Baby weighing

Written Monday, 11 March 2008

For two days this past week I went around my village with my counterpart and weighed all the kids we could find five years old and younger. We're going to re-weigh the kids every month. The idea, of course, is to track malnutrition levels in the village and to help mothers keep track of how their kids are doing and to motivate them to try harder to keep their kids well nourished.

This is what I found out from the first weighing: about 25% of the kids under five years old in my village are underweight/malnourished. I was a little surprised the percentage is so high since few of the kids here look malnourished, but during the weighings I discovered that a lot of the kids who look like a fairly healthy kid of a certain age are actually a lot older. So kids who look like they're 1 ½ or 2 years old are actually 3 years old or even older. They've just stopped growing, or at least aren't growing at a normal pace. It made me really sad to realize that.

There is a fairly large difference between boys and girls – 31% of the girls were malnourished, while only 19% of the boys were. I can't figure out why this is – from my own observations and also from asking my villagers about it, I know that boys and girls are given the same food in the same amounts. It's not like all the meat and other good food goes only to the boys.

Malnutrition problems start after babies are about 6 months old, when they are weaned. They get diarrhea from drinking dirty water and crawling around in and eating dirt. I think it is really this hygiene issue that is the problem, rather than not getting enough food or vitamins. We already talk to the women about filtering and bleaching their water, but I have no idea what to do about kids crawling around in and eating dirt. It is just the environment we live in here.

One difficulty with the weighings that might have thrown off the results (and I am hoping it did and the kids aren't as malnourished as these statistics show) is that the mothers often don't know how old their kids are. Birthdays aren't celebrated here, and people, especially the uneducated, which is basically all the women, aren't very familiar with the Western calendar. So unless the women brought their kid's vaccination card with their birthday on it, usually they could only tell us something like "He was born during the last rainy season." So I am hoping that some of the kids' ages were mid-guesstimated and they are actually younger, and consequently less underweight, than we recorded.

Next month, and every month from now on, we are going to re-weigh the kids to see if they are gaining weight from one month to the next.

Wife inheritance

Written Tuesday, 18 March 2008

There is an old custom here, which I believe is practiced throughout much of Africa (although I'm not positive, so don't quote me) that when a man dies, his brothers should marry his widows. In the West this is referred to as wife inheritance, and is usually viewed as an outdated, anti-feminist practice – the wives being passed around as if they were property to be inherited.

And maybe there's how it was in the past. Maybe there are still elements of that now. But I think the main purpose of the custom is to protect the widow and her children – rather than being just a "poor relation" dependent on the charity of others for survival, the widow, through marrying her late husband's brother, strengthens her ties to her husband's family and remains an integral part of that family. And any children she may have are more likely to be treated well by a step-father who is also their uncle (in West African tradition your father's brothers are considered to be also your fathers) than by a step-father who has no prior relation to them.

I bring all this up because my village host father is in the process of "inheriting" his deceased brother's wife. (Negotiations and arrangements are under way for the marriage). I am curious to see how it all works out and how our family dynamics will be affected.

The Affair of the Crinting

Sunday, 9 March 2008

The hut I am living in was built by my village for the previous volunteer, so now it is about 3 years old. Which means that the cement walls and floor are starting to crack and chip off, there are holes in the thatch roof where the rain will be able to come in when the rainy season starts (although the previous volunteer already had some of the thatch replaced last year), and the "crinting", the woven bamboo fencing for my backyard and latrine, is starting to fall apart. So I got permission from Peace Corps to pay to get everything repaired. Getting the cement and thatching was easy: I went to a store in Dialacoto and paid for the cement, and then paid for someone with a donkey cart to transport it back to my village. Same thing for the thatching: I paid some guys to cut some thatching grass out of the bush, and some other guys to transport it, and voila, a few days later it was sitting outside my hut.

The crinting, however, has been an entirely different story. Crinting is only made in a few villages around here (because of distance from the bamboo, I think), and the closest for me is a village about 10 km away. My host dad, the village chief, recommended a good crinting maker in the neighboring village, so one day, way back in January, my counterpart and I went to see him. He said he charges 1500 CFA, about $3, for each piece of crinting, which is about 10 feet long. We told him I needed 10. He said he could have them ready in 10 days. So we paid him a deposit of 7500 CFA, half the price of the 10 crinting pieces, and said we'd be back in 10 days to pay the rest and pick up the crinting.

