So, that's why I decided to live in Fandjora for 2 weeks. Its neglected relationship with the CSPS (and vice versa) is evident in a lot of respects. I was there in particular for the health of the mothers and children. Many of the children in Fandjora are malnourished, some severely malnourished (imagine a 20 month old child with a forearm circumference of 9cm). The Hearth Model is a program in which mothers of malnourished children make enriched porridge using only local ingredients every morning for 12 days. By the end of the 12 day period, children have gained significant amounts of weight as a result of the Hearth.
A typical Hearth group is composed of 8-10 women with children of similar ages. Because I was only staying in Fandjora for one 2-week period, guilt provoked me to take on a group of 28 women with children ages 6 months to 3 years. This led to some very chaotic mornings and difficult situations for children. With 28 women, it was very difficult to keep track of women and their children; they individually felt less obligated to attend to each session; younger children required lighter porridge and older children required heavier porridge; as a stranger in the community the women did not put the trust in me that women in Takaledougou would. On top of it all, my counterpart for this project (the nurse at my CSPS) insisted on watering down the porridge far too much to do anything for these children. Women are not used to cooking porridge for nearly 30 children, so when I pleaded that the women add more ingredients (for example, more than 8 tomatoes for a vegetable porridge to feed 30 children) they freaked out. "Its too much" they would say. It wasn't until the last half of the Hearth, after battling with them every morning, that they finally started to believe and trust in me.
So, after the Hearth every morning, I would spend the rest of the day until sundown painting 3 murals on a house along a path that was heavily trafficked. These were wordless murals (since many people, especially women, are illiterate) with messages encouraging healthy practices for mothers and their children. The process was not easy. First the walls were smoothed, then a layer of base paint. After that, I drew grid lines that would me draw and enlarge images that I had drawn on paper. The murals were drawn, then, using black, white, red, blue and yellow paint I mixed and matched colors to paint. While this required a lot of attention to detail, it was actually a huge stress reliever after my Hearth every morning.
The mural project turned out to be a huge success. Villagers stopped along the way to look at the images and explain their meaning to one another--the importance of going to vaccination days to get your child vaccinated, the kinds of foods to put in a nutritious meal, to go to the CSPS when you're about to give birth. Since CSPS staff only come out once a month, these images will be here every day, sensibilizing and reminding villagers of healthy practices.
