I woke up on the second day of Pecadom Plus with hope and
anxiety. Hope that the day would go
better than the day before, and anxiety having the knowledge that it probably
wouldn’t. Am I a pessimist? I don’t like to think so, I like to think
that I’m a realist. Not in the waltzian
sense (polis ci majors… anyone?) We got
our stuff ready and I find myself riding my bike down that glorious paved road. Since I actually know now where the dsdom
lives I rode on over to his house. The
day before I had delivered the supplies of the ACTs, the TDRs, and the
thermometer. When I arrived I asked him
if he was ready to go. He said he was,
but there was a problem: the thermometer was broken. “How is it broken?” I ask. “The mercury won’t rise.” Sure enough, the
mercury wouldn’t rise. Shoot. Now what?
Well, the thermometer is an integral part of the whole process because
it helps to identify fever, and the severity of the malaria. I tried to call Anne to ask what I should
do. Oh wait, there’s no reception… of
course. Ok, so there’s extra
thermometers at the health center. Ah
man, am I going to have to bike back to Saraya and back? Nah, the dsdom has a motorcycle he can
use. OK good, so go get the thermometer,
I’ll wait here… and he didn’t have any gas.
So I had to front a mil CFA for the gas and he was off. He returns like 2 hours later.
“I found a few thermometers.”
“That’s good, now we can start.”
“…yeah… none of them work.”
“So we spent like 3 hours and still don’t have a thermometer?”
“Basically, but I can use the back of my hand to feel if
they’re hot.”
(that doesn’t sound very scientific)
“Ok, let’s just start anyway.”
So we begin our sweeps of the village. Everything is going alright, except for one
thing. Instead of showing up to the
compound and asking everyone if there were sick people there, he would just
stroll into the compound, say what amounted to “whaddup” and start feeling
their foreheads. Like, “hey, how are
you?” BAM!!!! Back of the hand to the face.
It was actually pretty hilarious seeing the expression on people’s faces
as they were surprise-fever tested.
As we came to more
houses and I tried to explain the process to him, he would start introducing
himself and talking about the signs and symptoms of malaria and asking who
showed those signs. More like what I was
told the dsdoms would be doing. However,
he would still go around to everyone and feel their foreheads. Maybe he just liked feeling people’s
foreheads, I’m not sure. One time we
came to this household of about 8 men as they were gathered around watching a
soccer game. As the dsdom went over to
ever so gently feel each man’s foreheads the rest of them would crack up
laughing seeing the look of sheer discomfort and confusion on the face of their
friend. I thought it would take forever
(and it did).
In our sweep we found 5 active cases of malaria. I think I’ll always remember that first
malaria positive test. It just made it
so real, this child actually had malaria, and if nothing was done she might
die. This child, right in front of
me. I’d always heard about malaria, but
I’d never seen it. I guess before
learning about malaria it’s all abstract notions and I’d never had the chance
to tie it to real people, to real faces.
It really validated why I’m here and instilled a further drive to do all
that I can while I’m here.
The rest of the pecadom sweep went pretty well. We had our second causerie that was much
better attended, and everyone got a grab-bag to take home (it was maggi cubes,
which are basically MSG bouillon, it actually makes things really tasty).
I returned to the Linn Inn late again because of the added
event of the causerie. I think I ate
ceeb. I can’t really remember, but
considering it’s like one of three possibilities, I’ll take my chances and say
I ate ceeb. Anyway, I went to bed that
night slightly frustrated about the rampant and superfluous head-feeling, but
in retrospect this day of sweeps went better than any of those to follow…
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