10,000 fireflies

Rainy season has officially begun. The rain storms provide me with a great excuse to retreat into my room for some personal time. In addition to all the bugs and mosquitoes that appear in rainy season, Fireflies have begun to come out of hiding. As a city girl for the past 22 years of my life, I never experienced so many fireflies on a consistent basis. I know I keep touching on the beauty of nature and lack of electricity, but it's a truly unique and refreshing experience. Speaking of nature and lack of electricity, I am currently back in Thies for IST (In-Service Training). I am going to back track and cover what I've been doing up til IST and inshallah post pictures.

Deliveries from Dakar
In my last entry, I posted about attending a Senegalese meeting regarding Universal Coverage of mosquito nets. This is the first time that the Senegalese government has decided to take control of mosquito net distributions. They are working with USAID, PMI, and other partnering NGOs to cover the regions of Kedougou, Kolda, and Tambacounda this year. Peace Corps volunteers have spearheaded mosquito net distributions before in select villages, but many of the Relais and other health workers haven't been directly involved in the process. However, the health officials know that PCVs have been involved in distributions and acknowledged that fact in the meetings (which gave me some legitimacy in the eyes of my ICP: Infermier Chef du Poste).Due to PCVs doing numerous distributions in the past, they (as a whole) have accumulated much knowledge and had written a training manual for Relais along with amazing visual aids. The training manuals were provided by Peace Corps to all the health posts in the Kolda region, but the path from Dakar to the Chef du Medecin regional was an adventure... It began one rainy morning in the region of Kolda and my family thought that it was ridiculous that I was going out in the pouring rain. I wasn't ecstatic about having to deal with Senegal transportation in the rain, but the package of training materials was already en route from Dakar. As I leave the edge of my village, I slip and fall and get gray mud all over my left leg, and I'm just far enough from my village that I don't want to turn back to change. So, I decided to continue into Kolda and change into clean clothes at the regional house. I successfully evaded (kinda) judgment of my mud covered leg and make it safely into Kolda. I then realize that I have no idea when or where I am to meet the bus driver to pick up the package. Great..... Thankfully I have his name and number, so I give him a call. WELL, he spoke only French and Woloof, which was definitely a problem. I was able to understand that he wasn't arriving in Kolda until 1 in the afternoon and at this point it was 10am. What to do for three hours? First step: go to regional house and get out of muddy pants. I then watched an episode of True Blood, made lunch, and worried about where I was to meet Mr. bus driver for the package. I finally met up with the bus driver at 2pm at some random side street off of the market and it was such a relief seeing this big bus parked in the middle of the road. Last step of Mission: Relais training material was to get it to the Chef du Medecin du region. After a successful drop off and explanation, it was back to village. Adventure Complete.

Relais Training
Now that all the training materials were in the region, it was just a matter of conducting the trainings. I dropped the materials off with my ICP and was told that the dates of the trainings were July 2nd and 3rd. She told me that she would love it if I would attend the trainings and I promised her that I would be there for the 2nd, but I was going to Kedougou the 3rd. I show up bright and early on the morning of the 2nd (even though I knew that the actual training session probably wouldn't start for a good hour after the designated time) and it felt like I was the new kid on the first day of school. It was awkward and fun at the same time because I was obviously the new Peace Corps volunteer in the area. The trainings allowed me to meet a lot of the relais and the ASCs (Agent sante communitaire) who work out of the Bagadagi Poste de Sante. It was a long day filled with high points (training manuals being used and free swag!) and low points( aka the big storm at the very end of training that trapped me in the room with 35 health care workers for an hour). Then it was off to Kedougou the next morning for America time...

Training materials!

Fourth of July
Every year, the volunteers in the region of Kedougou throw a big bash in honor of America's birthday. It was a nice break from village life (although horrible timing for my mosquito net distribution project) and it was a chance to see people from my stage. I had a great time talking to my fellow stage mates about life in village and integrating into Senegalese society. It was awesome to hear all the fun success stories and it was comforting to hear the difficulties people were facing because it's something we all experienced.

Happy Birthday America!

It's funny how the themes of high school continue to permeate life. Going to the 4th in Kedougou was so much fun, but I felt like a freshman entering high school for the first time. The older volunteers are great, but walking in and not knowing a lot of people was slightly intimidating. I have obviously grown into myself and the insecurities that I had in high school have all but disappeared, but the lingering feeling of being the newbie(s) still remains. Anyways, after i got over my initial nerves, we had a nice summertime cookout complete with roasted warthog and baked beans! The night concluded with fireworks (of course) and a dance party and then it was back to village!

