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.