I don't think Peace Corps mentioned this in the job description. Yet that was what I've been doing for the past three months. This past month has been a bit hectic since I was trying to organize last-minute details for the proposal I’m working on.
Currently, my biggest assignment has been writing a proposal to the USAID (in joint partnership with Peace Corps) for funding to build an 8m x 12m shelter next to my health center where the under-five children can be weighed and immunized, as well as for youths to meet. As of right now, the mothers and their children (screaming ones who don’t have diapers, mind you) often wait up to an hour or two outdoor, which can become problematic during rainy season or hot season. This is one of the several factors that our under-five immunization coverage rate has been one of the lowest in all of Malawi (the penultimate one to be precise).
The other issue that challenges the youths is the lack of a venue for meetings and recreational activities. The youth-friendly health club I’ve been working with has been struggling a lot with attendance for various reasons. I don’t want to divulge too much here about the problems the youth club faces, but I know that they do need to have more activities to look forward to, like sports, games, movies, etc. I’ve also been encouraging the health staff to take a more active role in encouraging and advising these youths, especially regarding reproductive health.
With that said, I’m hoping that this proposal will pass and come October, we’ll be able to start building!
I’ve also been working on a few more proposals to fund other projects. The one that I’m most focused on right now is Nutrition Clinic. Before I came, the World Food Program withdrew their Supplementary Feeding Program for moderately to somewhat malnourished children from my health center, so we don’t even have an outpatient therapeutic program for these children. I’ve been trying to work on this one for awhile. Initially, I started a record book to monitor underweight/malnourished children over a period of 3 months, but the mothers were failing to show up the next month and/or the health workers were not following up when they were supposed to.
In an attempt to improve attendance, we designated a date each month for the mothers to come – the same day as the family planning clinic – so that they would have an easier time remembering and coordinating their hospital visitations. In addition, we added an educational component to the clinic that would promote self-sufficiency. After we’ve measured the children’s nutrition status, we’d educate them on different sustainable topics each month – basic nutrition groups, kitchen garden demo, food preservation demo, jam-making demo, and cooking demo. We’ve just gone through the nutrition groups and kitchen garden demo. Next week we’ll be presenting the food preservation demo: how to dry tomatoes and mangoes.
The kitchen garden demo has been a huge undertaking in addition to the work I’ve been doing for the shelter. I dragged one of my health workers with me to town to buy the mesh wire (to keep out the chickens) and the 100-pound metal pole, and it took four of us all day long to dig a 5x2 meter (x knee-high) pit out of a rock-solid floor. (Seriously, I thought we were digging up bricks and rocks. It reminded me of the time my brother and I dug up a pond in our backyard when I was in third grade.) But the point is that we want to show the mothers that they can build a small garden within their home compound, instead of going into their maize fields, and turn a dead ground into a piece of life. We’d add compost into the pit before sowing the seeds, so the seeds would then grow into a healthy bed instead of the dead rocky soil. The really cool thing about this kitchen garden is that there’d be a variety of food, alternating by legumes (i.e., soy beans), fruits (i.e. tomatoes), greens (i.e., spinach), and roots (i.e., garlic). They’re arranged in a way that would support the others. For example, the legumes nourish the soil, so the roots would benefit most from being next to them, and some of the roots (i.e., garlic and onions) are natural pest repellants from which the greens and fruits would benefit. To encourage the mothers with applying the knowledge, we also explained to the mothers that if they also dig the beds within their home compounds, we would visit their homes and provide some of the seeds. Since it’s still a work in progress, I won’t be able to know the effectiveness of the program, so I’m just hoping that it’ll be successful or be somewhat helpful to the mothers.
To take a preventive and more wide-scale approach, I also wanted to educate the villagers, not just the mothers with underweight children, about nutrition and proper food preparation techniques. Since men are the ones who usually buy the food or provide the money for food and the women are the ones who prepare the food, it is essential to include both men and women. My workshop will target mainly the Village Health Committee who was elected by their village to communicate and monitor health issues within their community. It’ll be a fun workshop with lots of cooking practicals and recipes! :)
My final major project is a natural medicine workshop. I’ve talked a lot about natural medicine in my previous update, but I didn’t want to just stop there. I want to host another workshop for Villages AIDS Committees and support groups for people living with HIV/AIDS. They’ll be able to learn about simple treatments for common colds and illnesses, as well as natural products they can use to generate incomes.
I’ll be continuing my secondary projects in November. My mentorship program fell apart for awhile because of all the exams and other problems (one of our mentors ran away after Camp GLOW and never came back), but when the new school year starts in November, I’d like to polish the program a little and start over. I might also consider teaching Life Skills at the secondary school again, but… I didn’t have the best experience last year, so we’ll see. And then there are the youths, of course. I’ll continue working with them, even though I’ve been facing a lot of challenges with them lately. I’ve also been involved with the youths at my church, though it’s not considered a Peace Corps assignment but a personal one.
I can’t believe how much this all sounds, but it really doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing a lot! I’m only here for 10 more months! I feel like I’m running out of time to accomplish all these things! I know it’s ironic that I mentioned helping people who don’t want to help themselves in my last update when I’m talking about the billions of projects I’m doing here. Will they all just go down the drain? I just hate the thought of giving up on people. I’m hoping that someone somewhere will actually learn something and think, “You know, maybe that is something worth trying and changing my life for.” Maybe they’ll start to hope and strive for a better life. :)
My yard while I was digging up a pit for my kitchen garden... using a hoe
My counterpart mixing the compost of our kitchen garden demo
