Today I woke up after dreams of lying in Central Park listening to Belle and Sebastian with Gabby, a Starbucks white mocha frappaccino in hand. I was shocked to find myself under a mosquito net and a straw roof, listening to the donkeys morning wheeze. And there is no jarring sound like the donkeys first sounds in the morning - raggedly sucking in air in a tension filled shudder, and as soon as it seems like the poor malnourished beast's lungs have collapsed, it haws out a shrill choked exhale. Most of the day was spent in my usual way: mornings in the health center weighing babies, afternoon tea with the CSCOM staff, cooking lunch and studying Bambara as a crowd of aimless children stare at me, the evening tea and chat sessions followed by dinner with my host family. Still, I felt I was looking at my village through raw eyes, everything highlighted by the vibrant blue and yellow outlines that my anti-malaria medication fabricates. This is where I live? These are my neighbors, my friends, my co-workers? These straw huts with the swirling squash and cucumber vines - this is my home? What a strange, beautiful, simple world to be living in, so unlike the crisp, metallic New York! Even though the people asking me for money piss me off, the children laughing at my terrible Bambara is exasperating, and I haven't quite figured out how to successfully carry my water buckets on my head without getting soaking wet, its wonderful to live so intimately in this village. And despite the frequent loneliness that comes with being an outsider, and my (daily) efforts to get the children away who constantly swarm to my house (which is facing the school), I am amazed at how much I've integrated into the community in a month.
One thing I've been doing alot of is baby weighings at the CSCOM. During vaccination days on Mondays, women of the surrounding villages come, and I've tried to take this opportunity to weigh the 30+ babies there. In addition, almost daily children come to the CSCOM, for whatever reason, who are obviously malnourished. I've found that about 8 out of 10 children I've weighed are malnourished, either moderately or severely. Plumpy Nut, an ameliorated peanut butter distributed by UNICEF, has been a really helpful way to ensure that they are getting their daily protien and vitamin quota, which is so lacking in the typical Malian diet of rice and millet. But the French charts and guidelines are contradictory and confusing to me, and even more so to the other healthcare workers who seem to arbitrarily prescribe the peanut butter and make unconfident suggestions to the clueless parents. There is definitely something to the argument that literature and funding is great in terms of aid to developing countries, but taking the time to actually train the health workers in the rural villages is desperately needed, and inherently more sustainable than throwing money at a problem.
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