Last Day in Makeni :(

Well folks, we have reached the final day in Makeni. Tomorrow we will be off to Freetown to meet with the World Health Organization and meet with our other worker for Ukweli, Allieu.

To start off the day, the team finalized the messaging packets that Hassan will use to train community group leaders on how to make their community members more aware of UTIs, Preeclampsia, and the need to get screened for these health issues. After all the edits were made, the squad rolled on over to the print shop in the market for the 17th time to print and laminate (fancy) the packets. Although Naakesh had a nightmare that the lamination would have set the pages and the print shop on fire, everything came out clean and the packets are ready to be presented to the Bombali District.

 

Upon returning World Hope with 5 cucumbers, 3 bananas, and 5 mangos, we finalized the pre-marketing license employee contract for Hassan and sent it over to Saidu (DC (Director of Country)) and Joseph (In HR (Human Resources)). The two gave the contract the green light and Saidu signed it, so all that is left is for Hassan and Allieu to sign it and we’ll be ready to rock and roll. We will transition to a different contract once we get the marketing license approved.

The next order of business was procuring Hassan’s bike. Rohan crawled out of his darkroom and emerged to help Hassan with his new whip. The licensing process turned out to be exceptionally frustrating because everyone Rohan needed to talk to left the World Hope office at the same time. Don’t worry though, readers, Rohan was able to get Hassan’s bike licensed and even got him a helmet. There are still some questions as to whether Hassan can take the bike home but we are choosing not to worry about it. All you need to know is that a bike is currently in Hassan’s abode.

We had a super productive meeting with Bockarie and Sylvester in the finance controller office and they agreed to store our inventory in Makeni (480 boxes). Naakesh, Rohan, and Zach loaded up our bucket and it fit pretty well.

Hassan then read over the employee contracts and explained to us some interesting anecdotes about traditional medicine. For example, an herbalist can crush up a live chicken with herbs and incorporate that into a cast which will cure a dislocated shoulder. Sierra Leone is wild.

We headed to dinner with the rest of the GSIFs (minus the sickle cell team, who were in Freetown) and had some rice, beans, potatoes, and bread. We had the 1st annual GSIF talent show. Ukweli’s acts were in three parts, but Hassan stole the show and part of Jordan’s trousers. We began with Rohan and Sage performing Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, then the whole Ukweli team joined them onstage to perform Billie Jean a Capella. Then, something incredible happened. The moment we all had been waiting for had finally arrived, when it was time for Hassan to lift a bag of rice with his teeth. Unfortunately, there was no bag of rice to be found and it’s expensive as hell (280,000 SLL per bag!) so we gave him a bag of concrete. He lifted gracefully but still was not mollified. He asked Jordan to come up with him and be the bag of rice. Jordan lay flat on his stomach. Hassan stooped down, a dangerous glare in his eyes. He attached his mouth to Jordan’s belt loop and tried to lift him, using only teeth. As you can imagine, Jordan’s belt loop gave out but he did catch some air. I have seen some wild things in my life, but I have never seen a man try to lift another man by his pants using only teeth. Sierra Leone is wild.

Many people dressed in African clothes today (partially because it was the only clean shirt I had left) and Khanjan ended up #twinning with Jordan. Unfortunately, Khanjan was eating when Jordan asked him for a picture together and we are still bummed that Jordan didn’t get to touch Khanjan’s forehead. There’s always the fall semester — don’t give up on your dreams, Jordan!

We had some tearful goodbyes and took some time to reflect on the genuine human connections we have made in such a short time. We had a fun sing-a-long where Ibrahim danced and Jwara did some freaky stuff with his arms. It was surreal to eat our last meal at Mbinti’s and say goodbye the people that have made our work here possible. We wouldn’t be able to do this without the dedicated translators and drivers on the World Hope staff or Hassan, so this goes out to them.

 

Signing off, this is Zach. See you tomorrow at 5:15 AM, GMT.


