27 February 2006

Well, I'm back for the evening.  I decided at the last minute to head west toward my prefectural capital, before heading north to my village, in order to talk in person to the boss of the aforementioned arrogant employee of the state that decided he could spend money earmarked for our project on any project of his choosing.  Not to mention suspicions that he's bouffing money (skimming from the top).  Anyway, the boss was really nice, and was open and direct in responding to my questions about how things are supposed to be managed and to my concerns that this is not happening, even showing me budgets and official memos.  He confirmed several things for me.  It so happens he and his staff were planning a tour of the various institutions in the Akebou region, and that they will be in my town tomorrow afternoon to inspect things.  So, he's going to meet with all concerned parties and clarify what's appropriate and condoned by the state.  Should be interesting.

Anyway, in the long hot cramped journey there, I realized that in my last message I forgot to mention some of the positive stuff that's been happening in village.  So I will now, since I have a second chance. 

One thing is I've been doing malaria talks to groups of women in each quartier, discussing the dangers to pregnant women and children under 5, and clarifying causes and prevention.  They've been well attended, about 20 or 30 women at each one, which is a good size for eliciting participation it seems. I feel very fortunate for the villager who helps me by locating the cheftaine of each quartier to have her gather the women, and then translates for me the day of the talk.  He was trained by the Red Cross to do awareness raising during mosquito net campaigns, so he already knows his stuff, but even more importantly he's a dynamic speaker and knows how to keep the women engaged by cracking jokes and making analogies they can understand.  So, he's translating what I say, but also adding to it and making it fun even if I'm exhausted from speaking that much French all day (we try to hit 2 quartiers a day).  We also add in a little nutrition and some hand washing for good measure, as well as going into more detail about any particular issue that came up during the session.  For example, I went into a long talk about prevention of UTI's when a woman came out with all these so-called symptoms of malaria that are actually signs of a bladder infection.  Because of this and all the headaches and dark urine women complain of during a day in the fields, I have started counseling them about drinking copious amounts of water during the day to avoid dehydration.  I tell them to humour me and try if for a couple weeks and see how they feel.

We took our show on the road to a village to the west (over some killer hills - beautiful views), and met our village nurse there, who had gone ahead on his moto.  He did vaccinations and we did our malaria-plus talk.  We all had a good time at it -- wished so badly I'd had my camera -- and plan to make this a regular thing at his monthly vaccination visits to outlying villages, and then will change the topic, such as going into depth with nutrition or something.  We'll do a quick Q&A first to see how much of our malaria talk actually sunk in from the last time...

The nurse and I want to create a sort of poster to put up on the walls of our dispensaire, showing his health zone, and all the villages he visits for vaccinations, and with photos I will take of these and of our own dispensaire activities.  Women from all over come in on our market day, but not all come to the dispensaire for health care or vaccinations or to monitor the progress of their pregnancy, and certainly not to give birth there, so we're trying to make it a more inviting place and get the word out.  And people here LOVE to see photos of themselves and pretty much anyone else, so the hope is it will encourage them to come on in and get poked and prodded like their friends in the pics.  This is why those disposable cameras will come in handy auntie karen! 

