A Health Club in Action

Well I’ve officially hit the milestone of 1 year in Senegal! It truly is amazing how quickly time flies, especially when I am so absorbed in throwing myself into this amazing work and culture while I have the chance.

One thing I knew from the beginning of my service is that I really wanted to work with kids. Kids just have such a fresh and fun energy that I love being around. After attending the malaria conference in December, I was inspired by the health club that a volunteer from Namibia started. So, I returned to site and decided to start my own. My principal was on board with the idea and pretty much gave me free reign.

I decided to work with just the 3 older classes of students out of the 6 at my school. There are NO extracurricular activities at the school, so the concept of a health club was a bit unusual to the students, but after explaining the idea, I had about 40 students sign up! And since the program is after school, I can run the entire thing in Pulaar. School is conducted in French, but since the kids are learning French at the same time that they are receiving instruction in that language, they are not as comfortable conversationally. It was important for me with health club that we spoke Pulaar so the kids could freely express their thoughts.

My one main concern about starting this health club was that I don’t really run the club with a counterpart – it is just the students and me. I know that, from a sustainability standpoint, this means the club will likely end as soon as I leave my community. However, not long ago, I was fortunate to receive a visit from a delegation from Peace Corps HQ in Washington DC who was in Senegal and visited a few volunteer sites. I brought up my concern, and one of the people from the delegation said to me something to the effect of “Sometimes volunteers get caught up in the idea of sustainability, and so if they don’t have a counterpart they don’t do certain ideas or projects. Just remember that education in itself is sustainable, and that is exactly what you are passing on to these kids.” It was one of those A-HA moments, and that sentiment has really stuck with me.

Using paint, bread, and "flies" to demonstrate food contamination

Each Tuesday, I gather my health club (usually about 20-25 attendees) for whatever activity we have planned that week. We started with a session about food contamination where we used paint and these hilarious flies I crafted out of construction paper and pipe cleaners to demonstrate how flies touch dirty things and contaminate our food. I think wasting a loaf of bread by covering it with paint was not something they had seen before, but it led to a good discussion on how to keep our food and water clean.

The next week we talked about what happens when we drink unclean water, and how to prevent diarrhea, a common health issue here, from causing further health problems.

Recently we’ve been doing a few sessions on hand washing. The school has newly built toilet facilities but no water source. I asked the students what they do then when they have to go to the bathroom. For pee, it’s just the squat and air-dry method. But for poop, when the answer I got was “Sometimes we use sticks” and “Then we just go back to class”, I knew something had to be done.

After a little research and a test batch at the PC regional house, we made homemade soap as a club!

  

Stirring the soap mixture

Showing the difference washing hands with soap vs. just water

Letting the final product set-up

Once the soap was dry, we built handwashing stations in front of the toilets at the school and provided the principal with the bars of soap.

The boys were super into cutting the sticks, probably because they
were in love with my Leatherman tool (thanks Uncle Dick!)

Putting the final touches on our "Tip-Tap" handwashing station

The club has been a big source of pride for the kids. We often have a group of other students outside the windows of the classroom peering in and wondering what we are doing. And unfortunately, due to my somewhat erratic schedule, there are a lot of weeks when we have to take breaks. But each time a kid says to me “Weli, you’re teaching us today, right?” I am reminded how awesome my job is here.

Our health club with a finished handwashing station!

Next lessons with the health club include personal fitness/exercise, healthy teeth (thanks to you who sent toothbrushes!) and a malaria curriculum that incorporates soccer.  I’ve got so many more ideas, but at least there’s still next year!

Thanks for reading. Peace & love,

Lindsay