Hello Blog,
well now I’m skipping forward to last weekend, because I’m lagging on this whole blog thing, and I have given up on filing the blanks before that point. So last weekend we were going to head to the Kakamega Forest on Saturday morning, we were to leave at 7am sharp, this was confirmed by Francis. We got up and ready and waited, and waited and waited, the guy was supposed to be washing the car when I called at 7:30, at 8 he still wasn’t around, and so on and so on. At 9:00 I finally called Francis and told him that it was getting too late and that all the animals are hiding by noontime, he and the driver finally made it at around 10:30, apparently the driver have loaned out his car to someone who was supposed to bring it back the night before, but didn’t bring it until the morning. I told him that it was too late, he tried to talk us into going anyway, but I told him he could come back the next morning at 7 if he wanted and we could go then. So he decided he would do that and went on his way.
We decided to take Claire swimming, and to take a Kiboko boat tour. Kiboko is kiSwahili for Hippo. So we went off to Kiboko Bay Resort and took Claire swimming. She loved it and she made some nice new friends. Her new friends had floaties too, so they all floated around together, Claire even shared hers with two other kids when she got out of the pool. We decided not to go on the Kiboko tour as the hippos are best to watch in the morning time, and Katie had slipped and was feeling sore.
So, the next day we indeed headed off to the Kakamega Forest. It was great, we paid a modest entrance fee and found a guide and enlisted him on our 3 hour walk. He turned out to be very knowledgeable and gave us a lot of great info about the medicinal properties of plants, which is exactly what Katie wanted. We recorded quite a few of his talks and will post them soon. I found out though that I have a memory card which is too small, back when I got it, this 2 GB card seemed huge, but on the walk I used it up less than halfway through the trip, which was no good and I even had to delete one of the talks about the medicinal plants. We found a black and white Columbus monkey, I got a great shot of him. So, I will get a bigger one at Nakumatt if the price is reasonable. So on the way back, the guide asked me if I knew anyone who knew how to make a website. And so I offer to make one for them in exchange for some free guided tours of the forest in the future. It seemed like the best deal for all, of course I’m very busy so that’s that hard part, but I told them it would just be a simple simple site.
When I got home I was the recipient of some amazing news! UNAIDS had offered me funding to help start a PMTCT program in Ghana in late September! I did a happy dance of joy and then was a bit overwhelmed by what this all means, so I won’t be coming back to the US after Kenya, I’ll be taking a leave of absence and going straight from Nairobi to Accra and then up to the Barong Afo region, (Which I know I misspelled) to start on the next project! Yay for awesome opportunity, sad that I will be missing my friends and family who were going to visit this fall and I might totally miss my J-termers before I come back to SIPA! So Yay and awesome and such for that, though I think the leave of absence has some consequences for financial aid and for the housing. But we will see. If I can keep my place I will just sublet it out to James who was here in Kisumu but is moving with his family to NYC. My friend Beth will be coming to Ghana to work on a two year contract and she agreed to bring me some stuff from my place that I want here. Okay so it’s the external drive with all my movies, the projector and my xbox, yes, I’m a nerd okay?
On the job side of things, exciting things are happening! We are getting a programmer to help with the programming side of things next Monday, his name is Kevin and he will be a big help. Plus he’s staying at the same guest house as me so I can bug him about the software non-stop! On Monday I had a meeting with Andy Kanter and Ben Nemser who are high up in the childcount/mHealth/eHealth bit of things in New York and we made some significant changes to the system. We eliminated a few forms and steps and came out with a much more streamlined version of things. Now the CHWs will not have any additional forms to carry, and the total number of new forms is down to 3. We are still collecting a lot of good data though. I will be working with the Yala Sub-District Hospital to try and get them to begin inputting CD4 results into the system as well and there is the long shot of getting the folks at the CDC lab that process the DBS tests to do input them as well. The conference call ended at 7pm and even that was only because they were going to lock me inside the building if I didn’t come out right then.
I worked late into the night on Monday to try and get the new forms ready for the meeting with the health facilitators on Tuesday. I knew I would have time at the place itself, but that my only access to a printer would be in the morning before we left for Yala. I got it all done and printed and headed off to the training where I would meet the health facilitators later. So, I arrived and while waiting for the training to be over, I realized what they were training on. They were to go around to all the households in their catchment area and do a household health survey. Somehow I was lucky enough to have the one sample pack of stickers that we were getting as part of my program and took about 10 minutes to ask the CHWs that when they were going around to please record the health IDs of the mother, father and all kids under 5 on stickers complete with the name for identifying, and to stick them to the inside front cover of the maternal health booklet. This was the plan from the start, I’m just happy I was there so we could piggyback on this instead of making them go to all the households a second time. Now we just need the stickers, though Dickson is supposed to be on that one, and to procure some maternal and childhood health booklets in case the woman hasn’t gone to her 1st antenatal visit yet to receive one, which Komolo is on. So, wow, we are moving forward, work has begun! And I spoke to 2 health facilitators yesterday and one today (who are the ones in charge of the CHWs at each health center) and they are totally on board too! So, things are going really well, I did another training today and the last one will be tomorrow. Oh, one funny thing, I didn’t have internet in the field and after busting my ass to get the forms changed, when I got back to the office I had an email with more changes! D’oh! But oh well, I’m going to do those either tonight or tomorrow. So, that’s about it for now.
Oh, next weekend we will be staying out in a village and giving a talk to 1,800 HIV+ kids… that will be interesting! OK, till tomorrow or so!
P.S. if you haven’t already, click follow or I will be forced to keep bugging you (You too Mom!) because we love to have followers!
OK, pics up when I get home because they refuse to upload now...
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