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!