Crazy Train

In America, I think I’m pretty sane – almost even keeled to a fault. Here though, I think there’s something in the water (besides amoebas) that makes us all a little crazy. Every volunteer I know experiences the same cycle of daily highs and lows. Not just good days and bad days, but good hours and bad hours, good minutes and bad minutes that come and go with the flip of a switch. My morning can be humming along, bright and sunny as could be when one off-hand comment of “you can’t speak pulaar” or hiss in the marketplace (a not-always-rude but 100% annoying occurrence) sets me off. Back home, it was only once in a blue moon that I really wanted to throw a right hook at a perfect stranger, but these days I find myself practicing more self-restraint than I’m proud of (and sometimes practicing no restraint at all, saying whatever I feel like because I know no one will understand me). That’s not to say I’m unhappy every day, just more riled up than in a previous life – in the words of another volunteer “this country reveals parts of myself that I didn’t know existed.” Many of those parts are good, some are bipolar.

As I approach the 6-month mark in village, these highs and lows seem to be dissipating and I feel less crazy day-to-day. Hopefully by the time I get back to an English speaking country my habit of telling people off in public doesn’t end up with me getting socked in the face.

Busy Week

So much went on this week, I don’t know where to start! After spending two days in Kolda (city) writing my well grant and doing other paper-work/life-organizing I headed to the eastern part of Kolda (region). I went with Sharon to visit our friend Sarah in her village of Sare Coly Sali, do some training-group catching up and watch a project of a second year health volunteer, Charlene, nearby. Sharon, Sarah and I pretty much spent two days in tears laughing at each other and one afternoon at a nutritional porridge-making demonstration. Charlene is in the middle of a huge project in six villages where she works with women’s groups to teach nutritional porridge making and other things nutrition-related. The demo was great – very clear and something I’d love to do, albeit on a smaller scale, in Sare Sara. And to top it off, the peanut butter-banana-millet porridge we made was delicious.

After two days out east, Sharon and I decided to pinch a few pennies (aka save $6) and bike back west to the finale celebration of Kelly’s relais training (I went to one of them a few weeks ago, another great event I want to copy). The bike from Sare Coly to Thiewal Lao is about 78 kilometers and took us just over 4 hours. Luckily the morning was cloudy and with a brief midday rest in Dabo we made it in one piece.

Wednesday was the big fete at Kelly’s health post. The event was mostly run by the health post ICP (head nurse/semi-doctor/master in chief) and a trainer from World Vision, who are both excellent. The event included skits put on by the new relais as well as demonstrations with anti-mosquito neem lotion, nutritional porridges and condoms. In true Senegalese fashion there was a huge speaker system, incredibly loud gas generator and no concern for scheduling.

After five days away I finally made it back to Sare Sara Wednesday night, only to turn right around Thursday morning and head back to Dabo for Tigi’s first visit with the vet. After so much biking earlier in the week I opted to brave a car and luckily she was incredibly well behaved on both buses – even though she shook like a leaf half the time and got me a few crazy looks from other riders (who, for the record, had much more annoying chickens/goats/babies while Tigi was perfectly silent and stayed on my lap the entire time). Kelly met us in Dabo with her dog Kindi but our grand plans of a puppy play-date were shattered as they spent the entire day snarling at each other. Overall it was a success though, and now Tigi is one rabies shot down.

I finally got one day back in Sare Sara to do laundry, scrub my hut, greet everyone in town and meet a few visiting missionaries. Now I’m back in Kolda preparing for another week of traveling - up to Thies for our health summit on Monday, then a few days off at the beach, Halloween in Tamba and then a potential visitor (Maria) in Dakar.

It’s going to be a crazy next few weeks with lots more travel, holidays and projects starting but it’s nice to feel like I’m getting things done, doing semi-real work and pleasing my village - they give me a hard time for being away butt are always supportive when I’m off seeing other projects that I can bring back.

Grant-ed

Hi folks. I just submitted my first grant for a well improvement project in Sare Sara and a few of the small surrounding villages. The organization I submitted to is called Water Charity and they fund a ton of projects for Peace Corps Volunteers throughout the world. All of the projects are water and sanitation related with a limit of $500. Check them out here: www.appropriateprojects.com.

Here's a picture of what we're hoping to fix:

I'm hoping the have it all done by Thanksgiving and then do a second phase in the village where our health hut is located.