My host dad had failed to mention to us, however, that while this guy makes good crinting, he's not exactly reliable. After a week, he sent someone to tell my counterpart that the crinting wouldn't be ready on the previously agreed date and gave a new date for when it would be ready. I figured this is just the way things work in Africa, and I wasn't bothered by it.

When the new deadline arrived, my counterpart and I biked over to the other village to get the crinting. But when we got there, his family said he was off in the bush making the crinting; he should be back at lunchtime. We said we'd wait. So we spent the whole morning just sitting there, with nothing to do but wait. The man wasn't back by lunchtime, though. So we had lunch with the village midwife, and then we waited some more.

Finally the crinting man showed up, and, as I had begun to suspect, the crinting wasn't ready. He gave us a new date when it would be ready, and we said fine, we'll be back then.

So it went for weeks. We'd show up in the morning, he'd be "out", we'd wait all day, and finally he'd show up and tell us he needed more time. One day we came in the morning and his family said he was out til the afternoon, so as usual we went to hang out at the midwife's compound. But then my counterpart decided to go back and check, "just in case" he'd come back early. Sure enough, his family had lied to us to cover for him, and he wasn't out at all but just hiding from us.

Finally I was fed up, and I told him that the next time I came he had better either have the crinting for me or else give me my deposit back, or else I was going to report him to the gendarmes. He agreed he would definitely either give me the crinting or the money.

So the next week we came back, determined to get one or the other. I thought that he would have been so scared after I mentioned the gendarmes that we would get whichever one (and I really didn't care which at this point) without any trouble.

But this guy was tougher than I thought. We showed up in the morning, and once again his family said he was out in the bush and would be back with the crinting by noon. This time we didn't go to the midwife's house to wait, but instead stayed at the crinting man's compound in ambush. But he wasn't back at noon. (I'm betting someone from the family warned him we were there and not to come back). His family told us, Well, definitely by 3:00 he'll be back. But 3:00 came and went. Definitely by 5:00. Ten they said, Well, sometime tonight. You can come back in the morning, and he'll be here. But I was really mad by then. (All day in the host sun with nothing to do made me cranky). So I reminded them that we had agreed that I would either get the crinting or my deposit back that day, or I was going to the gendarmes. I told them I'd better have received one or the other by 6:00 pm, or else.

So we sat there tensely for an hour, until 6 pm. Of course the man hadn't come back. I got up and told the family it was 6:00 and I was leaving. They tried to convince me to wait longer or come back in the morning, but I refused. (If I didn't leave then, I couldn't make it back to my village before dark, and the next day I was leaving for Tamba and then onwards for my much-awaited vacation).

So I left. When I got back to my village, my host sisters laughed at me, as they had been doing for weeks, for having wasted another whole day waiting for crinting I never received.

The next day I left for my vacation, determined not to worry any more about the crinting til I got back, and hoping that my counterpart and the crinting man would have resolved the situation by then.

Sure enough when I came back to my village this week, my counterpart told me he had gotten the deposit back from the crinting man (who I think was finally convinced that I was mad enough to report him to the gendarmes). He ordered the crinting from someone else, and a few days ago it was finally delivered to my hut.

So the crinting drama is finally over, and I didn't have to go to the gendarmes. (Would I really have reported the guy over stealing a $15 deposit? I'm not sure. I really don't know what the gendarmes would do about it – toss him in jail and throw away the key? Laugh at me and do nothing? Something in between?)

Now I just have to get someone to install the crinting and the thatch on my roof…

Competition!

Wednesday, 5 March 2008

I finally got back to my village last night after being gone for a few weeks for vacation, and this morning my counterpart came over to catch me up on what I've missed in the village while I've been gone and to talk about what activities we'll do over the next few days.

The big news: Kinkeliba, a private French hospital a few kilometers up the road, has hired and trained "relais" (health educators) to do health education classes and baby weighings in villages in the area, including my village.

This is exactly the same as what I'm supposed to be doing here, and as what volunteer relais trained by Africare, an American NGO working in the area, are supposed to do. Which brings me back to the question of what exactly is the point of me being here? And how is my counterpart, a volunteer relais trained by Africare, supposed to stay motivated to do health activities while he is not getting paid for it and someone else is? Should we just give up our activities and let the guy who is getting paid for it do them? Or continue our work, and compete with the other guy for popularity in the village?

