Hello friends and some people whom I have never met. I wrote a post for the official ChildCount+ Blog and it's now up. It's a more detailed explanation of what I have been up to here, so go and check it out!
http://www.childcount.org/2010/08/17/using-childcount-to-strengthen-maternal-and-childhood-health/
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Ok, so I'm back
So that was my first attempt at Creme Bruleé, it turned out okay, but I think I needed to account for the extra moisture from the passion fruit. Oh well, next time. It was still yummy but the consistency wasn't right.
OK where did we leave off? Oh yeah, we were going to be evac'ed to Nairobi, that went well, more like a vacation, yeah, in case of questions, see Katie's post. Big shout out to my Dad who donated $200 to help the orphans in Masago! That is going to help the feeding programs so much and help keep kids healthy!
Lets see, I keep thinking of things in my day and thinking "Awesome! I'm totally going to write that in the blog!" and then when I actually get home, I have completely forgotten it. So pretend i told you all about awesome things! yay!
Yeah, I'm still tired.
So, the past week or two has been really good for the project. The software is finished and has been moved onto the main server, which means we are up and running there. Komolo and I have trained the first three health centers, and starting Monday we will be taking trips around to see how the ID card distribution is going and if the health staff has any questions about the program as it stands.
I have also been feeling really good about all of the accolades that have been coming my way. I feel really good about the project and have really appreciated all the nice things that people have said about it and me. Of course I haven't done it alone, without Yanis I wouldn't have even had the chance to work on this or the funding that made it all possible, without ChildCount and Matt we would have had to start from scratch which would have made things about 18 billion times harder, Moses, Dickson and Kevin were the ones who actually did the programming, and Komolo and Francis among others have been key during my visits to the field. Andy and Ben made me fight for only those parts of the system that really needed to be there and helped to make the system as streamlined as possible. The CHWs and MVP project in general are the reason we can implement and I wouldn't have wanted to have to try and do all the amazing strengthening of the systems that they have done over the last few years before I started on this project. So yeah, I know most of you have no idea who these people are, but they rock! I have never enjoyed such hard work as I have enjoyed these past few months, if any of you guys are reading, thank you so much!
On that note, we have been talking to people who think that this system would be perfect for a district or nation wide strengthening of PMTCT services, so this is really exciting, as well as talking to the Kenyan Department of health people and UNICEF Kenya, we have also had meetings with UNICEF Uganda about this program. It's exciting to see the work you have done getting people to think about what they could accomplish in their own backyards with the same systems. It's all open source, and the more people using it, the more mothers getting good antenatal care and the more kids born without HIV, so that is awesome. I'm working on a post for the childcount blog and a Powerpoint that really goes through the system and shows how it works, I'll post a link to the CC blog and to the Powerpoint when I'm done with them (which had best be tomorrow!) So, Monday it's looking like I'm going to try and get my phone (or better yet, borrow one on the correct network) to be a fake CHW phone on the test network and make an appointment for my test patient. Make sure that it is all working to plan and meet with the lab here which does dried blood spot testing for early infant diagnosis of HIV and I hope the lab in Yala. I'mgoing to sit down with the coordinator and say "sorry to be a pain in the ass, but I'm going to need to commandeer one of your cars for my last week, I have too much to do and too little time to do it in and I have to be going between meetings in Kisumu and meetings in Yala the next few days. If that doesn't work, than monday in Kisumu, Tuesday in Yala, then Wed, thurs and Fri, we are training 2 Health Centers a day (which sounded good at the time of the planning meeting but now has more than a passing resemblance to logistics hell). We have 10,000 ID cards being printed (I hope soon) and booklets which need to go out to the health centers and I need to talk to the OpenMRS guys to see if the data entry folk can put in the forms in Sauri. Anyway, yeah, it's gonna be busy! Also, my contract should finally come next week, we have a Claire's 1st birthday/going away party on Wed and Claire's actual first birthday on Thurs.! Yeah, were gonna need a little more caffine over here... Okay, we are off tomorrow to hike in the rainforest, somehow between everything else, I took a night off and build them a simple website. So, yay for free rainforest! Enjoy the pics, I may not label them... We'll see. I wish I had Goonies to give the orphans, though I totally hooked them up with Winnie the Pooh and The original Star Wars Trilogy as well as The Princess and the Frog... They are good kiddos,I hope this small thing can help distract them from the difficulties they have already begun to face and feel like a normal kid for a bit.
