Weighin' Babies

It's been kind of a busy month.  Arts for Life went surprisingly well at the two weekends I helped out.  Fulfulde IST was because it was spending a week at a hotel with a pool in Garoua on the PC's dime with everyone from my stage.  It was set up just like French classes during training, 3-5 people per class, except there was no pressure, better food, and when class was over, you could go back to the hotel and watch American music videos.

 

My new postmate also arrived this past week, so that'll take some time to adjust to because she's actually living in my compound in another house.  I'm going from being alone in Lagdo and maybe seeing another PCV once a week (unless I was in Garoua) for the last 8 months to having one as my next door neighbor.

 

Arts for Life was actually pretty fun to do, considering we didn't have any clue how it would turn out during the planning stages.  There were some problems with logistics, "the small stuff," but the kids didn't seem to notice.  There were a lot of discussion-oriented sessions, and they understood for the most part what we were wanting them to do: use their creative side to express a message, which in this case was the dangers of bad decision-making.  It was interesting to get a glimpse into the life of North province Cameroonian "teenagers" (in reality, a lot of these kids aren't kids, but in their 20s), and it raises a lof of "what if" questions, like, What if students were actually supported by the government that Cameroonians are forced to rely on?  Maybe there wouldn't be 25 year-old high school juniors, hardly any female students, and large numbers of dropouts.  After Arts for Life, though, the kids that were selected for the project are very bright, so you know there's a lof of potential here.

 

Work is marching along slowly.  The guy at the hospital in charge of PVVS (people living with HIV/AIDS) has been jerking me around by making it hard to have a simple meeting with him, and then when the meeting is set, he doesn't show.  He's done this twice now, so that's disappointing, and I might just forget about it because knowing how long it takes for things to happen here and all the hoops you have to jump through, it's not worth it to keeping banging my head against the wall.

 

On the brighter side workwise, I'm going to a nearby village (about 10-15 kilometers away) health center once a week to do animations with mothers with newborns up to 12 months old.  The mothers are supposed to come about once a month for the consultations where the kids get their shots.  Before the vaccinations and the crying begins, I do my little presentation about some health issue for the mothers and their newborns, like the importance of breast milk, how to stop diarrhea, vaccintations, birth spacing, et al, then I help the nurse in charge of the consultations weight babies, which entails hanging a baby from a harness hooked on a scale.  It's hilarious.  Right now, I'm doing a presentation on making homemade oral rehydration solution to give a baby (or anyone else, for that matter) with diarrhea, then I'll move onto a new topic after a month.

 

In addition to going to that health center, school starts up again this week, so I'll work with the health club at the high school, and I'm going to give a go a going to local primary schools to give random hygiene talks if the principals let me (why wouldn't they?).  There is also a GIC (Cameroonian French abbreviation for a community group) here in Lagdo Centre that wants to build a primary school classroom, so I'm trying to help them get organized.  They probaby think I can magically find the money, and my expectations for something actually being built while I'm here are low, so I'm just focusing my efforts on getting the group off its collective derriere.  I might have mentioned this group before,  but it was specifically created to do development projects in Lagdo and hasn't done anything since it was formed.  The members seem motivated, but I won't be surprised if it'll go back to doing nothing once the prospect of free money disappears.