Karma

No, I am not talking about the Hindu cause and effect cycle in which the effects of all life's deeds actively shape the past, present, and future. Today, I am referring to one of my three satellite villages, those villages which lack a health clinic and must share the CSPS in my village. Because these other villages do not have their own health clinic, it is usually the case that they are much more motivated and interested than the village with the CSPS. Because they often receive little attention from the health clinic besides monthly vaccinations, these are great places to focus one's attention. This weekend was all about Karma.

I had mentioned to my major that I would like to do sensibilizations (health demonstrations) in my satellite villages for said reasons, so he helped plan a few activities with my nearest village, Karma. Karma is located about 3 or 4km away and is another Mooré-speaking village. I had been there a few times to help out with vaccinations and was eager to return for more activities.

This Friday, we had our own vaccination campaign in Aorema which took up most of the morning. When this wrapped up, I ate a quick lunch (lettuce, cucumber and cheese sandwiches) and then headed of to Karma with my major around midday. The destination was an alphabetization class, one of the learn-how-to-read-Mooré classes for illiterate women. When we arrived we were greeted by around thirty-five women clapping their hands and singing us a welcome song. Their appreciation was immediately palpable. The major introduced ourselves and we got to work by asking the women what they want to learn. We ended up with a list that included family planning, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and meningitis. This was going to be a long afternoon.

So we took the priority topic - family planning - and my major began talking about the different options women had for ¨spacing their pregnancies,¨ which had all the women amazed. And then he handed the floor over to me, as he took the role of translator. Using a handy picture book (called a boite à image in French) with images related to family planning, I began telling the story of ¨our family,¨ who has five children and one on the way and suffers from the constant stress, sadness, and poverty that comes with having too many kids to take care of. It was great to see the women were into the discussion. At one point I showed a picture of a woman breastfeeding her child and asked ¨What do you see in this picture?¨ One woman answered ¨A healthy mother breastfeeding her baby.¨ I said, ¨Yes, and do you think this is a form of contraception?¨ Immediately, the group began quietly discussing this among themselves. After a few minutes, the same woman responded: ¨No, it is not.¨ When I told them that they were wrong and that by continuously breastfeeding their baby, day and night, they could not get pregnant again for about six months, they were all in complete shock. The woman who had answered for the group clapped her hands together in surprise and began giggling from excitement. It was really nice to see that these women actually learned something completely new that day. We continued with the rest of the topics and several hours later, we finished, and another round of songs began, this time thanking us. I made it back home feeling really great about it all.

Saturday morning, I awoke early. We left my village at around 7am to head back to Karma. Today we had another sensibilization on a much larger scale. Our focus today was solely HIV/AIDS, and it was geared towards the entire community. We had a theater troop come in from another neighboring village, and my friend and fellow volunteer Christina from that same village also came to help out. By the time we began our presentation, after setting up all the seating and sound equipment, there were at least 150 people there. Overall, I think it went really well. I couldn't follow much from the theater group since it was all in local language but I did catch the phrase Mam data fo (¨I want you¨) during a chat between the main guy and girl and the girl refusing his advances. The people seemed to really enjoy it, and along with talks and demonstrations from my major, Christina and I, I think they definitely took a lot away from our presentation.

It was great to see so many people interested in what we were doing. You could tell that for the majority of these people, most of this information was new to them. I am excited to have another year and a half to prepare several more sensibilizations and other activities with Karma and the other villages. But after all the work this weekend, all I really want to do right now is crash. Until next time. Peace.