Sbitar visit

19/3/10

So who would have thought there would be other perfectionists in the Peace Corps? Well my perfectionist tendencies were well satisfied today with my CBT’s community map. Straight roads (bending reality), perfect color-coded buildings, palm trees, and even a compass rose and distance scale. This map is just one part of our community analysis project we are working on over this twelve-day stretch. Over the past week we have been meeting with school teachers, city security administrators, educated community members we encounter in the fields, asking questions of our families, and capping the week with a trek to the local health clinic. The sbitar (health clinic) was very small and was inoperative for five years until four months ago when a new building finished construction and a single nurse was assigned to the jurisdiction of 17 villages, with a total of 5,600 people. After walking about an hour to get there (mind you this is the closest health service location people in my town have and they can’t deal with any emergencies) we spent several hours asking questions. Well we actually only asked about six questions, the rest of the time the only nurse there was addressing the constant stream of locals coming in for services. This single nurse sees 50 to 60 people in the clinic a day. For the few hours we were there we counted about 20.

After another absolutely delicious lunch we took our post lunch break/naptime, resulting in a very groggy and probably our least driven language session to date. After our afternoon coffee and tea break we had the energy to create the aforementioned map of our community and surrounding area. I absolutely love my group. I spent all day today bonding with various people during the course of our walks. I feel very lucky to be with working with such driven people. Our time at the sbitar gave us a very clear idea of what our next two years might be like. When we asked the nurse/manager what she would have one of us do if we were assigned to her clinic, she had very clear jobs she needed done: community outreach for the clinic involving education about vaccinations, sanitation, and pre and post natal care. Talking with yesterday’s birthday girl Caity reminded me of how happy I am to be here and how many opportunities we have lying before us, both in the next two years and in the years after. Being surrounded by so many driven and well-travelled people is very inspiring. We sit around the lunch table swapping stories about Spain, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Georgia (the country), Jordan, Oman, UAE, Mali, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, China, South Africa, Columbia, Australia, France… and more I’m sure that just haven’t come up in discussion yet.

Well it’s now time for me to get back to writing up business/economics portion of our community analysis report.