Day 11

Saturday May 11, 2013

We were up early because it was pouring.  I thought the roof was going to get ripped off of our room! It was so crazy.  We headed into Larabanga and started the clinic.  I kid you not, we ended as quick as we started.  We had a huge open area to set up and people just showed up in droves.  I would finish teaching one group, and move to the next to start again.  We saw about 250 people, which was so great!! The people here needed to hear complete different things than those in Kumasi.  I had to really reinforce that death follows contraction of HIV.  One kid kept asking me to give him more condoms and I asked why.  He said he had a lot of sex.  So I asked if he had HIV.  He didn’t know so I said well guess what if you do have it, you will die! There is no cure.  His face got so serious and he said “okay, I will take one.”  Maybe I helped.  I hope so.  There were hundreds of kids there too.  We brought soccer balls and jump ropes to entertain them.  It was so much fun.  The clinic which services about a thousand people, was so grateful for everything.  We had a lot of donations for them and Lisa provided basic over the counter medications to them as well.  When I was sick I had all the medication I needed.  When these people are sick, they just work through it and have to hope it goes away.  I take my health for granted.  During assessments there were many people that had really high temperatures and it is just because they have nothing to fight off the infection.  We got home and swam around for a while and the weirdest thing happened.  A group of Africans came into the pool area and started taking pictures of all us white people swimming.  The moved closer and closer and eventually were standing right around the pool perimeter.  They were pointing and snapping photos.  I guess they are getting even from all the photos we take of them.  It was really bizarre but we hammed it up and posed for the photos.  It was pretty crazy.  We had to leave pretty early to head out to the tree house!!! About 14 of us headed out into the jungle bush and there was this giant tree house just out in the middle!!  We climbed up and set up our bedrolls and put up our mosquito nets! It was so hot!!! But once we all settled down it cooled off and you could here the whole jungle!!!! It was so cool to listen to at night.  I could hear bullfrogs and insects and birds and who knows what else.  Hyenas? Ah it was so cool.  Surprisingly I fell asleep so quickly but then I woke up in the night and just stared up at the stars.  It was so peaceful and I just loved that moment.  I had such a fun night.