A Dream Realized

Last November, my old neighbor Jaime and I, responding to a request from our local middle school, started planning what we hoped would turn into a dynamic girls' group aimed at reducing early marriage and teenage pregnancy. Over the course of a few months, it turned into education sessions focused on adolescence, early marriage, and teenage pregnancy, meeting separately with groups of girls and boys, at two different area middle schools. Unfortunately, last year the school system was plagued with strikes (this year too...) and school events/testing and it became very difficult for a team of 3 or 4 of us (myself, Jaime, the nurse or a local NGO worker, my counterpart Farba, and a woman from the first middle school who originally requested such programming--only to quickly drop out due to requests for more money...) to make sessions at both schools. In the desire to create a more sustainable program that could function even without our main team, I talked to people about doing what PC calls a Training of Trainers to train some teachers and students as peer-educators (known here as relais) to lead sessions at their own schools.

I wrote a grant, funded by USAID, and received financing for a 3 day training, creation of training and teaching materials, tshirts (relai "uniforms"), meals (breakfast and lunch each day), and transportation of goods/people (lots of photocopies, tshirts, etc). What follows is a brief summary of the weekend, which proved to be enlightening and educational, for all parties involved.

Group shot, end of Day 3...can you find me?

So I've been stressing for months (see: lack of sleep and the RENT soundtrack being continuously stuck in my head) in anticipation of planning and hosting this peer educator training and last weekend the stress and planning finally came to fruition. With the help of 3 health/science teachers, Batman and Robin (my unofficial counterpart Farba and his BFF Diegan, president of the rural community of Djilor), the local nurse, and several area PCVs, we trained 28 students from Djilor and 14 from Sadioga to be peer educators, specifically trained in reproductive health. Sessions from the training included: the importance/roles of a peer educator, Adolescence/Puberty, Early Marriage and Pregnancy, STIs, HIV/AIDS, Family Planning Methods, male and female condom demonstrations, how to lead educational talks in the village/at school, general Q&A, breakout brainstorming and action planning by school, and an awarding of certificates of participation. We started each day around 8:30am or so (come on, this is Africa...) and went until after 6pm Friday and Saturday (3:30 on Sunday), providing breakfast and lunch each day (and sodas and beignets on Sunday afternoon to celebrate!).

Here are some pictures of the weekend: many more will be available on Picasa in a few days...

Farba, my unofficial counterpart and the hero of local PCVs talking to the students about leading health talks.

The local nurse talking about family planning methods (some people tried to convince me not to do a family planning session with the students, but it wound up being the most interesting session to many of them!)


Motivated Sadioga students creating their action plan for educating their communities, which Mary and I will follow up on.

Fellow PCV Emily talking about STIs

We had a lot of info to cover in a few days, so I hope it stuck. I must admit that I had initially grossly underestimated the students existing knowledge about reproductive health, but we passed out a questionnaire on Day 1 to find out what they already knew and the results were astounding and horrifying. Most students though Senegal had a HIV infection rate of over 80% (it is officially around 1.7% or so, but varies greatly on location in the country) and could not name a single STI. At the end, we passed out closing questionnaires to measure their knowledge and while the results weren't perfect, their was an obvious improvement in understanding and awareness about reproductive health issues. To cover for the fact that time was limited and many activities we prepared for we did not actually get to (this is Africa, things happen and you have to be flexible), we also handed out thick folders with basic and more detailed information, class lessons, skits, and statistics about reproductive health, so I hope that the students will be able to revert to that info and the local resource people we identified throughout the weekend, when they go to lead their own sessions. They already have served as important talking pieces when students showed fellow classmates and family members, so hopefully the knowledge will continue to grow.

A side problem: The training was originally supposed to be for 42 students, but the 14 students from the 3rd school (Diossong) wound up not showing up. The transportation kept falling through for them all week and in spite of our insistence to just get on a bus and we would pay their fares as soon as they got to Djilor (15km away via bush, 30km or so via road), but the principle let us down. [Very frustrating because He was the one who searched Me out last year to participate in our programs and we had already done a few reproductive health sessions with them in early January, plus we budgeted and made purchases for all of their students as well.] Due to the great distance, the Djilor students were to host the visiting Sadioga and Diossong students in mini homestay situations. With Diossong not showing up and the big Sadioga wrestling tourney weekend happening (and students wanting to commute each way to watch at night), most of the homestays did not happen. The ones that did proved to form new friendships and create opportunities for collaboration between students from the two schools.

Numerous thanks to my neighbor PCVs: Mary for her emotional support and help stuffing folders, Emily for coming all of the way from the land of the Pulaars to share her knowledge and expertise on the subject, Chris for the title of the training (Ma Sante, Mon Choix), and Jack for bringing cheese to the folder stuffing and wearing a boubou on Saturday. Farba, as always, was my life saver and acted as our school liason, garnering support from school and local administration and keeping things organized. Cilor, Farba's wife, led the fabulous cooking team, whose delicious meals was spread across a 15km radius. Ndeye, the nurse, for sharing her medical knowledge, wisdom, and fabulous acting skills. To the teachers, who spent their weekend working with students and helping us lead sessions (even when we PCVs disagreed with some of the info they were sharing, or the way they were teaching it...). And to all of the community relais (Samba, Malick, Amadou) for sharing their experience and tips on being relais with the students, and for their singing and acting.

[I apologize if this entry is somewhat disjointed and incoherrent, full of mispellings...I am tired and not feeling like a very eloquent writer but wanted to post about this training before it got too late. I have several more updates to post, hopefully within the next week or so while in Dakar.]