Hey everyone,

I don't have long to write, but I thought I'd post a quick update.

I'm in Zambia now, I arrived Thursday afternoon. I really really really miss St. Lucia, and wish I could go back right away, but I'm slowly adjusting. It's really hard to not be there and not be home. Being here, I kind of feel like I'm just waiting to go home, and it's making it really hard to get into things here. I'm not totally enjoying it here right now, the other volunteers are really great, but I think I'm ready to be home.

The project here isn't as great as where I was, but it's not too bad. The time with the Lions is really incredible, and the lion handlers are some of the coolest guys I've ever met, but there are some really big problems with how the program is run.

Today, I went to see some of the older lions they have here (two years old) who are really big and really scary, and we had to feed them. To do that, we drove a freshly killed donkey into their enclosure, dropped it off, and watched them attack it. It was pretty cool to see, but absolutely disgusting, especially when we could hear the bones cracking and when they started to eat the intestines and the stomach and the liver and the bile, and the fetus, because apparantly the donkey had been pregnant. That's definitely not something I ever thought I would see, but I also don't think I really need to see it again.

Anyways, I don't have many chances to use the internet here, but I'll try to write again before I leave, which I think might be a little bit earlier than expected.

Hey everyone!
Sorry it has been so long, I've been a bit busy lately. I just have ne more week here in St. Lucia, and then I'm flying to Zambia. I'm still not really ready to leave, but I can't stay any longer.

This week has been going pretty well so far. Last weekend, we had an HIV awareness soccer match on Saturday at one of the local high schools, which was a lot of fun. Sunday, I finally got to go back to the beach, and even though it wasn't a perfect beach day, it was really great. The rest of the week has been pretty good. There was this guy Mpho and I saw on my first day here with Sarcoma on his leg who looked like he was doing OK, not great, but not too bad. We went back to see him sometime last week, and the cancer had gotten so much worse than it was, and was starting to spread to his arms as well. Then on Monday, Mpho told me he passed away over the weekend on the way to the hospital. I don't know why, I only saw him twice, but for some reason he was one of my favorites, so that was pretty hard.

Also, there's this 6 year old boy here who's mother left him to live with his abusive step father, but the boy ran away and found a really caring woman to take him in. We went to see him last week and found out his mother had showed up the day before to take him back to live with her. Then, I'm not sure why, today, we brought the mother and the boy back to the woman he had been staying with, because the mother figured out it would be better for the boy i he didn't live with her. But the boy didn't know his mom was leaving him there, and as soon as he figured it out, he was heartbroken, and it was so hard to watch.

Anyways, something else I've learned here is that Hippos are nocturnal animals, and that they like to walk through the pars in town at night to find grass. The first time I saw one at night was probably in my 4th week or so, and I was (thankfully) in a car. The second time was last friday, when Odilia (one of the photographers at the moment) and I were walking into town, and we didn't see it until we were about 25 feet away. They are HUGE out of the water, and apparently they can run at 40 kilometers an hour. Then, last night, Odilia and I saw another one in the middle of the park we were walking through. We didn't notice it until we were only 15 feet away and when it heard us (we weren't being that quiet), it just stopped walking and started staring at us. We hid behind a tree hoping it would go away, but it didn't so we started creeping out of the park, then ran back to the pub and got a lift home. It was very scary.

I'm having so much fun here, and I wish I could stay longer. I'm excited to see everyone when I get back, but I'm going to really miss it here.

Halfway

Hey!
So, I don't have much time to write, but there are 2 big things that have happened that I thought I'd let everyone know about. First, I've decided to stay an extra 3 weeks here in St. Lucia. I've really fallen in love with everything about the program and the place, and decided last week that I just wasn't quite ready to leave yet. I'll be here until April 29th, and then I go on to Zambia for only 4 weeks, and will still be home May 24th. Second is that last thursday night/friday morning the volunteer house got broken into. Three of us had stuff stolen. They took my laptop, phone, iPod and camera. Thankfully, I have another camera, so I'll be able to keep on taking photos, but I lost all of my music and all my papers from Loomis, as well as ALL of my photos. As I (stupidly) didn't have any of it backed up, it's really not that great. If anyone has any photos they think I would want, PLEASE send them to me (morgan_ross@me.com) I would really like to try to get at least some of them back if possible. I was bound to get robbed somewhere sometime, so I wasn't too surprised, and I'm already pretty over it. It's actually very freeing not having any technology to worry about. I'm sure it's going to really suck having to go on a 15 hour plane ride with no music, but besides that, I don't really mind it all that much. I definitely won't be careless enough to let it happen again though. Also, this means that I won't be able to upload any more photos until I'm back home. The internet connections at the cafes are too slow for me to upload even one. Anyways, I hope all of you are doing well, and I'll try to get back to write a little bit more sometime later this week.

