Nutrition, HIV/AIDS eradication, and sustainable development (including re-forestation)

23 Mar 12

These are some of the goals and project aims we have as PCV’s in the Environment and/or Health sectors in Senegal and The Gambia. The two sectors crossover as health depends on nutrition which depends on nutrients from vegetables which are harvested from the soil (sand) which require gardening and agriculture skills; and farmers require healthy people to be able to work which HIV/AIDS would compromise significantly.

These goals, regardless of what they are, require behavior changes. Changing behavior to achieve a goal is like the Everest of the researcher, teacher, motivator, or inspirer; until recently it’s been gone about in a rather “shoot and hope” fashion as behavior holds this nebulous meaning, what is it and how does one possibly go about changing it? Even in oneself, behavior change comes about only stubbornly and with a good fight, typically (eg., quitting smoking, adding flossing to your daily hygiene routine, recycling instead of throwing away, buying local instead of buying convenient, walking more, exercise, etc., etc.).

Let’s take nutrition for example: a typical diet in Senegal includes bread and butter in the morning accompanied with tea or coffee with copious amounts of sugar (also given to 3 and 4-yr olds). Lunch is rice and some sauce from some type of leaf and maybe dried fish, fresh chicken or beef. If there are vegetables they are often over-boiled where the water has been thrown out with the nutrients and include starchy roots as cassava potatoes and turnips, then maybe carrots, cabbage, eggplant and/or a bitter tomato which is more related to the eggplant family than tomato one. Dinner is much of the same with even less veggies and/or no sauce and is commonly just rice with spices and pounded dried fish.

The goal of eating here is to feel full affordably and easily (a common goal all throughout the world including the United States). On the outside, increasing the consumption of healthier food seems easy. There are the means to grow nutritious food here, even in the sand! Moringa trees (Moringa oleifera) and most others for that matter, do quite well here, as long as they are watered and tended to. The leaves this wonder tree produces offers gram for gram:

7x the Vitamin C in oranges

4x the calcium in milk

4x the Vitamin A in carrots

3x the Potassium in bananas

2x the protein in milk

A child given 100g of Moringa leaf powder for instance would receive ALL of their required daily value of Vitamins A and C, and calcium. They would get 75% of their required iron, half of their protein, and significant amounts of potassium, B complex vitamins, copper, sulfur, and all of their essential amino acids (source: Moringa Manual for Peace Corps Volunteers by Paul Kaiser, 1^st ed., 2000).

Moringa is available, the leaves are easy to collect, to dry, and to store and then pound for creating powder which can be added to sauces, salads, cooked into breads, etc. Volunteers all over The Gambia (and Senegal too I imagine) are starting Moringa tree nurseries and providing these teachings to people to try to help prevent malnutrition in children and adults. Also, Moringa is a tree! One of the best ways to stop an ever-encroaching desert is to plant trees, and lots of them! So much so that the word invasive for organizations here working towards re-forestation find it an appealing and attractive word. Utter invasive to any ecologist anywhere else and they cringe and seek to remove all of it to conserve that ecosystem. Here, where life is such a miracle itself, anything that takes off like wildfire is welcome at this point. I guess if it creates a mess, they’ll worry about it later, but for now, anything is needed, as long as it grows (I’ll be calling ECHO soon to get my free seeds!).

To get back on track, my schpiell about this amazing tree and the abovementioned goal of the people in Senegal and Gambia don’t match. The goal of nutrition again is a full belly. Our magic tree provides a powder to add to food that fills bellies and provides nutrients but it doesn’t make bellies anymore seemingly full. Instead it’s an extra step to an already labor intensive process which puts it in the negatives as far as its sell-ability.

What I’m starting to grasp is that all of this really comes down to intelligent marketing schemes. And fortunately much research has already been done regarding marketing and how to sell ideas and products. And it works quite well, how many of you have the iphone or the Android…? Probably most of you. And I think more and more these agencies in the form of NGO’s and non-profits, and so on and so forth with amazing goals of wildlife conservation, HIV/AIDS and Malaria eradication, sustainable growth, nutrition, woman empowerment, etc. and so forth, are catching on that we are essentially selling to an audience competing with the very companies that hinder many of our causes (i.e., car companies, cigarettes, and all the big names selling to the bottom billion teeny tiny packets of soap and shampoo and sugar and coffee and what not which produces so much unnecessary waste but that, I’m sure, makes a fortune (dis-regarding the actual cost it has on the environment of course)).

To help bring this point home I offer another TED video shown to us during our training session on behavior change. PST is rough but again I’ve been mostly impressed by the Peace Corps and the awareness this agency has at least in these two countries regarding effective and sustainable volunteer work. In addition to the video, if you are more interested in behavior change, I have just a few sources to recommend. If you have any others however that might seem pertinent I encourage you to email them to me and would be ever so grateful! When we start to aim with purpose, as in pool, rather than aim and “hope,” we might start actually sinking the balls in the holes after doing our proper calculations. Hoping this post, as all others, finds you well nourished, and well-motivated.

For more on Behavior change please see (I can email upon request):

Gifford, R. 2011. The dragons of Inaction: psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaption. American Psychologist 66(4); 290-302

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/amy_lockwood_selling_condoms_in_the_congo.html