HIV Hotline and Tree Nursery

I spent the last few days in Nairobi where I got some R&R, ate some amazing food and saw a few Peace Corps friends, but now it’s back to work at site. I have two new projects in the works for this month which should keep me very busy.

First is my new HIV Hotline which will provide HIV/AIDS support, STD/STI information and testing clinic referrals to people in 3 different languages (Kiwahili, Kalenjin and English). A man name Alfred who I worked on the International Women’s Day event will be helping me. He will carry around the phone from about 10am-3pm everyday and people can call and ask him questions about health. We’ve had a general meeting to make sure we are on the same page with health issues, especially HIV, so no false information will be spread. We made a couple of different posters for advertising and hopefully within the next few months the hotline will be ringing off the hook! Although it will be confidential, we will ask callers their sex and age to keep track of which type of people we are helping the most and who we should target.

My other project, is a tree nursery that I will be putting together with a local secondary school. For Earth Day, April 22nd, we will get together to learn how to plant the trees and how to keep them healthy. All I’m providing is the lessons and the trees and then it is up to the kids to keep them up. The goal is to hopefully sell whatever trees are not needed to start a scholarship for kids that cannot afford school.

I’ve been really motivated since the Women’s Day and am using the popularity I gained after the event to propel my new projects and ideas. Everyone keeps telling me how grateful they are for everything I’ve been doing and it’s truly humbling.

Next week I'll be visiting my old site near Busia and seeing all my old friends! I'm so excited to catch up with them and see my old students especially. After I will be traveling to Uganda with 20 other volunteers to go river rafting on the Nile River!!!!