There’s a saying in French here “Ca va aller.” It basically means, “It’ll be fine” or “Don’t worry about it.” It’s a very useful saying here. It works when I’m frustrated about something, when I’m stressed out about something, or when I don’t know what’s going on. It also works when I don’t understand what people are saying to me in French. I say it and people seem to just laugh. I have a feeling that “Ca va aller” may be a theme throughout my next two years here…

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Stage, Part II

October 29, 2011

(Stage is French for training period. Also pronounced differently.)

We recently welcomed a new group of 25 trainees to Burkina Faso and I was lucky enough to host 3 of them for demyst, a weekend trip trainees do during their training to see the life of a volunteer. They came to my site about 2 weeks ago. They had been in country for one week and two days when they arrived in my village, so just off the plane. We had a lot of fun and they were a really great group – and really good sports about lots of biking! They arrived in my village on a Thursday. We ate lunch at the marche on the road and then biked back 9 km to my site. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at my house and then went to greet a few people. Despite my insistence to the chief that it was proper for us to go greet him at his house, he insisted that he come greet us at my house (which is really bizarre and not at all traditional for a chief in Burkina, but it’s definitely refreshing to have a chief like him). On Friday, we did a family planning sensibilisation (health talk) at a mosque after the 1:00 pm prayer (Friday 1 pm is the big prayer where everyone goes to the mosque). It overall went really well. The imam was really supportive and I was really happy at the end when he added a comment about how using family planning methods allows Muslims to practice Muslim values but protect women’s health at the same time. Saturday, we went to the marche and then met with the CSPS (health clinic) staff and community governing board. I was really excited to share my experiences and my village because I live in an amazing village with an awesome family. It was also a cool chance for me to look back and reflect on the past 16 months. I don’t always see how I’ve grown, but moments like that, I can.

It was also exciting because I finally got around to doing something I’ve wanted to do for a while (well decorating my house too, but that’s not the important part). I’ve wanted to sensibilise men on family planning for a while. During the family planning sensibilisation, we focused on the importance of family planning and I particularly focused on the role men have in this decision. There’s this approach Peace Corps talks about called Men as Partners. It’s really important, especially here. You can’t empower women without getting the men on board. It would be dangerous to the social dynamics and brews resentment. Any time you talk about women’s development and empowerment, you have to talk about how men are involved, what role they play, and how you can encourage them to be supportive. Anyways, using this approach, I’ve wanted to talk to men about what people usually consider women’s health issues, such as family planning. Because it was successful, I am going to try it in other villages and on different topics (like the importance of giving birth at the health clinic versus at home).

I am now working the training for the new volunteers for a week. It’s exciting, but definitely lots of work. But again, also a good chance for me to reflect back on the work I’ve done the past 14 months, recognize success and see what I can do better and set goals for my last 10 months. It’s also cool to realize how comfortable I am here – I feel adjusted and integrated into my community. Things that I thought would never become easy are second nature now.

Projects in village are going well. Moving forward on the World AIDS Day project. We are doing an awareness campaign. We will train community health agents on HIV and then on World AIDS Day in December, they will do educational activities. We will also have a theatre performance and a soccer game. Right now, I’m trying to get the mayor’s office involved in this as well. School started mid-October, so I’m doing more health classes. Just last week, I went back to the school to do a health class. I am finishing up hygiene (which I started last year, but I wanted to do hygiene with the two newest classes before I move on to a new topic).

Last blog, I mentioned that I was doing the malnutrition program again, but with some modifications. It’s the same thing I did back in May – find malnourished babies and do a rehabilitation program with them. You met with the moms every morning for 12 days, make enriched porridge and do health education – mostly nutrition, but other topics as well as they are intertwined. It’s gotten off to a slow start this time. While it’s cool that I have 3 counterparts trained on the program and it’s a chance for me to be more hands-off and let them learn by doing and empower them, it’s also logistically less organized. While it may have more bumps along the way now, it leaves them with the skills to do this project when I’m gone.

One thing I’ve learned about malnutrition recently is how much it’s related to so many other health topics. I used to just think about malnutrition in terms of food. But what I’ve seen recently though is that children that are always sick become at risk for malnutrition or fall into malnutrition. A big issue here is hygiene-related illnesses. If a child is always sick with a bacteria infection, parasite, diarrhea, or other hygiene-related illness, they lose weight, lose their appetite, and can’t retain the nutrients they take in, meaning they don’t eat and don’t gain weight. Same thing with malaria. I had a mom come in with her child and the child was moderately malnourished. After talking to her, I realized she understood nutrition and tried to feed her child well, but the child didn’t want to eat and because she was always sick, she was losing weight to the point where she fell below the line into malnutrition. So particularly for malnourished children or children at risk of malnutrition, it is important to talk not only about nutrition, but preventing other illnesses (such as hygiene-related illnesses or malaria) so that the child has the opportunity to eat well and gain weight. That’s one thing we need to focus on more during this second try at the malnutrition program.

I harvested my peanuts finally! As usual, it turned out to be way more work than I expected. Seriously, every time I went to work in my field, I swear it grew larger. Because I only weeded once, it was tough to get to all the plants, but apparently they yielded really well (according to my brother, I have no frame of reference). I averaged about 10-15 peanuts per plant, although some had almost 30 peanuts. Of course, now I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of all these peanuts because I’ll never eat all of them. And I always get gifted peanuts because I live in the peanut region.

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