Happy Birthday Catee!

We have been very delinquent in updating this blog and promise to do a better job moving forward.

Tonight, I (Dave) am writing a post because Catee is away in Africa for work - this time she is going to Kenya, Burkina Faso and Mali.  

A lot has happened both with the house and with our lives.  I'll post some updates about the house in my next post and Catee will write more about her new job with Family Care International when she returns.

Today, I wanted to write to my best friend, my companion, my wife.  Today (June 12th) is her birthday and sadly we are not able to spend it together... but, we are used to that at this point.  Unfortunately, we probably have spent more birthdays apart than together - Catee always seems to be either in Haiti or Africa for our birthdays.

Catee and I had our one year anniversary two weeks ago.  Since we just bought the house, we decided to save some money, stay close to home and spend the weekend in Montauk.  It was a special weekend because although it was very low key, we didn't do much planning and the weather was pretty shitty (lots of ran and unseasonably cold), we had a wonderful time and it reminded me of why I love my wife.  

Leading up to the trip Catee and I were both too busy between our jobs and managing renovations to plan much, so being the planner I am, I was a little nervous about not making dinner reservations or planning more.  So, we went with a hotel reservation, a desire to show my wife where I spent my summers when I was little and a vague idea that we wanted to go surfing, but that was about it.  We arrived and it was pouring, cold and the Montauk I remembered from my childhood now looked very different. But, instead of disappointment, we made the best of it and had a great time as we always do.  We ended up exploring parts of the island I had never seen,

we went for a run in the rain along the beach, 

and surfed in freezing water.  

To some this might sound like hell - and until I met Catee I would have also thought it was hell - but for me it has become bliss.

I was re-reading our vows from our wedding and I thought it was worth posting them here today on Catee's birthday and a year and two weeks after our wedding.

I love you when you are leaving,

leaving to go work,

to go to the store,

to go to yoga,

to go to South Sudan.

Catee in Sudan - if you can read Spanish check out this blog entry by Catee http://www.elmundo.es/blogs/elmundo/cronicasdesdeafrica/2010/03/26/jonathan-el-afortunado.html

But, I love even more when you are returning.

I love you because you push me to be better.

I love you because you think I can be better.

But I also love you because you just love me for how I am.

I love you when you beat me mercilessly at scrabble - I promise to play scrabble with you even if you beat me every time

I love when you snowboard, floating through trees, 

Catee shredding at Snowbird, Utah

hiking up peaks, leaving me sweaty in your trail

Catee leaving Dave in her tracks while climbing Mary's Nipple at Grand Targhee, Wyoming

I promise to be your partner in crime, your fellow adventurer and to follow you up every peak and down every shoot.

Catee and Dave (sweating) after Climbing Mary's Nipple at Grand Targhee, Wyoming

I love your love for untracked powder and the road less traveled.

I love you when you talk passionately about public health - especially how fired up you get when talking about harm reduction

The guy in the middle is Paul Farmer (if you don't know him try Wikipedia or read Mountains Beyond Mountains)

I love your love for a challenge, whether its a marathon or an emergency missions in Africa.

I love that you challenge me to be a better person, not a better person who I am not, but a better me.

Happy birthday Catee.

Ivory Coast: Why I'm Here.

Two ladies in Wama, Ivory Coast, explaining to that they were circumcised, but their granddaughters won't be.

So. You’ve probably been wondering what exactly I am doing here in Ivory Coast.

I am here evaluating a female genital mutilation (FGM) prevention project.  I know, how light and uplifting, right? 

FGM refers to the practice of female circumcision, which can take many forms, but almost always involves the complete or partial removal of a girl's genitalia and in some cases also involves sewing up of the vaginal opening.  It is practiced across Sub-Saharan Africa, north-eastern Africa, and western Africa and in many Middle Eastern countries. With immigration it is also been recorder in many European countries, the US, Canada, Autralia and New Zealand.

