Happy New Year

It’s hard to believe that it is 2008 – almost the end of this decade – and also that I have been here for almost a year now. I spent Christmas and New Years working at an eye clinic in Bakel, a medium sized town in eastern Senegal on the border with Mauritania. Dr. Judith Simon, a Hungarian/American doctor from New Jersey, came to hold the clinic and perform free cataract surgeries. She does about two missions a year using her own money and finding donations of medicine and glasses to give out. Pretty cool thing to do for vacation! I was one of two volunteers who helped screen patients. We screened about 150 people each day, while Judith performed 7 surgeries each day. It was quite the operation, especially with five different languages going on at one time. Most people spoke either Bambara or Pulaar, but quite a few people also spoke Soninke, which none of us spoke, so we had to pull a translator out of the crowd. This meant that the doctor would tell us something in English, we would tell someone else in Pulaar, and then they would translate finally to Soninke. Exactly like the game of “telephone!” Somehow it all worked out. I sat in on a few cataract surgeries and a couple of trachoma surgeries, something that I obviously couldn’t have done back home. Trachoma causes your eyelids to turn under and your eyelashes scratch your cornea causing blindness. The surgery turns the eyelids back to “normal” preventing any further blindness and greatly improving comfort. Really fascinating!

Needless to say, the entire trip was exhausting, but really interesting and a great way to spend the holidays. It definitely didn’t feel like Christmas (especially in 80-90 degree weather without any hint of Christmas whatsoever), but it was great to be with other Americans and great to be working together on such a worthwhile project. While some patients were upset that we couldn’t do more for them (if we didn’t have glasses that were appropriate or if they had glaucoma), but many were thankful that we were there. Even more touching, I felt, was the compassion that many of the volunteers showed the patients. Despite long days dealing with literally hundreds of people (and multiple linguistic boundaries), my fellow Peace Corps volunteers kept their patience and compassion. A great realization of humanity…

Back in the village, my host family just finished picking all of our cotton, which means harvest is done! We are now “processing” some of the food crops. Yesterday we started on the peanuts. The plants have been pulled up from the ground and are now dried sitting in piles in the field. The men hit the piles with sticks, breaking apart the peanut from the plant matter. The women then fill basins and pour out the peanuts/leaves/stems into the wind. The heavier peanuts fall into a nice pile while the lighter plant matter flies nicely away. Really effective way to collect the peanuts – and shows how in-tune they are with the environment, since it is windy most mornings (after 9 AM) now during the dry season. Now we just have to shell them all… which will take basically happen everyday until the next planting season!

(When Josh, my closest neighbor, returned to his village after the holidays, he found five fresh chicken eggs waiting for him in his basket of clothes! TIA… Thankfully I wasn’t so “lucky.”)

In other news, I attended a region-wide declaration against “female genital cutting” (FGC) held by Tostan, a literacy organization (and now also a female-advocacy organization) started by a former Senegal Peace Corps Volunteer awhile back. Representation from 900 villages came to Tamba to march through town. We ended at the stadium where different dance troupes performed skits, songs and dances. Female circumcision as a right of passage has been traditionally practiced by both Pulaar and Bambara cultures, but after many villages have had literacy classes (provided by Tostan), women have decided that they no longer consent to the practice. (As an aside, Tostan recently won the Hilton Humanitarian Award; there’s a link to their website on the right.)

I’ll also be working with Wula Nafaa, a USAID sponsored project, to start tree nurseries at three sites near my village. Apparently behind my village is a protected forest. Wula Nafaa (which literally means “uses of the forest” in Bambara) has worked with villages in my area to sustainably produce and sell charcoal. Now they are expanding their project to start these tree nurseries to be able to replenish the forest, build a natural “border” around the forest, and also to make trees available for purchase for personal or public spaces within the villages. I’m attending a training in Tamba the next few days on how to build tree nurseries and then I’ll be working (along with two other Peace Corps volunteers) with local counterparts in each of the three villages. While one site is basically in my village, the other two are accessible about 12 miles through the forest! We have a lot of bike riding ahead of us!

As a final note, thank you to everyone who has donated thus far to help build a health hut in my village! The response in the first couple of weeks after it was posted online was quite touching and I really appreciated the personal e-mails that I got from people who donated. Last week my neighbor gave birth to a baby boy, but he died three days later of an “obstructed gut.” Having a health hut in the village probably wouldn’t have saved him, but it would have been one step towards overall better health. This sad event was yet another reminder that this project is necessary.

At this point, it looks like I still need $1,600 at this point, so if you know of anyone who would be interested in helping with this sort of thing, PLEASE pass on the information! We are starting to make the bricks with the contributions of the village, but we are otherwise waiting for it to be fully funded. Ideally we would like to finish building by April before it gets too hot to move. Many, many thanks!!! (And a special thanks to my cousin, Julia Klein, who raised funds as part of her Bat Mitzvah celebration!)