Stomping Out Malaria in Africa

The Malaria Team: Participants came from 11 different countries in Africa to participate in Boot Camp III

At long last I am back in Kedougou. I’m killing time ‘till the once weekly transport leaves to my village tomorrow, doing a little bit of work and a lot of floating in the Gambia river while my brain cools off from the intensity of the last couple weeks. I just got done a 10 day intensive seminar on malaria in Thies called Boot Camp III. Regular Peace Corps volunteers, Peace Corps Response people, professionals and staff came from 11 different African countries to participate in the event. Classes went all day long and late into the night (though the extra late sessions usually featured popcorn.. yes!). We covered topics such as the science of malaria transmission, vector control, advocacy, and behavior change. It was a huge, information overload, amazing introduction to everything malaria related.

Visiting Tieneba Seck, a village near Thies which demonstrated incredible community mobilization techniques in their fight against malaria

Perhaps more importantly, though, it was a forum for collaboration and momentum building for Peace Corps and many of the main players in the malaria field. We met or Skyped folks from the Presidents Malaria Initiative, FHI, Malaria No More, and numerous serious researchers in the field. By the end of boot camp the different countries presented specific action plans to take back to their programs and national partners. It was amazing to be a part of, to feel the incredible momentum surrounding this continent wide initiative, and to map out Peace Corps’ role in the fight against malaria. Malaria currently kills between 750,000 and 1.2 million people a year, mostly children in Africa. But huge gains have been made in the last 10 years. And, if the global community continues its commitment to malaria control, we will have an unbelievable impact on child survival and children’s lives.

Presenting Senegal's Plan at the end of camp

So, back in Kedougou, my buddy Ben and I are looking to adapt some of the information and strategies presented at boot camp to the regional level. Kedougou has by far the greatest burden of Malaria morbidity (almost 6x the national average) and mortality in Senegal. But we have an awesome bunch of volunteers and a huge amount of support from Peace Corps higher ups. So we’re getting ready for the next rainy season (though first we gotta make it through the fast approaching and oh-so-daunting hot season), trying out creative ways to mobilize the volunteer community and our villages in this important fight. We’ll be having summits, parties, classes and contests to educate people about malaria and prevention strategies. Too, we’ll be working with other Senegal volunteers to develop a post and re-distribution strategy to follow up on the universal net distribution campaigns that have swept Senegal in recent years. It is an exciting, exhilarating time to be here and be doing this work. I’ll be sure to share more as we go forward.

My little siblings back in Missirah. Going back tomorrow!

To Home and Back, With Some Softball In-between

A little more than a month ago I went to the states for Christmas. It was heavenly being back home, back with the dearest friends and family, surrounded by an endless array of the most delicious foods and beverages. I had expected a shock coming back to the US after 9 months in Senegal. Certainly the cold would do a number on me, the crowded insanity of cities, maybe the wealth and materialism so prevalent there? But a whole host of other things stuck out to me; trees were so tall, so beautiful and towering! Driving was thrilling, gigantic absurdly oversized houses and stores just seemed beautiful, and the endless selection of beers and cheeses was nothing short of glorious! I found myself slipping into life at home happily and easily, kicking it with my dear friends and family like I had never left. I was a happy man, drinking it all in with the deepest appreciation. Oh Amerique, Oh Home!

Such fine folks!


