Crazy Intense Week.

This last week has been very busy!

We started our service projects on Tuesday. Our group is split between two work sites, Walk in the Light and Gateway. Both are community organizations that each have several different programs aimed at helping the community. I'm in the group that's working at Walk in the Light. Walk in the Light is located across the street from the Township of Hanibille, with a population of 10,000. Walk in the Light, is a Christian based organization that does basically everything it can to help and assist the people of Hanibille, although have extremely limited resources. They provide food and clothing for the community . One of the main way they the assist the community is to provide transportation for individuals to and from the hospital and clinic as well as home visits. They also perform funerals and assist with the costs invloved. It is estimated that 80 percent of the adult population is HIV infected. So much of Walk in the Light's works includes working with individuals suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Tuesday, we went out to help with transport. Our team of 20 is split up into smaller groups of four. Each day a different group goes out with Rod, one of the directors of Walk in the Light, to transport people to the clinic and to get their pension from the government building. We transported 5 different women, two which were gogos (grannys) who were extremely weak and could not even walk on their own to the van. We later learned that out of the five women, we transported that day, four of them were HIV positive. It seemed so unreal. It was the first time in my life that I had put a face and name to HIV/AIDS. I know i have worked with HIV positive individuals on my previous trips here, but I guess I had never faced the reality of how wide spread and horrible HIV/AIDS is for the people and their community. It's heart breaking, becuase I know that those two gogos don't have much time left could very possibly pass away before we leave in the next three weeks. This week alone two people have died. The funerals are planned for next week. I think this is going to be the hardest part of the service project as we feel so helpless. These people that are dying have families. I'm at a loss.

As apart of Walk in the Light they work to supply food to people in their community. On Wednesday we helped out with this, by packing dried fruit into individual bags. We bagged about 20 buckets of fruit. In the afternoon the senior youth and kids came and we did some activities with them and played a bunch of games. It was really fun to play with and get to know the youth.

Thursday we whacked at grass all morning. They asked us to clear all the weeds and tall grass from the entrance of walk in the Light to the actual building. Probably 1/4 of mile. There was not enough money for gas for the mowers so we used "pushes" or extremely dull machetes. It was physically exhausting , but we were able to whack down quite a bit. In the afternoon the kids and youth came back and we played bucketball and led games and crafts. Working with the kids is definitely going to be my favorite part of the next three weeks.

Today, Friday, we have class all day. Which isn't very exciting. I'm learning so much about community development though! I didn't mention it yet, but we have been working to implement the tools we're learning class with the community. Especially with the senior youth that come.