This is a shot of Joyce in her office in the clinic. She comes in so early and works incredibly hard. She is the volunteer coordinator that I worked with, and she did my orientation and has helped Elizabeth and I get things planned out with Reuben.
Yesterday I worked in the school, Epico Jahs Academy, which is probably 200 feet from where I'm staying. The picture below is of the children is of the playground as seen from the door of the clinic where the VCT center will be. I listened in on standard 6 math and helped with standard 4 math, and worked with standard 2 science in the afternoon. I would have gotten started on the VCT work, but Elizabeth (who we hired to lead the program)--her son broke his arm when he fell out of a guava tree. He's 11, I think; she has two other children. I met her this morning.--and there's work to be done!
Yesterday I worked in the school, Epico Jahs Academy, which is probably 200 feet from where I'm staying. The picture above of the children is of the playground as seen from the door of the clinic where the VCT center will be. I listened in on standard 6 math and helped with standard 4 math, and worked with standard 2 science in the afternoon. I would have gotten started on the VCT work, but Elizabeth (who we hired to lead the program)--her son broke his arm when he fell out of a guava tree. He's 11, I think; she has two other children. I met her this morning.--and there's work to be done!
So here's the deal. I met with Joyce, the volunteer coordinator, and Elizabeth this morning (Tuesday), and we have our requirements all set now. We have to have the rest of the ceilinbg installed by the carpenter, the cabinets will be fixed, we will build a fence and a gate, wall off our part of the clinic so it's totally separate for the privacy of the people being tested. We have three rooms, and we're having shelving installed and have some chairs. We'll have to finish off the reception/lobby area. We also will need to paint, get an incinerator, and purchase a bunch of other things--curtains (for privacy), lab coats and gloves, etc. The photo of the clinic gives you at least some sort of idea what the place looks like. This clinic was built in 2002. The wing on the left is where the VCT center will be; I'll try to upload some pictures of the inside soon. I took a whole bunch of photos because Elizabeth and I want to have 'before' and 'after' renovation shots.
Hopefully after we make the last remaining improvements and develop our filing system, we can get the health ministry to approve everything. We still have to hire two more people. The biggest challenge is the money--making sure that they all get paid! We'll see what we can do. The carpetry should be done by Friday and we should be able to get the inspection in the next two weeks.
I'm here in the internet cafe with a guy from New York, who is working on microenterprise development. Their program provides loans to people who want to start small businesses at very low interest rates; they're really more like grants than loans. They have quite a large set of groups that they help.
Only two hotos today; the upload speed is slower.
The Candian medical students arrived; there are 5 of them and they brought a guy who is a potter. They're making ceramic water filters in a kiln--trying to get a whole operation going to provide a really cheap way to make filters to provide clean water. Three or four more people will be arriving with their group soon.
Tomorrow, I'm going out with the mobile clinic to get an idea of what they do ad how we can integrate our VCT services on a mobile basis. Also, Elizabeth really wants to have a long-term comprehensive care center; so that would mean that we would provide anti-retroviral treatment and several other programs related to HIV and AIDS (for pregnant women, for example, one of the groups with a high rate of infection).
Time to venture back out into the sunny weather and head back to ICODEI. I'll see what the carpenter has been up to.
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