Hello all and Happy Thanksgiving!!!
I can't believe it is already thanksgiving yet again. And it is so strange to be at the Peace Corps house to celebrate with about 40 other volunteers and now being considered one of the old and vetern volunteers. It seems like just yesterday I was the newbie asking all sorts of questions!!
Life in the vill has been going well. It is caterpillar season again meaning that most of my neighbors spend every morning out in the bush collecting the caterpillars and then their afternoons squeezing out the insides and cooking them and preparing to sell them by the gallon. It is quite the long and smelly process I must say and I dont really enjoy the afternoons when the wind blows the smell directly into my house. Yuck!
I have also been busy preparing my house for the second season of rains. I have bought about 10 bundles of grass and I have had members of the Kumbi NHC around a couple times to put it on the house and stop the giant leaks that were coming in with even the slightest of rain. So far since the put it up I am happy to report my house remains dry :)
Right now I am once again in the preparing stages of some things. On 1 December is World AIDS Day and this year we are having a celebration in my village. It first started out as just going to be a graduation type ceremony for my soccer programs I have been meeting with since the end of September, but now it has turned into much more than that. The plan includes to start in the morning with a march (featuring a homemade banner) starting at the clinic, down through the shops, and to the soccer field, having some role plays, poems and songs performed by the students, a booth set up by the clinic, counsellers available to do HIV testing on anyone who is wanting to know their status (which we are hoping many will want to) and then a soccer tournament and a netball tournament for the girls. And as an incentive we will be having someone make scones and a zambian maize drink called munkoyo available at the end. So since I came to Kasama on Tuesday I have been running around and calling around buying things and in search of freebies from the district health office and other shops. I dont really know how it turned into such this big event, but here is to hoping it will all go well!!
Then a few days after I will be taking two grade 8 girls and one female teacher at my school to Camp GLOW, which is a weeklong girls empowement camp. We will be teaching the girls about many things including confidence and motivation, assertiveness, boyfriend and peer pressure, preventing pregnancy and HIV, and sugar daddies. We will also be doing a sport olympics kind of thing and arts and crafts. A lot of planning has been going into the week and I really think it will be a great experience and I am really looking forward to it.
So it is a busy and fun time for me lately!!! Once I finish the two big events I will make sure to put up an update of how it went and also some pictures.
Keep sending letters, emails, facebook messages and anything because I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear from my friends and family back in the old US of A.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
PS ISHIKO
Well the 12 day nutrition project in Kumbi village has finished! We graduated 6 mothers after the 12 days were over.
Each day for 12 days these 6 maayos came together in Kumbi village (about 5km from my village) and we would cook an improved porridge to feed to their underweight children. Previously the kind of porridge they would make just consisted of mealie meal aka a carbohydrate so the kids were lacking food with a protein and vitamin/mineral source. This porridges I was teaching them to make included all three food groups. The combinations we made were:
1. kapenta(little dried fish similar to sardine, but much smaller) and veg
2. sweet potato and ground nut
3. soya bean and veg
4. pumpkin and groundnut
The favorite of the maayos was probably the sweet potato and groundnut porridge. Then after the cooking and feeding time I gave a health talk on numerous topics like family planning, malaria, nutrition, and hygeine.
I am glad I did the project, but I am also glad that it is done because it was a lot of work and a lot of time. Also many times I was left feeling frustrated because some days people wouldnt show up, or would be really late (like 1.5 hours), or I just doubted that any of it was even worth it. Were they really learning anything? Are they going to even adopt any of these behaviours when these 12 days are finished?
However, in the end the women who participated seemed to enjoy the program and I am happy to report we had weight gain from the children who attended daily. So it is a step in the right direction at least!
