End to Harmaton

So the harmaton cold has finally departed and Togo has entered into the hot season. It hasn’t gotten below 85, even at night, for the past week. It is only going to get hotter and then humid come March and April. It is back to the three showers a day and jumping between shaded areas to stay cool. But on the bright side, there aren’t that many bugs and the dryness makes biking much easier.

Work has been getting busier. I am now helping at the Niamtougou hospital every Thursday morning with vaccinations and baby weighing. It is a hectic four hours of crying babies. Three members of the Koka Red Cross have been going with me. Eventually, we are going to visit the Baga hospital for their weekly baby weighing and vaccinations, and compare how the two villages run things. This will hopefully give us a better idea of how to run the clinic whenever it opens in Koka. I am also working every week with a group of Peer Educators at the CEG near my house.

Also starting in February, I will be starting a women’s health group. I will first be visiting all of the seven villages that make up Koka and explain to the women of the villages why I am starting the group and how they can benefit for coming to the meetings every month. The first actual meeting will be at the beginning of March. I am really glad I am now getting a lot of supported for my Red Cross group. They are helping me a lot with projects I want to do and they are very accommodating with their time.

This past Friday, the business center where my brother works had the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new clinic that was built for the center. Some French students paid for its construction and stocking of the pharmacy, but there is no one at the moment to staff the clinic. In French it is called a Case de Sante, which pretty much just means a health hut. It is not funded by the government only by private donors, mostly religious groups. So I hope this new clinic is going to be able to stay open. For now the business center includes a carpenters shop (where my brother is the head carpenter), a metal-works shop, a seamstress shop, a bike mechanic, a library and now the clinic. I am still working on finding a funding source to open the actual clinic that was built in my village a few years ago, but has yet to open because of funding issues. But I do have two years to work on that. So if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

So that is about it for now. The mail has been kind of quiet lately so keep writing and emailing!!!! Oh and I posted some more pictures so check them out! Miss everyone tons!!!