Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Jour de Jeunesse 2014

Last week, I attended my first Youth Day (or Jour de Jeunesse). It is a day to celebrate youth (duh) where they march in a parade and perform dances and skits. Children are given money by their parents and can also earn money if they choose to participate in the performances. However, this processes includes grown ups sticking dollar bills to children while they dance. Let's just say for us westerners this can feel rather uncomfortable. Because I am “the white of Danfili”, I was of course given a seat in the front row to watch the festivities. It started with both the elementary school and high school marching. School clubs and town organizations followed. Afterwards, several students performed dances. (There are two nights leading up to the celebration where many more students perform dances and skits, as well.) Lastly, and this was the most exciting part for me, was a sketch by the “Hommes Dynamiques”.

The Hommes Dynamiques (a.k.a. Dynamic Men) is a group that the previous volunteer worked with. She identified 10 respected and progressive men in the community and led an educational training for them. They were educated on three topics: family planning, prenatal consultations, and vaccinations. Because these three things are very underutilized in Danfili, their job after the training was to share the new information with the community. Many people don't understand the importance of these three topics or have misunderstandings about them. At the end of the week of training, the men led an educational meeting to share what they had learned. The understanding was that they would continue work in the community, but they found that they did not have direction once the volunteer left. After meeting with them in January, they confirmed to me that they wanted to continue work and suggested that Youth Day would be a good way to start. Because it can be challenging to identify motivated individuals in the community, I was thrilled that they already had ideas. I explained that because I had never seen a Youth Day, that they would have to take the lead with the planning. They decided to march with the other community organizations and have a sign made for this and future events. They also felt that a sketch in Fulfulde would be the best way to share information. Although I attended several planning meetings with them, they did most of the creative work. The day of the festival, everything went great! They were introduced to the community as a new group and marched with their new sign. After the kids' dances, three of the men performed the sketch, two as “villagers” and the other an “Hommes Dynamiques”. He explained the importance of family planning and did a demonstration of how a bigger family means dividing food among more people. I turned around during the sketch and the men sitting around me (who were the more important in the community, because they had assigned chairs as well) were watching intently. The cherry on top? Later that day, one boutique owner who I know asked me about the different methods of family planning available at the hospital! This was a huge success not just because it was the first real work I feel like I've done. It was great that it was a continuation of work that the previous volunteer did. It was also really wonderful that the group themselves organized the presentation because these two things contribute to the magic word: Sustainability!

In other news, I had my first real health issue this past week as well, while preparations for Youth Day were going on. I felt nauseous on and off for about 4 days before finally going to the hospital and finding out I had microbes in my stomach! Quite frankly, compared to some of my fellow volunteers maladies, microbes isn't anything to complain about. No worries Mom and Dad, with the help of 3 days of meds I am already 100% again.


This week I'm headed to Bamenda for IST and it feels good to go with one success under my belt and microbe free!

Some of the adorable primary school kids marching

Our high school marching (these girls are the minority in Danfili; at our high school there are 50 girls and 136 boys)

Some of the girls at the high school performing

Hommes Dynamiques marching

The Grio (town crier)

Some really talented girls dancing

Some of the Hommes Dynamiques during their sketch

More of the Hommes Dynamiques sketch

Photos of my home!

My bedroom

My house!
My living room
My "kitchen"

My bathroom
Small Mborro camp outside of Danfili


The small town of Mbiyoka
Danfili's health center
The beautiful landscape on the north side of town
Me with the little stinker, Hawa, who lives with us
Another of my favorite little kids, David, wearing my helmet

