Doggy Death Wishes

So apparently our very cute puppy has a death wish: first, about two weeks after we got here, she was hanging out around the car and her leg was partially run over by the car. She limped for a few days but seemed to get over it until she was playing around some cinder blocks in our yard (there's some construction going on) and it fell on the very same leg, both bruising it and cutting the flesh slightly. She seemed to be doing okay for a solid 3 weeks in there, then was gnawing on a heavy wooden board that was propped up against the wall and it fell on her back left leg. The final blow? Alice, Marissa and I came back from grocery shopping tonight to find pools of radiant red blood all over our porch: puddles on the yoga mats, smears on the rocks, paw prints sprinkled around. It was already dark by this time so we popped out our headlamps and did some rudimentary first aid by washing out the wound, filling it with neosporin, and tying strips of newly laundered t-shirts around the gash. It was deep on her lower leg, sliced almost to the bone and bleeding long and hard. When I first wrote this blogpost I forgot to include the most comical part (if it's okay that something so serious might be comical): our night guard/watchman (whose English is sometimes indecipherable) said that the "big cat" did it. Now, there is a fat grey cat who has been seen in our garden from time to time, but if this cat was responsible for Kamba's wound, there would be a cheetah in our back yard and I'd be terrified to walk from our car to the house. After doing a little crime scene investigation we deduced that she had hit into some glass resting on the side of the house and that it probably cut cleanly though, a neat slice. We're taking her to the vet first thing in the morning, and as we speak she's sleeping soundly at my feet. Witnessing the whole ordeal made me wish I knew more though, made me wish I could do more, take action, know that I had done all that I could possibly do to remedy the situation.

The smoke that thunders

Not only does work come in waves, but so too do things to write about. Friday night a Zambian woman in our office organized a centuries old traditional performance/"educational session" involving drums, dance and some hardcore hip-isolation action which is meant to titillate and tempt your husband-to-be. In the past (and still sometime in more rural locations) the whole process was meant to last the month before marriage. These days however, women only take a night to do it, so it came across as a Zambian version of a bachelorette party. I'll save that story for vocal sharing (I wouldn't want to incriminate anyone, now would I?) and instead tackle the most recent (and maybe the most impressive) first while impressions are still fresh in my mind: Victoria Falls. The largest waterfall in the world, or so it claims - it is neither the highest nor the widest but its height and width form the largest sheet of falling water in the world (I stole this fact from Wikipedia). In Nyanja it's named Mosi-oa-Tunya , or the Smoke that Thunders. And thunder it does.

Another intern (Alice), my friend Jamie from Bowdoin, his friend Brandon and I road-tripped out there early Saturday morning and made the 6 hour journey arriving by 1ish. Splitting the driving made it easy and allowed us to sneak in some naptime, and cruising in car was so liberating. Here we were, on our own, driving in Africa, blasting music, singing along, joking and chilling out.

We hit up the falls soon after arriving at our hostel. Both Brandon and Jamie had been there last during the wet season and explained that at the time the mist was all-encompassing, obscuring the view, though the sheer magnitude and force of the falls was overwhelming. This time the stream was less, but it stretches so long and wide with a precipitous drop and moss-padded boulders crashed into by tumbling water...in some ways I'm glad it was the low season because we were able to see more. I never knew that Vic falls fell into a gorge so we were able to stand on one side and watch the other, peer into Zimbabwe, gape at people bungee-jumping from the bridge, sit in awe t the strength and capacity of those falls. I don't get it, it's just wanter and empty space, yet it takes people's breath away - including my own - every time.

The next day we hiked down to the Boiling Pot which is where the river turns below the falls, so for a little corner portion the raging water is (relatively) calm. There are no other words for what we did apart from frolic in the water and lounge in the sun. Afterwards we hiked back up and walked to the other side of the gorge where the river actually flows from. Stepping through shallow yet forceful streams, we made our way across water-eaten rocks carved deep by the powerful river to a pool of water right on the edge of the drop-off - I literally lay across the edge and peered hundreds of feet to the precipice below. My stomach flip-flopped but the adrenaline was also exhilarating and refreshing in a strangely carnal and simplistic sense.