Slowly and joyfully the three weeks passed by and the time came for me to return. It hurt to leave, to say a second whole round of goodbyes to such dear folks. But I was ready to go back. Senegal and my hut and family in Missirah Dantila were fast becoming a dream, much too far from away to possibly be real. So I packed up, loaded down with gifts for friends and counterparts back here, and left one sad, bright morning. My folks somehow finagled Delta into letting us all go to the gate together (my son doesn’t speak English, I promise!), so they accompanied me all the way there. Twas lovely and heart breaking.
I shared my flight from New York to Dakar with my friend Cibyl and a million Senegalese folks all going back for a HUGE festival called the Magal de Touba. They all thought it was hilarious that I was living in a tiny village in Kedougou, speaking Jaxanke and a tiny bit of Wolof. “what do you eat for lunch?” usually maafe (rice with peanut sauce) “Maafe!?! Haha! You bush person!”. Aye. When we got to Dakar we immediately hopped aboard a Peace Corps car and shipped off to Thies. There we had a big conference in which volunteers from around West Africa presented on their main projects and shared best practices. This was good, though I was in a bit of a state of shock, reeling from being back here, the sights, sounds and especially smells overwhelming and familiar.
Then it was time for WAIST , the West African Invitational Softball Tournament which occurs in Dakar every year. Ex-pat teams from around the region come to play. And the acronym, at least for the hundreds of Peace Corps people who participate, is a pretty accurate indicator of the state of sobriety which will characterize the entirety of the three days. Lord! We had an absolute blast though, a great big marathon of manic, joyful, careening insanity, dancing, partying, and the occasional softball game. Each Peace Corps team chooses a theme. Themes included French- all of Dakar wore berets and batted with baguettes, South of the Border (Kolda), and Baseball (Kedougou/Tamba). Baseball I think was meant to be an ironic choice given Peace Corps’ general practice of forfeiting each game from the get go and then spending each inning in a chaos of hilarious antics, wheelbarrow races, and imbibing. I think wearing baseball uniforms was actually inspiring though. We certainly made the most of batting from each others’ shoulders, four person batting lines, and red-rover games in the outfields. We actually tried at some points though, and may have set a Peace Corps record with at least one win and one homerun!

Ben, Brian Bartel and I, ready for a three-man grandslam


The madness of WAIST and the great proms and parties that followed produced a myriad of results- most hilarious, some very bad, and many just plain bizarre. I sprained my ankle in a tragic second base slide. My team rallied to my side though, feeding me Oreos, beer and kisses to ease the pain and carrying me off like a king to get X-Rays. I eventually ended up in a cast, but this certainly didn’t stop the great dance party that ensued that night. More seriously Cibyl got in a car accident and ended up with a broken ankle and another friend Emily sprained hers running across a treacherous median. There also was a girl who got hit by a car going the wrong way on a one way street (thankfully she wasn’t too badly hurt) and another friend of mine Meg who had gotten meningitis a while before and played softball in a wheelchair. We all bonded in the Med-Hut, cooking up tasty food and cursing the fickle friend that is WAIST!

Emily, Cibyl and I: Curse you WAIST


Eventually I made it back to Kedougou and back to Missirah. It was overwhelming being back but so joyful. Back to the peace of my hut, my family, and my kind, joking villagers. I got pretty good at hobbling up and down Missirah’s crazy windy streets. And everywere I went, every day, every person I met would greet me and say prayers for my quick recovery.. ‘Is it a little better?! May Allah grant that it feels better soon!’. ‘Aminu!’ Now I’m back in Thies, getting ready to start an intense 10 day Malaria training. I’m excited, for I’m really interested in continuing work with the big Roll Back Malaria campaigns that are being implemented throughout Africa and have already been incredibly successful. More on that soon. Hope so much that you all are well.

Thanksgiving in Senegal, just a few months late!

A disclaimer: this blogpost was written in the beginning of December, just before I left to America for Christmas. I meant to send it off before I left but I failed epically, partly due to a phone company strike and partly due to laziness. In America I was too distracted by unbelievable food, family, and fine friends to even think about blogging, so it was again delayed. But while there I was surprised and heartened by how many people are indeed following along on this blog adventure. So with thanks to you all for reading and routing for me I will post this tardy entry and do my very best to catch up to mid-january as fast as possible. Cheers!

