Full Stomachs and Classrooms

I just returned from a trip out to Tagantassou--a Tamasheq village here in Niger--where some of my teammates have been working and building relationships. We took out a team of dentists from Canada to address the dental issues of the village--primarily, pulling out rotten teeth, but you'll have to wait till my next newsletter to get the details of that. However, Tagantassou is also the site of a school feeding program that my teammates have just begun.

making the morning porridge

close up of the millet porridge

This is how it works: the children are feed two meals a day--a breakfast of porridge made of millet and a lunch of rice and sauce. When there is left over porridge, they also get a midmorning snack. So their daily nutrition has been doubled and now parents, who before didn't feel it was worthwhile to send their children to school, have now enrolled their children because of the added benefit of the feeding program. The size of the school has doubled, and the number of girls attending school has shot up too!

eating breakfast

Daniel serving breakfast

For added impact, we will be installing tippy taps around the school yard in order to combat the many diseases that they battle that are due to improper hygiene. A tippy tap is an empty, large, plastic oil container, with a small hole in the top. This container is hung on two strings. There is a cord that you pull in order to tip the container enough to get a stream of water flowing. A second cord attatched to the container is connected to a bar of soap. So, as you can see, tippy taps are basic, easy, reproducable ways of making basic handwashing very available. We are hoping that after a few months of regular hygiene, nutrition and school attendance, parents will see benefits and make tippy taps for themselves and promote and value education.

We had the opportunity to help serve the children's breakfast and then were given a tour of the classrooms, interact with the kids and then we were taken to the well and garden next to the school. The well is for the school to make clean drinking water accessible and the garden is to grow vegetables for the school feeding program.

after breakfast, the students gathered around the flag pole and sang the Nigerien anthem

five little girls sharing one desk

The program is only three weeks old, but after seeing the set up, I'm so excited to see how it progresses in the months to come!

Damien and Shane, members of the dental team, and the Principal of the school

Ace learning how to get water from the well--we were all so scared he was going to fall in!

Just one more fun little anecdote: The first morning I woke up (freezing--it was 22 degrees celsius) to the sounds of women pounding millet, donkeys braying, sheep bleeting and Britney Spears whining, "Isn't she lucky, that Hollywood girl..." in the distance.