motos... for Johnny

One thing we spend project money on is transportation: trucks, motorcycles, gas (this is a huge expenditure here and the budget is always short)

Here are some of the 9 motos the project purchased for our local partners, so that their field agents can do supervisory visits:

my dress!

Just about to go to bed, but wanted to share some pictures of my dress that I got back today..

first look at my dress!

Just stopped by the tailor's to check out the dress I am having made for a colleague's wedding... it actually turned out pretty cute. They are making some minor adjustments. You like?

Gaou

Today I learned how to say I am not a fool in Franco-Ivoirien slang... Je ne suis pas un gaou

sur terrain

I have been bothering the health team here to let me go into the field, "sur terrain". It's been a little hard for me to get motivated and really understand the health projects sitting in Yamoussoukro and Abidjan. So this week I finally got to go to Tiébissou, one of the three districts in which our current projects are based, for a training of the district health team. Our health manager and the Tiébissou district health director (or the DD, as everyone calls him) co-led the training which concerned monitoring and evaluation, why its important, and the health team's role. The district health team (made up of health clinicians and administrators) is required to do supervisory visits every month to the 16 health centers located throughout the district. This is important for collecting data from these centers (no email, or computers for that matter, in these rural health posts) and also motivating personnel. This is the DD presenting:
Here are some pictures of the district hospital, where the training took place. Probably pretty standard for a district hub in west Africa. The complex is made up of about 5-6 buildings, including an emergency care area, a maternity building...
a regular office visit/ consultation building...
even a dentist's office...
There was also a half-built surgical building, the administration office, and the DD's office and pharmacy. Most of the buildings have a sign on the outside which lists the prices for consultation.

I thought the training went pretty well on the whole. I was impressed with the DD and our health manager's presentations. They engaged the team members and got participation from everyone. As well, I was impressed with a lot of the health team.

It was at times disorganized. It started late; I helped our health manager create the pre and post tests right before the training; despite being a co-trainer, the DD was there less than half the time; and of course... everyone was constantly answering their cell phones (including our own health manager!). This is a phenomena here that drives me crazy: people always have their cell phones on and they answer them regardless of where they are. In a meeting, talking to someone, no matter. What is funny to me is that often people answer their phones just to say, "I'll call you back" and hang up. The cell phone etiquette here is out of control. I'm not sure how it is in other countries and if anyone else is suffering through the same...

I also found it interesting the amount of time we spent discussing payment. The district health team, in addition to their regular salary, get paid a per diem, meals, and a travel stipend to attend trainings. All NGOs offer this, though the exact amount varies. For this training, because no team members had to travel, they weren't offered a travel stipend, which caused consternation among the staff. I feel kind of conflicted about this myself. On the one hand, I know their government salaries aren't very much and supplementations help people make ends meet. But at the same time, it is disheartening to see this dependence and this attitude that I won't do something unless there is something in it for me. Some people get it. Some people realize that our money is better spent in direct service (medicine, building wells, etc). But some people don't. I waver between thinking these people are greedy and self-serving or just realists trying to do what they can with the hand they've been dealt. Regardless, it seems to me NGOs are complicit in this problem by the very nature of how we give aid...

Chicken in the yard!

A chicken showed up in the yard today... not sure from where... Maybe over the wall?


(FYI this is part of the area of the yard we cleared to grow vegetables, we'll see if stuff grows!)

Happy Birthday to Lucas!

Fabric!

I got my first piece of fabric today. A woman from the office is getting married and those of us attending from the office will be going en uniforme (i.e. everyone buys the same fabric, gets something made, and wears it to the same event - like the African version of those family pictures where everyone is wearing khakis and a white t-shirt).


