Attn!! If Wound Talk Makes You Feel Ill, DON'T Read!

And here's the rest of the story...

As you may know, about a week ago I was bitten by a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad" bug on my left ankle. It started out looking no worse than a mosquito bite so I thought nothing of it. Then about two days later it started forming into a good centemeter sized blister. Once the blister opened, as a nurse in a not to distant past life would do, I started keeping it clean, medicated, and covered. This was not enough to fight the filth of Africa, I guess, 'cause a couple days later I woke with a swollen and red ankle (cellulitis).

I was heading north on Monday anyway to enjoy a week of friends, running water, and gardening/food security training so I took a detour to the office to see our Medical Officer. Right away I was put on antibiotics and anti-inflammatory meds, then I was back on my way to training. The following morning my hands started looking spotted like a cheetah. Oh, oh, not good. Come to find out I may be allergic to something after all: Keflex (antibiotic I was on). Needless to say, I was picked up from the training site and brought back into Mbabane to observe my reactions to the meds and to keep an eye on my infection, which was now looking "funky" (my Med Officer's words. haha). Funky meant my skin was purplish in color with a blackening scab tissue over the wound.

Pictures were taken and sent to specialists in Pretoria, SA (regional PC med office) and if the infection would have continued I would have been too. Luckily, the following morning the new antibiotics were doing their job. I went to the Mbabane clinic to have a consultation about the wound now left by the bite blister. The area was shot up with anesthetic (lidocaine) and the dead tissue was scraped away. This revealed that the wound had gone quite deep (probably little less than a centemeter), so it was packed and bandaged.

Now I will be visiting the clinic every other day for sterile wound dressing changes (which they won't let me do myself back at my site even though I am capable), until this has healed. This means I will be away from my site and my hut for potentially up to 3 weeks!!!! :-( I am staying at a bed and breakfast in Mbabane where everyone on medical goes. Although that may sound like a vacation, I'm thinking it will be feeling like a prison stay within a couple days, especially since I don't feel ill or in much pain even. Next week I hope the amazing staff at Baylor Pediatric Clinic (who I did the children's camp with and with whom I have formed wonderful friendships) will allow me to come be an extra volunteer. This will help to keep the cabin fever at bay and maybe even make me useful. :-)

In conclusion, I still don't know how to keep plants alive, bugs are on my black list, I'll be missin' my hut/community/family/etc, but I will make the most of it and even enjoy the private bathroom, tv, and home cooked meals while I can. :-P Can't feel sorry for me now, huh? Ha ha ha.

Because multiple people asked to see pictures... blame them if you're grossed out, not me :-)



Yuck... this was before my visit to the clinic.



Quite swollen!



"Prettier" pictures of the braid removal process. Meredith was also in town so she helped me out.



Darryn with an Afro... nice :-P



Bouquet of used synthetic hair!

Business Woman

Friday 5th March 2010
7:21pm
Today I had the opportunity to give my second educational, community wide, workshop. What were these fabulous workshops on? Nutrition? Transmission of HIV? Health related at all?! Nope. I gave two sessions on how to write a professional Business Plan. You may be asking yourself, “What the heck does Darryn, being a nurse and HIV/AIDS educator, know about business plans?!” All I can say is that I now know more than I ever wanted to. :-P

The government of Swaziland is currently in the process of trying to stimulate their economy by giving out grants to start small businesses, which as I understand it never have to be paid back. The forms that my community members were filling out last week at Umphagatsi (weekly community meeting at chiefdom level) had asked for a business plan. I was continually asked to write these documents for people! Ummm… no thank you. I remembered that my PCV friend, Justine, had been previously working with an NGO called TechnoServe that focused on teaching high school youth the basics of business. I instantly excused myself from the meeting and called her in fit of desperation, and pleaded for her help! She said that she could easily teach me everything I needed to know about writing a business plan for a small Swazi business, so we made a sleepover date for the weekend. The community scheduled a Business Plan Writing Session with Zodwa for Monday morning. Have to admit I was pretty nervous. :-/

The following day a woman in my community asked me to explain how to fill out the three page application form. After describing the difference between a physical address and a postal address, I started to feel a bit more qualified to teach about business. I realized that whatever I taught was going to have to be VERY basic. Justine’s high school curriculum was exactly that! I could easily handle the topics included in a business plan such as, markets and competition, start-up budget tables, product/service description, and business location! As Justine put it, “Yay for our well rounded education”! With my flip chart paper (reminds of a Swazi version of power point –everyone uses it!!) and my high school business manual I walked into my first workshop teaching experience in Swaziland. And no one was there.