Birthday Bash in Gbendembu

In this edition of Ukweli adventures, one of our very own fierce warriors – the longest trooper at Lehigh to have stayed on the project – turned a whopping 22 years old today. Indeed, it was a birthday to remember. Cassidy Drost, 5’8″ hailing from sunny San Diego and master of any and all card games, celebrated today in Makeni surrounded by all her Global Social Impact Fellows. Not only did she get to ride shotgun all day, but she was doused with a birthday card, an avocado fresh from the market, ice cream at dinner and several exciting birthday gifts awaiting her back at Lehigh. Cassidy is officially the oldest GSIF and we were all so happy to celebrate her day together in Sierra Leone.

And the fun continued all day. Instead of doing office work all day, we took a ride first thing in the morning to the Gbendembu clinic. While we were originally planning on talking to the clinic’s CHWs on messaging for Ukweli Test Strips, plans changed when we arrived and found out that the CHW monthly meeting actually occurs later on in August. However, we were still able to salvage the visit and had the unique opportunity to speak with the first female CHW I have seen in Makeni during fieldwork. Hassan did a great job yet again guiding the discussion and informing the CHW directly of the opportunity Ukweli Test Strips presents to health workers like herself, both in terms of financial incentive and in empowering them to do more to serve the individuals in their communities.

Some adorable goats outside the clinic!

 

After the interview with the CHW, we all walked back toward the World Hope van…. until lo and behold, Sierra Leone roads struck again. The victim this time? The back right tire of the van. That’s right, a flat. But with some help from a nice man in the village who helped us change the spare tire, we were back on the road in less than a half hour. The delay was actually welcomed by the team, since the village was pretty and it was a comfortable temperature. It also gave us the opportunity to buy some ginger cakes off of a local woman. Flour, water and ginger is apparently all it takes to entertain a bunch of college kids and keep us happy while we waited for the tire to be swapped out.

 

Cassidy doing a tree pose under a ginormous almond tree!

 

On the way back to World Hope, the sun continued to shine and the day kept getting better as Ukweli took full advantage. William, our driver, pulled over by a pretty stream and we were all instantly reconnected with nature. The team took photos, skipped some rocks and then took in the views at the bridge going over the stream… until Hassan got nervous we were getting too close to the edge (us Ukwelians can be ris-que) and walked back to the van.

Two members of the Ukweli team plus Marc on the bridge!

Back in the cave at the World Hope office, the team got right back to work on Hassan’s contract and motorcycle logistics, which we hope to finalize tomorrow in our last day in Makeni. We also identified a quality control test to run and some last-minute edits to the training materials. The day ended with an upbeat meeting at Radio Mankneh, where we connected with an employee at the radio station and got ideas for programming for Ukweli along with pricing options. Patrick from Mankneh was very engaged with our project and we hope to get Ukweli on the air both through in-studio interviews and in-the-field coverage of Hassan’s training sessions.

I was about to sign off… but, wait. This just in from THE Khanjan Mehta. Breaking news out here from the Makambo resort. The money for the marketing license has FINALLY been officially submitted, and our 90-day countdown until approval from the Pharmacy Board starts NOW! Though the team is disappointed at the delay in the whole process, we are so happy that we are now on the right track and we can officially launch the venture, featuring the selling of our test strips, this fall.

YEET


A Day of Wins

Finally. After a few hard-pressed days for the Ukweli squad (as our loyal readers will know from following the past few blog posts), we had ourselves a day. In fact, today was our best day of fieldwork yet. To start off, Sage, Cassidy and me had a stellar meeting with the station manager of Radio AMZA, a local radio station walking distance to World Hope. This followed a productive informal meeting on Saturday with other AMZA employees. The station manager was incredibly nice and helpful and seemed very on board with potentially running a radio program that is aligned with Ukweli in the future. He gave us two options: an in-studio program and an in-the-field program. The two would complement each other well, and the station manager emphasized the importance of including women in the conversation and airing our program in a variety of local languages to be better understood by those in rural communities.

From there, the whole team traveled to Kalungba clinic for our first ever practice training with professional health staff. Six health workers took part in an Ukweli training, with six Peer Supervisors and CHWs in attendance. Hassan absolutely killed it. I am so proud of him. It was amazing to watch him work and interact with the health staff. It was immediately clear that the health workers respond to and respect him, and Hassan presented himself as the perfect combination of knowledgeable and intelligent while being approachable and charismatic. After the three-hour training, the whole team followed each health worker who passed the training’s oral exam to a nearby village to conduct real screenings of women in the community. I left the village incredibly inspired by the dream of Ukweli looking real and tangible, arguably for the first time. Despite the disappointment of the marketing license saga, watching Hassan in action proved to the team that this can still happen and we can still make the difference we set out to make.

