Where's MY bed net?!?

With only a couple more days left of Ramadan and about two months into the rainy season, I’m finding myself finally ready to write another post. There are quite a few updates I've been putting off, but it’s only because I've been so busy and productive in village…ok so maybe that’s only half true.

UPDATE 1: My mid-service crisis is transitioning into a sort of “get your life together” panic. Talking to other volunteers who were in the same training group as me, I feel as if we’re all starting to think about what’s going to happen in eight months when our service is over. It makes me feel better knowing that we’re all in this similar state of mind and that I still have a little time until I need to worry about these things.

Digging the well at the middle school.

UPDATE 2: My well project is well underway. And despite previous worries about not being able to dig this well during the rainy season, my well digger has proven me wrong (thankfully)!!

UPDATE 3: I've booked my ticket home for Thanksgiving! I’ll be home for three weeks and have already started a list of places I want to eat at. I’m also excited to drive a car, go to a movie in a theater, sleep on my memory foam mattress, and blow dry my hair…just to name a few things.

UPDATE 4: Ramadan in village has been quite pleasant. Maybe it’s because I only fasted for one day, although my intentions were for five. My host mom refused that I fast and insisted that she cook lunch for me. Of course I couldn't disobey her, so now I’m actually eating more than I normally do because on top of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I also break the fast with my family at sun down. It was endearing to see how much my host mom cared to see that I was comfortable, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever eat enough to please her. I swear I could eat a meal made for four and she would still tell me I didn't eat anything.

But the main reason I wanted to write this blog was to talk about the universal coverage campaign of bed nets that I recently helped with. This campaign is put on by Senegal’s Ministry of Health, and plans to distribute bed nets over all of Senegal, region by region. The region that I live in, Kedougou, has the highest rates of malaria each year, and for this reason was the first region to get nets. Just to paint a picture, in my village of about 1,300, there have been about an average of 5-7 cases of malaria per day just in the past week. And that’s just accounting for the people who are actually going to the health hut to be treated. The other day I literally had to walk my neighbor to the health hut because she refused to get help. Malaria here though is just something they've all come to expect and learned how to deal with. For those who don’t know too much about the disease, it is only spread by one type of mosquito that is active at night. This is one of the reasons that sleeping under a bed net can be a huge factor in eliminating this disease. Of course it’s going to take more than just sleeping under a bed net and it’s much easier said than done.  I’m not sure how many of you have tried sleeping in a hot room, under a mosquito net that even further restricts air circulation, but sleeping outside in the open air is much more comfortable. You also have to take into consideration that people stay up way past when the sun goes down and aren't going to hang out all night sitting under nets. That being said, bed nets are still important and if used properly and regularly can help to prevent the spread of malaria.

So my village was the distribution site for three villages, mine and two neighboring ones. I attended a two-day training with my work counterpart, who is the community health worker, and we were instructed on how the distribution would take place and all the logistics involved. A few days before the actual distribution, ten HUGE bags arrived carrying over 1,500 nets, and the task of labeling each and every net was set before us. It took us two and a half days to finish labeling and organizing the nets by village and family compound. By the end of the third day I never wanted to touch another bed net again, and my face was burning form the insecticide that covered each net. But nonetheless, I felt accomplished and ready to hand those suckers out. 

Just a fraction of what we distributed, with nets labeled with name, date, and village.

So the day of the distribution came and I was excited to finally give the nets away. I had been telling my family for weeks that mosquito nets were coming and I was anxious for them to see all the hard work I had put into this campaign. What I wasn't expecting though was the ungratefulness, for lack of better words, that I felt from people in my community. Some people were upset that they were receiving fewer nets than others, even though my counterpart had done a census in the village. He and another community worker had gone around the village to count every sleeping space available and mosquito net available to assess how many nets each family actually needed. The thing I found was that everyone just wanted a new net, even though they already had perfectly working nets at home. And when I came home from the long day of distributing nets, I was greeted by an astounding, “We didn't get enough nets!” It was indeed discouraging and upsetting. That night I talked to a neighboring volunteer and she told me that she saw similar behavior in her village too. Her counterpart explained it simply by saying that there aren't any problems when people have to pay for things; it’s when things are handed out for free when problems arise. This statement resonated with me for a long time and actually made me feel a lot better. And among all of the hustle and bustle of the distribution I had forgotten the meaning behind the distribution, and it wasn't until one night sitting out with my family. My brother was tired and had been laying outside when all of sudden he jumped up and asked where the new mosquito net was. In that moment I realized that people were appreciative of their new nets, even if they didn’t outright say it. So this one goes out to my little bro in village…thanks Amdiatou.