fa'amamafa over it (a little line) but I don't know how to do that and
don't have the time so please excuse the intentional typo. Things
have been crazy busy as of late. Due to the slow moving nature of
things in the work place, and in special projects, I have taken on a
number of projects to help keep me busy. And keep my mind off my hot
fiancee as much as possible. It's not that I don't like thinking
about her, but being a half a world away for two years is no place to
sit idle and count the days.
As is bound to happen on occasion multiple projects have moments of
overlap where I find myself frantically busy trying to keep up with
the workload. This is mostly because if they all went to plan there
would be plenty of time for each but usually there is a lot of waiting
around for people to get back to you so you can move forward with the
work. So, what do I have pressing for my attention right now? We are
getting ready to train the group 82 volunteers on a village based
chronic disease prevention program. Due to delayed responses in
consultations and meetings I am working frantically to finalize
revisions to the program and get it ready for the volunteers. I am
fairly certain it will be done in time but it is definitely taking up
my evenings and weekend for the next week.
The HIV program at the Red Cross is starting to move forward after a
long hiatus. We got some community surveys out last week and I have
been working to compile the information. The info will be used to
develop education materials and handouts. Unfortunately it was not a
research project so the results cannot be used for wide uses but I did
not have the resources or the time to organize that sort of effort.
They will do their job and though the results are not research
quality, the methods used make me confident in using the results.
They did reveal some less than desired numbers in the general
understanding of HIV, methods of transmission and attitudes relating
to HIV discrimination. Nothing really surprising, but it's good to
have something to go by in developing our messages.
The blood program will be distributing a survey this week for the same
purpose. So hopefully in the coming months we will get some new
materials developed for the peer educators to use in their work in HIV
and materials that can be distributed at blood drives and other events.
We also had a great meeting today that will help us in getting things
moving in the right direction in the larger HIV picture. The results
of today's meeting is a long awaited meeting between some key
stakeholders to hopefully strengthen the work and cooperation in
addressing the HIV situation in Samoa.
Avanoa Tutusa is still rolling along and we are looking at ways to
scale up our operations. We have some people interested in helping
the organization in the near future and we are very excited about
that. We are also planning a health fair for the youth of Samoa. We
have our first official planning meeting this Friday and we have had a
great response by a number of organizations who want to be involved in
the planning process. This will provide us with a great opportunity
to get some Samoans interested in Avanoa Tutusa and hopefully join the
organization, one of the key goals for this year.
Sorry to bore you with work stuff but that is about all I have to
report. We did celebrate Cinco de Mayo last weekend in Savaii and it
was a great time. I got to see a lot of the PCVs I don't get a chance
to see that often and I got to have some mexican food (or close
enough) and margaritas (not really close enough, but take what you can
get I suppose).
Whitney bought her ticket to come visit me this summer. Second week
in August! I can't wait! And the truly amazing thing is I know the 3
months will fly by and then when she leaves I only have 3 and a half
months left. It's shocking and I can feel the clock ticking. I am
excited to move back home but I am anxious to do the best work I can
here before I go.
Well, 12:30am is about 3 hours past my bedtime and I have a day that
is just slammed tomorrow so that's it for today. I'll try to throw a
post up this weekend. Tofa soifua.
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