Subtitle: A Children's Treasury of Tales of an ADD Field Officer
Prologue: Martine Ojuka is a member of the WASH Benefits field team. In a small number of ways, he is just a normal team member, completing his surveys and leading community meetings. In a not-so-small number of ways, he is a total goofball. If WASH had a yearbook, Martine would be voted "Most Likely to Be Prescribed Massive Doses of Ritalin". These are some of his stories.
Chapter 1: The many faces of Martine Ojuka
It was an exciting day in the WASH office: some high-tech, motion-sensitive video cameras had just arrived from the University of Buffalo in the US, fancy new tools to help us monitor people's handwashing behavior and encourage them to wash more often. And when it came time to pick someone to be in charge of giving our babies a little test drive, I had only one name in mind.
Half an hour later, Martine shuffled back into my office, clutching the camera and grinning in the kind of way someone who is bad at keeping secrets grins when they are trying not to tell you about the surprise party My eager queries about how it went, whether they had figured out how to use the motion sensor, and how easy the device was to assemble and disassemble were met with stifled giggles. I suspect this may be why:
I still have no idea whether the motion sensors work or not. They never quite managed to achieve that fifteen seconds of motionlessness required to turn the camera off. Actually they never really came close.
Chapter 2: Martine, Lord of the Flies
Here on the WASH team, it's our job to leave no stone unturned when it comes to figuring out how little kids could possibly be getting all that diarrhea. One possible route we are currently exploring is the large number of flies you'll find upon entering any Kenyan compound: could they really be more than cute, innocent little house guests?
First, I set Martine to work on a literature search to come up with any existing research on fly species in East Africa, their prevalence and seasonality, and any evidence about their role as disease vectors. What follows is a partial list of the titles his efforts uncovered:
"A sample survey of selected areas in and near Little Rock, Arkansas, to assess the prevalence of Entamoeba histolytica."
"Studies on diarrheal diseases in Central America: Preliminary findings on cultural surveys of normal population groups in Guatemala."
"Selective primary health care: is efficient sufficient?"
"Environmental factors in the relationship between breastfeeding and infant mortality: the role of
sanitation and water in Malaysia."
You may have noticed a common thread to these articles. I, on the other hand, did not, unless that theme was "ARTICLES THAT ARE NOT ABOUT FLIES IN AFRICA". The one article that had anything to do with Africa at all was a study from Zambia talking about piped water. I decided that perhaps there were more productive uses of Martine's time and declared the literature sufficiently exhausted.
Over the next few days, I put Martine to work constructing cheap fly traps from leftover plastic bottles, going around to local butchers for rotten meat scraps to use as bait, monitoring fly activity around the traps at various times throughout the day, and finally speciating the flies he caught using rubber gloves and google images. I was amazed at how thoroughly and quickly he took to each task. I think he felt a certain bond of brotherhood with the chaotic little creatures.
A few days after the completion of the fly trap trial, I ran into Martine and Fredrick (another field officer) walking down the hall in a heated argument. Thinking this was probably something to do with Martine stealing the "e" that properly belonged in Fredrick's name and sticking it rather unnecessarily on the end of his own, I didn't think much of it until they stopped me, with very serious expressions, and said they wanted to ask me a question: "Andrew, these fly traps. Are they part of sanitation? Or hygiene?"
Of course, this made me feel like a proud parent with a teachable moment, and I launched into a lecture about how we could really see elements of both, blah blah blah, something ridiculous, something boring, and finally, if I had to choose I would probably say sanitation.
At this point Fredrick turns to Martine, slaps him on the shoulder, and shouts the Swahili equivalent of "I told you so!", and Martine, looking thoroughly chagrined, took fifty shillings out of his pocket, slapped it into Fredrick's hand, and slouched off grumpily. Fredrick, looking elated, rolled his eyes and asked me incredulously "Can you BELIEVE he really thought it was hygiene?!"
For those who are wondering, I do in fact have a gambling-based community educational curriculum in the works. Possible titles include "How to gamble with your health--and win!" or "WASH: you can bet on it." I also choose to view the fact that my field team is now confident enough in its WASH knowledge to start putting money on it as a sign that I am doing something right, and not as a sign that they are also secretly betting on how many times I will have to ask Roselyn to repeat herself as she greets me in Swahili.
Chapter 3: Martine Discovers the True Meaning of Asthma
Once upon a fine sunny day, the WASH team was happily sitting around discussing potential sources of contamination that young children may come into contact with in their daily activities around rural households. All was well with the world, until Carson and Andrew decided to take a perfectly good discussion and wring the last drop of fun out of it by turning it into an actual, standardized survey.
Amid the general boredom that ensued, the field officers entered into a grave debate over whether it was important to distinguish between times a child comes into contact with pets (e.g. dogs, cats, rocks) and those times when he or she comes across other domestic creatures (e.g. cows, chickens, goats, sheep, donkeys). Martine distinguished himself for being adamantly against the idea that pets posed any threat to a child, advocating that they should be left out of the equation altogether. Most of the others had a more suspicious view of pets and their germy-ness, so Martine called a recess in order to research the matter further.
About an hour after our discussion had concluded, I received an e-mail from Martine with the following tantalizing subject line:
It's long but read through to the end. We continue tomorrow
All right Martine. I'm curious. I'll bite. And the first lines did not disappoint: "Remember that idea (Question by Duncan) that we do away with either code 9 or 10 in the list of things that children come into contact with at home? PETS ARE EQUALLY DANGEROUS."
Wondering what research could have prompted such an abrupt change of heart, I scrolled down a little further. Ah. Yes. The Dog and Cat Management Board of South Australia. How could I have forgotten their earnest warnings about the potential for allergies and asthma attacks in children who come into contact with household pets? Or that cleaning out a litter box can put pregnant women at risk for toxoplasmosis? Or--seriously, where was my head?--the threat of psittacosis posed by the presence of a budgerigar in the home??
The full manifesto included stern warnings to "Make sure children do not try to go near dogs that are eating or
sleeping because dogs can become angry if disturbed" and "Young children should never be left unsupervised with a dog, even the family pet!"
In all honesty, I was really proud that he was so willing to do the research and not to switch his opinion when confronted with contrary evidence. Changing that "contrary" to "convincing" is a bit of a work in progress.
***
Signing off from Nairobi. St. Louis, I know I asked (begged) for snow. Now I just want you to let my plane in. Please.
