Chugging Along

So work is starting to get under way. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Centre D’Accueil Pour les Jeunes
The CAPJ work is progressing. Sort of. I was supposed to have a meeting yesterday with CAPJ members to re-do some training on the PACA tool I started training them on last week, but only Lydie showed up. This is apparently typical in Cameroon – people either come late or not at all to meetings. It’s not meant to be malicious or an indication of irresponsibility – it’s just life. Things come up and they just don’t show. But it makes doing work here pretty challenging. Some volunteers I’ve talked to handle this by imposing a small penalty fee (for example, 500 CFA, or roughly a dollar) for showing up late, money which is then used for group initiatives. I’m not sure yet if, when, or how I might try to implement this. We’ll see. Magloire left on the 13th for a training in Douala, so I’ve been in village by myself. When he’s not around, the CAPJ work is harder to do, because I don’t really understand everything yet, so I can’t really manage it in his absence. Plus, I really think he is the glue that holds the whole organization together and makes sure that people show up to meetings. I’m just going to have to wait until he comes back on the 19th to do anything about it.

Centre Medical D’Arrondissement de Ngambé Tikar
Otherwise known as the hospital for our subdivision. I’ve been curious about how the hospital runs things, and whether or not they could use my help, so I went last week and spoke to the only doctor and asked if I could come and just observe once a week how things operate at the hospital. I also asked if I could attend the pre-natal consultations and vaccinations, which both occur once a month, on the 15th and the 30th of the month, respectively.
Monday was my first day of observation at the hospital. It was very interesting. I’m not sure I completely understand everything, and I don’t even know how to begin to explain why things were confusing. One case I found notable was a little girl with intense third degree burns. I have no idea how old she was, she looked maybe ten years old. (However, it’s usually quite difficult to guess someone’s age here just by looking at them; nutrition is different from in the States, so kids and adults grow differently here. My homestay father in Bangangté once told me that Cameroonians grow until age 30, and I internally scoffed at him, thinking he was wrong, self-assured in the knowledge that people stop growing by about age 20. Now, I think he might be right. It seems that here people’s growth is sometimes slowed at earlier developmental stages, but continues for longer into life.) She had horrible burns covering her entire chest, most of her upper right arm, her legs, her chin – basically everywhere. Apparently, her clothes had caught fire (this was awhile ago) and her skin too. I can only imagine how painful that must have been. Anyhow, she got initial treatment at a hospital in a bigger city, but lives here in Ngambé Tikar; while I was there, she was coming to get her bandages changed and her burn wounds cleaned (which she apparently comes to do every two days).
As the nurses pulled off the bandages, some of the healing wound came with it, and I was struck by the behavior of the girl and the medical staff. The girl was essentially silent the entire time, though clearly in pain. She bore it silently and obediently, letting tears course down her cheeks, barely making a sound. The only physically manifested response she gave while it was all happening was to cover her mouth with her hand and gasp quietly when especially agitated. The staff was gentle with her, but there was no “hand holding” that you might find for a ten year old girl in a hospital in the States, no cooing of “how brave you are!” or “okay, now this will hurt, be a strong girl!” They simply went about their work. When her hand that was covering her mouth got in the way of cleaning the wound, they brushed it away and told her to be still. I couldn’t believe the bravery of this girl.

Yesterday was pre-natal consultations. About 30-40 pregnant women from all around the subdivision came. It’s basically a whole-day affair. It begins with one-by-one taking the women’s stats (weight, BP). Once that is well underway, the nurse comes out to give a session with some sort of information about having a healthy pregnancy. After that, they begin to do one-on-one consultations with each woman. They divide the group into new pregnancies and women returning with existing pregnancies. During the consultations, they do basic information intake and take basic measurements of the woman’s belly to measure fetal growth. It seemed to me, that because of volume, it would be difficult to truly give each woman a really informative consultation, although I did notice the nurse take time to address specific issues with specific women when it came up, which was good. I think in the future, I will try to do some education at the prenatal consultations about basic to have a healthy pregnancy. I was astounded at how long the whole process took. It began before 9 AM, which is when I arrived, and when I had to leave for a meeting at 3 PM, it was still going on. It was incredible. There’s got to be a way to do it faster so the women don’t have to waste a whole day at the hospital. That’s another goal.


Club-santé (health club) at the local high school
Well today, I had my second meeting with the club-santé. The first one was last Wednesday, and it was basically just to introduce myself to everyone. The teacher in charge of the club said that it is not a new club, but it appears that they have just re-begun this semester; that is, there was no club last semester. So I didn’t totally understand how they run things. Today was interesting. The president of the club basically held a vote and asked people what they wanted to discuss next week. The club decided on HIV/AIDS, and that five members would take part in a debate about it, touching on topics such as transmission, prevention, explanation of how it progresses in the body. Afterward, he gave me the floor. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but I had planned a game to do introductions to everyone in the club. What I hadn’t counted on was there being upwards of 30+ members there, and all of their names being in the local dialect and incredibly difficult to understand, much less pronounce. OY. I came hoping to learn everyone’s name, maybe remember five or so. I left, not sure if I actually learned five names correctly. Alllllright then. Anyway, afterwards, I asked to have a little meeting with the club officers to get a better read on how they run things, and what they would like me to do with the club. I still don’t really understand, but I gather that next week, I should come prepared to intervene during the debate to correct any misinformation they might present about AIDS/HIV. I think I might also prepare a game or something to introduce concepts about HIV progression in the body. They also vaguely mentioned wanting to create posters to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS that we could post in village. Anyway, working with the club-santé looks like it could be interesting, if nothing else.

Miscellaneous
One of my other jobs is to integrate into the community. What a vague term. Well, to that end, I planned to have Princess Jeannette come over and teach me how to make croquettes – a snack that is like a slightly sweet, fried ball, the size of a marble. We did it today. It was a fun, interesting process, and now I have a little snack that will last for awhile, since we probably made enough croquettes to last me for a month or two. And, Jeannette and I made plans to eat legumes (my favorite, the all-encompassing term, “legumes” could be almost any leafy green vegetable) this Sunday. I’m so happy to have a friend.