I wish I could say my busy weeks are all finished but I would be
lying. The Youth Health Fair was on Wednesday and the GRE was
Saturday, in American Samoa.
As things do here, there were a lot of last minute plans and
confirmations needed for the Health Fair so needless to say last
weekend and early this week were insanely busy. The basic premiss of
the fair was to bring rural students into Apia and give them an
opportunity to hear and participate in messages from health
organizations and government ministries. We invited the Year 12
students, that's like 11th grade in the US, from 9 schools around
Upolu island. Bus transportation was arranged and we had about 220
students attend the fair. We took a unique approach to the health
fair in that we did not just have booths set up and let the students
mill around through the day. Instead we organized 40 minute sessions
and split the students into 8 groups. There were 8 stations so each
group participated in a station for 40 minutes and then rotated to the
next. The overall message was "making healthy choices" and stations
covered topics like HIV/STIs, obesity, communicable disease, first aid
and safety, and cancer/tobacco. Student health assessments were also
carried out by doctors and nurses. Overall the responses to the event
were very positive and we are confident we reached the students with
messages they aren't regularly exposed to in the village. Hopefully
it is the first Health Fair of many to come in future years.
I won't go into specifics about the GRE because it is a stupid
standardized test that is a waste of money and time and universities
need to accept the fact that they need to spend the extra time and
effort to review applicants academic and professional history rather
than using short cut methods like the GRE that is not a true
reflection of anyone's ability and capacity for success in a graduate
program.
Moving on to my insightful thought for the day about development. It
has become very clear to me in my time here that development is a
double edged sword. The US, as well as other nations like Australia,
Japan and Canada have programs that offer aid in the form of money,
professional support or both to developing nations. There are
programs that work to improve education, health, gender equality and
other quality of life related aspects of development. Progress is
slow, as is expected but positive steps are made every year, or so it
seems. I will use health as a prime example, the developing world has
been working hard to improve immunization rates, infant and child
mortality rates, and malnutrition rates among other aspects of
health. These efforts have been effective at different levels through
the developing world. These changes are fantastic and are worth
getting excited about.
As these major improvements are occurring the health and quality of
life is declining in other areas as chronic disease begins to wreak
havoc on developing nations like Samoa. The influx of refined, high
fat, sugar and salt foods as well as mass production and increased
availability of cigarettes are two of the primary reasons for this
decline in health status. Unfortunately the manufacturing, importing
and sale of these goods are also associated with development, economic
development. This is just one aspect of development that has negative
impacts on these nations in transition. Unfortunately the countries
that are offering the support in development work are the ones leading
by poor example. Like the developing nations, health, among other
things, are sacrificed for economic "progress" in western countries.
As I finish my work in the developing world to return to the US to
begin work in solving some of our own problems back home I sincerely
hope those who take up work in Samoa and other countries recognize the
negatives that come with the positives. By taking the opportunity to
look at the western situation objectively, a local approach and
systems with solutions in mind can be established before some of the
negative impacts of development become intrenched in everyday life.
After all, to me, the goal of development work should be to create
equality, happiness and a good quality of life for everyone while
preventing manipulation and exploitation of the same people who we are
trying to help.
Those are my thoughts for the day. Now I am off to the internet cafe
for my favorite part of the day, talking to Whitney! I'll be putting
some pics of the Health Fair up on the Picasa Webalbum so check'em out.
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