Thanksgiving in Senegal
I’m writing this blog from the comfort of my hut. It’s all sorts of noisy outside. The roosters and cows are making an early morning din, my next-door neighbors are blasting malinke tunes on the radio, and there’s the almost ubiquitous ‘thump’ of women pounding corn with huge wooden mortars and pestals. Meanwhile I’m sitting on a bamboo chair underneath my grass thatched hut, listening to bluegrass tunes on a tape player and typing away on my computer. It’s an odd mix of the modern (I could even get internet on my computer with a Orange key that I bought), the 1980’s (back to cassettes!), and the traditional, everything made out of mud and wood. All the same, it’s not really that odd. Technologies of a million different time periods seem to blend so seamlessly here; languages too, and religion for that matter. In the course of one conversation I might hear four different languages (Jaxanke, French, Wolof and Pulaar- maybe even an English word or two). And older healing and magical traditions (ie. Genies, charms, witchcraft) are all melded into a very devout form of Islam so well that it is difficult to distinguish between the two.
I wanted to write several days ago at the end of thanksgiving. But I suppose those funky chemicals in turkey got the best of me and I was bested by sleepiness and absurd fullness. It was a great thanksgiving, though, one worthy of a blog post and songs from the West African Griots at the very least.
We did it up in with true Kedougou spirit. It is such a cool culture around here. Goals, no matter how far-fetched or absurd, are tackled with a ‘can’t nothing stop us’ attitude. ‘Want to weld together a tandem bicycle? Go to!’, ‘Have our entire region run a marathon at the beginning of hot season in Tamba? Why not?’, ‘Make a Purducken for Thanksgiving? Yes!’. And this is just what we did- a chicken stuffed inside a duck, inside a turkey, inside a pig, all wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in the ground Hawaiian style. It was a crazy, ridiculous idea. But everyone got behind it. After all, who could dream up a more epic Thanksgiving feast? And we all worked hard. We found a turkey in Tamba and bought him a place on the roof of a station-wagon coming to Kedougou. The other animals we found around Kedougou and spent many a long hour plucking and butchering. A grisly process, to be sure, but I suppose it’s good to be so close to your food. And eventually, long past nightfall on the 23rd, we put white hot rocks and stuffing inside our purducken, wrapped it all up in banana leaves, and lowered it all into a hot pit to barbeque underground for the next 18 hours.

Thanksgiving, or any holiday for that matter, away from home just isn’t right. Without my family there it was hard to believe that this was really Thanksgiving at all, and the nostalgic feel and smell of November was burned up by our hot Senegalese sun. It felt more like we were having a mock thanksgiving feast in the middle of August. But as the big day really got going I got more and more into the Thanksgiving spirit. Everybody was cooking up a storm in the kitchen- pies, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes- and we were drinking homemade honey wine. We also had done a radio show in Malinke about what thanksgiving is and what we’re thankful for. (Nse Allah tantou baawo nna dimbaaya Amerik a nin men be Senegal bee be kedeyaarin!) Sometime in the afternoon we all took a break to go swimming in the Gambia river. And there, all of us frolicking in the cool water, I felt pretty dern lucky to be doing thanksgiving in Senegal. It’s not Thanksgiving with my family, but I’m thankful all the same.
When we got back it was time to pull the purducken out of the ground. My buddy CJ and I unwrapped the banana leaves and there it was- cooked to perfection, fall off the bone deliciousness! Everybody crowded around like kids around presents at Christmas, pulling big chunks of meat off the pig and savoring them with huge grins. It was so joyful- our purducken a success! By the time we finally got to the feast we were nearly stuffed. But we piled our plates nevertheless and didn’t slow down till the apple pie, carrot cake and cheese cake were all gone. Nse Allah tantou!

HIgh Adventure in the Land of the Genies

A couple of weeks ago my friends Marielle, Ben, CJ and I packed up our bags and set out on a great journey. Our destination was an unbelievable collection of giant rock cliffs called The Spires. They loom quite menacingly over the big mountain ridge that separates Guinea and Senegal, beautiful as could be and almost totally inaccessible. And, according to local legends, they’re inhabited by genies.

View of the spires from far far away


So, despite the mostly bemused objections of our villagers (‘lemme get this straight- you not only want to visit the spirit inhabited, toubab eating spires, you want to sleep there in toubab houses?!! (tents)’) we set off to climb these crazy cliffs and, inshallah, stay the night up there. Getting there was as much an adventure as actually climbing the mountain. Marielle and I cut down back paths from my site to meet with Ben and CJ. This entailed crashing through 6 foot high grasses that covered the path, gettin’ eaten up by tsetse flies but in turn eating some cooked straight on the coals corn with some friendly villagers along the way. Eventually we emerged from the mass of grasses, found our comrades and turned up back paths towards a town at the foot of the ridge called Dunkita. There we befriended a Jalunke man who offered to keep our bikes while we continued the rest of our journey on foot.
Next we climbed straight up the mountain to Marougou, a tiny Jalunke village at the foot of the spires. Marougou looks like, as Ben put it, a model West African village one might find in a cultural center or National Geographic. It is extremely poor but beautiful, a tiny cluster of huts and mango trees rimmed by the mountains of Guinea and the Spires. We found the village chief, gave him kola nuts, and asked if we could stay the night there. Our explanation of toubab houses really confused him but eventually he got the point and found a nice place for us to set up tents. As soon as we made camp though we were hit by a terrifying rain storm. Ben and I jumped in the tents to keep them from blowing away and Marielle and CJ were nearly hit by lightning as the rain through the rain on the way back from pulling water.

