'Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.'
In eary February, our team was joined by Emily - a consultant from the States with many years of experience working on surveys in various African countries. We became friends with her last summer as she completed her internship in Niger with Samaritan's Purse and she agreed to come back and help us roll-out our survey, following the completion of her Master's (in December) in International Development. Throughout 6 weeks in the months of February and into March our team:
- trained the survey teams to conduct the surveys (including 7 Fulani speakers - interpreters who speak French, English and Fulfulde; 3 villagers who spoke Fulfulde and varying degrees of French; and 2 villagers who speak only Fulfulde
- visited 4 communities (2 Fulani villages, 1 Tamasheq village, and our urban workers)
- interviewed a total of 1218 people (198 households).
The training session for the Fulani team took place over 2 days. Our five villagers travelled into Niamey and we were joined by 2 local interpreters.
We were taught about the basics of survey taking skills. Such as: respect those being interviewed, do not lead them to a response, remain professional, do not react (or verbally respond) positively or negatively to their responses - as this may influence future responses. For example, if they indicate that their first child was not sick last month and your response is 'ah, good'; then if another child was sick last month, they may be hesitant to tell us this.
The second day of training, we headed to a Fulani concession in town of 3 families with whom my language instructor is friends, in order to practice our new founds skills.
On Monday morning we headed to the first village - Teppe - to conduct the interviews over the next four days. We learned the art of random selection, so as we entered each compound of huts, we randomly selected which huts were to be interviewed. We flipped a coin in the air - heads for interview, tails for move on. We then headed out in teams of 2-3 people to conduct the first interviews. Our Fulani villages are scattered - groupings of huts (compounds) based roughly on family lineage - separated by their fields. As interviewing teams, we go to those we interview, walking on small footpaths or through the fields (and through animal dung - as the fields are being fertilized for this year's crop, by their animal herds. The interview teams consisting of at least one male interviewer and a village female for culture appropriateness (most interviewees were the wives, as the men were often off at the market or elsewhere in the village). My interviewing team consisting of myself, a language helper who speaks French and Fulfulde, and occasionally one of the village ladies as well.
First Inteview:
During this interview, I am handed a baby boy to hold - always a slightly disquieting experience (much as I love babies) for there are no diapers here! Sure enough, towards the end of the interview the little guy lets loose what I am sure was a night's full bladder. As I am sitting cross-legged his pee soaks through from the front of my wrap skirt down to the backside. The ladies and I giggle and they pass me a plastic teapot of water to rinse out my skirt. As we walk to the next compound of huts, my wet skirt whaps back and forth against my legs, from both sides, on each step I take. Thankfully, despite a slightly overcast day, it is still hot enough that my skirt has dried by the time we finish the second interview. The Fulani have a saying that if a baby pees on you, you will receive a gift (either money, a blessing or something else). That evening I found a dime (cdn) in the book bag gifted to me (Thanks Dennis & Dorrie) - though I joked, that I had been hoping it would be a more significant amount - given the amount of pee that I had been blessed with!
Our nights were spent in Makalondi (the town across the road) in the house of missionaries currently on furlough in the USA. This town has no electricity, so our supper was by candle light on their terrace!
We ran the generator for a few hours each night after supper - mostly to review the survey forms before the next day. Looking for inconsistencies or missed pages to be addressed the following day.
