Basically been consolidated. They say 'Third time's a charm' and well I am about to embark on my third site of Peace Corps. This isn't to say I'm going to stop the work I was doing in Djibo. Actually, I am going to continue with it in great ways that I am very excited for but I will also be joining up with another organization and finishing my service from Ouagadougou (it's really fun to say Ouagadougou).
Shortly after my parents left from their visit, I got consolidated for my second time during my Peace Corps service. Over the past few months, I have made the most of it. I took the opportunity to visit friends in their sites, help out with their projects or learn more about what they are doing, took a brief trip to Niger and walked among Giraffes, did a couple of guest speaker spots for the new training group, helped plant 20,000 trees and over the past week, biked 221 miles as part of the Sur nos vélos, pour le Faso bike tour, a fundraiser for Gender Equality work done by volunteers all over Burkina Faso. Needless to say, I was a bit worried about biking 30-50 miles a day for five days after not having been on a bike in three months but I found that the hardest thing wasn't the biking but was leaving to return to Ouaga to finish work before deadlines.
But, despite the "bad luck" as my sister refers to it in getting site placements, I was and still am privileged with some incredible work partners in Djibo. And during this time, I received some of the best news of my Peace Corps service related to the enriched porridge flour project I previously wrote about. In short, recognizing a need for an internal source of funding to finance certain workshops, I helped my host organization, the Maison de la Femme, develop a social enterprise commercializing enriched porridge flour in an effort to combat malnutrition. After an exceptionally great start, we approached the head doctor or MCD for my region about hosting a nutrition day in the market. He was thrilled except for one thing: he wanted us to analyze the nutritional content of the porridge flour to make sure it was good for infants 6+ months of age, despite being promoted by the Ministry of Health, the Red Cross' malnutrition team and other nutrition related projects. Originally he said he would have the analysis done for us at the Ministry of Health's National Public Health Laboratory. He said it would take about a month and I didn't have a chance to follow up with him before being consolidated. Two months later however, this still had not been done and when we finally got in touch with him, it turns out their was a cost for this being done and that the health officials in Djibo were not willing to cover.
So here we were. A widely successful project stalled. Six months after making and selling our last batch, we still have brand awareness and people asking where they can buy the enriched porridge flour and why we aren't making it anymore. I didn't want to stop the project and neither did my host organization but we had to face reality: we could not continue until we had this analysis done. Well, it took a little while longer but we finally got in with the National Laboratory (friend of a friend kind of deal, thank you networking) and they agreed to do the analysis for us, for FREE! And the frustration of having the project put on hold for six months turned into a benefit because now we could make a fresh batch, evaluating price increases in our pricing model and compare nutritional values of a packet of flour that was 6 months old to one that was freshly produced to see if their was any decline in nutritional value, thus allowing us to identify a shelf-life. While I have yet to see the exact nutritional values, the analysis was done and the results were very positive meaning we can continue manufacturing and selling the porridge flour.
Even though I can't live in Djibo, I do miss that 130 degree heat, I still have every intention of finishing up my work there, esp. my enriched porridge flour project. With the results form the analysis, we can host that nutrition day, that sent us on the long-time coming analysis results. The nutrition day is the kick-off marketing event for our porridge flour. Not only do we aim to sell a lot of it, but also build/expand our brand awareness, and most importantly, kick off a multi-tiered approach to marketing four to five key public health and nutritional messages, which proceeds will continue to finance through training women vendors to sell the porridge and convey these messages in surrounding villages as well as a series of radio shorts (in local languages) emphasizing the same key health messages.
So I can't say if "Third Time's a Charm" is true as I have yet to start my new posting. I'm also really grateful for my second posting in Djibo. Not only did it give me the opportunity to work with an amazing group of motivated individuals, endure 13o+ degree temperatures (I'll tell you that 60 degrees is now a lot lot worse...) but to have designed and implemented a project that has a lot of potential not just for what it is and does, but because of its sustainability even when I'm not around.
