90 homes, 16 hours and three days

The past few days have been incredibly productive.  In partnership with multiple international organizations, Peace Corps is conducting a country wide evaluation of the 2011 bed net distribution.  This translates to each volunteer surveying three villages near them.  After a day of training on how to conduct a non-bias, authentic, and legitimate survey with two counter parts we chose from our villages we received our fancy blue ‘survey’ vests and survey books. 

With the week before Camp Espoir, I knew my schedule was light and so I volunteered to do all three villages with my counterparts.  Why not? I’d like to see more of small villages around me.  Thankfully, we didn’t have to battle the weather and it was overcast and cool most of the three mornings. I took notes on my observations to share some highlights:

First up was the village to the south of me, Yara Kabye.  My counterpart (I call her Madame because I can’t pronounce the rest of her name) met me on my porch and was full of the latest gossip concerning these silly surveys.  You see, Madame is a local health agent who was recommended to me by Aposto, but she isn’t who another staff member would have chosen to do the work (and received the pay) and thus there was ugly talk going round. Really? I thought to myself? Why does everything have to be everyone’s business? I wondered if this place would ever advance if it continued to battle petty politics like this. We arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to announce our presence at the chiefs doorstep a few minutes later.  Too bad the chief wasn’t as eager.  The guy was almost literally almost dead. His children had left to work in the fields and so here he was delirious and refusing to go to the hospital.  What a great encouragement for our work!  Luckily, other village ‘officials’ arrived and gave us their blessing to continue with the surveys.  

One of these kind leaders decided to be our tour guide for the day, helping us navigate the winding paths between houses and fields.  It was helpful and he carried my heavy bag. However, he also yelled at villagers when they didn’t respond to the questions in the ‘correct’ manner.  After this happened the second time, I had to pull him aside and explain we were here for the truth, not the ‘right’ answer.  I’ve learned people in need will often tell you what you want to hear so you’ll keep coming back and providing for them.  And in fact after a lot of the surveys, people asked us if we were going to bring them more mosquito nets. Oh, development work.

With Madame not having the greatest eyesight or literacy and most of the tiny village speaking local language, it was a busy morning of me reading the eighteen questions in French, her translating back and forth and recording the response. Over and over.  It was cool- I felt very PC, until about house number 20 and hour number four of walking and sounding like a broken record. At about this point, my energy and patience was running low and the little kids chanting ‘white person’ went from being cute to just plain annoying.  Every house we went to a crowd gathered to see what the white person was doing here.  When one family offered a calabash of tchouk and even larger crowd gathered to watch me, I tried to explain how it’s not polite or nice to stare.  That if they came to America, no one would call them out for being black or stare at them.  This blew them away a little and while I knew they’re innocent in their wondering, it wears on a girl after awhile.

Walking among spouting corn, bean and cotton fields I wondered how long progress and development will –if ever- take.  Watching filthy, half naked kids scraping bowls of corn mush clean while interviewing their mother breastfeeding another child and who couldn’t have been past 30, I couldn’t help but wonder if this cycle of life –poverty – will ever be broken.  Will there always be small villages in Africa with no sanitation, health care, or education? Other oddities/frustrations came when you asked the mother or father, how many people live here and what are their ages. Unfortunately, I thought of America and sitting at someone’s kitchen table, parents easily listing off their kids’ ages (birthday, social security number, and what they ate for dinner, if you asked).  This is unfortunate for me because obviously this is not America and someday, hopefully I stop comparing the two.   A general statement, but often parents may not know their children’s ages, or the kids who slept at their house last night. Everyone is welcome (the mother’s sisters cousins daughter and her daughters son), thus determining the age and gender of the nuclear family are difficult.

The second day started out well.  I noticed right away the socioeconomic differences of the two villages.  This day we were in the small village just north of LT, Yao Kope, and I was working with 

Terry, another local health agent.  This chief was very with it and ready for us.  When you enter someone’s compound or yard of sorts, someone calls for chairs or wooden stools and you do the interview with whoever is there.  ‘Its always interesting to watch the hierarchy within the families (if dad’s there he yells at mom for the chairs, if mom’s there she yells at the kids who then yells at the youngest to get the chairs). Almost all of the compounds in Yao Kope had cement covered outdoor areas, when almost everywhere else I’ve ever seen is dirt.  Not only that but families had pens for their animals and full cement huts for cooking and storing things, not just stick and straw lean-to’s. The real kicker was the public latrines. I counted at least five (and used one) scattered throughout the village.  Wow! This is quite unheard of and I wondered what made this village, only a few kilometers from Yara Kabye so much more developed.  

Not only was Terry more literate than Madame (he filled out and asked every question) but he was much more methodical, thus the 30 houses took us six hours instead of five. In more of a supervising role, making sure he was filling in the blanks correctly, I was in my own day-dream world as the interviews were all in local language. To top this day off, we couldn’t find moto’s to take us back to LT and had to walk the hour back, in the 1 p.m. sun.  “I signed up for this,” I said, reminding myself.

On the third day, Madame was early and I sat at the schoolyard being stared at intently by the hoards of kids milling around while she went looking for our motos. I felt light and happy as we road through fields and washed away dirt roads to reach this even more remote village of Kobyo. I prayed I could feel this way in five hours. Thankfully, Madame was on a mission and as I would start the question in French, she would start in local language and this helped move things along. Again, I made not of the socioeconomic status; huts made of mud and straw, out in the middle of fields.  New this time however, I noticed the lack of oral health as most people were missing quite a few teeth and what was left were obviously quite rotted.  

Trekking even further between households, I was amazed and saddened when the mothers would ask us if she should get her husband from the fields to meet with us. No, we explained, you’re quite capable. We got caught in the rain at one house where everyone was sitting under a straw hut when their oldest boys came home announcing they had passed their exams.  The family was very glad, but they discussed how expensive it is to pay for school and they worried how they would manage with four more kids not yet school age.  I wanted so badly to be into the conversation, but again we were at hour 4 and my human needs of being hungry and tired overrode the volunteer in me.  Add to that the foul wafts of the father’s breath hitting me in the face and it was too much and I had to look the other way.  We passed a farmer herding his cattle on our way to the next house. I was pleasantly gifted cow’s milk after the interview, of which I destroyed on accident in attempting to pasteurize it when I got home.

Finally, we went to say goodbye to the chief and as we waited for our moto drivers, I shared my package of cashews from America and he and Madame were amused. 90 homes, 16 hours, five moto rides, three calabashes of tchouk, one craft of cow’s milk and countless miles walked, yes, it was quite the experience.