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Although I've completed my Peace Corps service, I have not forgotten this blog! As the saying goes, "Life comes at you fast" so it'll take me some time to gather my thoughts (and find some free time) to post more thoughts about my Peace Corps experience.

There's so much to tell. Where do I continue...?

Malaria in Me

I recently took a malaria rapid diagnostic test when I was sick and the result was negative. Yay! But did I ever tell you about the time I actually got malaria?

April 2011. I haven't had a headache this bad in YEARS.

I took some pain killers and closed my eyes, hoping sleep would take the pain away. I awoke the next morning to sun highlighting sections of my hut. The headache was gone. Great, back to work.

A week later, I came down with a really bad case of the flu. Or what I thought was the flu. As I started walking to the clinic from my house, my body felt like I was going in slow motion. I was walking in a blizzard, fighting against strong wind and freezing cold. But no such thing existed. Something was wrong. My body won over my stubborn persistence to walk to the clinic and I retreated home. With the wind knocked right out of me, I collapsed on the floor of my hut.

 

Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Test: cassette, reagent, pipette, needle prick, and alcohol swap

I looked at the cassette sideways, sliding it back and forth in my hand. This can't be... right? A line appeared under P. falciparum on the cassette. Hm, I must've done something wrong. I guess I'll use the other one. So, I repeated the process with the second cassette. The second cassette had an identical result.

Unglamorously Yours: Poop in a Hole

Interestingly enough, while I was writing this entry, I Googled "poop in a hole" and one of the first suggestions on the search bar was "poop in a hole peace corps." I'm glad Google understands that this matter is always trending in a PCVs life.

Party time!

"We all float down here and when you're down here, you'll float too." - Pennywise the dancing clown from Steven King's IT

I know it's disgusting but there's no other way to talk about this. Your survival in a rural area depends on knowing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You've heard the saying "everyone bleeds blood"? Well, guess what? Everyone poops too. It's one of humanity's universal truths. Beautiful people, average-looking people; Black, White, Brown; religious, non-religious; the rich and the poor. As a person traveling around rural parts of a country, whether you're working in the field for years or just visiting for a week, you might have to poop in a hole.

On Friendships, Strangeships, and Things in Between

I'm always thinking about relationships because underneath my serious, New Yawker expression, I care about the people that help manage the ebb and flow of my time in Zambia.

Friendships:  The seasons change and friends stick around even during rain season. And no matter how long rain season is, they're there for you and you're there for them. Distance doesn't silence you and you're never at a loss for words the next time you communicate. 

Thanks to Facebook era, people slip acquaintances into the friends category sometimes. Which is cool, I guess. No one wants to hurt anyone's feelings and tell them the limited extent of their relationship. It might not matter to some who calls what whom and yadda yadd yah. It's not to say that I don't appreciate people that are currently in or have been in my life but I cherish the people that really get to know and understand me and still put up with me anyway.

Stream of Consciousness Travel

I wrote this while traveling.

Long road trips. I love them and I hate them just the same. I love them because of I love to travel. Travel gives you the chance to see and experience new things. My family's regular migrations from New York to South Carolina are enjoyable because you can see how much the backdrop changes: from tall skyscrapers and concrete to tall trees and open land. So why do I hate them? After 16 hours in a car, my body contorts like a zombie in Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

Malaria Anonymous

Looking up from the patient screening book to see the growing number of patients waiting to be seen, my eyes rested upon a mother anxiously rocking her infant back and forth in her arms. Worry clouded the woman's face as her eyes concentrated on her infant. The infant's eyes revealed fading glimmers of life. For the brief moments they opened, only the whites of her eyeballs showed. Her small chest rose sporadically as she gasped for air. For a brief moment, she didn't seem real. The one-year old girl remained in this zombie-like state as her mother rushed her to the front of the patient queue.

We tested the child and asked the mother the who's, what's, when's and how's about her child's condition. The mother treated her child at home, saving her the effort of walking the 24 kilometers to the clinic. But now, after several days, the child's condition deteriorated.

