Ok, so I know that I have been SUPER bad at updating over the last couple of weeks so here is an attempted synopsis of some of the exciting, routine, and amazing things that happened in that time.
Trip to Kayanza to assess a community outreach project aimed at increasing prenatal care and deliveries supervised by skilled birth attendants:
This part of the project is just getting underway, and it would appear (to my admittedly immature skill set) that there is a lot more work that could be and should be done with this project. Here is a picture of me, and a community health worker, interviewing one of the women with whom we spoke that day. We ended up talking to about 8 women, all of whom had had more than 6 pregnancies each. Some were 45, and on their 10th pregnancy, and with very little information or access to family planning services.
In a way, it is great that I have had the opportunity to experience several different activities underway here, each with its own intricacies, strengths and weaknesses. I was supposed to write an article on this project, like I had done for the positive deviance/mamans lumieres project of muyinga province. Unfortunately, I had to tell my boss when we got back, that I really felt a lot more follow-up had to be done before we would truly be able to sing the praises of this intervention. This is certainly true if a 'cause and effect' relationship is to be demonstrated between this outreach and the increasing use of services at the health center. Tanou (the boss, and luckily for me an M&E guy himself) understood entirely what I meant, and set me upon a new assignment: writing the quarterly report!! 
Here is a picture of the Community Health Worker of Matungo Health Center, charged with educating the community about the importance of pre/post natal care and hospital delivery. Not sure if this picture does it justice, but I call your attention to his t-shirt. It reads "FBI: Female Body Inspector". I wonder if he recognizes the irony of his attire. Kept me laughing on the hike, I can tell you that much!!
The hike was pretty good though I will tell you and we got to see some great scenery while we were clambering about.
Miles and miles of tea farms, interspersed with banana plantations and coffee fields.
As usual, we gained quite a following out and about, trekking around the hillside. Not much weirder that watching a white woman hike around in a skirt, particularly in backwoods Burundi.
Day at the Beach:
Getting back from this trip, I had the weekend to relax before heading back to work. After a long night on Saturday, I slept away much of Sunday morning, but managed a nice trip to the beach during the afternoon. Beautiful place, and a lovely place to spend a day with a couple of different clubs and restaurants to go to. Here are a few pics, worth many thousand words, I'd say :)
Writing the Quarterly Report:
The next big assignment when I got back from up country was to begin work with the M&E specialist writing the quarterly report. At that point I had indeed only worked for the project for three weeks, so you can imagine the difficulties and frustrations that arose with trying to capture the last three months' worth of activities. Two days, countless phone calls, myriad frustrations, translations, and computations later, a final version emerged with which I was relatively content. It only took a couple of edits and revisions before Tanou was happy with it too. Unfortunately, having completed that, I appear to have left myself open for another demanding assigment: the complete rewrite of our family planning/gender based violence work plan...fun fun fun. But before that: Annik and Ramillo's wedding!!
Annik and Ramillo's wedding:
This is the couple, friends of Diane's, who I had met during my first week here. Their wedding had finally arrived and I, along with the dress and shoes I had had to buy here, was ready to go!!
The mass was sooooooo long!
Even for Burundian standards, it was long apparently. Like, almost 2 hours long. Then there was the reception, with its 500 guests. Receptions here are a bit different than in the US, consisting mostly of speeches and gift giving, by all kinds of different people, while family and friends watch on. There are also the inevitable dancers and/or drummers to celebrate the new couple. I have to say though, this was a pretty impressive wedding!
That's you caught up until about a week ago. Will see if I can find some time tomorrow at the office to catch up the rest. Spending the day at the beach today, enjoying my last weekend here!
A la prochaine,
Amy
xoxo
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