In Freetown

We’ve arrived in Sierra Leone.

In the airport we met David, his older brother, and Ishiaka of Red Cross Nordic UWC ‘08. They took us to eat some very spicy food near the airport at a friend of the brother’s place under the shade of mango trees.

Flying in, we saw a tropical and very lush country covered in green. It is the rainy season here, with the occasional shower and the constant drizzle. The humidity is of course very high, but the temperature rests around a comfortable 25-30 degrees Celsius. There are people out and about everywhere in the streets, and the way people live here is very far from the neat, orderly arrangement of housing we know from suburban Denmark.

We took the ferry to Freetown and I got a chance to recap with David on the swingy ferry ride while the fresh, hot ocean air was blowing in our faces. Later on we met Paul, David’s father, who has taken very good care of us and has arranged a stay in a comfortable guest house for us. He works for UNICEF and has been instrumental in planning the project, and we’ve now squared our understanding of the project with him. So, the GMin Eradicate Malaria project is as follows:

The UNICEF division in Sierra Leone has most generously decided to donate approximately an extra 600 Long Lasting Insecticide-Treated bed Nets - also known as LLINs - for the Pujehun district in Sierra Leone. We are meeting with UNICEF’s representative tomorrow, the first of a series of meetings this week. Then, we will meet with the District Medical Officer (DMO) of the Pujehun District who has also agreed most generously to donate these nets to the GMin project in the Sahn Malen Village, in the Sahn Malen Chiefdom. We will work with the DMO’s health team and utilize their expertise and sustained presence in the village. It is the purpose of the project to equip everyone with a mosquito net. However, there are several steps we need to take before this becomes reality.

First, we need to square our understanding of the project with all interested parties in the course of the coming week, where we will be based in Freetown.

Next, we will travel to Sahn Malen via Bo Town which is about 8 hours of rough ride from Freetown. Once there, we will seek to make friend and partnerships with the people in the village. Although they have already expressed that they are happy about this project, we still feel that a challenging exercise awaits: We will have to engage in a dialogue that is based on their reality - and thus not a sermon on our part - and we have to uncover the problems that make people stop using bed nets even though they have been provided free of charge. Furthermore, the culture is obviously very different (for the Danes), and we will have high school students acting as our ‘buddies’ - personal guides and translators. It is a demanding task, but we are confident that we through various initiatives and activities will establish a bond with the village, and that our visit will create some lasting publicity and general awareness about the importance of using bed nets. More about how that goes later.

The final step is the work of the District Health Team. The money GMin has fundraised will act as a long-term incentive for them to make a sustainable effort in achieving a high rate of bed net usage. At best, they will write a report each year for the coming three years.

This is how the project looks now, and we will consider ourselves blessed if all goes according to plan. We will try to update as frequently as possible (which will be more frequently when in Freetown) and hope that you enjoy following our blog.

We’re all gonna blog at some point, so our posts will represent various points of views and experiences. Till next time!

-Mathias

If you're new here, you may want to read about the project this blog is about. Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 11:02 am and is filed under Eradicate Malaria. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.