So after an uneventful weekend last week, Monday came, and Rebecca and Amanda said their goodbyes to everyone at Bwafwano. I mostly spent my day doing data entry, trying to get my malnutrition program spreadsheet finished. I ended up getting the last bits done at home Monday night. The day was largely uneventful. The three of us, plus David ( a Swedish economics student we met here) had a great dinner at the Indian restaurant as a send-off. Tuesday morning, Rebecca and Amanda headed to the airport early, and I went in to Bwafwano. I showed the clinic monitoring spreadsheet to [View Full Entry]

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After getting back from two consecutive long weekends, with only a short period of productivity separating them, it was time to buckle down and get to work again. Tuesday we went to Ngwerere again, and while we saw a better crowd for the IMCI stuff, it still is the only site without a CTC admission. While the kids there might be better fed than in other places, I'm still inclined to think that word isn't getting out as well as it could be; after all, about 2/3 of our IMCI business for the day didn't come in until Naommy and I [View Full Entry]

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Spent some days in Lusaka before and after a trip to Livingstone courtesy of Holiday Inn (thank you, Southampton!). Dropped off blue box, water filter and other equipment to VSO, had my exit interview with the programme manager and also got myself tested for malaria and bilharzia. Met up with Fiona (who had previously come to the South Luangwa game reserve with us) and Anne, an ex-VSO, now with a 'proper job' working on the development side of an ISP which is expanding Zambia's broadband capacity. After Chipata, Lusaka was very noisy and bustling. It is mainly low density sprawl except [View Full Entry]

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OK, here goes an attempt to get myself up to date before I disappear and fall way behind again. Saturday was a somewhat light day. The famous Julie (for those of you who don't know, she's basically the reason why there have been UMass students coming to Zambia for the last several years) arrived early in the afternoon, and I just barely got to the internet cafe in time to see her arrival time and call for a ride for her. Whew! I took it easy that day, seeing a movie in the afternoon, and then we all had a nice [View Full Entry]

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Well, I managed to update two days' worth of activity last time I got at a computer ... and now, five days later, I'm finally getting a chance to update more. I'll have to start typing things out on the Bwafwano laptop at night, and uploading whenever possible. These new internet cafe hours (closing at 6) are definitely not cutting it right now. So, as you all may have suspected by now, I've been a little busy the last couple weeks. I'll get the end of last week done now, and hopefully get this entire week done tonight. Sadly, since my [View Full Entry]

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So, now that I got the excursion to Livingstone all told, time to dive into the events of the past week. The work week for us started on Tuesday, since we didn't get back from Livingstone until very late Monday. My day's task seemed pretty simple: get the RUTF from Chipata clinic that we ordered last Wednesday. We were instructed by the district health management team (DHMT) that Chipata was to put in our order for us, and we would be picking up our supply from them. A couple weeks previously, we had ordered 20 boxes in anticipation of needing that [View Full Entry]

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I have about 15 minutes before leaving for the next site which evidently does not have the best internet, nor trusty electricity. Over the past few days I have been battling something, I have no idea, I've just been a little sick and haven't been sleeping well. Today looks like a good day after a good night's sleep (thank God for Simply Sleep). But through all of that I have been able to visit a local school - other than where the site was - that is made for orphans and "vulnerable' children. The school was amazing with its own small [View Full Entry]

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This is the first time I've been able to get to an internet cafe since Monday, and it closes in half an hour, so I'll try to be quick. Monday I picked up a laundry list of tasks to take care of for various people in the next couple weeks. My to-do list became very long very fast. Unfortunately, I met with the Ubuntu guys BEFORE getting this list, in spite of half the items having to do with them, so I had to schedule a meeting for the next day, too. Yesterday I was out at Ngwerere all day, and [View Full Entry]

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I'm still alive despite not having posted in a little less than a week. Where we have been staying does not have good internet which yielded no posts. Tonight we moved into our home for the week at Kalundu where Sr. Scholastica is taking excellent care of us. (This idea of losing weight in Africa is not going to happen while I am here.) Let me see if I can go through the week and relay what has gone on so far. Thursday afternoon: After writing on here I went to Hidden Voice to paint with Seth and Banks (Vanderbilt). I [View Full Entry]

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So I wasn't quite as productive today as I'd intended to be. The plan had been to go into Bwafwano early, have Rebecca and Amanda head off to Chazanga to start in on the contraceptives stuff, then meet with the Ubuntu guys, then head to UTH, visit the patients I've referred, and maybe say hello to Dr. Samwe. But, Rebecca and Amanda were at Chazanga longer than anticipated, lunch took an unreasonably long time to get done, Nicholas from Ubuntu couldn't meet till Monday, and when I got to UTH it turned out that Dr. Samwe was gone and the children [View Full Entry]

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