six weeks at site

Hello all,

I'm sorry for not having posted in a couple of weeks, but as you'll see, I've been a bit busy. Right now the rainy season is beginning in Senegal, and with the rains come mosquitos and malaria. Sleeping under a bednet reduces one's probability of getting malaria, but bednets can be expensive. Thus, a US government organization called the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), in conjunction with USAID, some NGO's, and the Senegalese government, distributed over 750,000 bednets in four regions of Senegal during the past two weeks. I helped out a little bit in my village with the distribution, and went to the nearest regional capital Diourbel to participate. During June, the Ministry of Health oversees the free distribution of Vitamin A (which prevents a type of night-blindness and is a derivative of the beta-carotene which gives carrots their orange color), and an antiworm medicine called Mebendazole to children below the age of 5 throughout the country. The bednet distribution piggy-backed on the Vitamin A and Mebendazole distribution.

The distribution was conducted differently in my village and in Diourbel. In my village, villagers had to bring their kids to our health hut to receive the meds and nets; in Diourbel, healthworkers went house-to-house to give out nets and medicine. While the approach in Diourbel is a bit tougher for the healthworkers, it ensures that everyone receives their meds and if necessary, their nets. Hopefully, in the future, healthworkers in my village can adopt this approach.

As I said earlier, the rainy season is beginning and my village has undergone a massive change. My village was still sandy at the time of my last posting (done in Kaolack two weeks ago). When I returned to my village after that posting, it was unrecognizable. There was grass all over the place, and shrubs were starting to look green. Now it is even lusher and more beautiful. And the rains also help to cool things off. But food is at its scarcest for people here now as they have to wait until the harvests (in October) before they can start to eat well again. Nevertheless, the workload for everyone increases dramatically now. All of the males in my family go out into the fields by 7 am to sow their seeds, returning at about 11 or 12 for lunch. They return to the fields at about 3, and work for an additional four hours.

Right now I'm posting from Kaolack again, but I will be heading to the southeast of the country for July 4th. This morning I biked from my site (a little over 50 km away) here, and it was one of the best bikerides I have ever enjoyed. We had a massive rainstorm yesterday, so it was cloudy but cool. There was a drizzle throughout the bikeride, but the birds were singing and the frogs were ribbiting. Indeed, the ride was worst when cars would pass me by or when I would go through towns. In the bush, it was beautiful!

Of course, I am going to be really sore tomorrow as I haven't ridden my bike in about 3 weeks and my soreness will be compounded by the fact that I'll be spending about 5-6 hours in a cramped car going on the worst road that I have ever gone on (the same road that I went on in August during my 10-day community based training period). But the payoff is that I'll be in the greenest (and supposedly most beautiful) part of the country. I've been periodically taking photographs since I've gotten to site, but haven't gotten an opportunity to load them onto a disc. I think that I'll be able to do so next week, so I will be able to post pictures pretty soon, Inshallah.

And so, take care and have a safe July 4th!