Home Visits

Yesterday I went to meet the director at the orphanage. That was an intimidating meeting, especially because of the language barrier, but I told her my portuguese is limited and she was super nice and spoke clearly and simply. I went the first time today and got a tour and met some people that worked there. Some of the kids got together and sang a song of welcome to me. It was so cute. I'm still not sure what I'll be doing there but I'm hoping I'll get a couple of good games of "Terra, Mar" in.

Today, my coworker, an activista, told me that they want to start a business called the Association of Women Activistas. They want to sell chickens and firewood. I'm going to look into writing a grant to help start it. There's also a PC Program called JOMA/REDES. It's where a PCV gets a group of adolescent girls/boys together to make stuff and build self-esteem. We'll see how that goes, I still don't know many adolescents but that particular activista said she'd help me out. No worries there.

Home visits here are soo difficult. The neighborhoods here don't have street names. Two activistas per day go together to make two home visits to clients who have tested HIV positive and still need to start treatment. So, what they do is they go out into the neighborhood and simply ask people where the person they're looking for lives. But, asking people is a process in its own. What we do is, we enter someone's house and say, "Licensa!" (Excuse me). Then they stop whatever they're doing and bring out chairs for their unknown guests. They all greet each other and then the activistas ask if they know the person we're looking for. They usually say no. Sometimes we get lucky and the person we were looking for happens to be the person's house we strolled into. But, the meeting is always taken as an opportunity to invite the person/family we're talking to to take an HIV test at the hospital. The process is long, especially in the heat. But it's nice to stop at people's houses because they let us sit in the shade.