As I stepped off the plane I was
greeted by a huge hug as the humidity of Lomé squeezed me tight practically
screaming “welcome back!” I just got
back from a trip to Senegal where the weather was a pleasant high of 75 degrees
and as dry as could be. They were the
most comfortable weeks I’ve ever spent in Africa, granted I was by no means
prepared and in the morning and at night I was freezing as the temperature
dipped into the 60’s and caught my first ever African cold. Though, while most pleasant, it was not for
the weather that I went to Senegal.
Myself and another volunteer were sent to attend a two week long
conference and training on malaria.
As many of us have heard at some
point in time, malaria is a severe disease spread by mosquitoes that is the
cause of nearly a million deaths a year, an estimated US$12 billion loss in GDP
in African nations, and is endemic to much of Africa. In the past malaria was a major cause of mortality
in North America as well, but with rapid treatment, mosquito breeding site
elimination, protection of homes with window screens and bed nets, and
eventually the use of insecticides we were able to completely eliminated
malaria from the United States. Many
decades ago the world declared that it would eliminate malaria from other
endemic areas such as South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. While sincere, efforts were spotty and
unfocused and when results didn’t come immediately interest and funding in many
ways petered out particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Today we are equipped with new
tools to fight malaria including new anti-malarial treatments, new simple and
rapid diagnosis methods, a vaccine to prevent malaria deaths scheduled to come
out in 2015 (and others on the way to prevent transmission), and most of all a
renewed vigor to finally finish what we started. There have been new efforts to implement
universal coverage of insecticide treated bed nets and funding access to Rapid
Diagnostic Tests (RDT) and malaria medication.
Another key aspect of the renewed fight is a new goal of unified action both
in scientific technology development and on the ground efforts.
That is why I went to
Senegal. For many reasons it has long
been in the Peace Corps culture that volunteers and Peace Corps countries have
followed their own agenda and not put forth a unified effort on any particular
project. All countries have their own
training materials and each sector within a country does their own individual
activities. Today, though, with
expanding communication opportunities and an increasing technical knowledge of
the issue facing us, there really are no longer excuses to not collaborating and
not collaborating really represents a weakness in our efforts to eliminate
issues that reach across borders.
The Peace Corps in Africa is
working to unify our volunteers through the Stomp Out Malaria in Africa
initiative (stompingoutmalairia.org).
The goal is to have all countries in Africa endemic with malaria create
a unified front, making malaria a priority activity for volunteers of all
sectors, creating a universal Peace Corps-wide training. In order to put this initiative in motion the
Peace Corps has been sponsoring “Malaria Boot Camps” to educate staff and
volunteers who will spear head to start of or strengthening of malaria
initiatives in their country. This is
where my trip to Senegal comes in.
This was the third Boot Camp put
on the by the Peace Corps and twenty-three participants from eleven countries
convened in Senegal for training. A mix
of volunteers, PC response, and staff from Senegal, The Gambia, Mali, Burkina
Faso, Togo, Benin, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia, and Mozambique participated in
technical training, lectures from experts from all over the malaria effort, and
much more from advocacy strategies, how to utilize social media, to how to
convince all volunteers to participate.
We began our days at 8am and finished around 10:30pm and had only one
day off for the two weeks. It was a
tiring two weeks, but I learned a great deal and have come back motivated to
work together with Peace Corps Togo to begin our efforts against malaria.
While much of the time was work it
was great to get to know the people from the other countries. We got to spend a day at a beach in a town
called Popenguine, went hiking through their nature preserve, climbed around on
old military bunkers, played on the beach, and had some good food. Over the past twelve days we all bonded and
have promised each other to stay in touch.
A group of us were all on the same plane back and the joke was made that
we should pretend to be asleep when we got into Lomé and stay on the plane as
it continued on for Ethiopia. If only
things worked that way…
This training in Senegal and
meeting the team of Peace Corps volunteers has inspired me to worked more in
the fight against malaria and sparked optimism that we can accomplish our goals
with wise investments and a unified effort from all those in the fight against
malaria. And maybe I can complain a
little less about the weather with a new motivation to be doing work here…though
I don’t know if I could ever really do that. Haha.