So, I'll try to write more, but as you can see I'm a bit scattered and have a lot on my plate!
Ok ok ok, I'll finally post a blog!
Hello blog people. This is Casey. I have not disappeared because of a time traveler accidentally screwing up the space time continuum ala Marty McFly, yes, that was a Back to the Future reference. A few weeks ago, our Japanese housemates and I were talking about movies from the 80s, Kaniko and I agreed that the Goonies was awesome and then we moved onto the Never Ending Story and Karate Kid (Which only Yoshi had seen) We had to use google quite a bit to find movie posters as things are called something different depending on what country/language you see them in. I saw "Dreamcatcher" a few years back in Burkina Faso, and that movie sucked even then and in French. In case you missed it, it had Morgan Freeman in it and monsters that came out of your butt. I'm not even sure why I'm writing about movies, I think I might be tired. Anyway, it's time to faire le bruleé sur mon creme bruleé so I'll be back and actually talk about something current. I apologize to those who just read this post. That's my bad....
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
In case you were wondering about the module
So, the software I am working on designing is an addon to Childcount+ I've embedded the overview here in case you wanted to know how text messages are used for health in Africa. I'm making a new bit to add to this slideshow... I'm trying to get caught up on work, (Claire isn't helping with this, but she's a really cute distraction) I'll write a real post later...
ChildCount+ Overview from Matt Berg on Vimeo.
Referendum week
Lynn voted!!! You can tell because she has been marked with a type of ink that won't come off for about a month. This is to prevent people from voting more than once.
I’m writing to you with a baby head under one arm and a baby leg on top of the other arm. Claire likes to take her breakfast while I blog. So, we’re back in Kisumu, and I’m back to the land of the living! Last week, we were in Nairobi on a forced holiday, of which I spent most of my time in the guest house room with a nasty strep throat. On the 3rd day, I finally took antibiotics and by that evening, felt like I was finally winning. While in Nairobi, we visited the Village Market (read: rich people mall) on several occasions, and it made me appreciate Kisumu prices, as it was ridiculously expensive and non-negotiably priced. I did get a nice haircut though, and ate some amazing Indian food. Oh, and we ate at The Carnivore, which is exactly what you would expect it to be: lots of meat roasted over a big, indoor pit. It was an admittedly tourist activity, but it was worth the experience and it was Kevin’s last meal in Kenya before flying back to France, so we made it into an event.
We flew back on Saturday, and I was so happy to be back in Kisumu! I’m realizing that we have just 2 weeks left here, and it’s a little hard to imagine life back in NY. It’s looking most likely that we will be headed back to NY for Casey to finish his degree this Fall, then Ghana probably in January. It is all up in the air right now, of course, but I will keep you all posted!
Clinical trial update: I have heard back from 2 of the 3 doctors involved with the Iquilai pilot in Kenya a few years ago, and they have offered to supply the remedy for the trial, which is great! Now, I am looking for funding for the rest of the trial, so if any of you know of any small grants for individual research out there, please let me know.
It’s the final push for Casey’s project, and he is working very long days to get it all finished. I am so proud of him, and I will let him tell you the most recent good news on his next post.
Claire turns 1 in 9 days!! We are going to celebrate on the 17th with all of the SIPA-ites, our Kenyan friends, and hopefully our Japanese friends who are now both in Mbita doing research. Claire will definitely get some of her cake, as she has had wheat flour, dairy, sugar, eggs, and pretty much every potential allergen (except nuts/nut butters and honey), and seems to be doing quite well with it all (fingers crossed!). We made a decision to just let her have what we are having, and you will see by the pictures I posted that she is enjoying trying foods very much!
Pictures from Referendum week
Contemplating...what exactly?
This is us evacuating.
Me gnawing on a sheep bone--my Grama would have been proud!
Oooh, who knew ice cream could be so hot?
Awww, sharing is nice.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Election time and getting evaced to Nairobi!
