January Pictures and a reality update

As of January 21, I am now into my "teens" in terms of months of service left in Togo (down from 27 months to 19). I'm not counting down the days until I get out of here or anything, but it was just something that I realized. Sometimes when I think about it, I'm amazed that I've already finished 8 months, and then other days, I think "I still have so long to go!". Whenever I think of the time I have left in terms of work though, I always get anxious in feeling that it's not enough time to accomplish everything I want to get done. I guess that's the reality of development work: everything just goes so slowly.

In that vein, I have very dramatic ups and downs/highs and lows. I was re-reading some of my past blog entries and was thinking how they make me seem like I'm happy ALL the time - which isn't quite the case. That's not meant to be interpreted as: I wish I wasn't living here. I just mean to say that the reality is, behavior change comes about very slowly (if at all), and in the meantime, the kinds of issues I encounter in my work can sometimes be very difficult to deal with.

A couple examples:
-HIGH: I got really excited this one day when the mother of one of my neighboring families approached me about getting herself and her 15 year-old daughter on some method of birth control. I had been trying to talk to them both for a while about it because the Mom has 6 kids and is still fertile and could very easily get pregnant again, but doesn't want to, and yet isn't using protection. And the daughter had run away with a local boy at the beginning of the month to who-knows-where before finally coming back, and was now obviously sexually active, and the mom was terrified that she was going to get pregnant. After first discussing the options with the two of them and what the process would likely entail, I agreed to first accompany the daughter to the dispensaire as moral support.
LOW: It turned out that the girl already had an STD. Worse: after asking her questions about when the symptoms began, we found out that she'd contracted it in 2005 - which means she was 12. But there are no health classes here (even if there were, she'd dropped out of school anyways) so she didn't realize it was something abnormal, and moms don't talk to their daughters about these kinds of things (usually because they themselves don't even know!), and kids don't have physicals, etc. etc... So she just plain didn't realize. The second part of that morning thus involved me going back and sitting down with her mom and talking with them about the consequences of this and what her responsibilities are now to prevent her from spreading this to others (although the likelihood is that her current boyfriend is probably already infected), while in the back of my mind, I couldn't help from doubting that she was actually going to follow my advice. That incident alone depressed me for the remainder of the week.

-HIGH: Not long after arriving permanently at post, I met the director of the CEG (middle school) who was incredibly friendly and flexible and supportive of all of my projects. His support helped me get a lot of my initial projects underway.
LOW: A couple weeks ago, while meeting with him over work, he made completely inappropriate comments, suggestions, and gestures that proved himself to be just like the other men I know here who disrespect women. I had thought he was different but he wasn't. I was disappointed to the point of tears over that one.

-HIGH: In response to their complete ignorance/lack of knowledge about their bodies and puberty, etc., I started using my girls club sessions to talk about things like why girls get periods, how (biologically) a girl gets pregnant, what type of birth control exists and how they work, etc. I was really encouraged by the girls' reactions because they were completely enthralled and participated with a bunch of questions that they had never had the chance to ask before. They just plain didn't know! Some older girls (some of whom already had children) even later approached me about helping get them on birth control methods, now that they knew they existed.
LOW: When they realized that they had to consult with the midwife in the dispensaire rather then with me about what method to go on, their response was "Oh...Never mind". The problem (I realized)? The midwife has such a bad attitude and temper that girls do not want to approach her about getting put on a birth control method because she'll just YELL at them for being sexually active so young. And YES - being sexually active is obviously not the ideal life choice for these girls at their age, but - realistically - her yelling at them is not going to make them stop, and what instead happens is she scares them to the extent that they AVOID the dispensaire, and then they don't use ANYTHING, and then they get pregnant. This is a problem I am still trying to resolve.

There are also just a lot of other things I encounter all the time that are hard to deal with, including incredibly malnourished babies (the worst cases are the ones where the mothers don't seem to care), induced abortions (once a girl came in to the dispensaire with an infection that came about because she had tried to abort her pregnancy by sticking a bicycle wheel spoke up her vagina to burst the umbilical sac; I've also known girls who have died from trying to induce abortions by drinking homemade herbal mixes), EARLY pregnancies (once a tiny 13 year old girl came in to the dispensaire with her mom because she'd been throwing up and thought she had the flu; it turned out she was pregnant), and serious wounds (a woman once came in after having been attacked by her husband with a machete and had deep cuts all over her head and shoulders).

It's heavy stuff. And I'm so grateful for the experience and the chance to do what I can to help with the things that I can, but sometimes it can be really overwhelming! Thank you to those who serve as the people I vent to when I need to - I don't know how I'd make it otherwise! I am also grateful that my work here does involve as many highs as lows because it helps me to keep going.


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NEW PICTURES!
Lizards cooling off on my window screen at night (this happens every night). Notice the blue foam stuffed around the sides of the window frame: I did this so that the lizards would stop coming INTO my house that way.

Making enriched bouille with girls from my girls club on the porch in my compound.

Some girls from my girls club selling enriched bouille at the market and showing off their new shirts (the club name is "Filles en Action" (Girls in Action) )

Danielle came back from her vacation in the States! Fabiola came and visited and we celebrated.

Danielle and I doing an Enriched Bouille sensibilization in a neighboring village





Baby-weighing at the dispensaire. The women weigh the babies on the scale on the left, and I record the weights along with demographic information in the babies' health books and in the dispensaire's record books.

Danielle and a HEALTHY baby at my baby-weighing

Me and the Pharmacist in the pharmacy at my dispensaire

Teaching my environmental class about the moringa tree

Starbucks Togo-Style; Emily and our home-made coffee cake

Emily and her new puppy, Fenway

In-Service Training; I hadn't seen a lot of these people from stage since swear-in!