Week 7

Hey everyone!

Sorry it has been so long since I've written, I've been pretty busy. There are 8 new volunteers here now (well, not really new anymore, they've been here for 3 weeks), and Simone, whose been here since I got here just left this morning to go back to Switzerland. There are 6 photographers and 2 girls on the community project. There's also a new Medical volunteer coming on Monday. Right now, there's Kelly, from Australia, Lesley and Alison from Scotland, Laura form Wales, Ray and Chris from the U.S., and Stefanie and Timo, a german couple who have been traveling around Australia for the past 2 years.

Work has been pretty normal. The girl from the bus accident is getting MUCH better which is very exciting. We saw her for the first time in my first week and I don't think it will be completely healed by the time I leave, but it will be very close. Plan, the guy with the gunshot wound, is getting worse again, but there isn't really much we can do except for what we're already doing. I've seen 2 new people recently that have really left an impression though. The first is a man who had a stroke a while back and has lost all use of his legs and one of his arms. His family doesn't have a chair or couch for him to sit on, so he just lays on the floor on heaps of blankets, and, if he wants to sit up, they can put him in a wheelbarrow. The other is a young woman, about 26, whose tongue has swollen up and rotted (at least that's what it looks like). The doctors told her it's cancer, but they didn't do anything to help her. It looks like she's in a lot of pain. She can't eat or drink anything and has to pour liquid directly down her throat because she has problems swallowing and she can barely speak. She also has HIV and her white cell count is only 62, so thank you Grandma for trying to help.

Anyways, two weekends ago, I went back to Mozambique, and there were dolphins!! Then last weekend on Saturday I went on a game drive in Hluhlue/Imfolozi National Park, about an hour away. I didn't see any Lions or Cheetahs, but I did see Rhino, Giraffe and 16 Elephants as weel as a bunch of smaller animals. On Sunday I had a surf lesson with Simone at Cape Vidal, which is the best beach I've been to. For Simone's last night yesterday, we had dinner at the house last night, then went out to the local bar for a while. She had to leave for the airport at 8:15 this morning, and I think she only had an hour of sleep.

That's about it for this time. Keep commenting, and I'll try to get some more photos up next time I'm on.

Pictures!

Hey Guys!

Here's a few photos.

There's a sunset from the Wetland park, the boys at the opening of the orphanage in my first week, a rhino we saw sleeping on the side of the road on our way to Cape Vidal, A baby sea turtle I saw one night on the beach, a giraffe, the view in the Wetland Park, a Hippo, and a group photo from my second week when we took the HIV

support group

bowling in St. Lucia.

3 Weeks!

Hi again!
Still doing well here, but this week was a little bit harder. It's gonna be a bit of a shorter post today, I don't really feel like writing much, but I have pictures! I didn't see any dolphins in Mozambique last weekend, but I think I'm going back this weekend to maybe dive, so I might get another chance. It was beautiful there though, and I tried Barracuda and absinthe, so that was exciting. Anyways, the first half of this week was good, but Thursday and Friday weren't so great. On Thursday Mpho and I didn't see any of the people I really like going to see, and everyone we visited was in really bad shape, then on Friday, a woman I've seen a few times, told us her daughter died. This woman suffers from arthritis and lives alone and no one from her family makes any kind of effort to support her. It was really hard to watch.
Friday night we all went out to dinner, because everyone except Simone and I is leaving this weekend, and 8 new people are coming. So we went to dinner at a mozambiquean, brazilian place which was pretty good, then to the bar in town. It was really nice to go out and just have fun because we're pretty much constantly working throughout the entire week at the house.
Yesterday we went to Cape Vidal again, and spent some time driving around the Wetland park. I saw two rhinos, a bunch of Zebra, and a lot of Kudu. It's really strange now that everone's gone and it's all new people, it'll probably take a few days to get used to. OK, here are my photos. Please keep commenting, I really love it. Also, I'm gonna run out of things to talk about and take pictures of, so please please please tell me what you want to know/see.


