I'm coming back!

Hello friends,

So, it's official. I get to come back to Ethiopia for one last hurrah! I've purchased my ticket for a two week long trip :) I leave on the 26th of September, and I will be back in D.C. on October 11th, for the National Equality March, which I am really excited about. There's nothing that I'd rather be doing on my birthday (12th), than marching on Washington with The Family. Yay! It'll be great to see Rajani again too. Really, what could be better?

Now, for all those who are wondering - why the crap is she going back? and/or what the hell was she doing there in the first place? Here's my little answer. People are generally confused when I try and explain what it is that I've been up to in Ethiopia this summer, so I'll try to give it my best shot in writing.

While in Ethiopia, I was working to complete the 400 hours of field study experience that's required by my Masters of Public Health (MPH) program. In addition, I've gathered some info that I'm currently trying to organize to write my master's thesis (aka "capstone). I was working with the AIDS Resource Center in downtown Addis Ababa, with their newly established Pediatric HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment Communications team. Fancy, isn't it? There was a few of us 20-somethings that were passionate about children and their health and psychosocial well-being, and we worked out the beginning of a soon-to-be-wonderful peds HIV campaign. In order to do that, we set up a workshop, or a conference of sorts, for federal, national, and international level organizations (think Ministry of Health, UNAIDS, UNICEF, Clinton Foundation, JHU, Columbia U, UCSD... etc.), who will all come together on the week of Oct. 5th-Oct. 9th. It will be fabulous, I'm certain. Basically, we need all these people - pediatricians, policy experts, communications experts etc. to come together and figure out what Ethiopia should do to address the many problems of pediatric HIV, like testing, drug adherence and HIV status disclosure, to name a few. Then, a plan of action will get devised, materials will be developed, more doctors educated, more children tested, more children treated, HIV eradicated... okay, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but a girl can hope, right?

In addition to working on setting up this conference I spent some time developing a community conversation flip chart, that's designed for caregivers of children at risk for HIV and couples hoping to become parents. It's basically a set of pictures with a corresponding discussion raising questions, and a facilitator's guide. We'll see how it's going to look when all is said and done, but while I was in Addis the pre-test participants had very positive reviews of where this project was headed. Here are some examples,


The caption for this image is: Should we test our child for HIV?

The caption for this image is: How do I encourage my friend to test her child for HIV?

That's the short version, I suppose, but I hope that it makes sense. I will be going back to Ethiopia to attend the conference that I've been working to set up, and to see what progress has been made on my flip chart, although I suspect that not much has changed, since everyone else has been busy with their own projects, etc. But, whatever, I feel like I did something that has an awesome potential, however long term the outlook may be.

I will update more on how things progress, but as for now, which me a safe journey, or just come by to look at some photos!

Peace, Maryna