Finally doing some real work

I’m hanging out at my house right now. My host family is playing their radio and I can hear myself and my site mate, Meg, on it. It is playing our weekly English radio program. Normally we record the show on one of our computers the day before, and then give it to the radio station on a USB key. Last week, though, we did it live. I was actually a little nervous when we first started it. Normally if I messed up what I was talking about I would just stop recording and do it over. But doing it live made me have to think more about what I was going to say, fun and a little bit of a rush. It was also a fun experience to work with the radio tech guys, as they synced in the intros and outros to songs while Meg and I talked.
I also got the ball rolling on this cool little idea that also involves the radio. I presented it to some of the main people at the hospital the other day. They liked it, so this coming week we’re putting together a meeting with the radio station to talk about time slots, availability, and possible costs. If everything works out and we can actually get it on the air, I’ll write more about it.
There is an AIDS association here that I work with too. I helped them plan out a project for 2011, which is basically a children’s club for kids affected by HIV. I helped them put together a good budget for everything, and tidied up a project proposal letter for them. So next week they are going to present it to PLAN (an international aid organization) and hopefully get funding for that!
I also have been working with this other organization that goes out around the town and does these things they call ‘sensibilzations’. We go to different places(like schools, or community meetings) and talk about stuff like why you should go to the hospital when you’re sick, what is malaria, what is HIV, why people should try out family planning methods. Its fun and I get to see a lot of the town this way.
I’ve actually been too busy to watch any soccer matches or hang out in the town center area. I had some people asking me the other day when am I going to come out next for a few rounds of batchi ball. I felt like for my first two months in Sotouboua I had barely anything going on, but all of a sudden for the past two weeks there has been something going on every day. It’s nice to have stuff to do, but I hope I can check out a soccer match this week!