Orientation

This past week as been orientation! We have spent most of our time in the center's board room, below ;)
We have learned all about Botswana's national guidelines for HIV care, how the center runs, and have even had time for a Setswana lesson! Setswana is very hard to learn as many of the words have multiply meanings and pronunciation is difficult. But I can now do basic greetings in Setswana.
I spent yesterday working in the clinic. It was very busy. Most of the patients were doing incredibly well with undetectable viral loads on medicines. I saw some complex patients as well. One was an 18 yr old male who was severely mentally challenged and very confused about his medications. We are very fortunate to have a psychologist, social workers, and even an "inreach" team (social worker/nurse who go to patient's houses to assess the home environment) to help with these complex social situations. They are working very hard with him and his family to remedy the situation, but much like the U.S. these situations are incredibly hard to solve.
Today is the beginning of Camp Hope. A one week long sleep away camp for children who are HIV positive. I'm looking forward to being a part of the camp and hope that will be covered in the next post ;)