World AIDS Day Planning

The past few weeks have been focused on planning the World AIDS Day (WAD) events here in Thyolo District. We started planning at the beginning of this month and will hold the activities on December 1st. Although it is a worldwide event and most occur on December 1st, sometimes due to the arrival of funding, people's schedules, etc, the events are held after December 1st. And, I learned here in Malawi that WAD is actually the start of a year-long series of events (if money and time allow) to commemorate that particular year's theme. So WAD actually goes from December 1st of one year to November 30th of the following year. This year's theme is universal access to testing, care and ARVs.

Unfortunately, at least here in Thyolo, the only variation in the planning activities is the theme, the rest of the event is the same. Since the DAC office has not received funding from the national office (or maybe this doesn't even matter) in a year and a half, we are using the budget and format for the WAD event planned for last year. As far as I know, the event actually did occur last year. In any case, the national office has issued a checklist to each of the districts in the country with the activities that should occur in their respective WAD events. So, like all the other districts we will have traditional singing and dancing, skits, poetry, speeches from invited guests - all related to this year's theme.

One of the largest portions of the budget for this event and most other events, training, etc is that set aside for allowances (or per diem). So, for our WAD event we will be inviting important guests such as the Members of Parliament for each of the 5 constituencies in the district, the village headmen, the traditional authorities and the chiefs. We will pay them an allowance to attend and will also ensure that they have the best seats and get the best food.

We will be holding 2 events on December 1st, and possibly 2 or 3 more later in December, January or maybe not at all. The 2 events on WAD will be held at a town about 10 minutes drive from the town proper and at the district prison. Since it is the rainy season we will be borrowing some large tents (like the kind they use for weddings and other outdoor events) to protect the performers and the invited guests. Unfortunately the area where we will hold the event in the prison is too small to comfortable contain a tent, so if it rains I guess that we will just have to (hopefully) postpone.

Other than WAD, I'm still slowly working on the grant for the nutrition training. Hopefully I can get it submitted and approved by mid-December. We want to hold the training the last week of January and the first week of February of next year.

There was a reseach dissemination day (similar to the internship conference at the College of Public Health) this past Saturday. I was surprisingly really excited to go. I didn't realize how much I enjoy research, statistics and data until I came here and started working on this grant. The idea behind the day was that so many government and NGO employees working in Thyolo attend national and international conference where they share research and data gathered in the district. This information is rarely shared on a local level, so the District Health Officer and one of the doctors at MSF decided to create a forum to share such information. It was really interesting and nice to learn what other people are doing in the district.