Happy Malaria Month!

No, we are not celebrating the disease, but the fight against it.  As part of PC Guinea’s celebration of malaria month, we have all been challenged to get involved in malaria projects at our sites.  Our malaria coordinator even made a competition out of it, and the region with the most points at the end of the month gets a prize!  I’ve taken this opportunity to get involved with the national bed net distribution campaign, a project that aims to get all Guineans sleeping under a mosquito net this year by distributing millions of them.  Since you can’t have malaria without mosquito bites, zero bites means zero malaria.   Here’s something I wrote a couple months ago, when I first started working with them:

As an agroforestry volunteer entering the Peace Corps, malaria was only on my radar as the reason I had to take that little pill each week.  Since then I’ve witnessed the detrimental impact this disease can have on my community, so I was especially excited when asked to participate in the national bed net distribution campaign. Specifically, I’ve partnered with a local NGO, Association pour la Promotion des Initiatives Feminin (APIF), who is charged with the distribution of nets for the prefecture of Kankan.

            Together, we attended a training organized by Catholic Relief Services on how to organize the census data that had been collected over the past several weeks.  The NGOs from the other prefectures were there as well, each paired with a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Two days later, the chefs de santé from our prefecture came into Kankan with all the data they had collected from their assigned localities.  We all went around the room introducing ourselves and when it came to me someone asked, “Why is the Peace Corps here? What is their involvement?”  You see, Peace Corps volunteers are usually involved in small community-based projects, not internationally funded nationwide campaigns.  Once we started working, however, it became apparent that I had a lot to contribute.  As someone who understands Excel and had attended the prior training, I was able to help input the census data into the spreadsheet, effectively cutting the time it took in half.  Because I understood the logistics of the whole campaign, I could also offer advice about which logistical issues might arise and how to prevent them at these early stages of planning.  At the end of a long day typing in names of remote villages (And just how do you spell Gbangkonkorokansin?) and strings of numbers, the staff of APIF and I decided to meet at their office the next day to go over what we had collected.

            The next morning, as we looked over all we had collected, we realized just how much work there was.  Not all the census takers had followed the standardized layout and others had omitted crucial information.  We would have to make sense of any errors and resolve questions with the chefs de santé.  For the next two days, Cabinet, Junior, and I poured over Excel spreadsheets and submitted data forms.  For someone obsessed with order, this was at first a very frustrating experience.  There was no perfect way to make sense of the information and each person had a specific way they wanted to do things.  It took a lot of discussion and trial-and-error, but eventually we worked out a system of how to map out the distribution routes and calculate how many and what type of vehicle we would need.  Seen as a kind of ‘outside party’, I was able to point out flaws and offer suggestions without ruffling too many feathers.  Whenever a computer or IT problem arose, I could step in and fix it before it caused too much damage.  We worked long into the afternoon both days, a feat considering Nigeria was playing in the African Cup of Nations, but eventually finished, the first prefecture to do so, if I’m not mistaken.

            It was a great experience working with everyone at APIF. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I have experience planning and running projects and as a geeky American, I have an obsession for detail and logistics.  Because of this, my voice matters and I know how to help prevent any future logistical nightmares in this project.  In fact, I’m going to continue working with APIF several days a week until the distribution in April, consulting on each step of the project. 

Personally, knowing I’m working on a project that will make a noticeable difference in the malaria situation in Guinea gives me a huge sense of accomplishment.  When we finally finished, Cabinet looked at the numbers we had calculated. “Look,” he said, “we’re going to give over 500,000 people mosquito nets.” Helping prevent malaria in over half a million people? Not too bad for a stint in the Peace Corps.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this blog, I followed through on my word and have continued working with APIF a couple days per week.  They are a really motivated group of people who don’t mind working through the afternoon break and have put a lot of work into this project.  On April 25^th, we will finally get to distribute the bed nets we have been planning for all year!

NEW PHONE NUMBER

So the Guinean government has decided that it cannot provide enough phone numbers for everyone it keeps all the numbers at 8 digits, so it has decided to add an extra one on starting April 1st.  It’s unfortunately not simply adding a ‘0’ to the end of all the numbers or something easy to understand like that.  It adds a number in the second place depending on your service provider and current first and second numbers.  Watching the confusion that is bound to unfold over the next month will be no doubt hilarious, but hopefully it means all those random Guineans who somehow got my number will be confused and stop calling.

Without further ado, my new number is:

628 06 11 41

I.e. there is now a ‘2’ between the ‘68’ that used to start my number.

Here’s hoping the addition of that 2 will be give me better cell signal in the future!

How To Hold a Quintessential Guinean Meeting

All of these things have happened to me at least once, but never all in the same meeting, thank god.  But that level of hilarity is what makes a satire a satire. Ou bien?