Pie Dilemmas (and no, not whether to choose pumpkin or pecan...)

First real VCT, second big event, and whether it was coincidence, confidence, less organization needed overall or fate, I'm not sure, but it went much, much smoother than the first. Things didn't go 100% according to plan (they never do here), like we were supposed to start at 8 AM and things only really got moving at 10, but at the end of the day we tested over 300 people and maybe even over 400, so the late start didn't seem to put much of a damper on our ability. I'm getting way ahead of myself here though. Let me first explain what a VCT even is.

VCT stands for Voluntary Counselling and Testing - it's a free service whereby people are tested for HIV using kits that only require a tiny pinprick of blood and take about 10 of 15 minutes. Since GRS doesn't test people ourselves, we have other organizations we partner with that come and do the testing for us, like Tiny Tim and Friends (TTF) - a paediatric-focused organization, CIDRZ, and Marie Stopes who not only test but also provide family planning. At Saturday's event Marie Stopes only tested about 50 individuals, but they did on-the-spot IUD insertion (birth control by way of an Inter-Uterine Device...Google it if you don't know what I'm talking about), and disseminated a lot of information other forms of birth control as well as male circumcision (which reduces a man's chances of acquiring HIV). If an individual is found to be HIV positive, they're then followed up by one of these organizations/clinics and given comprehensive care, counselling and treatment.

But back to Saturday's VCT: One of our biggest challenges at these events is figuring out how to draw more parents and guardians out. We had hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands, of children milling around but no guardians, and children under 16 years old need a parent or guardian's consent in order to test.

The kids crack me up, and it's so weird because I never thought I was a kid person before this. Time and time again at the VCT they began to surround me, with giggles and cornrows and dust-caked clothes (some appropriate and just well-worn, others almost comical - a princess-like dress worn casually? but it's all they have...), with grins and sores and new teeth pushing through pink gums, with flies perched on their dreads and babies saddled to their young non-existent hips (siblings, no doubt), with their excitement at the seemingly mundane and their gyrating hips at a song with a heavy beat; they represent incongruous mixtures in the same single person. They are powerful in numbers - jostling and pushing to the front, creating a mob-like scene either around us muzungus (white people) or around the local Zambian pop performers - and it can be easy to forget their needs when, for a split second, you wonder if they would trample you should you be pushed to the ground...

Talking about VCTs, kids in these compounds, GRS's role as an NGO, it's so hard not to resort to cliches and to express my thoughts, feelings and beliefs in a logical, coherent way. Maybe it's because there IS no organization to them. I want to help these kids, to provide motivating role models for them, to set up the structure to help empower and educate them, to have a sense of self-efficacy even if they won't become movie stars, but in the same breath it's so frustrating and tiresome and emotionally trying when people ask you for things NONSTOP. I genuinely don't think I've ever been asked for so many things in such a short period of time. "Give me 50 000 kwacha [the currency here]," "Give me a ribbon," "Give me food." When I would try and explain that everyone else was asking for that too - how could I only choose and give to one person? How could that ever be fair? - they would just keep on pressing. I know that it makes sense, I would probably do the same if I were in their situation: if you don't have anything to lose and only have the possibility to gain, why no push for whatever you can get? Why not ask and ask and ask, one day you might get something.

Case in point: we had leftover pies from lunch (not pies like fruit pies, they're meat pies with potatos in a sort of gravy, and encased by flakey pastry. Delicious but deadly amounts of oil) and a member of the GRS staff decided to give them to a few kids who had helped move desks back into classrooms where they belonged. I told the staff member that I didn't think it was a good idea - I had already witnessed the frenzy that the kids went into when something, anything, was given away for free - but he insisted and I decided to stay out of it. Sure enough, after he had given out the pies, the lucky recipients went streaming from the room bragging to anyone who would listen, and a legitimate stampede of kids followed, elbowing their way to the front of the crowd. It wasn't fair and it was unnecessarily obvious, and then for the next hour we spent cleaning up and waiting for a truck to get there, we had to fend off children asking for pies. It's such a shitty feeling, knowing that you do have 10 or 12 pies left, that you may or may not eat them, that you definitely don't need them, yet you lie because there's no fair way to distribute them. The worst part was that I justified it in my head by thinking that we'd give them out to our coaches who had worked hard all day long and who were riding back in a truck with the tents, yet when we got back home they had all already been dropped off. So there we were, unnecessarily left with extra pies (when we have about 20 in our freezer already), we could have unfairly distributed them to a select few kids who probably would have loved them, and I just have no idea what's morally correct in this situation.

