Boat Trip!

We finally did the boat trip! Some people said they had never heard of this boat trip until my last entry, so here's a summary of the planning process. We were talking about copying an HIV boat trip that was done on the lake since like our first month at site. We originally planned to do the trip in May, at the end of the hot season, but getting approval turned out to be an incredibly difficult process. When we finally got approval, in September, we got moving quickly. The trip officially started on Nov. 7th and finished Nov. 16th. I would call it a very successful trip by Peace Corps standards.

We started in Nawuni (GOD) and hit ten to twelve villages (depending how you count it) on the way to Yapei. The boat was way bigger that I thought it was going to be. I would say it was a 50ft wooden boat clearly made for transporting goods more than people because it had no seats, just planks going across. It had twin outboard engines and went about as fast as I used to like tubing when I was little, which if you know what a chicken I was as a kid, you'll know is pretty slow. It was great to be on a boat on the water though!

To give all the details on the trip would take forever, so I'll give a synopsis of what we did and try to highlight a few good points. In general, in each village we split up the community education and health volunteer education. Each village has about 4 health volunteers who we trained more in depth on HIV and we gave them a kit with games to teach about HIV and a wooden penis to do condom demonstrations. We also gave them four boxes of 144 condoms to sell so they could buy more and always have condoms available in the communities. We taught the community about the basics of HIV, played a game with them, and did a condom demonstration. At the same time, we hired nurses to come do free HIV testing and had an excellent turnout for that. Then we gave them a movie about family planning and HIV that they could watch in the evening.

I guess I should explain the ten to twelve villages thing, since I should probably have an exact number for the villages we went to. We planned to go to ten villages, and although we made some changes along the way, our goal of ten exactly never changed. Apparently some villages on the water are named after the bigger village they are near that is inland. So, when we were told we were going to Wala, for example, the nurses thought we were going to the inland one and we though we were going to the riverside community. Luckily for the first few this got sorted out before we went and we didn't have problems. However, things got interesting in the last few villages. We did one village without testing because the nurses wouldn't test on a Sunday, or so we thought, but they called us while we were doing the education saying they were in the next village and where were we. So we were off by a day with the nurses there, no problem, they would test Sunday and we would educate Monday. Monday, we show up to what we think is Tedrope, but when asking how to spell the name of the village, Kim finds out we're at the fishing camp. We were already into the education and couldn't stop then, so when we finished with the fishing camp we walked the mile or so to Tedrope and did the education again. That adds one village, so we're going for eleven at this point. The next day, the nurses were supposed to meet us in Kito. At 7:30am we get a call from them that they are on their way. We were already in Kito. We started the education... finished the education... ate lunch... where are the nurses? We finally left around 2 and never saw the nurses. Later the nurses talked to Kim and said they came but the village hadn't seen us. I'm curious what village they actually went to, because it clearly wasn't the Kito we were in. So I guess that makes twelve.

Now, I'll throw in a few funny tidbits. First, when you spend 10 days in close quarters with a few friends, you run out of normal topics to talk about. By the end, we were challenging each other to do monologues on things like packaging materials, going to the latrine, chilean mines, and other random stuff. "Julie Goes to the Latrine" was apparently the best monologue, but I unfortunately was going to the latrine at the time. We somehow got obsessed with asking questions about "if you were stuck in a chilean mine..." and saying who you would want there (choosing celebrities, PCVs), what meal, book, movie, song you would want if you could only have one for the whole time, etc. Basically, I think we went a little crazy but we're better friends for it.

At one point I got an eye infection and luckily was in a town with a pharmacy so I got eyedrops. No problem, but the funny part was... the same day I got the eyedrops I was playing with the cat that belonged to the PCV whose house we were in and I noticed the cat's eye was swollen shut too. So, being the kind person I am, I shared my eyedrops with the cat. I don't think she appreciated it as much as she should have but her eye was much better later. My friends like to say I gave the cat the eye infection, but I like to say the cat gave it to me. Either way, I think I shared a disease with the cat.

Along the way, most of the villages were very small, some had less than 100 people. And being small villages in the middle of nowhere, they did not have toilets. We anticipated this and brought a hoe with us to dig and bury when we had to go. So, around the 3rd village, I finally had to go. I wasn't sure where exactly to go, so I asked a girl and she grabbed the hoe and walked me to a nice clearing out of site. Then she proceeded to dig the hole for me and walk about 30 feet away to wait. I went while three other kids went about 10 feet away from me at the same time. Then, I asked for the hoe so I could bury it myself (I thought that was the polite thing to do). Unfortunately, I broke the hoe in the process and the girl had to come back and fix the hoe and finish burying for me. It was slightly awkward. I know I tell too many poop stories on here, but that's a good one, you have to admit.

Those are the funniest stories I can think of at the moment, but if you want more stories see my friend Kim's blog: ghanakimsuri.blogspot.com. I'm not sure if she updated it yet, but she will soon and it will be pretty detailed.