Reports from Swaziland

Sorry for the long delay in blogging! First for a bit of fun… We went to Bushfire, which is an event put on by Young Heroes, an NGO that works to raise funds for kids education. The event is an international arts and crafts festival, so there were many little craft booths set up by NGOs who were selling crafts on behalf of the women who had made them, and there were also many booths set up by gogos (grandmas) who actually were selling the arts and crafts that they themselves had made by hand. We did quite a lot of shopping from the gogos- it was so nice to see how much happiness they had when you bought a small craft from them! Seeing that was probably my most favorite part of Bushfire. Apart from the arts and crafts though, there were concerts, poetry recitations, and more going on throughout the day. Bands from all over Africa had come, and we got the chance to see the Swazi legend Bholoja sing folk songs!

Alright- now back to business. During the beginning of the week, Caren and I worked on a family planning brochure for the patients, based on the contraception methods that Ann talked to us about us. One of the most popular family planning methods here is a tiny implant that can be placed under the skin of a woman’s upper arm. It releases progestin hormone for 3-7 years (depending on the brand and the weight of the woman using it) and requires no follow-up doctors visits regarding the matter during those years!

We also started brainstorming to come up with ideas on how to monitor the patient adherence to liquid ARVs, such as Nevirapine and Kaletra. One cool idea we had was to use a plastic straw, place it in the medication, and cap the other end of the straw with your thumb in order to hold the liquid in the straw for a short period of time to measure the height of the liquid on a measuring card. Now we just have to find straws to see if it will work!