Reaching Out

I had a great time spending the four-day weekend in Zabljak. I haven't been there since I was a baby so it was great to see where my great grandparents house used to be and to hike and see all the beautiful lakes. I wore long-sleeve stuff almost all the time and it was nice to be cold for a change. Zabljak really epitomized for me the transition that Montenegro is undergoing. There is a booming tourist industry in Zabljak so in the main town there are new hotels and a new ski resort and in the fields you can see newly built, large vacation houses. All this is being built right in the vicinity of the old, run-down houses and barns in which the families that live year-round in Zabljak and whose whole family history is centered around those fields and mountains live. They live of what they can produce and it is often a very poor lifestyle. As my mom spent most of her childhood in Zabljak, we know many of the families there and I went to visit one of the families. They live and sleep in a barn house with a dirt floor that is filled with flies. None of the elders have any teeth and the kids (a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old boy) have teeth that are already rotting. There is only an elementary school and most kids from the area don't get past 8th grade. They barely get by on what they produce in the warmer months which they have to use during the winter-time and they mostly live of bread and dairy products. Among families such as this where kids have almost no opportunity to obtain an education come thousands of tourists year-round from Serbia, Montenegro, and the rest of Europe and their presence seems to almost swallow all the native inhabitants and the history of the location. The country is doing everything in its power to promote this tourism and to build new, giant, impressive hotels, etc.

In general, Montenegro seems to have forgotten about maintaining and improving the old and is just focused on building as many new things as possible. There are so many new, beautiful bridges, apartment buildings, restaurants, and hotels, but they are all being built right next to 60-year-old, run-down buildings which have never been painted or renovated. The city is the strangest mix of brand new buildings with peeling, broken, and falling apart buildings. They seem to be trying so hard to catch up to the rest of Western Europe that they have skipped key steps in the development process. I went to see the university my parents attended and the inside has not changed one bit since they went there twenty years ago. Every street is thus an example here of the transition this country is undergoing and it is perfectly clear what was the old and what is the new.

I took the time to try and develop some new forms for the outreach work that I think will be
more efficient so I can show them to the director when she gets back from the seminar on Monday. I already showed them to one of the outreach staff and he seemed excited about them. I think they will be much easier to fill out quickly when doing the outreach work and so it will help them keep more accurate records of everything they give out and all their contacts rather than counting on memory of who was seen on a certain night several weeks ago. I also went out to do outreach work two nights this week and helped with filling out the forms to test my new layout. I did not have trouble getting everything down even on one of the more busy nights we had. That night was a really tough outreach night for me as many of the clients were really under the influence of drugs and many could barely talk or walk when we saw them. Interacting with them was just a completely new experience for me and, at times, I was scared that something would happen to them medically. We had a client who had completely destroyed his legs from injecting as that area is extremely sensitive and one has to go really slowly and accurately or else the site of injection swells up. Both his legs were completely swollen and he told us that he had begun to inject in the veins in his groin area. I could no longer see a single vein in his arms and he really looked like he was in a critical state. We spent a while trying to talk
with him and convince him to stay clean for at least several days while the swelling calms down.

That same night, another girl got really mad at us as we would not give her a ride somewhere and none of us had 1 euro to give her so she refused any help and stumbled away. In that one night, I saw so many things that were new to me that it was a little overwhelming. I am still having a hard time understanding why and how people get involved in such things and how they can do so much harm to themselves. I guess it mostly comes from the influences one has growing up and, if you are surrounded by family or friends who are all involved in such things, it is difficult to escape it. And once you start, it becomes a vicious cycle that only a few can get out off. I just really feel helpless sometimes during the outreach work as there is nothing you can really do to stop the problem at the core and all you can do is minimize the risk but it just doesn't seem like that is enough. Hopefully, our work at least makes them think about the health effects of what they are doing and hopefully in at least a few cases that brings some motivation to think about and commit to stopping. I have finished all my work with the data gathering and designing
the new forms. I will definitely show her my ideas and, if she likes them, work on finalizing versions of the forms and preparing them to be used for the outreach work. In addition, I really want to work with her to set up a meeting with the HIV doctor in the near future which I still haven't been able to do.

On Monday or Tuesday, I plan on going again to the Voluntary Counseling and Testing Center to see if I can observe some of their counseling sessions. I will also continue going out to the outreach work. Finally, I will definitely try and see with the director if there are any trends in which they would specifically be interested for me to look into. There are some I would be
particularly interested to explore so I will see with her if that would be helpful for them for me to do.