Malaria Brunch/I Win/Malaria Stomped…and Goodbye Senegal, call me maybe?

With my last few hours in Senegal ticking away, I’d like to take this time (while eagerly waiting for Evan, Mike, and Emily to cook some delicious pancakes) to write a little something about malaria for April 25th aka World Malaria Day.

First thing. If you don’t know what malaria is, take a few shameful minutes to google it.

Working with malaria in Senegal can sometimes be a tricky business. Will my community like this?Maybe.Will they listen to what I have to say?Probably.Am I going to bore them to sleep?Most likely.Volunteers have to think of creative ways to share this information. In Tamba, our choice to keep people on their toes was to do a malaria theater tourney. Which is the fancy way of saying, slowly biking to different villages, dressing up in ladies clothing, pretending we’re mosquitoes, and dancing like hired clowns to keep the crowd there. But what works works right? I think there was a total of 9 villages on this tourney, sooooo we reached….5 billion people? Sure.

Also, since this is my last post in Senegal. I guess I’ve got to say something memorable or meaningful or profound. So…in the words of the incomparable Mr. Spark-DePass:

I was going to say something about potatoes, but you’ve got that instead.

(Referring to some guy I wasn’t listening to who was telling me something profound to say for this blog post)

Murdering AIDS

Last month we drove up to Maleme Niani and conducted some serious HIV/AIDS awareness classes. Okay, half true. We did lead some classes about HIV/AIDS, but for the most part, we just giggled when the kids talked about sex and private parts. Also, it didn’t help that fellow PCVs Nic and Spence gave condom demonstrations on a banana which progressively got flaccid and mushy. So, as a solution, they switched it out with the girthy handle of a well-hung shovel.

Don’t let anybody tell you that development work is boring.

(Look at these happy volunteers. Don’t you want to give them jobs and monies and back-rubs and fancy cheeses when they get back to America? Think about it.)