GMin blog

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

LLINs - as they’re commonly abbreviated - is at the core of our project, so I figured I’d tell you a bit about them.

Treated with an insecticide which kill or repel mosquitoes for 3-4 years these nets are truly ‘long lasting’, and they can even be washed several times without any decrease in their efficiency. To put it in short, LLINs are superior mosquito nets.

You use the net during the night - the mosquitoes prime breeding time - where you sleep thus normally an easy victim, but with these super nets, a mosquito killer for years!

LLINs actually originates from ITNs (Insecticide-Treated Nets), a treated mosquito net that’s neither washable nor long lasting; they have to be re-treated every half year, what a mess..

The effect of using mosquito nets (no insecticide) to fight malaria, was already proven in 1914 with the building of the Panama Canal. At the first attempt in the late 1900th century more than 20.000 workers died, mainly due to malaria, and the project had to be stopped. At the second attempt in 1914, scientist had found that malaria is transmitted through mosquitoes, and a major effort was made to prevent the mosquitoes in reaching the workers; both through draining of swamps, but also, more importantly, through the use of mosquito nets. (You can read more about the Panama-intervention here).

Unicef, Red Cross and alike are currently distributing LLINs - through big centers - to pregnant woman and children under five; the two most vulnerable groups. An initiative that greatly cuts down on malaria among these two groups but not much on the disease in general.

Unlike Unicef and the others - that use LLINs as a way to protect specific target groups - we’re taking a more Panama-like approach, using the nets as a weapon against malaria. Something you can read more about here.

-Morten

I am aware that when you read this several days will have passed since I wrote it. None the less I feel compelled to share the following with you. We do not have any internet nor do our phones work here in Sahn, so we have not been able to upload anything since we left Freetown. So when you read this, we will be in Bo and have acces to a computer.

Sahn has a stunning location. It matches all my imaginations of a ‘Tropical African village’. There are big palm trees everywhere, and the environment is extremely fertile. Except for the mosquitos, there are many amusing and beautiful insects. David talked about a gorilla settlement a few miles down the road, and Morten has already seen a monkey. In some way it is a true fantasy oasis.

Most of the houses we visit are made of clay and bamboo (Until recently I thought bamboo only existed naturally in Asia) for walls and palm leaves for roofs. Wherever we go there are people cooking over open fire, and there are always loads of kids running around between the houses.

But everything sweet has a sour side. It is very sad to see the state the village itself is in.The village was nearly destroyed during the war, the biggest buildings are still ruins. I can’t stop thinking what the village would have looked like if the rebels hadn’t burned down all the buildings, and so abruptly reversed development.

In spite of this, many people have impressed me. Everyday I see people carrying gigantic items on their heads, be it a big log or a container with water. It looks really convenient though. You can carry a big load, and you have both hands free to use for other purposes. Perhaps I should introduce that carrying skill in Denmark.

Another thing I’ve come across that I find strange is some of the eating habits. Or maybe “strange” is a wrong word to use, maybe I should say surprising. For the most part we’ve eaten rice. Not that there is anything strange in eating rice, but it turns out that the rice which is a daily part of a sierra leoneans meal is imported from China. This means that it is  more rentable to grow rice in china for then to ship it to Freetown, for then again to drive it 7 hours through the country on bumpy gravel roads and sell it in Sahn, than it is for a local farmer to grow rice or another eatable wheat. In one of the worlds poorest countries, I find it odd to see that it is still cheaper to import rice from china. Go globalisation…

The chinese must do something right.

-Jacob

That is how I feel at the moment. We’ve been here for 3 days now, and already our names are known by most of the inhabitants of the village. Every time we walk through the village children yell our names and wave. It really is quite amazing. Especially Morten’s video camera and my photo camera attract a lot of attention - the children simply love seeing pictures of themselves.

Apart from that little personal anecdote, the project itself is going well. We had a meeting with the District Medical Officer (DMO) of Pujehun today, and we’ve started handing out the nets to the households. People are very grateful and it feels very good to make a difference for some people that are really in need. Before that, we spent two days conducting surveys to figure out, among other things, how many people who live in the different houses, and how many people that have been sick (fever) within the last two weeks. The numbers are mind-blowing. Of the 50 households I asked, at least 40 of them reported sick 1 family member sick in the last two weeks. In many cases fever is a symptom of Malaria.