Moral dilemmas aside, the preliminary numbers tested are great and beyond that, the warmth, energy and crystallized joy that I witnessed on Saturday leaves me with positive connotations and a sense of pride that I played a real role in the planning and execution of this event.

New pictures up!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050616&id=4603434&l=9cb7e3069d

New addictions and Rosh Hashanah

I now see why people become gambling addicts. For the first time in my life last night I played blackjack and gambled. What was the outcome, you ask? I tripled what I put in and walked away with $40 USD more than I started with. Groceries for a week! I won't make too much of a habit out of it, but it's definitely rewarding .

On a completely different note, my trip to the refugee camps has been postponed. I was supposed to leave next Wednesday but because of re-registration in the camps there are (apparently) a million-and-two activities going on and nowhere for us to stay (the UNHCR guest house is full and there aren't hotels or anything around there). When I first heard, I was pretty pissed. I know that a large part of being here and working here is being flexible - particularly time-wise - but this was going to be my escape from the city, my time to be out in the field, to be autonomous, to be the only intern working on a project (as awesome as it is to work with other people, sometimes it's also nice to have something that's yours, you know?). Instead of next week it's moved to the beginning of October and we actually come back on my birthday (the 10th). The switch just forced me to take a step back and reorganize my thoughts and my mentality. A firm grip on time just doesn't work out here. And that's okay. But I need to remember and respect that, instead of getting frustrated.

Lastly, the other night one of the fellows and I made Rosh Hashanah dinner for the GRS interns and fellows. It was a veritable feast! With crunchy sweet apples, notorious Zambian honey, bread that is braided and soft like challah (what it's doing in Zambia, I have no idea!), orange-lemon-rosemary roast chicken, balsamic gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, minted cucumber tomato salad and an apple honey bourbon cake with vanilla ice cream, we dined like kings. The highlight was the vuvuzela as the shofar - pictures will certainly be up soon, but to say the least, it was epic. Epic and nice to both have that connection to what I associate with home, and to share it with people here (for a few of them it was their first Rosh Hashanah dinner). Spreading a little Jew love here and there. Shana tova!

A different sort of graduation

This past Saturday we had our first big graduation/testing event and it was a complete whirlwind of excitement, terror, passion, dance and fun. Before I go into detailing the actual event, I should preface all of this with a little explanation of what we're up to that kids are graduating from. Grassroot Soccer in Zambia implements a 10 session-long curriculum in schools, community centres and refugee camps focused on HIV education and prevention using soccer and sport as a medium. It's an activities-based program (or as they spell it here, programME - it's tough to get used to!) that relies on the power of soccer to establish self-efficacy in youth through the use of local peers and mentors who act as coaches for the GRS Skillz (yes, with a Z) curriculum. After these 10 sessions there's a graduation for the kids. Since we finished a cycle in four different compounds (like townships in Cape Town) around Lusaka, we decided to have a big graduation with all the kids together. GRS also organizes VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) events where people can come and get HIV tests for free. For the first time we incorporated this into our big graduation, so it was a little bit chaotic but really cool and totally new too.

Because it was at the UN urban refugee transit center (where refugees stay for about a month before being placed somewhere else), and since it is walled-in and (relatively) secure, we were able to go with all our coaches the day prior to begin setting up. I expected it to take the larger part of the day, but again here is an example of one of the many illogical processes here: we went with all the coaches around 10 AM, but the big truck carrying the 300 chairs and poles for tents only showed up several hours later. Typical, and I'm learning to anticipate the need for flexibility at all times, not only in certain situations.

