My work

Hello everyone! I hope you are all staying warm.. i hear it is pretty cold back home. Well if it makes you feel any better I am freezing here too! I don't know what is up with the weather lately but it has been crazy.... March and April are suppose to be the hottest months, but yet i find myself wearing 2 long sleeve shirts and wrapped up in a blanket.

So I am not sure if I have ever blogged about what exactly it is that I do here. My main project that I am working on is the Santa Rosa Support group "Fe and Esperanza" or faith and hope in english. It is a group that meets every month for people living with HIV/AIDS or PLWHA for short. The group itself was started by my counterpart 3 yrs ago and since then has grown to be quite a large group... every month we have about 25 people show up plus children. We meet the last friday every month and discuss all sorts of things!

The health project has a manual for working with PLWHA developed by the PVVS team which I am also a member of. Of the course of the last few years the team has been developing and editing the manual so that it can be more useful and user-friendly for Hondurans and who ever else would be using it (mainly volunteers). Well anyways, every month we pick a few activities that are related to an overall theme.... for example in December we talked about adherence to treatment because we have had a few members who want to go off their meds. So we did lots of activities explaining what exactly the meds do in their body and how the virus affects their immune system and how if htey verve off their treatment course then they can develop a virus which is resistent to the medicines we have available.

Also with the support group we have started a little mini-business of making mantas.... which are little knitted or embroidered clothes that people use here to wrap up tortillas and keep them warm. Every month support group members take 4 clothes that have various pictures drawn on them and work all month long making their mantas. At the monthlymeeting they turn all them in and we sell what we have made. With all the funds we raise from the business we help members of the support group in case they get sick or need to go to a special doctor or get special tests. Because their immune system is compromised they are very suseptable to infections that maybe not affect someone with a healthy immune system.. so just an average cold can get pretty serious for them. We have had people in the group who develop cancer's and need biopsy's which require a trip to SPS... so we use some of the $ from the business to help pay for the transport to SPS. Because of the discrimination and stigma associated with HIV many of them can't get jobs or are fired from their jobs so they are very poor.
Manta

Selling Mantas in the park with a volunteer from Canada.

Thanksgiving activity. Members wrote down on their turkey reasons they were thankful.

The group is fun and it is great to see all their wonderful faces every month. Recently we have been talking alot about how the group has helped them deal with their situation. Most of them come to us very depressed and lonely, feeling like they are the only one dealing with this... but after a few months you can really see the difference and see how much their spirits are lifted. It is a constant up and down but that is why we are there.... we cry together, laugh together and most of all have a good time together. I feel like in some way they are part of my Honduran family here and it feels good to walk into a room where I know I am loved.