As I hope you are all aware, this month is Malaria Month! Thus all of us over here in Guinea and the entire continent of Africa are doing all we can to Stomp Out Malaria! This lead me and my site mate, Mr Ben Collins to plan a bike tour from our sites down south throughout the Base Cote all the way to Coyah.
We started le 3 avril at my site Porékiré doing a sort of door to door style sensibilisation (i.e. explaining what malaria is, how it's transmitted, how we can protect ourselves, etc.). The next day we biked the 30km to Ben's site to do a sensibilisation for his community, including a bed net demonstration!
Friday then we took off for our first longer day, including two stops! We first stopped about 20km outside Gougoudje (Ben's site) in Sinta to do a sensibilisation with a class of 10th graders who happened to be in a class of revision studying... yes, you guessed it, MALARIA!!!
After some Peace Corps paperwork with the Principale and lunch with his family we continued on under the hot African sun to Konkouré. Konkouré is a nice little village that finds itself as the half way point on the awful road between Telimélé and Kindia - donc all taxis stop there for lunch and Ben and I pass the time with one particular tea vender every time. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I had sent our friend several texts and even a letter he didn't pay very close attention and was thus surprised when we showed up. However, we still ended up with possibly the best sensibilisation we did all tour! There were three health agents that were already in the process of doing what we were doing in preparation for the universal bed net distribution this month!!
We had a great turn out including soon-to-be mothers, and kids (two of the main groups with the highest risk for malaria), great participation and really helpful translaters!
After spending the night with our friend from Konkouré we continued on to the big city of Kindia! This day was probably our toughest as far as riding is concerned. After several days of riding close to 75km on what one can barely call dirt/gravel roads or even roads at all and under the blazing African sun we almost didn't make it to Kindia. But once we did we were greated by our friend Chalupa who lives on an amazing, giant, organic, sustainable farm! We rested this day and continued on in the morning to our final resting spot for this bike trip, Wonkifong!
In the sub-prefecture of Wonkifong we did two sensibilisations in neighboring villages with a now local, one of our fellow volunteers.
We also were able to help many families hang bed nets!!!
Over all, it was a great success!!!
