Thoughts On Work

Every time my mom calls me, she always asks, "have you thought about what you're going to do for your big project?" To which I tell her that I'm not going to have just one big project, but rather many different projects during my next 2 years here. Oh, and then I also tell her that I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to and that the mere thought of beginning health work in my village overwhelms me in every possible way.

Up until this point, I haven't been expected to begin any work in my village. The first 3 months at site (my village) were just supposed to be for getting to know the community and improving my Pulaar. This past month was In Service Training (IST) in Thies. IST was great and I feel like I learned a lot of important things that will hopefully be useful to my village during my service. The scary thing, though, is that I am going back to my village in a couple days and will finally be expected to actually implement those things. I mean, where do I even begin? Furthermore, I still can only communicate with the people in my village at the toddler level, at best. How am I supposed to be holding health classes and conveying useful information? I know that my language skills are improving every day and that I can't really do that much formal work until I am better at communicating in Pulaar, but I want to be ready now.

The first 3 months at site, I didn't feel guilty about just concentrating on learning Pulaar and not doing any work, but now, when I return to my village and am expected to begin working but can't because my Pulaar isn't good enough yet, I feel like a slacker. Good news for me, though; the month of September is Ramadan and since my village (along with 95% of Senegal) is Muslim, they will be not eating or drinking water from sunrise to sunset and will pretty much be tired all the time and not interested in doing anything in addition to their daily work. From what I've heard from volunteers that were here last year for Ramadan, I'm pretty much off the hook as far as health work goes during Ramadan, which will be ideal for me. I plan to spend Ramadan really working on my Pulaar and conducting an informal survey of the 450+ people in my village to get a better idea of their wants and needs. I plan to ask each family about how many children they have, their ages, how many children of theirs have died, which of their children are in school, if the family has a mosquito net, and if they have a proper latrine. These questions are all related to project ideas I have.

For example, I have been told that the infant mortality rate in my village is much higher than the Senegal average. There are many problems that stem from or contribute to infant and child mortality. In most cases, infant mortality in Senegal is due to dehydration from diarrhea. Dehydration is also because mothers here don't usually exclusively breastfeed their babies because they don't know that breast milk is 90% water. Because children die in large numbers, households tend to overcompensate and have more children, often leading to very large families. Too poor to invest in the education of all of their children, families can only educate one child, usually the eldest son.

With these issues in mind, if I can convince new moms to exclusive breastfeed their babies and encourage ways to better nourish their children, it makes sense that the infant/child mortality rate will go down. If mortality rates go down, it follows that women will stop overcompensating and having more children than they can adequately support. Finally, with smaller families, girls can begin to have more of an opportunity to go to school instead of getting married when they're 15. I know that it will take many years for all of this to happen, but if the only thing I successfully accomplish here is getting new moms to stop giving their babies water, exclusively breastfeed, and continue good child nutrition, I will feel successful. The rural areas of Senegal are not going to develop and/or change overnight, but in time, with the proper knowledge, people will stop dying unnecessarily and start living longer, more prosperous lives. That's the goal, at least. I just want to do whatever I can to help be a part of that process.