How to get a mini-me

Dear Aissatou Sadio Diallo,
Welcome to the world!
Love, your tokora

As I've mentioned throughout my blog, Senegalese people are named after family members or close family friends.  While this keeps the variety of names to an unheard of low level, it's pretty exciting to have a baby named after you.  All of the kid in my compound are named after sisters or brothers of my baaba or neene, except Yaya, who is named after his paternal grandfather, and the newest addition to our family, Aissatou Saio, who is named after me!

Oumou with Moutarou and Aissatou

Let me give full disclosure here:  I was dying for this baby to be a girl, and I was dying for it to be named after me.  I'm named after my baaba's neene, who died about six months before I got site. My CBT tokora and I were absolute besties- both of us felt like we owned the other one a little bit.  It's something that I really loved about Senegal during my training and it's something I've really missed since tainin ended.  I've just been floating along, tokara-less, owning no one and no one owning me.


UNTIL NOW.

In an utterly shameless fashion, I've been dropping hints that this baby (who was always a girl in my mind) should be named after me.  "Oumou, I saw this kilo of bananas in the market and just thought of you!"  "Omar, here's some extra tea, you've been working SO hard!" "After the baby is born, I'll carry her on my back all the time!" "Neene, tell them to name her after me."

Finesse is overrated.

Me and my tokora at her denabo

Aissatou was born February 23, 2014  to Omar Diallo and Oumou Keita.  She has an older brother, Moutarou, age three, who doesn't really like her since she stole his mom.  she's beautiful, if small.
When any baby is born, the parents sit around and dream about the little weird-looking pile of skin's future.  As a part-owner of Aissatou, I've been thinking about her future a lot.  Will I see her learn to walk and talk?  Will she go to school? For how long? When will she get married?  Will she have a choice in the matter?  What can I do to make sure this little girl has everything that should be available actually available to her?  What kind of role can I take in her life when I come home, or will she just forget me?

I don't have a lot of answers.  The way things are run right now, I think she will go to school.  For how long, I don't know.  Neither of her parents learned for very long, and her mother got married at 15.  I want to believe things will have changed so much in fifteen years that that will not be an expectation for the precious Aissatou, and I have a new motivation to create these discussions.

Roadtripping with the Counterparts

The Peace Corps recently offered a 3 day nutrition training to PCVs in Tamba, Kedougou, and Kolda regions, and the best part was that we got to bring our counterparts.  The point was to link nutrition and agriculture, two of the most important aspects of food security.  I brought my community counterpart, Moussa, who is a farmer, part owner of a cashew transformation business, and a new relais; and Fatou, our village's longstanding relais.

During the training volunteers and counterparts were split up, since volunteers had already received most of the training during PST or IST.  this was counterparts could go into detail (in Wolof) while not having to worry about translating for their volunteers, and volunteers could quickly and easily discuss the issues relevant to their communities. The training was an overall success.  Moussa and Fatou said they learned a lot, and they each got a nutrition handbook they can keep until the end of time.
At the end of training the three of us made an action plan- what could we do in village with this new bounty of knowledge?  So far Moussa and I have done a complet talk and neighboring Sare Hamidou with our good friend Hoyo, and Fatou joined us for a talk in Sanankoro.

We talked about basic nutrition for everyone.  There are so many different guidelines for how to feed different age groups (especially pregnant and nursing women and children under 5) but we decided to stay general for our first health talk.  What exactly does gnutrition mean? Why do we need to eat healthy? What are we doing not to ensure we have access to nutritious meals, and what can we change?


To drive the point home and give a concrete example of what makes a good meal, we used the complet model.  This sis a Senegal-specific example using traditional Senegalese dress.  he tikka, or headwrap, represents this foods that makes you smart- fruits and vegetables; the shirt represents things that make you strong- fish, peanuts, eggs, meat, beans; and the skirt represents foods that give you energy- corn, rice millet, bread.  We had the women place drawn pictures of food on the complet based on how its nutritional content affects your body.  They got it, but there was a big discussion on whether it's feasible or not, because of money or seasonal availability.

This will be an ongoing project.  we'll conduct home visits with the women to make sure they understood our message, and take the opportunity to talk to their husbands as well.  Inshallah, this will be a onthly event, so look forward to similar posts!

Stomping Out Malaria Bootcamp

I was recently given the wonderful opportunity to attend the 9th Stomp Out Malaria Boot Camp in Theis.  Theis? What's so special about that, you go there all the time.  Sure, but what made this time so cool was that this event was Pan-African. Thirty-six other volunteers and Peace Corps employees from 18 different countries all around Africa came together to have an intense and in depth discussion on something that has plagued all of our communities: malaria.

