Stomp Out Malaria Song

For those of you who know my love for making up silly jingles, it
should come as no surprise that I made up a song for malaria.

A brief lesson on malaria:

The female anopheles mosquito carries the parasite that causes
malaria, and transfers this deadly disease while feasting on humans.
Like most blood sucking creatures, it prefers to dine at night when
everything is dark and quite, usually between the hours of 10:00 pm
and 5:00 am.  Thus the reason for promoting sleeping under mosquito
nets in areas where malaria lurks.  Other recommendations we give are
wearing long sleeves and pants, filling in holes where puddles can
form and keeping the grass short near your home.  The long sleeves
(like the mosquito net) create a barrier and less surface area for the
mosquitoes to bite when you are out and about during peak dining
hours.  In Zambia the rainy season is when malaria runs rampant, this
is because the anopheles mosquito lays its babies in fresh standing
water.  Hence the reason for filling in holes where puddles form
creating the perfect place for the pesky offspring to develop. Lastly,
keeping your grass short provides a cleaner environment and a cleaner
environment means less bugs, especially the devilish anopheles
mosquito.

Bemba Lyrics                                   English Lyrics
Ukwisusha ifilindi                                Fill in holes
Ukukwempa iccani                               Cut the grass
Ukufwala ifitali, ifyakufwala            Wear long clothing
Lelo makamaka ukulala na ITN         But, most important sleep under a net
Pantu malaria it’s bad                         Because malaria it’s bad
Oh, malaria it kills                               Oh, malaria it kills
So…(repeat from the top)                    So…


Meet your choir:

Kanona Basic School is the main government school in my area.  Both
grades 8 and 6 have been two classes I have spent many days with
discussing the health issues in their community.

Muleya Community School is a small school ran by volunteers near where
Ben and I stay.  Ben teaches English there on a weekly basis and has
really fallen in love with the kid’s enthusiasm of learning.

The neighborhood health committee is the main group that I work with
here in Kanona.  They are all volunteers and their job is to go out to
the surrounding communities to make sure they all know of the health
facilities in the area and to educate on preventative measures.

Ben and I have lived on a family compound called, Kalula Farm, since
we moved here.  They are amazing people who I hope we have taught as
much as they have taught us.  There are three sisters and their
families and the matriarch, our Zambian grandmother.
Another Peace Corps Volunteer that lives a few hours south of us,
Patricia Muran, taught her village the song as well.  The very cute
little girls finished up the video.

Thanks for watching!

For more information on Malaria go to: www.stompoutmalaria.org



World Malaria Day

April 25^th marks ‘World Malaria Day’ which means little to the western world, but living in Sub-Saharan Africa I am able to see why a day is devoted to such a cause.  In my tiny village just since January of this year over 1000 cases of malaria have been treated at the rural health clinic, manned by one nurse and random volunteers some days.  In a place where 20% of maternal deaths and 40% of deaths to children under 5 are caused by malaria, this disease cannot be looked at lightly.  This is why for the past two years of my service I have made a point to celebrate World Malaria and use it as a springboard to get information to the public.

This year was a huge success, with over 500 people from the surrounding area coming to the event.  We had a disc jockey for a dance party, two different groups performed malaria related skits, a young girl’s dance/drill team performed, we played educational games and even had a relay race.  The event ended with everyone enjoying a local drink, munkoyo, made by the neighborhood health committees. 

I hope that my village will continue this tradition for the years to come after I leave in hopes of one day eliminating malaria once and for all!

Dance/Drill Group Performing while singing 'Prevention is Better than Cure'

Relay Race- Groups had to run three legged, fill in a dirt hole, run back to the mosquito nets and tuck themselves in, all while being timed.

For more information on Peace Corps work with malaria go to:
www.stompoutmalaria.org

Malaria and My Brother

At first I was annoyed that my little brother Joe was crying in the middle of the night. He obviously didn’t know that I wasn’t a baby anymore and that I had to go to school the next morning. Grade one isn’t all that hard, but when you have to walk seven kilometers first thing in the morning, it helps to have a good night’s rest, otherwise
you just fall asleep in class.  When you do fall asleep the teacher yells at you that you are lazy and stupid and embarrasses you in front of the other 40 students.  Plus, we ran out of corn last night, so there won’t be any breakfast, so I know I’ll be tired. Hopefully I’ll just grab some fruit from someone’s yard when they aren’t looking.
That always helps.


At the moment that I was just about to punch him and tell him to shut up I saw his face and I could tell something wasn’t right.  He looked like he was a zombie or something. His eyes were open but he just
looked into space, and his eyes were so funny looking. He must have been sleeping under the part of the roof that leaks, because his face was all wet. I got up off the dirt floor and ran to Ba Mommy’s room and told her that something was wrong with Joe. When I woke up in the morning, Ba Daddy was putting Joe on his bike.
Stupid Joe, why does he get to ride on Daddy’s bike? I’m the one that goes to school now, not him. He just plays in the dirt and cries all day long. Ba Mommy told me that Ba Daddy was taking Joe to the clinic
because the funny dressed American people told her it was important. What did they know about who should ride a bike? They both had two fancy bikes after all.


After school I saw Ba Daddy waiting for me with his bike. I knew he would let me ride it after all. We didn’t go very far though, we just went to the clinic together down the path. That’s where I saw Joe again. He was lying on a bed  with some plastic thing in his arm. I thought we must have been lucky because only people with money get to use beds. That’s when Ba Daddy told me that Joe was really sick. The plastic thing in his arm was putting medicine into his body so that he wouldn’t be so hot the nurse told me. The nurse said we were lucky. That this week alone two other children got really sick and died and went to heaven because of something called malaria. He said Joe would be better though. Lucky for us the nurse was right, Joe did get better. He came back a couple of days later and we were all really happy. We even had a chicken for dinner. Ba Mommy always said we only could have chicken when important people came to visit. I’m not sure who was so important, but I was happy to have my little brother back.

Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease that affects millions of people across the planet. In Zambia, 4 million people are affected annually. Over 50 percent of the malaria deaths are in children five years and younger.

This story is based on actual events, and is written to give a voice to the children of Zambia who suffer from this terrible disease. Please visit stompoutmalaria.org for more information.