Health is a precursor to happiness, so I like to think that when we are out doing our public health work, we are out spreading happiness. And when I see faces like these in our health centers, I know we are getting the job done. Magic 298/365, Healthy Body, Happy Face, Kalonda West, Kasai, DRC
The mothers are always out and about making things happen and carrying things everywhere in Congo. I took this photo while we were trekking around in a field outside of a village where we were building a latrine out of local materials. Our project did a lot of really great work, but sometimes we had …
I hear a lot of negative opinions about aid work, but aid work WORKS. This is a photo of a severely malnourished girl that our nutrition team found six months before this photo was taken (see yesterday’s post). They taught her mother how to make a weaning food recipe out of locally available ingredients and …
It may not look like it, but this is what hope looks like. Community relays trained by our nutrition team found this young woman, Mado Betu and her malnourished daughter, also named Mado, while I was working in Kasai Central, DRC. The next day I followed them back to her house and filmed them as …
And the children. Cover the mother and the children. That is the strategy for hanging bed nets. Our malaria program gave free bed nets to all pregnant women and children under one in every area we assisted, which covered a population of eight million people. Then we went and hung nets in a few areas. …
I took this photo during a focus group we held in Kasai Central as part of our research during the development of our behavior change communications program. Magic 292/365, Listen to the Mothers, Kasai Central, DRC 2015
This little baby brings so much joy to my heart. There is really nothing better than seeing a happy, healthy child in a health center. It is an indicator that we are doing our jobs. We are getting health to the people who need it most. We still have a long way to go, and …
This is another photo I took during my early days in Congo. These women were most likely there waiting for their children to be treated for malaria. At least that was the answer I got 100% of the times I asked. Magic 290/365, The Mothers and Their Children, DRC, 2014
I snapped this photo of this young boy as I was strolling through a health center that our project was assisting in a remote part of Congo with DFID, the funders of our project. Magic 289/365, Cute Little Man, DRC, 2014
Rural Congo is still very tribal, so when a chief speaks, the people listen. This chief was expressing his opinion about the work we were doing in his area at a meeting with DFID and other community leaders. Magic 288/365, When the Chief Speaks, Kasai Region, DRC, 2014