Dear all,
I'm sorry for not having posted in the past few weeks, but I think that from now on, unless there are any extraordinary occurrences, I will only be posting once a month. This is because it is relatively difficult for me to get reliable access to a computer. So here goes...
In my last posting, I mentioned to the beginning of Ramadan and my fasting to keep solidarity with the villagers. As I had alluded, the lack of water was much more of a problem for me than the lack of food. Thus, after about three days in the village of fasting without water, I began to drink again. While I told the villagers what I was doing, I would drink water privately and not in their presence so as not to make them feel bad. The toughest thing about Ramadan for me was the long hours it required. At about 4:45 am my host father would bang the tam-tam (a local drum) to signal to the village that it was time for the morning meal. By 5:30 we would have begun to tuck into our food, steamed beans over corn couscous. The fast would be broken around 7:30 (though this moved closer to 7 as the month went along) with Cafe Touba (a spicy local brew), dates, and steamed beans in their pods. Occasionally we would have corn, but most times it was just the beans. Then, after the last call to prayer, all of the men in the village would go to the mosque and pray until about 9:30-10:00. After they returned, we would have our dinner. Then it was time to sleep until 4:45 the next morning when we'd repeat the whole sequence. During my first five months in country, I lost about 20-25 lbs (though this was not due to not eating enough, but rather I think to just getting more exercise and not eating too much). I had gained a few pounds back during my IST, but lost it all after Ramadan. So right now I am the same weight that I was as a junior, both in high school, and in college (when I studied abroad in the UK).
For Eid al-Fitr (called Korite here), the village pooled its money together and bought a cow to slaughter for the meal. I went with my host father (the village chief) and the guy designated as the village's butcher to the traveling market to buy the cow. It was interesting, to say the least.
On Korite itself, by the time I had woken up (at 7:30), the cow had already been slaughtered and butchered and the villagers were arguing over which family should get which portion. After each household was allocated their portion, each went to their own kitchen and prepared essentially the same meal: pasta with onions, garlic, spices and the meat. Every household made beignets to give to each other, and people dressed in their finest clothes to go to the prayer. After the prayer, every household put the food they'd cooked into the big bowls that they all eat meals from and took the bowl to the marabout's compound. There, the entire village ate together. The rest of the day wasn't really notable. After Ramadan, village life has returned to as it was before.
In terms of notable events and experiences during past few weeks, I ate bushmeat (which happened to be lizard) once and in all honesty, it really did taste like chicken. I also did my first baby-weighing, in order to moniter nutrition and malnutrition levels in my village. It went really well, though it was also exhausting.
I have been really busy the past two weeks preparing for the visit of my PC program director (tomorrow), in which we will create a health and environmental community action plan with the villagers. Because there has not been a volunteer in my area for a long time, there is not a whole lot of information about my area. Thus, we are hoping to have a wide spread group of people present to help us with this action plan, such as representatives from the villages that use my village's health hut. They will tell us what they think the villages' needs are, and then we will prioritize the needs with their assistance. The preparations have included going from village to village to invite people (one male and one female) to this meeting and organizing the logistics of the meeting itself. I will be really glad when it's over because my long-term work will have some sort of shape to it, and things in the village will slow down a bit. As I envision it, my regular work will include these baby-weighings in my village and the neighboring villages, a local garden, and work with the local school. In addition to this, there will be more long-term projects. The purpose of the plan, in my estimation, is to provide guidance with these long-term projects. We'll see how it goes.
Take care, and to those of you in the 'States, enjoy Indian Summer!
Me
Overlooking the Pacific outside of San Francisco
3 comments:
hello rithvik,
we missed you during our visit to chicago this time.i have been reading your blog regularly.its interesting to read what you have been doing.do you also have a medical team working with you?how do the people accept childhood immunisation programmes?are all the babies immunised?
look forward to reading more on your blog.
lots of love,
aruna mami.
Hi there,
I work with a group of health workers, but none of them is a doctor. This is largely due to the paucity of doctors in this country. Ultimately, when a person receives training to be a doctor, they are loath to stay here when faced with the prospect of a much more lucrative career elsewhere. Thus, my colleagues are mainly nurses. I'll try to give you a description of the situation here...
I work at the most peripheral level of the public healthcare system, in the village. There is a childhood immunisation program in place, but it has to compete with occupational factors. In order to receive childhood vaccinations, people need to pay for a bus fare to go to the health center (where there is an actual medical doctor), or take a horse-drawn cart ride to a health post (headed by a nurse). Most rural Senegalese are farmers and for them to go to a clinic involves an opportunity cost in addition to the cost for the bus fare and the medications. This is compounded by the fact that the vast majority of them are uneducated and illiterate. The situation in my village is somewhat unique; the village is reasonably close to both a health post and health center (about 7 km to each). People are supposed to go to a health post before a health centre (they are referred to the centre when the illness/disorder is beyond the capacity of the healthpost), but it is a more difficult route to the health post as it is through the bush rathre than on a national highway as the route to the health centre is. So people generally go to the health centre. As a result, the health post, which conducts vaccination tournees (meaning they go around to the villages each month to do vaccinations), does not come to my village because the villagers go to the healthpost. There is not a cultural resistance to vaccinations per se, but there is a lack of education about them and knowledge about their availability. So the short answer to your question is that people generally accept childhood immunisation programs when they know about them, but not all babies are immunized.
Love,
Rithvik
Hi there,
I work with a group of health workers, but none of them is a doctor. This is largely due to the paucity of doctors in this country. Ultimately, when a person receives training to be a doctor, they are loath to stay here when faced with the prospect of a much more lucrative career elsewhere. Thus, my colleagues are mainly nurses. I'll try to give you a description of the situation here...
I work at the most peripheral level of the public healthcare system, in the village. There is a childhood immunisation program in place, but it has to compete with occupational factors. In order to receive childhood vaccinations, people need to pay for a bus fare to go to the health center (where there is an actual medical doctor), or take a horse-drawn cart ride to a health post (headed by a nurse). Most rural Senegalese are farmers and for them to go to a clinic involves an opportunity cost in addition to the cost for the bus fare and the medications. This is compounded by the fact that the vast majority of them are uneducated and illiterate. The situation in my village is somewhat unique; the village is reasonably close to both a health post and health center (about 7 km to each). People are supposed to go to a health post before a health centre (they are referred to the centre when the illness/disorder is beyond the capacity of the healthpost), but it is a more difficult route to the health post as it is through the bush rathre than on a national highway as the route to the health centre is. So people generally go to the health centre. As a result, the health post, which conducts vaccination tournees (meaning they go around to the villages each month to do vaccinations), does not come to my village because the villagers go to the healthpost. There is not a cultural resistance to vaccinations per se, but there is a lack of education about them and knowledge about their availability. So the short answer to your question is that people generally accept childhood immunisation programs when they know about them, but not all babies are immunized.
Love,
Rithvik
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