On the same note, it’s worth mentioning that our youngest GMin team member Hopanda, a 12 year old boy who is a good friend of David, is having 40 degrees Celcius in fever - we are pretty sure it’s malaria, so even in our own team we are affected by the disease.

However, one thing is to provide the mosquito nets to the inhabitants, another thing is to create awareness about their importance and usage. We have therefore started a big soccer cup with the name “Kick Malaria Out of Sahn Malen”. Before each game Mathias and David make speech about the importance of using the mosquito nets every single night. A lot of people watch the games and people seem to be very interested in our message and listen when we speak.

I played my first match yesterday, and the fact that a white boy is playing football has not gone unnoticed. Even though I personally don’t think I played that well, a lot of people has come up to me today and said “Hey Jacob, the footballer, good playing yesterday”.

Tomorrow we are continuing the distribution of the nets. Though we have a bit to go, we expect to finish tomorrow.

-Jacob

KNOCK!!! KNOCK!!! KNOCK!!! I woke up by Morten knocking on my door 4:30 in the morning. We had to get ready to catch a bus bound for Bo Town.

We took our packed bags, and David’s dad drove us down to the bus station where one of David’s brothers, Mustafa, kindly helped us buy tickets. (We paid a little extra in order to get our bags on board as well).

The bus was completely stuffed. It soon became clear to us that the famous computer game “Tetris” never made it to Sierra Leone; they started packing the bus from the front (in opposition to Tetris where you pack from the buttom), so people had to stand and wait for ages before they were able to enter. We finally got on the bus.

The ride out of Freetown was slowed by heavy traffic, but when we first came out of the center the ride went smoothly. Sierra Leone’s nature is absolutely astonishing; rivers, wide open spaces of grass, tall palm trees, high mountains - simply fantastic.

After an hours drive and 2 stops the quality of the road deteriorated drastically and we were exposed to a narrow, uneven, very bumpy gravel road. It was a bit strange to think of that what we drove on, was the main road between the capital, Freetown, and the 2nd biggest city, Bo Town.

After 5 hours ride we were received by David’s family in Bo Town. They were very very nice to us, and we quickly settled in in David’s house. Next, we went to eat down town in Bo at ‘Black & White’ and afterwards we went to a workshop to buy tools for use in Sahn Malen tomorrow. We bought different kinds of hoes and machetes which we will use to cut down grass and bushes tomorrow in Sahn Village - in order to deprive the mosquitoes of places to breed.

A long ride, the journey continues tomorrow, I hope you will join us.

-Jacob

So, I arrived in Sierra Leone 2 nights ago, and was a part of a the nation’s most popular radio Show. What a start.

My flight went well, and the entire original GMin Team is now gathered in Freetown. Yesterday we had some meetings concerning another project which David is also working on. So far it has been really interesting. Just walking down the streets of Freetown is an experience in itself. Despite the fact that the city is very poor, people are really friendly and people don’t seem to be out to cheat you when you are shopping as a tourist (unlike many other countries I’ve visited).

We had a small accident last night that made it even clearer why Mosquito nets are so important and essential for Sierra Leone.

Last evening, we went to the beach to chill out and have a nice time. We took a swim in the warm and salty water and everything was perfect. All our of a sudden a big wave caught Mathias by surprise and he was smacked to the ocean floor and had a small concussion as well as a wound in his head. Fortunately, some friendly people helped us, and we got him to the hospital where he got three stitches and a bit of rest. The doctors were very skillful and Mathias was walking again within 2 hours, but the hospital itself was in a terrible condition. Mathias was put in a ward to rest with 8 other people, where 2 suffered from malaria, and 1 from yellow fever. The rest of them I do not know.

The place had no mosquito nets, so mosquitos flew around in the room all the time, transferring malaria from the sick people to the healthy people.

After 5 minutes of rest the room went dark and the nurses lit candles. Initially I thought it was a kind of ritual or something like that - but it turns out that Freetown hasn’t had electricity for 3 months and everybody is therefore highly dependent on private generators, which the hospital, in order to save money, turned off in the evening. They only kept it on for our sake…

Except for that little accident, all is good. Mathias os fine again, and so is his head. So no worries. Elections are coming up in a month’s time, and all over the streets people are campaigning for their respective parties. It seems like it is going to be a close race between All Peoples Congress (APC) and Sierra Leonean People’s Party (SLPP). The parties are each allocated specific days for campaigning, and on those days the streets are filled with the party colours red (APC), green (SLPP) and orange (People’s Movement for Democratic Change).

