Work and other things

So I haven’t really talk about work recently. I’ve been focusing more on life here in Cameroon as opposed to what I’ve been doing. But I’ve been working hard on a project in Mogode that takes up most of my time in village.

A few months ago, I started designing my “big project”: my legacy, the project that will take up most of my time. The proposals are in the work section of my blog but I’ll sum it up here for you. My idea is that all the groups that I work with start working together for the common cause of preventing malnutrition. The program I designed is being implemented in two small villages close to Mogode and Mogode itself, with hopes that if it proves effective, the next volunteer will expand it to the entire County. Basically though, Diedonne comes in once a month and does vaccination while introducing the “Health Topic of the Month” to the mother’s who get their kids vaccinated. Then, trained women in the community take over and hold two information sessions after Church on Sundays on the same topic. They will be giving more information and practical uses for that information such as how to make tofu or filter and treat your water. These women are also being trained to identify signs of malnutrition and encourage mothers to go to the hospital, where they can then be treated for free.

So basically, these Sundays will be a little information fest, with posters and activities in all these villages. Every month, the topic will change and new women will be in charge of the information fest in each village. To make sure it will stay alive and that it’s a sustainable project, these women are going to be working closely with the hospital. Once a month, the “experts” of the month will meet with Diedonne, and some staff from the hospital. There, everyone will go over the topic of the month, refresh their memories, catch up on new information, ect. So, hopefully, after everyone is trained, it will become a self-sustaining system with women teaching women and the hospital making sure that all the information is up to date and correct.

Some cool by products of this project is that some women will also be presenting at the hospital during Prenatal visit days to pregnant women. The women will have a small but steady cash flow with the soap and lotion sales that they are doing. Also, we will be working with Traditional Birth Attendants to try to encourage women who need to go to the hospital, to go and to hopefully make home birthing a safer endeavour.

In order to make this happen though, I have a lot of people to train. All the women need to be trained in their selective topics to become the “experts” of the month. In addition, Dieudonne will need to be trained as well. 

So that’s the plan! PC is going to help us fund the project, paying for transportation, food, materials, ect. We’re waiting for the funding cycle to kick in and to get approved, but I have high hopes that it will be fine.

The only other little hiccup that we’ve encountered is my lack of presence. Last month, I came back to post from the capital with so many plans. I made meeting after meeting for the next month. We scheduled our first training module and had plans for the women to start doing presentations in Nov. I was so excited. And two days later I got sick.

This is the reason for my long silence. Turns out I had malaria. But underneath the malaria, I have also contracted a virus of some sort. On the plus side though, I’ve seen how PC handles stuff like this and I’m super impressed. On the third day of my fever, PC sent a car to come and get me and bring me to a hospital. The guys had to travel over 11 hours to come get me. After a few days of non-successful visits to the Maroua hospital, our medical officer had me come to Yaounde to check it out. They were extremely thorough, kind, and attentive. So, you guys can rest easy. Bottom line, while we don’t know the exact kind of virus, we know in general the type of virus. So I’ll be sick for a bit, but they’re on top of it. Unfortunately, that means that I have to go to Yaounde regularly and get checked out. Meaning that I won’t be at post for long periods of time for an unknown amount of time. Which sucks. This puts my project a little behind schedule.  And this leads for an uneventful month full of travel and hospital visits. But all is well, work is progressing, and I’ll keep you all updated.