I realized that I have been really bad the past two months about updating my blog. I’ve been pretty busy lately, which I think is a good thing. Makes time go by faster.

I’ll start with August. August went by really fast and I only spent just over a week in my village. The first two weeks I was down in Lusaka with all the other 2017 RAP volunteer for In Service Training (IST). It was so nice to see everyone again! It was great to see our technical trainers as well. Because travel is so difficult here, some people had to travel multiple days to get from their site to Lusaka. It took one guy who is placed in North Western three days to get from his site to Lusaka. Zambia is roughly the size of Texas, so slow travel time is more to do with the lack of infrastructure than country size.

The first week of IST was more technical training. We talked over any problems we we’re having at site. Some people had some interesting stories about their site. Some about kidnaps and others all the animals in the village being rounded up and shot (no volunteers were hurt/threatened in these stories. Or where they ….. dun dun dunnn)

During the fist week we also got a crash course in gardening and got to visit this really cool organic farm. LIFE, the other (agriculture/forestry) program we came into country with is all about promoting conservation farming. I think this is a very important program and Zambians should be encouraged to practice organic farming. I feel this way not because I’m a hippy greenie but because fertilizer is very expensive and cuts way into local farmers profits. Farmers already don’t have the best yields and majority of village farms are living in poverty. Also, because locals are not educated on farming practices, so some of what they are doing is harmful to their environment. So the LIFE program teaches organic farming practices that increase yields, are low or no cost and help with conservation.

The second week of IST was focused on HIV training. Mostly volunteers and the counterpart we brought got trained on a program called Grass Roots Soccer (GRS). GRS is an international program that focuses on teaching young adults about HIV, how to protect yourself from HIV, and tries to reduce stigmas around HIV/AIDS. GRS receives some of its funding through the US government and often pairs with Peace Corps throughout the world, but it is a totally separate program than Peace Corps. GRS has a specific curriculum that we are supposed to follow that is engaging to youth and is also pretty fun. During the training we went through 4 of the sessions, just like we were the youth. We got to act like kids, give each other exaggerated high-fives, and dribble a soccer ball (I got to showoff how un-athletic I am, knocked over way too many cones).

During the HIV training we learned about the different challenges the HIV/AIDS crisis has in Zambia. One of the problems is that ARVs (the HIV suppressant drug) can be hard to come by in the village. ARVs need to be taken at the same time everyday to be effective. So if you don’t have regular access to the ARVs, this causes an issue. Some villagers don’t even have watches or clocks, they use the sun to help them tell time. My host father often does this. He’ll look up at the sun and be like “it’s 11:43” he’s always very specific on the time, no idea why, but he has yet to be correct.

ARVs also decreases the chance of an infected person spreading it to another person. For example breastmilk is one of the ways HIV can be transmitted, if a mother is taking her ARVs consistently then there is a reduced chance of spreading it to her child. Unfortunately clinics don’t always have the ARVs available. These drugs are very expensive but are subsidized by the Zambian government. The drug expense and how difficult it is to travel around the country all play a role in the lack of ARVs. Not to mention that many people are a hours walk away from the nearest clinic. Plus sometimes testing and ARV distribution are done in specific days. This might discourage people to go to the clinic those days because they don’t want people to know they are HIV positive (there is a huge stigma around it). There are so many different layers to this problem it can become a little overwhelming.

Once again, I’d like to leave you on a very depressing note. I promise I’m enjoying myself and am not just crying in my hut all day long.