Hassan training health workers

Almost on cue, the day ended with the most beautiful sunset of the entire trip thus far (though I’m holding out that the sunset on the beach in Freetown will beat it). There truly is light at the end of the tunnel.

🙂

Makeni sunset

 


8/18/19 – Pain and Parades

Today was a rough day for Ukweli, but we still accomplished as much of possible. At the beginning of the day, Zachary posted his daily meme of the day (which was a fire meme). The team figured out what Hassan will be doing during the interim period of time between acquiring the marketing license and now. He will be traveling to mother support groups in order to educate them about the danger of preeclampsia and maternal health in general. He will also be meeting with religious officials, traditional healers, chiefdom heads and anyone else with a far reach in order to expand the Ukweli operations and educate those under their purview. This will also allow Ukweli to establish our base clientele for when we are ready to fully launch and able to sell strips. Jordan, Cassidy, and Rohan completed the preeclampsia data log for Hassan to fill out after he has talked to one of these groups or leaders. This will allow us to understand the prevalence of preeclampsia in the community and assess the full effect of the condition on the community. In order to check how effective this messaging strategy is, Naakesh and Zach created a survey for the groups that Hassan has presented to. Jawara, another World Hope employee will call the group heads and ask them how effective they felt the messaging was and if they would recommend us to any other groups. Not only would this help us fix any flaws that we did not notice in the education, but it would also increase our range of effect if more leaders recommended our presentation to other groups. During the break in our work, Naakesh was able to beat level 300 on candy crush. (This is not that large of a milestone though because Cassidy is on level 1500). We were also able to name the second puppy at the World Hope office. Originally his name was Boots, which I think is adorable, but we quickly found that the local accent has trouble pronouncing the word boots. We renamed the dog Attin, which means playful in Timné. This is a fitting name due to the fact that this dog really enjoys playing with every person that comes his way. There was also a large parade today on the street in front of the World Hope offices today. The Ukweli team went outside in order to observe the festivities. Only later did we find out that it was actually a memorial service for a recently fallen government official. We were very thrown by this news due to the fact that people in the street were so lively, they were cheering and playing joyful music. I believe that they were celebrating a life instead of mourning a death and that is a beautiful sentiment. Still wish that Jordan hadn’t smiled at the service though. Show a little respect man.

Jordan at the parade with a random dude making direct eye contact with the cameraAfterwards, the team worked on the business paper. This document is the origin of the turmoil for the Ukweli team. We argued with Khanjan but eventually came to a mutual agreement. He will take a hard look at the paper and deem whether or not more resources should be put towards it. Also Chris tried doing a high kick and fell really hard. I could hear it while he was outside and we were on the opposite side of a building.

Now the Unwell team will lay down to rest in each of their respective beds. Hopefully Zach will snuggle with me tonight.

This has been DJ Bambi, thanks for listening. Signing off.


Radio AMZA and a Radio

The team didn’t leave the Makambo until 10:00 AM and that was a true blessing. Hassan called me at 9:22 AM saying he was already at the office so that kind of sucked but we did tell him 10:30 AM, so I accept minimal fault. I have definitely learned that communication is a more involved process in Sierra Leone, where precedent will be honored before a direct order so I have to be clear at least twice. I’ve also noticed that Hassan prides himself in coming to the office on time, which is something good to take note of in the future.

Jessica and Griffin during breakfast.

We started off the morning by running internal training. Jordan acted as the CHO while Rohan, Chris (from malnutrition), Cassidy, and I acted as CHWs. Hassan did well communicating the goals and limitations of the project. Aside from small details on messaging and anatomy, it was a perfect training session and we are excited to roll it out to PHUs once we have government approval. Naakesh accidentally put in a funny phrase in the CHW messaging packet: “frequent unprotected sexual identity”. Please let us know what you think this means in the comments below.