It was a great four days of practicing my language: listening to the survey questions and the respondant's answers and conducting the occasional survey myself! Through the course of this week though, my brain struggled to function in 3 languages - often failing to recognize in which language I was speaking at any given time. I was speaking English with our survey consultant and occasionally our two interpreters, French with our two interpreters and the 3 villagers who can speak French, and Fulfulde with our interpreters, village surveyors and the all other villagers! At one point, I leaned over to ask a question of Mamane, a village surveyor helping me with interviews - perfectly speaking 1 full sentence in English and 1 in French. He leaned over to tell me that he had not understood, and so I repeated my question - again: the first sentence in English and the second in French. As the last words I spoke had been French, my brain did not make the connection that al had not been spoken in French - until Mamane leanded over and said in Fulfulde: "Khadiza - you are speaking in English to me!". Mamane laughed, I laughed, and the villagers we were interviewing laughed; and then I apologized and worked it through all in French for him! After four days, we had entered each and every compound of the village and interviewed at least 1/2 of the huts available in each one. We then headed back to Niamey for the weekend of rest before the second round. The next Monday, we headed out to Kojeri - the village where I had worked with the Beulah team earlier in the month at our medical clinic. It was a joy to be back in this village and to be recognized and accepted on my return. We set up camp again, this time staying in Kojeri over our nights there. Tim, the field director came along the first day to do the majority of the camp set-up and prepare the supper as our survey teams hit the ground running! (He also trained our bush cook in the fine art of dish washing with soap - and other basic food sanitation principles - for which I am extremely grateful!) Before we headed off, I conferred with the village chief's son to determine:
- how many compounds were in the village
- where to find said compounds
- how many huts (or heads of families) were in each compound
- 1 husband
- 2 wives
- 10 dependant children (3 others had left in the last year to find work in Burkina Faso and 1 infant had died in the last year)
- 1 elderly mother
The next morning, we headed off again in our various survey teams. I was able to conduct a few interviews - during one of which, the man understood about 95% of my questions without one of my helpers needing to repeat my words!!! (I found out later he was non-Fulani, so therefore more adapted to hearing other accents . . . but the day will come that I will learn the village accent some and they will learn to adapt to my slightly off accent some as well.)
By lunch-time we had determined that the village was smaller than originally estimated and we would therefore be finished that evening - after 1 day! However, as the lunch progressed, the village chief's son approached me:
'Khadiza', he said, 'I have forgotten a few huts.'As we discussed this further, I discovered that 3 kilometres away from the main collection of huts, there were another 6 compounds! Including 62+ huts! Basically, the chief's son had forgotten 200+ people of his village!!! How this is possible, I am unsure. So we made plans to drive out to this area the next morning with all the survey teams - spread out and conquer!
The hospitality of this village is amazing and humbling - from their 'little', they share! We were given two live chickens for our meals, one per day. (While here in early February with the medical team, we also received a goat - pre-'BBQd' for a supper meal.) In every compound we entered, we were given mats or stools to sit on and often received millet water to drink. The concern in each compound was that we were given shade in which to sit - as the temperatures soared into the 40s this brief respite from walking in the sun between compounds was wonderful! (The last is also true of Teppe, and had we camped in their village, we likely may have received food gifts as well.) This meant that we often were sitting in the middle of the hut compound and surrounded by all who lived there. The animals wandered around us, the girls pounded millet, the birds squawked nearby and children ran around playing. Imagine conducting a survey in the midst of all this noise!
video link Those we are interviewing never sit closer than 2-3 feet away, and the men conducting the interviews speak so quietly that I (sitting less than 1/2 foot away can barely hear them), the interviewees responses are equally soft. I am often straining to hear this new language amidst the noise, yet they seem unbothered and quite capable (experienced) to hearing each other despite all the chaos around them.Each compound was the same - the ladies and young girls pound millet into flour throughout the day - pounding enough for the evening's supper and the next morning's breakfast. As they pound and separate the chaff, they chat and sometimes sing. If I am caught watching, some will watch me with sparkling eyes and start to show off - throwing their pounding stick in the air and clapping their hands underneath the flying stick before catching it for the next pound!
The amount of animals and variations thereof differed in each compound, but the effect was always the same - all animals bleating or squawking by. Occasionally a flock of guinea fowl strikes up a choral song - never just one 'singing' at a time and their rhythm of squawks overlap and intertwine much like a song sung in rounds. Often the sheep or goats take advantage of the human preoccupation with the interview process to sneak food out of the various calabash bowls scattered around.
The children playing was typical in each compound - and quite often even the same children - as they followed us around. We were a novelty (or at least I as the white person was!). I have heard it say: We are their National Geographic experience! There was one little girl in particular who followed us through at least 3 compounds. Each time I looked at her and smiled, she could not resist breaking out in a huge grin lighting up her face from ear to ear!
As we created our own 'compound' with the survey teams, eating and sojourning together, it was a joy for the first time to see the life, and humour of the Fulani!! We spend two nights together, and each night became late as we sit around . . . (no, not a camp fire, cooking wood to precious and scarce, our one solar powered light bulb) listening to each others stories and teasing each other.
