Off to Town and MST

So first off, we made it! Yay! We have survived yet another Rapture/Y2K/End-of-the-world craze. I can't tell you how relieved I was when I woke up this morning...riiight. Anywho, since I haven't been swallowed in fire and brimstone (yet, I guess the day isn't over for another 14 hours...) I am moving on with my weekend plans.

Today I am wrapping up some recording for next month's episode of Health Watch. I am really excited because I organized the group of Peer Educators I work with to perform a skit that they had written and rehearsed. The theme is peer pressure and teen pregnancy (which has been on my mind a lot recently). I am really excited to see the end result! After the shoot, Sara and Tim and I are heading to meet up with some other PCVs in Georgetown and celebrate Sara's 25^th birthday at the Princess hotel (the fanciest hotel and Guyana's only casino) for dinner and shenanigans.

Tomorrow we are checking into a hotel with the rest of our Peace Corps buddies for our Mid-Service Training Conference (MST), then hitting the trail with the Guyana Hash House Harriers for a run in G/town. Both activities will be loads of fun. PC conferences are always a mixture of tedious sessions in meeting rooms, interesting discussions with colleagues about our projects, and a ton of fun catching up and touching base with our compatriots. It is weird to think that after MST we will only meet again in one big group at our Close of Service Conference (COS) around December time.

I am looking forward to the week to come. When we get back from MST I am excited to start my own Be Safe! Sessions in a local nursery school and continue with the other projects I have going. In addition, I am going to keep following up with the young mother and her sick baby that I mentionedd a few posts back. (Update: I heard the baby had been discharged from the hospital so I decided to go visit them at home. So, yesterday two nurses from my health centre and I walked around for an hour and a half trying to find this girl's house to check on the baby. When we found them, we learned that the situation was not much improved. The girl is still not breastfeeding her baby and he is as malnourished and weak as ever. Many reasons for this include an unsupportive family, an irresponsible teenage baby-daddy, and a TOTAL lack of education about how to raise a healthy child. The nurses and I spent hours with her, showing her how to change a diaper so baby's persistent rash will heal, how to breastfeed and/or express her milk and feed baby with a cup and spoon. By the end of our visit, after a few ounces of breast milk and a clean diaper, the baby, who was previously almost completely inert, was opening his eyes and making baby sounds as he nursed. Little by little, with a lot of effort and teamwork, we may just be able to give this child another chance at life. I am NOT giving up on this baby).

Okay, thanks for indulging my baby tangent. I've been trying hard to put into words the effect that working with the patient is having on me emotionally, but I can't seem to yet. Right now, I am just taking action to try to get the child better and that is the most helpful thing I can do right now, both for baby and my own psyche. Thankfully, I will get an imposed break from that situation during MST and check in on them again when I get back to Linden next Friday.

I'm sending love to everyone at home and so much gratitude and prayers for all the healthy babies in my family (Eevee, Quinn, Sawyer, Josiah, Lucia) and all the little ones on the way.