Final Miles in Magugu

I am back from Magugu for good, and my group had a pretty successful two weeks after our break. We had a testing day, where about 220 people were tested (including myself!), taught at a village meeting, the Catholic Church, and the Lutheran Church (and their choirs!). We set up a peer education group at the secondary school, so the kids there will be able to teach incoming students about HIV. We also planned and hosted Community Day in Magugu, where all the other villages game in, and we had a soccer tournament (the prize was a goat), chapati-eating contest, rice-sack races, chicken chases, and HIV testing. Over 300 people got tested that day, and hopefully SIC left a very positive mark on all of the villages in Magugu ward.

Chicken Chasing

The winning village (Matufa) celebrates by dressing up their trophy

Teaching the peer educators (yes, Francois helped...)

Some song and dance from the Lutheran church choir after our teaching

Leaving the homestay was hard on Monday. I will definitely miss everyone from the house, even if we couldn't really talk to each other much. My roommate and I got their PO box though, so hopefully I can write letters that Kaka Michael and translate for everyone.

I have more pictures of the family on my camera, but I didn't bring the cable to upload them... so these will have to suffice for now :)

Eriki, Michael's nephew

Our neighbor Nungu (with Francois)

Although our program wrapped up on the 17th, I am staying until August 3rd to continue working on my practicum for my MPH. SIC has a lot of baseline data collected for their community health worker (CHW) program, so I am working (and living) in the office to help organize it. Funnily enough, my work so far looks a lot like the spreadsheets I used to put together in my former life as an insurance analyst. It's a lot more gratifying looking at CD4 counts and medication adherence than premiums and violations ever were though.

I already miss running... and it's only been about 5 days off. There's a short strip of road that is paved well and has almost no traffic (aka runnable) near the office. But I don't like the idea of running alone here. It's perfectly safe during the day, but I'm hesitant to draw extra attention to myself. Plus I'd probably have to run up and down the road about 10 times to get a decent workout in. Oh well. At least I managed to log just over 130 in my time in Magugu since break! I even had a couple of running buddies that I picked up along the way - like these kids! (Pardon the blurriness, it is hard to run and take pictures at the same time!)

My experience here has been powerful. SIC, the volunteers, and the teaching partners really worked hard to make an impact in Magugu ward, and I feel like we really changed some lives for the better. So asante sana to everyone who helped get me here, whether through donations, encouragement, moral support, prayers, or any other means. I greatly appreciate it all.

Natalie