Journal #6

This week has been more than stressful to say the least. All I can think right now is TGIF. Seriously this week needed to be over like last week. I have had so much happen I didn't even know it was possible to fit that much into one week. Most of the work has been from getting caught up for the prep class and the 1001 things I need to do before I leave for Africa.  My classes are demanding more and more of me which I expect but I feel like all of my professors met together this week and decided to give me as much work as they could. I'm not going to bore you with details but it didn't help on top of that, that stupid Orange County decided to hand out Certified Abstracts of Birth vs Certified Birth Certificates the year I was born. I still have no idea what the difference is but I DO understand that it is making it impossible for me to get a passport which makes it impossible for me to get a Visa which makes it impossible for me to go to Africa. So let's all pray this gets resolved in the next week. Thankfully I have a wonderful Mom that is helping me out through this process. 

I had a meeting with Jackie this week to focus my project and that was such a relief! I have a little more direction to my project. I know that I want to broaden my subject to the under five population's health in the region of Wiamoase. I understand that working directly with these kids will not be possible so I want to go through the mother's decision on the health plan the family has. I found an AWESOME article that really went into depth on reasons why clinics are used or not. Some of the reasons really surprised me. Some reasons were as expected; lack of funds and not having a clinic within distance. Other reasons were more traditional like it is regarded a bad omen if a woman delivers via caesarian section, hence the choice of home delivery. It will be interesting to further research the reasons why a women would choose home or clinic for treatment. In Ghana I will interview the mothers, grandmothers, care takers, husbands on their reasons of how they treat illness or health issues. I am expecting to get a lot of really different answers so as I continue to research I think I'll focus on a couple of illnesses or health issues. Malaria is very dominant there so I might do the treatment on Malaria but then again I don't know if it affects a large percentage of the children. Each time I blog I realize how little I have done and how much I have to do which is overwhelming me to say the least. One day at a time and before I know it I'll be in Africa (if my passport gets here)!