Mami and Pikin Wellbodi week, World Aids Day, I cant keep up!

Mother and Child Health Promotion week was launched actually last week by the President, 3 key things are happening: 3 million Malaria nets are being distributed to all households in the country (so a tiny challenge then!), Vitamin A for all children and deworming medication (Albendazole) for all. I have a net, I take multi-vitamins, but I'm due for the 6 monthly mass genocide of the small pets living in my colon!!! these campaigns every 6 months do seem to have an impact

I cant believe that its 1 December tomorrow.... count down to Christmas and World Aids Day. There is a big event happening at the back of my office to mark the day (I know because of all the tents, chairs and red ribbons banners!) and we health workers are required to 'March' ok saunter in this heat from Victoria Park in town to somewhere else (not sure where yet). This is a lot easier than a previous sporting activity I undertook on 1 December 1989, which was to throw myself off the top of Fazakerly Hospital (a mere 14 storeys high) with only a rope for company... abseiling apparently. I raised enough money to pay for the post traumatic stress counselling needed for the next 5 years! I'm assuming the March will be less scary.

The photo is of some kids who will benefit this week I hope... plus an animal called a 'grass cutter' which is a delicacy but whose sweet taste I've not had the privilege to try yet!

Shocking

One of yesterday’s Freetown papers has a story about a young man caught stealing an old pair of shoes. Members of the Leicester Road community (up the hill behind the parliament, on way to Fourah Bay College) cornered him and its alledged that he was beaten and stoned to death by this 'mob'. There was an awful photo of him in the paper, naked and bloody. The paper intimated that he deserved to die, more or less saying that it was a lesson he would never forget and a warning to others.

I know this community are plagued by repeated robberies but this is an atrocity and should be treated as such. People taking the law into their own hands is not how a country grows and progresses. Members of the same community and the people who own and write for the paper will go to church on Sunday and I wonder what they will pray for.

The Awareness Times does a summary online of the latest local and national news in Sierra Leone, although it wasn’t the paper who reported this in such an irresponsible way it does cover the story in its summary: http://news.sl/drwebsite/publish/cat_index_037.shtml

From New York to SL

Monday 24th November 2008. I was half way through a short 4 day trip to the Big Apple, taken on a romantic notion and never regretted! Wednesday 24th November 2010 (location Freetown!) and I’m fondly reflecting on that trip only 2 years ago and started comparing Freetown to New York in my head. Here are a few highly subjective similarities in a random order:

· Chaotic traffic and enormous jams (but there are no bulldozers randomly taking the front of buildings off so the road can be widened!)
· Yellow taxis (although most of the NYC taxis don’t have smashed windscreens held together with Man United stickers and back axles scraping on the ground or scary sounding clunks as you drive along)
· Able to buy things day and night (although the choice here is severely limited)
· Friendly people
· Massive inequity between rich and poor (the relative differences I haven’t economically assessed)
· Buzz, pulse, beat, however its described – the pulsating life of a city that both NYC and FT have but lots of cities don’t have
· Some great food!
· Lots of people living in a small space
· Creative ways to make money, lots of entrepreneurs!
· Surrounded by sea
· Dirty air and Noisy (all kinds of sounds, including music everywhere?)
· Amazing hairstyles and clothes
· Areas that aren’t safe at night (but you could say that of any city)
· Some good places to have a beer!
· Lots of religious buildings!
· Lots of languages spoken

There are lots of differences too. There’s the obvious developed v under developed massive differences for people; levels and access to education, health care (although in both places, many poor people still have to pay for their health care), life expectancy, housing etc. But my comparisons are, well, a little less heavy in this blog! Freetown is hilly and wooded and there are hardly any tall buildings, no proper shops, overstretched and underdeveloped telecommunication systems, most buildings are not maintained, no proper public transport infrastructure and almost no galleries or theatre but it does have amazing countryside and beaches less than an hour away. Both towns have that essential life blood which makes them interesting, fascinating and exciting places to live. Freetown is definitely the Big Apple (or should I say Mango, as all apples are imported) of Salone and despite the fact that its not New York. I still love it.

In true Carole style, these photos have nothing to do with the blog but the 1st is the Taiama workshop photo taken with my colleagues last month (note I am the only women, hence the opening phase by the permanent secretary.... good morning Lady and Gentlemen!) and the 2nd is the kids in Peter's (Ministry Driver) village waving us goodbye!

Thanks to a certain lovely Irish guy for showing me the real New York and inspiring this blog (you know who you are)

Its a dogs life

Two weeks ago I met 3 female vets at Balmaya (one of them starred in a previous blog!). That day they had neutered 279 male dogs! Talk about being on a mission, impressive eh! I didnt ask how, too much information. But this is totally necessary. There are dogs everywhere and they almost all look the same, beige with white socks, the gene pool must be very limited! They breed and breed, leading to more canine misery as most of the dogs are homeless, thin and hungry. They fight alot and howl or bark continuously at night. Most of them have bits of their ears missing, wounds from the endless fights for food.

Although I am totally in agreement with this mass neutering, sometimes I wish these committed lady vets were removing the larnyx instead of the other bits, as I havent had a single nights sleep which hasn't been interrupted by bloody dogs barking and howling!!

'Dumbo' stars in the photo, an extremely skinny dog who lives at Hamilton Beach with abnormally large ears (of course!)

(Lack of!) Future Plans

I have decided to stay on longer in Freetown after my VSO placement ends at Christmas, for another 6 months or more. However I have to overcome some minor problems: (1) I have no job yet (2) I will have nowhere to live in 8 weeks time! I still have no idea whether I'm going home for Christmas or not and the flights are getting booked up! Mmmm... well at least I have started to look for a job and even applied for 2 but no luck yet. Plan A is to get funding to stay in the Ministry (easier said than done). Plan B is to work for a partner agency here but I'd prefer the Ministry in order to put the last 8 months to good use. Plan C is to give up on health and open a good italian coffee shop, with great coffee, paninis and cake! I even have the name..... Caroluccios! Watch this space!

To blog or not to blog?

I’ve decided that I should really only blog when I have something interesting, useful or pertinent to say. However life carries on here much the same as it does in the rest of the world. However, its been a month since I blogged! Things do pop into my head sometimes ‘that would be a good thing to write about’ and actually as I sit here, the reason I decide to blog has frankly escaped into the ether! So… I’ll just talk a little bit about my last month here.

I have been upcountry twice. Once to a workshop with the top Docs in Taiama (near Bo). It was an interesting day, a topic I knew a little bit about and could contribute and the place was nice (aircon and hot water now make me feel totally spoilt!!) however, my driver, Peter drank some dodgy water and ended up on a drip in the nearby clinic. Never have so many Drs tended to one patient! The poor CHO (Community Health Officer) was overwhelmed! They did have some drugs but no electricity (or running water, in contrast our hotel 500m away)), so I had to hold Peter’s hand in the dark while he slept. The poor chap was a bit pathetic and therefore this was the source of major teasing for the next week! The next day he was a lot better and off the drip and I got to drive him almost home (from Moyamba Junction to Waterloo). We stopped just before the police check point and swapped over (I am unsure about all the legalities here, like insurance etc!!)

The next time I went up country was to Makeni for 5 days. I was facilitating a workshop with Patricia, my colleague. We were developing a Community Health Worker national programme and a number of representative from NGOs and donors were there. It was hard work but by the end of the week and lots of group work and discussion, we had a draft training manual and programme. I got to know Makeni a little better. I’ve been there at least 5 times but never spent this long there. I stayed with some of the Makeni VSOs and discovered that they also have a good social life which is centred around eating delicious food! I put on weight! Thanks Alice, Kim and Angel.

Work has therefore picked up a lot since I came back from the UK and I’m quite busy. Just over a week ago, I facilitated the Ministry retreat with John and Nathan (Tony Blair guys).On the second day I did most of the facilitating and I enjoyed it. We came out with useful plans to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of how we work in the Ministry and some have already been put into place. That evening there was a big dinner, hosted by the SL Medical and Dental Association (a bit like the BMA here) and it was all incredibly familiar. Men dressed in smart suits, ladies in beautiful outfits (the Salonean women know how to dress up!) but the only difference was that the main meal was served at 11.20pm and the speeches finished at 12.30am and then there was the dancing…. I sloped off about 1am and cadged a lift from one of the Drs who is also a Reverend. He had a sermon to do for the next day!