However useless I feel, at least I can be pretty sure that health activities in the village won't just stop when I leave. Hopefully the village will benefit from all this competition between Peace Corps, NGOs, and private organizations.

Hot

written Sunday, 3 February 2008

 

The heat has come back - almost 100 degrees today.  Ick.  At least it's still cool at night, so far.

A surreal morning

written Friday, 1 February 2008

 

This morning as we were finishing up breakfast my host sisters chirpily asked me, "Do you want to go visit Mariama with us?  Her husband's brother beat her yesterday, so we're going to see how she's doing."

 

Um, okay.  So we trooped down to Mariama's and found her lying in bed in her hut.  Chirpy voices again: "Mariama, get up!  We brought you some porridge!"  But she just lay there and ignored us, so the women fed her baby, and then we sat around for a few minutes and chatted (with each other, not Mariama - she didn't talk the whole time) like it was a normal social visit.  And then it was time to go.  So we said good-bye and headed back home, greeting everyone along the way.

 

Sometimes here I feel like I'm losing my grip on what's normal...

Wildfire!

 Written Monday, 7 January 2008

 

Wildfires are a problem here after the rainy season ends, when all the grasses that grew with the rains become dry.  Today a wildfire came very close to the village, which is not uncommon, so the village chief rang the bell that is used to summon villagers for meetings and communal work, and everyone went out to fight the fire, the men with branches to beat it back and the women with buckets of water.

 

The men told me not to go, because toubabs are too delicate for hard work and all the smoke.  But I didn't want to miss out on the excitement, so I went along to take pictures.  The women gave me a hard time about not having brought a bucket of water, though.

 

The fire seems under control now, but there is a lot of wind today, so we'll see what happens.

Literacy

 Written Monday, 7 January 2008

 

I have started to teach one of my sisters, who never had a chance to go to school, how to write.  She is a really curious person and seems to really regret not having an education.  She is always asking me to teach her English words, but it is hard for her to remember them.  I've been wanting to teach her to read for a while, but wasn't really sure how to go about it since there aren't really any reading materials available in Jaxanke.  But finally it occurred to me that I should start by teaching her to write, and that will probably help her to remember letters better than just looking at them.

 

So I bought her a notebook and two pencils as a present, thinking that might be exciting for her – she's probably never owned school supplies before.  She seemed really pleased when I gave them to her and wanted to start the first lesson right away.  So I taught her A, B, and D (there's no confusing C in Jaxanke – just K or S to make those sounds), and we talked about words that have those sounds in them.  She was really quick to figure out about breaking up words into syllables to sound them out.

 

So I think the first lesson went really well, and she seemed happy.  I just hope she finds the time and the motivation to stick with it.

Taxes

written Monday, 7 January 2008

 

While I was in Missira I also stopped by the Rural Community (basically the county government) office, and they explained to me how taxes work here, which I had been wondering about for a long time.

 

In the rural villages, it is very simple.  Taxes are collected (by government officials with the help of the village chief, simply by going door to door) once a year.  Each family is supposed to pay 1000 CFA (about $2) for every person between the ages of 14 and 65 (or maybe it was 75 - I can't remember now).

 

There is no penalty for those who can't pay.  After all, what could the government do - foreclose on their hut?  So the government tries to motivate people to pay their taxes by awareness raising - teaching people that the taxes go to projects that benefit the community, like new wells, schools, and roads.

 

The rural community tax money is supplemented by money from the central government in Dakar (but where does that money come from?  Taxes on the richer Dakarois? foreign aid?  I'm not sure).  Most projects are funded through a sort of match grant system, where Dakar will pay, say, 90% of the costs and the rural community has to come up with 10%.  If the rural community can't pay their share, then the project doesn't happen.

 

So how effective is this essentially voluntary tax system?  It varies from year to year.  The official I was talking to said that in 2005 and 2006 about 95% of people paid their tax, but for 2007 hardly anyone paid.  Was that due to a bad harvest?  Were people just poorer?  No, he said, the harvest was fine.  It was due to a "variety of factors".  And that was all he would say about it.

 

Which made me think that maybe people had decided the rural community officials were corrupt and were "eating the money" (i.e. embezzling it), which is a common complaint among villagers, but I have no idea how widespread a problem it actually is.

 

There is another tax for people who live in "batiments" - concrete houses instead of huts - and I'm sure for people in towns the tax structure is different and probably less voluntary.  But that was all of my lesson for the day.

