visit with Ian and Charmaine

Visit with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers Ian and Charmaine this weekend.

Coffee

studying

I've had a pretty good Sunday so far. Studying Sidamic for hours. Cleaning, organizing, laundry. Did some strength training exercises. Ate at a local restaurant and had the rare treat of shredded beets (sauteed) as well as small portions of lentil stew, pasta, and potatoes with turmeric on injira (this is called bayonet - a vegan medley on injira). Tomorrow I'm travelling with the Health Extension Supervisor to another town for a training on Tuesday. Seven other Health PCVs will be there with Ethiopian counterparts too!

walk

I've had a hard week so today I decided to do something different. I decided to go for a long walk down the road and turn around when it felt like the right time. I walked and walked in my crocs (poor choice of footwear but it worked out OK), greeting maybe a hundred or so people along the way. I stopped in a town to get lunch, then kept walking. After I'd been walking for 3 hours or so, a passerby told me that I was close to a larger town. I recognized the name as a town close to where a Peace Corps Volunteer couple live (there are four total PCVs in the Sidama Zone - 2 health and 2 agriculture). It turns out one of them was in town (Ian) so I had coffee and went to the market with him. Then I took a bijaj (a golf cart like vehicle) back home. The exercise, the many many handshakes and smiles from Ethiopians, the PCV company and phone conversations with two other PCV friends have been good for me and I'm grateful for today.

Three month work plan

On Friday I will have been at my site (in the Sidama Zone and SNNPR region of Ethiopia) for two months. Here is my work plan for the first three months at site as a Community Health Volunteer in Ethiopia:

Objective 1.1: Improved Household Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
1. Counterpart will introduce PCV and her purpose to community and selected households.
2. PCV will share, using the local language, the first the month work plan with the households and health center staff.
3. Shadow Health Extension Workers and other health center staff.
4. Design and conduct at least 2 health education activities on WASH/nutrition at the health center.
5. Visit health center and the accessible health posts.
6. Facilitate needs assessment and ethnography of WASH infrastructure and practices at the community level and with 8 households using the Peace Corps Ethiopia community and household WASH and nutrition needs assessment tool.
7. Teach parents and caregivers to build, maintain, use and guide children to use hand-washing stations in 8 households and my own home using locally available resources and the hand-washing station toolkit.

Objective 1.2: Improved Household Nutrition
1. Prepare healthy, age-appropriate meal for child (enriched porridge) at selected household.
2. Facilitate needs assessment and ethnography of nutrition-related behaviors at the community level and with 8 households using the Peace Corps Ethiopia community and household WASH and nutrition needs assessment tool.

Objective 2.1: Improved School Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
1. With a least one teacher and at least five students, conduct a WASH activity at the school. Hand-washing demonstration with posters or trash clean up.
2. Conduct school WASH needs assessment (facilities, environment, sanitation club activities, health center engagement with school, classroom WASH teaching) using Peace Corps Ethiopia school WASH needs assessment tool.


Objective 2.2 is: Improved Adolescent and Youth Reproductive Health. They don't want us to do any work on this goal until we have been at site for at least 6 months.

Peter visit

This weekend I visited Peter - an agriculture volunteer who, like me, lives in the Sidama Zone and moved to his site in mid-April.

He started digging plots for a garden at the Farmer Training Center.

I tagged along for two of his visits with farming families and they fed us dishes made from enset - the false banana tree.

water

Rain water storage for hand washing and washing mud off shoes.

Nonfunctional water pump.

Vitamin A in medicine storage room.

Road to health center - it gets muddier as rainy season progresses and there are hillier parts where you must travel up/down hill.

Infant nutrition health lesson

Today we shared a lesson on nutrition for babies 0-24 months with mothers and fathers at the health center. Then we made mashed bananas and mashed avocado as an examples of snacks you can feed to children from 6-24 months. Next week we make enriched porridge!


Mothers and fathers holding visual aids on food groups:

This is Ebenezer. He is a public health officer at the health center. I wrote the lesson and my language tutor translated it to Sidamic. Ebenezer read it aloud and ad libbed a bit and I followed along and displayed the visual aids.

So, first I had the half liter bottle full of the liquid that represented breast milk (water and red food coloring - now that I think about it - milk is probably a better choice). We explained that breast milk fulfills all a baby's nutritional needs from 0-6 months. Then I poured the liquid into the liter bottle to show that a baby's nutritional needs are half met by breast milk, half by complementary feeding from 6-12 months. Finally, I poured the liquid into the 1 and 1/2 liter bottle to show that breast milk fulfills 1/3 of a baby's nutritional needs from 12-24 months.

Current contact info

Wish list: nutritional yeast in sealed container, essential oils, cute and dark colored socks, foot/hand balm, spice packets, teeth whitening strips, Thai Kitchen instant rice noodle soup packets, letters.

Address:
Erica Ward, PCV
C/O Peace Corps Ethiopia
PO Box 1767
Hawassa
ETHIOPIA

Padded envelopes are usually cheaper than boxes.

making injira