Teaching health in the village

So one of my favorite memories that I would like to reflect on is when our team taught health to the women in the lengasti village. We had just arrived in the village the day before and we were all eager to get to know people and get started on all of our projects. We were asked to teach health the next day to the women in the village. We had a brief meeting the night before. All of us weren't quite sure how it was going to turn out and we all tried to prepare ourselves for whatever would happen. We all sat around a table and just started out with asking the women questions about the village and what they do to take care of themselves. Our conversation very quickly transitioned from malaria to HIV/STD's/AIDS and it wasn't until that moment that I realized how much previous knowledge I had on something so simple. It is definitely easy to assume that everyone should know what I know, but unfortunately they were not given this sort of information. We had a translator there helping with the language barrier but although we could not fully understand one another our emotions were clear that when something was serious the tension was serious but when we practiced putting condoms on the models then the tension became more comfortable and it was clear that we all felt the same giddiness. the women made it clear that they were grateful for what we taught them and to make it understood it is not that the people were unintelligent for not knowing this information. If no one teaches you these things then how can they be retained. The women left confident and secure in what was taught to them and through prayer and the new knowledge they have retained I myself am confident and secure that they will teach others in the village the importance of their health.