Back from the bush

Hi everybody

We arrived in Bamako this afternoon following a long-ish ride in an ancient van down bumpy, muddy roads. It takes about 5 hours to get to Nana Kenieba by this mode of transport; we know someone in NK who says he can get here in 45 minutes by motorcycle, but we're suspicious of that. We've come here to get back to the internet for a bit and maybe look at some museums. Our work in NK is on pause right now because we have to wait. We have to wait to start the vaccination program until the next dose is due, which is next week, and we have to wait before we can go check up on our mosquito net program in order to let it get started. This program is what we spent the 1st couple weeks doing. We traveled around by motorcycle to 6 villages including NK. While there, we gave a general health education program, then trained 5 female volunteers from each village to treat mosquito nets with an insecticide. They then decided on a price to sell these for, so that as many people as possible could buy them. This was a little more than the cost. The idea is that from the 1st 20 nets which were donated they will make enough profit to buy 22 more, and plus 2 every time. We just have to go make sure everything is going smoothly. The vaccination program entails visiting 6 or 7 surrounding villages and helping the nurse of NK, Moussa, to vaccinate children. Since it takes quite awhile to travel to these places, this is a 5-day operation. Ben is getting very good at motorcycling because of all this traveling by moto on terrible roads. We haven't fallen off yet.

In the time when we aren't doing programs like these or surveys of villagers, Mariel usually follows Moussa around doing medical stuff, and Ben intensely studies Bambara. He's getting very good at it; Mariel has down the greetings only. She utilizes the translator more as Ben perfects his French and Bambara. In following the nurse, Mariel has helped examine, treat, and operate on many people in Nana Kenieba. Because of this and our reputation of helping people out as far as money for prescriptions when needed, people are starting to bring their injuries and sicknesses to Mariel. While most of the time they're told this is a health center matter, she's been trying out her clinical skills on some small infected wounds, pink eye, and an ear infection. There is one boy named Djibiril who is particularly interesting. His sister took me to this one and a half year old smiley baby and showed me a big, infected-looking lump under his arm. I brought him to the health center ASAP and he's been coming in every day since to get it cleaned and examined. It's being treated as an infection so far. His parents are gushing with thanks; his mother said that up until about 3 days ago she thought he was going to die, but now she knows he will be fine. It's an emotional place because there is so much poverty, and people die from things that could be easily treated with ample supplies, medicines, and interest. We're doing our best to help out when we can. As a result of all this clinical stuff Mariel has been doing and a birth she (almost) witnessed early in the trip, she has been asking questions and going to prenatal consultations with plans to write her senior honors thesis on rural childbirth, or something along those lines. But there are ,mlany possibilities.

So that's what we've been up to. We'll write again before heading to NK again SUnday.

Love
Ben and Mariel