Today was another early start to the day. Chrissy needed to go to the hospital in the morning to meet with the director of the hospital. We went to the office and she had Mwape sign a letter explaining her interest in working at the hospital. I stayed and checked emails for a bit before meeting her to catch the bus. When she came out from the hospital she was really excited because thankfully, after 3 days of trying, she and Ivy had been approved to make their hospital visits. The director only let Chrissy choose 2 wards to observe in, which wasn’t ideal, but was certainly better than nothing. Chrissy chose the women’s health and pediatrics wards. I know that she’s looking forward to doing this, and she plans on making visits at least 3 days next week after we get back from safari. It’s going to be really interesting to hear all about the treatment for the patients at this hospital.
We only conducted two sessions at Munali this morning, one at Tionge and one at Mumana. We ran the Mumana session on our own and chose to do it in the classroom because this would be more effective than outside since we couldn’t split the students into small groups. After that we made our way to Chipata for our weekly HIV/AIDS class. Today we took a different route to get there, avoiding having to go into town. Timo had told me about this new route on Tuesday and I had luckily remembered the names of the correct stops. This was a much easier route, got us there in half the time, and cost us half the price. Thank you Timo! At Chipata we conducted another successful lesson. The class started off a little more empty than usual, and of all girls, which was discouraging. But shortly into our review and question answering more students showed up, with these including some groups of boys. At the end of class we told them they could raise their hands and we would come around and answer questions if they felt comfortable asking them in person. We also gave them more slips of paper so they could anonymously write out more questions. One boy asked Chrissy and I some very specific questions about HIV. He asked me if the HIV virus would still be alive in dried blood. He then asked Chrissy why boys always die before girls in a couple of HIV positive people. Neither of us really knew what he meant so we decided to look into what he was saying. One girl raised her hand and when I came over to her she pushed a piece of paper in my direction that said “how do I tell me parents that I have HIV?” My immediate reaction was shock, but I had to hide that quickly. I told her what I thought was best, and she just sat there silently nodding. She didn’t actually say that it was her who had HIV, but from the expression on her face it sure seemed that way. It was really hard for me to talk to her without showing how sad I felt.
We finished the session with a game that incorporated topics that we had taught that day. Then we had Lazzy pick us up so we didn’t have to deal with the buses on the way home. Once home we hung out in the kitchen with Ivy and our new housemate, Francis. He’s 19 and from England, and first impression showed that he’s a little immature. It still makes us sad that Mike and Dave aren’t living with us, no one seems to be able to replace them. Chrissy started to make dinner and I had to get ready because I was going on a date with one of the Ideals students, Thomas. (Side note from Chrissy: She looked so pretty and I was gleefully living vicariously through her…a date in Zambia! Aaah!) Never thought I would go on a date while I was in Zambia. I had to borrow Ivy’s clothes (because I don’t really have any normal or cute clothes here). He picked me up in a cab and we went down town to eat at Rhapsody’s and then went out after. It was a lot of fun and I had a really great time. He also paid for everything and was a complete gentleman (I guess guys from Wales are just like that – American boys take note). The only bad part was that I didn’t get home until around 1 and I had to be up at 5 the next morning to pack my bags for safari. So worth it though!
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