Taxes

written Monday, 7 January 2008

A really good day

written Saturday, 5 January 2008

 

Yesterday I biked from Tamba to Missira, about 35 km, with another volunteer.  It was so nice to be outside and getting exercise again after sitting around in Tamba for so long, and also to have company for the bike ride.  Along the way I noticed a tree with beautiful orange flowers on it, and I stopped to take a picture.  My friend found one of the flowers on the road, and we took it with us to give to the woman he buys sandwiches from, just as a small gesture of friendship.

 

So when we got to Missira we bought our bean sandwiches, and my friend gave the sandwich lady the flower.  He explained that in America men give women flowers as presents when they like them.  (She is older and married with kids, so she didn't take this the wrong way).  My friend wasn't expecting anything more than a thank you from her, but instead the present caused a big commotion.  The sandwich lady started calling everyone in the vicinity over to show them the flower and tell them that the toubab gave it to her.  Then there were lots of discussions about what tree it came from and what the point was of giving a present that couldn't be consumed and that would just go bad quickly.  It was a lot of fun to see how excited everyone got.

 

Soon after that I ran into the woman I always buy vegetables from at my weekly market.  She lives in Missira, but I've only seen her there before when I was on my way to Tamba.  When she realized I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere for a while she grabbed me and took me to her house to be her special guest.  She introduced me to all her family and neighbors, and then stuffed me full of really good food, which I wasn't really hungry for, but I appreciated the thought.  She wanted me to stay and spend the night, but I told her I had to get home to my village.  I did promise to spend the night some other time, though.

 

Finally in the evening I made it home to my village, where I was so happy to see my friends and my own little hut again.

 

So, a perfect day: good weather, exercise, flowers, happy friendly people, good food, and my own bed to sleep in at the end of the day.

Stuck in Tamba

written Saturday, 5 January 2008

 

I went up to Tamba on Christmas Eve, planning to spend just two or three days in town for the Christmas holidays, since there wouldn't be any celebration happening in my village.  (Not that there was anything happening in Tamba either, since most volunteers were elsewhere, but at least I could have internet and good phone reception).  I really didn't want to be out of my village long, since I feel like I haven't spent enough time in my village lately and that is what I came to Africa to do.  But while I was in Tamba I was hoping to meet with the woman at the health department in charge of training midwives, in order to talk to her about training a girl from my village to be a midwife. 

 

I was hoping that since Christmas isn't a big holiday here that she would be able to meet with me right after, on the 26th, and then I could go home to my village.  But when I called the health department they told me she was out of town til the 31st, so I should wait until then.  So I waited in Tamba.

 

On the 31st I called again to set up an appointment, which I was finally able to get, but not until January 3rd.  So I waited some more.

 

Finally on the 3rd I went to my appointment, only to meet there the girl from my village who we were trying to get the midwife training for.  She'd already gotten permission and started the training a month ago, and just never bothered to tell me or anyone else from my village.  (She'd been visiting her parents, who live in Tamba, for a while, so that was how we didn't know).

 

So I felt a little ridiculous and superfluous, having wasted so much time in Tamba for nothing.  But I am trying to tell myself to be happy that this girl was motivated enough to take care of things herself, and also that we are about a month ahead of where I thought things stood.

 

In any case, I was finally able to come back to my village yesterday, and it is good to be back.

I'm back!

It seems like I've been away from my blog for a long time, although maybe it hasn't actually been longer than usual.  Anyway, I'm back, after a wonderful, much-needed vacation.

 

And now, for a few old entries that I forgot to post last time.

Traditional Medicine

Written Tuesday, 24 January 2008

 

 

Lately I've had a not very serious, but never-ending, cold.  I used up all the throat lozenges that Peace Corps gave me.  Stuck in my village with a scratchy throat and no throat lozenges = not fun.  So my counterpart offered to make me some traditional medicine – a particular kind of leaf, boiled in water, and then sugar added. 

 

I decided to try it.  It was a thick, syrupy drink the color of pond scum.  And tasted about like pond scum too.  And it did indeed make my scratchy throat feel better.  I still prefer throat lozenges, though.

Love potion!

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

Recently one of my host sisters has stopped eating with my host family.  At every meal I would ask where she was – shouldn't we call her to come eat? – and someone would tell me she was full.  Very fishy, I thought.  She wasn't sick, so I started to think that maybe there had been a fight in the family and she was avoiding hanging out with them.

