Spent the weekend in the Fatick Zone – southeast of Dakar – with my public health class. In groups of four we conducted a malnutrition survey in a village and are now analyzing are results in preparation for our final presentation. It was definitely a nice ending to a semester spent learning about the health system in Senegal. Our survey consisted of a series of questions that could be possible explanations for malnutrition such as the number of children in the family, if the child is currently sick, and the education level of the parents.
In this area most speak Serer, another local language, but I was still able to put my Wolof skills to use to ask the questions. Even when the subjects spoke little Wolof, our translator would translate my Wolof questions into Serer. I really enjoyed being able to make that connection through Wolof and appreciated how we were welcomed despite that we were often interrupting the work being done. Having a translator work with us who is from the village was especially helpful as he also directed us through the community and introduced us to the families.
In this area most speak Serer, another local language, but I was still able to put my Wolof skills to use to ask the questions. Even when the subjects spoke little Wolof, our translator would translate my Wolof questions into Serer. I really enjoyed being able to make that connection through Wolof and appreciated how we were welcomed despite that we were often interrupting the work being done. Having a translator work with us who is from the village was especially helpful as he also directed us through the community and introduced us to the families.
Our professor who also works for IRD: Research Institute for Development, gave us a tour of the compound in Niakhar, the small town where we spent the weekend. There are multiple projects being conducted including a study financed by the CDC in Atlanta Georgia on a new flu vaccine and a study on meningitis. It was the first time I’ve spent time in a lab since classes back at DePauw. There are a few trucks financed by CDC and small huts where researchers can stay when they visit to perform research, as well as a central kitchen and offices. This observatory has been here for over 40 years and is really well established -- power outages are common but there are 4 back up systems to ensure that no data is lost. There was also a data protection vault that was added after 9/11 to protect the data in case of a disaster. It was a great opportunity to see a glimpse of where a study financed by CDC is performed.
I really enjoyed asking questions and collecting data and the process of analyzing data is much more exciting when you collect it yourself. We found 7 malnourished children out of 19 (ages 1 to 3). Many of them had parasites while other factors may have been the large number kids in the family or the poor transition between breast feeding and eating solid food. While I don't think I'll go into a career in research I can use this experience to start thinking about a post-DePauw independent study/research project
I really enjoyed asking questions and collecting data and the process of analyzing data is much more exciting when you collect it yourself. We found 7 malnourished children out of 19 (ages 1 to 3). Many of them had parasites while other factors may have been the large number kids in the family or the poor transition between breast feeding and eating solid food. While I don't think I'll go into a career in research I can use this experience to start thinking about a post-DePauw independent study/research project
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