Stomp Out Malaria Bootcamp: Thies, Senegal

I was chosen to be one of three Public Health volunteers in Kenya to become a Malaria volunteer. This means I would stay in my village, but would have additional responsibilities throughout my province in connecting resources with volunteers as well as assisting in Malaria based projects.  To manage this, I attended a two-week long boot camp training in Senegal. With almost 30 volunteers from 14 different countries, we sat together day after day learning how we can improve the Malaria epidemic within our countries and within Africa.

When I refer to this training as “Boot camp,” I mean that in the most literal sense. We were up for breakfast by 7AM each morning, attended class all day, had a one hour break between 6 and 7PM where we had to cram in a study session and read up on whatever case study was assigned. This was all followed by dinner, then a group discussion on our case study and finally we were free again after 9PM. This isn’t to say we didn’t squeeze in an hour or two of socializing followed by an angry and painfully early alarm clock the next morning.

So what did we do with our long days? These were filled with skype conferences with some of the big wigs at the Center for Disease Control (CDC), USAID, the Presidents Malaria Initiative (PMI), and some doctors and researchers from around the world. We visited local communities, hospitals, clinics and a research center studying mosquito biting behavior. Then we sat in lectures about behavior change and the epidemiology of Malaria in all of our respective countries. Basically everything I didn’t know that I didn’t know about Malaria, I learned in two weeks. 

I was able to brush up on my French and sweat out of pores that I didn’t even know existed in the daily 109 degree heat. I ate some amazing food and met some great new friends. But before I could go back to my village life and get back to work, I arrived in Nairobi at 5:30AM and went to meet my parents for their first trip out of America (Canada doesn’t count) just in time to make our 10AM flight to the Maasai Mara Game Reserve.