The team set off to answer a big question: what does Hassan do until the marketing license is approved? We decided to divide and conquer for the afternoon.

Naakesh, Zach, and Rohan went to the market with Hassan to procure some disposing bags and a radio. The boys bargained the radio price from the ‘Apato’ rate of 275,000 SLL all the way down to 60,000 SLL and we are proud of them for saving us project money. They also revisited the print shop we went to yesterday because we missed a few pages on the training packet and saw a fun surprise on the desktop. The desktop screensaver on all the laptops is a picture they took of us yesterday with the owner! Guess we are famous now.

Jordan, Cassidy, and I walked down the street from the World Hope compound to Radio AMZA, which involved walking up seven dark flights of stairs. We spoke to Mustapha and Mohammed who helped us set up a meeting with their boss for Monday at 9:00 AM. Hassan also secured a meeting at Kalangba with 4 CHWS at 10:00 AM on Monday, so it will be a busy morning.  Jordan has been spearheading the program for a while now and it is exciting to see progress. We plan to visit Radio Mankeneh, a more community-oriented station, next week.

Left: Staff at Radio AMZA. Right: the simulated training session with Hassan.

The team spent the rest of the afternoon discussing strategies for grant procurement and engagement. I did not realize how higher-level foundations rarely had a website listing so we found a helpful database called Foundation Directory Online. (Any organizations reading this: donate 20 dollars to Ukweli!)

We wrapped up the night with a Khanjan meeting about CSR initiatives in Sierra Leone and logistics. Good news, Khanjan talked to World Hope’s country director, Saidu, who said he can sign off on a bike! There are these unused bikes from UNICEF just sitting at the Makeni office and he is willing to let us get one fixed up for Hassan.

The absolute highlight of my day, however, was that the president of Lehigh University, John D. Simon, emailed me back. Ukweli plays a card game that involves joker cards, and when you play one you get to dare someone to do a stupid task. I was dared to email President Simon about his day and he replied. Correspondence below:

With less than a week left in the trip, I’d like to note some observations on Sierra Leone.

  1. Everyone gives you exact change even if it puts their life in danger. We have had street vendors chase us down because they owe us 500 leones, which is 5 cents with the current exchange rate. People are incredibly honest with money here even in such small quantities and have never short-changed us even if it was easy. This level of honesty is interesting to see in such an impoverished setting.
  2. Makeni is the heart and soul of the APC (All People’s Congress) and the party infrastructure is still in place even though the SLPP is currently in power. Red and White colors are everywhere and there seems to be a dilapidated party office on every street corner with a detailed painting of E. B. Koroma, the former president.
  3. NGO posters are everywhere but you rarely see the NGO workers themselves. I’ve seen Toyota land cruisers everywhere with logos and most street corners seem to have some public health announcement or other. It makes you wonder how long these signs have been up and what happened after they were erected.
  4. Makeni has a poor waste management system. It is clear how much plastic waste affects the quality of life here and how the storm drains get clogged with single-use plastics. It shows how hard it is to make impoverished communities more eco-friendly when wasteful products are the cheapest. It makes me think about how we always come from a privileged standpoint whenever we tout the value of green products without first addressing socioeconomic barriers.

Me by an APC building right by Radio AMZA.

Cassidy by our favorite UN poster in Makeni. Not me, not now!

 


Trees, Dogs, and Fried Dough

Let me tell you a story. I want to share the Ukweli dream with you.

The date is August 2025. We have our marketing license (finally) and we are selling our test strips to thousands of women across Sierra Leone. Hassan drives his new motorcycle to the Kamabi clinic wearing new Ukweli swag and is holding a large bag of Ukweli Test Strips. Hassan gets into the clinic and the Community Health Officer welcomes him with open arms. He completely sells out of test strips and the Ukweli Health Workers are grateful for the opportunity to better serve their community. Hassan calls us and says that this is our 500,000th box sold. At this point, we have covered all of Bombali including Koinadugu and Karene in Sierra Leone and we have screened millions of people. We are expanding to Tonkolili in October. Our dream is to help to lower the maternal mortality rate in Sierra Leone.

This is our dream.

Here is the reality.

Picture 1. Marc portraying our reality.