Each day for 12 days these 6 maayos came together in Kumbi village (about 5km from my village) and we would cook an improved porridge to feed to their underweight children. Previously the kind of porridge they would make just consisted of mealie meal aka a carbohydrate so the kids were lacking food with a protein and vitamin/mineral source. This porridges I was teaching them to make included all three food groups. The combinations we made were:
1. kapenta(little dried fish similar to sardine, but much smaller) and veg
2. sweet potato and ground nut
3. soya bean and veg
4. pumpkin and groundnut
The favorite of the maayos was probably the sweet potato and groundnut porridge. Then after the cooking and feeding time I gave a health talk on numerous topics like family planning, malaria, nutrition, and hygeine.
I am glad I did the project, but I am also glad that it is done because it was a lot of work and a lot of time. Also many times I was left feeling frustrated because some days people wouldnt show up, or would be really late (like 1.5 hours), or I just doubted that any of it was even worth it. Were they really learning anything? Are they going to even adopt any of these behaviours when these 12 days are finished?
However, in the end the women who participated seemed to enjoy the program and I am happy to report we had weight gain from the children who attended daily. So it is a step in the right direction at least!
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Return To Zambia
Well I've been back in Zambia for just about a month after being on a visit home for a few weeks. It's so strange to go home to America and feel like I never left and then to come back to Zambia and again feel like I never left. It's like a double life or something.
Since being back I've been preparing for some projects that are about to get started. One is the PS-Ishiko project, which is our version of the PD Hearth model. The program gets together between 6-10 underweight children with their caregivers for 12 days. Over the course of these 12 days the caregivers will learn how to cook nutritious foods for their kids such as porridge with a protein and veg source instead of just a carbohydrate as well as getting a daily health talk on topics ranging from HIV, malaria, to family planning. I will be starting it on Monday in Kumbi village, and then will hope to expand it to more villages if all goes well. So it'll be a busy 12 days for sure!
The second project I will be beginning is called Grass Roots Soccer (GRS) project. The program uses soccer to teach youth about HIV and other life skills. I haven't had much of an opportunity to do a ton of HIV work with the youth in my community so I am hoping this project will help to reach them.And the kids in my community LOVE soccer so I think they will really enjoy the program. So now I'm just getting last minute supplies together in order to get the project started. I have to conduct 2 sets of 11 sessions before the year comes to an end and then one more in the beginning of 2012 so it should keep me pretty busy.
Also I have a new addition to my hut in the form of an oven so now I can begin baking up a storm! So if you have any good recipes please feel free to send them my way :)
Since being back I've been preparing for some projects that are about to get started. One is the PS-Ishiko project, which is our version of the PD Hearth model. The program gets together between 6-10 underweight children with their caregivers for 12 days. Over the course of these 12 days the caregivers will learn how to cook nutritious foods for their kids such as porridge with a protein and veg source instead of just a carbohydrate as well as getting a daily health talk on topics ranging from HIV, malaria, to family planning. I will be starting it on Monday in Kumbi village, and then will hope to expand it to more villages if all goes well. So it'll be a busy 12 days for sure!
The second project I will be beginning is called Grass Roots Soccer (GRS) project. The program uses soccer to teach youth about HIV and other life skills. I haven't had much of an opportunity to do a ton of HIV work with the youth in my community so I am hoping this project will help to reach them.And the kids in my community LOVE soccer so I think they will really enjoy the program. So now I'm just getting last minute supplies together in order to get the project started. I have to conduct 2 sets of 11 sessions before the year comes to an end and then one more in the beginning of 2012 so it should keep me pretty busy.
Also I have a new addition to my hut in the form of an oven so now I can begin baking up a storm! So if you have any good recipes please feel free to send them my way :)
Saturday, June 25, 2011
AmericaLand
I'm coming back to America for a visit in less than a month and I have started compliling many lists of what I want to do, what I have to get done, what I want to buy and bring back with me, and most importantly what I want to eat. Here's my working list:
To Do (both want and need):
1. Weddings
2. Doctor, eye, dentist appointments
3. Go to the cabin
4. Drive my car...a lot.
5. Watch a new movie
6. Get my hair cut
7. Open house party
To Eat:
1. Chipotle
2. Steak
3. Pulled pork
4. Cheeseburger
5. Pizza (from Bulldogs and V.I.P)
6. Starbs (obvi)
7. French toast
8. Hotdog
9. BBQ sauce (I'll probably put it on anything)
10. Dr. Pepper
Well that's it for now but I expect it to continue. Less than one month!!!!
