Hoping To Be A Mother Soon?

Can I just tell you how many plans I had initially made for this summer? Unfortunately I haven’t had the will or the interest to see through to most of them. Let’s see, number one was to successfully accomplish my internship at Social Marketing Company. I’m still working at SMC and will be doing so until August 27th when I leave for the States, but I don’t know if the successful bit will actually happen. I’ll tell you in a minute why. Second was to lose weight because I have convinced myself, if I don’t manage to do it while still in college, I’ll never end up doing it. The week I returned to Bangladesh, I started interning at SMC and that same week, I convinced SMC to let me use their very male dominated fitness center. They even tried locking me out of it my second week here, but I went directly to the highest management and got access to it once again J. Unfortunately, that incident killed my enthusiasm for working out during my lunch hour at work. Instead I had been reading books during my lunch breaks. That, was my third goal/plan. To spend this summer, reading as many books I could get my hands on and watch all those movies I have always wanted to and have been recommended to but never actually had the time. Okay so this is what happened with the books. I read something by Coetzee, hopefully I’m spelling his name correctly and was so depressed over it that I kept texting my brother about it and even went to see him at his work so he could cheer me up. My brother’s cheering up consisted of scolding me for wasting time at work, sitting and pretending to work while really I had just been reading. He suggested that I would be making better use of my time, staying at home and napping. If you all don’t believe me, you can read the text he sent me. LOL we all understand the value of napping in my family. I’m reading Tuesdays with Morrie right now and yet again getting upset. LOL I might just switch to learning GIS (Geographical Information System – this map making program) instead of reading, as that had been another goal for this summer that I’m yet to even start. Um watching movies didn’t go too well either because I started with Departed and I abhor violent movies that end in everyone being dead anyway. I mean what’s the point of violence if you can’t even protect yourself? Yeah I’m very peculiar about how I want my books and movies to end.

So this is what happened with SMC. I had a little confusion about the project, Maternal and Neonatal Health (MnH) Program, that I’m working for before I came. So the MnH project was launched at the beginning of this year to bring about changes in knowledge and practice of childbirth processes to decrease the maternal and neonatal mortality rates (MMR and NMR) in Bangladesh. This is how confused I am about my work because I am not too sure about whether we are working to just reduce MMR or both MMR and NMR, of course any process undertaken to reduce one will also reduce the other to some degree. Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of MMR and the region where the pilot MnH program is being launched is Barisal (one of the district/state in Bangladesh), which has the second highest MMR in Bangladesh. Sylhet, another district in Bangladesh has the highest MMR but the reason for the birthing difficulties and death in Sylhet apparently are not due to the typical issues of access to good health care, lack of knowledge, etc. So what SMC is doing through the MnH program is launching a kit called the safe delivery kit (SDK) with a plastic sheet for the mother to lye on during delivery, a blade to cut the umbilical cord with, two pieces of string to tie the umbilical cord with, a bar of soap and this scissor kind of sterilized plastic thing to actually cut the umbilical cord. Did I happen to mention 90% of the births in Bangladesh take place at home and most of them not in the presence of a trained person? Anyway, so the SDK is for changing the practice of birthing, but this product is for illiterate villagers who are wary of any new thing that is introduced into their lives and has very little faith in Western medicine. Therefore, to the enhance the knowledge of villagers and the people who service them (these health care providers are typically high school graduates with their knowledge in medicine coming from experience) SMC is setting up teaching sessions, outdoor discussions with only mothers, whole family, or just decision-makers in families like the mother-in-law and husbands to not only introduce our new product but also to teach them the dangers signs of pregnancy, the importance of being ready for delivery at any time with money and traveling vehicle, to encourage them to see professionals not only before and during birth but also post delivery, etc. And the way we are going about this training is that people at the head office, (like me J) are planning and making the curriculum and holding training sessions for the heads of our regional offices. This training is called training of the trainers (TOT). Our regional officers came last week, and we had our TOT session. Now these officers will be launching another training session, which too we are making the curriculum for, to teach the non-graduate medical practitioners (NGMP) who actually provide the health care in villages. Villagers do not trust doctors and think they’re too costly along with Western medicine. SMC has a few selected NGMPs who work on most of their projects. NGMPs are called different things by different organizations and by villagers and they are not all even high school graduates, this is a criterion for being SMC’s NGMP. The NGMPs will conduct the actual work of talking to the villagers and convincing them of the importance of care before, during after pregnancy, the use of SDK, safe birthing processes, etc. SMC is going to take down data of births using SDK and without to see changes in MMR. If the project is successful in the two districts being launched, Barisal and Patuakhali, it’s going to be launched on a countrywide basis in a couple of years. So MY WORK, lol consists of being a part of all these processes in Barisal and Patuakhali and also the advertising campaign, which has been actually given to an outside third party company. But since the product launching has been pushed back to August 15th as opposed to July 15th, my work right now consists of translating all the syllabus, curriculum, power point slides for training etc from Bengali to English. LOL and here lies the issue with my internship and it being successful. I THINK in both Bengali and English and all those people who know me well enough, KNOW that I speak in both languages all the time regardless of other peoples’ comprehension of either Bengali or English…so can you understand how painful it is for me to translate full sentences in Bengali to full sentences in English???