The practice was first started out of the belief that a circumcised woman would not cheat on her husband while he was away. The practice can cause extreme pain, infections, hemorrhage, problems with childbirth, cysts, obstetric fistulas, sexually transmitted infections, and higher risk of newborn death. It can also cause psychological trauma, pain during intercourse and low libido.

I must say, I have known about FGM for a long time. I wrote a paper about it in college. I had seen cases in the hospitals in Chad and Ethiopia, but it was not until this trip that I truly absorbed just how bad the practice can be.

The project that I am evaluating is in a region called Séguela. Here, girls are circumcised after they have their first period. When a girl starts menstruating, her family begins to plan her circumcision and to arrange her marriage. In the year that follows, money is saved up and put aside in order to have a big celebration.  For that entire time, the girl must stay inside her home, as leaving is a sign of promiscuity that will not be respected by her community. On the day of her circumcision, the girl’s hymen is checked. If it is intact, she is paraded around her village and given gifts by her community.  She is then considered ready for marriage.  If her hymen has been broken before the ceremony, there will be no celebration and the girl will be shamed.

The people that I have spoken with say that the belief that a circumcised woman is more faithful remains, but that the practice of FGM also persists because it is a tradition passed down from generation to generation.  People worry that if they don't do it, people will think that they are poor or that their daughter is not a virgin. It’s also a celebration akin to some weddings in the western world – an opportunity celebrate and to show off wealth and one’s status in society.  In Séguela the practice is actually passed on by the mother and women have been the most resistant to stopping it.  They fear that not only that without it their daughter not be respected or able to get married, but that they themselves will lose status in their village.

All of this is bad.  Really bad. The arranged marriage, the idea that a woman who has had sex should be shamed, the idea that a woman should not enjoy sex. But the part that makes me cringe the most, is that this whole process takes place with absolutely zero anesthesia of any kind, and its usually a local woman with no qualifications at all that does it with nothing but a razor blade or a knife. In other words, its torture. Straight up.

One girl recounted the story of being pinned down by many women and blindfolded so that she could not see the woman who was cutting her. Now she says she is traumatized – she can’t talk about the experience without crying.

The good news is that there is progress being made.  This project and others like it, by collaborating with local NGOs, authorities, and cultural and religious leaders, has had some success in raising awareness about the risks involved with circumcision, as well as promoting gender equality and women’s rights.  In 2009 Séguela had an over 80% prevalence of FGM, in 2013, most of the younger women we spoke to said that they had not been circumcised and did not plan on circumcising their children.

My job here is to help measure this progress in order to inform future programs as there are still many communities that have not benefited from them.   By speaking with various community members, former practitioners, authorities and project staff, we can better understand what elements of the project were effective in reducing FGM prevalence and which elements were not.  This information will inform the design future FGM prevention projects. My personal goal, and why I do this kind of work, is that every project carried out be more effective than the one before it, and that we use every bit of information that we have to prevent FGM and the needless suffering that it causes from happening in the future. 

For more info please read this.

Hotel Président, Yamassoukro, Ivory Coast

Last night on the way to Abidjan from Séguela, our my colleagues and I stayed at the Hotel Président in Ivory Coast's capital, Yamoussoukro. It was awesome.

The hotel was built by the government of the Felix Houphouët-Boigny, the first president of the Ivory Coast in the 1970s, presumably to cater to politicians and diplomats. When you walk through its front doors it feels as though you are stepping back in time. Everything is perfectly preserved. Eero Saarinen tables abound, as do those spectacular dome vanity lights.  The bathrooms are lined with orange and brown tiles and have Lucite cigarette holders next to the bidets.

So long, CG

I meant to post this on our move day, but I got a little side tracked with, well, moving.  So now I'm posting it from my hotel in Daloa, Ivory Coast. We're definitely excited to get settled in our new home, but will definitely miss  our old neighborhood, Carroll Gardens, with its restaurants, shops and old school Italian feel.