Back online and in the game...off to volunteer at an orphanage.

That is right my friends as of tonight I have regained control of my accounts with PayPal, Yahoo and Gmail. Thanks so much for those of you who said a prayer to help with this or sent me a kind email with reassuring thoughts. It was tough not being able to check my email for nearly a week and knowing that someone was trying to steal money from my bank account using my PayPal account. It was also tough knowing that my last two blog entries with many errors to correct would remain untouched until I could regain access to my Google accounts. I must say that out of the three Yahoo was the best at responding quickly and following up in good time but the other two are lacking in speed and follow-up. Either way my bank denied the two withdrawals the “hacker” tried to make from my account and now I just need to finish cleaning up the mess, changing my passwords, etc. and going through the proper channels to report this, see about getting compensated for money I was charged for insufficient funds when the hacker tried to take $4,000 from my account (not getting a penny) and take the steps to ensure that this won’t happen again.

I will be going to an orphanage on Wednesday to visit for two nights and when I return on Friday I am sure I will have many stories and photographs to share about the experience. If you want to learn more about the orphanage please feel free to visit the Topsy Foundation and pay particular attention to the sanctuary as that is where I will be staying, volunteering, playing with the kids, etc. Last April my friend Lori and I considered doing our internships/practicums with Topsy and came upon the foundation because one of the people that started it, like my supervisor Linzi is also an Ashoka Fellow. His name is Duke Kaufman and you can read his Ashoka profile to get more information on him and the Topsy Foundation.

What I do….A New Hope....

Creative title if I do say so myself. Any guesses as to why I chose this? If you think you know feel free to post a comment below with your guess. It has come to my attention thanks to my one of my greatest enemies who at the same time can be my best friend i.e. my self-conscious or Jiminy Cricket (my apologies for the Disney reference, yes Fiona this is another thing I don’t like) that I have written very little on Ripplefxs about me, my time here in South Africa and what I do here for work, fun and more. I started this blog with the idea of sharing about my time here but have found that it has been a good place to share my epiphanies, rants and random thoughts with you as well as a cathartic activity. I promise to return to the theme of “my life” from time to time.

I would like to briefly recap what I covered in my first and second entries just a month ago to share a bit of the work I do and purpose behind my 6 months here. I am working, as an HIV/AIDS consultant, for an Ashoka Fellow, Linzi Smith, who was a government nurse for over 15 years in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Linzi started Education, Training and Counselling (ETC) five years ago after a trip to the United States which inspired her to take a new approach to the HIV/AIDS situation here in South Africa. Along with Linzi, who works about 16 hours a day, I work with Douglas Smith, Linzi’s husband, and Ben Brown. I have mentioned about Doug before as he is very memorable, funny and kind and Ben who I watched play soccer my second weekend here and who has an amazing story of his own that I hope to share in a future blog posting.

Last Friday, Ben was finishing facilitating a five day training at a mining company where he was training a “select” group of employees to be certified “peer educators”. Four of the people out of about 20 that he was training disclosed to him on the final day that they were HIV positive. Ben stayed much later than normal to counsel these four individuals and he only began to start the two hour trip home around 6 PM. One of the people had only been tested last Tuesday, the day after the course started, and thus was disclosing some very traumatic and personal information with Ben who as is his nature stayed to provide the best support and care that he could. I will write more about Ben later but should get back to “my life” which is not to say that Ben, Linzi, Doug and others are not a part of it as they are a huge part and I am grateful to each of them for their friendship, guidance and all the rest.

So far my work has mainly consisted of helping around the office with various computer problems (I am not an expert but sometimes it is all relative), searching for funding sources and grant writing, marketing/sales and preparing PowerPoint presentations. Next week I am excited to tell you I will participate in and co-facilitate my first peer educator training. I will give a more in depth explanation next week of “peer educator” training in the context of HIV/AIDS, South Africa and ETC.

I am really looking forward to this training as it seems to be the seminal component to the work that is/can be done to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, protect the rights of people that are HIV + and prolong the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) through proper nutrition, exercise, medication, etc. I have been told this training is a life changing experience for many and it was for Ben, who I will have to ask to do a guest blog entry. You can look for more on “what I do” in a future blog and don’t forget to guess why I chose the title for this blog.