Thanks to the hard work of John Massey, Mariama Moussa, and your Nomad Foundation crew, Global Health Media has posted four new videos in Tamasheq on their website. Films are a great educational tool for everyone but especially for non-literate learners. We have used them on every mission since 2016 but have been hindered by […]
General
Our Toyota’s demise
Since 2011 our faithful Toyota pickup has been running around nomad lands delivering meds, trainees, supplies and anything we need to conduct our projects. On Christmas eve, it spontaneously caught fire while on a mission and burned completely. The insurance available in Niger does not cover fire. Needless to say our projects cannot be completed […]
What We’ve Got Here is Success in Communication–by Dr. Becky Jones
Education relies on communication. When working with non-literate people whose native language differs from the teacher’s, quality communication is challenging. In our matrone training project, we have two groups of trainees who speak two entirely different languages – Wodaabe who speak Fulfulde and Tuareg who speak Tamasheq. In school, Nigerien children learn French from a […]
Back to work–Tamesna training 2022
Seeing our team in Niger was pretty wonderful after three long years. Rabi, who we are putting through midwife school, takes time off from that to continue running our programs at Tamesna. Our plan was to have our local staff do the training under the supervision of Dr. Becky, Pat and Jennifer. So the first […]
Help from Direct Relief International
Direct Relief International has been helping us with medicines to supply our clinic for almost a decade. This year Dr. Becky hand carried medicines and here she and Jennifer explain their use to our new clinic nurse Rhaichita. These quality medicines along with a warm, respectful welcome to our patients is what has set our […]
New Team Members
Jennifer Stevens, recruited by Dr. Becky and Pat, is a doctor of public health, midwife, and nurse who has worked globally focusing on maternal health and midwifery education. Most recently she has been living in Bangladesh, working with the United Nations – WHO and UNFPA – while she finished her doctorate. She is a very […]
Back to Niger 2022
It has been three long years since I have been able to visit Niger. Some of the kids that are going to junior high and High school in Agadez came by to visit me at my hotel. They are growing up so fast. Awalawal left is now taller than I am. Tefeste in blue has […]
Malaria prevention
Dr. Bob Skankey, is no longer traveling to Niger but is still a very active board member of the Nomad Foundation. As he has done all his life, he is determined to improve people’s health. He has devised and financed a program to address one of the biggest killers in the region where we work–malaria. […]
Matrone training continued by local staff
We completed two missions: one at Tamesna conducted by Rabi our former medical director and one at Iferouane conducted by Assalama. 14 new traditional birth attendants have been trained and turned in their first annual reports. These reports showed no maternal mortalities in spite of several potentially critical conditions the matrones were able to address […]
Work in Mali
For many years we have worked in Mali to try to make a difference when its people are suffering from the violence of terrorist groups who have taken over much of the country. This work is directed by Charlene Pidgeon and our local representative in Mopti, Abdoulaye Diallo. Here is a letter he recently wrote […]
Friends running for Office
Niger elections are in full swing as we speak. We have among the candidates for regional and national offices–six friends running. Every one of them we have known and worked with for at least ten years. We are very proud that our work together has led to visibility that encouraged them to run. They are […]
Help for Iferouane Students, Artisans, Seamstresses and Matrones
Last year, when we visited the school in Iferouane, Niger where we had helped them repair the roof which had blown off, we found the kids doing their studies kneeling on the ground–they needed desks.
Mission 2020–The work goes on during the pandemic
We are all navigating the major disruptions in our lives that COVID-19 has brought. I hope you are all doing that successfully and in good health. Some of the necessary changes have not been all bad. We have been trying for many years to find a way for our programs to be completed entirely by […]
COVID-19 mission to the nomads
The population of nomads we work with is very isolated, but they must on occasion visit a crowded market to do their shopping. In the hot, dry season which is happening now, Wodaabe women often leave the country, traveling south to Nigeria, Benin, Togo or Ivory Coast, or west to Mali to sell their traditional […]
Our first local training mission in Iferouane
The only way to insure that our matrone training program continues in the long-term is to turn it over to local staff. We have been inching toward this for many years. The biggest step yet was possible when during our last mission we learned that all the essential materials we provide to new trainees […]
Dr. Becky’s thoughts on the 2019 mission
One of the most satisfying aspects of our missions is to observe nomadic women helping one another achieve better health and safer pregnancies. Each year their achievements grow along with their confidence and knowledge. In addition, it is always an enormous pleasure to reconnect with our nomad friends and colleagues despite the limitations in direct […]
What it’s like to go on a mission
Besides all the work and projects that you have been reading about in this blog, I thought I’d try to give you an idea of what the travel is like–not the airplane–you all know about that. I can’t really give you (and don’t want to) the bone crunching experience of driving off road through the […]
On to Iferouane
