Zeke Emanuel Comes to Koumpentoum!

This past week, Koumpentoum had the honor in hosting the White House’s Advisor to Global Health Policy, Zeke Emanuel. Besides the fact they caught wind that there is a phenomenal Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Koumpentoum, Zeke and a Senior Advisor to USAID are doing an Africa tour to check out the President’s Malaria Initiative programs. Since Koumpentoum recently had a universal mosquito net distribution and pumping to eliminate mosquitoes in each of the homes in the district, USAID Dakar thought Koumpentoum would be a good site to visit and analyze which programs are and are not working. The small entourage only spent the morning in Koumpentoum and a small village about 18K into the bush, Kissang. I was invited to accompany the group because I helped out in the distribution last August.

Zeke definitely wanted to talk about the health issues and policies in the region, but I think all the Senegalese delegation had in mind was a party for him. You can imagine that the village of Kissang felt honored that delegates from USAID came to their village, but it’s not very Senegalese to want to talk about their problems and health issues. They feel that it would reflect failure on their part. When we arrived in Kassang, the entire village was ready with fine clothing, traditional outfits, tom-toms, and dancing. There were children holding signs that read “Thank you USAID, we sleep under our mosquito nets every night”. Clearly, the village had been well prepped for their arrival, which is nice, but not what Zeke was looking for. He requested that we swing by a village that isn’t prepared for his arrival to know if they actually received mosquito nets and are properly using them.

I’m not sure if the USAID delegation got everything they needed out of their visit to Koumpentoum and Senegal, but I had a good time having the opportunity to chat with them and visiting a village that I haven’t been to in my region. The visit also made me a little more interested in looking into doing more health work in the area. Inchallah.

Zeke chatting with the chief of the village.

Cultural dancing.

More song and dance.

Random crying baby. I thought her outfit was really cute.

From the left: Yaya (from Koumpentoum), Zeke Emanuel, Me, Nicole (Senior Advisor for USAID)

Sometimes You Just Have to Fail

Clearly, not everything is Senegal (or any country for that matter) goes as planned. For years, volunteers have discovered that you can pour your heart and soul into a project only for it to collapse in a day. In less developed countries, there are even more factors to consider for the potential of failure than you would in a more developed country. Not only are there the infrastructure barriers to consider (lack of reliable electricity, access to clean water, deteriorating roads), but there are cultural barriers that exist as well (lack of privacy, fatalism, the elasticity of time). While I didn’t witness a project crash in burn, I definitely experienced a bit of a set-back this past week.

For the past month, Koumpentoum has held a sort of “American Ideal” festival between the various youth groups called les OSCAR des Vacances. It’s essentially a theatrical, dance, and misses competition between the ASCs (Association Sportif et Culturelle) which roughly breakdown among neighborhoods. It’s closest thing that Koumpentoum has to a talent show and a pep rally. The event is suppose to raise awareness about important health and youth issues in the community, like HIV/AIDS and gender equality, through the theatrical skits and on-stage questions and conversations.

For the finale, the JICA volunteer in Koumpentoum (Miki) and I had discussed about doing a small presentation about trash and how long it takes items to decompose. We had put together a small powerpoint questionnaire (in French) and a script, talked to hospital about loaning trash cans for the event, talked numerous times with the director of les OSCAR des Vacances, and made posters to put over the trash cans to signify the two types of trash – biodegradable and non-biodegradable. I had also put together a questionnaire about HIV/AIDS in Senegal. Both short programs were to be presented at the beginning of the evening of the finale.

