Today was an unremarkable day. This morning at 8:00 a.m. Mouctar showed up at my door. I was still getting dressed and he had already hiked all the way from Kambaco. He's Saikou's star student and assistant in the literacy group out there. He said Saikou was sick with a sore throat and did I have any medicine?
I gave him some cough drops I had and recommended tea with lemon. I also recommended he gargle with salt water. I had to look up the French word for "gargle" (se gargariser) and demonstrate for Mouctar what it meant. He thought it was pretty hilarious. I told him Saikou probably had the flu but if his sore throat lasted more than three days, he should come in and get checked for strep.
Mouctar brought a little notebook with him and asked me to set up a sales register for the condoms I brought them last week. We had discussed the group becoming a sales outlet for Prudence condoms as part of the AIDS campaign, and Saikou had designated Mouctar and Ramatoulaye to be in charge of the enterprise. Mouctar for the guys and Ramatou for the girls. Then I brought back the carton of condoms from Labe and presented them with it, along with a little demonstration using bananas to show how to put the condom on correctly. I told them they would have to actively promote the condoms and they couldn't do it if they were shy about talking about sex. I made them repeat the demonstration for me and as an exercise had them tell me all the dirty words they knew in Pulaar. They were pretty reticent.
I asked Mouctar today as I was drawing up the sales register (Saikou was supposed to do it, but I guess he didn't feel up to it) how the promotion was going. He said they hadn't sold any yet, but he had talked to about ten people about it. Unfortunately Ramatoulaye, who is younger and much more shy, hadn't gotten up the courage yet. I hadn't really thought that Ramatoulaye was such a great choice; she is too demeure. There is another girl in the group, Oumou, who is away visiting her family in Conakry but may be back in a few days. She is more outgoing and I have used her and Mouctar together for health education in the schools. When she gets back we will have her take over from Ramatoulaye.
I finished the sales register and gave it back to Mouctar. The idea is for it to be self-sustaining: they will keep track of the number of condoms sold ($.05 for a packet of two-subsidized by USAID) and the money they make, and when most of the condoms are gone they will give me the money for another carton and I will get it for them.
When Mouctar left, I hiked out to N'Dantary (12 kilometers-about two hours) to visit with Amadou Sara, the local health worker in the dispensary there. I brought him a carton of condoms too. (I have also placed a carton with Dr. Balde in the N'Dire dispensary, and one with Mamadou Alpha, one of the storekeepers in Maci Centre.) I am trying to do at least something to make condoms available in the subprefecture before I leave. They are of course essential, not only as a means of birth control, but to fight the spread of AIDS.
I also brought my little tape recorder with me out to N'Dantary, so Amadou Sara and I could work on the Pulaar public-health cassette I'm putting together. We managed to record all of the chapter on hygiene. Eight chapters down, four to go. I might actually finish this before I leave. When it is finished it will be six cassettes, with one chapter on each side of each cassette. There will be a considerable amount of unused space on the cassettes, but it will be simpler to use this way.
(We are working from a UNICEF/WHO public health manual called Facts for Life in English but better known in Guinea in the French version, Savoir pour sauver. I managed through a Guinean acquaintance who works at the National Literacy Service to get a pre-publication copy of the new Pulaar translation, Aandugol fii Daandugol, and this is what we are using to record the cassettes.)
Amadou Sara showed me three of the fluorescent light bulbs of our beloved solar-electric system that have burned out. We'll have to go to the supplier in Labe to get them replaced. Now normally the Health Center Management Committee would be responsible for this, but in Maci this committee, as with many other things, basically exists in name only. They were supposed to re-elect the committee six months ago, but the authorities never seem to get around to it. So I'll go to my friend Sani, who is from N'Dantary and managed the construction of the dispensary for me, and ask him to take care of it. If he doesn't do anything I'll bitch and moan to the Chef de Centre and try to get the district president to take care of it. If still nothing happens, well, it's their damn clinic, not mine. It they want it to fall apart, there's not much I can do to stop them.
I hiked back from N'Dantary in the afternoon, getting lost twice. Everything looks different because the fields have been burned and turned over for planting. I thought I knew the way blindfolded but all the landmarks have changed.
Well, my bucket bath is hot now, so I'm going to go and wash. Then I'll have my nightcap of vodka (cheap French stuff I get in Labe) and go to bed. I'm thinking of you.