All of us with the Marougou villagers


As the clouds cleared the Chief’s son, Sory, invited us into his hut to dry off and make tea. We passed the rest of the evening in there, drinking tea and swapping stories about Genies while the sun set over Marougou. We had brought rice and given the villagers some money so they could make us dinner, and finally an old woman came into the hut with a tiny little bowl. We opened it up and found fonio, a delicious West African grain, and peanut sauce. Though the portion was tiny we ate gratefully, thankful for anything they could give. This turned out to be just round one though, and as soon as we were done another woman came with another bowl of fonio. Then came dinner number three, fonio again, dinner number four of the rice we brought, and more fonio for dinner number five! Amazing! It turned out that all the women in the village were making us little dinners to welcome us, fattening up the travelers with true Senegalese hospitality.
The next morning we woke up early. And, with some kind prayers from the elders and thank you’s all around (‘I nin walli’ in Jalunke) we headed out. Some little boys from the village took as far as they dared to go and then we veered off into the bush, cutting a line through the bush with a machete. It took a few hours to reach the base of the spires but then the real work began. Two times we tried to summit, crashing our way through fields of stinging nettles and clamboring over boulders only to be stopped dead by the sheer, insurmountable walls of the cliffs. After the second time we figured we had maybe one more attempt left in us before exhaustion and our alarming water shortage got the best of us. So after eating soggy bread (soaked in the rainstorm the day before) and sardine sandwiches we set off. Eventually I crested a ridge and there it was, a high grass valley nestled between two huge but potentially climbable peaks. Marielle and I took one side and CJ and Ben took the other. CJ and Ben found a way up and eventually we all were at the top of the highest point in Senegal, the flatlands of Senegal stretching out forever into the horizon far beneath us. It was beautiful.

Victory!


That night we played cards, rationed our tiny water supplies, and went to sleep early. We awoke in the middle of the night to a terrifying roar. Perfect Storm number 2 had rolled in and an unbelievable wind was tearing around the cliffs and making a noise like a dragon. It and the rain hit our tiny tents at the same time with incredible force. We all were starfished on the floors, praying that the wind wouldn’t pick up the tents and fling them off the edge of the mountain. The genies or whatever energy is found on the Spires were angry, but Alhamdoulilahi the storm finally passed and we lived through the night. We awoke the next morning to the sound of a million bees (genies round two?) but we hit out in our tents ‘till they had mostly flown away.
And thus ended our spires adventure. We climbed back down the mountain, greeted the Marougou villagers who all were quite happy to know we had survived the night, and then headed down the ridge to retrieve our bikes in Dunkita. For the Dunkita family who guarded our bikes we promised to bring children’s cloths and we’ll be printing pictures for our lovely Marougou hosts next time we pass through. For as crazy and fun as it was to climb the spires, the thing that has really stuck with me after our grand adventure was the kindness and hospitality of the people along the way. It is one fine fine place I am living in.

The Last Few Months: Ramadan, Camp, Nets and Mandolins

Greetings to everyone! I’m sorry it’s been such a long time since I last wrote. The internet odds have been against me lately though. In the first place our regional house in Kedougou is a lightning magnet, and our poor defenseless router (maybe 3 of them actually!) have suffered greatly during the rainy season. Too, I’ve been a busy man, doing work at my sight and around Kedougou. It’s been a good thing- I’ve loved working and I’ve been building lots of good fodder for a blog post. But, it hasn’t left much time to actually write one. Alas! I’m back in Kedougou now though, hoping to get one typed up before I bike back to Missirah tomorrow.

