Julie's Week 4

It is Brett's turn to write this week but he's sick today so he stayed at the base to sleep. I think he probably has parasites. Not fun at all for him, poor guy! But he started parasite medicine today so hopefully he'll be better in a few days. It stinks that he is sick on our day off though. I wasn't feeling well this week either but I'm feeling better now. They say it is impossible to come here without getting parasites at least once. When we leave we are supposed to take some medicine that will get rid of potential parasites that aren't showing symptoms yet. Anyway, enough about worms.

This week went by pretty quickly for the most part. I had a smaller and more managable group for VBS so it was a lot easier. We did a week of Moses and had a lot of fun weaving baskets with the kids and writing out the 10 Commandments. I have a good group of kids every night for English lessons. They all bring their notebooks and dutifully repeat everything I say.

The community I am in is an invasion community. People want to live closer to the city so they pack as much as they can into taxis and literally take over a new area. Most people have only been here for 3 months so they are still trying to get money to build their houses. Right now everybody is living in shacks while they work on building their houses. My job title is Community Ambassador and so I'm supposed to figure out what would benefit the community the most and then try and do whatever that is. This week my parter Mike and I talked to the president of the 17 de septiembre (the name of the community) about building a garden and playground for the kids. I figured that since it is such a new community and there are so many kids it would be something that would really benefit this place. So I will be working on the garden in the mornings and doing the VBS and English classes in the afternoon and evening from now on. We're also going to get fruit trees and give one to each kid to plant next to their house.

I'll be here until about March 15 and then we are having a medical clinic for 2 weeks about 4 km from where I live now. And then after that we are going on several short medical trips. So I'll get to have some medical experience afterall! I'm excited about that. Anyway, my time is about to run out. More next week.