My "job" job

OK so people keep asking me about my actual job in the pc. Truth be told, because I’m still a trainee (until Thursday) I haven't done too much as far as my actual "job" job is concerned. But there are things I can talk about:

I am technically assigned to the North East Regional Health Authority (NERA) . I am supposed to be connected with water and sanitation projects across the region, but specifically in St. Ann because they have the most water issues at the moment. My supervisor is a public health inspector who inspects water quality across the parish of St. Ann. This includes drinking water, pool water, waste water, and water used for recreational purposes. He is a very knowledgeable guy and really laid-back and friendly. This past month or so I've been following him around out in the field to get a feel for the layout of the parish and learn a little bit more about water quality and how the health department operates. I think I ask him about a hundred questions a day, but he doesn't seem to mind... yet! I keep being told that if you don't know something in Jamaica, you need to speak up and ask because otherwise people are going to assume you know what you're doing.

This past month I have also been working on building a small database for my supervisor to better organize/store information on the results of water quality samples for the parish. I keep tweaking the database to be more user friendly and have been doing some data entry to make sure it's working properly. So far so good, but the real test is when other people try to use the database. We'll see how that goes...

I've also been brainstorming with the public health inspectors and other employees at the health department about other projects I could work on. Here are a few we've thought about:

1. Water catchment tanks in St. Ann- repair broken ones, increase number of communities with access to treated water, talk with communities about the importance of treated water, work with parish council to generate funds for these projects, train caretakers, etc.

2. Solid waste management/vector control - better plans for solid waste management in communities, create central places to throw away trash, encourage behavior change with-in the community (away from littering and burying or burning trash)

3. Youth - I've been approached by several people about the idea of working with youth in my community. We don't have specific projects planned yet, but I said YES! I'm always down with working with youth!

I haven't started any of these projects yet but there's a Jamaican saying I'd like to use, "Soon come," meaning it WILL happen eventually, just maybe not in the time frame you're expecting it to happen. :D