July 7 –

I’ve been here a little over a month and things are going relatively well. I just took my mid-training language evaluation. I have reached my minimum performance level of Intermediate-Mid. That’s two levels up from my original placement and I hope to be at Advanced-Low by the end of training (I have three and a half weeks to get there). Although at this point I want to focus more on local language (Ewe). I have managed to learn the most basic of greetings, and I would type them here if I had keys for the several new letters in the alphabet. And they use sounds I still haven’t figured out yet.

I leave for my post visit week on Saturday and will meet with my homologue/counterpart on Friday. This is the go-to-person that I will be working with in my village. I am pretty nervous about it actually. I would describe what I am to understand to be my future home, but I figure I should just wait until I’ve been there so I can speak in definite terms instead of guesses. (side note: I have not used a computer in so long that my hand is cramping up right now as I am relearning to type.)

At this point in stage, two members of the health group have left- one girl broke her leg and had to be med-evacuated to the US to have surgery. She has the option to come back in 4-6 months when she has finished healing. The other, a guy, went home to attend the funeral of his father who died unexpectedly last week. He should be back in another week or so.

Illnesses have not become of great concern. Many people are having digestive problems and one guy had parasites. He’s better now. Another guy unfortunately has an infected bite. It’s in the yucky stages at this point but it should get better. He is on antibiotics. Our med unit is pretty good about getting us the medications we need.

We had our first taste of what our work is really going to be like on Monday. We did a mock-causerie (info session). We gave a presentation to new mothers about the advantages of family planning and some basic contraceptive info. We gave the presentation in French and then our teachers had to translate it into local language for us (that is how it will just about always be done – which is why our homologues are so important). Afterwards we helped with baby-weighing and filled out weight charts for the mothers, explaining that it is important to monitor growth because malnutrition is a big concern here, particularly for infants. The babies were all very cute.

Everything is going well. I killed another spider in my room. A big one. But at least that is the worst of it for me. Some of the others have had cockroaches or scorpions in their rooms. I would cry!! I do worry about snakes. The path through the cornfield that I take to get to my house from the PC school always troubles me. I have only seen a dead snake on the path so far. I should carry a stick, especially at night. One guy had a snake in his room. Fortunately, it was day time and he hadn’t gone into the room but saw it before hand. His host mom went screaming to the neighbors who came over to kill it. It was bright green. Not likely to be my new friend. Lol.