The World According to Koumba

My muraling endeavors have reached a pinnacle. The world map at the community center is finished, and while it wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, it still took 4 days to complete. I may be retiring my paint brushes for a little while.

Here's a (reverse, whoops) time-lapse look at what it takes to do a 4-by-6 foot mural...

Oh Baby

This was written on Monday…

In an effort to practice full disclosure to my loyal blog audience, I will admit that my work has no gone exactly according to plan 100% of the time (shocking, right?). Those “baby weighings” I’ve mentioned have not been the most successful events – with my two attempts thus far either crashing soon after takeoff due to weather or never making it off the runway (publicity error). In all honesty though, I’m not too discouraged. My village attitude is the same as my college one – work smart, not hard. I’m taking the approach of seeing just how much work I need to put in to motivate/encourage/facilitate my community and counterparts. This hands off approach is perhaps not the most productive – it involves a fair amount of waiting – but I’m justifying it with an effort to promote sustainability. Yes, I just used the development cliché of the decade, my apologies. Aside frohm being a convenient way to justify my innate laziness, I really do want my community to take ownership of our projects – that they requested! – so beyond doing the things they really can’t do (write grants, get supplies, access information) I’m trying to let the projects happen on their own time. Want a community garden? I’ll be here all week, come get me when you’re ready to work. I don’t want to feel like I’m forcing my community into anything (which let’s be honest, I don’t really have the backbone to do anyway) or that I have hold their hand through the whole thing (I’ve never done most of this stuff either!).

This part was written on Friday…

So that whole thing about “working smart, not hard” – I had the “not hard” part down just fine but only just figured out the smart part - relating to baby weighing anyway. On Wednesday afternoon I had my first successful baby weighing with my new female counterpart, Anta. In an effort to make my baby weighings seem legitimate I was trying to hold them at the community center. I figured it would be a win-win: pretty new building and I wouldn’t have to deal with the politics of having it at the chief’s house. Not to mention, there’s a roof. Now, Sare Sara is not a big place -it takes exactly 4 minutes to walk from one end to the other. While the community center is located slightly outside of the main “residential area” it is right on the road and within 5 minutes of every compound. I also thought that by having my event at the center we could practice a modicum of confidentiality, so that when I told a woman her baby was malnourished not everyone in town could hear. News flash: HIPPA does not exist in Senegal. Confidentiality is not high on the list of baby weighing concerns for my village moms. What is high on the list? Dressing up.

So on Wednesday I tried the community center situation once more, but quickly realized is just wasn’t going to work. Anta and I relocated to her compound, which conveniently is also the compound of the head of the women’s group (her mother-in-law, and yes I believe nepotism was involved in her counterpart appointment). Five minutes later and the women started pouring in. I still felt uncomfortable telling women their baby is underweight in front of a whole crowd, but clearly I was the only one with such reservations. Once again, my awkwardness is the only thing standing in my way.

Another excitement of the day was the introduction of Koumba’s Special Health Cards. Since so many of the women either don’t have or can’t read their health cards – and honestly neither can I, doctor scribble is nearly impossible to decipher in French – I decided to make my own. The cards I made are incredibly simple – just three rows of boxes to indicate the baby’s age, weight and color-coded nutrition status. All the moms need to know now is that green is good, yellow isn’t good and red is really bad – no reading necessary. I had told Omar that I want to start an incentive program – controversial, I know, but everyone likes prizes – and while I wasn’t ready to announce it he went ahead and told everyone they get prizes for three greens in a row. I’m thinking the first ones will be a printed picture of the mom and her healthy baby but I still have a few months to work on that. I only had 8 cards to give out this time, but they seemed be a hit and hopefully in a month they won’t all be lost (I imagine the format is going to take a little tweaking to ensure clarity and durability).

The other good thing to see was that although 20% of the babies were in the “yellow zone,” most of them were within about a kilogram of the good “green zone.” This means I have some good candidates for an intensive nutritional porridge program I’m considering doing that is designed to close that small gap in a short period of time. Also, the percent of babies in the yellow went down considerably from the first weighing which happened during Ramadan, and indicates that starving season is coming to a close (thank god, I’m so sick of white rice).

And, a special shout out to my new favorite baby - Samuel Brandt Eisner! Congratulations to my cousin Ben and his wife Jess on their new addition, and thank you Sam for taking over the role as the youngest cousin.

Yay babies!