Projects begin!

Hi all!

After a whole month (and what seems like much longer) spent doing “nothing” in village, I had a very productive week. After talking to other health volunteers, I had decided to plant maranga trees at my CSCOM. Maranga trees are AWESOME! You could probably find info on them on the internet, but here’s the basics: these trees grow quickly, are very resilient and have a million uses. For example, the leaves of the tree can be used in salads, or ground up into powders for sauces and provides a multitude of vitamins and protein! The leaves can also be used as a salve for skin irritations, while the seeds can be used in water purification. I have already planted a couple of these trees in my concession and they are coming along quite nicely. I had talked to my homologue about wanting to plant some at the CSCOM to later use in animations to teach about nutrition. We talked to the president of the ASACO (the board that directs the CSCOM) and he was in for the idea. I also talked to Mammi Dembele, a man who owns a very large tree farm in village. Mammi has been a homologue before and is very excited about Peace Corps and development work, especially as it pertains to environment. So, on Wednesday I set off with Alima, my homologue to dig some holes and plant some trees. When we got to the CSCOM early, when the sun was not quite hot yet, we greeted everyone and spent time chatting. Officials from the CSREF in San had come in to do paperwork with our Chef de Poste and our records keeper. The CSREF is to the CSCOM what a city hospital is to a small health center. Because they were in to check up on our facility, we did not get to dig our holes or plant our trees. Instead I spent the morning talking to a man about marriage in America. We discussed the fact that men in America only have one wife, not three or four. We also talked about how families tend to have fewer children. Because my Bambara is still a work in progress, it was easiest to tell him that the reasons were money related. Children are expensive. They must be fed and clothed and put through school. When you have too many of them, it gets too expensive. I found it easiest to explain that women didn’t want to share their husbands with other women, that, in fact it is illegal to have more than one wife, and that if one man had multiple wives, there wouldn’t be enough for his neighbors to have one. (We had been told in a discussion in training that some people believe that there are more women than men in Mali, and even in the world, and men are actually helping the problem by taking in more wives.)


Alima and I had decided to come back in the afternoon to dig our holes and plant our trees. We had lunch with Alima, the matrone, who is like a midwife, and then went home to have a nap. When we came back in the afternoon, around 4:30, the sun was dipping down in the Western sky and was blocked by the trees near the road. The weather was pretty perfect. Alima took over and began digging the holes and since we only had one daba (the blunt edged pick you use in the garden and the fields) I went to the pump to pull water. We planted the seeds and as I was putting the last few into one of the holes, Alima got very excited. She informed me she had more and would run to her house to get them. She’d be right back. When she returned, she had two mango starts and another tree start call sen sen. It is a tree that grows an edible fruit, although I am not sure what it would translate into in English. We planted the starts and as I watered them, Alima put up branches around them to keep animals from eating them. It was awesome because even though I had started the project, Alima had taken the idea and ran with it, bringing her own starters from her garden.

The next day, Thursday the 15th of October, was Global Hand Washing Day. People that I have spent time with in Mali understand washing their hands, but they only use water, no soap. As volunteers, we do a lot of talking about washing hands with SOAP and water. On Thursday morning, as we were getting ready for baby weighing and vaccination day, I got to give an animation on hand washing. In Bambara that my host dad helped me with, I explained why you should washing your hands with soap, when you should wash with soap, and then how you should do it. I even demonstrated! After I gave my animation, another woman from San did an animation on when and why people should come to the CSCOM. We finished out the morning with the usual baby weighing and vaccinations.


The next day I began the project of tracking babies’ weight and health progress in each village. I am taking the charts we use to track the health of babies, their weight and age determining whether they are health, malnourished or severely malnourished. I will make visual graphs to show how each village is doing. They will also to show the comparison between the health of baby girls and boys, as well as track the consistency in the recording of the baby weighing, something that we are going to be working on. In addition, my Chef de Poste has asked that my homologue and I start making mooni (porridge) on Thursdays, the mornings of vaccination and baby weighing. We will serve the mooni to children who are in the yellow (malnourished) or the red (severely malnourished) zones, which is determined by comparing their weight to their age. I am amazed, totally surprised, in the best way possible, at the initiative that my CSCOM has taken thus far. They already do so much and are so organized! A part of me is a little confused about what I will do to help, but very excited at the prospect of being able to be a part of such a cool group of people. And I am assured that there is always room for improvement. All in all it was a very productive week.