Mosquito Net Distributions
Right after the 4th of July, the region of Kolda began the distribution phase of Universal Coverage. The planning meeting occurred on the 7th and distributions were to begin on the 9th and continue for 5 days. The Poste de Sante at Bagadadgi covers 35-40 villages within a 10K (ish) radius. This includes the villages of 5 PCVs. The day of the first distribution roles around and it's off to Bagadadgi. Ideally, the distributions would begin with opening all the mosquito nets and having an assembly line process. There are fiches des recessments where the family names are written with how many nets were needed. In a perfect distribution, one person with the list of names would partner up with an individual who would write the familial name on the net itself and the year (this is to prevent people from taking the nets over the border and selling them). Then, they would count out the correct number of nets and place them in a neat pile. Another person would then come along and write the same name on the pile of nets below. While all this is occurring, a team of Relais would be conducting a causerie about malaria and malaria prevention. Lastly, once the sensibilization is complete, we can just hand out the nets and everyone goes home happy.

Unfortunately this is Africa and nothing happens in the most efficient way. During the census period, families were given coupons to be redeemed for mosquito nets the day of their distribution. The day of the distributions, when we (the health care workers and I) showed up to the distribution site, the family representatives mobbed us with their coupons. We then had to go through each one and cross check it with the fiche de recessment. After that, we would write the names on the nets and explain how to use them to each family. This process took forever and it was frustrating for me because I could point out at least 5 more efficient steps.

My Sweet Shirt!

That first day, I went to two separate distributions. The first went went relatively smoothly because it was at the health post, so no major issues came up. The second distribution of the day sent me home in tears. The first problem was transportation...the ICP didn't plan accordingly to get all the nets to the distribution points. As a result, we ended up strapping 4 bales of 50 nets each to the back of 4 bikes and going 3K into the bush. This would've been a difficult task if we were biking on the paved national road, but we were on an unpaved road that was actually "under construction"(not fun). We finally arrive at the village (2 hours later than planned) and start the distribution. My job at this location was to cross check the coupons with the fiche de recessment (funnnn.....not). This particular location had numerous individuals with coupons, who weren't on the fiche, which meant that we weren't allowed to give them nets at that moment in time. This lead to angry people and a very stressful situation. The slow step of the operation is the writing of names on the nets. I was getting more and more agitated as the sun started to set, so I grabbed a marker and started to write names on the nets myself. I perplexed my Senegalese counterparts at first, but they soon realized that I was a really fast writer. Thankfully that distribution ended before sundown, however the drama didn't. My village is 1K away from the site of the second distribution, but no one informed my village of that fact. The need in my village was only 8 nets (not actually accurate), so my ICP decided that I could just deliver the nets to my village. WORST IDEA EVER! I show up to my village with 8 nets and suddenly everyone is asking for a net. I wasn't there when the relais came to my village for the recessment, so I couldn't make sure that it was done correctly. I knew that the need in my village would be low (I mean, I only have 150 people living there and my site mate did a distribution there the year before), but 8 was unusually low. At this point, it's past my shower time, I'm tired, and upset, so I tell everyone that I need to shower and run into my room. I sit in my backyard for a good 5 minutes crying and then call my site mate and cried to her for another 10 minutes. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't the worst day I had in village, but it was so overwhelming at that one point. Everything just hit me at once and it was too much to handle (cue crying). After crying and my bucket bath, I felt a million times better. Onto day 2 of distributions.

Day two of distributions occurred at 4 simultaneous sites. I was sent to Salimata, where we have an Ag(riculture) volunteer. I left home at 8am to bike the 10K to Salimata in order to get there by the 9am start time. The nets didn't arrive at the site until noon. Fortunately, I had three other PCVs come to the distributions. Having other PCVs made a frustrating situation entertaining. The distributions ended with slight nausea from constant contact with the insecticide impregnated nets.

Day three had 6 concurrent distributions and I was told that it was the last day (SURPRISE- something occurred ahead of schedule...woohoo). This was the most efficient distribution of the 4 that I participated in and the only one that started and ended on schedule. There were no problems with the coupons or the fiche de recessments and the team I was working with was efficient. After three long days of distributions and countless hours of sitting (in meetings and at distributions), mosquito net project in Bagadadgi complete (for the most part).

Farewell village

Right after net distributions, it was off to Kolda and then up to Thies for IST. In total, I'll be away from village for a total of three weeks (sad face).

Thank you to everyone for the emails/letters/packages. Loves you!!

--Peace Out