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July 20, 2007

The big meeting and the Distribution of 1,200 ITNs

Two days into our stay at Sahn Malen, the town crier was heard reverberating a message from the Chief. He did this in total darkness, as there was no power. The pitch-black atmosphere reminded me of Freetown . The crier was announcing that every member of the community should, at the request of the Chief, gather at the town center at 9:30 am for a talk with guests of the village and that they should all come prepared to participate in every way possible.

I was getting a bit anxious when at 10:10 am there was still no sign of the Doctor and his team who were traveling from Pujehun. Well, the uneasiness passed away and the full house settled into their chairs and those standing in the rain held their umbrellas higher when we heard the Land Rover jeep zoom into town. The Chief came over and the meeting was opened. It was a great feeling- seeing the Chief become very emotional as he welcomed us. A few other people spoke before I was given the microphone.

I thanked everyone for their time and especially the District Doctor for bringing together his team. It was something special because in Sierra Leone , there is only 1 medical doctor for every 50,000 people. He was the only doctor for the whole district and his time was valuable. I introduced my colleagues; Morten, Jacob and Mathias and at the end of the day we were all welcomed to the community as brothers.

During my speech, I presented tools- including hoes, cutlasses, and machetes- to the community so that people could utilize them to clean their environment. People were admonished to brush around their homes as this often served as breeding grounds for mosquitoes. At the same time, we presented 9 footballs to all the sections of the village to encourage youths to be engaged in sports and to use this to spread the message against malaria and its hazards. We finally told the people that starting the next day, we would give out all the ITNs and people should wait in their homes to receive the nets.

The ITN distribution was done in the same way as we had carried out the questionnaires and after two days, we had distributed about 1,200 ITNs and every sleeping area had been allocated a net. In between the distribution, we played football and many more people flooded the matches to see their youths stand against a disease that continues to take the lives of their children. During the distribution, one household had a missing member and Morten was told that one of the children had just died of malaria. Maybe he wouldn't have died if the ITNs were given a week earlier. We wouldn't know now!

For me and all the other members, these 3 weeks have seemed like a year. The five days in Sahn even felt like years. We had made so many friends and become attached to the daily activities of people in the town that it seemed we had lived their all our lives. In addition to the amount of work daily, the hospitality of the people in the village was overwhelming and their enthusiasm and appreciation only spurred us on and on and leaving was as hard as leaving a family member. We were only saying goodbye for 4 days.

On our way back to Bo, we passed through Pujehun. History would repeat itself again. We had a break down on the road. This time, our low Mercedes Benz got stuck in a ditch and we spent another 45 minutes or so trying to move it out. More villagers on their way to farms joined us and within 20 minutes there were at least 15 people helping to push the vehicle out of the ditch that would have been impossible had we not received help. We would also be late for our meeting with the DHMT in Pujehun due to no fault of ours.

We arrived in Pujehun and met with the whole health team. We deliberated on developing another project proposal that will ensure that we could officially collect data in a scientific manner and hopefully publish the results of the study that will be monitored by the DHMT over the next three years.