Saturday, June 5, 2010

Long Overdue Update...because when are they not

Hey everyone,

Sorry for taking so long this time around to send an update on the
life and times of Sully in Senegal; the time really gets away from you
when your sweating your way through the days. But thankfully we seem
to be on our way out of the hot dry season and into the hot rainy
season. We've already had quite a few rains, and it's amazing the
difference even just a little moisture can make to the landscape. My
friend who is a fellow volunteer and my closest neighbor described it
pretty well when he said it's like going from a moonscape to a jungle
in a matter of weeks.
With the rains comes the planting, and my 2nd annual distribution of
Samba's corn and assorted crops. I recently got all my seeds that
were issued to me out to my site, and now their in my hut waiting to
be given out to farmers once I come up with plan d'action. I
fortunately got to request things that I wanted this time around,
being all experienced and what not (...?). I also have the seeds that
were returned to me by farmers last year to figure out what to do
with, so I'm thinking of trying to expand out to a neighboring village
or two. Probably just with one or two farmers in each one, since I
don't know those villages very well, and I'd be stretched pretty thin
trying to visit them constantly on top of monitoring the fields in my
own village.
In addition to that, the goings on consists of a lot of work for the
upcoming mosquito net distribution, also for the second year in a row.
However (and you all probably noticed I didn't try to hit you up for
money this time around), the system is a little different since it's
much more on the government's shoulders this year and not Peace Corps.
The national anti-malaria program in Senegal has decided to adopt the
system of distributing nets that we implemented last year, when it was
much more the PCVs baby, and use it to continue towards the updated
goal of universal coverage (and they've provided the nets). Last year
the government did distribute some nets, but they were focusing only
on women and children under 5, so our distribution was beneficial in
ensuring that every sleeping space, regardless of who slept there, was
covered by a net. The government has since, as I said, updated their
goal to mirror our distribution last year in trying to achieve
"universal coverage" (which, incidentally, was the recommendation of
the World Health Organization that distributing long-lasting,
impregnated mosquito nets en masse was the most effective way to
combat malaria).
So while it has been a lot of logistical work on our side, it's been
encouraging to see that with so many national, regional, and
departmental teams involved this time, even if we were to quit right
now, this distribution would still happen without us. My job has been
helping with the visuals (surprise) for the many trainings that are
needed this year to educate local health workers on the best way to
take a census of a family's compound and accurately discover exactly
how many nets that family needs. The dry run of this training was
yesterday, with the first real one being today. I think it's going to
go really well, and I was happy to be able to contribute what I think
will further help these health workers do the best job possible.
That's most of the recent news; however, I do have a continuing well
project which got underway about a month and a half ago thanks to
funds I received from my high school's National Honors Society. They
raised an incredible amount of money putting on a dodgeball tournament
of all things, which I thought was pretty awesome. Some of those
funds are also going to go towards the mosquito net distribution by
helping alleviate the costs of conducting so many trainings of local
health workers and ultimately the transportation costs of getting nets
out to their distribution points. Anyway, the well idea was brought
up at the large village-wide meeting I think I wrote about before,
where we had men, women, and children all separately bring up what
they thought the priorities for improving life in the village should
be. One that they all agreed one was digging a new, modern well
between the two areas of the village which are the farthest apart from
one another. Since then I wrote a grant for the well to be dug, which
was later funded by dodgeball, and digging has been underway for the
last couple weeks. I'm happy to report we recently hit water at 6m
underground (which is ridiculously shallow and I'm very fortunate
since I only budgeted to go no farther than 10m; also because most
people get to 10-20m and haven't hit anything but more rocks). We are
still going to continue down below the water level to the 10m mark, so
that the villagers will never have to worry about that well running
dry. The idea is that since we've only just entered the rainy season,
the water table is going to be at about it's lowest point, so if you
dig to it and then continue beyond by a couple of meters, you can be
sure that even in the thick of the hot dry season, there will be
water.
I'm kind of chronologically all over the place since it's easier to
write about things as I think of them. I did just get back a couple
weeks ago from JazzFest in St. Louis, which is up north of Dakar and
basically extremely far away from Kedougou. It was totally worth the
trip though; myself and three other Gou volunteers went up together
and had a room at a hotel that was by the beach (not particularly nice
but it was by the beach), and our room had a little kitchen area with
a gas stove and mini-fridge, so we were able to cook our own meals
some nights and grill out on the hotel's property. The music was
awesome, though not the music of the actual Fest since I wouldn't know
what that sounded like. The actual event is walled off and expensive
to get into, but every other bar on the island has live music in
celebration of the Fest, so we would just watch those shows for free.
All in all, despite the heavy amounts of travelling, it was a great
getaway and a nice little vacation.
This past week my two closest neighbors, Lindsay and Ian, came out
to my village to paint a world map at the primary school there. Not
much to be said about it besides it was extremely hot and took us 3
days to do it, but PC has like a whole packet on how to complete one
so it turned out really great. It was just that I dont think any of
us expected it to take as long as it did, and my family was surprised
when my guests' stay went from one night with us to three. In any
case, it's done now and looks really nice and the school was
very appreciative since now they have a great new teaching tool
available to them.
Oh, and about 3 months ago, we did a repeat of last year's eye
clinic: same doctors, same deal, I even got to have the same job as
the Pre-Op guy and getting to use what my friend called my "polished
Grandma Pulaar" to help "soothe" patients by explaining everything to
them. It was cool, though, to see a marked difference in how much I
could tell them and to what degree I could answer questions as
compared to the me of last year. They performed something like 94
cataract surgeries again this year which was incredible, but the best
part was that the hospital was performing C-sections at the same time,
so we'd have to give up the OR until they were done; one day my friend
and I asked the head surgeon if we could, you know, watch, and he
actually said yes! We just had to don scrubs and masks and stood in
the corner watching the whole thing. NEVER would have been allowed in
the States, and it was totally gross, but now I can say I've watched a
C-section from beginning to end. They're surprising brutal.
That's about it for now, if you're still reading at this point! As
you may have noticed I switched my email over to a Gmail account
because Comcast doesn't work too reliably for me over here, for
whatever reason, and PC has been doing a lot of info and file-sharing
through Google Docs, so if we have our own accounts it's easier for
us. So I just copied over all my contacts from the old account and
recreated this list; if youre still on it and would rather not be, let
me know, or if you know someone who should be on it, tell them they're
not on it for a reason. Or tell me, and I'll add them.

Thanks again for all the love and support, and I'll make a serious
effort next time to deliver a timely (and shorter) update.

Love,

Steve Sully Sullivan