I think last I wrote was in July- we had just got done a long, tedious, but quite informative In-Service-training. So, catching up where I left off, I left IST and headed back to Missirah Dantila for August. My arrival coincided with the month of Ramadan. So I jumped write in to Sunkaro (fasting month in Jaxanke) and began fasting with my family. During Ramadan no one (except pregnant women and sick people) eats or drinks from sunrise to sunset. This is quite exhausting, and though people kept working and farming life really slowed down. At the same time though there is a great comraderie that develops, especially when people realized that their local adopted Toubab was fasting too. “Fode Mady! I be sundin? Iyo? Tonya??? Allah mu a to soneyala.” – something like: “Fode Mady, are you fasting? (me- yes indeed!) ‘Really? Amazing! May god make the rest of your fast easy/peaceful’.

Each day I’d get up at 4:30, roll myself out of bed to go break fast with my brothers. It was always pitch black, the milky way often brilliantly lit across the sky. In my brothers hut we’d all plop our sleepy selves down on the mat and crack sleepy jokes while we at left over rice and sauce and waited for the water to boil. Then we’d have coffee (as always with an absurd amount of sugar) and bread, occasionally even mayonnaise or jelly. That sounds kind of pitiful writing it now, but bread is a special thing in village, a kind of expensive treat, and something like jelly most people have never even seen. Afterwards we’d load up on water in preparation for a day of thirstiness and then head off to bed again or out into the fields, all before the sunrise.

Ramadan was difficult- tiring for the body and mind, especially when I got a terrible stomache sickness at the end of it all. But, at the same time, it was really rewarding. A sort of we’re all in this thing together thing, and my villagers really appreciated my willingness to give it a try. So, though I’m considering a nice vacation around August or so next year, I’m real glad I did it this time. And, at the end of it all, every one puts on their absolute brightest cloths, parades into the wilderness for a prayer, and then spends the rest of the day eating amazingly. So, I’m gonna make sure to be back for Korite next year!

All of my villagers in their Sunday best, out praying in the woods for Korite


As for work, I spent all of august conducting a baseline survey on health attitudes, knowledge and practice in my village. I went around, sometimes accompanied by my younger brother Karamba, asking people a whole barrage of questions about demographics, water and sanitation, malaria, HIV, pregnancy, and nutrition. The idea of a survey sort of confused folks, but mostly they were happy to chat, blabbing on about the crazy plant medicines they use for cuts or how they received mosquito nets last year but their cousin stole two of them. The information that I obtained is a little overwhelming but really interesting. 84% of people, for example, get their drinking water from the river. And, while almost 90% of them filter the water with a cloth, only 10% or so actually add bleach or other purifying tablets. In the end I will use these data to help inform future projects, but also to help evaluate their effectiveness as the projects progress.

September, though it started off a bit crappy with the giardia I mentioned, turned out to be an amazing, really exciting month. I started it off in a town called Dindefello helping out at a youth camp that Peace Corps hosts every year. The camp was a funny combination of regular old summer camp- trips to the beautiful waterfall, challenge courses, art- mixed in with development activities like making enriched porridge for undernourished children and making home-made bug cream to prevent malaria. I helped out all around, in porridges, challenge course, egg toss and sports. But my main activity was teaching creative writing/story telling.

Patrick teaching the Challenge Course at camp!

I was a bit apprehensive about this, not sure how it would go teaching this to kids who do almost solely route memorization in school. But it turned out amazingly! The kids were really receptive, and some came up with stories worthy of a children’s book. And, I just heard from another Volunteer Larocha, histoire creative was a bunch of her villager’s favorite activity. Yes!
After that it was off to Saraya to help with a mosquito net distribution. The distribution was part of a Universal Mosquito Net Coverage campaign that was actually started write here in the Saraya region a couple years ago. Its goal is to provide free nets to every bed in every village so every person sleeps under a net, with the end result of reducing malaria incidence and prevalence throughout the region. It has since been adopted by all of Senegal and is moving out across West Africa. Strangely though, Saraya and the neighboring zone of Khosanto themselves never received nets . Though this was too bad it meant that this year I had the lucky chance to be part of the Universal Net Coverage campaign as we finished up Saraya.
A lot of the prep work was tedious as could be – all day long trainings for the health workers who would do the community censuses and distributions, and a continuous logistics nightmare trying to make sure we had the right number of nets. But we kept each other sane with many a bean sandwich from the local bean sandwich lady and making a hilarious radio show about the distribution. And, when the days of the distribution actually arrived, it was a huge success. Each day we would ride out to different villages, monitoring the distributions and net education activities, interviewing people and making sure folks knew how to attach their nets and what they were for. You had your occasional malcontents for sure, but for the most part people were really happy and thankful. And, as another volunteer Jessie pointed out, soon you will be able to watch the rates of malaria deaths fall in the villages that were covered. Pretty amazing!

