It's been a while so I thought I would write a brief update. I've been busy working on the nutrition training. It's scheduled to happen next week and the first week of February. The grant proposal was approved and the funding will be coming. Unfortunately, we probably won't receive the money until after the training has started. It's okay though because the important supplies are stationary for the participants and facilitators and most of these will be taken from my office or else bought on credit.

Speaking of buying on credit, I decided to try to buy some folders and pens for the participants on credit. I wasn't sure if it would be possible but I figured I'd give it a try rather than just sit around and have to stress out during the training. There are 2 stationary stores in town but I only knew of one so I didn't bother to price check. I went into the store and explained my situation but I didn't do a really good job because they kept asking me "who sent you". I know they just wanted to know what organization I was representing so they could know if the person was reliable or not. But it still sounded like I should have come with a secret password.

The owner said he doesn't usually give things out on credit but I left him my contact details (including where I work) so he can come find me if he so chooses. The money is scheduled to come in next Monday or Tuesday so I plan on going back to his shop as soon as it does.

We were hoping to have a guest facilitator from USAID to help deliver the curriculum but unfortunately this was not possible. So now we're trying to find someone here in town to fill in. We already have 2 facilitators so the third would just make the workload easy (which is important) but it will not make the training impossible to carry out.
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It's been raining for a couple of months now so the crops are really tall. I'm always amazed by the speed with which corn and other crops grow. It's so fast that you almost forget what the landscape looked like during the dry season.

The CBO mapping is going along. Not as fast as it could but not as slow as it could either. We've managed to contact about 20 organizations out of the 200 that are known to exist in the county. We'll keep at it and maybe we'll finish by the time I leave. One of the biggest road blocks is that our office does not have any funding (other offices received funding but not the office of the District AIDS Coordinator where I work). So we don't have money for fuel to drive to these places or phone cards to call them.

Other than that, not much is happening right now.

Happy New Year!

I haven't written in a while because not much was happening at work. Actually all of the government offices shut down from Christmas Eve until today so even if I had gone to work I wouldn't have had anyone to work with. Well, the hospital and the prison were still functioning but not at full capacity.

I just found out that the grant that I applied for last month was accepted for the full amount. : ) This is great news since we're scheduled to hold the training at the end of this month. I'm really excited to see this project come to life. I hope that the nurses who are participating enjoy the training and are able to use the information that the facilitators deliver.

The National AIDS Commission asked all the District AIDS Coordinators (DAC) to conduct mapping of all of the HIV/AIDS stakeholders in their respective communities. The Thyolo DAC and I have been working on the mapping for our district since last month. We have the survey ready and we're scheduled to go into the field this week to deliver them to some of the organizations. I found out that Medecins sans Frontieres (and NGO operating in the district) has also completed a mapping of the HIV/AIDS stakeholders in the community. This made me wonder how many other organizations have done a similar task. So I asked the DAC if we could have a district-wide meeting to find out what other organizations have conducted similar mapping activities and any suggestions or resources that could be shared. Hopefully we can have that meeting this month or next.