Into Week 3

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Wow, I can't believe I've already been here 2 weeks!

I had a busy week this week. Started out by going with one of the Water/Sanitation local volunteers (meaning he's a Liberian) to one of the clubs on camp (yes they actually have night clubs in the refugee camp!). Its basically just a area of concrete near a wooden bar that serves some beers, but still, i can say i've been clubing in a refugee camp! Some guy next to me kept trying to give me tips on how i should dance, "ya nee ta move ya body, la thees..." pshht- like i don't know how to dance, I should be giving him tips! (Katie, Steph, stop laughing!)


Next day however, my roomate got pretty sick. He came home from his HIV/AIDS outreach and just collapsed in a chair the rest of the day. We didn't think anything was really wrong until that evning when he had trouble making coherant sentances and had a 102*F (39*C) temperature. Sure enough he had malaria. Later in the week he started getting better until Wed. when he started having these nasty halucinations. He kept seeing dead cats in trees and dead bodies around and other such things: kinda scary. Then thursday night while we were all sitting around in the common area he jumped up screaming "GET IT OFF ME, GET IT OFF!" He thought there were bugs all over. We think it was a reaction with some other meds he was taking, but regardless, I wasn't too keen on sleeping in the same room with him that night!

The programs I'm working on in the camp have been plodding along this week. It sometimes gets increadibly frustrating though when nothing seems to work. We finally got current at the IT center so we could have class, this makes it the 2nd class to be held since I've arrived (we're supposed to meet everyday).

I got a bit of a shock during class though, literally- I was stretching and touched the celling and got an electric shock. I rushed to tell the main teacher (a local volunteer) who kinda of looked at me like I just told him the sky was blue when I explained about the roof. Apparently having a electrified roof is no big deal. I just wondered what would have happened if I wasn't wearing tennis shoes with a half inch of rubber protecting me. I don't touch roofs anymore on camp

We finally finished a Water and Sanitation educationaly pamphlet this week too (thanks Kendra for the clip art by the way!). It gives advice on how to keep camp and your self clean with simple things like "wash your hands before eating" and "through your trash in a bin". And then it explains how these things help prevent malaria (by keeping rubish off the streets it helps keep water flowing, meaning malarial mosquitoes can't lay there eggs) and cholera (of which there was an outbreak on camp recently). We were working in conjunction with local volunteers to make sure we were using language that liberians would understand (aka, 'dislodge bins' instead of 'empty bins'). But then, after this whole long meeting on how to educate the refugees on proper trash disposal and how its important, one of the local volunteers takes his empty water bag (water comes in little 500ml plastic bags- there a bitch to try and set down without spilling) and just chucks it into the grass! It feels like your banging your head into a brick wall!!

But other than that it felt like a productive week. To top it off it rained on thursday!

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