So you want to hold a meeting? Maybe your groupement is starting a seed bank, your NGO is electing a new board, or a group of health workers is getting trained.  Somehow you need to get your group of people together to have a big talk.

You decide to have it Saturday afternoon, at 4 PM, after everyone is done with work and should, technically, be free.  Inevitably, some people will by Friday evening or Saturday morning, curious as to where everyone else is.  On the day of the meeting, around noon, it’s generally a good idea to call everyone again to reassure them that yes, the meeting is happening.

By 2 PM, it’s time to start collecting chairs.  No one has enough chairs at their house to properly supply the meeting, at least not the fancy plastic kind, so you go around to neighbors collecting chair until your compound looks like a Rainbow Brite moved in.  Oh, and don’t worry about returning the chairs afterwards.  Neighbors will send their petites (kids aged 3-12) to collect them.

Once that clock strikes 4 (or for those really au village, when the muezzin starts his call) it is time to get dressed for the meeting.  Remember, the brighter and ‘sparklier’ the better, and, as leader of the meeting, you should have Bejeweled infomercial levels of sparkles.  Now it’s just a waiting game.  If you’re lucky, people will start arriving by 4:30, but a better bet is 5.  As guests arrive, be sure to provide drinking water and a shower to splash off in (this only happened once, but was ridiculous enough I felt I had to include it).  By 5:45, you should have enough of a quorum to start your 4 PM start time meeting.  Have your local “more than averagely religious man let out a string of benedictions.  Don’t forget good health and plenty of offspring.

It’s now time for the meeting to start.  Choose a moderator and president for the meeting, whose roles are basically interchangeable, but who are both absolutely necessary.  Ask for a volunteer to take minutes.  Most likely no one will be aching to do this, so feel free to pick a victim at random (some advice: make sure they are literate first!).  Now write down the ‘Order of the Day’, a kind of schedule of the meeting ending with a ‘Miscellaneous’ category.  The president will say a few words worthy of their honorific and announce the meeting open.  The first topic can now be discussed, with the permission of the moderator, of course.

This is the real meat of the meeting, the back-and-forth.  Five minutes in, a baby should start wiling, prompting all the other infants to join in.  But have no fear, tops will come off, breasts will come out, and all the babies will be quietly nursing in the blink of an eye.  Any particularly strong personalities, and there’s always at least one, should have taken over by now.  Each will need to talk about each topic at least twice, so try to account for this in your timekeeping.  At about the halfway mark, you should have anywhere from 50-75% attendance, with stragglers continuing to arrive every couple minutes.  It is the perfect time for a group of vendors to enter your meeting space, selling candy, shoes, or cologne.  Half your meeting will most likely want to form a ‘commerce’ sub-group and will signal this by throwing off their shoes and running over to try on those bright pink flip-flops that are so popular nowadays.  You can continue in this divided state if you choose, but one of your previously mentioned strong personalities will probably take offense that he doesn’t have everyone’s full attention and commence a 10 minute lecture about the seriousness of the meeting.

Between all of this, you should have been able to at least touch on most of your topics and be ready to summarize and conclude.  If your meeting is outside, a herd of 5-20 sheep will walk through as you try to voice your final thoughts, drowning you out with their shockingly human-like screams (listen to this if you don’t understand what I’m talking about).  The most efficient and cute way to deal with this is to name your youngest petite head sheepherder and have him chase them away.  You can now signal your religious man again, who should have plenty of unused blessings left in his artillery.  Someone should start a round of thanks, thanking everyone from you tot heir mother to Obama that will spread to the rest of your attendees faster than the bird flu.  If it was an especially good meeting, this may even culminate in a song and dance in your honor.  With that, your meeting should be over.  Attendees will rush over to buy that last “Titanic: Jack and Rose” perfume before ht others and the neighboring petites will start to arrive.  Now you can relax and bask in the glory of your successful meeting, watching the rainbow parade of plastic chairs streaming from your compound.

Sidenote/background:  I remember having a session during Pre-Service Training about meetings in Guinea and thinking it was a waste of time to devote two hours to the topic, but, after attending my share of meetings, I can see why.  It is one of those instances where the Guinean culture mixed with French bureaucratic history makes for a very frustrated American.  Guineans are nothing if not verbose and meetings are the perfect soapbox for just about everyone.  That mixed with the never ending regulations and minute details of the French system make meetings seem slow and tedious to Americans.  This is not to say they are necessarily bad.  Because the meetings aren’t rushed, everyone gets a chance to talk and rarely gets cut off.  Also every detail about the meeting is recorded so you can look back at a later time.  In spite of this, I still have those days when I get so frustrated I just have to laugh out loud as we pass the fifteenth minute debating whether ‘Alpha broke his arm’ should come second of third in the Order of the Day program.