The Morning Program

There are two pressing problems that Steve and I feel we can combat at this moment in Ddegeya, lack of education and malnutrition. We have created a two pronged morning program to combat both of these problems. We have thirty local children between the ages of 2 and 7 who do not go to school come to the clinic.

The first aspect combats lack of education. During the hours that the children are at the clinic we practice letters, numbers, and writing. In order to practice these things we have purchased each of these kids a little blue book in which we write exercises every night. Their abilities vary. Some of the older kids can write their names while some of the younger kids have trouble holding a pencil. We alternate our time between writing, chanting/singing letters and numbers, and playing with the few soccer balls and other toys we have.

The second aspect of the morning program combats malnutrition. When I first came here I asked Steve if he would be interested in growing some of our own food. We didn’t really have a lot to do and I thought it would help fill our time. Now my idea of a small garden has grown into a soccer field sized garden, full of 150 cabbages, over 200 maize plans, 200 bean plants, 200 peanut plants, carrots, greens, green peppers, onions, and tomatoes. Now we plan to do several things with this food. The first, which applies most directly to the morning program is make peanut butter out of the peanuts we grow and feed it to the children who attend the morning program. This should hopefully combat kwashiorkor. We also plan to give them chewable children’s multivitamins. Now there are several things we plan to do with the rest of the food. First, we plan to give a bunch to the kids who attend the morning program to increase verity in their families and their diets. We also hope to give some to malnourished patients. This was a really good idea Steve had. We will give foods rich in vitamins that patients need to help cure their illnesses. For example, a patient coming in with eye problems will be given carrots to increase their vitamin A intake. The last thing, but also the hardest thing, we hope to do with the food is barter with poorer local families for our staple foods. For example, we would give families who have plenty of cassava, carrots in exchange for their excess cassava. This would allow the family to add variety and nutritious food to their diets with little extra cost.

The first day was a complete disaster. John had to help us the entire time and the kids were terrible. Many would pick up brooms and beat the other kids with them, others would run into our neighbors gardens and dig up sweet potatoes to eat, and others would horde all the balls and hide them in the chicken coop. It was terrible. In addition, none of them would listen to us instead they would just come up to us and hit us. John had to send several of the kids home.

The next day the kids were better. While still bad they started to listen to us. Now the third day is when a change started to happen. One of our really troublesome kids, Kassim, was sent home. He lives right across from the clinic. When he arrived home early his dad knew that it was because of his behavior. His dad then beat him really hard in front of his house, which also happened to be in full view of all the kids we were teaching. Now all I have to say to a kid is “Oyagala ogenda waka?” – “You want to go home?” and they shut up stop what they are doing wrong and act properly. Now there are some kids that are just to small to understand. For example, one of my favorites, Joan age 2.5 just doesn’t understand. In addition, she loves attention which she gets whenever she is bad so she keeps being bad. We have had to resort to putting her on top of one of the picnic tables whenever we have free time. She is too little to get down by herself, so whenever she gets bored you hear her little voice yelling “Oyagala viao!” –“I want away!” It is so cute! In addition, when she is good she acts just like a thirty year old. She crosses her legs when she sits down and has long involved conversations with me. It is soooo cute.

One of my other favorites, Maze age 2.5, is an example of a success story. Maze is Peter and Nabuuma’s younger sister. Until we started the morning program she was unbelievable shy. For example, while she would tell her mother that she was friends with John, she would be too scared to come within fifty feet of him and whenever he came near her she would pretend to do something else instead of look at him. In addition, while she would shout my name and wave at me from far away, when I came close she would run away and hide. However, after a couple days at the morning program she has started leaving Peter’s side (something she never used to do) and make friends her own age. The other day she even got up in front of everyone and counted to ten. She is learning really rapidly and now holds my hand and has conversations with me. It is so amazing to see what a great effect we have had on her.

One of the things that shocked me most about the whole program was at the end of the day all of the kids walk home by themselves, even those that are two years old and live over half a mile away. Even Joan, who is a niece of Susan our cook, can walk home all by herself. Sometimes she doesn’t want to leave and Susan has to walk outside and point her finger at Joan. Then Joan gets the hint and waddles home. She is one of the kids with the worst kwashiorkor and I really hope our peanut butter helps her get better. She has the littlest limbs and the biggest belly. It is really sad to see.

Overall I have really enjoyed the morning program. It has been both the most challenging and the most rewarding. Sometimes I want to hit some of the kids they are so bad, but at the end of the day when I am writing new exercises in their books I think about how much good I am doing and I really believe that if more Minerva Fellows came and continued this program it would have an effect on the population.