Marathons and Masons

Hey ya'll! Things are getting really busy these days in the bustling city of Tambacounda!! PEPAM has really started to mobilize the community, and after three Community-Led Total Sanitation triggering ceremonies, we're organizing a mason training to teach over 60 masons how to construct three types of latrines, all three of which meet World Health Organization standards for good latrines. But prior to this... we had the first annual Tambacounda Race for Girls Education, which went insanely well in spite of all of the difficulties we thought we'd run into!! Get it?

Anyway, March 3rd was the highly anticipated registration day for the marathon. Although our primary audience was intended to be high school students, runners, and government employees that worked out (for example, the police department and the fire department), initially our audience consisted of talibe (Koranic students) and flat out crazy people. Students came through eventually, though, and we registered tons of students to run. An English teacher brought in his classes to perform, and they sang 3 songs in English, which was fantastic. This particularly motivated and dedicated teacher actually sponsored several of his students (both girls and boys) to run. The inscription fee was 1,000 cfa, which was a bit hefty for students, but thanks to several sponsorships we had many students running in the end (lesson learned: student rate for next year). Like any good party hosts, we had speakers blaring and a rotating cast of random dancers, which meant that even if people didn't come to register, we had many people come and just ask what we were doing. This was a great opportunity to say that we are raising awareness of girls education needs in Senegal, and raising money for gender and development activities. Which, sure enough, we actually did. I was a bit concerned with all of the overhead costs (speaker rental, water for the runners, table chair and tent rental, etc) that we wouldn't end up making any money at all, but we came out ahead! 137 runners signed up for our three races, a half-marathon, a 10k, and a 5 k.

The next day, on the day of the race, everyone showed up with their numbers pinned onto their shirts and ready to go. We had our safety and security director kick off the events and a local government representative ran in the 5k in honor of his awesome city (have I ever mentioned how much I love Tamba? Because it's awesome). Students, military dudes, and PCVs alike ran like crazy and we closed the day with a ceremony with several speakers, including a local women's speaker that spoke to the importance of girls education. We had sashes made for the 1st and 2nd place winners of each category out of shiny satin, and had them embroidered with TAMBA 2012 plus the category of the race and their respective place. Various important community members presented the winners with their sashes, and every student winner was presented with a backpack full of school supplies. We also gave away tons of free ORANGE brand t-shirts, which people put on immediately over their clothing. All in all, it ended up being tons of fun, and the Tamba region volunteers have already started planning for the next race, which is happening the 1st week of December. We hope it will have a level of awesomeness turned up to 11.

I started a series of health causeries at Tamba Soce, only to realize that unfortunately it may not be possible to do this series of causeries because they conflict with my office time in the temporary PEPAM office. I started doing them just last week (although they had been planned with the school director for over a month), only to have to cancel this week because I needed to be in the office filling out my job description. The first two days went really well though- the format was as follows: Teach the CM2 students the lesson. Pick out 4 or 5 CM2 students to teach the rest of the classes the lesson. Shadow the CM2 kids as they teach the lesson to all of the other classes at the school. It worked really well as the younger students listened very well to their peers. We did a two-day hand washing lesson, and talked about how germs are spread, what some examples of “microbes” are, and proper hand washing techniques, all guided by 5 lovely CM2 students. It was heartbreaking to cancel this morning- this type of work I love- but my priority right now needs to be making sure this mason training not only happens, but happens well, and that nobody wants to choke anyone during the process of it happening (or, if they do want to choke someone, then making sure that they don't actually do it (the stress potential is high).

So about that mason training! If things go as planned, 60+ masons, 20 from Peace Corps villages, will be trained in the villages of Bira and Kouthiaba on latrine building techniques. If things go as planned, the first day will be the 20th, and everyone will be meeting in Bira, our model demo site. After a day in Bira, the masons will split into two groups, one of which will spend its time in Kouthiaba, and the other will stay in Bira. Each volunteer will be bringing 2 masons, and while we will be staying with our volunteer hosts, the masons will be staying either with host families or in a community room. The masons will be learning how to make Sanplat , VIP, and DLV latrines. A Sanplat is a basic latrine with raised food beds so that your feet do not come into contact with waste. The VIP is the “ventilated improved pit” latrine which is a beautiful brick latrine with a nice roof, and the DLV, the “double ventilated latrine,” which has two pits and an expanded life span. All of these latrines will help the communities raise their sanitation standards, as many of these masons are coming in from communities where open-air defecation is an issue. The last day should be the 28th, if things fall in place.

There have been some difficulties with planning the training due to the fact that our PEPAM office is just now starting operations, and our staff are in various parts of the community right now and we have been planning primarily via email, phone calls, and text messages. I think the hardest part of this actually has been getting only small bits of information at a time- my job at this point is to ensure that the volunteers have all of the information their community needs to prepare for the training, but I have only been getting the information in tiny tiny chunks. Normally, the trainings are planned when the staff is all together and can work together, but not this time around- we're all over the place. It will only get easier from here, but working in this type of chaos can be really stressful, especially coming from an American mindset. I expect things to work on a schedule and be at least vaguely planned. Things probably will not be 100% concrete for this training until, well, it's happening. I have faith that it will work out, as I have seen USAID trainings work out really well in the past. It's just a matter of waiting around for that next little morsel of important information so that I can pass it on to the volunteers who need it.

In the end, even if things are stressful now, we will have over 60 village and small-town based masons trained in a skill that they previously did not have, which will make it all worth it.

Well, that's all for now. Peace only!