Goal: Let's Get Fat!

Thank goodness rainy season has ended. While it is nice that with the rain comes relief from the heat but it also means it is difficult to do any medium to large scale projects. This is mostly because during rainy season everyone is working in the fields. Since the end of rainy season (end of September), I have started doing weekly health lessons with the local primary schools in the region. At one of the schools on the first day that I met the kids—probably around the ages of 5-8, the director introduced me and asked the kids if anyone knew my name. One kid raised his hand and responds with Nissarra. Not my name! Nissarra literally means foreigner/white person in the local language; the word makes every volunteers’ skin crawl when we hear it. When you are walking in the market, or on the street, or riding your bike, you just hear Nissarra all of the time. The kids love to chant it. It has been explained to me that it is not meant to be racist, it is just an adjective to distinguish me from other people. I try to explain to the adults who speak French that while it may not be rude in their culture, it is incredibly rude and offensive in my culture. I say my name is either Todarra (Bissa name) or Brittany but not Nissarra and some times people still call me it--especially some of the people on the health board that I work with. Sometimes more than others it really irks me and I will respond, “Excuse me? I have lived here for a year already. I work with you. You should know my name by now. I have a name and it’s not Nissarra.” It is like saying, “Hey black/brown/white person, come here.” In the beginning, Ganga, my official counterpart would call me that in conversations with other people until one day when he was talking on the phone with a PC staff member. He called me Nissarra and Congo (a Burkinabe, himself), God bless him, corrected and chastised Ganga saying he has not to call me that anymore. Now when the COGES members mess up or someone else calls me Nissarra he jumps on them and chides them by saying, “Her name is not Nissarra. It is Todarra!” One small victory.....Anyway, that was kind of a long tangent. So when the kid called me Nissarra the director was like, “no, that is not her name. Try again.” The next kid raises his hand and says, “la blanche.” That literally means white person. The director again says again that is not my name. Finally, the third kid raises his name and says Todarra. So long tangent short, I have started health classes with the local primary schools. I am still conducting weekly health causeries with the women on baby weighing days. I have also helped with the tetanus and polio vaccination campaigns—I have a 4 day polio campaign when I return to site. Before coming here I recently conducted a two week nutrition and health workshop with 12 women from a quartier of one of my satellite villages. It went really well. Every morning I would show the women how to make an enriched porridge to give to their malnourished children (the children were chosen to participate in the program because they were malnourished) and afterwards we would pick a certain health topic to talk about for the day e.g. nutrition, diarrhea, malaria, family planning etc. One challenge, or should I say lesson I learned, was that it is not entirely effective to just sensibilize women on these topics, because it’s the men/their husbands that rule the roost and make all of the decisions for the family. For example, during our family planning talk I asked if any of the women practiced family planning. None of the women raised their hands so I asked if there was a particular reason they did not practice it. A couple of women responded that they had asked their husbands but their husbands said no and that it went against their religion, Islam. No questions asked. Thing is, every women in my workshop was Muslim. I was at a loss for words; I didn’t know how to respond. It’s logical that it is not a good idea to have children if you lack the means to adequately provide for them but its like, how do you trump religion here? You can’t. A few Muslims in my region practice family planning but I have yet to meet one. My counterpart says they exist though. I would really like to get their opinion or even motive as to why they started practicing family planning so that maybe I could share it with the women. Good hygiene is another example—the women know using soap prevents maladies but they are not the ones who give the authorization to buy the soap---it is the husbands. It is a difficult situation. I think for the next two week health workshop I am only going to allow couples to participate. That means that if a family wants their child to participate both parents most attend all days. Because I conducted this workshop, my supervisor, the Associate Peace Corps Director, invited myself and three other volunteers to speak for fifteen minutes each in front of the Ministry of Health on our findings. It was quite intimidating doing the presentation to the Ministry of Health, let alone in French but the APCD said I did very well. I even told them about my idea about incorporating both the husband and their wives in the next workshop and they were very impressed and liked the idea a lot. When I return to site I am going to have a World AIDS week with all of the local primary schools in my aire sanitaire. Yayy for doing projects!