You think WHAT, now?!

In a village that doesn’t see very much activity from the “outside world” I am regularly surprised by the things people believe. Some misconceptions, like the idea that white people enjoy the smell of farts and will give you money if you fart next to them, are just hilarious. Others, however, are anything but hilarious. Here are a couple stories of frustrating beliefs I’ve heard from my village recently.

HIV – While preparing to do HIV lessons with students, I gave a pre-test to see what they already knew or thought about HIV and AIDS. For the question “Can you be friends with someone who is HIV positive?” the class unanimously answered “no.” If that weren’t bad enough, one question asked how to prevent the spread of HIV. I got answers saying you couldn’t say hello or make eye contact with someone with HIV and even a couple kids who said that everyone with HIV should be sent out of the village to live in the bush so no one with HIV would be in the village. When it came to give the lesson, I put a LOT of focus on how HIV is transmitted and how that means that you can be friends with an HIV positive person and do the same things they do with their other friends. I tried to point out that someone who finds out they are HIV positive need friends and support even MORE. I could tell afterward that not everyone was convinced but they at least learned the “right” answer to the question. Everyone said that you could be friends with an HIV positive individual and I hope most of them actually believed it. Hopefully that sinks in for the rest of them at some point, too.

Excision – While talking with a male neighbor, the topic of excision came up. “Yeah,” he said, “If a woman is not excised, she can’t do ANYTHING! She can’t walk more than a couple of kilometers at a time, she can’t work in the fields, nothing.”
“Uh…” I responded, “That is absolutely NOT true!”
“Well, here it is. For our women, it’s true.”
“Every single woman in this village is excised. How can you know what a non-excised woman can do or not do if you don’t even know one?!”
“I just know. Our old people told us.” Because the old people know everything, of course.
“I’m not excised and I can do things. I can bike and walk and run far.” I countered.
“Well, yeah, but that’s Americans. African women are different.”
After a few more minutes of this type of arguing and telling him all the dangers and reasons it shouldn’t be done, I realized it was not going anywhere. I left frustrated and also sadly contemplating the fate of his beautiful little daughter.
When I told a fellow PCV about this encounter later, she said encouragingly, “Maybe at least now you’ve put those ideas in his head. He’ll be thinking about it and questioning it now.” I hope she’s right!

Adopt-A-Latrine!

In my village, hygiene-related illnesses are a huge problem. Next to malaria, they represent the highest number of visits the CSPS receives. One huge contributor to this problem is the village’s lack of latrines. I see people of all ages doing their business on the side of the road in the bushes on a regular basis (and let me tell you, it’s a little disturbing to see a grown man squatting to defecate in some bushes where anyone can see him). But there are worse consequences than grossing out the local Peace Corps Volunteer when people go to the bathroom in the open air next to their courtyards. Flies land on the poop and then go to land on people’s food or hands or dishware and eating utensils. When it rains, the rainwater washes the poop into the local wells where people get the water that they drink. People around my village are literally ingesting little bits of their own feces and it obviously causes them to come down with various fecal-to-oral illnesses. So when the Peace Corps announced the opportunity to attend a workshop on hygiene and latrine building, I jumped at the chance.

Two masons and I went to the workshop a couple of months ago and the entire week was spent discussing good hygiene practices such as hand-washing and using latrines. Of course, we also learned to build latrines. At the end of the workshop, we created an action plan describing how we were going to bring the things we learned back to our village. We planned lessons to present to the community about the importance of proper hand-washing (one of these presentations is pictured in my previous blog post about the 8 Mars celebration). We are also doing a project distributing hand-washing stations throughout the village, particularly in places where people usually eat or use the bathroom. Finally, we are planning to build 15 new latrines around the village so that people will have more access to latrines.

While my village members are very eager and willing to donate time and labor and smaller miscellaneous purchases to this project, cement is expensive! Each latrine needs about $135 worth of cement and so I wrote a grant proposal asking for money to buy cement and iron bars while community members take care of the labor. The kind of grant I applied for is a specific kind that allows people back home (meaning you!) to be involved in the project by donating to it. Every little bit counts and 100% of what you donate goes directly to buying supplies for latrine building (and it is tax-deductible). Please visit the website for more details and to help make this project a reality!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=686-216

If you still have questions, feel free to ask me!
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