Baby Janneh

I’ve been at my permanent site for over 3 months, but I would like to take this post to reflect back on my time in training village in the Gambia. I lived in Mariama Kunda, a small Mandinka community, with an absolutely lovely host family. My host mother, Fatou, and her children, Fatou, Mustapha, and Baby Janneh welcomed me into their family and treated me like a daughter and sister. Even though I only lived with them for a few weeks, I warmly remember our time together, from dancing to my younger sister drumming on a water bidong with a stick, to chasing Mustapha and his homemade leaf propeller around and around the mango tree, to my host mother patiently teaching me Mandinka proverbs. 

But my stay was also marked by the difficulty and frustration of watching Baby Janneh grow sicker and sicker every day, as her health rapidly declined. Even though Janneh was over 5 months old, she was severely malnourished, weighing less than 10 pounds. During much of my time in Mariama Kunda, I naively tried to convince my host mother to take Janneh to the local health center, although she had been hospitalized twice during the last month. I thought that she would receive a diagnosis and the medication she needed to get better, and was frustrated that my host mother seemed so resigned towards Janneh’s condition. I soon discovered that my host mother’s attitude toward the public clinic was not unfounded, when she returned with a non-descript diagnosis of chronic malaria and general medications including a fever reducer and vitamins. When I moved from Mariama Kunda to my permanent site, Baby Janneh was still struggling to survive, but after a few weeks, she passed away. 

Healthcare is very different in the Gambia, where few modern medical technologies are available, health workers are poorly trained and overworked, and death is accepted as a norm. The challenge of working in the health sector of the Gambia is daunting, but I hope my work in health education and disease prevention will make a small difference in the lives of the people in my village. It is difficult to accept the death of people who have lived full, productive, happy lives, but it is even harder to watch someone die, who never had a chance to live. Although Janneh did not have a long life, she touched the lives of those around her and continues to motivate me as I work to address the health problems in my village.