Blog:
Well, there is quite a lot to update all of you on. So, I assume that you would like to know how things went at Masogo, so, last weekend, that was the destination. Leaving, all we knew was that there was a CBO (which stands for community based organization for those not familiar with development-speak) which was caring for 1,800 HIV+ children. That was all that we knew, and boy were we not prepared for the reception that we got when we arrived. Francis said when we arrived in Masongo, “see those ladies? That is where we get out” and so we did, and they were chanting and dancing, and then they put sparkling garlands around our necks, took our hands and began dancing down the street. Meanwhile, Claire is asleep in her carseat, oblivious to the commotion going on around her as she led the parade down the street in the back of the car. I know that you are likely wondering about that word that I just used: parade. Yes, it was a parade, 60 widows all dressed in black, and We, the visitors, singing and dancing our way through the town, There is a video, if Katie will allow it, I’ll post. After some time we found Komolo, Mary and Charity from the MVP and they joined us. After about 2 kilometers (and I’m not kidding) we arrived at the office, and the widows came inside, and the children and other assorted hangers-on departed. We were introduced to the caregivers for the children and signed the guest book. After that, we were running a bit behind, so we left the caregivers in Komolo’s hands for training and headed off to the nursery school.
I call it a nursery school, but it was a tin building with a dirt floor, James, the head of the CBO said that they had quite a few problems with the place, that the floor was no good and gets infested with bugs. So, we sat under a tent, some really cute kids performed some songs and dances for us, and then Katie gave her speech to the kids. After that, we moved on to another school, a few kilometers down the road. This one was a nursery school, and we sat down to a very nice tea and then moved on to a classroom filled with little itty bitty chairs. There we greeted some parents, and by this point, Katie and I had decided to trade off on the speech, so I gave it this time, modified slightly for adults. When we arrived at this place, a little boy saw Claire and said that she was a doll! It was very funny, we was very confused when she was walking around like a real baby.
After this we headed back to the area of the office, thinking all the time that when we put sunscreen on Claire we should have really applied some ourselves as well. So, we headed back, and after a short stop came to another school. It’s really amazing all the things that we take for granted in the US, even things like permanent structures for our schools, this one had a few buildings with mud walls and on where they were working on finding materials for a roof. So, another speech and we were back off down the road to come back to the first place. We arrived and I delivered the last speech, utilizing President Obama’s “Yes we can!” rally, it was really cool seeing all those widows chanting that, affirming their good work and their power to make changes in their lives.
Okay, so now it’s about 4 days after I began this post and Katie had already filled you in on the other details.
Skipping ahead, I know there were some things I wanted to share, so please everyone just pretend that I shared some amusing anecdotes here, and pretend as though you are all caught up. Short version, we have some new cards printed up with all the ChildCount+ Ids for all the households and have printed up the first 400 CC+ Ids on stickers with barcodes for easy integration into the OpenMRS system! Yay! Ummm, let’s see, met a student from the MPH program at the Mailman school of Public Health at Columbia who is working on a program that I worked on an earlier version of, those hers is much better. They are re-training traditional birth attendants to be doulas and having retired midwives be available for births which can’t make it to the hospitals in time, or which happen after the health centers are closed. I’m working with her to make sure that our programs work well together as a bit was overlapping before, Looks like everything is working together really well now though. I bought a whole bunch of pirated DVDs, just in case we are stuck inside for a while, the president and prime minister were here on Saturday and some other stuff happened, but now I can’t so much remember what it was.
So, it was suggested a while back that we evac to Nairobi for the upcoming elections on Tuesday. We decided not to, because we felt very safe here and it’s looking pretty mellow. No one seems to be expecting violence. But, MVP has decided that it would be better if we were in Nairobi, so it’s now mandatory that we go. So tomorrow morning we are going. Don’t be worried, I’m sure it will all be fine. We’re hoping to be back to Kisumu before Friday. Check out http://uchaguzi.co.ke/ to keep up on everything that is happening here. Take care! Our Kenya mobile phone number is +254-71-315-8513 if you want to get a hold of us, and we should have internet access. Okay, that’s all for now, it’s late and we need to get up early and pack in the morning. Love you all!
Casey!
PS the neighbors are having a hell of a party, it sounds like so much fun! I want to go!