Today, we were lost. With no marketing license, we are struggling to move forward. Today was the first time that I felt that we were not moving forward with our project. We had a long and turbulent meeting with our advisor. Here is what we can say with great confidence. (1) Ukweli values ethics, social responsibility, and integrity. (2) Nothing heals a hurting soul quite like “Don’t Go Breaking my Heart”.(3) Jordan CANNOT cut an avocado properly.

Picture 2. Jordan’s avocado cutting methods. What the actual hell. 

So after our meeting, we took a walk. I saw a tree. It gave me great joy. The tree really reminded me that we needed to stand tall and keep our roots, well at least a part of the palm tree did. On our walk back Zach used his dog sense to find and track the scent of World Hope, so we could get back to “work”. We printed some training packets at the local print shop.

Picture 3. Rohan and Jordan almost getting killed by an “Allah is Great” truck and a motorcyclist.

Zach accidentally sniffed out some fried dough. After the snack break, the team ran into two “Apotos”: Nate & Maria. They were trying to find avocados to bring to dinner, Nate left the avocados at World Hope by accident.

Picture 4. Rachel, Zach, and Naakesh smiling at the Wesleyan church. 

 

Tomorrow, the plan is to simulate our operations from our state-of-the-art control center at World Hope International. aka the conference room with spotty Wi-Fi. aka the cave.

Goodnight.

Picture 5. The Ukweli team at the print shop portraying the four stages of grief. 


8/15/19 – Bucket Hat to the Max!

Today was an quite a mixed bag of a day. The team arose at an early hour in order to get a jump on a full day of work. We left for the World Hope office at 8:00 AM. A blow occurred in the early hours of the day. The team had to tell Hassan that the marketing license will not be accepted until three months after we leave Sierra Leone. Khanjan confirmed that it will be at least 90 days. Telling Hassan this not only brought down all of our spirits, but hurt the morale of Hassan as well. We tried to get Hassan a job as a translator for the malnutrition team in the mean time while we are waiting on the marketing license. Today left us with a lot to reflect on, between issues in transatlantic communication and bureaucracy reaching to even the farthest corners of the developing world.

In order to store the strips during this new  interim period, the team needed to purchase a large bin. We ventured into market and were approached by many vendors who tried to sell us very authentic Gucci slides and Louie Vuitton belts. Being the shrewd businessmen and businesswomen that the team is, we were able to see through their sales pitch. After purchasing the bucket, Zach was instructed by one of the merchants to place the containment unit upon his head in order to minimize stress to his very weak forearms. During this process, we stopped at a stand to buy Sierra Leone bon bons. Cassidy described them as, “It was better than I expected and it reminded me of SpongeBob”. After doing this, Zach was heckled by many a locals.

Once we returned to World Hope International, we observed that each member of the team that ventured into the market had sweat through their shirt due to both the high temperature and humidity. Hassan promptly pointed out that we paid too much for the bin (which was supposed to be a wooden crate, apparently) but we did our best. The team went out for a stretch in order to circulate blood and increase creativity.

Sage wrote the job description for HR to review.

Zach and Naakesh wrote the planning document that will guide how the mock training at World Hope will go. The mock training is used to determine how the training content is presented in the most digestible way possible. The training document is also used to see how easy it is to fill out the data collection documents which are paramount to our success.

Rohan tried to perform exposure tests in order to determine whether the strips have an accelerated rate of deterioration when exposed multiple environmental factors. This test yielded inconclusive results due to the weather changing from sunny to down-pouring in the span of fifteen minutes.

The Ukweli team received an email from Allieu about the application for expedited review. There were certain edits that needed to be made within 15 minutes of receiving that email. The team sprang into action and was able to make the edits and finalize the email within 14 minutes and 59 seconds.

After a sobering day, the team decided to brighten their spirits with a round of a Capella singing in order to practice for the GSIF talent show. There was also a round of the card game ERS, in which Rohan won like a champion, and Jordan cam in close second. Sage and Cassidy were new to the game but showed promise for improving in the future.

Thanks for listening hope you tune in next time, this has been DJ Bambi spinning up some live beats for y’all.


