By lrich522
This past weekend I traveled with my public health class three hours outside of Dakar to a village called Niarhar, in the Fatick region. I had never taken a public health course before, and chose this one at the beginning of the semester because I thought that Senegal would provide an interesting context to learn about the subject. We hadn’t realized until we arrived that we were in the town that our professor is from, and we were able to meet his entire family.
The point of the trip was to complete an “enquête”, or survey, that consisted of finding 40 kids and asking their parents questions regarding their children’s health. The class was split into 3 groups determined by the kids’ ages. I was in a group of 4 students charged with the task of finding the parents of 40 kids between the age of 3 and 5 years old.
Initially when our professor described the survey that we would be conducting, I was a bit apprehensive towards the idea of showing up to a village and asking parents medical questions regarding their children, especially considering none of us are actually studying medicine. The village itself was mostly Serer, and each group was provided a translator, meaning my already weak Wolof wasn’t useful for the most part.
We asked questions like age of child, sex, is he or she vaccinated, total # of children in household, has he or she been sick within the last month, did he or she go to the dispensiaire, was traditional healing used, what was the treatment, do you face obstacles in going to the local hospital, parents’ education level, and where they receive their information regarding health. I found that certain parents were more than willing to answer these questions for us, whereas others seemed a bit wary. In hindsight, I still feel uncomfortable about certain aspects of the experience.
There was one man who we interviewed who told me that his kids were healthy, however he wanted to know what I could do for his injured leg. There was another man who told my group member that there was a nearby village that we needed to visit where everyone is sick because of the drinking water. I think people assumed that since we were foreigners conducting what appeared to be an official looking study, that we had some sort of medical background/pull in the international medical or aid community that could actually make a difference. In reality, we were just some intro to public health students passing through a community for the weekend just to ask our questions then go. Overall, it seemed as if we were standing on very uneven ground compared to the people we were interviewing, and this power dynamic still makes me uncomfortable.
In the end, many families cited finances as a reason that they have trouble going to the hospital or buying medication, a lot of the kids had chicken pox, and we were told that they get sick pretty frequently. However, the longer I am here in Senegal, the more I am realizing that development is about acknowledging what works as much as it is about identifying obstacles. So while I am still unsure about the ethics of our survey as well as the results, it is important to note that 39 out of the 40 children interviewed in the village were vaccinated. Also, children under the age of 5 in Senegal are provided free health care (if anyone can tell me where the US is on this, please do).
Furthermore, I do see the value in better understanding first hand the realities that people face every day as opposed to viewing people as figures in a text book, especially when studying development. My view of the subject is definitely evolving, and I believe that there are harsh topics that need to be addressed in order to learn. I wrote at the beginning that I was beginning to resent learning about development from a classroom in Washington, DC, so confronting difficult topics as well as the validity of my involvement in studying them was a big reason that I chose this program. Every time I learn something new here I find that I am a little bit more confused, but I guess all I can do is hope to be moving in the right direction (wherever that may be).