Getting down to business.

Things at site are going well right now. As usual, it’s awesome on one front and pretty poor on another. My new birth spacing education campaign is going very well. It’s not at a point of perfection yet where I can mass produce it but it will be soon. I need to go to Bamako and get the HIV/AIDS Tool Kit. This kit includes props and demonstration materials. We have been putting condoms on flashlight sand not only is that confusing, it’s hard to explain everything fully in Bambara without using inappropriate sign language so I really need those props and some translated materials. My plan so far has just been talking to my friends casually and this has held good results. It also usually draws a small crowd. I need to HIV/AIDS Tool Kit though before I can talk to the teenage boys who live next door to me and play cards outside my house every evening. They are a really fun bunch that help me do soak pit work sometimes and we joke about their girl friends, and I know that they each have at least one. Normally this is secret but that the glory of being an American- I am a third party that I guess they don’t feel too weird talking to. Especially since they are only a few years younger than me and they have seen my boy friend come visit too. Though to my village, he’s my husband.

I know that results are going well though because not only have women asked me for condoms, I have had women get the shot and one women waited at my house for me one day while I was at the market so she could ask me about it. She had heard through the grape vine and she wanted to hear my speech about the benefits of birth spacing. So that was really exciting. My plan is to go door to door basically since scheduling a meeting rarely happens. I will just find the women sitting around working together and talk to them there and the same for the men. And then for those who I can, I think it would be nice to talk to both the man and the woman together as a couple and talk about their plan for the future and children.

The soak pit project is not done yet and I am really lacking motivation. People want it but they just aren’t willing to work for it, not quickly or efficiently. I just want it done. We are so close but there are a lot of people who are still short rocks or this and that and they are never home and when they say they will do t, I feel like it never actually happens. Even when the rocks are in a giant pile next to our unfinished mosque.