The Polio Campaign

Today I earned every bit of the $6 Peace Corps pays me (after taxes, naturally) to be here.  Rotary International sponsors a door-to-door polio vaccination campaign trimesterly here in Benin.  For this December's iteration, I actually received some advance notice and thus was able to plan to participate.  I generally have nothing to do on Friday mornings, so I figured I  might as well check out a new neighborhood - in-depth! - here in Kandi.  Despite that I walk everywhere and go for runs in the mornings, there are still a few spots in this town that I haven't yet explored.  And, ever since working at my nightmare of a job that happened to be located at their world headquarters in Evanston, I've been curious about what exactly Rotary does.  Not that they ended up  having a whole lot to do with the actual vaccination part, but whatever.  They did do a good job of marketing it (including text messages from our cell phone carrier, MTN), so props to them for that.

According to the coordinating doctor, all volunteers (relais communautaires - or community health volunteers who are specially trained - and myself) were to be ready at the health center's gazebo at 5:30am.  Being Benin, we really got going around 7.  I was paired with two women I had never seen or worked with before, both of whom were too fond of gesturing to me rather than using words.  I should probably put in a disclaimer here that I hadn't eaten breakfast and was anticipating stopping for some fried dough or other such street food delicacy (ha ha, total oxymoron).  We all know how I get when I haven't eaten breakfast.  So when they meant door-to-door, they really mean door-to-door.  At each house/room, volunteers are required to ask to see any children under 5 and even if there aren't any, they must write (in chalk) a big zero and "3T," representing the third campaign of the year.  If you actually do vaccinate, you have to write on the door of the house (or the wall) what fraction of them you vaccinated.  Most were 1/1 or 2/2.  The chalking of the doors/walls seemed bizarre at first, but I guess it makes sense.  It reminded me of Hurricane Katrina.  Of course there is also the official "fiche de pointage"or the tally sheet, where the volunteer (me, in all vaccination cases - tallying is ALWAYS my job, but I'm good at it) mark the age of the kid and how many were in the household.  Luckily one of the volunteer women was from that neighborhood (Keferi), so she mostly knew which kid belonged to whom and who comprised each household.  When you have literal mazes of single room mudbrick homes, it can be a challenge to figure out who belongs to whom.

Luckily the polio vaccines are oral.  The vaccinator kept telling the kids to come get their "bonbon," and their little faces would light up only to be met by bitter disappointment moments later.  This is no bonbon in the traditional sense.  It's hard to explain to a kid that these two flavorless drops of drug might not taste like candy, but you'll thank us later when you're not dealing with paralysis.

And so we wandered around this little neighborhood for, wait for it....., SEVEN hours.  At six and half hours, I was like, "ladies, can we possibly take a five-minute break here?"  I'm pretty habituated to walking around in the sun (believe me!), but this was another thing entirely.  Mostly because, as I mentioned, I hadn't eaten breakfast (not that there were any viable options at 6am, being that the Dunkin' Donuts just went out of business) and we were inching dangerously close to the end of the food stand/shack lunch rush.  So we sat down for five minutes, and I returned a friend's call.  My two fellow volunteers stared at me intently while I spoke what they initially thought was Spanish.  They asked what other languages I speak, and I mentioned Hausa, to which one of them said, "well the sun is a lot more intense in Niger."  For once, I just kept my mouth shut., mostly out of fatigue.  Twenty minutes later we finished the last vaccine vial and headed back to the health center.  Selfishly, I decided not to go tomorrow, given that I have a 14 mile run to do on Sunday.  Not only do I think the other volunteers have this one covered, but I also just want to say "no" for once. Perhaps that's not a bad thing.