Health education in the time of cholera

There was a cholera epidemic Touba recently, a region of Senegal neighboring my own beloved Fuuta. News of the epidemic prompted the nurse at the health post in my town to suggest this would be a good time to do some work on informing people about cholera. As a result, I spent the past week going from house to house in my town doing cholera education, telling people to wash their hands with soap, cover their food, etc. My Pulaar has improved considerably in the last ten days or so- I can now tell people to put three drops of bleach in a liter of water to wash vegetables, and that if they don't have a latrine, they should dig a hole in the ground to poop and cover it with sand.

That's all very well and good, but what I really wanted to tell you about is my friend Binta. She's four. Also, adorable. My town is pretty big (at least for one person trying to go to every house in the city limits), and to make it seem more manageable, I started the house to house tour in the quartier (neighborhood) of Falbe. Most of my previous excursions to Falbe consisted of visits to my aunt, her twelve year old son, and four year old daughter, who are particular favorites of mine. Binta lives next door to them.

Falbe turned out to have way more houses than I originally thought, which resulted in me spending a good chunk of the week wandering around the twisty-turny paths of the herder neighborhood without knowing exactly where I was going. The second or third day of my tour, I ran into Binta, who was quietly lurking around the streets of Falbe, and who looked delighted to see me, in her own taciturn way. I said hello to her, and the next thing I know she's tagging along with me to every house I go. Me having a four year old shadow as I went around trying to fulfill my professional duties didn't seem to faze anyone, at least not more than a toubab showing up unexpectedly in their house speaking Pulaar and talking about diarrhea. And Binta coming along had an unexpected benefit- given that four year olds are apparently given free to roam the streets in this town, she knew the entire area I was working in like the back of her hand, and was able to direct me to the next house, and the next, with an ease that had eluded my increasingly disoriented self. This was extremely useful, seeing as I was having some trouble navigating the mish-mashed jumble of houses that pass for Sinthiou Garba's gesture to urban planning. Binta has never been to the paved road before (which is all of a ten minute walk from her house), but she knew every single household on her turf. Often when we entered a household together, the head of the household would greet her and then turn to me and say, 'You know her? She is my daughter.' Turns out having a four year old guide is a better deal than you might imagine.

Really, though, the highlight of the whole experience was when, after going to about twenty houses with me, and patiently sitting through my spiel at every single one, Binta and I were walking along and she turns to and says thoughtfully, 'Aissata? Cholera is bad.' Alleluhiah! I officially succeeded in communicating a health message. I felt pretty gratified, not to mention charmed, because, come on how many people have four year old assistants in their work on health education?