Monday Monday....

Well...the weekend was a great success. I think the best thing was the food and the hot showers! The lodge we stayed at was fab. Went on fantastic excursions including a cheetah sanctuary, a hippo and crocodile boat ride and a safari. And I am pleased to inform you that not only did we see the big five, we also saw Jiraffe and a cheetah in the wild...amazing!
But now for the important stuff. Today was strange. Its still really hard to know what to do. If you get up and help the nurses all the chores are done by 9am. Today Femke and I helped wash some patients. She's been shown how so she could show me how and I was glad of the supervision! I did feel a bit awkward because if it were me I would feel so degraded, having some young wippersnapper telling me how to wash, and having to wash my backside. But the lady was really nice so it was fine. Its really rubbish though because they don't have proper towels. They each have a face flannel to wash their entire body, then we have to rinse it and wring it out to wipe them down to dry them. And the water is cold.
We also had our first meeting with the psychologists today. I'm a bit dissappointed actually. Its great because we actually get to do VERY basic assessments of patients, but its hard because of the language barrier. Also, apart from just asking them how they are each week and teaching them about HIV and their treatments there doesn't seem to be much in the way of psychological interventions here. There isn't anything even mildly therapeutic. I'm guessing money is a big issue there. 
So once we were done checking the psychological forms of a few patients, it was lunch time and after that, there isn't really much to do. A lot of patients sleep when there isn't anything on so you can't even chat.
We asked Vincent about Edward, the guy from Hull, to see if we could take him out for a day because he always seems so bored and he always says that he likes to go outside the hospital but there isn't much for him today, and I guess he doesn't get on with many of the patients because he's the only white dude. But Vincent says we can't take the risk because he has PTSD and has been known to freak out a bit in the past, so if we were out somewhere and that happened it wouldn't be good obviously. I was tempted to say I would go anyway but I wouldn't go alone and I don't think anyone else was comfortable with it. We're allowed to go for short walks with him, so I'll try and do that as much as possible. I think he likes having English accents around. He must feel so isolated.
After lunch I went with Irma and Ruth to get a phone for a patient but that was it really. Felt a bit useless to be honest. But never mind, tomorrow is another day, and Ann told me one of the guys on the sixth floor was asking for me so I'll go up and see him tomorrow. Hope everyone is okay back home! 

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