Looking at the child's lifeless state, I desperately snapped, "Can't we just please refer her to the district?"

"All of these people have malaria," the clinic In-Charge answered. He raised his hand to guide my eyes to the sea of patients waiting outside of the clinic for malaria tests and treatment.

"She doesn't look well... at all. This woman walked TWENTY. FOUR. K..."

"We will see her," the In-Charge reassured.

BAMM!: Stop Out Malaria

April is Blog About Malaria Month (BAMM). This month, we will increase our efforts to Stop Out Malaria with awareness about the disease. This post is the first in a series about how malaria affects everyone's lives.

Malaria, one of the world's deadliest diseases, is caused by a parasites that are spread by mosquitoes. The infected mosquitoes then transmits malaria from person to person. Malaria is found in many tropical climates in the world, mainly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.  Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 85% of malaria cases and 90% of malaria deaths worldwide. It can be especially harmful to vulnerable populations such as young children, pregnant women and People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Malaria devastates the lives of individuals, families, communities, and nations.

To date, many organizations have made countless efforts to eliminate malaria by raising awareness, conducting behavior change trainings, mass distribution of bed nets, and fundraising to aid community organizations in their malaria elimination and prevention programs. In Zambia, the Ministry of Health's prioritization of malaria control, in conjunction with increased international aid and advocacy, helped decrease the number of inpatient malaria cases and deaths. The Stomp Out Malaria initiative assists the Ministry of Health in their goals through malaria research, education, and community mobilization. By combining a scale up of community-level and large-scale organization/government effort, we hope to stomp out malaria once and for all.

For more information about the Stop Out Malaria project, click here.

A Mile in My Shoes

"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes."-Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

It's no secret that I can be very hard on my shoes. I get every dollar and cent out of the worth of my shoes before they scream "Enough!," take one last breath, and expire. I've had small-scale interventions with friends and family which result in the retirement of some shoes I have worn to death. As I was cleaning out my stash of latest worn out shoes, I realized my problem is a bit more unique in Zambia.

The Process of Grief

Some call it “explosive crying.” I call it a cathartic release of pent up grief. When you pack all of your skeletons in the closet it comes to a point when you’re just waiting for the door to give way. Every suppressed feeling and thought is now sitting at the forefront of your mind, impressing upon an already confused emotional state.

The neighbor just died.  The sound of loss is very distinctive.  Blood curdling screams are now added to the soundtrack of loud operatic church music.  Family members and neighbors come and go; some staying for hours and others for minutes.  I'm sure they're not keeping track of time.  Time seems to slow down out of respect for the dead...

This Is Sparta-Whoops, I Mean Zambia!

Yeah, yeah, I know the movie 300 came out years ago but I still get urges to yell the above phrase when I accomplish something that I think is equivalent in effort to climbing Mt. Everest.

And whhhhy do I feel like shouting that phrase like I have some sort of nervous tick?  Well, it looks like the AMAI team's plan to create a 24-hour toll-free hotline is off to a great start.  My project supervisor at AMAI mentioned a while back that she wanted me to work on developing two more things: a 24 hour hotline for health workers to call in emergencies and a website.  This hotline will service both Lundazi and Nyimba districts in Eastern Province.  Inside my head I laughed because I love a good challenge.  Then, anxiety took over.

How was I going to pull this off?

Where There's a Health Worker, There's a Way

The lack of human resources continues to pervade the health sector across Zambia.  In an effort to earn a living, health care workers move away from family and their normal support systems to serve in remote locations.  Some health centers even try requesting unmarried service providers because they believe it lessens the likelihood of the person leaving.  However, without any familiar support, unmarried workers may face more obstacles in coping with living in unfamiliar and difficult environments.  A health worker, stationed at a site roughly 6 hours away from the town, explained that living and working alone in unfamiliar and isolated territory plays a huge role in service providers not wanting to work inaccessible locations. 

Supply Strain: Health Facility Barriers to Health Access

When the AMAI team conducted the assessment at health facilities in Lundazi district, I was unnerved by the general lack of medicine, supplies and general infrastructure.  Sometimes those supplies were present but non-functional. 