I'll upload the pictures later this week, it's taking too long and I don't have time to wait for them.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Hi again!!
Things are still going pretty great over here. This week went by really quickly, and I changed my first dressing! I was pretty nervous, but it I think it went well. I changed the bandages on a young woman who was invlved in a bus accident and lost her 7 month old child. On Monday, in the morning we took the HIV support group bowling, then, in the afternoon, an orphanage the community project has been refurbishing opened, so we went over there and played a bit with the kids moving in. There's a new medical volunteer, but I'm not sure I really like him. He's nice, but he just annoys me a bit. I did home based care with him and Mpho on Tuesday, then I had HIV education on Wednesday and Thursday in the schools. I had home based care again this morning, and it was a really good day. We saw a new woman who's on TB medication and ARV's, then we saw a 3 year old on TB medicaton, with sores all over his legs. This kid was unbelievable. I was cleaning and bandaging the sores, and he didn't even make a sound or show any sign of pain the entire time even though I'm sure it was hurting him. If I had been doing that at home, the kid would have been screaming the whole time. We went and spoke to another woman suffering from AIDS (her white cell count is only 20) as well as arthritis, and lastly, we saw the woman from the bus accident again. Her wound is definitely healing, but Mpho decided we have to change the bandage everyday because there's a lot of puss still coming out. One funny thing this week was the hundreds of marijuana plants I saw growing in a woman's back yard. She wasn't purposefully growing them, but weed is literally a weed, and it had just spread everywhere. I thought that was pretty interesting.
I finished my book, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin. It wasn't very good. It's about a white Zimbabwean, but it was written too much like an article. It had a lot of interesting information about what Zimbabwe is like under Mugabe though, so I liked that part, but I wouldn't recommend it.
I'm going to Mozambique this weekend with a few of the other volunteers. We're gonna hang out on the beach, and swim with some wild dolphins. I'll let you know how it goes.
I still don't have any photos for you guys, I lost my camera. I know, I know, it was stupid, but I'm getting a new one this weekend, so I PROMISE I'll have some next week. Also, ff there's anything specific you guys want to see or hear about, let me know, and I'll try to work it out.
That's about all I have time for. Please leave me comments either here or facebook, or email me (morgan_ross@me.com)! I really love hearing from all of you.

1st Post!!

Hi everyone!!!
I've been in Africa just under a week now, and I've decided to start a blog, so here it is. I'm hoping I'll be able to update it around once a week, but I'm not making any promises. I don't have any photos yet, but Ill try and get some for my next post. I'm living in a dorm-like volunteer house in St. Lucia, South Africa, about a 2 and a half hour plane ride from Johannesburg. I'm in South Africa for 7 weeks, and I'm going to be providing home based care to the local zulu villages surrounding St. Lucia. I'm the only volunteer here doing the home based care, but the other volunteers at the house are really great. There's Simone and Elise, from Switzerland and Holland. Simone's 36ish, and Elise is probably in her mid-twenties. There are 3 women from the U.K. who take tea breaks every half hour, and Kelsey, the only other 18 year old, who just got back from a term in India, pretty similar to what I was doing in Ecuador.
Anyways. I started volunteering on Tuesday, and so far, it's been pretty good. I go out into the villages every morning with Mpho (pronounced Impo), who's the main care giver and who translates everything for me (the majority of the people in the villages only spek Zulu, of which I'm learning a few words, but it's REALLY hard). Apparently, about 90% of all people in the villages are HIV positive, but it's illegal to ask their status, so I have to go in just assuming they're positive. Sometimes though Mpho will tell me if they're on ARV's (HIV/AIDS medication). So far, I've seen around 15 people, but there are a few that have stood out to me. First of all, there's a woman (I'm still having some trouble with the Zulu names) who has had both legs amputated because of diabetes. I'm not sure how diabetes can lead to amputation, but my guess is through lack of information on how to live healthily with the disease. She lives with her sister, but she can't move around at all. and is just stuck sitting on her bed. Her house smells terrible, and I have to breath through my mouth whenever we go in. The smell, Mpho told me, is the smell of rotting flesh. She also told me she's starting to give up hope of this woman getting better. We don't give her any medical care when we go, but we sit with her for a minute, ask how she's doing and give her some food and rehydration salts. The other one who sticks out to me is a man who was shot in his leg 14 years ago. He went to the hospital (about a 1 hour drive away), and they fixed it by putting a metal bar in his leg, but recently, his wound has goten very badly infected. There's aparently no way to make it any better, but we can keep it from getting worse. We go see him 2-3 times a week to redress the wound. I haven't done any dressings myself yet, I'm still too nervous, but Mpho says I have to this Monday. The people here are unbelievably brave and strong. Some of them are in very large amounts of pain, both physically and mentally, but they never even flinch.
On a lighter note, so far I've seen 2 pairs of TOMS shoes from their shoe drops in the villages, which I think is very cool. Also, today, while we were at a woman's house changing her bandage, the battery in our truck died, and we ended up having to push the truck on and off for about an hour before another person from the program came and got it to start.
I'll try and get back either later this weekend with some pictures, or sometime next week! Thanks for reading!