Where does malaria come from? Who is most at risk? What are some of the best practices we has health workers can bring back to our communities? Is there an end in site?  During the 10 day training with 12 hour days, we delved deeper into these topics than I ever have before.  We got to Skype with leading professionals in their fields, see a community that had essentially eradicated malaria (gasp, it can be done!), visit an entomology lab that breeds and tests mosquitoes in order to stay up to date on how effective the preventative measures we use are, and share cross-country tactics we can use in our own communities.

In Africa malaria is an endemic disease, with 85% of malaria cases and 90% of deaths worldwide.  The most at risk groups are pregnant women and children under 5 (85% of malaria deaths are children under 5).  Malaria initiatives are very focused on these groups- in Senegal pregnant women receive free nets and malaria prophylaxis at their pre-natal visits, and children under 10 can receive free malaria treatment at a health post.  Senegal has been doing some really innovative work in order to reach pre-elimination stage.

Although pregnant women and children are the most susceptible, pre-elimination is not possible by targeting them alone.  Senegal is in their second wave of universal bed net distributions.  Many countries do not do free, universal coverage campaigns.  They tend to offer subsidized nets or free nets to at-risk groups.  But Senegal found they weren't getting the results they wanted, and are now doing another round of universal distribution.

Senegal also has the PECADOM program, and is scaling up a new and improved PECADOM Plus program.  The PECADOM program places a community health worker, called a DS-DOM, in a rural location (where the population is farther from health facilities and therefore more likely to die) with a backpack full of anti-malarial drugs.  These drugs are free, and anyone can come to this worker at any time to receive treatment.  The PECADOM Plus program, however, takes this model and changes it from a passive to an active treatment.  In the Plus program, community health workers do sweeps of their catchement and actively look for cases of malaria.  Statistics show this model is more effective and saves more lives, and Senegal is hoping to expand the program from Kedougou to Kolda and Tambacounda as well.

But the awesome thing about this training was that it wasn't all about Senegal.  Sure, Senegal is doing some really awesome things, but so are other countries.  I learned that co-infection of AIDS and malaria is a huge problem in East Africa.  I learned that they're making a vaccination that should wipe out the disease, but even though there's that light at the end of the tunnel, we can't stop trying to stomp out malaria because there are millions of people between then and now that could die.


But this camp was more than just malaria related. It was also the perfect opportunity to share our adopted cultures and discover how similar our experiences are despite geographical differences.  There was some volunteer to volunteer competition: You think your hut is tiny? You think that's a bad giardia experience? You think 14 hours is a long car ride? Well, let me tell you...

And that bonding experience is important.  Knowing that every Peace Corps Volunteer faces the same day to day challenges, no matter the culture, or living situation or country, is extremely comforting.  When I meet another Peace Corps Volunteer, I know that I can have an engaging, exclusive, culturally stimulating conversation, and they'll get it.  And that led me to something that I really needed: a renewed sense of purpose.  A lot of time volunteers can feel overwhelmed with the amount of options we have for work, or feel lost in a larger purpose.  Malaria kills 500,000 people a year, what can I do in my village of 450 people to have any impact on that number?

Garden

     Back in December, I shamelessly solicited you all for money so I could build a school garden in my primary school. Thank you to those who donated. I'm overwhelmed by the amount of support I receive both emotionally and financially (for projects!) from all of you at home, so thank you all.

     The garden was constructed and planted by early February.  Teachers, kids and community members alike are excited.  I can't tell you how many times a day I'm asked how my garden is and how the plants are doing.  "Jam tan," I tell them, "but it's YOUR garden!"

     On top of that, they also tell me when things aren't going well!  Full disclosure, I've been insanely busy these past couple of months, ad only made it out to the garden a couple of times a week to check and see that everything wasn't dead.  I'm also not a gardening expert, and while I've had some training and own a manual, there's a lot you can't learn from a book.  So my neene told me the lettuce didn't look good, and sure enough, the sun was burning it all; I talked to the teachers in charge, Monsieur Kande, and we're getting some shade.  Organization also needed to be readdressed- the kids are the ones taking care of the garden, but a lot of them don't know what they they don't always know what they're doing.

     To remedy this, I brought in Sustainable Agriculture PCV Brad Berry, to the the kids a better idea of how to take care of a garden.With the help of Monsieur Kande, we used a question and answer format to discuss how to properly water beds, mulch, space plants, and maintain plant nurseries.  For practice, we thinned the carrot nursery.  Next time, inshallah, we're going to transplant the onion nursery and learn how to properly prepare a bed with all of the amendments.

     I love this project because it covers several different areas.  Aside from the physical benefits (VEGETABLES) and giving the children a project of their own (instead of making them do all of the work and reap none of the benefits), several volunteers and I are going to be doing regular classes on nutrition, gardening, and trees.  I think it's really powerful when a bunch of adults give children this much attention, especially here.  School is a lot of memorization, and these activities can give kids a reason to get excited to love school!

Brad and me with our training group