social work and school visit

Today is the 22nd incase this blog gets confusing.


I have already had a tour of Botswana, visited a nearby village, worked with children after school, made 3 house visits with Roberta and had a meeting with Baylor Clinique staff. Yesterday, I had an awesome meeting with Roberta my supervisor, the psychologist Linsday and the social worker Bachani at Baylor Clinique. They are all phenomenal people who share my passion for people and I am so excited to be able to work with them. Lindsay and Bachani had so many ideas of how to use me and I was excited by every possibility. Evidently they are in dire need of extra hands. So it looks as though I will be spending the majority of my hours working with the Clinique. Bachani has had social work interns many times before so she has a good plan for me. They are interested in getting me trained quickly so I can begin to take my own cases as soon as possible! I will first have to be trained in HIV/AIDS care as nearly every client at Baylor is HIV positive. Some other possibilities mentioned at the meeting were:
- Working with the teens program/support group
- Job shadowing other social workers in the area (Backani’s contacts)
- Assisting Lindsay with extra house visits to inform her on what is happening at the home of clients
- Assisting in training for caregivers of HIV positive patients
- Organizing a survey to put numbers to the cause of virus
Yesterday, after the meeting Roberta and I went back to the FM office. There I met up with the rest of the short termers (Ruth and the 3 guys from Germany) and headed out to the school in Pakgalani. At Pakgalani we put on a program of singing, told a Bible story, played some games and then just talked with them. Many are starved for attention so as soon as we arrived we were ambushed by a mob of smiling children each telling me about their day in Setswana all at one time. It was hilarious all I could do was laugh when they pulled me to the ground so that some could sit on my lap! It was cool to watch how the older children watched out for the younger. At one point two girls were each holding onto one of my arms and sharing quite nicely until a third girl came in and pushed one out of the way so that she could take my hand. Before I could say anything an older girl came in, took the third girl gently away and put the other two girls hands back on my arms – it was so cute! When the third girl came back she kept eye contact with me as she took hold of a part of my arm that was free. They helped me with Setswana and had fun laughing when I said it wrong. It was great fun and I can’t wait for next time!