in the Special Olympics (or something to that effect). Not quite at the level of the Pope’s blatant ignorance, because he won’t be responsible for the deaths of many people, but horrible nonetheless. You are an idiot for the rest of the week Mr. President.

If I seem presumptuous in my liberal usage of personal insults, I try to only seek the absolute, most brainless personal actions to state my opinion about; I believe these two qualify.