The next morning we were up bright and early at 6:30 (on a Saturday! Better get used to it for these types of things) and headed to the location to finish setting up and welcome the busses full of children and parents. It's so funny and foreign to me that the kids and parents actually made it there in the first place. At home, people would need not only a formal invitation - which the parents here actually did get during home visits - but a plan of action, a definite arrival/departure time, schedule for the day, etc. etc. With incentives like chitengues (fabric wrapped around as a skirt) for parents and lunch provided, that was enough to make them come.

I knew that the day would never go by without any hitches and that the game plan was in reality just a rough outline, but I think that we handled the speed bumps really well: a few tents fell down/weren't put up at all because of missing parts which messed up the organization of the testing partners a bit, then the lunch/drink distribution was slightly messy, consent forms that had been signed previously had no means of organization by which to get them back to the kids, and we almost ran out of blank consent forms, but somehow everything worked out in the end.

Everything aside though, I had a total and utter blast. Bustling around and making sure things were running as best as possible, I felt like I finally had a minor grasp on the way things function in Zam. Speaking and interacting with coaches I saw friendships being fostered, jocular attitudes cultivated. And observing kids taking this graduation seriously, proud of finishing the curriculum, I could see the impact that GRS has on their attitudes and their lives. As a mzungu (white person) with translucent skin, red hair and blue eyes, I felt welcomed, giddy and energized when I danced in front of 300+ people, surrounded by kids as young as 6 and as old as 18, booty-poppin', shaking and moving to strong thumping beats, totally sober in the midday African sun. Completely invigorating.

Another first for me, I also got an HIV test! It wasn't exactly nerve-wracking, but there's always that minuscule element of "what if...?" The 10-15 waiting period is like a built-in anxiety ticking time bomb waiting to be detonated or deactivated, you're not sure which. At our whole event with over 300 people and about 150ish tested, only 4 kids were found to be HIV positive, all from the same family. I can't even wrap my head around how soul-shaking it must be to receive that information as a parent...They'll receive support, counseling, ARTs, etc from our partner organization Tiny Tim and Friends, but still...

The last thing I'll mention for now is that most of the accompanying parents and guardians were female, but there were a select few particularly gung-ho males (fathers? uncles? grandfathers?) present too, who were adamant about having their children tested. I can only imagine what they've gone through to make it to that point of pushing a role that's often associated here with the feminine, but it genuinely warmed the cockles of my heart (as my mother would say) to witness that kind of care, dedication and support.

So summary: first graduation = great success!

Finally, pictures!

So I've learned that pictures upload much faster to Facebook than to this blog, so for those of you not savvy with the fb (ahem...mom...), here's the public link to my posted pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050616&id=4603434&l=9cb7e3069d

Fiction and facts

Just a few interesting stories/myths/tales/even some truths I've learned in my three weeks in Zambia so far:

1. At an intervention last week (an intervention is where GRS coaches conduct one of the ten practice sessions in our curriculum), one of the older kids (about 15 or 17) was very convinced that one of the ways you could get HIV was to be bewitched be someone else.
2. Many parents don't want their kids to test at VCT events because they think that people (we) are taking their children's blood for satanic purposes.
3. You can get HIV through touching someone, sharing plates, etc.
4. Women sometimes think that their husband or boyfriend isn't being faithful if they use a condom.
5. On the other hand though, kids here have exceptional knowledge about HIV and AIDS transmission and prevention. Why is the epidemic so bad in Southern Africa then? There are other places in the world that have lots of poverty and similar levels of education...however here there is a lot of intergenerational sex and many multiple concurrent partners (partners at the same time) versus consecutive monogamy. Since the HIV virus proliferates in the first 8 weeks of exposure, to have multiple partners at the same time during that period increases the chance of passing the virus on to a partner. People are actually 40 times more likely to pass HIV on during that initial infection periof than they are the 2-10 years after that! Crazy, eh?