2002-06-08 - 12:58 p.m.

The olive skinned curly haired girl recoiled in horror as I advanced with my device in hand. I’m still not sure if the fear was caused by my white skin or by the thought of the bitter tasting liquid I was about to give her. Either way, I am quite sure that even though I may be saving her from a life with Polio, the combination of these two negatives will in no way increase this young girls confidence in Caucasians. The word eradication tends to be lost on 3 year olds and vaccination is only associated with needle pricks and vomit inducing liquid. I should have realized this when I agreed to help Alison with the campaign, but after forcing the 50th screaming child to swallow two drops containing the disabled virus, I started to focus less on the overall good I was doing and more on the immediate fear I was inflicting.

The campaign itself lasted 4 days. We were each paired with a Mauritanian counterpart and went door to door asking for children. My partner was in charge of speaking with the family and recording all of the necessary information. I was in charge of hunting down each and every child under the age of 5, tackling them to the ground, forcing their mouths open using every technique possible to keep my fingers intact, distributing the two drops, and making sure the child actually swallows the fluid (I had 3 children spit it back in my face). I don’t mean to exaggerate. There were those few brave children that marched forward, opening their mouths to take what I had to give them without the slightest tinge of fear. However, I must emphasise the use of few in the last sentence.

One of the tactics my counterpart used frequently was to tell the children what we had to give them was delicious. “It’s candy,” he would say. Now, I am all for using little white lies to try to get children to do certain things that we know is good for them. But using the word delicious was an outright lie and a dirty trick. It is for that reason I also began to tell the children it was delicious. At one family we encountered two children, a boy around 3 and a girl very near to 5. The boy was bravest, and took the first dose. The sister still refused, so of course we lied and said we were giving her candy. The brother overheard this and yelled out “No, it’s not candy. It’s disgusting. Don’t take it! Don’t take it!” The girl immediately got up from her seat and ran upstairs forcing me to tackle her football style, and again use my fingers, a la jaws of life, to open her mouth.

I was only able to work three of the four days due to illness, but in those three days I vaccinated over 350 children. What truly amazed me during the whole debacle, was how many houses had children. I would say that 9 out of every 10 houses had a child under the age of 5. Although, white moors are not like the Pulaars in the south that can have upwards of 20 children. I fear if fertility rates continue to rise, malnutrition will also increase in this country that has already reached maximum capacity. There is a verse in the Koran the that literally says a fertile woman is always better than a pretty woman, so I don’t foresee any well received population control presentations. The best I can hope for is working in the local girls center. Statistics have shown that the higher the level of education a woman has, the less likely she is to have lots of children. Women’s rights is a battle that has yet to be one in Mauritania. These small centers placed in big cities may be the hope for this generation.

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