8/14/19 – Clinics, New Strategies, and More Rain

Hello Ukweli Fans!

We had a loaded and interesting day. Rohan and Zach split off from the rest of the team this morning to visit two different peripheral health units: Makamp and Mapaki. Although the meeting with the Nurse in Charge at Makamp ended abruptly because a women in the process of delivering a baby arrived on a motorcycle, we got some good information about their operations and they seemed very interested in our product. Similar to Makamp, the health workers at Makapi were interested in our product, and were excited for our team to eventually come back and train their CHWs. There was also a Peace Corps Volunteer from Pennsylvania (small world) working at the Makapi clinic, and she provided us with very good insights about the health care system of Sierra Leone. 

A photo from the Makamp Community Health Post in the Bombali District.

A photo from the Mapaki Community Health Clinic in the Bombali District.

While Rohan and Zach were at the clinics, the rest of the team was back at World Hope figuring out the rest of the operations for the trip and pushing to get our Marketing License for the test strip approved. During that time, the team found a pretty cool tree to climb, so Ukweli now has a fun thing to do during breaks from work. 

After Rohan and Zach returned from the clinics, the whole team assembled to lay out the strategies for the rest of the trip. We decided on how to conduct trainings without being able to actually sell the test strips, which appears to be a likely scenario with the marketing license being held up for a little longer than expected, and decided on three Community Health Clinics (Binkolo, Kamabai, and Makamp) to target for Hassan to officially train while the Lehigh team is still in Sierra Leone. After calling Hassan to tell him about our plans, a few team members made their way over to the local hospital so Jordan can get his ear infection looked at. Ukweli is glad to report that he is on the road to recovery. After that, the team had enough time to start planning out which song to sign acapella to for the GSIF talent show on the last day in Makeni. We’re not going to spoil what songs we’ve narrowed it down to, but needless to say it will be great. 

Cassidy, Jordan, and a Malnutrition team member in front of the hospital where Jordan got his ear looked at.

While most of the day was fairly calm weather-wise, around 3:30 Greenwich Mean Time (11:30 Eastern Standard Time), it started raining very hard (maybe even four ‘hards’ according to Hassan (inside joke for Ukweli)). 

*Side Note: Lights just went off in the hotel lobby, I’m going to power through and write this in the dark.*

Obviously, going outside and playing tag in a downpour is the best thing to do in the rain, so Ukweli and team members from various other projects took part in a round of tag that lasted 15 minutes and left everyone soaked and very uncomfortable. It will be interesting to see if the clothing will ever dry due to the high humidity Sierra Leone has during the rainy season.

*Side Note: Lights are back on in the hotel lobby.*

A few of the GSIF members who took part in the game of tag.

Dinner tonight was pretty good also! After eating pretty much exclusively rice and beans for the whole trip thus far, tonight we had rice and beans… but also potatoes! Having a little change in the meal made being soggy and cold a little better.

Sage was also very excited that her outfit matched Mark’s outfit pretty well (the kid who couldn’t open the tuna can for all those readers who have been following along with the blog post), and made sure a picture was taken.


8/13/19- Clinics, Training and Market Shopping

Today we left the hotel at 8:30 bright and early, ready for whatever the day throws at us!

Once we got to World Hope, Rohan and Jordan immediately left to visit three clinics—Mabunbuka, Mateboi and Gbendembu. The team sent Jordan to ask CHOs and nurses about preeclampsia and the monthly CHW meeting times each clinic has. We sent Rohan, Ukweli’s quality control guy, to look at how each clinic is storing their test strips. Since we’ve been in Makeni, he’s been running experiments on how the combined humidity and temperature of the region effects each assay of the test strip. From his testing so far, our test strips have had no problems! The original assay color has remained the same after about an hour of exposure.

 

The other four remaining Ukweli team members stayed behind at World Hope to work on training with Hassan. Hassan has done an incredible job so far comprehending and learning the UTI and preeclampsia information. We are all starting to feel very confident in his abilities to train other CHWs, and he is super eager to start training at clinics. He’s been telling us every day now that he is meant to be in the field and not in a conference room. We hope to soon grant his wishes and put him into the field, however we are still waiting on the approval of our marketing license :(. Praying it gets approved by August 20th!

