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¢