Well, there is quite a lot to update all of you on. So, I assume that you would like to know how things went at Masogo, so, last weekend, that was the destination. Leaving, all we knew was that there was a CBO (which stands for community based organization for those not familiar with development-speak) which was caring for 1,800 HIV+ children. That was all that we knew, and boy were we not prepared for the reception that we got when we arrived. Francis said when we arrived in Masongo, “see those ladies? That is where we get out” and so we did, and they were chanting and dancing, and then they put sparkling garlands around our necks, took our hands and began dancing down the street. Meanwhile, Claire is asleep in her carseat, oblivious to the commotion going on around her as she led the parade down the street in the back of the car. I know that you are likely wondering about that word that I just used: parade. Yes, it was a parade, 60 widows all dressed in black, and We, the visitors, singing and dancing our way through the town, There is a video, if Katie will allow it, I’ll post. After some time we found Komolo, Mary and Charity from the MVP and they joined us. After about 2 kilometers (and I’m not kidding) we arrived at the office, and the widows came inside, and the children and other assorted hangers-on departed. We were introduced to the caregivers for the children and signed the guest book. After that, we were running a bit behind, so we left the caregivers in Komolo’s hands for training and headed off to the nursery school.
I call it a nursery school, but it was a tin building with a dirt floor, James, the head of the CBO said that they had quite a few problems with the place, that the floor was no good and gets infested with bugs. So, we sat under a tent, some really cute kids performed some songs and dances for us, and then Katie gave her speech to the kids. After that, we moved on to another school, a few kilometers down the road. This one was a nursery school, and we sat down to a very nice tea and then moved on to a classroom filled with little itty bitty chairs. There we greeted some parents, and by this point, Katie and I had decided to trade off on the speech, so I gave it this time, modified slightly for adults. When we arrived at this place, a little boy saw Claire and said that she was a doll! It was very funny, we was very confused when she was walking around like a real baby.
After this we headed back to the area of the office, thinking all the time that when we put sunscreen on Claire we should have really applied some ourselves as well. So, we headed back, and after a short stop came to another school. It’s really amazing all the things that we take for granted in the US, even things like permanent structures for our schools, this one had a few buildings with mud walls and on where they were working on finding materials for a roof. So, another speech and we were back off down the road to come back to the first place. We arrived and I delivered the last speech, utilizing President Obama’s “Yes we can!” rally, it was really cool seeing all those widows chanting that, affirming their good work and their power to make changes in their lives.
Okay, so now it’s about 4 days after I began this post and Katie had already filled you in on the other details.
Skipping ahead, I know there were some things I wanted to share, so please everyone just pretend that I shared some amusing anecdotes here, and pretend as though you are all caught up. Short version, we have some new cards printed up with all the ChildCount+ Ids for all the households and have printed up the first 400 CC+ Ids on stickers with barcodes for easy integration into the OpenMRS system! Yay! Ummm, let’s see, met a student from the MPH program at the Mailman school of Public Health at Columbia who is working on a program that I worked on an earlier version of, those hers is much better. They are re-training traditional birth attendants to be doulas and having retired midwives be available for births which can’t make it to the hospitals in time, or which happen after the health centers are closed. I’m working with her to make sure that our programs work well together as a bit was overlapping before, Looks like everything is working together really well now though. I bought a whole bunch of pirated DVDs, just in case we are stuck inside for a while, the president and prime minister were here on Saturday and some other stuff happened, but now I can’t so much remember what it was.
So, it was suggested a while back that we evac to Nairobi for the upcoming elections on Tuesday. We decided not to, because we felt very safe here and it’s looking pretty mellow. No one seems to be expecting violence. But, MVP has decided that it would be better if we were in Nairobi, so it’s now mandatory that we go. So tomorrow morning we are going. Don’t be worried, I’m sure it will all be fine. We’re hoping to be back to Kisumu before Friday. Check out http://uchaguzi.co.ke/ to keep up on everything that is happening here. Take care! Our Kenya mobile phone number is +254-71-315-8513 if you want to get a hold of us, and we should have internet access. Okay, that’s all for now, it’s late and we need to get up early and pack in the morning. Love you all!
Casey!
PS the neighbors are having a hell of a party, it sounds like so much fun! I want to go!
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