Teaching Hassan in the World Hope Conference room.

 

Later in the day, Zach, Naakesh, Sage and I went to the market to get supplies for the training sessions Hassan will hold. We got 300 blue pens which will be given to each CHW who purchases a box of test strips. This will hopefully incentivize CHWs to record the number of people who screened positive or negative for a UTI and/or preeclampsia on our data chart print out. We then bought 5 large ledgers to give to PHUs so they can also record information about the people they are screening. We also purchased 15 cups that Hassan can utilize in the role play part of his training session. We plan on having CHWs practice on each other with these urinary cups before they get certified to screen people in their community.

 

Zach is a big fan of the quotes they put on the cars and buses. “Son of man” is just one of his favs.

The busy market roads

This bumper sticker describes how it feels to be in the conference room all day.

 

When we got back from the market we continued training with Hassan. He absolutely nailed it and we had a really good discussion about how he would present it differently in front of a PHU vs. a CHW. He even did part of the training without the reference guide. Tomorrow we will continue on with more of the training and hopefully get more updates on the status of our marketing license!


Training Mode

Today’s events featured malaria, a meeting with one of World Hope’s top administrators and lots of training….. along with a near-death experience. I’m sitting here writing this blog post STILL trying to catch my breath from a whirlwind day, so away we go!

When Hassan came into the World Hope office today, he explained to us that he was just recovering from contracting malaria the previous day. He told us he had been bed-ridden, but after taking some medicine and staying in bed, he was ready for whatever we were prepared to throw at him. Naakesh, Zach and Rohan spent a good chunk of the day running through a mock training session with Hassan, in which members of the Ukweli team ran through an example training session before Hassan practiced running one back to the team himself. Hassan even surprised us by coming in with several pages of notes which documented research he had conducted regarding preeclampsia and the symptoms and complications that can arise from the condition.

Picture 1. Scenes from the rainy season in Sierra Leone. 

Meanwhile, Sage, Cassidy and I took a trip to the market downtown to scout out some of the supplies we need to purchase for Hassan to get him started when we launch Ukweli. We created a shopping list of sorts, which included ledger notebooks, pens, and clean cups for urine, among other items. We had pretty good luck finding the items on our list and getting a gauge on the cost of these supplies. Besides a minor detour in which we had to hide under the roof in an alley due to a storm that turned walkways into rivers, all was going well…. until IT happened. We were buying some food in the market area when one car began honking behind us for the crowds to disperse to let it through. ‘ok,’ I thought. ‘I don’t know why cars are allowed through this narrow, pedestrian-heavy road, but whatevs, I’ll move.’ But then, much to my horror, a SECOND car started driving down the opposite side of the road, trying to get through, get past the crowds and get past the oncoming car. CHAOS. The drivers began honking at both each other and the crowds swarming either side of the market, and I dared to look down to find one of the car’s wheels mere inches away from my feet. Trapped with nowhere to go, me, Cassidy and Sage eyed each other, wondering if we would make it out of that mess by some miracle. Somehow, someway, the drivers screeched past each other, and here I am able to write this blog post. Why is that entire area not pedestrian-only? These are the answers I will never know. Truly an experience, but I won’t tell lies: I was scared.

Picture 2. A NEMS ambulance from a clinic last week. You can see this size of car should not fit in a one-lane road.

We arrived back from our adventure at the market to discover Saidu, the country director of World Hope in Sierra Leone, was in the Makeni office and ready to meet with the Ukweli team. We had a productive conversation about the logistics of our venture, including contract details for Hassan and discussing how transportation and phone costs could work if resources are shared between the Lehigh team and World Hope.

Picture 3. Loki, the sweet World Hope puppy.

Tomorrow, I am hoping the team can purchase the supplies for Hassan, continue with Hassan’s training and for the universe to balance our bad karma in the market with a happy surprise, like the approval of Ukweli’s marketing license. But worst comes to worst, I know I will be in for some quality insights from Naakesh based on his reading of the business paper. Just when you think you’re bored here in Sierra Leone, that’s EXACTLY when adventure strikes 🙂

Picture 4. off a dirt road next to a clinic in Rokulan.