Miss VCT

One of the things I read about life as a volunteer before I came away said that after about 4-6 months, your life starts to seem ridiculous. In the context of facing extreme poverty every day though, your old life will seem ridiculous too, and apparently the thing to do is shrug your shoulders and get on with it.

When the author said that life can sometimes feel ridiculous, I'm fairly sure they didn't have in mind that as a volunteer you'd find yourself sat in a nightclub at 3 in the morning, rating teenage girls on their cat-walking and smiling abilities, in the name of halting the HIV pandemic in Africa.

Livingstone has the highest rate of HIV in Zambia, 31%, and my organisation works with young people to try to reduce the number of new infections. This week saw our 'Miss Voluntary Counseling and Testing' pageant, where a beauty queen is selected as our ambassador for the year to work to influence young people to know their HIV status and to take appropriate care to stay negative or not to infect others. I was one of the judges, and the event was fun in a chaotic sort of way (advertised to start at 7,30, really we were hoping to start at 9, proceedings actually began at 11pm...). The concert went ahead the next day too, despite very limited planning and it was fun to meet some Zambian popstars.

It's very hard to know if any of these projects have a real impact on the prevalence rate of the disease, and it's felt like this weekend has been partying in the name of development. This week I'm hoping to be able to sit down with my boss and make some solid plans for the rest of my year. Now I've been here 4 months it feels like time to really start doing some work but there are big challenges at the organisation and I think it will be hard. Definitely reminding myself what VSO taught me at training all those months ago that no-one said development work is easy.

I also have a meeting with a different HIV organisation this week to see if they can make use of my free time so perhaps that will be another chance to do something useful while I'm here enjoying the sunshine, going to nightclubs and watching England mess up football matches!