How to Deal with Utter Failure

So we're going to talk about something uncomfortable, embarrassing, and something people don't necessarily like to talk about, especially when it come to themselves: failure.  It's taken me a while to write this post for the reasons listed above, but I feel more comfortable talking about it now, and I think it's because I've finally got a plan.While I've experience more failure and below averageness in the past year than I experienced in the first 22 years of my life, it hasn't hit me as hard as I thought it would.

We'll start with the less embarrassing of the two anecdotes:

 At camp I was in charge of organizing the First Aid session.  No problem, I've been a lifeguard for years; I'm literally a professional.  Give me a First Aid guide and we're all set. Done. We'll just write it out, give it to the local nurse (who should know this stuff) and everything will be just peachy.
Problem 1: I don't speak French. Problem 2: She lives 30km away and I'm really busy. Problem 3: Advising people to call 911 and seek medical attention ASAP is just not realistic. Nor do I want to teach anything super heavy like CPR or setting a bone.

First Aid with the Community Health Worker

 Problem 4 arrived on the day of.  The nurse who was supposed to come was really sick, bedridden with an IV, and couldn't make it.  We managed to get another health worker to agree to come.  The session was due to begin, and she was no where in sight.  We had a schedule, even if this is Senegal, so I thought it'd be a great idea to start the session.  Problem 5 arose fairly quickly after that: no one knew what I was talking about.  Apparently the difference between heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke do not translate.  We got through the Heimlich maneuver and heat illnesses before I gave up and had my French speaking toubabs try.  Around this time our health worker friend arrived; a woman had gone into labor and she had been busy doing her job.  How can you be mad at that?  So she picked up where we left off and even backtracked a little to cover stuff that wasn't exactly working when we did it.

I felt like a failure.  Why was I not more prepared? Why didn't I review my language skills beforehand?  Why was I not more energetic, engaging, connecting? Did the kids even care?  I spent the rest of the afternoon in a funk, kicking myself over and over again.

The upside of this failure is that is wasn't a complete failure.  Every night we did small group debriefs.  What did you like today, and what didn't you like?  Did you learn anything interesting and new, or was the day a wash and you were totally bored?

"I really liked First Aid today," piped up one kid.

I looked at him like he had 3 heads and a tail. "Really? Why?"

He then recited everything we had gone over that day, which was awesome because that meant he was actually paying attention, and shared a personal story.  "Now I know how to take care of myself." He pulled up his pant legs to show his shins.  "You see all of these scars?  Whenever I had a wound before, I would put dirt in them because I thought that would make them heal more quickly.  Now I know that is not good, and I should wash with soap and water until it heals."

Putting dirt in his wounds aside, this made me feel really great.  Even though it wasn't me responsible for making the kids understand, it meant the session wasn't a total failure: the kids had learned something. The rest of the kids piped up too, regurgitating information and sharing more stories, chipping away the big block of embarrassment in my chest.

It only got better from there.  Theatre, a terrifying and life ruining pastime in American schools, is a beloved pastime and wonderful teaching tool in Senegal.  For one of our last sessions we split up into our small groups and each picked a topic the camp had covered and prepared a skit.

WHAT?

 The first skit was about a family who didn't want their daughter to learn and gave their ungrateful son everything.  There was an intervention, and eventually the father decided to send her as well.  Flash forward a couple years, and the son is a soccer player and the daughter is a doctor.  The children come home to see their parents, and suddenly their father is choking on a fish bone.  The son watches in shock, knowing his father is going to die.  The daughter, however, springs to her feet and performs................ THE HEIMLICH MANEUVER. WHAT? I laughed so hard.  So the moral of this anecdote is that doctors are more useful than soccer players and even when you think you fail you can still get your message across.

Now comes the harder part.  My garden is dead.  While I was away at camp, the teachers were away on vacation as well, and the students became lackadaisical with tending the garden.  One day someone left the gate open.  A donkey got in and ate it all. All of it.

It's been difficult to deal with.  There's no coming back from that.  If it's dead it's dead.  They will not get any food from this garden this year.  After a month of mulling it over, avoiding the topic, and eventually coming to terms with everything, we've got a plan.  The garden may have died this year, but it will be a more sustainable project in years to come.  Instead of putting it under school authority, we will be transferring most control to two community members.  They will be nominated by their respective chiefs, and make sure the children are maintaining the garden properly.  In return for their service they will be awarded plots in the garden for personal use.

Will this work? I think it will, but in reality I can only have faith, and say, Inshallah.


Jam tan,
Kim