We expect to see many more parades when we come back from Bo Town later this month.

The mood is very high in our team and we function well together. We are all looking forward to starting the project itself - which will hopefully be on Friday when we go to Sahn Malen via Bo Town.

We are trying to shoot a lot of video and pictures, but uploading them onto the blog is a bit difficult since the internet is very slow and unstable. We will do our best though. Do keep on reading.

-Jacob

It’s July 9th 22.30 and Jacob arrives to our hotel-like guest house, he’s 2 hours late..

We throw him into a cab and race off. Destination: UN. We’re waaay to many squeezed into such a little cab but nobody seems to mind–our thoughts are elsewhere. Jokes fly around, some a bit harsh others plain silly.

The cab stops, we stuble out and walk over to the UN guards who let us in after looking at our passports. We’re close now. Just a few meters in front of us is the UN radio station where DJ Base - old war hero, now radio star - welcomes us. We’ll be on Sierra Leones most popular radio show in 20min.

Jacob and I do media; taking pictures and recording video. David and Mathias do radio; talking - with two other Sierra Leoneans - about community service and volunteerism, and the idealogy that everyone could make an impact on their community, including youths.

It’s a huge success. People call in from all over the country to ask questions and the number of text messages is sky-rocketing. The show goes on for about an hour and a half.

We took a cab back to the guest house and go straight to bed. What a night!

-Morten

Here I am with an update from Freetown. We’ve accompanied David around the capital to visit a wealth of friends and relatives, and the above greeting has now entered our active vocabulary.

Freetown is a very interesting city, it is dense with houses that descend down green and red slopes to greet the Atlantic ocean. The streets are filled with cars and are lined by pedestrians that often carry large loads on their heads. There is a constant clamor of horns, voices, private power generators and engines. At night, most of the city goes pitch dark as the electrical grid hasn’t been working for more than three months now. Strolling through the city with David is in itself an immense learning experience, and we’ve felt nothing but welcome.

Now, as for a follow-up on my last post: We’ve held four key meetings, and they were all successful. First, we met with the Health Officer at UNICEF, and we agreed on the provision of the nets. Also, we agreed that research should be at the centre of our project. This means that the test of our project will be the results from the District Health Team’s surveys, in relation to the initial survey we will help conduct when we go to Sahn Malen.

Next day, we first met with the Representative for UNICEF in Sierra Leone, Geert Cappaelaere, (see picture below) and he fully endorsed our efforts. Later on that day, we met with the District Medical Officer of the Pujehun district, who welcomed our project warmly, but we didn’t go beyond arranging dates.

The final meeting that day was with the Chief of Sahn Malen village, who is also the chief representing in parliament all the chiefs from the Pujehun district. He also welcomed the project, and this meeting served mainly to square our understandings of the project. All of these meetings were supportive and gave a further boost to our enthusiasm for this project and confirmed it. One thing is to plan a project by making conference calls and sending e-mails, another thing is to be on the ground in a (to me) new country and meet everybody face to face.

Chief

Girl playing at David’s

The venue of the last meeting was David’s family’s house in Freetown. We’ve spent a good deal of time there, and I’ve uploaded a few pictures from the veranda, from a chilled-out afternoon. David’s father and brothers stay in Freetown, but his mother and sister live in Bo Town, where we are going on Tuesday. David’s father and eldest brother have already gone ahead to Sahn Malen via Bo Town to prepare the project and set up the survey. Before we join them, we’ll pick up Jacob Lennheden, possibly do a radio show, and hold a few meetings about possibly bringing Être: The face of human rights, a travelling exhibition, to Sierra Leone (more on that later).

As the pictures indicate, we’ve been doing other things than holding meetings in Freetown. We’ve met up with several graduates and students of United World Colleges, We’ve enjoyed the fresh fruit that is available from every street corner (even though they’re out of season) and we’ve traversed many different parts of Freetown. Additionally, we’ve been to the public Lumbley beach on a day with almost no rain, where the Atlantic Ocean was beating relentlessly upon the shore, the smell of salt was carried by a warm breeze and the soothing, luke warm water of the ocean surrounded our feet.

That was all for now from Freetown where the rain has returned and we expect it to stay along with the blackout, the clamor of noise and the amazing, tropical landscape.

“We go see”

-Mathias