Peace Corps Response: The Adventure Continues

In just five days I’ll be leaving West Africa, but I won’t be gone for long.

I've been offered and accepted a Peace Corps Response position with Save the Children, serving as a Health Program Specialist in Kankan, Guinea. It’s a nine-month assignment, starting in June, and I’ll be supporting the current Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP) that’s being funded by USAID and led by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Jphiego.

Home Sweet Soon-to-Be Home

MCHIP activities focus on strengthening family planning services, increasing local capacity for reproductive health services, and increasing the quality of care provided at the community level. As a Health Program Specialist, my main responsibilities will be to provide regular monthly updates on program activities in Guinea in English and French, to work with local staff to improve work plans and budgets, and to help coordinate the development of a Public Health and Nutrition Program. It will be a big change and a lot of responsibility, but I’m eager to work with Save the Children, to spend a bit more time in West Africa, and to eat avocados for breakfast every day. (Among other things, Guinea is renowned for having beautiful terrain, nightmarish roads and absolutely fabulous fruits and vegetables.) 

As excited as I am, there is a big opportunity cost – I was really looking forward to spending a summer in the Trinity Alps, to finally being around for weddings and birthdays, and to spending the holidays in California. Happily, I will have a long enough break to spend some quality time with friends and family, and the office where I'll work in Kankan is outfitted with electricity and a back-up generator  so it will be a lot easier to stay connected. Plus it will probably be all thrilling and novel just to be in an office, to have a desk and a chair and an internet connection. Who knows, maybe I'll even have running water at home. Fancytown! 

Maternal and Child Health Training: The Last of the Work Stuff

In March the maternal and child health training for "Neighborhood Aunts"that we've been trying to get off the ground for months actually happened, and despite some communications difficulties (the cell phone network went down for a week and a half) it went really well. “Neighborhood Aunts” are women who have been selected by their villages to serve as point people for disseminating important health information and encouraging healthy behaviors. Because they live and work in the community they are ideally placed to serve as health resources and can encourage healthy behaviors, such as attending pre-natal visits and seeking early treatment for malaria. 

For the most part, the midwives would lead a discussion or lecture, and then the women would break into small groups to practice leading health talks and having conversations about a given topic. Then, one by one, they would practice leading a health talk with the whole group, and the midwives would add or correct things as needed. The training was based on the "Neighborhood Aunt" curriculum laid out by the Senegalese Ministry of Health, and the schedule went like this:

Day One

·        Orientation and discussion of roles

·        The importance of advocating for ante-natal care

·        Pre-natal visits, attended births, post-natal visits, and miscarriage

·        Family planning and reproductive health

Day Two

·        The importance of advocating for child health (0-5 Years)

·        Vaccinations, seeking early treatment for illness and injuries

·        Community mobilization methods, implicating community leaders

·        Creating and managing community health funds

           

Day Three

·        Planning, implementation, following up, and reporting activities

·        The importance of the "Neighborhood Aunt"

·        Evaluation and distribution of monthly activity reporting forms

·        Review and closure

There were also group discussion about why maternal health is important, and the participating women spoke frankly and passionately about how women are often undervalued or seen as replaceable, and how that needs to change. They had the chance to ask all sorts of questions, talk about the reasons that people in their communities wait until the last minute to seek medical care, to discuss why some people are opposed to family planning, and to reaffirm the importance of having "Neighborhood Aunts" in a village.

The Community Center where the training was held is also where local youth can take vocational courses for trades like tailoring and catering, so the lunch and coffee break prep for our training also served as a practicum for a group of catering students. It was really fun to hang out during lunch and coffee breaks, both because the people serving the food were intent on showing off their skills and because all of the women were so obviously delighted at being served a fancy lunch that they didn't have to make from scratch themselves. I think it made them feel important, which made the training feel more important, too.

Once the chairs were rented, the radio announcements made, and the lunches all paid for, my main role was just to sit in the back of the room, taking pictures, occasionally holding fussy babies, and nodding approvingly whenever anyone looked over at me. About half the participants came from other villages, took three whole days out their lives, to attend the training, and it was great to see most of them really enjoying the training, asking good questions and taking their role very seriously. Best of all, the midwives were really pleased, and after the training wrapped up they talked and talked about how to best implicate the newly-qualified "Neighborhood Aunts" in their attended birth and pre-natal visit promotion activities. 

To-Do

My training group and I had our Close-of-Service (COS) conference last week and I now I have an official COS date (May 1st, 2013!)  and a long list of things that I have to get done before then. With the latrine project wrapping up nicely I can turn my attention to helping run a Maternal & Child Health training, helping to facilitate another visit from the PeaceCare team, participating in the Kedougou Youth Leadership Camp, and handing off my various Peace Corps-related responsibilities.

The Maternal Health training was supposed to happen last November, but there were some... perturbations... during the whole grant-processing  procedure and things didn't quite pan out as planned, but the midwives and Health Center staff are enthusiastic and I'm hopeful that the training will happen in early March so that I won't have to pass it on to my replacement, who will be arriving in early May. I'm looking forward to PeaceCare's visit (cryotherapy training for local health professionals! How can you not be looking forward to that?) and of course, pretty much everyone knows how much I love camp, so that'll be great, too.

It's shaping up to be an exceptionally busy few weeks, but as hectic as it's shaping up to be, I am glad that I'll be busy.

I'm hoping that all the work will help keep me from dwelling on how sad I'll be to leave my host family and my friends here and from fretting about the somewhat intimidating prospect of returning to America. (So big! So expensive! So fancy! So many options for everything!) I'm definitely going to miss Mariama Kesso and her daughter Fatou (above - she's getting so big!). I will miss the kids (Sajou, Tijane, Mankaba, and Diabou, below left) who like to come by my hut in the afternoons (and some mornings, and most evenings) to color and practice counting and insist that I look at whatever they happen to be doing. I might miss Diabou (below right, with marker on her face) most of all. She was the last of the kids to warm up to me, she doesn't talk much, and one time she accidentally peed on my floor, but she's also funny and tenacious and always comes over to offer me peanuts and to help me sweep out my hut. She's a good little friend.