I'm in Yaounde (again), and I've been here for over a week now. Man, I am ready to get back to post. There's really not much to do in Yaounde except spend money on expensive western food and/or drink beer. But there's only so much money you can drop before you start to feel your soul drip out through your wallet and evaporate into the pockets of the wealthy Yaounde-ites who cater to the tastes of westerners who miss the culinary traditions of their homelands.
Well, it's been awhile since I updated anything about my work life so I'll go ahead and give a brief update. Before I left Ngong I was doing demonstrations about 4 times a week on various health topics from Malaria to nutrition for mothers and babies to the importance of vaccinations. The first day I did my nutrition presentation to pregnant mothers I mentioned the importance of eating meat and getting lots of iron because pregnant women are at a high risk of anemia in our part of the country. Well, when I went in the next day all the nurses told me that about half of the women bought anemia-prevention medicine which definitely shows that at least I had an impact and got through to the women--if not necessarily in regards to how they can naturally prevent anemia through diet.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm in Yaounde right now and I'm here because I've been selected to help out with training for the new group of agro and health volunteers arriving in a couple weeks. I'll be coming down and presenting the technical sessions on Diarrheal Diseases, Water & Sanitation, Malaria, and Food Security. The last one I'll be doing with my friend Patrick, an Agro who lives in the Northwest. I'm really excited, though, because I will also be in Bafia (the new training city) when the groups find out their posts. Not only will I be able to see who'll be the new kids around me but I'll be able to give information on a lot of the northern posts and calm some of the unavoidable fears of the trainees going to the grand north.
On the back burner right now is my trash collection project. I've been green-lighted for funding, the only snag right now is that I don't have all of the prices down for the plaques I'd like to have made for our sensitization campaign. Hopefully I'll be able to find those out before I head back up north on Wednesday night.
One other project I'm working on right now is getting a pump fixed with Chris, a SED (small enterprise development) volunteer about 22 k from me. The pump is in a small town called Rabingha, 4 k south of me. Chris is going to do some savings and general money-managing classes with the members of the water committee there, and I'll be doing some water sanitation sessions with whoever wants them.
I also did a short jam-making project a while back. It started out pretty well, but I definitely started the project too late into the mango season, so I wasn't able to teach as many people as I wanted to and I doubt the women I taught had much time to practice before the mangoes were all gone. Oh well, next year I'll have to start when the mangoes arrive.
There was an outbreak of cholera in my health district back in July but, as it stands, we've only had seven cases (none in Ngong proper) and no deaths. The last case was also over a month ago, so we're pretty sure that this specific outbreak in our district is done. Knock on wood. Who knows when another case will slither on down from the Extreme North and infect more people, though. I went out to the town where the first case was and, let me tell you, I have no idea how there weren't 100 cases. The latrines were uncovered, dirty dishes were laying around everywhere, and the well where people got their water was horrible. It was about 200 meters from the big river in the North (the Benoue) and the water table was only about a foot below the surface. The water was so cloudy and dirty that I couldn't see more than five or six inches below the surface. It looked like the water in my buckets after I get done washing my clothes. Anyway, the authorities treated the well (LOADS of chlorine in it, closing it off for a couple days), and made everyone who lived nearby start boiling their water and using chlorine when washing their dishes.
Well, guess that's about it for now. I'll probably be pretty busy in the next couple months, what with traveling back down here for training and working on the pump and trash projects.
Until next time....
Monday, September 6, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
The revolving door of peace corps
Peace Corps is a unique and interesting organization for innumerable reasons, though the one I'd like to look at now is how it affects the relationships between people.
I thought of this pretty early on after I arrived in country but Peace Corps really is like a revolving door of people. When we first got here, most of the volunteers we met and got to know left before we even finished training because their two years of service were up. After that, a few people I got to be good friends with left again back in June-July, with a new group in to replace them. Throw in the people who have to randomly go home due to family illnesses or other reasons and you can see how there's constantly people filtering in and out of my life around here. Now, a good number of my friends and volunteers around me are going to be leaving in November and December and I think that's going to be pretty tough on me. Sure, I've still got some friends around me, as well as the rest of my training mates who I'll see when I come down to Yaounde, but I feel like I slipped in pretty well to the health/agro stage before mine and it's going to be a sad day for me when they're all leaving and off to bigger and better things. I know that might sound like an egotistical thing for me to say but I guess I'm just saying that I'm going to miss everyone when they leave.
Peace Corps also does an interesting number on personal relationships. During training, friendships and relationships are on a hyper-accelerated pace as we spend 8+ hours a day together. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as you get to know people pretty well in those short 11 weeks. Since training, though, I haven't really seen much of the others from my training group as I am pretty far away from them all, so many of these friendships have kind of fallen to the side. Somebody warned me that it would be hard to stay involved with their lives being, at the least, a 2 day journey from 90% of them. With a few exceptions, it's turned out to be pretty true. So I became good friends with the people around me in the North region, a good number of who are leaving in the next 3 months.
Another volunteer nearby me who has been here for close to 3.5 years now has said it's hard seeing people you trained with go, and while I didn't train with the people leaving soon, I definitely became good friends with them. I might take a couple days of vacation and go hang out with him in the Extreme North in December before the new volunteers arrive, to get away from all the empty posts.
Maybe this blog has been a bit of a downer. I hope not, but it's been something on my mind a lot lately.
I thought of this pretty early on after I arrived in country but Peace Corps really is like a revolving door of people. When we first got here, most of the volunteers we met and got to know left before we even finished training because their two years of service were up. After that, a few people I got to be good friends with left again back in June-July, with a new group in to replace them. Throw in the people who have to randomly go home due to family illnesses or other reasons and you can see how there's constantly people filtering in and out of my life around here. Now, a good number of my friends and volunteers around me are going to be leaving in November and December and I think that's going to be pretty tough on me. Sure, I've still got some friends around me, as well as the rest of my training mates who I'll see when I come down to Yaounde, but I feel like I slipped in pretty well to the health/agro stage before mine and it's going to be a sad day for me when they're all leaving and off to bigger and better things. I know that might sound like an egotistical thing for me to say but I guess I'm just saying that I'm going to miss everyone when they leave.
Peace Corps also does an interesting number on personal relationships. During training, friendships and relationships are on a hyper-accelerated pace as we spend 8+ hours a day together. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as you get to know people pretty well in those short 11 weeks. Since training, though, I haven't really seen much of the others from my training group as I am pretty far away from them all, so many of these friendships have kind of fallen to the side. Somebody warned me that it would be hard to stay involved with their lives being, at the least, a 2 day journey from 90% of them. With a few exceptions, it's turned out to be pretty true. So I became good friends with the people around me in the North region, a good number of who are leaving in the next 3 months.
Another volunteer nearby me who has been here for close to 3.5 years now has said it's hard seeing people you trained with go, and while I didn't train with the people leaving soon, I definitely became good friends with them. I might take a couple days of vacation and go hang out with him in the Extreme North in December before the new volunteers arrive, to get away from all the empty posts.
Maybe this blog has been a bit of a downer. I hope not, but it's been something on my mind a lot lately.
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