Waiting for Carnival!

Hi all. This time I will probably be able to update you only once this month. This month started off with a building weekend, which means we fix up the buildings and facilities in the school and cleaning up the grounds. During normal schedules we carry out minor maintenance tasks once a week during the time set aside for ‘action on compound’, such as clearing the gutters and cleaning the kitchen thoroughly. During the building weekends we dedicate a whole weekend to carry out more time consuming maintenance work on the school buildings and grounds such as paint work, fixing roofs, mowing and clearing up shrubs (we have a huge compound and everything grows really fast, especially in the rainy season which is starting now).
We have had various courses over the past weeks, the most interesting one for me being on tropical diseases. It was not only important to learn more about common diseases such as Malaria, Tuberculosis (TB) and Typhoid, but also most importantly to learn how to teach about these diseases to “village Africa”. It’s not as easy as one thinks when you have to try to explain something differently. I chose to study TB more closely because of the relation with HIV (it is reported that TB is the leading cause of death among HIV infected people). I’m grateful that there are vaccines for many common diseases and even more grateful that I can afford these vaccinations :) The problem, as you all know, is that most people don’t have proper nutrition, medication or care for easily preventable or curable diseases or conditions such as diarrhea. But I hope to be able to help improve these conditions as long as it takes me!
Anyway, I’m sure you will hear more of that from me later on. For now, it’s about doing what I can do here. I hope I will leave a ‘footprint’ as an individual…As a group we are supposed to leave something tangible (practical or not) as a footprint at the school. So keep an eye on my blog to see what we decide to leave behind.
We are also starting with our specialization period, which means we carry out certain tasks more specific to our projects, in my case TCE project in South Africa. As I mentioned before I am involved in the mini TCE community work here, which I can just continue with for my specialization period. In addition we all have to prepare and give complete classes (earlier we only worked on presentations). So most of my classes will be related to HIV and AIDS, but we also have to learn to give general classes such as geography or science classes for various audiences from primary school to adults in the training colleges. We also have to start thinking more concretely about our plan in the project we go to and any ideas we have on various fundraising and community activities. Six months is not so long so we have to plan well for the whole period.
OK, I’ll stop boring you…I’ll leave you with more interesting news – the Vincy Mas (Carnival) is coming up next week! It’s such a hype and there have already been lots of activities and shows in anticipation of the event. I also can’t wait for it – a Caribbean carnival! First time experience yey! Although we probably won’t be able to enjoy the main shows as you need to pay entrance. But there will be many shows on the streets of course. I’ll try post some pictures if possible, but otherwise I’ll update you next time :) And of course there is lots I need to update you on the ongoing fundraising activities...hhhmmm...next time.
Take care.