25 February 2012

Trapped


I often find myself complaining that I feel trapped.  I make excuses for not going outside and my lack of exercising because I don’t feel comfortable because I already feel like enough of a spectacle always being stared and shouted at when I’m doing normal things; running wouldn’t be nearly the escape it should be it would be stressful. I suppose my house and my couch are my prison, but still a place that’s mine. 

Well the karma of all my complaining caught up with me when I made to leave for work yesterday.  I was trapped, not figuratively, but literally.  I stuck my key in but it wouldn’t turn; the lock was broken, I was locked inside my house.  I thought about shouting out my window to my neighbors, but no one was around who spoke English or French and could understand my plight.  I tried calling one of the people I work with, no answer… my program director?.. another colleague? Nothing…  Finally I broke out of my house, only sort of breaking down my door. 

Previously I had lost my key and I had broken into my house and now I was busting out.  It wasn’t too bad, but with the bolt still in the locked position I couldn’t really go to my meeting.  Thankfully, I finally got in touch with the ones I was to have the meeting with and they were very understanding and appeared only a few minutes later with a carpenter in tow.  I was saved!

My landlord’s wife came back a short time later.  “You got locked inside your house? Muhahahahahaha!”  Yeah, she laughed at me—I suppose it was a pretty funny situation.  I’ll have to watch what I complain about now, no more feeling trapped or out of touch, maybe I am “so tired of feeling like I eat ice cream all the time.”  I could be trapped with that.

12 February 2012

Senegal ahoy!


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.