All blog entries

25/06/2008

Today is our final day here in Jiu Long. I spent the morning handing over to Jean, my replacement from the British Red Cross. She will spend the next month here doing hygiene promotion and is accompanied by Dan the team leader and Theo the engineer.

The local school phoned to say that they have organised a talk with parents and asked us to present some information about how they can promote hygiene in their homes (tents). Zhao Xiu Gang, one of our peer educators, accompanied us and explained some of the main points, which they included in the peer education activities.

Last night, the villagers presented us with a banner thanking the friends from Spain, Britain and Denmark. It was very humbling. Today the deputy mayor also brought us local handmade gifts.

We have distributed 297 latrines as well as foot plates and plastic sheeting for latrine rehabilitation, and we leave teams of local people trained in latrine construction and hygiene promotion. Now we can return to the UK content in the knowledge that the team replacing us will take the project forward with their new perspectives and ideas. They will work closely with the Chinese Red Cross so that the project can be handed over to them next month.

We went to Chengdu for a farewell dinner with our colleagues at the Chengdu Red Cross. Looking back I feel like I have crammed three months of life into just 30 days. This deployment has been one of the most challenging and fascinating months of my life and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to come to China with the British Red Cross. Now I’m looking forward to a long soak, a roast dinner and a hug from my gorgeous chubby niece in London.

I hope that the new team will enjoy continued success and touch as many people’s lives as hopefully we have managed to do.

24/06/2008

Trying to escape the baking heat we sat in a shaded tent with a group of people at Jing Hua camp, where several of our latrines have been erected. We discussed their views on our latrines and what other hygiene needs they have. They talked about the cramped conditions and the heat, smell, rubbish, stuffiness, flies and mosquitoes.

All 16 people in the group have used our latrines. They like that they are clean and have roofs. The smell in the camp is better since the latrines were erected but the rubbish still smells. Sanitation workers disinfect the latrines two or three times a day. I am happy to hear that our co-ordination with the local health workers is showing some results. Some people even bathe in the latrines. I note that there is a need for a wash tent here!

The government has done a lot of education around public health and hygiene. People know that they need to wash their hands with soap before meals and after defecation but they don’t all understand the reason why they need to use soap. (It reduces your risk of getting diarrhoea by about 40%). They currently go to the tap to wash their hands without soap, or just use water and washing powder.

They suggested that we use the loud speaker on a pole in the centre of the camp to broadcast hygiene promotion messages or come at lunchtime to talk to people. They are in urgent need of soap and garbage bags. They say thank you to the Red Cross.

23/06/2008

Today is market day in Zun Dao and the main street is filled with vendors, bright-eyed frail elderly people (very few children) and a wide array of goods for sale. Our hygiene promotion stand is positioned next to a butcher. Here you can buy not just the popular cuts of meat that we see in the supermarkets but also the trotters, the tail and the snout! The team is busy talking to people about hygiene in their homes and distributing soaps and water containers.

Mid morning I needed the toilet so headed through the rows of tents towards one of the foul smelling communal pit latrines that we had been shown during our needs assessment. I passed some people cooking in their tent and understood (even though I speak no Chinese), that they were asking me where I was going. I pointed in the direction of the latrine. One of the women took my arm and smiling and patting my hand she led me down a different path. I wondered where we were going until we turned a corner and there was a neat row of three of our latrines!

22/06/2008

Today we had a peer education session in Shuang Tong school. The young people had never done anything like this before but we had some shining stars in the group who are very bright. The day was a great success with 198 students taking part in a variety of participatory activities, after which they told us they’d learnt how to prevent disease by using soap to wash their hands to kill germs and another important thing was, “No field poos!”

One teacher said that the students had previously received some lessons in hygiene promotion but never in such a participatory way. They felt our course was very much needed. The peer educators are a credit to their villages and when asked if they would repeat the activities in other schools everyone’s hands flew up and they all shouted, “Yes!”

This evening I took some flowers and left them next to the toys and mementos that families have left in the pile of rubble that used to be the school. Some of the children’s bodies have still not been recovered, but the army is working hard in the village bulldozing the wreckage of homes, erecting interim plastic houses and dangling precariously off electricity pylons fixing the wire cables. I wonder how it would be to grow up without a brother or sister.

Someone walked up to our team member who featured in our hygiene promotion hand washing campaign and told her they’d seen her picture in their toilet. Jiu Long may seem a huge expanse to cover with education and toilets but we have made a mark. Driving along the country roads our light grey latrines can be seen dotted near groups of tents for miles around.

21/06/2008

Our requests for counterparts from the China Red Cross are finally being answered, last week Song arrived. He is working closely with Mujeeb, our engineer, and they’ve been busy training a team from Zun Dao in latrine construction. Tomorrow they’ll go out to two communities to support the trainees in latrine site selection.

Today we welcomed four more arrivals, two of which will work with me. The hygiene promotion team has grown from just me and my field officer Sabrina and now includes two Red Cross public health specialists Cai Tao and Shu Jun and Snowy and Lily, two beautiful young women from the local community who we’re training to be hygiene promoters.

Good news – the digger is fixed.