Reports from Swaziland

This weekend, I had one of the biggest adventures of my life. We went up to Malolotja Park and took the zip-lining canopy tour! It was quite an experience for sure, gliding above the trees while dangling from a cable.

Yesterday, in conjunction with a visit from Dr. Oden and Dr. Richards -Kortum, we attended five meetings, including ones with CHAI, ICAP, and EGPAF. They were all very excited to hear about both of our main projects, namely the liquid adherence dipstick and the family planning brochure that we have developed. This, of course, would be wonderful for us. We are still working on getting it translated into Siswati, however, many of the staff are experiencing difficulty finding the right wording for the brochure as it is rather technical.

One person who was invaluable to the translaition effort was the nurse manager. We asked her how she knew terminology that so many of the other native speakers did not seem to know, and her response was that she grew up in the rural areas, where she did not use any English to supplement her Siswati.

At our meeting with CHAI, we found out that we needed to contact a department in the Ministry of Health to look at the brochure, even during the translation stage. We’d heard about a similar department before, but found out then that it was one department called by two separate names – Swazi efficiency strikes again!

Also through the meetings, we were able to identify a few more areas of need. One was to develop an adherence chart for the liquid medications. This was much easier said than done. We have been working vigorously on it, but there are many variables that must be taken into consideration. Finally, today we also developed a job aid for the pill adherence chart so that even with the high turnover rate of nurses, pharmacists, and staff, new workers will be able to understand how the charts should be used.

That about sums it up for the past few days. We are really looking forward to three three busy weeks ahead of us!