The Foreign Service Journal, June 2004

From the first trial test, the behav- ioral transformation among the chil- dren was beyond what any of the team had hoped. Children previously iso- lated by abuse and fear learned to trust each other. Reticent children started to speak, interact and partici- pate. The program’s impact may be best described by a mother inter- viewed after the pilot, “This program has given me back my child; her char- acter has come back.” The Child Witness Research unit has finalized 10 hour-long modules that are highly adaptable to any con- text of work with young witnesses. The South African Justice Depart- ment has been closely consulted throughout the design of the program. New legislation is under consideration that would grant all child witnesses assistance from a court intermediary. The innovative child witness prepara- tion program has already attracted the attention of international donors who have suggested it be adopted in other regions of Africa. Reverie Zurba Information Officer USAID, Pretoria Adventure and Hard Work in Niger Niger’s problems remain enor- mous, perhaps insoluble. It’s the world’s second poorest country, with fragile institutions, and it’s located in an environmentally harsh and politically turbulent region. I title my orientation presentation to newly arrived Peace Corps trainees “Adventures in Service,” emphasizing that to be successful in Niger they will need a taste for adventure as well as dedication to serving others. Most of them seem to have both in abundance. One recent event highlighted the adventure side of the ledger. Three of our current Volunteers decided for their vacation to retrace the voyage down the Niger River of Mungo Park, the 19th-century explor- er who discovered and mapped its course. They took a bus from Niamey to Gao, in Mali, where they rented a bush taxi to take them to Timbuktu. After a couple of days there, they pur- chased a typical wooden pirogue and spent the next 18 days floating down the river from Timbuktu to Niamey. Just writing the place names evokes National Geographic images. What an adventure! But the Peace Corps experience in Niger isn’t all adventure. In fact, it’s mostly hot, hard, frustrating work in dif- ficult conditions andwith few resources. Yet the Volunteers are able to accom- plish a great deal for the people they are here to serve, and the satisfaction they get from this servicematches the excite- ment life here can bring. In Niger, the health system is rudi- mentary at best. There are hospitals, staffed by doctors, in a dozen of the largest towns; and clinics, staffed by nurses, in some of the larger regional villages. Most people, however, have little, if any, access to health care. Niger has fewer than 250 doctors (about the same number you would expect to find in an American city of 100,000 people) to serve a population of 12 million; and annual per capita expenditure on health care is about $10 (compared to $5,440 in the U.S.). To bring some limited, very basic health care to more of the population, the government has a program to build “health huts” in 1,000 rural villages over a five-year period. These are one- or two-room buildings staffed by a high-school graduate with a few weeks of medical training and stocked with some basic medicines and first aid sup- plies. The people of Volunteer Brendan St. Amant’s village, located 17 kilome- ters from the nearest rural clinic, want- ed one of these health huts, and Brendan made sure they got it. He went with village leaders to approach government officials (access is much easier if you have a foreigner along), worked with the building contractor during construction, arranged training for a young man from the village to become the health worker, and per- suaded Catholic Relief Services to pro- vide the initial stock of medicine and supplies when the government proved unable to do so. In short, he was the driving force behind the project. We visited Brendan and his health hut in December 2003, and he told us about some of the many obstacles he had to overcome and the frustrations he experienced. Such a facility might not be a very difficult project in America, but in rural Niger it is a mon- umental accomplishment. Activities like this — multiplied by an average of 100 Volunteers a year and extended over the 42 years that the Peace Corps has been active in Niger —have surely had a positive impact on how Americans and America are per- ceived by the people of this country. J.R. Bullington Peace Corps Country Director Niamey Tennis as a Tool of Diplomacy in Madagascar Upon my arrival in Antananarivo, Madagascar, in August 1981, it was clear that the government of President Didier Ratsiraka adhered to a policy of 60 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 4 The people of Volunteer Brendan St. Amant’s village wanted one of these health huts, and Brendan made sure that they got it.