Monday made me laugh, a lot. Started out as a regular day at work having sorted out shopping lists wih our housegirl and leaving her enough money. Turned funny when in the afternoon my houemate texted me saying there had been a small mistake and 6 lemons had turned into 6kgs of lemons! Spent a while thinking of lemon receipes but in the end we managed to give them away meaning I never got to make lemon pie, lemonade, lemon curd or lemon tarts. Instead we kept a few to put on pancakes as had been the original plan! The next comedy moment of my afternoon was when a small child wandered into the office as happens quite often and my friend, Maggie, gave him paper and colouring pencils and sat him at my desk oppostie me. When he’d finished his picture he left and surprise, surprise returning about a minute later with another small child. Quite quickly we’d grown to about 10 kids in our office and so I showed them the video I’d made of holiday programme which they loved as they recognised themselves and their friends. When it had finished they asked for more tv and went between Maggie and my computers looking to see whose was more interesting. We were just about to try and get back to work when Maggie put on lipbalm as any normal lady does and then noticed the look of fascination on the faces of all the kids in front of her. She then gave each of them a bit and taught them to put it on and smack their lips together. By this point I was nearly on the floor as they all fought over a tiny mirror to see their shiny lips. We then got photos and video of shiny lipped slum kids! So entertaining!
My final entertainment of the day was our interviews for more Esteem volunteers. We had asked our health promoters if any of them were interested in being Esteem educators and a few volunteered. Instead of our normal way of getting them to write a presentation and present it to a few adults we thought we’d see if they sink or swim by letting our football team loose on them with permission to ask any questions they liked! Both the people we saw that day did really well but the top question had to be ‘if you circumcise an old man do they die?!?’ Classic!
So apart from my entertaining Monday life has continued as normal. We held a HIV awareness day in Musoto yesterday that tested 46 people for HIV. In the past we have held these days at Beersheba but the last one tested 130 people with 2 testing positive. That sounds great to have such a low result but those two were already known to support agencies and everyone else had been to several HIV awareness days and were quite clued up. We decided therefore to move them out into the community to see if we can access new folks. Out of the 46 we tested yesterday 3 were positive and had never known their result before. Obviously it’s terrible that anyone tested positive but it has shown us that out in the community is a more needed place than on our site among our neighbours. We are planning another 2 events this year at other points in the area in partnership with other churches.
So today and tomorrow I’m working from home and then Friday is yet another public holiday during which I may well work as my plan for now (middle of the afternoon) is to go and visit a craft fair that is in town which will help my souvenir count go up quite significantly! Currently debating whether to stop by the bank on the way or whether that’s just asking for trouble! Either way I’m off shopping…
