RNW – 22 June, 2010 - Pupils at the Garage Beintegnier Basic School in the outskirts of the Senegalese capital, Dakar stands in front of visiting USAID Administrator and staff, shoulder-to-shoulder, and sang an emotional song to their parents.
By Sheriff Bojang Jnr.
“Dear Mama, my room is a haven for mosquitoes. Dear Papa, my bed is without a mosquito net. I need protection from malaria in order to go to school or to reach my full potential...”
The song was written by 12-year-old Salieu and his 13-year-old classmate and best friend, Amadou.
With a population of about 2000, Garage Beintegnier is one of the suburbs of Dakar with a high annual malaria rate. It has just one tiny health center with hardly any drugs.
According to Salieu, “everyday a classmate or friend is absent from school or misses an exam because of malaria. Everyday a friend or a neighbour is rushed to a hospital in Dakar to be admitted for malaria. It frightened and worried me and so I decided to write a song with my friend about our fears.”
The song inspired Salieu and Amadou’s school teachers and health staff in the community to start a special project in which they give daily after-school lectures to children about malaria and mosquitoes. The idea is for the children to transmit the message to their parents, most of who are illiterates and are reluctant to apply any malaria precaution.
Magamou Gueye is a community health officer and one of the coordinators of the project. For him, “this is like a training of trainers project. We are preparing them to go out there and sensitize their parents about the consequences of malaria and how to avoid it.”
Gueye said the children are targeted ‘because in this community, parents are so poor. They can hardly afford one meal a day. But their children are their pride. They love them, they believe in their future and they listen to them.”
For Amadou, the project has made a big difference in his household and the rest of the community.
As a result of his song, Salieu is treated by fellow pupils as a little celebrity. But Salieu, wearing an orange t-shirt underneath his blue uniform top, is more proud of the message he sends than his new-found popularity.
“My parents initially thought malaria is unavoidable and that when you have malaria you shouldn’t do anything about it. But after I sensitized them, they are now as conscious of it as anybody else. It makes me cry seeing them tying the mosquito nets, cleaning the backyard or advising their friends about malaria.It feels so good to sit quietly and watch them do all these things.”
The worst period of the year in Senegal for malaria is from July to September (rainy season) and it is Gueye’s hope that ‘children nationwide are used to spread the message’.
And for Amadou, ‘this should go beyond Garage Beintegnier. Children all over the country should be involved in fighting malaria because our parents are both the problem and the solution and we are their best friends. Every parent listens to his or her child.”
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