Me with a villager in Bembou, helping out at the net distribution

And that brings me to now. I am busily doing a bunch of computer stuff- too much actually- but gonna go back to site. There I’m hoping to start some individual education projects which I will detail next time I write. I also am helping get the grant and logistics for a training of midwives in my region, so more about that next time as well. And, last but certainly not least, I’ve recently acquired a mandolin and am hard at work learning it. Life is good!

Hope all is well,
Ian

Startin' Up Work

My brother Cheik and I- best Koto Ke (older brother) in the world

I’m back in the bright bustling of city of Thies, trying to take advantage of the abundance of power and internet access to write a blog post before we head back to Kedougou. We came up here along with all the other new(ish) volunteers from our stage almost two weeks ago for IST- In Service Training. IST consists of a whole bundle of trainings and sessions on actual technical skills, project suggestions and design, and development theory. The days are long- we start sessions at 8 am and usually aren’t done till 6 or so in the evening. But, disreguarding a couple particularly tedious sessions, they have generally been extremely helpful and informative. I find myself now at the end of this IST full of project ideas, perhaps a bit overwhelmed, but most of all ready and excited to return to site and start work.

And, whilst on the subject, I wanted to write about the beginnings of my work back in ol’ Misirah Dantila.  Somewhere around the beginning of July all of us health volunteers organized a Neem Cream tour throughout the Kedougou region. Neem is a miracle tree (though I think it’s actually invasive in Senegal) whose leaves have a myriad of magical anti-bug properties. It is used in gardening as both a prevention and a treatment for all sorts of pests. And, happily, it can be used to make a really effective mosquito repellant lotion! This is, or at least has the potential to be, a godsend in the fight against malaria in Senegal and throughout Africa.

Leah and a wonderful woman from my village stirrin' up a batch of neem lotion

Malaria is particularly endemic in my region of Kedougou, and cases have been sky rocketing now that rainy season and its accompanying mosquitoes have arrived full force. Despite universal bed-net coverage all sorts of people (siblings, villagers, even our nurse) have been falling ill. Tragically a little girl in my compound died a month or so ago from malaria and severe pneumonia. Her name was Sokxna- she was beautiful and cute as could be. One night I was playing music for all my villagers when my brother told us to knock it off cause Sokxna was sick. The very next morning I found out she had passed away in the night. The funeral had already taken place and the period of mourning already passed (grief is expressed by women screaming and crying at the top of their lungs. For little children, though, only a few hours or a night of crying is acceptable- testament to the frequency of infant death in developing societies I suppose).  This event and making sense of it afterwards was extremely upsetting. But I include it here in the hopes of showing a concrete example of the often too abstract nature of our work. We work in big generalities- fight malaria, improve maternal and child health- but it boils down to specifics like preventing this tragic and avoidable death.

Thus in July we organized a big regional Neem tour where we went from village to village teaching folks, especially women, how to make this homemade and quite affordable Neem Lotion.  Leah, a second year health volunteer, and I kicked off the Saraya region part of the tour in a tiny town near mine called Touba Kouta. We bicycled in to Touba Kouta in the morning of the 10^th (I think), finding the friendly village health worker and not a single woman to do the demonstration with. Slowly though they began filtering into our little shade structure and pretty soon we had a big, enthusiastic crowd.

 We began with a petite causerie (not sure the word in English- means a small, informal information sharing session) as to what malaria is, who knows how you get it, why it’s bad, etc.. Then we moved on to the neem making demonstration. We divied out tasks, some women cuttin’ up soap and some stirring the boiling water, Leah and I slowly explaining each simple step in Jaxanke. Pretty soon the women had themselves a huge batch of this frothy, creamy mosquito repellant (it looks kind of like lemon mousse- ah, how delicious would that be!). We doled it out so everybody could get a sample, smearing some of the leftovers on our arms and legs to demonstrate how to put it on.  Everyone clapped afterwards and were so thankful and enthusiastic, all energized about Neem and fighting malaria and so on. Leah and I left with huge smiles and happy hearts, basking in the success of this prototypical Peace Corps causerie.