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

En Brousse: January 31, 2014

After two months at post, I am finally in a finished, permanent house! After my “fou” incident, I moved to a different house, but was required to make a million changes to meet Peace Corps housing standards. With the speed that business gets done here, the process has taken pretty much the full two months. My house is great now though, and I'm in the process of adding homey touches, like buying a bed! During the past month, a lot of work has been pushed to the side as I have been stuck at the house while they work. One thing that I've done is help on the polio vaccination campaign. Because the number of people entering here from C.A.R. has been increasing and there have been several cases of polio recently, the goal is to vaccinate all kids under 10. This means walking around villages into each concession to give the drops to each kid. I asked to go “en brousse” (in the bush) this time to get the opportunity to see the little villages. Believe it or not, Danfili is considered a “large village”. Our 4,000-5,000 population is like the big city compared to the towns of 200 that are en brousse around us. Anyway, I got on a moto (motorcycle) with one of the community health workers for an hour ride down a little dirt path to the town of Mbyoaka. On the way, we stopped at one of the camps of the Mborro. The Mborro are the group of people who raise cattle here. They generally live en brousse in small encampments that are just their families. The camps consist of one man, his 3-4 wives and their bazillion children. Some of the bigger camps include the man's sons and their families as well. The first one we went to was pretty cool. They were very welcoming and appreciative that we had gone out of our way to give them vaccines. We generally don't go out to the camps unless the father asks us to. He thanked us for coming and they gave us gifts of manioche (it's the thought that counts..). On our way to Mbyoaka we also ran into a mom and her four children who had been waiting for us to pass by. So, we hopped off to give them vaccinations. As we were leaving, one of the little girls said to her mom, “What is this type of person? I've never seen anyone with skin like that before!” It was pretty funny! Because in some areas, people are wary of modern medicine, it's pretty cool when we see people who go out of their way to get their children vaccinated. Many people also don't understand what the vaccines are for and ask us why they don't have any for adults or the elderly. A lot of older people will ask us to vaccinate them! Anyway, eventually we arrived in Mbyoaka, which is a little town right on the lake. Most, if not all, of the families fish for their living. The town is small enough that it only took an hour to walk around the entire thing and vaccinate all of the kids. At the end of the day, I was exhausted. Turns out, sitting on a moto for several hours is a lot of work! In Danfili “proper”, I've been getting to know the town and people a lot better too. I still love the family I live with and spend a lot of time with them. When I am able to communicate with my grandma, I'm finding out that she's actually pretty funny. With our mix of French and Fulfulde we even have some inside jokes! When I leave my concession, I walk past this row of boutiques (which just means a convenience store, basically) and a small mosque. There are always men hanging out outside and they all seem to be intent on teaching me Fulfulde. If they see me trying to sneak by, I get called over to practice my Fulfulde. One man, who is an El Hadji (a.k.a. He's been to Mecca or is very respected in the community.) is especially intent on teaching me. He speaks Fulfulde at me until I either understand or admit “Mi nanata” (I don't understand) and lets me go. One of the boutique owners has also been really helpful. We try to do our transactions in Fulfulde. He is patient and let's me think through my phrase before correcting me. It's definitely helpful though and I love that people are so excited for me to learn. Even using the very simple phrases that I've learned so far makes people really happy. I know I'm learning more every week, but I'm going to try to find a tutor to speed the process along. A word I just recently came to understand is, “Yohwah!”. I heard it all over, but couldn't get a real explanation for a long time. It's basically a general response, similar to “Okay!”, but is much more fun to say. So obviously, I've been using it every chance I get. Another fun character I've met is our “town crier”. Yeah, he literally walks around town with his megaphone making announcements. He does this for the vaccination campaigns, but also gets sent by the chief to deliver various messages. The other night, he was letting everyone know that a mattress was stolen from someone's home and if the culprit didn't come forward, the owners of the mattress would use traditional medicine against him. I was informed with the utmost seriousness that, “That could kill a person.” I'm not entirely sure how they conduct this “medicine”, but it seems to be generally agreed upon that you don't want to be on the receiving end. The town crier speaks some basic English and always greets me with a salute and an enthusiastic, “Good Moooorning Sistah!” During the vaccination campaign, we had a whole conversation in which he spoke to me through his megaphone, in spite of the fact that I was only several yards away. The great thing about Danfili is that because it's so small, once you know a couple people, you see someone you know every time you go out! It always reminds me of those movies where all the characters connect, but you don't know how until it is slowly revealed as the movie progresses (like Love Actually or Valentine's Day). You are sitting in someone's compound and suddenly a teacher you know from the high school shows up. Turns out, he's your friend's cousin. It's pretty crazy how quickly you can adjust to new things though. Oftentimes I catch myself doing certain things that were so daunting to me before arriving, without even a second thought. The idea of trying to figure out transportation was very scary to me, but I travel to neighboring towns about once a week and it's so easy! I just walk out to the road and find a car facing in the right direction! Navigating the market, flagging down motos, killing cockroaches, responding to marriage proposals... no problem. Time has been going crazy fast here, though! In 3 weeks I will be getting ready to go to IST or PST Reconnect, as it has been renamed. That means a trip to Bamenda, a week with my fellow stagemates, and pizza! Thanks to all of you wonderful people who have sent me letters and packages! It's really great to get letters about everyone's life in the states, even if it is a month out of date when I get it!