Ears to Hear: A Gentle Village Leader and the Elevator Boogie Men

3:45 a.m. this morning was a contrast to our experience yesterday. As we have been almost every morning, we were awakened by banging and drilling. The elevator repair men prefer to work in the elevator shaft across from our rooms at the times when the hotel guests are trying to sleep. It does not matter which floor you are on, all in the hotel are universally impacted. The noise does not discriminate between floors or cultures. All who have ears to hear can hear.

Between Alepe and Grand Bassam are seven small rural villages. The Vaccination program in conjunction with the distribution of insecticide treated mosquito bed nets is underway in each of the villages across almost twenty health districts. Three members of our team rode through the jungle yesterday to check on the vaccination and distribution program. In one of the villages we had the pleasure of being invited to the home of one of the elders of the villages, a man with a quiet demeanor and gentle eyes. He and his family received us under the thatched roof outside their door. Apparently he is a man whose ears heard the desire of the young people of the village who desired to plant a Methodist Church. He shared some of his property and a church was built next to his home. As a result of his willingness to help in this effort, he was beaten and hospitalized by persons in the village that did not want the church. We exchanged traditional greetings and small gifts with the family. They gave us cocoa bean pods and coconuts. We gave them a small mirror that was received joyfully. All this happened while two small girls killed a chicken by ringing its neck and plucked the feathers in preparation for the late afternoon meal. In many of the villages, the largest meal of the day for most is in the mid to late afternoon before darkness falls. Many villages only have limited electricity.

The vaccination and net distribution in many of these villages takes place at the market in the center of the village. The market is in what we might call a pole barn without sides in the US. There women sell and trade the things that they have prepared or gathered from the jungle outside the village. There are tables of papayas and bananas, tomatoes and yams, seasoning pepper, onions and other items, smoked fish rolled up into rounds and an occasional pot of rice or fish stew.

For our 3 p.m. lunch yesterday, we sat on the bank of the river to Grand Bassam and ate rice covered with fish stew made out of the smoked fish. I will have to admit that my stomach and smoked fish do not agree. The smells of the market contrasted with my hunger and made it difficult to satisfy.

Oh, by the way. Each these seven small villages distributed about 300 nets today. Two Thousand one hundred children were saved in these villages from malaria. Many of these children may live to the each of five or more.