One facility received donated dental equipment.  The problem? There are no dentists at this facility. 

Many other facilities either had “improvised” beds or general patient beds due to limited resources.  There were also concerns about power sources.  Since many facilities have makeshift power supplies that include a solar panel, battery and an inverter but the usage from this power source varied depending upon the quality of equipment and any damage that might have happened to the equipment.  

An improvised labor and delivery bed

"If You Build It, They Will...Come?": Infrastructure and Environmental Barriers to Healthcare

A pregnant woman in her third trimester is having shortness of breath, a mild headache and blurred vision.  Her sister, concerned about her health, encourages her to visit the rural health center.  The rural health center is 10K (~6 miles) away on foot after she crosses the river. 

What is the likelihood of this woman going to the health center?

The above scenario might be made up but the conditions are not.  Some of the largest barriers to healthcare are caused by environmental factors and poor infrastructure.  If our team did not have a four-wheel drive vehicle and relatively good weather conditions, our travel to many of the sites we visited in Eastern Province would have been impossible and/or dangerous.  We couldn’t reach one of the sites due to a tree that was knocked down by a heavy rainstorm.

It just wasn't meant to be.

AMAI Team: Saving Mothers, Giving Life

This is the first in a series of posts on the new maternal health initiative Saving Mothers Giving Life and my thoughts on some of the common barriers women face in receiving quality healthcare.  I’ll also talk about possible solutions to eventually eliminating those barriers.

A Little Background

Last October, I started working with CIDRZ (Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia), on implementing the Global Health Initiative project "Saving Mothers, Giving Life."  The main goal of the project is to reduce maternal and infant mortality by 50% in a year.  Seeing as it is a very ambitious goal local and global stakeholders are collaborating on a multi-faceted strategy to not only promote women coming in to health facilities to deliver but to also improve the quality of life-saving health services those women receive.  I believe a key factor in this project is documenting the barriers to healthcare so that people across the globe see these struggles.

An Entrepreneurial Showcase: Aveles Niyrenda's Chitenge Creations

Anything artistic or crafty (or just downright quirky) usually catches my eye.  I oftentimes dream of creating some whimsical item for myself or as a gift to loved ones (unlike those “creative” pieces I used to draw in Kindergarten).  When I met Aveles Niyrenda at the Dutch Reformed Church’s Saturday crafts market, her chitenge¹ crafts display not only triggered my chitenge addiction (more on that later) but also made me curious to know how she created her unique items.  After a firing off a series of questions, I jokingly told her I was coming to her house to witness the steps firsthand.  Surprisingly, she welcomed me.

Welcome to Aveles’ workshop.  This narrow corridor in front of Aveles’ house allows her chitenge visions to unfold.   The following are steps to creating her works of art.

Just Write

This blog offers no proof that I’ve been living and working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia for over a year now.  In the age of “fast food” (mainly inauthentic) communication, I’ve been savoring the written word in the form of letters and journal entries.  After all, living in a village without electricity forced me to do that.  Oftentimes, though, as I sit in front of a computer I wonder: “What the heck is there to write about?” 

"Are You From Zambia?"

Life is such a great comedy. 

One of my fondest memories happened at JHU's Spring Fair 2008, when a security guard on campus posed a question about my nationality: "Are you from Zambia?"  I often have people try to guess my nationality but hearing that question made me burst into my usual oddball laughing fit.  Fast-forward two years and now I wonder if the security guard at my university was also my placement officer for Peace Corps Zambia.

Purpose of My Blog

"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." -Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism

And so I clicked "Submit" on my Peace Corps application.



Since the early 1990s, many Peace Corps volunteers have used blogging as a way of communicating their thoughts through a series of photos and or texts.  This blog captures my personal experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia.  My goal is to create a dialogue between my host country, Zambia, and America in order to promote two of the three goals of Peace Corps:

Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

I hope that we all will contribute to a more connected and vibrant world.