Things Starting To Pick Up

Hello everyone, sorry for the delayed response.  The last few weeks have been pretty busy with trainings and projects starting to move past the planning page.   With that being said, those projects will be the primary topic of today’s blog post with a conclusion of some random stories since we last spoke.  To make the organization of the projects easier to read, I’ll discuss them in list form.    

Gumare Women’s Group

Since our in-service training a couple weeks ago things have started to pick up for some project.  For instance, as soon as I got back from the training a lady from a women’s group that Dave and I are helping with came over to seek some advice on registering her group as a non-profit.  When she first called and explained this I expecting maybe an hour or so to discuss a plan for registering, but this was not the case.  She wanted to get this group started and do the application at the meeting. 

So not having anything else going on, Dave came over and we sat in my house with this lady writing a letter to the ministry here that handles non-profits outlining what the group’s objective; coming up with ten possible names; and calling the members for a meeting to formally record minutes from a meeting discussing registration. 

Even though Dave and I were somewhat caught off guard, the outcome I think turned out okay.  Below are the objectives of the group:

·         Provide quality, caring, and nonjudgmental support in a manner that fosters self-respect and independence in persons experiencing intimate partner abuse.

 

·         Lead the effort to end domestic abuse through advocacy, outreach, and community education.

 

·         Have the knowledge and expertise for directing persons experiencing abuse to the proper professional care providers

The next steps with the group will be organizing training for the members around these objectives; introducing ourselves to the community through some marketing; coming up with programs and projects around the objectives; and finally come up with some sustainable methods for resource development.

PACT Club and Camp Glow

These projects are essentially the same: Working with the youth around Gumare to develop their confidence, decision-making, and other important life-skills that will help mitigate their chance of contracting HIV/AIDs.  

Dave and I are currently running one PACT Club with about twenty kids aged 10-14 at an elementary school on Wed afternoons.  Basically, we start off with interactive learning about a like-skill topic and then play games the rest of the time.  It usually lasts about an hour and half. 

In addition, the PCV’s in this region, myself included, will be putting on a Camp GLOW for about thirty elementary school kids.  The camp will be for a week and link life-skills with avoiding teen pregnancy, which is pretty high in this region.  Hopefully this camp will happen at the beginning of December. 

Sekgele and Gumare Primary Counseling Center

These are my two primary assignments so I spend most of my time there, but I am not doing too much project implementation.  Currently, I am just working on developing some training in basic computer skills, Microsoft Office, and business skills.  Hopefully next month we start doing these trainings at least twice a week.

After the trainings, I hope to start getting incorporating what we learned into more projects that the organizations have going on so look for more posts on that in the future.

When I am not doing these trainings, I am helping my organizations with any administrative help they need whether it is creating fliers or inputting data on a spreadsheet or helping write grants. 

Random Happenings

So these projects are basically what I spend most of my days working on and like I said earlier they all started to pick up more after the training.  It has been good to busy, but I do get some time to relax and do things I like. 

For instance, I have started to play soccer on Mon and Wed.  Actually, it is not really playing as much as it is me embarrassing myself.  I have not played soccer in probably over ten years and don’t really know what I am doing.  In fact, the first time I played I didn’t even know the positions.  One of the guys told me I was positions 11 and everyone started calling me top striker with big smiles on their faces.  I was laughing along but then had to finally stop and say where does the top striker go and what does the top striker do?  This immediately got more laughter, but eventually someone answered me.   With all this said, it has been really fun and a great workout.  All the guys are government workers here at the hospital, schools, or government offices so they do speak English.  Also, like everyone else I met here, they are extremely friendly and never get upset if I do something stupid like completely miss the ball when trying to kick the ball off a bounce.   

In addition to playing soccer, I hope to start going fishing regularly with a group of guys that go every weekend.  The idea happened about two weeks ago when I hitched to this lagoon area with an old Zimbabwean guy going fishing.  I didn’t plan of fishing that day, but ended up sitting with this guy for five hours and talking about politics, Africa, and the US while he was having barely any luck with the fish.  After the five hours, we exchanged numbers, and he told me that a group of guys usually goes out every weekend and to call if I am interested.  Hopefully, I can get a fishing pole soon and join them.  But again, like soccer I am not much of a fisherman so it will be interesting and potentially embarrassing experience. 

That’s pretty much it for this blog post.  Sorry it was so random, but things here are always random, so it just makes sense to do the same for my blog post.  I hope you enjoyed.  For my friends and family, I miss you all very much and hope everyone is doing well.   Please send me some updates through email on how you all are doing. 

Oh, I put some pictures up on Flickr and will keep adding them slowly but surely.