The Fulani are a fun-loving crowd and exuberant laughter characterized our time into the wee hours (even after I had gone to bed, I could hear the villagers continuing on). Aissa told stories of her visit to the national wildlife reserve and of wandering off with her friends and how they nervously walked back to the village with a lion stalking them. Adamou told a joke on me - which unfortunately had to be explained, because it was a play on words between djerma and fulfulde! The word for bread in Fulfulde is the word for hyena in Djarma. So at supper time, he yelled at Emily and I in Fulfulde that the 'bread' was coming (to the table) - expecting us to react and run for our village enclosure (fearing the coming hyenas); however, neither Emily nor I speak djarma and I barely Fulfulde, so we lost the the humour of the joke!!
Also each night, our two village women surveyors - Fati and Aissa - wandered past the tent that had been set up for Emily and I. They proclaimed that they had discovered a new 'hut' to interview and eagerly asked to speak with the head of the hut. Though these two women cannot read - their grasp of the interview was exceedingly vivid - they had memorized the entire survey, in order to help their counterparts with the survey process. They then proceeded to interview me, in all seriousness:Until they reached what may have been the ultimate point of the interview:
To which I responded: well, there are only two beds in the house - one is mine and the other is Emily's. As there are only two beds, and if I am the head of the house (women here are the head of the house: jon suudu), then the head of the family (jon baade) must be Emily. This brought much laughter!!! - as the head of the family is the husband (and Emily is decidedly not male)!
They must have been waiting this whole year to ask this question (waiting until my Fulfulde was strong enough to understand and respond); for later, they sat me down for a serious discussion on the topic: was I married, why not, and did I want to be.
This opportunity to sit, live, laugh with and love these people was a joy beyond compare. My first full glimpse into their culture!!
Some of the results from our survey:
Health- Malaria, diarrhea, fevers, stomach pains and worms are the most commonly reported illnesses.
- Only 20% of children under five were born in a health facility.
- 79% were born either at home, in the bush or elsewhere in the village.
- 36% of children received more than six months of exclusive breastfeeding (based on recommended minimum from the World Health Organization)
- 58% of the people were ill within the last month alone and 80% sought help
- Out of all deaths reported inthe last year, 79% of those were children under the age of 5
Education
- Only 20% of the people have ever attended school in their lives
- Only 40% of the kids who should be in school today actually are
- Only 7% of the population have ever completed primary school
Water
- 70% of people use forage pump wells and 30% use surface (contaminated) wells
- 25% of the people spend between 1-5 hours for EVERY trip to get water: some walking 3-5 km in the dry season (or year-round) to reach the nearest well.
Sanitation
- 79% of the people have no toilet facilities and go out into the bush
- the rest use occasionally a shower area behind their hut - in the Fulani villages, there are no properly dug latrines
- 40% of the population uses soap when washing daily
We asked both the husbands and wives at each hut interviewed if they had any ideas of how they would like to improve their family's well being in the next year. Most did. I remember one lady in her 80s whose idea was: to work and eat. Another young, single man of about 26 indicated that his way to improve his well-being was to finish building his house and get married (being single at his age is not the norm - I interviewed another young couple later that week: the husband 17 and the wife 14). Though these stand out the most to me, it is for their difference to the common responses, being: to improve their fields (either yield or purchase another field), improve their herds (health and/or more animals) and a few ladies and men wanted to start a small micro-enterprise (selling hand-woven mats, braiding hair, making and selling soap, donkey cart transportation business). This alone brings out the stark contrast of their lives to mine - they are a people who live simply and though their dreams to improve their lives seem small compared to our options, they are for the most part beyond their means. Yet, in the time spent amoung them, again I see that though they have little, they make the most of what they have and they are happy.
Please pray for our team as we process the results and data of this survey to determine how best to use this information as the village committees determine themselves in which areas they desire help with development projects.PHOTOS
The many photos that I took over the course of these two weeks are way too many to load onto this post!! So, I have created a web photo album complete with stories!!
My apologies for the delay in this post - I tried unsuccessfully for the last 3 weeks to upload a small video for your viewing pleasure (of the background noise of our surveys); however, the internet strength is insufficient.
No comments:
Post a Comment