An Intro to My Practicum

So what am I doing in this fine and recovering West African country?  Well, it’s part of my Master’s Practicum, which is a 6 month internship that leads to a thesis so that I can graduate in May 2013 with a Masters of Science in Public Health.  My internship is with the Center for Communication Programs (CCP), who I have been working with part-time since October 2011.  I actually met them while I was still in Senegal in 2011 and have been on the NetWorks and Senegal teams this past year, supporting projects that promote mosquito net use and behavior change communication to reduce the malaria burden in multiple countries.  In June, I went full time, divided between NetWorks and a HIV/AIDS prevention project in Cote d’Ivoire called PACT (Participation Active et Communication Transformatatrice), which consists of several different programs in Cote d’Ivoire, especially with youth and young adults 18-30, called Super Go, Sports for Life, and African Transformation. We work through various NGOs around the country to run these programs and the office I'm at oversees everything.

This past spring, as I was trying to decide what to do for my Master’s Practicum, I found out that I received a small travel grant to go to Cote d’Ivoire with the PACT project and then NetWorks proposed sandwiching Cote d’Ivoire with two of their countries, Senegal and Benin, in order to do an awesome malaria-HIV/AIDS mash-up practicum focusing on training/education and formative research--super exciting and it seemed like I had found the perfect Practicum for my interests, past experiences, and future goals and skills learning.  Needless to say, an opportunity to use my recently renewed (and thus EMPTY) passport and get 3+ stamps beat out a different practicum possibility that was Baltimore confined but with an awesome international maternal and child health organization that I would LOVE to work for when I graduate.

Unfortunately, Senegal and Benin fell through at the last minute, bringing my time abroad down from about 16 weeks to just 8, bummer!  But, I’m back in West Africa and speaking French every minute of every day, so that’s pretty awesome.  My originally planned activities here got majorly delayed (oh international development!!!), so my work is changing to be a lot of technical assistance with some baseline surveys for African Transformations, leading formative research for a TV series/soap opera that entertains and educates about HIV/AIDS (see Intersexions in South Africa), and doing some preparation for a big strategic leadership course that will be happening in October.

Hopefully the work will still be interesting, though it's less time "in the field" than I would like, at least it's something.  Also, due to the nature of where I work and the fact that we have to go through a lot of ethics approvals, the fact that we have "competitors," and because I daily work with people who are all over facebook and the web, I probably won't actually be talking about any major details of what I'm doing or able to post a lot of pictures of things, but we'll see :)

Returning to West Africa

Rekindling the blog, two three weeks late.

So where am I now?

Cote d'Ivoire!!!  Or to the non-francophones, Ivory Coast!

I was first introduced to CI probably in middle and high school French classes, and vaguely talks about the war while in college, but was really introduced to it when I read Nine Hills to Nambonkaha before joining the Peace Corps in 2008.  It's the story of Sarah Erdman, who was a rural health education volunteer like I was, in a small village in northern Cote d'Ivoire, right near the border with Burkina Faso.  [Actually, one of the PCVs in my stage's older brother served in Peace Corps Cote d'Ivoire with the author, if you believe it!]

Here’s a little about what the CIA World Factbook says:

Close ties to France since independence in 1960, the development of cocoa production for export, and foreign investment made Cote d'Ivoire one of the most prosperous of the West African states but did not protect it from political turmoil. In December 1999, a military coup - the first ever in Cote d'Ivoire's history - overthrew the government. Junta leader Robert GUEI blatantly rigged elections held in late 2000 and declared himself the winner. Popular protest forced him to step aside and brought Laurent GBAGBO into power. Ivorian dissidents and disaffected members of the military launched a failed coup attempt in September 2002. Rebel forces claimed the northern half of the country, and in January 2003 were granted ministerial positions in a unity government under the auspices of the Linas-Marcoussis Peace Accord. President GBAGBO and rebel forces resumed implementation of the peace accord in December 2003 after a three-month stalemate, but issues that sparked the civil war, such as land reform and grounds for citizenship, remained unresolved. In March 2007 President GBAGBO and former New Forces rebel leader Guillaume SORO signed the Ouagadougou Political Agreement. As a result of the agreement, SORO joined GBAGBO's government as Prime Minister and the two agreed to reunite the country by dismantling the zone of confidence separating North from South, integrate rebel forces into the national armed forces, and hold elections. Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of rebel forces have been problematic as rebels seek to enter the armed forces. Citizen identification and voter registration pose election difficulties, and balloting planned for November 2009 was postponed to 2010. On 28 November 2010, Alassane Dramane OUATTARA won the presidential election, defeating then President Laurent GBAGBO. GBAGBO refused to hand over power, resulting in a five-month stand-off. In April 2011, after widespread fighting, GBAGBO was formally forced from office by armed OUATTARA supporters with the help of UN and French forces. Several thousand UN peacekeepers and several hundred French troops remain in Cote d'Ivoire to support the transition process

Not super optimistic, huh?  It's a beautiful country that after a promising start has suffered tragically.  Cote d'Ivoire also has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in West Africa, estimated at 3.4% in 2009.  The US government does not have much going on in CI, apart from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

In terms of places to go and things to do, Lonely Planet is pretty unhelpful since tourism has suffered greatly due to the war and crisis, leaving me at a loss for what to do on the weekends, but coworkers are helping fill some of the time up.  The UK Trip Advisor has a little more going for it in terms of information about places, shopping, and more.

I’ve traveled to a lot of new places on my own, but always meeting up with people somewhere along the way.  This is my first time without a group of people in my similar situation or job, if you will, so that's a new change which means I'm spending less money on phone credit and more time wandering around the neighborhood to see what there is.  It's exciting and I'm enjoying learning about a new place, but that is the subject for another post, coming soon!

Third Goal

So here's one of 5 blog posts I started last summer and never finished, yikes!  This was actually all ready to go and then, BAM! nothing.  And by nothing, I mean I left Senegal, stopped briefly in Illinois, and started grad school within about 8 days.  A little intense.  So this is old, but here it is.

I've never talked about this before, but the Peace Corps is comprised of 3 different goals that define its mission in the world.  These three simple goals are as follows:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.

2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Goals 1 and 2 are obviously work that happens during your PC Service, as does Goal 3, but it's this last goal which they tell us we never can stop doing.  Every PCV is told to "bring it home!"

The Third Goal is...

http://www.thirdgoal.org/view-details/BArnold

http://www.thirdgoal.org/

If you click on the link for Regions, Africa, my pictures are currently the first 3 that come up (probably because they are the most recently uploaded).


**Please note, this above point is probably no longer relevant as it was WELL over a year ago that I started this post.  Still check it out though, I'm still bringing the Third Goal wherever I can.