Rachel

As you might have noticed, I have finally found a way to post pictures on my Blog. I hope you are enjoying them. You may find that sometimes the pictures appear a day or so after the post. This is because they are making a slight detour via my big brother's computer in the Netherlands. I send in a post and he tries to add the applicable pictures afterwards. This will probably also be the case with the picture belonging to this post:


Today is Rachel Cullen's last day at VSO. I promised her I would feature her on my Blog, so here is a picture of her thinking deep thoughts (very!) as she does, well, most of the time really:


In the past year Rachel worked as the HIV/AIDS programme manager in the VSO office in Port Vila. And lucky she did, as it is becoming evident that AIDS is not going to by-pass Vanuatu - as lots of ni-Vanuatu (proudly) thought it might. Up until last week there were only 3 known cases of HIV infection in Vanuatu. However, HIV-tests done at the maternity ward in Port Vila's hospital recently, came up positive for 13 of the mothers that had given birth there. Implying ofcourse that the babies and possibly the fathers of these babies might be infected as well. This news has hit people quite hard. Today I was talking to one of my colleagues about it and she expressed some thoughts that were heard in the Netherlands some 15 - 20 years ago as well: "Let's put all the people that are infected with the HIV virus on a seperate island, so they won't be able to infect anyone else". People are worried and scared because they are unsure of the facts surrounding infection and protection. Part of VSO's work in Vanuatu is educating people about HIV and AIDS and making sure that good testing facilities are available.

Another interesting thing about Rachel (yes, there is more!) is her hair. She tells me that when she arrived in Vanuatu her hair was as short as mine. Like her, I decided to grow my hair while I am here. So this is what my hair will look like in one year's time.