Week 3

We have spent this week with Josephine, the district Medical Rehabilitation Worker. Despite adopting the communication approach of only sharing information in response to direct questioning that we have become accustomed to she seems to have slowly warmed to us. Josephine is actually very friendly and obviously very competent in her role which further raised our question about what we are doing here. We then learnt that she will be leaving soon to take up a post in a coastal district near her family leaving us as the only trained rehabilitation workers in the district, raising another question regarding sustainability after we leave. Things are far from clear regarding our roles and we must wait a couple more weeks before we meet my line manager to ask some more direct questions!

In the meantime we have found a role in supporting health promotion. Yesterday we found ourselves appointed to a committee planning a two day programme raising breastfeeding awareness. The two days turned out to be today and tomorrow – nothing like forward planning! Not the best utilisation of our skills but it was good to be doing something useful. And I have learnt a lot about breastfeeding! It also gave us a chance to be introduced to the community. Today’s event was held in an outdoor cattle auction arena with the presentations interspersed with prayer, songs and drama – we are certainly in Africa.

At the weekend we took the hour drive to Otjiwarongo to do some shopping and meet up with a couple Canadian volunteers. Genevieve is a physiotherapist placed in another region and it was reassuring to hear that her experiences so far had been similar to ours. I felt for her partner Simon, who is a non-volunteering partner or NVP, who seemed to have had a very long week and was craving internet access! I have also noticed how much time we seem to have here – we have already got through a whole season of Lost. When not watching Jack, Hurley and our other friends going crazy on their island we have been passing the time playing Scrabble, at which I continue to get worse.

Ant x