Some of the women at the Misirah Dantila demo, pre-chaos

This basking turned out to be quite short lived though, cut down by the ridiculous chaotic failure of our next demonstration in my village! Back in my village two more volunteers, Kate and David, showed up and my brother Cheik put out a call over the loudspeaker at the Mosque for all the women of the village to come to my compound for the demonstration. Though there was by no means every woman at the causerie, we probably ended up with 70 women and 100 people in total! Given these numbers, the initial rounds of the talks and demonstrations were surprisingly peaceful. Everyone was very interested, quiet and interactive, all lending a hand and helping out with the triple batch of neem that we were trying to make.

When it came time to dole out little samples (every women who came was supposed to get a little bit) all hell broke loose! Women started shouting and grabbing, clinging at my arms and trying to block out each other in hopes of being first in line for Neem. I looked over and Leah was in similar straits, her bucket of neem held out over her head as a million crazy little ladies surged forward and tried to climb up her. I yelled at her to jump ship and we just dropped our spoons and neem, abandoning the mob to their own devices. This unleashed still more chaos! Some women got whole buckets dumped down their shirts as they played tug of war with others, and one crafty woman even stole a bucket and jumped a fence in hopes of escaping her outraged pursuers. Ha! It was pure craziness! In the end just about nobody got anything, the majority being spilled on the ground or on women themselves. As soon as there was nothing left to fight about, though, everybody calmed down and it was as if there had never been a near riot. Everyone was laughing and thanking us, back to their regular ‘peace only’ greetings and life.

The next day we forged on, on to a bunch of other communities and just as many stories. Over all it was a great, amazing experience. To be sure, I learned things that I will do differently next time, but we reached a lot of people and found a lot of interest. Too, I personally felt so good to have started work, experienced my first round of successes and failures, and to recognize that my language skills are getting to the point where I can comfortably, if still falteringly, do that work in Jaxanke. And now at the end of IST, armed with lots more knowledge and some good ideas, I am ready to head on back and keep on going.  

Ben and I in our Patriotic finest at the Fourth celebration

My favorite picture from IST- Chelsea and a baby kitty who was born here at the center during our PST- it's gotten so big!

Tambourines and Elephants!

This blog I actually wrote a couple weeks ago, so the timing is a bit off. Indeed it is now july 6th, which means I've been at site for about seven weeks. We just had a fantastic fourth of July party. All of the volunteers in Senegal came down to Kedougou to celebrate. We cooked 4 pigs (two of them in banana leaves in the ground), danced all day, and sent fourth great big joyful shouts of love towards ol' Amerique. Twas such a time! Now back to my out of date blog post-

Two cute little girls from my compound, both named Fanta!

June 22nd, 2011: I am back in Kedougou now, celebrating the end of my first five weeks at site. We were challenged to spend these five weeks without coming in to the regional house. Forsaking the big city charms of the house here (a kind of commune-esque series of huts actually) is supposed to make us all better volunteers in the long run, tougher and better equipped to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous village life fortune. For now, though, it seems like the Kedougou house itself is the true arrow slinger. Volunteers are fallin’ ill left and right, besieged by stomache issues and fevers and whathaveyous. I thankfully got my bout of sickness out of the way before coming here- spent four or five days lying around my hut with a high fever. But I maintain that it was not me that brought this plague to everybody else, for I had (mbe Allah tantoula) nary and intestinal problem during fevery days.

Overall things have been very good for me. With each passing week I find myself more and more comfortable in my village. I have been makin’ friends with folks and slowly learning the vocabularly to hold my own in absurd, loving and good natured insult matches: ‘You’re greedy and without manners!’ ‘Yeah? Well you lie and you are a perpetually joking woman’. ‘yeah, well ibe hoohoorin!’  I’m not exactly sure what hoohoorin is, but I think it has something to do with eating a lot (or my villagers just taught me a made up word cause it sounds so funny).  I explained to them Santa Clause, how he’s jolly and eats a whole bunch and says Ho Ho all the time. We concluded he must be hoohoorin as well.

