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!