Bet you Didn't Know!: This Week's Top 5

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a week-long training with an NGO on grant writing.

There was an interesting group of people in attendance: a Polish woman who heads the regional NGO office here, two German men from the International office, a Dutch woman who lives in Northern Ghana and heads up a childhood disability program, an Ethiopian eye surgeon who lives in Guinea and leads an eye care program, a Nigerian man working on self-help programs for women, an a man from Niger doing disability prevention work.

I wanted to share a few little nuggets from the week that you might find interesting:

V. There is such a thing as "Professional Crier" in West Africa. They are hired to attend the huge funeral celebrations that are culturally imperative here. Families will spend their life savings on throwing the biggest, most lavish funeral they can afford to honor those who've passed. In addition to live music, drinks, food, and gifts for guests, particularly well-off families will hire people to cry loudly at the burial. Those who can produce tears as well as hysterics are in very high demand.

IV. There's a belief among pregnant women in Northern Ghana that they can not eat eggs, as eggs are another creature's baby. Per their voodoo beliefs, if they eat eggs, some harm will be done to their own fetus. This belief has caused many a problems for non-profits who've come in preaching the importance of eating enough essential fats and proteins during pregnancy and saying there's a perfect solution for poor women in villages: eggs.

III. Similarly, if a child is born with a disability in Ghana, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso, it's largely thought that the mother is to blame. She must have done something wrong to deserve the punishment of bearing a disabled child. These babies are hidden away from society (including doctors) and, in extreme cases, left to die. So when researching country data on disabilities, consider questioning Togo's report that only 3% of the population has any disabilities.

II. Throughout Central Africa, there is only 1 eye specialist for every 510,000 people. There's a neat program in Guinea that is trying to build up Africa's base of medical specialists in this field. It's touted as the only medical school in many surrounding countries to have things as basic as state of the art microscopes (3 of them) and a laser to actually do the eye surgeries. With the help of funding, they offer the chance to gain 2 years of specialty training in exchange for giving 4 years to a rural community in Africa.

I. There isn't a single doctor in all of Togo who can perform the surgery that heals vaginal fistulas. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I highly recommend watching A Walk to Beautiful. Once you see this documentary (YouTube or NetFlix), you'll understand how terrible this is.

It was a really neat week. Maybe someday I'll get to see some of these programs in remote Ghana or Niger in person.