I am slowly beginning to get a sense of the health situation of my village and opportunities for future projects.  Of course, malaria is one of the most immediate, grave problems.  It is particularly prevalent in our region of Kedougou, and will be coming in full force now that the rains are here.  Thanks to the recent volunteers Kedougou pioneered a universal bed-net distribution, so everyone should have a net to sleep under. There is still a lot of work to be done though, as many people use them improperly, claim they never got them, or refuse to use them at all. We also have a big push to teach people how to make and use neem lotion. Neem is a miracle plant that proliferates around here, the leaves of which can be used to make, among other things, a very effective bug repellent. Soon I will help conduct a big neem tourney in or Saraya region where we’ll be going from village to village teaching how to make the stuff.

Aerial view of Misirah Dantila, taken while repairing one of the roofs after a huge storm knocked off all the straw

Maternal and Child health is another huge focus of our work around here. Senegal, while blessed to have some really positive health indicators like a <1% HIV rate, has an extremely high maternal mortality rate. Too there are lots of opportunities and need to do childhood nutrition work. In Misirah Dantila and some of the surrounding villages I have been helping do baby weighing and vaccinations. Some kids are severely malnourished and every single one could use more vitamins and protein in their diets. Apart from that, I have begun to notice an inordinately high prevalence of cataracts in my village. So many old men shuffle around in their crappy flip flops (everyone in Senegal wears those cheap plastic beach flip flops), led around by a kindly child who acts as their eyes. I’ve heard stories of an eye clinic being set up here in Kedougou last year- Doctor’s from the U.S. actually came to work it. So I’ve told them I’ll do some snooping around and figure out if it’d be feasible to set up a traveling clinic in Misirah or another fairly central but way out in the bush town.

I should say that, though I’ve certainly been brainstorming and helpin’ out where I can, for the most part I’ve just been settlin’ in and hanging out these past weeks. At first it could be a source of stress, feelin’ like I’m not doing anything but chattin’ day in and day out when I should be working. But these first couple months are really meant for learning the language and the people and starting any serious projects is discouraged. So I’ve embraced the slow days and hanging out. I get up at 6:30, drink my mono corn porridge and go on my traditional round of greetings. I force myself to pass this one populated block of old, friendly, heckling women whose names are impossible to remember. And slowly I’m mixing up their last names less often,  but I still get a few wrong or have to sidestep my forgetfulness by claiming I’m in a hurry to greet my father.  After I make it to his compound and greet him and all the old, friendly, heckling men I am free. I hang out for a while and then take my leave. I slip back on my shoes (you have to take off your shoes to go into any important person’s house), point them in a direction, and see where the day takes me.

I almost always find some sort of adventure for my day- some folks will beckon me over to help them plant corn or a family will be repairing a hut and I lend my new found palm-rope making skills. This is cool, cause I always end up with new friends afterwards, and usually tea and invitations for lunch. I also spend a lot of time with the kids. We go on big searches through the bush for Saba’s- a green fruit whose yellow seeds taste incredibly like warheads. I also love to ask them about the animals around here. They will tell me a name of something- a Maloo for instance- that I have no idea. Then we will shift and maneuver language till we arrive at an understanding: ‘ it’s a huge, huge animal’ ‘An elephant?’ ‘No No- it lives in the river. It’s terrifying and dangerous’ ‘A crocodile? Does it eat people?’ ‘No it eats plants. And the smallest one is the size of a cow’ ‘Ah!! A Hippo!’. And so all of our conversations go about porcupines and hyenas and all manner of crazy sounding things that live around me.

I have also gone on a couple lovely trips whilst at site. Here is a picture of a trip to the waterfalls of Kafouri. My buddy Ben came off of his fungolimbi mountain and we met a current volunteer Jess there. So beautiful! I also have gone to see Marielle in Nafadji a couple of times. The last time I found a guy who claimed to play the djembe. After much goading he finally agreed to let me go get it, and pretty soon we had a big ol’ dance party going and kids were running in from everywhere. The coolest part, though, was to wake up the next morning and find all the little kids in her village making drums out of rusty coffee cans and scraps of cement bag paper.