BCC day 2 - Zone C

Today was day 2 of my Behaviour change and communication (BCC) training. I was in Zone C today, which is as far from the health center as you can get. So, we had the training in the food distribution center. It was hot. The roof is essentially made of plastic material lined with oil cloth. I think that the idea is to keep the rain out but all it really succeeds in doing is keeping the heat in. I knew I was in trouble when at one point I bent over and sweat dripped off my forehead and made a plopping noise as it hit the sand....

Today's training, once again, went pretty well. There were a lot more men present today so, unfortunately, the women were not as participatory, but there were still a few with the courage to speak up and even to offer opinions different from the men.
One of the few things that went wrong today was that the food (once again, sheep and his intestines mixed with onions) didn't arrive until 2 hours late. So, we were to have the food/prayer break at 1pm, and start up again at 2pm. This is pretty important since what I had planned for the afternoon takes an hour and 15 minutes, and the convoy leaves the camp at 3:30 - making the timing tight. The benefit to not having to eat lunch at lunchtime was that I got to wander a bit around Zone C, take some pictures, and amaze the kids with their digital photos. The little girl in yellow, pictured above, kept a careful eye on me the whole time.

Luckily, the participants agreed to start without food and we were able to get things done and eat afterwards. This little baby helped me to keep my focus. With her mom, she sat in the front row and payed excellent attention throughout. She was, possibly, my favourite part of the training. She didn't even cry when I picked her up! (most babies take one look at my skin and scream bloody murder.)

At about 3:30pm, just as we were packing up, the wind kicked up. It was a pretty impressive sand storm. And in fact, most of my photos did not come out - they just look like huge pixels of dust in front of the lens with blurry background images. The images below are from when the wind had really calmed down and people were actually able to leave the hanger we were sheltered in to head back home.


The cars to take us back to Bahai town didn't actually appear until 10 minutes or so later. But, we made it back, I spent about 20 minutes at the office organizing tomorrow's training (BCC with midwives and traditional birth attendants) and then headed back to Guantanamo 1 (the name given the expat compound by the national staff, usually just "Guantan 1") just as the rain started falling. It was another impressive rain, and once again the compound in flooded. Doesn't look like there will be a plane tomorrow!