I reunited the village sanitation committee, which I was surprised to see included a bunch of people I already knew.  None of them had thought to tell me there WAS such a committee, but it luckily came up in a random conversation about how I really wanted to get this one particular area cleaned up before the rainy season.  (Side note:  it continues to amaze me that the villagers tend to think that I already know everything there is to know about the village's various groups and families and all about every project the previous volunteer had a hand in or even merely had proposed to her.  They are also disappointed that I didn't come in speaking the local language as well as she did when she left.  The memories are very short, and they only remember everything and everyone she knew by the end, and not what it was like for her when she first got there.)  So, we planned a clean-up day of that area for the following Monday, plus we've designated the first Weds of every month to be "village propre" day, where everyone gets out and cleans up their quartier or has another project to work on.  I know it sounds far-fetched, but I had just happened to run into our local sanitation agent a few days before our first mtg and he told me other villages have had success with it.  Our group seems to be optimistic too, so we'll see.  Can't hurt to try.  Last Monday we gathered up some people to clean up this area of road and brush that leads down into a river bed that's dry now but will start flowing when the rain comes, and will lead to the river where the main well is located and where people collect water directly from the stream.  The road is highly trafficked by people living in that end of town on the other side of the river bed, and by kids coming and going from the primary school.  It is (was) a disaster and smelled horrible.  People use it as a toilet AND a garbage dump.  We went through with machetes first -- I got two blisters within literally 10 minutes but was too embarrassed to let on, especially since no one would let me use one at first; I had to defy them and go knocking on someone's door to ask if I could borrow one.  Then we set fire to the place, and most of the brush burned away.  For them it was "clean" because all the brush was gone and therefore people couldn't hide behind a bush anymore, but I insisted we rake up all the filth and trash we could find on the road and amongst the non-burnt patches, and burn that as well.  Otherwise, people will continue to add to it, besides the fact it will eventually run into the river.  We only found one rake, so the task was left to few hardy souls, and then we set fire again.  I know the smoke was toxic, there were so many little black plastic bags among the rubbish among other plastics, plus discarded batteries.  It's not completely clean by my standards of course, but it sends a clear message to add to the sign they put up saying it was now forbidden to shit and throw trash there, punishable by a 1000 franc fine (2 dollars).  We designated a different depotoire not far away but away from the road and the river.  Again, we'll see.

I did an intensive day of field research to find out just how much money we weren't collecting at the water pump, or which is otherwise disappearing -- money which is supposed to go toward maintenance and repair and even more idealistically to the addition of more such pumps.  I sat there with the collectrice all day, 12 hours, and counted the number of cuvettes filled.  Depending on the size of recipient, they are supposed to collect 5, 10, or 15 francs per fill-up.  However, not everyone pays and some will argue about the amount they are supposed to pay.  With me there, and being a stickler about it so that more people paid than usual I'm sure, we collected 2000 francs tho by my count of cuvettes filled, we should have collected about 2500 francs if some families didn't feel themselves above having to pay.  Multiply that by 30 days in a month, and we should get about 60k every month or at least 45k to count slow days, but we usually only get about 17 or 20k, and never more than 30k.  Obviously, something is seriously going awry.  Meanwhile, one pump is broken and the working one needs a new head as well, which costs about 100k.  Plus, due to previous bouffing, there's not much there to begin with to help with repairs.

(Hmmm, it just occurs to me that I've just gone into a whole bunch of detail again, and I still haven't read the memo about all this.) 

Anyway, the collectrice has to sit there all day with her one-year old, taking frequent breaks obviously and probably sleeping at times (I wanted to!), plus being female cannot push people to pay who don't want to -- it's mostly women who come to collect water, and they will talk ill of her if she is insistent.  Plus, she doesn't even count the money at the end let alone keep track of how much water was collected, before passing it off to the guy in charge of guarding it.  She gets paid only 200 francs a day for volunteering to do this (she's probably bouffing too), but that's more than 20% of most of the days' takes.  No one it seems keeps track of the daily intake of money, and it's only totaled up at the end of the month.  We''ve just begun talking about ways to make it all more transparent and easy to keep track of, plus how to motivate the collector to do her job or perhaps the need to hire a guy for it unfortunately.  I think we need two people to split the shift, and that they should get paid a pourcentage of the day's or month's earnings to encourage them to be hardasses.  We are also going to try to convince certain folks that their status in village does not mean they shouldn't pay for water, and that in fact it is their moral duty to do so.  If it comes down to it, I will refuse to help find funding for any water projects until this is all figured out.  In fact, they don't need outside funding if they'd get their act together on this!

So, that's a summary of some of the major stuff going on currently.  That oughtta hold ya for a month.  ooooh, but I forgot also to tell you about the creepiest bug yet I've had to deal with:  I think I had a Tumbu fly!  They lay their eggs in wet laundry drying in the sun, and if you wear it within the first 3 days of said drying (I forgot just once!), the eggs will hatch and burrow into your skin, and then the larva matures 8-9days later, forming this huge and very painful boil, then wriggles out as a fly -- leaving a big hole (well, size of my pinky nail), and a traumatized host.  It was a very painful few days, but it got better immediately after the hole finally appeared, and I didn't have to see it come out, thank god.

okay, bye.

love, Laura