Work

Hannah has brought it to my attention that other then my description of work months ago, I only mention work, not what I actually do. So, here is a rundown of SMA Katima and what we try to do.

First off we have a Malaria program. This program is to educate people on Malaria. Kluivert, is our malaria person, and he is in charge of spreading information about malaria thought the region. He does outreaches in communities, distributes leaflets, and other a ICE material (educational stuff from global fund or USAID). Recently we also distributed about 10,000 mosquito nets to children under the age of 5, pregnant mothers, people living with HIV, TB patients, and orphans and vulnerable children. He really did all the work, but I help him make a form so he could record what he did, and just help him organize the events. He works hard but there is no rhyme or reason to how people do things here sometimes. Oh and we sell mosquito nets for 17 rand, or about 2.50 US. So, I let him do the talking cause its in Lozi and I am terrible, but sometimes help him organize and make sure paper work is done to record activities, or re-make it if I don't feel the paper work has enough information on it.

The organization I work for also has two programs that are the same with the military and police. We go into both organizations and select a small group to train on HIV and other health related issues. TB, Malaria, and just facts so that educators know a lot of information. Some material has been made that is supposed to help facilitate meetings is then given. Lastly we have these members of the police and military train their peers on health related issues. We give them a flip chart with about 25 different topics, and try to make it easy as we can. One example is just a picture on the front, and on the back the facilitator can about 30 true or false statements with the correct answers on the back. The flip charts are supposed to be an hour for each page/section. With about an hour of material planned out that facilitators just need to follow. After 3 week long trainings with the police I really feel that they are probably more competent then anyone from Namibia that's not a nurse or doctor or specially trained in the field. The material we teach is pretty basic, but I am trying to force them to understand it at my level minus the technical terms. Its a lofty goal, but I am pushing hard in trainings, leading trainings, and going way beyond what the flip chats cover. Ideally if we educate the forces enough they will be able to run a program without any assistance from the outside.

Third, we have COH or Corridors, Of Hope, program run by Braster. This is a program that targets Most At Risk Populations. For this program we have two things that happen. the first part of the program is we have trained to local CBO's to go into bars at night, with some supplies and talk to people about health issues. These people go and talk basically about HIV, condoms, or STI's. We train the CBO's and then they get a few dollars to do talks at bars that are considered "high risk", but that should be everywhere here as the HIV rate is still about 33%. The second part of the program is, Braster gathers some girls from locations that are known for having lots of young, uneducated, girls without jobs, and trains them on HIV and health related issues. This women are educated like the police, and are supposed to go back to their community and educate people who live in the area. They receive a small amount of money for running health sessions in their community.

Lastly we have a program called TUSANO, run by us and Albert. Albert is hired by us, but works with the Namibian red cross, with over site by Braster. We provide funds to Tusano, which is supposed to link all the support groups in the region together. We will bring members from support groups into town, for trainings on how to write a grant proposal, nutrition courses, HIV education, and a variety of other topics. Some groups like the one in Singalwi we are actually providing gardening material because they wrote a proposal and have done work to clear a space. Success, is hard to say though as any time money or supplies are introduced people just fall apart. It's culture that if you are fine today, you don't need to worry, so when lots of people don't plan ahead even a day, it makes anything long term fairly hard to keep working.

Oh and then there is my job. I audit the warehouse every month and send a report to the capital, and then jump around to where ever I am needed to make things run closer to American standards. As in if you have a file put it in a folder, hopefully the right folder too. I will also go to trainings so that we have two people at trainings instead of one, and that's when I start to challenge people with hard questions and give answers of why something happens the way it does. A lot of people here know there is HIV, most know about TB, most know breastfeeding should stop after 3 months if a mother is HIV positive, most know that for every man there are 3 women. Yeah but no one can ever answer why right or wrong. Well no one but my police peer educators now at least. So I have tortured people with entire days on how a virus replicates, the fact that we can cure exactly 0 viruses, and how they are different from bacteria like TB and parasites like malaria. I even throw a few ways to answer religious questions because a lot of people feel its a sin to use a condom, since the bible says go forth and multiply. I like to tell people they made these things called the 10 commandments, they talking about only having one partner. Basically we stress, abstain, if not, be faithful, lastly use a condom if you don't do A and B. As far as religion goes, if you are both tested and being faithful you don't need a condom to avoid HIV, its not an issue. The pope says condoms are not the answer, and he is right, if you abstain, and be faithful like the pope wants then you don't need to worry about a condom. If you have sex (its hard to find a girl over 18 that doesn't have at least 1 child) then you should be using a condom. That's kinda my job, with a few other side things that pop up. (OK lots of random other stuff happens, but its Africa, and they tend to be once off type deals)

I hope that gives an idea of what I do? If your not sure still it may be that I'm not sure, either. So yeah make those programs run in a way that I tried to describe them is pretty much it.