Our current news

We've had a great and productive last couple weeks. The Austrian Government is building a new Polyclinic (which they say is a big step down from a hospital, but a big step up from the typical clinic) in Karaga. There are many steps here, so we're just taking them one at a time! Cameron has been really busy meeting with the project manager and helping supervise at the job site. He's been enjoying this so much, since he's able to get back to the kind of work he left back in the States. At the school I've been trying to give the teachers some new ideas (they do the same thing, over and over, but the kids still don't know the material). Instead of the teacher pointing to the blackboard (with the kids falling asleep or running out of the school) saying "1, 2, 3, 4, 5", we've started to count rocks and sticks. As primitive as this sounds, it's been doing amazing things. Teachers here like to sit, but with twenty 2 and 3 year olds, sitting down just doesn't make sense. We've also been teaching HIV and AIDS lessons at the high school. We've had some interesting questions, but at least they're asking, right?! We're working on getting our district health team to come and test the students and teachers who want it. It's a free service, but most of the students are too scared to have it done, so we're really focusing on the fact that knowing is safer than not knowing, and that you can still have a marriage and babies with the virus. It's difficult for them, so we're trying to find someone who can come to the testing day to offer immediate counseling. We'll let you know how that goes.

About the photos, we had a blast going to Andy's site. He put on an HIV and AIDS drama in his village and it was a huge success. Most of the new photos were from that trip. Then the others were of us hanging at home with Asiyah and Sulo, two (sometimes) cute kids that live in our compound. The construction photo is of the new Polyclinic.

We hope you enjoy! OH, we want to send out a HUGE, HUGE thank you to Beth's (Cameron's mom) church ladies who put together a bunch of materials to teach with. They're just beautiful and I'm so thankful. We'll put up pictures of the materials in action when school starts up again after the break. Really, thanks again, you can only do so much with the sticks and rocks.