Yesterday was the first day of our four day distribution, which we're doing in conjunction with the Linguere Department vaccination tours, run by health workers from each of nine health posts. We're tagging along, mooching free rides out to the farthest reaches of the bush, to provide nets to all of the kids who didn't receive them in the two previous national distributions. I'm glad that we're targeting villages that are often forgotten or ignored by the health authorities, but our decision to distribute to the farthest villages, yet to work on a Senegalese watch, is making for some looooooong days.
A rundown on grueling Day 1: We were supposedly starting early, so I rushed to leave Barkedji at 7 am and went straight to the hospital in Linguere after grabbing a bean sandwich on the side of the road. I waited for three hours for the vaccination car to arrive. We finally left in the late morning, stopped at the office to pick up nets, and transported them to the Warkhokh Health Post. We left the Health Post around 12 pm, drove 2 hours out into the bush, and made the vaccination/net distribution rounds until 6:30 pm. Then we started driving home until the head nurse realized after half an hour that she had left her phone in one of the villages. We drove around for an hour looking for the phone to no avail before finally giving up and making towards home again. We arrived back at the Warkhokh Health Post at 9 pm and tabulated vaccination counts for over an hour. I didn't make it back to the Linguere office until after 10:30 pm, by which point I was exhausted, hungry and dehydrated. Notice the conspicuous lack of mention of lunch and dinner in the previous paragraph... Also, it's hot season again, which means I might as well be continuously peeing out of all of my pores all day long. There's simply no way to drink enough water in this heat.
I generally don't mind these long work days. We have so much down time here that it's always nice to be physically working for more than an hour or two at a time. And--how to say this diplomatically?--it's also really uplifting to see Senegalese working so hard for their own country's development. The health workers I accompanied were genuinely concerned about targeting the highest number of kids who otherwise wouldn't get vaccinated or receive nets. They never mentioned going home early because they were hot and tired.
It's easy to grow disenchanted with the concept of sustainable development when people so often seem to want to take the easiest way out. In this line of work, we encounter a fair bit of entitlement, resignation and even laziness. But it's good to remind myself that it's a frustratingly visible minority that feel entitled to "presents" from toubabs, but refuse to (or don't know how to) be proactive about solving their own problems.
So, I was happy that we worked hard yesterday, happy that we achieved something concrete. But as my dad would say, just one minor complaint, dear: If we hadn't waited all morning for the vaccination car to arrive, we wouldn't have had to work until 10:30 pm. They do these vaccination tours a lot. Someone in that car must have realized when we left the Health Post at noon for a two hour drive out into the bush that we wouldn't be arriving home until very late. I know this is a question I shouldn't even bother asking at this point, but seriously, why didn't we just leave earlier...? I have learned to be patient here, but there is such a thing as too much patience, and this country is sure toeing that line. There comes a point when patience degrades from virtue to fatal flaw.
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