Socially there is always loads going on. An irish bar O’Caseys has just opened here! One of the new VSOs (Beth) does yoga lessons. We had a party last Friday and loads of folks came. Apparently it was a good party, photos to come. This weekend I’m organising a beach trip to Samso’s (named after Samso in Jutland Denmark, the guy lived there for a while) on Hamilton Beach.

For some reason I cant load photos anymore. The internet disconnects! Its probably a salonean bug! My USB stick is so infected that I don’t like touching it… I’ve lent it to John instead. He does the equivalent of sticking it in dettol every couple of days…. So no photos for a while. I’ll try again soon.

So sorry for the rambling blog but I'll try and remember what I was originally going to write about! Its a muslim holiday today (hence time to blog at 7.30am!) and there is going to be a big carnival in town later. I'll try to cover that! I'll also cover the massive road building programme and the interesting technique of simply bulldozing the front of people's houses if they are in the way. Folks just rebuild a front wall and live in a smaller house! This is a topic where photos tell the story....

I've had better weeks

I wrote this blog a month ago (around 20th October) and couldn't decide whether to post it or not but it was how I was felt at the time so here it is.....

Sometimes I think that my skills and experience are simply not noticed, recognised or utilised….its been a frustrating week so far. The bureaucracy of external funders, the fragility (or lack of) local health systems and skills, overload of so called expert consultants doing piecemeal and (in my opinion) sometimes unsustainable work, The lack of processes at every level. Sometimes the workload is mundane (I write a lot of letters) and the constant learning curve to understand things in a totally new context can leave me exhausted and sometimes dejected. You think you are getting somewhere and then there is some big setback. Might sound a bit familiar (friends in the NHS?)?

To add to my work and other frustrations this week was when on my way to work I discovered an injured dog in the road, with taxis and podas driving around it. I see human suffering and misery everyday which is hard enough and so I have learned to blank out the suffering in the animal kingdom, but not on this morning. With the help of a press-ganged passerby, we gently pushed the dog out of the way of oncoming traffic. It clearly had a head injury and broken bones after being whacked by a car once or maybe two or three times? It was 8.30am and according to the person working at the house next to the road, the dog had been there for some hours, but he had left the dog in the road to suffer and had done nothing. He got the dog some water (I kind of gave him no choice) and I went to find my lovely and resourceful neighbour Joe. I had no idea that we were literally about 300 yards from an animal rescue place, but Joe did and they stretchered the dog there, sedated him, examined him and agreed that there was nothing that could be done for him. A British vet was there, who had arrived 2 days before to volunteer her services for 2 months, brave woman. She concurred with the local vets diagnosis. I put my hand on his head and said goodbye.

Last Sunday I had a long chat with a rather good looking young man who sells locally made bags outside one of the cafes (Bliss). His grandfather makes the bags and he sells them for a living. I’m going to buy a bag next week from Ibraheim. He has no hands, being one of the many in Freetown who were victims of the war atrocities. There are also people who were so badly beaten that their limbs no longer work. Every day I am confronted with a row of wheelchair ridden young people (mainly), begging for food outside my office. Sometimes I give them money, sometimes food. But often I also walk by. I buy medicines for the lower paid staff in the office and I often bring in food. Government drivers earn approximately £45 per month and that’s sought after position in a country with mass unemployment. I haven’t even started to talk about the Freetown slums or the opportunities (or lack of) for the young, especially if their family cant afford to send them to school. People somehow manage to live by selling cucumbers (and a massive array of other things) on their head’s, so its hard to justify getting so upset over a dog in this context. But then again all living creatures feel pain and suffering.

I’m pretty sure that things are improving, we are slowly seeing this in the health sector, especially after the launch of free health care, but sometimes the enormity of the task is quite overwhelming. I have every respect for my Sierra Leonian colleagues, who simply keep going, despite the slowness of progress and the complexity of everything. This makes my frustrations pale into insignificance.