Day One

It's 5:30pm here and I can't wait for the sun to go down so it will cool off here. I know I'm not getting any sympathy from anyone back home, but it's painfully hot here. The whole house went to to town today to help out with HIV mobilizations. Mlolongo is a town along a very busy, main highway. Trucks have to stop to be weighed, and the wait is a long one so that is how the town developed. There are loads of semis along the road, opposite multiple rows of guesthouses (i.e. brothels).

We met the head mistress for the female sex workers in the area. There is one particular street, one block off the main road, that is the primary area for the women to work. They just call her "Mistress" and she is working with the volunteer group to educate and distribute condoms to the females in the trade. Essentially any woman walking around town who isn't working at a kiosk or shop is a prostitute.

The streets of Mlolongo are dirt roads covered in garbage. I wasn't able to get a great look at the buildings and shops and people because I was too busy watching my step. There are piles of garbage around town that get burned at the end of the day. We even passed a man with several goat heads on a grill, fur and all, cooking and preparing them. I think I'll stick to the mangoes.

After a few hours in the hot sun, and a good layer of dirt making me look much more tanned than I am, Milanne and I headed back to the compound. We needed a break from the sun and are feeling the effects from the last couple of days of travel. We missed a play from the volunteers aimed to educate the community about HIV and different ways of contracting it as well as STIs. After lunch, the group was heading to 3 or 4 guesthouses/brothels with Mistress to hand out condoms and talk about HIV/STIs.

I don't think I had many expectations coming here in terms of what I would see. The town is a far cry from anything I have ever been exposed to before. Walking through the streets, I wasn't scared of anything, as people were pleasant and just going about their business. It's just very... different.

Tomorrow we are heading to a baby orphanage and may go to a monkey park as well.