Bring on the Mosquitoes

First there is the rain. (By the way, I got my room fixed but it hasn’t rained since so I don’t know how well it was fixed. We will see.) Second, everything turns green. It is so nice to see bits of grass filling in the sand and the baobab trees have leaves again! Third, mosquitoes hatch… many, many mosquitoes.

This year, good ol’ president Wade made a President’s Malaria Initiative . USAID funded hundreds of thousands of mosquito nets. The department of Bambey (kinda like a county) received over 34,000 nets. What they do is pair up mosquito net coupons with Vitamin A supplements and Mebendazole distrib. Teams of Senegalese go into the bush and around the city door-to-door giving the vitamins and coupons to kids. Obviously this is hard work! And then pregnant women and people with kids age 0-5yrs come in to the Health Centers with their coupons to get the nets.

I heard about all this and went to a meeting to see if I can help. I paired up with World Vision since I already had a relationship with some people from the office. We became part of the supervision team. Yesterday, I went out with Bruno (world vision dude) to 3 different health centers distributing everything to check on the system. Today, I went with 5 others in an SUV (air conditioned – amazing) to three other sites (a long ways down a horrible road – not amazing). All in all… management of these health centers is HORRIBLE. There are so many people sitting around with screaming kids in the heat waiting in long lines for their nets. There is no easy way to show proof for ages of kids besides seeing the kids themselves. Birth certificates don’t exist, only vaccination cards but only people who want them have them. There are so many problems with all of this. Sometimes rumors exist that meds given cause infertility so moms don’t let their kids receive the vitamins. Nets aren’t hung since it’s hot so people sleep outside. There are so many nets given away for free that they don’t see their importance. Sometimes people really want them so they make the kids go 2 or 3 days in a row to take heavy doses of meds. And then management of it all is also difficult. There may be 2 or 3 health centers but like over 30 villages without transport since all the horses are used in the fields for tolling and planting, getting ready for the rain. We went around to ten houses asking if people had come around. It’s a cultural thing, like a superstition, to mention how many kids you have or if you are pregnant is bad luck; like if you talk about it, it causes a stillborn or a death of a child. So we tried to do a survey of 10 houses but it took over 2 hours to get all the answers! I am exhausted!

I have now decided it is just not possible for me to go back out again tomorrow. I am so tired I can hardly think! The heat of the afternoon and not nearly enough water and food… tomorrow I am going to say it is a day to recuperate. But get this: I have to talk with people at the mayor’s office, send a fax at the post office, eat lunch at my women’s group’s president’s house, call and talk to my fish salesman, go to CDEPS and personally drag my work partner (he’s the kind of guy that is better than us since he’s a man) to a training for another women’s group on porridge.
So next week – I am going on vacation. For the fourth of July there will be a PCV party in Kedougou. It’s a long ways away but should be fun. I’ll fill you all in when I’m back. In the mean time, I’ll be sleeping, inside my net away from all the mosquitoes!