Hahona Mathata

Lumelang!

Happy International Womxn’s Day! Hope everyone’s 2020 is off to a great start. Been a while since I gave everyone an update, so I thought now is as good a time as any!

It has been very hot here, the summer months have just been brutal! However, it has been raining a lot, which is great because it just makes everything stunningly green and full of life. It’s wonderful! The corn fields are tall and lush, and the Senqu River is overflowing with water. I can appreciate the beauty this year after a long winter and drought season far more than I did last year. The other thing is I no longer have to wake up at 4:15 to fetch water from the tap! Water is at the tap all day, it’s very exciting. My site mate and I even went down to the river to go swimming with some kiddos on a particularly hot day, and it was deep enough to actually swim! Really kaofela ke hantle, everything is good and I've got no worries (hahona mathata).

Views on my walk home from the clinic. My village is breathtaking, ka nette.

January was our Mid Service Conference which “officially” marks us as second year volunteers. It was a week conference, and being able to see everyone from Health was really nice. It’s the first time we’d all been in the same place since March. We had some Sesotho lessons and an exam (I’m an intermediate high speaker woot), talked about plans for our second year, mental health, resilience, and (most of our favorite part) COS details! Close of Service, COS, is what Peace Corps calls the end of our service. So at Midservice, we got our official COS Date, (November 17/18). In August, the entire 88 cohort will have a short conference to prepare for leaving Lesotho. We’ll have medical appointments, a career panel, details about chelete ($$), and mental health discussions about readjustment. After this conference, we are not permitted to travel out of the country until COS! It’s pretty crazy that it’s coming up so fast. But I’m hoping to enjoy every second I can until it’s time to leave. I am also planning on traveling for about a month and a half right after COS, so my plan is to be back in the US at the end of December. Mark your calendars!

In February, my GRS Counterpart, Keke, and I held a very successful first GRS intervention! We had been attempting to have our first intervention last year, but due to the teacher’s strike and some other factors, we had to delay it until this year. But luckily, it all worked out, and we had a very successful two week intervention. If you don’t remember what GRS is, I will gladly remind you! Grassroots Soccer is a program which teaches youth about HIV Prevention and risk factors through sport related activities. It was developed in South Africa, and it has a partnership with Peace Corps in several countries, Lesotho included. Back in June, myself and two counterparts went to the training, so we are able to administer the intervention in our own community.

The first time I actually did an intervention was back in October at YOLO Camp. But in that context, I wasn’t working with the counterparts I was trained with. So it was even more exciting to do a GRS Intervention with my friend and counterpart, Keke! Keke is a teacher at the primary school, so we did our intervention with a group of 43 primary school kids ages 11-16 every day after school. We were able to get through 11/12 practices (heavy rain prevented us from one of the sessions we had planned). The sessions put a strong emphasis on three things: (1) The primary risk factors for HIV transmission among youth in Southern Africa are unprotected sex, sex with an older partner, and mixing sex and alcohol, (2) abstinence is the most effective way to prevent oneself from getting HIV, and (3) youth should be open and comfortable with their friends and family about topics related to HIV and sex. I have to say, it is an extremely well done intervention and it was so obvious to us that the kids were really understanding the topics, and they had fun doing it! We can even measure how well the kids learned because of a pre and post-test. (Our kids on average did much better on the post test, very exciting).

Keke absolutely crushed it with leading this group of 43 pre pubescents. She expertly translated the English manual to Sesotho on the spot, and she dealt with giggles and questions expertly. She even did a male and female condom demonstration with anatomically correct penis and vagina models that we borrowed from the clinic! The kids thought the vagina model was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. That was a great day!

My favorite practice is one called HIV Limbo. The general concept is to demonstrate that youth have a higher chance of contracting HIV from an older partner. So what happens, is you have a limbo stick with a piece of paper saying “HIV” hanging off of it. We make sure to tell them that all of this is pretend. The rules are, if you can get under the limbo without touching the HIV paper, it means you’ve not contracted HIV, and vice versa. So we play four rounds. The first round represents abstinence, and the limbo stick is held high, so everyone gets through no problem. The next round, the limbo stick is a little lower and it represents having sex with someone the same age. Then the stick gets a little lower to represent having sex with someone five years older. The last round, the stick is so low that nobody can get through, representing having sex with someone ten years older. All of the practices are hands on learning like this, where the kids themselves can completely visualize the concepts being taught. It really was fun for Keke and I as well as the kids! We ended the two week intervention with a graduation ceremony, all the kids receiving certificates and having a fun photoshoot. Keke and I are planning another intervention for later this year, and I can’t wait!

Keke performing an condom demonstration with anatomically correct penis and vagina models which the kids thought were hilarious. *Photo was posted with parental, school, and student's consent*

As for work at the clinic, we are currently preoccupied with a new system called eRegister. The Lesotho government, in partnership with an organization called ICAP, recently rolled this new patient information system out early 2019. Quthing is the last district to get it (typical), but at least now every clinic in Lesotho has shiny new computers and a shiny new system! It’s really an awesome system, and hopefully it will make paper files and paper reports a thing of the past. Basically, all patients who access the clinic have their information inputted into the system, and every patient get their own profile with all of their medical histories, a log of their visits to the clinic, and a unique patient identification number. It’s a huge step in modernization and organization, especially regarding HIV patients. Most patients we see at our clinic are there for ART refills and consultations, so we have hundreds of paper files for each patient, which have a habit of getting lost. So much time and energy is poured into appointing patients in this huge appointment book by hand, and filling out these giant books of paper reports at the end of each month and quarter. It will save so much time for clinic staff to focus on other things, and really it will improve organization of data and patient information country wide.

Another important part of this system is that soon it will become a national database for patient care. Why is this important you ask? Well let’s take the case of Lesotho data for incidence of HIV. Let’s say I’m a teacher who lives in Berea but I work in Butha Buthe. When school is in session, I go to my local clinic in Butha Buthe for ART services. Then during school breaks, I head home to Berea and pick up my refills at the clinic near my home. Because Lesotho doesn’t have a national system, when it comes to data collection, I am counted once in BB and once in Berea. I am representing two cases of HIV when I am just one individual. This scenario is really common in Lesotho. It is theorized that since many people are counted multiple times, the rate of HIV in Lesotho has been over reported. This system will allow clinics to access all the patient information with their unique number on a national scale so reporting will be more accurate, and patient care more individualized. I really think it is necessary and really important for Lesotho, and I think this system will be a vital tool for increasing the effectiveness of healthcare here.

Well that’s it for now! It’s currently raining, and I’m getting a cold breeze that makes me feel very content! I’m going to make some bread to prepare for this week, and get ready for another week of work. I’m loving this country and my life here more and more every day and I’m starting to dread the thought of leaving in November. We’ll see how I feel in eight months!

Until next time, Salang hantle!

P.S.- Last week was “Peace Corps Week” and our Tech committee decided to use the week to highlight serving in Lesotho. I did an Instagram takeover for one of the days, so show what a day in the life of a health volunteer is like. If you are interested in seeing the photos and videos from that day, reach out to me or my family and we will share the link to the google photos album with you!