You can kind of tell, the gold in the fabric is irrediscent-y. I'm glad my colleagues chose such a pretty fabric! Now I just have to decide on how I want to get it tailored... let me know if you have any ideas...

charity : water

Here's a good NY Times article (short, succinct, Nicholas Kristof) about one of the donors for a project I'm working on, charity : water. To be honest I had never heard of them before this internship and didn't know much about them until I read this article...

charity : water is currently funding us to build/rehabilitate 35 village water pumps and 35 wells and elevated water towers in health centers. This is part of a larger health systems rebuilding project. The cool thing that my organization does is 1) when building pumps they use a rope pump technology developed in Ghana and make it w/ local materials, and 2) they form water and sanitation teams in all the villages. The team is trained to do normal pump maintenance and repair (along w/ hygiene promotion). This helps avoid a very common problem with water projects, which is that NGOs often install nice pumps that no one can repair because they either lack the knowledge or materials. The countryside of Africa is strewn w/ defunct pumps...

oh no!

one of the little diamonds fell out of my engagement ring! now i'm afraid to wear it, but i need to wear to convince all the african men i am unmarriable... what to do??

the Basilica

One of the first places I visited in Yamoussoukro is the Basilica, or the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Paix de Yamoussoukro. It is HUGE. It's 323,000 sq ft and is 518ft high - that's bigger than the capital building, bigger than the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Officially, it is the biggest church in the world. It was built in the '80s by Cote d'Ivoire's favorite president (Houphouët-Boigny) for $300 million.

Here's one of the entrances. It can hold somewhere around 16,000 people.

You can take elevators (which are inside some of the huge columns-cool!) to the top. The pews are made of African mahogany which was shipped to Europe to be wood worked.

The marble is all from Italy, the stain glass was all made in France. I did not see it but apparently, the image of Houphouët-Boigny is part of one of the stained glass. He is depicted as one of the three wise men, kneeling as he offers a gift to Jesus (that is nepotism to a new level...).





The Basilica is obviously very beautiful and impressive. Yet, it also typifies the extravagance and financial irresponsibility that is unfortunately too common in African leaders. Moreover, nothing about the Basilica is remotely African.

Dinner

Fish...yum (i'm learning to love it)

Chocolate flavored air freshner

Interesting... but somehow inappropriate for the toilet.

what am i doing here anyway?

So as I mentioned before, I am here to fulfill a practicum requirement for my masters degree. I am working for a non-profit, non-governmental organization which works in over 40 countries. Typically they work in conflict areas, offering services to refugees and internally displaced peoples (IDPs) and helping to rebuild in post-conflict areas. They opened an office in Cote d'Ivoire following the crisis in 2002. Initially, their program focused on offering IDPs education and health care services. But as things have become more stable here, they've started programs in water and sanitation (building and rehabbing water pumps and latrines), gender-based violence, economic recovery, and community-building.

I am working with the health program here. There are 2 main health programs just getting started. One is a health system rebuilding program. It includes training community health workers and traditional birth attendants, reestablishing the health committees and management teams that were functioning before the crisis, as well as some clinic rehabilitation and ensuring clinics are stocked with essential medicines. The other project is a pilot project for community case management of diarrhea, malaria, and pneumonia. Basically this program entails training community health workers to treat these 3 diseases, which are the top killers of children in lower income countries. Treating these diseases at the community level, and not just in health posts and clinics which the poorest cannot access, is critical to lowering the mortality rates of children. However, because it requires community members to handle medications, many doctors are resistant to it.

One way organizations evaluate how well their projects are carried out and what impact they have is to conduct pre and post surveys. This was done before I arrived, so my first task here has been to analyze the data from the survey. I'm hoping to finish my first draft of the report this week. This is my first real data analysis project, so its been a lot of work! Here is my proudest accomplishments from the report - a population pyramid of the survey population. Check it out:


As you can see, there are lots of young kids here. Over half the population here is under 20 years old. Also notice how the female side is bigger than male side. A lot of males here leave their villages to work on farms and factories. Anyway, this graph may not be interesting for everyone, but I think its super cool!

holy cheap produce

this big bag of spinach cost 40¢