Things have been passing by quickly...

... and apart from my health assessments there hasn't been too much news. I have completed the health assessments at Chikumbuso which totaled 200 students. Each assessment was head-to-toe including the weights and heights of the children. I was very pleased to be done with the assessments since I have been wanting to see other parts of the school, including sitting in classrooms and watching the children learn in their courses. The class discussions should be fun to listen to as I have read on the chalk boards some interesting topics the students are learning.

This week we truly began the 'volunteer' program with the Lamumba Secondary School students. We have chosen 10 to work with and each Tuesday and Wednesday we take 5 to one of the schools we have been working at. They have been blown away at times at how good they feel after helping the younger children learn basic English. They have told us each time we take them to the schools how fun it has been, but also how tired they are afterwards. Very true!

It is a new concept to them to volunteer since there aren’t many Zambian volunteer programs. It is not something that most young people do here. We hope to have them stay involved and maybe to create some sort of program that might stay in place even once we have gone.

I have almost completed the Chamba Valley School assessments and I hope to finish them the week before I leave. We are thinking that from the assessments, we will create an excel program with all the information. This way we will be able to get some statistics that may be useful for future grant writing or activities that could help raise funding for these schools.

Thursday I visited Jon's Hospice which is where I volunteered last year for 6 weeks. From the week before there were not as many patients, but this week every bed was full. Also, the few patients I had met the week before had sadly all passed away. I was told that they did pass peacefully.

The daycare there is doing very well. Three other American medical students have just recently arrived and are quickly getting into the schedule. Sadly, they did not have their luggage for almost a week, so they were sad and a bit grumpy... which is exactly what I would be!! I am hoping they will be able to help with another project here related to our schools.

On this note, as I have mentioned before, Dr. Tim runs a non-profit organization that helps children in Zambia who are orphans, HIV+ or vulnerable. On Thursday he and I talked about his organization donating 40 rapid HIV tests to the 2 schools. I would perform the test and his social worker would do the counseling and enrollment into the organization if the child is positive. This will be something I have never done before. I know that for each child I test, I will be extremely stressed while waiting for the results which apparently only takes a few seconds. This I will be doing on my last week, and I hope that the American medical students will finish the testing when I’m gone.

This post was written by Sabrina, a doctoral nursing student at the University of Texas at Austin and SWB's resident registered nurse.