Call of Encouragement

A woman in a village pounding millet in a spot
where people usually work together.

This past week I had a very encouraging hour-long phone conversation (which would cost about $12 with the phone carriers here, but I had that amount from a bonus offer!). It was about my work with Community Health Evangelism (CHE). Up to this point I have participated in basically abstract training on CHE (despite the attempts to emphasize participatory learning), so I’ve mostly got my encouragement from the fact that CHE is such a good idea that it must be worth doing. In fact, most of the experienced foreign workers that I’ve talked with in the Sahel have said that it sounds like a really good idea and probably is what our country really needs, but it also probably won’t work here. Many cite the fact that there is such a dependency mind-set on foreign projects bringing emergency aid and money. Others have concluded that the traditional nature of the culture makes it very difficult for people to break away and do something in a new way even if it is clearly helpful. Some of these people who had tried doing CHE lessons before admittedly did not follow the CHE method very closely or started from a very institutional and aid-focused position already, and so it has been hard to weigh their wisdom.

But this phone conversation was different. Now I was talking with someone who has done CHE training for almost two decades and has worked in our country around the capital for the last five years. He was much more encouraging about the potential for what impact CHE can have on communities here. He can also see that things are moving well in the sites where he and his native trainers have been working. He shared about how these communities are excited to use the method to work on their malaria problems and start business ideas with community micro-financing. One example of even the combination of the two ideas was a community where they’re going to finance ideas like selling soap made with natural ingredients that have mosquito repelling properties, which they learned about through CHE lessons. Another story I found very encouraging is the CHE training they’re doing with the youth “fadas” in the city, which are similar to neighborhood gangs of youth that hang out at particular spots all day drinking strong tea and waiting for something to do. In the end this conversation also provide some good advice from experience about how to get our CHE training program working on the ground in the first few months, for which I was very grateful!

--El Padre