 

Finally one day I saw her eating breakfast at my counterpart's compound, so I decided to ask him why she is not eating with us anymore.  The answer was about the last thing I would ever have guessed: love potion!

 

A man in my village has asked her to marry him, and she has refused, saying she doesn't love him.  So this man went to a marabout (religious leader) and got him to make a gris-gris (magical/religious object) – essentially a love potion – to put in her food, so that she will fall in love with him and agree to marry him. 

 

My other host sisters, who do the cooking for the family, of course found out about the plot, and they warned her.  So now she is not eating with our family so that no one can slip her some love potion.  And soon she and her mother are even going to leave the village in order to escape from the threat.

 

Now I am worried – what if someone tries to slip me some love potion?  My host mom would probably let them do it if they gave her enough money.  Let's hope love potion doesn't work on toubabs.

Baboons!

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

A few days ago I was biking back into my village from a neighboring volunteer's village, and I came upon a pack of at least thirty baboons crossing the road.  There were moms with little baby baboons on their back, and a giant dad baboon that must have weighed more than me.  They all moved away quickly when they heard me coming, so I didn't have to worry about them attacking me and I didn't have time to get a picture. 

 

This wasn't the first time I've seen the baboons, but it was just one of those moments where I realize how amazing it is that I'm living in an African village.

 

 

Clothes in trees, Part 2

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

I wrote on this blog several months ago about how people hang discarded clothes in trees.  I asked around about why, and all I could get as an answer was that it is related to a taboo.  Well, I finally got a little more information.  The discarded clothes are hung in trees because if they are just thrown on the ground or burned, the former owner of the clothes, particularly if it is a child, will get sick.  Putting them in trees is supposed to protect them from getting burned accidentally, and thus protect the clothes owner from getting sick.

 

What happens if there is a wildfire and the clothes get burned while they're in the tree?  No clear answer.

Muslim New Year

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

The Muslim New Year was last Friday.  At least here, it is not a big holiday like Korite or Tabaski, but it meant we got to eat meat with our lunch.  And in the afternoon, the women make dego, the Senegalese no-oven-required version of cookies, which is just corn, rice, or millet flour, or even a sort of paste made out of beans, mixed with water and sugar.  Then the village children run in packs from house to house demanding their share of dego.  It felt kind of like trick-or-treating on halloween.  And the adults go around asking their neighbors to forgive them for any wrongs they have committed against them.

Puppet show

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

This past week a couple of other volunteers and I performed a puppet show on dental hygiene in our villages.  It was a lot of fun; I don't know if my villagers had ever seen puppets before.

 

It's funny how the things that sounded pointless or cheesy or lame to me before coming to Peace Corps, like teaching English or doing theater to teach health messages, turn out to be my favorite activities here. 

Stop touching my boobs!

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

I had a classic Peace Corps freak-out moment recently.

 

I knew before coming here that Africans' sense of personal space is different from Americans', and I was prepared to try to adjust.  So when I got to my village and discovered that it is no big deal for people to touch women's breasts, it wasn't a surprise.  So I've gotten used to village women grabbing my breasts to compare my size with theirs, or to pretend that they're going to have me breastfeed a baby.  I even once had a woman at the market greet me by grabbing my breast and shaking it as if she were shaking my hand.  All of which I have endured and sometimes even been able to laugh at, although it always still feels weird to be touched like that.

 

But one day about a week ago one of my younger host sisters, who likes to push boundaries with me and see what she can get away with, decided to test how far I would let her get into my personal space by grabbing my breast and massaging it.  For whatever reason, instead of being able to ignore it or laugh it off, this time I just lost it.  I screamed at her and would even have hit her (not at all in character for me) if I had not had my hands full with holding a small child upside down by its feet at that moment (the kid was enjoying it, I wasn't torturing her or anything).

 

Everyone in Peace Corps has their story of losing control and acting out of character, no longer able to keep pretending to be the perfect, tolerant volunteer.  So this was mine.  My villagers seemed surprised to see me so angry, but they seemed to understand why – I was told later that at some point in the past (when the last volunteer was here? Before the first volunteer came?) they had a meeting to sensitize the whole village about Westerners' ideas of personal space.

 

Now everything is back to normal in my village, no weirdness with my villagers over the incident.  But no one has gotten in my personal space since then either, and I hope it stays that way.