Exactly one year ago, I was whining to my mom at the fancy GW hospital after breaking my ankle while dismounting my bicycle. Womp womp. One year later, I am part of our neem team! Riding around the entire district of Saraya in my adventure pants, spreading the good word of natural mosquito repellent in efforts to eradicate malaria in Senegal.
Rainy season is a busy time for most volunteers. It is seed planting time, so the agriculture volunteers are distributing new kinds of seeds and teaching people sweet food growing techniques. The Agroforestry volunteers are watching as their trees are sprouting from the rain. And for us health volunteers, rainy season sadly equates to malaria season and our job is to try to stop people from getting it, a heavy, heavy task.
Last year, the health district of Saraya reached “universal coverage” of mosquito nets, which theoretically means that every sleeping space in the district is covered by an insecticide-treated net. I say theoretically because for various reasons, some people did not receive them last year and then throughout the year, people have used them in their gardens, sold them across the border, left them in the sun and completely destroyed them, many thinking that they would receive this free gift every year, not listening or understanding or not having been told that they are supposed to last at least four years. This has created some drama in my life lately, with people asking me why I am such a bad volunteer because I haven’t given them their free mosquito nets this year. Is this because Peace Corps made it seem like this was an annual thing? Or because people are used to receiving free things so often that this has turned into a vicious cycle?
But to reinforce the importance of using and taking care of the nets that people have as well as teach some other prevention methods, the health and environmental education volunteers of Saraya got together on our bikes. We have been to seven villages so far, teaching various women’s groups how to make “neem lotion” from the neem tree, which is an invasive tree species from India that has magical mosquito repelling powers. The neem lotion is easy to make; all you have to do is boil leaves in water, put that water in pieces of soap, stir, add a little oil and voila.
Neem lotion is important and convenient because we are never going to convince people to sit under their mosquito nets at six pm while they eat dinner or ‘sumu’ which means hang out at night and chat and sing and play music. There also has been a large number of weddings over hear in Malinke land which involves dancing until the wee hours of the morning while the mosquitos are out. Nobody can dance under a mosquito net; even I know that. So we are pushing this lotion as something to use before you go to sleep. And better yet, it actually works! (I was surprised, sometimes I put that on instead of my 98% deet that has many disconcerting warnings on the bottle…)
We are also trying to push it as something that woman can fabricate and sell to others, as it is fairly cheap to make, and it seems that even though most people in the area know how to make it because they were taught last year and again this year, they just don’t. Behavior change is rough. But if we find the women who are willing to make it and want to make a bit of cash, we try to sell the idea to them. My toxoma (namesake) has already made a batch to sell to the village. It will be interesting to go back to these villages to see who these ideas stuck to and who was just really excited when we came and gave them a free tiny bag of neem lotion after the demonstration. Some women seemed so enthusiastic and excited about us coming to their villages to help them make neem lotion. I sort of wante to take some of these women to be my best friends for life.
So ten villages down, what next? Well when that doesn’t work, we try to make sure people go straight to their nearest health structure the minute they notice a fever. Because at this time of year, a fever most likely means malaria. And treated early, it can be like America’s strep throat. Treat it, be miserable for a few days, a banta, finished. And better yet, the medication is subsidized by the government and free. But if people do not go at the first signs, or if a malnourished or already sick child is hit with the malaria parasite, things can turn for the worse very quickly. Sadly, we have seen too many deaths from a preventable and treatable disease. So thus the neem team’s work continues. Us and our favorite ladies. Unite.
