Ed, Tom and I drove out to the Mercy Orphan Care Center, about 15-20 North from the ICDI Guest House. We met there with Madam Rebecca, the nurse for the orphan program. Ed talked with her about her training and experience, and learned about how she teaches the children about water and other related health concerns. She employs an animated flip chart that has Sangho and French words. For example, these are simple tools to encourage the children (and their caregivers) to find good sources of water that don't include run-off from areas where humans or animal deficate.
I've said this before, the problems in Central African Republic rival few other places because it seems as though all basic infrastructure is broken: water, sanitation, schooling, food sources and social. The water is broken to the point that public water sources in some communities in the capital city have been closed. We've approached the city officials to get permission to drill wells in these locations only to be strongly turned down because that is the "business" of the water company. They don't want to approve because that will take away from the water company's sales (remember, their distribution point is closed!). Even if the water company approved the
well, and they opened their distribution point, there would still be a water shortage. Everything is done by the bucket. In communities where the distribution points are open, people line up as early as 4:30 AM because most of them close by 8:00 AM and then reopen later. Pure water is the CORE to good health.
Sanitation is poor. While most houses use an pit, they have the pit right outside of their home and their homes are right next to each other. In most cases, the pit is no more than 15 yards away from their hand dug well. A good latrine should be about 5 feet wide and 10 feet deep, yet above the water table.
Schooling is a challenge because the governmental system experiences servere inconsistencies with paying teachers and providing the basic infrastructure necessary to teach students. The statistics paint a grim picture of a system in a shambles: there is one teacher for every 92 children at the primary level and nearly half of all teachers in CAR are parents with either very basic training or none at all. Net primary school enrolment rates have nearly stagnated for the past 15 years at 55%; and only 31% of children end up completing primary school.
However, even these numbers do not truly reflect the gravity of the situation: in Haute Kotto prefecture, for example, there are only 14 trained teachers for over 29,000 children in need of primary education. (taken from http://hdptcar.net/blog/education/).
Food security (or the level of access to food) is low. Recent information says that 2/3 of all people make less than $1/day while another 20% make between $1 and $2 per day. Given the level of poverty and the increase in food prices, the average number of times a person eats per day has dropped from 1.8 to 1.3. Yes, that is right. About 1 time per day. In addition, Ed and I have confirmed that THE meal eaten in homes at night includes a mush made from boiled casava flour dipped in casava greens with a little bit of palm oil. This offers some caloric intake but hardly any nutritional value.
The social challenges are vast. The concept of the "Limited Good" is an African concept that, on one hand it offers community and family support. On the other hand, it dramatically limits investing for the future and positive change. It is commonly held in traditional societies like CAR, that there is a limited amount of "good" to go around. In other words, the amount of good luck, money, etc. available is held to be finite, so every time one person profits, another loses. Societies that subscribe to this philosophy tend to display strong levels of equality among members and to be strongly resistant to social change. This seems to prohibit any one person
standing strong to invest in long lasting change - like large plantations, forestry projects, fish ponds, etc.
More to come later,
-Matt Storer
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