Hey all, first of all, let me just express my thanks openly.
When I got to Maroua, I found our PO Box there full of letters, notes, and
packages for me. I feel so downright loved. Thank you family and friends for
your well wishes, your thoughts, and the action of putting that love in my
little mailbox. You’ll be hearing from me!
Unfortunately, now, more than ever, my internet use is super
limited. Internet in Maroua was down, and my internet key that I have at post
uses a carrier that has been out of service for three weeks at the time of my
writing. As a result. I have these updates piling up, as well as emails to
check and responses to send. So, please forgive me my delay in answering any
email, facebook (although, please I prefer email), or any other type of
messaging (although in that case, you’ll probably never get an answer, with my
limited internet time, I tend to focus on my email).
Enough for excuses: my update! Today was really extremely
successful day, in more ways than one. I woke up at 5:30 to get ready to go “en
brusse”, meaning that we went out to a small isolated village where people have
a hard time coming in to the hospital. I do this one of my counterparts a few
times a week. We end up hitting each of the little villages in our area about
once a month. There we do our vaccination campaigns. Meaning, that my
counterpart actually sticks them, while I try to communicate with the mothers
(very hard considering none of these women in the villages speak French;
depending on the village, they speak either Fulfulde or Kapsiki), and when that
fails, just make funny faces at kids and sometimes hold one or two. Today, I
had the lucky chance to meet a mom and her 3-hour-old daughter. While I still
haven’t witnessed any births yet, this isn’t the first newborn that I’ve met
and I’ve been able to watch and even help with the Prenatal consultations at
the hospital. This village, Ploumtom, is one that I’ve written of before; this
is the village with the little girl with suspected polio. It’s a cute little village
on top of a hill above a small stream. You can see the mountainous landscape
for miles.
When we got to Ploumtom, my counterpart (hereto after
referred to as Dieudonne) did the rounds with his loudspeaker that plays jingle
bells, letting mothers know we’ve arrived. While we waited for them to show up,
we visited some of Dieudonne’s friends. The first house we visited was dark and
smoky. We went in and sat on the matt they rolled out for us. Welcoming us into
her home was the oldest, skinniest, most lively little old lady I’ve ever seen.
You could see every muscle and sinew in her arms and legs. She was so cute.
Through Dieudonne, she joked with me about finding me a husband and coming back
to the states with me.
From there, we visited the house of Dieudonne’s cousin. She
married the village medicine man. When we got there he and his grandson were
busy preparing some natural remedies against Typhoid. This consisted of
smashing sticks and pulverizing some bark. On the bowl at his feet he already
had shredded leaves and what looked like mulch. Dieudonne, who works for the
hospital, said his medicine was effective and took a swig of another medicine
in front of me. It looked like apple cider gone very bad with cloudy mold
floating in it. I politely declined.
From there, we continued with the vaccines. There weren’t
many mother’s today, but there was a mother with the first set of twins I’d
seen here. They were telling me how here, after twins are born, its required to
through a huge party, or else both will die before they reach three months old.
On their necks, they had strings with little leather pouches sewed on.
Apparently these are to guard the kids against the spirits that come and kill
little kids. (bandits maybe? Or a supernatural explanation for natural
sickness?)
From there, we left to head back to town, but we took a
little detour. Dieudonne took me to see the dam/lake that apparently the
Catholic mission is building. I have my doubts about the source of the funding,
but I’ll explore. The scene was something out of the Prince of Egypt crossed
with Bob the builder. Topless men with hard hats on were wielding jackhammers,
pickaxes, shovels, wheelbarrows, and survey equipment. They had, in the last
year and half, constructed a huge hole, at least 100 feet deep in some parts.
Men with pickaxes broke up the ground as they expanded the hole. Men with
shovels worked behind them, throwing dirt into the wheelbarrows which were
efficiently carted up by a assembly line of wheelbarrows. On the other side of
the hole were men tackling the large stones, breaking them apart little by
little with huge hammers. I felt transported back in time to the railroad days.
It was something to see. Apparently it will be done in two years time (after I
leave of course). But this dam is designed to be the solution to the water
problems of Mogode.
Water is a huge problem in Mogode. Wells are abundant,
however, wells are not nearly deep enough to get into deep groundwater sources,
and therefore, dry up in March. There are two forages in town. One is the
Catholic Missions and the other you have to pay 5000 a year to use, eliminated
the ability to most of the people of Mogode to use it. A forage is a well so
deep that instead of pulling water up, you pump it up, using one of many foot
mechanisms. These tend not to dry up, but if they’re not dug deep enough, they
can. Starting in March, there’s a huge water shortage here in Mogode. There are
local villages that have small streams that you can dig in to find water, or
some towns have forages. Mogode, though, is notorious for its water problem.
I’ve been thinking about working on trying to get a forage for public use
started while I’m here, but it looks like they might already have a solution to
the water problem in the works. I’m going to investigate though. I plan on
heading over to the Catholic Mission sometime this week.
The rest of my day at the hospital was devoted to teach the
head of the Health Center (he’s in charge of day to day issues like inventory,
ect) how to use excel. I may have stated this before, but the hospital has
numerous computers that aren’t being used. I brought it to the doctors
attention in order to try to get one of them made available to the staff and
the pharmacy. Stupidly, I volunteered to help teach people how to use the
computers and programs. The doctor and one of the other coordinators took this
out of context and have officially made me their “IT guy”. They’ve asked me to
make wedding invitations, reproduce excel spreadsheets (that already existed)
and other stupid things. Being as “nice” or “passive aggressive” (choose the
word choice you prefer), I haven’t objected, but I’ve started avoiding the
doctor and coordinator. It’s something I’m going to have to deal with at some
point. I’m certainly not here to be a computer expert and that’s not how I want
to make a difference. I’m happy to teach them how to use computers and
reallocate resources to improve their efficiency, but at some point, I’m going
to have to say no to wedding invitations. A happy balance will have to be
struck.
Life at home is good. A package full of spices and love
arrived from my family (sent around thanksgiving) so my food situation has
improved significantly. The puppies are so cute, but such a pain in my butt!
I’ve started weaning them, which Nousnous caught onto with excitement. In the
meantime, I’m dealing with pee-puddles and little turds all over the house
whenever I let them in. They’ve started stealing things like paper (pictures
that have fallen off the wall), shoes, socks, ect and bringing them into their
little doghouse. They’ve dug up one of my tomato plants 5 times. They are trouble
makers. But it’s so nice to come home and watch their three cute little faces
peek out of the doghouse right before they come running up, jumping and licking
me all over. I’ll be happy when they’re gone (3 is too much) but I do love
having them here. I’ll try to post some photos. This is particularly long
update, rambling and stream of consciousness, but hopefully you followed. All
my love!
No comments:
Post a Comment