To Do (both want and need):
1. Weddings
2. Doctor, eye, dentist appointments
3. Go to the cabin
4. Drive my car...a lot.
5. Watch a new movie
6. Get my hair cut
7. Open house party
To Eat:
1. Chipotle
2. Steak
3. Pulled pork
4. Cheeseburger
5. Pizza (from Bulldogs and V.I.P)
6. Starbs (obvi)
7. French toast
8. Hotdog
9. BBQ sauce (I'll probably put it on anything)
10. Dr. Pepper
Well that's it for now but I expect it to continue. Less than one month!!!!
Friday, June 24, 2011
"How are you? I'm Fine!"
Well, I survived my first child health week and let me say it was a VERY busy week! 2 times per year (June and November/December) the ministry of health has a week dedicated to child health where the purpose is to weigh every child under 5 and provide Vitamin A, de-worming meds, and even measles vaccine to all the kids all for free. In my catchment area we covered our 10 zones over a 2-day period doing 5 zones per day. It was crazy to say the least but we made it through!
My main objective was to collect my data for all the kids age 6-60 months for my upcoming PS-Ishiko project. I had to collect the names of all the mothers and children, their weight and corresponding status (eg normal, mildly malnourished, severely malnourished), birth date, and then mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC). After all this data was collected I then calculated the overall nutrition status of each child and complied the statics for each zone. In each of my 10 zones there were HIGH rates of malnutrition totaling about 45-60% and normal children only being about 20%.
So the upcoming PS-Ishiko project will work to rehabilitate these malnourished children by having the mothers of the healthy children teach them healthy feeding behaviors. This will be done by holding daily sessions for 12 days where the mothers learn about a different health topic and then how to cook an improved porridge with the addition of a protein and vitamin source. The mothers will leave each day with a liter of this improved porridge to give their children throughout the day in addition to their regular meals. So the hope is that at the end of the 12 days the children will have gained weight and the mothers will have learned new behaviors to continue the weight gain and take their children to a healthy weight status. It's a lot of work, but the impact can also be really big as well.
The rest of my month has been spent doing work around my house. I am happy to report that after 8 months of being in my house I now have all my furniture! It was a big day when I finally placed the couch in my house and was a LONG time coming. I've also been working hard clearing the dry grasses from my yard to make it less inviting for snakes. So I purchased a slasher and then went to work and have finished with a blister to remember my hard work.
I also completed one of my goals of biking to Chishimba Falls, which is about 35km from my house. I set out one morning and made it in about 2 hours and was able to spend some time with some other volunteers swimming in the water before heading back. The ride back was much more difficult and took about 2.5 hours and for the next few days I was feeling that 70km!
So needless to say, June has been a busy month! Thanks for reading!
My main objective was to collect my data for all the kids age 6-60 months for my upcoming PS-Ishiko project. I had to collect the names of all the mothers and children, their weight and corresponding status (eg normal, mildly malnourished, severely malnourished), birth date, and then mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC). After all this data was collected I then calculated the overall nutrition status of each child and complied the statics for each zone. In each of my 10 zones there were HIGH rates of malnutrition totaling about 45-60% and normal children only being about 20%.
So the upcoming PS-Ishiko project will work to rehabilitate these malnourished children by having the mothers of the healthy children teach them healthy feeding behaviors. This will be done by holding daily sessions for 12 days where the mothers learn about a different health topic and then how to cook an improved porridge with the addition of a protein and vitamin source. The mothers will leave each day with a liter of this improved porridge to give their children throughout the day in addition to their regular meals. So the hope is that at the end of the 12 days the children will have gained weight and the mothers will have learned new behaviors to continue the weight gain and take their children to a healthy weight status. It's a lot of work, but the impact can also be really big as well.
