So I've not written in a while as beaucoup is going on right now. I've been really busy for the past few days as there has been a eye clinic here in Kédougou with american doctors removing cataracts and giving away free eye glasses. This is quite possibly the most interesting experience ive had so far here in senegal. Not only do we open our doors at 8 and close at 6/7, but because there are so many people that come into the clinic with such a variety of problems, we have to turn people away with legitimate problems. Kinda depressing as someone who has glaucoma, theres nothing that we can do for them though so we have to tell them to go home even though they are basically blind. I mean the only thing i can take away from it is that we are actually helping the people that we are giving the surgery to. Also with the glasses that we're giving away, along with the free loaders that just come to get free glasses like the governor and the commandant of the local military camp, we do actually help some people. Today I had a kid in to get glasses that could barely see the chart that we were using for our distance tests, but by the end of trail and error, we were able to get him to see about 5 lines down the chart. with some seriously strong glasses. That does make you feel good when you know that in with these people who are just after a col looking pair of glasses there are actually people who need glasses.
There are about 7/8 of us working the clinic at a time with about 4 american doctors as our guides so to speak. My main job over the course of this past week is as the glasses guy. My job is to test peoples vision who want glasses. So basically all the volunteers who are here to help end up doing some kind of translating. most of the people who come in are pulaar speakers with a healthy mix of malinke thrown in. Those are the two main languages down here. So Its kinda important that we have the speakers here that know those two languages. Weve had a few people down for the nearest big city, Tambacounda, to help out and there will be more next week to help out as well. My french and pulaar has made my glasses station a one man operation. I only have to go get help when i get truly stumped with the pulaar or a malinke comes in as i can pretty much get by with the french most of the time.
So as well as this clinic ive been doing some ag/fo type stuff as well. On this past tuesday i went out to a village on the other side of the river from kédougou to check out some potential work partners with my counterpart and Sheila. Good meeting with the chief of the village, he seems interested in working with us and was going to go talk to the farmers to figure out how big their fields are and check interest levels. I think my counterpart is really trying to brach out for this coming year to try and find people who are interested in working with ag/fo technologies. I need to get my counterpart some tree sacks for a nursery he wants to make for this year. Also the seeds that will be coming down with some of the other volunteers for the ag/fo conference at the end of the month.
Also on the ag/fo front, i was able to make contact with a farmer on the banks of the gambia in a town called Sintiou Roudji who has a very nice looking field with a pump up from the river. I just kinda introduced myself and said that i worked with my counterpart on planting trees and helping people with their farming. He seemed interested and his field would be perfect for this type of work as hes got cement basins already made for storing water that he pumps up from the river for watering his field. He said he knew my counterpart as well so we'll hopefully swing by and talk to him next week or so when im not busy working this eye clinic thing.
But the eye clinic is going well and when i was walking round the market yesterday with one of the volunteers that come down to help out with it, we ran into at least 4-5 people who had been there and knew me because of it. Great practice for the pulaar and french though.Hopefully this afternoon ill be collecting seeds for the ag/fo clinic and maybe finishing up my bathroom fence. Thatd be great, only 4 months since I've been here and ill be done. im also going to be trying to bang out a proposal for a irrigation system for a farmer here in kedougou as well as for my counterpart as he wants a cement basin for his field to hold water for his jerry rigged irrigation system. Im thinking that i could write into the proposal a request for a pump for his well, as there are good hand pumps that could work very well for his situation. We'll see how it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment