It hasn't been very busy here at the Assembly lately. The frenzy of planning World AIDS Day is over so people are relaxing a little. The DAC and I have been planning to conduct some field visits to area Community-Based Organizations, Faith-Based Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations and Youth Groups. We have two motives for these visits. One is to have all of the HIV/AIDS stakeholders in the District (so that would be all of the organizations I just listed above) complete a survey indicating what activities they do. The other reason is to do GPS mapping. The first purpose is fairly easy and we will probably be able to complete it within a matter of months. The second purpose is proving a bit tricky.

The National AIDS Commission (NAC) has asked all of the District AIDS Coordinators to use GPS mapping to find out the location of all of the HIV/AIDS stakeholders in their respective districts. This is a great idea, however, not all districts have access to a GPS device, and even if they do not all of them have someone available who knows how to operate it. Also, there are almost 200 different stakeholders in Thyolo and I'm sure it's something similar in all of the other districts. So that means that it will take a lot of money to provide fuel and per diem for the people conducting the mapping. As I mentioned a while ago NAC doesn't really have any money so they are not a realiable source of funding.

To futher complicate the issue, there is currently a fuel shortage in Malawi. I was told this is due to a lack of foreign currency in the banks. I think that means that they use the foreign currency to buy fuel from other countries. So no money = no fuel. And no fuel means that we cannot go into the field. I did submit a budget to the District Commisioner (DC) to cover the cost of fuel and per diem for us to visit a few organizations. The DC accepted the budget, so now we just wait for the fuel shortage to end.

I finally submitted the grant for the nutrition training. We are hoping to have it in 6 weeks so hopefully it will be approved either before Christmas or right after. The training will be for 2 weeks: the last week of January and the first week of February. We will then monitor the nurses to see if they actually practice the techniques they learn in the training. They will fill out a short monitoring tool after each field visit and at the end of each week I will collect the forms and enter the information into a database. This will be done for only three months. Well, at least I will only be collecting the information for 3 months because I need to wrap up the grant before I leave in August. I will leave the database and all of the information with MSF and the district hospital when I leave and if they want to continue collecting data they can.

Right now everyone at the Assembly is waiting for the President to declare the offical government dates for the Christmas holidays. I guess people don't really know the dates of their vacation until right before it happens. It's kind of like a Christmas surprise. But it makes it difficult to plan travel, etc. I won't be traveling far this year, just a 30 minute bus ride away to a friends house. We will make Christmas cookies, watch movies and sing Christmas carols together. Delightful.