Malaria Bike Tourney 2019

Kedougou (where my site is) has one of the highest
 incidences of Malaria in Senegal 

Happy rainy season from Kedougou! Good news: Kedougou is hands-down the prettiest region in Senegal with a sea of green covering every inch of the place, Bad news: Malaria. Rainy season is when mosquitos breed and come out just to sting people and transmit Malaria…especially in Kedougou where the humidity brings in all those thirsty critters. Actually, Kedougou has one of the highest incidences of Malaria in the whole country (more than 25% of the population gets it!). So, Peace Corps has a nifty program called STOMP Malaria Senegal where volunteers are encouraged to train their communities on Malaria prevention. But because Peace Corps volunteers like to be competitive, they made a two-week long competition called Malaria Fort-nights where volunteers can rack up points for every Malaria-related activity they do in their communities. In light of potentially winning TONS of money (like 50 bucks…) currently every volunteer in every region in Senegal are trying to do as many Malaria-related activities as possible. My work-zone happened to do a week-long Malaria Bike Tourney where all five of us biked to each one of our sites to do one activity. Throughout this week I biked 108 km just to spread the work about Malaria.

Site #1: Saroudia (40 km bike ride)

I mean...look at this view! 

Mind you, I’ve NEVER biked 40 km in my life and it was about 95 degrees and humid that day. But the scenes during the ride made up for all the extreme exhaustion. We arrived to that site with sun burns, numb legs, and dripping sweat but happy because no one comes here because it’s so out of the way (sorry Andrew). Saroudia is a hidden gem with its diverse vegetation and scenic hills.

Here we did a talk to a group of mothers of the importance of their children sleeping under mosquito nets. We also taught them on how to fix their mosquito nets to fit around their beds better.

Site #2: Daikha Madina (13 km bike ride)

One of us talking about the importance of
sleeping under a mosquito net

For this we were planning on taking a car at 8 am to the Road Town, Saraya, and then bike to Daikha Madina (13km), but we woke up to rain that morning so we didn’t leave until 11am. We made it into Saraya though, bought Pringles, and headed straight to site #2.

After eating our lunch and then the Pringles we did Mosquito Bed Net checks. We visited about five house holds to check if their mosquito were there. Almost every household did have their nets hung up, so that’s awesome.

Site # 3: Fode Binea (21 km bike ride)  

There's me in the middle making soil! 

This is my site!!! It’s actually 5 km away from site #2, but we wanted to bike 13 km to the road town to pick up breakfast sandwiches and then bike 8 km to my site, totaling a whopping 21 km.

For my site, I decided to do a training on how to eliminate standing water that sit outside people’s huts. Standing water is a breeding ground for mosquitos and is especially harmful if it happens to be right next to their bedrooms. I also did a training on how to transform any open container into a mini garden that can produce basil and mint. The participants found it useful and were especially happy to receive basil seeds!

Site #4: Bembou (21 km bike ride)

Daiken showing off her new clothes!

Before doing site #4, we took about a three-day break to celebrate Tabaski (Eid Al-Adha) with our host families. This is a celebration about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God, but instead of his son a lamb was sacrificed. For this holiday, we dressed up in new clothes and enjoyed eating sheep all day long. 

After that, the work zone got back together and biked all the way to Bembou (21 km) to talk about the cost of having Malaria. The talk explained that the cost of having severe malaria can hinder costs for food and clothes needed for the family. We also discussed how preventing getting severe Malaria is possible and should be practiced.

Site #5: Saraya (13 km bike ride) 

We biked from Bembou to Saraya and chilled with the family hosting us. Our lunch was hands-down the best Cheb (rice) I’ve had in Kedougou. We had boiled carrots, sweet potato, cabbage, sheep, onions, and bitter tomato on top of perfectly seasoned oily rice. I wish I took a picture, but I was too busy stuffing my face.

After our Cheb nap, we went around the neighborhood and did a trash clean up. Believe it or not, trash on the street breeds mosquitos and is a major source of malaria. We had some kids help us and they seemed like it!

Following the trash clean up, we did a radio show to talk about malaria and give tips on how to prevent it. Radio is always fun because we get to play American music and greet our host families. But tonight was special because “Dancing in the Moonlight” by King Harvest came on right before we left and for some reason we all broke out into a dance party... even a random Senegalese guy came to join in on the fun! 

So it was 108 km of spreading the word about Malaria, all done in Malinke (the local language). It was exhausting mentally and physically but I had fun exploring the Saraya region and meeting more locals. Totally worth the sore legs!