Adaption to living with HIV/AIDS

In 2002, Jean-Pierre (one of the RDIS staff) was the head of the provincial committee for HIV/AIDS. Today, we visited families with whom he worked, and the evidence of their programme was clear … completely transformed lives. The lady here is HIV positive. She has been since 1997. Eight years back she was very close to giving up, weighing only 30kms, but today she stands healthy weighing a full 70. The main challenge Jean-Pierre and his team faced was to get people to accept themselves and to accept those who were affected. When people find out they have the virus, they tend to keep quiet about it because of fear of being rejected by the community. They even feel too ashamed to visit a health centre to receive antiretroviral treatment. Consequently they fall behind, their families fall behind and the virus keeps spreading. Many are even too scared to be tested for HIV because of this reason. Jean-Pierre’s programme provided social support to those diagnosed, encouraging them to face life and fight the challenge with God’s help. The programme also assisted them to start small businesses to generate income for their treatment and their families, as businessmen are reluctant to employ a person with HIV/AIDS. They are then also provided with start-up cash to get going. The treatment has worked very well for this single mother of three (her husband died in the genocide) and she was able to raise her children to the point where they are now working and able to provide the income for the family. Her youngest is also affected with HIV and receiving treatment, but I believe that with this type of support, she’ll live to see many more days. In another family we visited, both parents are affected, but through the programme they came to accept their status, embrace whatever support was provided and now have two children who are clean and who will according to them ‘be able to live the family legacy’.

Children’s Church Choir

I totally loved this group. This was the children’s choir of the church I visited today. The way they interchanged song with dance and acted out the story of the song completely conveyed the message – even I was almost able to understand what the song’s about. The dancers had bells tied around their feet which added to the beat while they danced. A livelier choir you’ll struggle to find! This is how I imagine David danced before the Lord!

Playing Camera Man (Lady)

Just before I came over, I decided to invest in a camcorder in order to capture my experiences with more authenticity. So I’m very new to the recording thing and apart from still figuring out the camera, I’ve got lots to learn about shooting. But unfortunately there wasn’t much time allowed. RDIS was desperate to show their stakeholders what they are doing and they grabbed the opportunity to have it recorded in live. So this week I had to record and edit films on the fly. It’s really just beginner’s material and I’ll even be reluctant to show it to anyone else apart from close friends and fam, but I guess to the organisation something is better than nothing. My first piece of work has now been produced!

Vunga Vocational School

Many children, after finishing primary school, have no means of entering a secondary school. Therefore vocational schools have risen to equip this category of youth with skills which equips them to earn a proper income within just two to three years. School fees are minimal and students still receive a balanced education in addition to their chosen trade. The school receives generous support from people in Canada, the UK and the local church. The investments are not in vane as Vunga has become the top vocational school in the district. The head master invited me to come and see what it’s about ( … and also while I’m there, to give him some training on the computer). The school grounds cover 7 Hectares in a beautiful valley. Within two years, the student count has grown from 20 to 140. They are now planning to extend the facilities to include accommodation for students and teachers which will allow many more that simply lives too far to attend. We finished the visit at midday and the cooking class provided us with lunch – definitely chef standard (although still a bit too oily for my preference).

Financial Reporting Assistance

I had a chance to dip into the financial side of things here this week as well. One of the project coordinators asked for some assistance in properly reporting on his projects’ finances as he reached the end of the semester. He always struggled to get this right in the past. We dug into his files of receipts and after I made some sense of what is required of him, showed him how to create a basic financial report in excel. Good prep for my MBA!

Stat’s of Rural Families

RDIS completed their first proper profiles of their beneficiaries this week. Hundreds of forms containing information on the families and their economic situations were piled up on a table (fortunately for them there’s no problem with data-protection here, yet!). And then one of the members of staff approached me with a big frown, asking if I have any suggestions on how to summarise the data. This suited me quite well, as I was looking forward to a bit of a challenge again.

I explained to him that what they really need is a tool to not only summarise, but also analyse the data; something where they can just enter the data into and then the statistics is spat out without them worrying about how to use formulas. So that is exactly what I did. I created an excel template for their future use. Then I helped him to input the data and whala, the first time ever they actually have reliable stat’s to evaluate their work and plan future actions on. Something so simple can mean so much.