Sibebe Rock, our new backyard

ok, where was i...

We moved into a new pad and it is fantastic. We are now country dwellers. We live in the countryside but only a 15 min drive to work. It is a small brick cabin in the woods kind of place with a nice fireplace, patio, loft and amazing views. We basically live in a park. Our backyard is the largest single piece of granite in the world. Google it - its called Sibebe Rock. Last weekend my friend Ryan and I climbed to the top. It was a bit hairy in parts - very steep. We made it to the top and so did the dogs. There are 4 dogs at our new place. 3 came with the place and one is a stray puppy that showed up yard at the old place. That makes for good security. Our house is in Pine Valley, probably one of the most beautiful places in Swaziland. In the picture of us climbing the rock, our house is below with the green roof.

Work, hmmmm....Always busy and always challenging. The sicknesses, death, dying, misunderstandings, baracades, cultural and gender barriers can make it difficult to swallow. My outreach work continues and I have been traveling to work in small clinics a lot lately. We do have successes, children get healthy, babies turn out to be negative, opportunistic infections cured and smiles return to the faces of these lovely children. Lately, I have been seeing greater than 25 patients, round trip driving of 3 hrs leaving little time to finish all the patients. The patients in outreach are sicker, more malnourished, lower socioeconomic status and less knowledgeable about ARVs and HIV. Most of the patients are women and children. Men rarely come to our clinic but yet have most of the power in the homestead. Most of the time the women need to get permission from their husband or father to go to the clinic, get tested, start ARVs etc. In one situation recently a mother brought her child to be tested and enrolled in care. The child was 6 months old, the mother could afford formula so we recommended weaning to prevent transmission of HIV (current recommendation by WHO in HIV pos women is to exclusively breast feed for 6 months then wean if she can afford other forms of milk). She stopped breast feeding, disclosed to the father that the child was tested. He got mad and stopped buying milk for the child. Now when I saw the baby at 8 months of age, he did not have any form of milk for 2 months because the father was mad. Challenges, challenges….

Angela is doing quite well, working for Young Heroes orphan relief program. She is busy preparing for a benefit concert coming at the end of September. She loves our puppy even though she is quite a troublesome dog. We are traveling to Nisela this weekend where she will do some safari stuff and I am taking a course on dangerous/venomous snakes. I will be learning identification of snakes, first aid for bites and types of venom. Needless to say, Angela was not interested in that course! We are both looking forward to our visit home at the end of August. I am still trying to iron out the dates but hoping to start the travels home by august 24th and spend 3 weeks stateside. Looking at the first and third weeks in MN and the second week in California. We plan on going to Breads wedding (Barry and Fred) in MN then Bealmans (Beal and Bergman) wedding in California. Also may give a grand rounds presentation in Santa Rosa on the 5th of Sept. Should be busy but great. We are looking forward to seeing family and friends.

That’s all for now….
Dan