And I swear it’s hotter than last year. The nice, cool breeze has now turned into a heater blowing hot air at your face. If I get water at the pump and leave it in my house, the next afternoon, it is too hot to shower with.
Work is going great, still super busy. We finished the HIV awareness project we were working on. 
We did a mural at the primary school, an HIV lesson with the oldest primary school students, a community awareness day, and three theatre performances. The picture to the right is from the community awareness day – it’s me with all the community health agents. The other picture is from one of our theatre performances. It’s been very interesting talking to people about HIV and seeing the cultural differences in how people view HIV. One of the most interesting is talking about what advice you give to people living with HIV and their loved ones. I was at the pump one day and a woman was asking me about HIV. And she said (granted in Bissa so this is a rough translation,) that HIV wasn’t a problem anymore because now there is medicine for it. Yes, ARVs are available (actually for free here 
at the district hospital), but it’s not a cure. It makes sense why people might think that because in pushing for early testing, people always talk about the free meds and it can easily be misinterpreted. So, while we were planning the theatre performance, I wanted the group to be very clear that the ARVs are not a cure, but something to prolong life and that once a person has HIV, they always have HIV. It’s important for them to know that so they act responsibly and prevent transmitting HIV to others. The community health agents took issue with that because they said culturally, you don’t tell someone so directly such bad news. You should say that they will get better. It’s a tough balance between being culturally sensitive but presenting correct and important information.
I have continued health classes at the secondary school. There are six classes, so I do each topic with each class before moving on to the next one. This is probably my favorite activity because I really enjoy working with the secondary school students. We are now doing an HIV/AIDS lesson. I love how interested the students are, open, and willing to ask questions. They can be challenge (for instance a lot of “well what if…, couldn’t that transmit HIV” questions), but it’s a good thing that they don’t just take what people tell them, but they think about it and challenge it. And just last week, I started what will be a weekly thing with the English class at the secondary school. We do activities so the students get a chance to practice speaking English. I am trying to incorporate life skills and health topics. Last week we discussed goal setting. This week, we will have a discussion related to Women’s Day which is Thursday.
I have also started another malnutrition program. We weighed babies in 2 villages and identified malnourished children. We get together twice a week to do a cooking demonstration and talk about different health topics. It’s been a lot of fun and the women involved are great. They seem really motivated and interested in learning about health so they can help their children. We’ve focused on malnutrition, but also incorporated other things that relate. For instance, if a malnourished child or child at risk of malnutrition is sick, they will not gain weight. Therefore it is really important that the mothers prevent against other sickness, particularly malaria and hygiene-related illness
. The only frustration is just people showing up late, but other than that, things are going well.
In honor of Super Bowl Sunday, I made buffalo wings (actually the whole chicken) and had ranch and hot sauce for dipping. I explained to my family that men watch for the game, women watch for the commercials. To the right is my Super Bowl chicken that I bought at the marche and biked home on my handlebars.
This past weekend, I traveled to Dedougou with other volunteers to go to the mask festival. 
It was awesome! So they use the French word for mask to describe it, but it’s really full costumes. They came from all over West Africa and the significance varies by region, but usually they appear at funerals and are in general associated with animist religious practices. We don’t have them in my region, so it was interesting to see this aspect of traditions here. There were performances, but then all the groups also walked around the town in their masks as well. At a village ceremony, you are not allowed to take pictures, but for the festival, you were allowed to photograph. One night, we were walking through the craft m
arket and saw one of the masks walking around. The picture to the left is while he walked by. When you do take pictures, you give a small contribution. So when he saw the flash from my first picture, he turned around and approached me. We were eating dinner so under a tent. I took the picture to the right as he ducked to leave the tent after I gave him some money. The other photos are from performances.