As I should have expected people, including my translator, didn’t arrive until about 1/2hour to an hour later than the starting time. A few people were there because they wanted to include a business plan in their application for the government grant and a few others were actually there for a school committee meeting and decided instead to see what crazy Zodwa was going to do. :-P I expected many more people to attend, since there were so many people applying for the grant. Come to find out the deadline for the application forms were the day they decided to have my session, so a large number of the applicants decided to run their papers to the chiefdom in the morning. Oh well.

I am declaring that session a success for two main reasons. Firstly, the people in the lesson really seemed to grasp the concepts we were discussing, especially when using examples like chicken projects, hair salons, and khumbi drivers. Secondly, they were so impressed with the section on writing a budget that they wanted me to give the same presentation today so they could get more community members to come! Yay to a teaching success story! I did give the same discussion today and more people came, even a few men who were at Monday’s lesson.

Looking in the TechnoServe curriculum manual I have decided to suggest and offer to teach about marketing and basic bookkeeping. I think they are going to take me up on it! So, when I return to the States don’t be surprised if I have all the skills to become a Forbes 500 person (is that even right?) in no time! :-P

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of my teachers and the entire education system (although flawed) for giving me well rounded education. Those of you who are teachers or are studying to be teachers thank you. You don’t even know how much you are impacting the future of your students, or when they are going to have to pull out the information that you are bestowing on them. God bless you all!

Kids and Computers

2 March 2010
4:43pm

At this moment I have six adorable kids around me. We are sitting on my grass mat outside my hut. I was working on another blog which was almost finished and one of the kids accidently closed the document and erased my work. Oh well. You will hear about my business expertise another time. :-)
The kids are the proud typers of the following prose. :-) They wanted to write their names. The first boy is named Thobi, so I really don’t know what he was trying to write. A few of the others were too little to know how to write their names so we helped them. Here is their handiwork:

Mjhoblcl

Setsabile

Phelele

Mabuti

Neliswa

Sive

Zodwa – I wrote this with my eyes closed and they were amazed!

Lindokuhle dlamini – My 15 year old bhuti came over and also wanted to be a part of the fun :-)

Neliswa and Lindokuhle are the only two who live on my homestead. The others are neighbor kids that hang out in a pack with Neliswa. They are frequently at the homestead playing all sorts of interesting games. I was even taught two new card games, Crazy 8s and Sisu (“Stomach”), by them. When I first arrived in the community most of the younger kids were much more timid around me. Now my presence seems to be their best form of entertainment. I often hear little voiced “Sawubona”s or “Hello”s from homesteads as I walk by. I have a clan of uniformed school children accompanying me home if I walk past the primary school after they are let out for the day.

Just this morning I had about 5 little grade 1 or 2 boys running with me. They burst into laughter as I changed things up and had us doing high knee runs, penguin walks, and butt kicks. They made for a very enjoyable morning jog. I still occasionally get the really small child crying at the site of the crazy white monster, or skittish peeks from around their mothers’ skirts, but I’m building a good report with the youth.

This Friday is the second meeting of Zamokuhle Primary School’s brand new health club! 79 kids have signed up to be a part of my fun/educational group!!! I’m thinking for my sanity, I will need to split them into two groups and have the groups meet on alternating weeks. :-P I’m loving the kids, though!





These are a few of the Neighborhood "Clan". They were playing with bubbles and having a blast! Laughter brought me out of my hut and the scene was so darn cute I had to take a picture... then I joined in on the bubble swatting fun, of course! :-P