I was in Dakar the day before the finale, so I rushed back to Koumpentoum in order to be present for the event. When I arrived, I learned that it had been postponed by a week. When the evening of the finale arrived, we waited for about four hours for the event to commence. I had set up everything on stage and waited patiently for our turn to do our little bit. By the time they were ready for us, I discovered that someone had messed with the projector while I was not looking and it would not work. By the time we finally got the projector working, we had missed our window of opportunity. We never got a chance to do our brief presentation. Since the event started four hours late (actually a week and four hours late), the night dragged on and I had to leave early, which was around midnight. I heard the night didn’t finish until around 3 a.m. The next morning, when I went back to the foyer de jeune (where the event was held), there was trash everywhere except in the trash cans we put out. Two of the trash cans were crushed from people trying to stand or sit on them and our posters that we put up had been stolen. My weeks’ preparations were a total waste. I was glad that I was going to Tambacounda that morning, because at that point, I really needed a little break from site. I know I can’t expect to serve two years here and not have any failures, but it still doesn’t make my experience any more pleasant when I do.

Food Give-a-Way

A couple times a year, the World Food Programme offers food to communities that are in need at scarce times. During the rainy season in Koumpentoum, some food is hard to come by because it is all waiting to be harvested in the fields. The World Food Programme offered individuals in Koumpentoum corn, beans, and peas. The women’s group that I work with attempted to make an entrepreneurial endeavor out of the program. The food given away from the World Food Programme is only for consumption – it cannot be sold for a profit. The women decided to save some money to buy some of food item to stock pile for when food is scarce and they can make a small profit off it next season. That way, they had food for consumption from the WFP and could generate an income with the purchased food which will later be resold when the supply is down and the demand is up. I didn’t have any of the hand in these transactions. I merely showed up to chat with the women and take some pictures of the distribution.

The buckets lined up to be filled.

Women gathered to separate and disperse the food.

Dispersing . . .

One woman with her share.

Taking the goods home.

Camille’s Baby Shower

In a little Bambara village about 50K southwest of Tambacounda, Peace Corps Volunteer Camille lives with her host family and her dog, Tiki. Camille is an Environmental Education Volunteer and has been in country for about a year and a half. Some of the work that Camille does in her village and surrounding villages is promoting good post and prenatal health practices. Over the past 8 months or so, Camille met with a number of women in her area to discuss topics such as breastfeeding, malaria prevention, diarrhea and rehydration, hand-washing, and baby nutrition. Camille worked with various women in her village to be able to train other women how to properly care for their youth. At the end of the program, Camille promised the participants a fete (party) that would involve a health fair to demonstrate what they know about healthy maternal practices to other men and women in the community. This is where I come in. Camille needed a number of volunteers to help facilitate the causerie stations and encourage the women who are leading the sessions. Seizing the opportunity to visit another volunteer’s site and assist in her project, I volunteered.

The morning of the health fair, I and five other PCVs started out on our bicycles for Coeur Bamba (Camille’s village). It still being in the midst of the rainy season, we ran into a temporary torrential downpour, we then overshot our “exit”, which is actually a small village on the side of the road that we were supposed to turn off at. About 5K down the road, we encountered another volunteer, who is more familiar with the area, and his counterpart on their bicycles heading to the same event. The only difference is they were going the right direction. After doing a little bit of backtracking, we found the road we were supposed to be on. About 2K further into the bush we came across a Peace Corps vehicle stuck in the mud. We got off our bikes to help push the car out of the mud, and then mounted our bikes for the last kilometer and half to Camille’s village.

Once we arrived, Camille showed us her hospitality by giving us water to bathe and then we were ready to help out for the day. I was assigned with another Wolof speaker to assist in the demonstration of how to make a oral rehydration solution that is necessary to replenish your body with salts and sugars when you have diarrhea (a major problem in the villages). We also discussed ways to prevent diarrhea. We worked with one of the woman in her community who already knew about the points of the causerie, but was just a little bit shy getting started. After a couple tries, she was able to present the causerie without our assistance.

Of course, no Senegalese event is complete without a lunch of ceebu gen (rice and fish), tom-toms, and dancing. By the end of the day, it was too late to bike back to Tambacounda, so we got a ride with Peace Corps and slept sound.

No Senegalese event is complete without dancing.

Me and Katy leading a session on Oral Rehydration Solution and hand washing.

Participants demonstrating how to properly wash their hands.

Lots of kids and women hanging out for the day.