How is the work?



We know that everyone is eager to know what we are doing with ourselves (other than reading, cooking and sleeping), so here are a few things we've been up to recently. Incidentally, the two of us generally work separately, but we have had some great opportunities to team up on special projects and events lately. Here are a few:

Bwiam's Youth Action Movement group had a short parade and a program to observe World AIDS Day in early December. Our sister Mamie is holding the banner in this picture (on the left). We attempted to give some inspirational speaches about how youth have the power  to stop the spread of HIV.





Darrin has been assisting an elementary school in another village with their tree nursery. We recently went and helped them plant a few hundred seeds in beds and polypots the students had helped prepare.

We did a family planning talk in a nearby village. Here Hyatou and I show off a poster I made that compares birth spacing to crop spacing. Darrin and Yaya were talking to the men, while Hyatou and I talked to the women. I've used this same poster to do health talks at reproductive and child health clinic. The main point is that families and farms grow better and are healthier with proper planning. On the left you can see "Fatou's family" and on the right "Binta's family" (or, as one woman called it, "the seven kids in seven years family").

 

 

Our friend Kaddy (American name: Kathy) undertook the task of painting many health-themed murals at a large regional health center near her site. Darrin and I spent one weekend helping with the project and we worked on this mural, which shows the importance of infant vaccination.