The rest of my month has been spent doing work around my house. I am happy to report that after 8 months of being in my house I now have all my furniture! It was a big day when I finally placed the couch in my house and was a LONG time coming. I've also been working hard clearing the dry grasses from my yard to make it less inviting for snakes. So I purchased a slasher and then went to work and have finished with a blister to remember my hard work.
I also completed one of my goals of biking to Chishimba Falls, which is about 35km from my house. I set out one morning and made it in about 2 hours and was able to spend some time with some other volunteers swimming in the water before heading back. The ride back was much more difficult and took about 2.5 hours and for the next few days I was feeling that 70km!
So needless to say, June has been a busy month! Thanks for reading!
Friday, May 27, 2011
Life as of now....
I can't believe it's almost June and my one year mark of living in Zambia is so rapidly approaching. Time is flying!
Well things have been going along pretty smoothly here in the village and the rains have stopped meaning that my time spent cleaning up spills from my leaky grass roof is over. I'm happy to report I survived my first rainy season!!
Last week (May 16)I had my big womens event in my village. The event was all about soya and brought together my 8 womens groups, representatives from the district health office, and the Peace Corps Northern team. All in all the attendance totaled at 143 people! Each of the womens group created a soya dish (we had biscuits, chocolate cake, sausage, milk, and pancakes to name a few) and then presented it to our guests from Kasama. And because this was a Zambian event a dance party featuring drums and bamaayos busting a move was also ever present. Did yours truly join in the party and show her moves? Why of course I did...surprised? Shouldn't be. It was severely embarrassing because from the moment I joined in with the icitenge wrapped around my waist the screams from all 143 participants escalated to insane amounts. My boss from Peace Corps followed me filming the whole thing so keep your eyes tuned to YouTube for all the embarrassing footage. In the end though, the embarrassment I felt was worth it because my bamaayos were just so excited that I joined them.
The other big news I have is the latest addition to my Peace Corps family. This latest addition is Finn, a now 2 month old puppy. I named him Finn after my favorite character in Glee, Finn Hudson. Lunga, my cat, is coping with the adjustments as well is to be expected, and in time I am hoping they'll be the best of friends. I'll keep you posted on their friendship :) He's been a handful, but also really fun, especially when I throw my village kids into the mix. My favorite, Mutukangi, refuses to call him Finn because to him that doesn't sound like a name and instead calls him "Fen". He also likes to think he know has part custody of Finn and like to discipline him whenever possible. It's adorable and makes me love that kid more and more each day. In fact my whole village is aware of this bond and calls me banamutukangi which means mother to mutukangi. I like to wear this name with pride :)
Well I think that's about it for now!Thanks for reading!!
Well things have been going along pretty smoothly here in the village and the rains have stopped meaning that my time spent cleaning up spills from my leaky grass roof is over. I'm happy to report I survived my first rainy season!!
Last week (May 16)I had my big womens event in my village. The event was all about soya and brought together my 8 womens groups, representatives from the district health office, and the Peace Corps Northern team. All in all the attendance totaled at 143 people! Each of the womens group created a soya dish (we had biscuits, chocolate cake, sausage, milk, and pancakes to name a few) and then presented it to our guests from Kasama. And because this was a Zambian event a dance party featuring drums and bamaayos busting a move was also ever present. Did yours truly join in the party and show her moves? Why of course I did...surprised? Shouldn't be. It was severely embarrassing because from the moment I joined in with the icitenge wrapped around my waist the screams from all 143 participants escalated to insane amounts. My boss from Peace Corps followed me filming the whole thing so keep your eyes tuned to YouTube for all the embarrassing footage. In the end though, the embarrassment I felt was worth it because my bamaayos were just so excited that I joined them.
The other big news I have is the latest addition to my Peace Corps family. This latest addition is Finn, a now 2 month old puppy. I named him Finn after my favorite character in Glee, Finn Hudson. Lunga, my cat, is coping with the adjustments as well is to be expected, and in time I am hoping they'll be the best of friends. I'll keep you posted on their friendship :) He's been a handful, but also really fun, especially when I throw my village kids into the mix. My favorite, Mutukangi, refuses to call him Finn because to him that doesn't sound like a name and instead calls him "Fen". He also likes to think he know has part custody of Finn and like to discipline him whenever possible. It's adorable and makes me love that kid more and more each day. In fact my whole village is aware of this bond and calls me banamutukangi which means mother to mutukangi. I like to wear this name with pride :)
Well I think that's about it for now!Thanks for reading!!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Giddy with animal fever
Greetings everyone :)
Well it's finally happened, I've seen a lion, zebra, and giraffe in Zambia. No worries they weren't in my backyard they were in South Luangwa National Park in Eastern province.
My fellow peace corps volunteer and I headed up to the park for a jam packed 4 day visit. In a word, it was incredible. Each morning we were woken up by 0530 and out on our morning drive. Then we'd return by 11, have lunch and then relax by the pool till 16 then go out for a night drive. Salley and I really loved the night drive because we'd stop some place to watch the sunset and then go in search of hunting lions and other nocturnal animals. Each night we came across the lions and watched as the walked by a mere one meter from our open top cruiser. It was slightly terrifying but so exciting! I hope to return again sometime in the future! And visitors are more than welcome to join me :)
Now it's back to work and it's going to be a busy time. Coming up I have a huge event with all my women's groups. We're inviting people from the district and provincial health offices, peace corps staff and local village leaders to showcase what the women have been learning about nutrition and cooking with soyabeans. The soya recipes have been distributed, the lunch budget has been set, and the invites have been sent out. All in all we're expecting about 200 people to be there. So pray it all goes smoothly! It's happening May 16 so it's coming up fast fast!!
Also in the works is the beginning of the PD Hearth program. This program teaches ten mothers at a time how to prepare and serve their malnourished child one supplemental meal over a 12 day period. At the end of the 12 days the child will have gained weight, approx 200 grams. And then as the mother continues this soon the child will be out of the danger zone. That's the plan anyways. So my first step will be to get all the weights and upper arm circumference of all the under 5 kids in my catchment area during Child Health week mid-June. I'll keep you updated on the progress for sure!
Thanks for reading everyone. Hope you all had a great Easter!
Well it's finally happened, I've seen a lion, zebra, and giraffe in Zambia. No worries they weren't in my backyard they were in South Luangwa National Park in Eastern province.
My fellow peace corps volunteer and I headed up to the park for a jam packed 4 day visit. In a word, it was incredible. Each morning we were woken up by 0530 and out on our morning drive. Then we'd return by 11, have lunch and then relax by the pool till 16 then go out for a night drive. Salley and I really loved the night drive because we'd stop some place to watch the sunset and then go in search of hunting lions and other nocturnal animals. Each night we came across the lions and watched as the walked by a mere one meter from our open top cruiser. It was slightly terrifying but so exciting! I hope to return again sometime in the future! And visitors are more than welcome to join me :)
Now it's back to work and it's going to be a busy time. Coming up I have a huge event with all my women's groups. We're inviting people from the district and provincial health offices, peace corps staff and local village leaders to showcase what the women have been learning about nutrition and cooking with soyabeans. The soya recipes have been distributed, the lunch budget has been set, and the invites have been sent out. All in all we're expecting about 200 people to be there. So pray it all goes smoothly! It's happening May 16 so it's coming up fast fast!!
Also in the works is the beginning of the PD Hearth program. This program teaches ten mothers at a time how to prepare and serve their malnourished child one supplemental meal over a 12 day period. At the end of the 12 days the child will have gained weight, approx 200 grams. And then as the mother continues this soon the child will be out of the danger zone. That's the plan anyways. So my first step will be to get all the weights and upper arm circumference of all the under 5 kids in my catchment area during Child Health week mid-June. I'll keep you updated on the progress for sure!
Thanks for reading everyone. Hope you all had a great Easter!
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