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.

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!

 

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.

Happy Friday! The Ukweli team started the day going to a Peripheral Health Unit. First, we visited Masangbo, a Community Health Clinic where we introduced our test strip to several nurses. We were joined by the Safe Motherhood Documentary and Sickle Cell teams.

 

While the other teams were building relations with the clinicians, we had the opportunity to take some great action shots of Hassan screening a pregnant woman with our strip! Hassan explained to the woman about the importance of getting screened early and often. He obtained informed consent and approval from the Nurse on duty. Watching Hassan do this allowed us to better gauge our training and messaging protocols before we implement our venture.

Back at World Hope International, we worked hard to iron out the kinks in our operations plan. Naakesh, Zach, and Rohan focused on training, messaging, and data collection. While Cassidy, Sage, and Jordan worked on finances and a 3-pager that concisely summarizes our venture. Tomorrow, we plan to double and triple check our work and begin training! We cannot wait to officially be up and running!

 

This week has been extremely challenging to say the least, but we could really feel the excitement in the air today. Between Hassan networking and using our strips, to getting the final pieces of our venture together we are extremely excited to move forward. See you tomorrow.

Today we got to sleep in a little, which was very nice for all of us because of how early we had to be at the hospital yesterday!

When we got to World Hope, we spoke with a woman who works for early child development programs. She is the supervisor of 10 mother support groups, which is a group of women (about 15 members) who meet to advise and educate each other on health related topics. She says she visits these groups monthly to provide sensitization on different topics such as nutrition and disease prevention. She also gives refresher trainings to these women to ensure they understand the information presented. She told us that the CHWs select who is in the mother support group and the community members appoint who should serve as the leader of the group.

We are thinking that to get pregnant women to understand the importance of disease screening, we should target mother support groups. Women, especially pregnant women, will trust their community members way more than us or any ad. They will also be much more receptive to learning about UTI screening if it comes from someone they know and trust.

We are thinking of teaching the mother support leaders about the signs and symptoms of a UTI. Then, they can go to their group members and educate them.

After interviewing, we finalized all of our concept of operation documents. We organized them all into a single folder with the most update versions.

Later, we went to radio Mankneh and AMZA radio to see if they would be willing to run a health program on Ukweli. Radio is a good way to engage with community members in Makeni, so we are considering purchasing a time slot for an hour to help sensitize and introduce our venture. Both stations charge the same hour and 30 min rates, however radio Mankneh is a more community based program and is the oldest station in Sierra Leone. They also broadcast in 5 different local languages, rather than other stations which is just english and creole.