All Work and No Play . . . Never!

Hi all! It's about time for another post to let you know what's been going down. I realized as I was writing some friends earlier that a lot of the day to day stuff here has lost a lot of novelty and is starting to feel very routine to me. Even so, I've still managed to have some adventures since last time.

Despite the fact that it's supposed to be winter right now, we've been having very lovely weather. It's usually chilly in the morning and in the evenings, but during the day when the sun comes out and there's time to sit in it, nothing could be better. Consequently, we have discovered the beach. I'm trying to be good about only going when I legitimately don't have other things to be doing, but I have to say that I've loved every minute I've spent there. Dylan and Hyrum, two of the YSAs in our ward, are both working part time but have a lot of spare time as well and are both beach experts. They've taught us how to play touch rugby and soccer, climb sand dunes and body surf in the waves. Dylan also knows quite a bit about the critters you can find hanging out in the tide pools and sand, so it's been educational. Or so I tell myself. Last weekend, we also had an opportunity to visit a local animal park and see all kinds of cool critters. There was a buffalo, warthogs, kudu, tons of elephants, a pair of lions, zebra, jackals, monkeys etc. The part was absolutely beautiful as well.

It's been a lot of fun, but I promise I'm working as well. I'm still volunteering at Dignity House although we haven't had another day to match my first one. We've had patients come in and out, some of them in worse states than others. In the process, I've been learning a lot about treatments for TB and HIV and some of the medical expertise surrounding those two diseases and others. We have one adult patient right now with septic chicken pox and another with renal failure. It has been interesting to see how something as relatively routine as I've always thought chicken pox to be can suddenly become so complicated when you add in the HIV factor. Because the woman is HIV positive, she was more susceptible to contracting the disease which is more severe in adults than in children, and on top of that, she got a staph infection in the blisters, so it is taking a much longer time than usual to battle the virus. Right now, she is suffering from blindness, but we're hoping that if she can kick off the chickenpox once and for all, the blindness won't be permanent. There's no way to tell right now though.

Sister Helen, the head nurse, has decided to put me to use helping her kitchen staff design a nutritious menu for her patients. So far, it's been a tricky process because we are very limited by budget, what the patients can and will eat, and what the staff can and will make. I've been extremely happy to discover that produce is quite inexpensive here and extremely accessible, but it takes a long time to prepare, and a lot of the patients won't eat vegetables. I've been trying to come up with ways to sneak them into things so that they're not as noticeable, but teaching Cindy and Thembisa how to do that might prove difficult. Cindy at least seems keen to learn how to make something different than the same old, same old she's been making for months, but in order to teach her something new, we're going to have to get different supplies than the ones our grocery guy is used to finding for us, and limited as we are by budget, I think people are nervous to risk overspending on experiments. I'm not quite sure how to get traction there, but for now I'm going to be patient and see how things unravel.

I have been amazed to discover how little people know about good nutrition here. Many of the women I work with are HIV positive, and seeing the way they eat is terrible. A classic South African lunch is KFC with a loaf of bread and a bottle of "juice," which is soda. People eat way too much, a lot of the wrong things, and not nearly enough of the right things. For someone with HIV, the effects of bad nutrition are greatly magnified from what they would be in an otherwise healthy person. PLWHA can live a relatively normal life if they take care of their immune system, and one of the best ways of doing that is making sure it gets all of the vitamins it needs through fruits and vegetables. Supplements aren't nearly as effective as food in this regard. When I try to talk to some of the staff, their understanding of that concept, as well as of other basic medical things like how diseases are spread, is extremely low. I really wish I could just have a day to show them how to cook quick, healthy food, but they have other stuff to be doing and there's also quite a big language barrier as well.

Anyway. For good news, I finally got approval from the IRB to start my research, so once I get my consent forms translated and find an interpreter, I'll be ready to roll. That's all I've got for you right now.
Hopefully, I'll have more progress to report in a week or two.