It’s been a year and change in village thus far. My first
year was filled with many cool projects, big and small. However, they were
mainly concerning my primary sector, community economic development. Sure I’ve
done some health trainings here and there, but they were small in nature.
Recently, simply due to the luck of good timing, my
village and I were able to undertake two solid health projects in Ramsa. The
first was a two week enriched porridge training with 9 women with malnourished
children. The second is a community-based largescale malaria project which will
carry through until the month of November. I brought these two project ideas to
my community, but it was been them (especially my Health Clinic’s Head Nurse
and one of our Community Health Agents) to have taken the ideas and turned them
into reality.
The porridge project, which in French we call “Le FARN”,
or “Foyer de l’apprentissage et réhabilitation
nutritionnelle”, is an intensive two week project with the goal of
getting malnourished children to gain weight. Each day we would first do a mini
training on an important health topic (such as nutrition, hygiene, family
planning, or malaria). We did this because to properly raise a child, one needs
to do much more than provide good food. Afterwards would train them on a new
porridge recipe, using only local ingredients to ensure that they could
actually practice these recipes at home. All of the materials were paid for by
the participants, and this aspect was crucially important to me. In Burkina,
there are a lot of free handouts coming from outside donors. One example is
free grain powder/nutrition bars for malnourished children. In theory, these
gifts should rehabilitate the children in a certain amount of time. But, most
times it is consumed by other members of the family. Having the participants in
this project pay for the ingredients and other materials was a way to start
training them on being accountable. The lesson that they could effectively
nourish their children using their own resources and not relying on outside
gifts was probably the most important take-away of this project. Again, I was there
in a facilitating/organizing/supporting role while my counterpart led most of
the trainings and saw the project to its end.
We take the baby's weight on the first and twelfth days to monitor their weight gain (or loss).
Mixing in other health trainings as well. Here my counterpart and I are informing them on the three food groups. Images are key.
Training on family planning.
In the end, nearly half of the babies gained a good
amount of weight. The rest were neutral, but if they continue with the porridge
at their homes they will surely see positive results in the coming months.
During the second week of our porridge project, we
started another endeavor in the health arena. The PECADOM+ Malaria project was
started years ago in Senegal and has proved to be an effective way to combat
malaria in the village setting. The present situation in village is that
malaria is very normalized to all villagers (kind of like the common cold back
in the US), resulting in many people simply living as a malaria host without
seeking treatment. This enables malaria to be easily transmitted within family
compounds with its proliferation never-ending. In this project, community
health agents will do weekly sweeps in each neighborhood and give a free
malaria test to anyone showing symptoms. They will then be able to buy medicine
right then and there if tested positive.
My Health Clinic's Head Nurse (bottom right) training our health workers on how to administer the malaria "Rapid Diagnostic Tests".
Our first day in the field. For the tests we have to draw a bit of blood. The little kids either react one of two ways: they do absolutely nothing or they throw a massive tantrum.
She was tested positive :(
Last month we did our first test-run, to give it a try
and see what difficulties would come. The first couple of days were a bit rough
but by the end each team had their process down and could do up to 50-60 tests
in one 2-3 hour sitting. The results from this test-run were staggering. Almost
in each neighborhood around half of the people that were tested were positive
with malaria. One night 39/67 were positive, mostly children. This is shocking
for me because it is currently the hottest period of the year when malaria is
supposed to be at its calmest. I’m apprehensive now to see the data when we
start this project when the rains come (which is the worst time of the year for
malaria). The silver lining of our test run was that each worker saw the
importance of their contribution to the community and is ready to carry this
project though during the rainy season, despite having to farm all day before
setting-out into the village for their sweeps.
In other news, my counterpart Hermane and I were able to
execute a successful Animal Husbandry training exchange at my friend’s village
in another region of Burkina. It took us all day long to travel 100km. We were
tired and anxious, wanting everything to go perfectly. And it did. Hermane did
a professional-style training and the participants were engaged each day from
8-5, despite the blistering heat. This training was very heartwarming for me,
since I know that at least with my counterpart in my village our work will
continue on because of his hard work ethic and tremendous capabilities.
Starting off our first day talking about chicken coups.
A true Burkinabe Change Agent. Helping his country by using his gift of effectively sharing knowledge.
Rainy season starts in a month, but not before the single
hottest month of the year. Hopefully I can make it through.
Until next time,
MB
