Forever and a day

This is from the 11 of this month

It’s been forever and a day I know. It’s not my fault, blame it on African internet, or recently the lack there of. It’s amazing really, you get use to having something and then when it’s taken away you’re like, what the heck, I was using that. Only to remember, oh yeah, I’m in Africa stuff like that is suppose to happen. So what was I up to during the lovely month of January, since I am pretty sure I didn’t post anything, or if I did, I only posted once. Well, I welcomed the New Year in with style, rocking it out in Malanville with Megan, Audrey, Ryan and Michael. Dinner, dancing, wine and Dawson’s Creek what more could 5 twenty somethings want/need to welcome in 2008? A few days later I found myself on a bus heading down south to Ouidah for training. Periodically throughout the year different sectors (in my case the health sector) get together and talk about what they’ve been doing and get further training and ideas about what they can be doing at their posts. It lasted a week, and though I was looking forward to seeing all my health pals, I was not really looking forward to the conference its self. But I’m glad to say that I was wrong, and that the conference went really well. It did what any good conference does, it inspires you to want to go out and change the world, or at least in this case your village. It is not until you reach your village however that reality starts to crash down around you and you realize that this new wonderfully awesome things you were taught about, well they are easier said than implemented. So for most of the month of January I have been trying to figure out what to do with myself over the next two years. Big surprise, huh, since I believe in most of my posts or letters to you all, I have mentioned this “trying to figure out what I’m doing here”. The PC gives us things that they would like us to work on, such as Morgana trees, soy, mosquito nets, mud stoves and so on. However, over the past few weeks I have realized that my village already knows and uses this kind of stuff. Well, except for the mud stoves, but I was told that people would probably not want to use them b/c they are comfortable with what they have and know, and are not likely willing to change. So the few ideas I came here with are slowly one by one being shot down. So I’ve kinda been in a discouraged frame of mind here lately. But then this past Friday, I did my first health lesson for the women who come in to get their babies vaccinated. I give the information in French and the midwife that I work with translates it all into local language for me. Or at least I believe she’s translating it into local language, she could be singing the lyrics to a Greatful Dead song for as much as I understand local language (which is Mokole, incase I’ve never mentioned it before). I was so nervous before I started, and I told Safia (the midwife) this and she asked me why, and I explained that this was the first time I had done this before and she was like it’s going to be okay, you’ll be fine. And I was. There were times that she didn’t understand what I was saying; thankfully I had everything written down so between that and my retrying to explain the concepts in more basic french everything went really well. It is amazing how something so small as a half hour lesson on breast feeding can change my disposition. To finally feel as if I have accomplished something is so wonderful, I actually feel like I am earning the right to be here, instead pretending like I actually have the right to be here like I usually do. May the work keep coming. My hope is to keep doing the lessons every Friday with the women who come for vaccinations, but change the topic I speak on every month or so since different women come each week. I am going to start up my girl’s club health lessons this week as well. My two new project ideas is to start a prenatal group for women who pregnant with their first child and to do a health conference of sorts on women’s health for the fathers in my community. Men rule everything here and very few have any respect whatsoever for women. I want to explain what it is important for the woman to go to the doctor for prenatal check ups, and why she needs to eat better than what she does, stuff like that for the most part. I am hoping that I can get enough interest to start a weekly or month group to continue on teaching them. But we’ll see. Everything here is just wait and see for the most part.