Unreal

As I sit here to write this long overdue blog post, there are many things running through my head...

First, today is April 6th which means I have been here three months today.

Second, I can't believe how long it has been since I blogged. Time is really flying by! I was doing so well when I first arrived then life picked up and I stopped for a bit. Hopefully this means I am back and will try again to be more consistent.

It was funny to me when I saw what my last post was. Today as I was sitting in a class my phone kept vibrating and I kept turning it off. This person kept calling and since I didn't know who it was, I wasn't going to answer. They were persistent so I stepped outside and took the call. It was Fatmata, the patient I wrote about in my last post. The one who went on the radio and did the interview and the one I visited at her home. Another nurse gave her my number and she wanted to call. I asked if she was back in school and she is! I asked her why she wasn't in school today and she told me she is but it was lunch time. She will be back in a month for her followup appointment and I can't wait to see her. I am SO glad she is back in school!

So I'm going to go out on a limb here and be honest... I don't think I realized how hard it was going to be here. Yes, I knew it was going to be challenging. I knew there would be moments of craziness and trying to relate to national nurses was going to be hard, but oy. Today I feel like I have hit a wall. I'm tired. I'm tired of many things but I'm tired. Everything is a struggle. I can't get from one place to another in my day without some sort of issue. I have been working to get HIV trainers out here to train the nurses to be HIV counselors so we can start testing all our women. After going round about how much it would cost and finally getting the cost to something we could afford and settling on dates, they were finally able to come out. I thought my nurses would be excited for this opportunity. We are paying for and supporting them and offering them knowledge about something which I know affects each of them. After the first day of teaching they sat me down and proceeded to tell me everything I did wrong. It was one thing after another. My favorite was that the sodas weren't cold enough and they were pretty upset about this.

I am making friends though and that's been encouraging. Having the ship on the other side of the city has proven to be amazing. I have lots of returning friends from there and have spent the last few weekends with them and have loved it.

On the VVF side of things, the women are still lovely and amazing. Our numbers have been down a bit but I feel like things are going to be changing and I'm really excited to see that. We have some things in the works and this excites me. I'll keep you posted as I can.