Mulibwangi? Dilebuino (sp?)

Well, I'm back from my first field visit and I've learned four phrases in Chichewa in two days - not too shabby!

I went to Nkhotakota, a district about 3 hours away from Lilongwe, as USAID sent an assessment team there and I accompanied our program staff on the visit. Yesterday we met with the district level family planning advisor and a health facility representative to prepare them for the visit, and today we visited a lot of people - the district health officer and family planning advisor, a villiage chief, a health surveillance assistant, a health facility in-charge, and a community based distribution agent. It was great to see the program in action and to get out to the community to get a better sense of the context the program is working in. Communities are very poor, and many women have over 5 children. The contraceptive prevalence rate in the country is30%, and many districts are much lower (I think Nkhotakota is 12%). Some of the health surveillance (HSAs) have been trained to give Depo injections, and the demand is high. We spoke to one HSA that was trained in December and given 50 doses of Depo. She now only has 4 left! The CBDAs also do HIV counseling and testing, and the one we met today had just started testing on her own one week ago. She has already tested 18 people (all negative so far). What is really amazing is that the CBDAs are volunteers - they get a bike, a polo shirt, and a bag to facilitate their work, but no monetary compensation. It is a position of respect within the community, but still a lot of work!

I have pictures to post, but unfortunately the internet situation here is such that I don't have wireless access. They have hotspots that you have to pay to access, but you can't pay online - you have to buy a prepaid card and enter the code. The hotel says they sell the cards for 30 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, and a week of unlimited access, but all they have is the week of unlimited, which is almost $50 and not worth it for me at this point, as I have internet at MSH and will be leaving the city in a few days.

Tomorrow is a national holiday, so I'll get a nice run in and check out the market. I woke up at 5:15 am (ugh) to run today and while I'm glad I did, it was definitely not the best run of my life. It was hot and humid and I ended up taking walking breaks, but hopefully it was just "first run in a new place" adjustment. We'll see how it goes tomorrow!

Friday I'll be in the office for a bit and then head to Liwonde national park to stay at the Mvuu camp, which is a wildelife reserve. Mvuu means hippo, so I hear that I will see hippos, crocodiles, elephants and warthogs! I'm looking forward to it, and in the end it didn't end up being too expensive, so that is a plus. Hopefully I'll get the internet situation figured out soon so I can share all the photos with you all!