We got to Iferouane after and exhausting two day drive–the highlight was stopping at Dabous the magnificent neolithic carving of a giraffe–considered to be one of the best in the world. It is life size! The road was so terrible we arrived to a welcoming committee after sunset–so the planned party was very short and […]
Tamesna Clinic and School
We had been so busy with the matrone program that we have felt the clinic and school need more of our attention…next year I’m going to have the kids paint another mural for the school. Those who painted the last one in 2013 have mostly graduated to junior high. Can’t wait. We did have a […]
Tamesna matrones
Arrival at Tamesna is kind of like coming home. We put up our decorations (wall hangings, paintings by guess who, fairy and solar lights in the trees) and settled in to await the arrival of the matrones in the afternoon. Dr. Becky and Pat packed the pills that the matrones need for their work and […]
Back from an amazing mission
As I always do–I post our news after I have returned from the mission in Niger. (security reasons) I am sitting in the Paris airport for a few hours so I might as well get started. After the same looooonnnnnngggg trip from LA to Agadez that I have done for 25 years I arrived at […]
Presentation at Johns Hopkins
Rebecca Keene Jones, MD. PhD and Patricia Manzon MSN, CNE presented the work of the Nomad Foundation at the 12th Annual Johns Hopkins Women’s Health Research Symposium. Known to us as Dr. Becky and midwife Pat, they have been working hard, running our training program for nomadic traditional birth attendants since 2016. This poster summarizes our […]
Dr Becky’s words from mission 2018
On social media, new mothers can bake bread in their skinny jeans whilst blissfully nursing their newborns, who also sleep through the night. Volunteers on medical missions can miraculously save lives on shoestring budgets staffed by highly skilled, selfless providers in dangerous environments. As a mother and obstetrician on many missions, I see these boast-posts […]
Desert FUN
Iferouane, known as the gateway to the dunes has been a very important community to the Nomad Foundation–we have worked remotely with them for years, but never done a training there. They asked us and we responded–the bright side of driving two exhausting days over rubble and craggy, tire eating rocks is that the return […]
Jewelers get tools and we all get a big party
On Graduation day for the matrones we called together 15 jewelers chosen in advance and distributed 15 sets of jewelry tools generously donated by Toolbox initiative. And then they threw us a party ALL THIS JUST FOR US….WOW!
Motorcycle Repair Training
Nomads move around alot–the camel was always the best means of transportation in their desert land–then for the “wealthy” the Toyota Land Cruiser took its place. For the average nomad a 4WD Toyota is way beyond their means, but a motorcycle costs about the same as a camel–and moves a lot faster–of course the down […]
We go bearing gifts
We are headed soon to Niger with a full schedule and many suitcases full of materials to make all our programs happen. Right now a program is taking place which is training 20 young nomads how to repair motorcycles–their camels, I guess, are too slow. The motorcycles are very useful–last year one of our students […]
New Mission to Niger–Fall 2018
It is time to prepare for our next mission to Niger in October. Dr. Becky Jones and midwife Pat Manzon will recertify our existing traditional birth attendants at Tamesna and expand the program to Iferouane–a remote community known as the gateway to the dunes. We have worked with them for 20 years, helping with artisanal, […]
Big plans for next year–expansion of matrone training–cataract mission
We made visits to the Agadez maternity—where by chance a baby was born while we were standing there, the Agadez hospital and the American military base (who asked us not to post our photos). They live isolated in air conditioned tents surrounded by concrete barriers, razor wire and a huge ditch. They are frustrated because […]
Goodbye to Tamesna
Our work at Tamesna was not yet done. We got the community together to create a management committee for the clinic. We have a very good reputation and as a result, are turning a profit beyond the cost of replacement meds and supplies so this money needs to be managed and the decisions as to […]
Not all work
Having finished the matrone training we got ready to go to a big Wodaabe festival. This was supposed to happen last year and got postponed, so I was anxious for the new team to see this remarkable thing. We had a morning to kill since it was windy and we knew the dancing would not […]
Junior high in Agadez and Ingal
All ten of our top class graduated from grammar school and were accepted in junior high school, but there are none available in the “bush” where the nomads live so we thought long and hard to find the best solution for the kids and their parents. At first we thought to create a location in […]
Tamesna school 2017
Our grammar school at Tamesna started earlier than most bush schools because we have a committed director in Assadek (back left) There were already 27 kids present and we expect 15 more. 10 graduated to junior high for which they had to go to Ingal and Agadez.
Eyes on Africa–Thanks again
Eyes on Africa once again comes through with hundreds of pairs of readers and sunglasses which we distributed all through our mission. We left 100 readers and 100 pairs of sunglasses at the clinic for Rabi to distribute as needed. We are working on a mission to do cataract operations next year, but maybe these […]
Arrival at Tamesna 2017
Although I am now back in Agadez having completed our mission I am now able to post with photos–so here we go from the beginning. We arrived at Tamesna midmorning and started packing pills, preparing the matrones medical bags and matrones began to arrive. Following in Dr. Bob Skankey’s footsteps is not an easy task—given […]
Desert Beginnings
Dr, Becky and her midwife sister Pat arrived with the many bags of meds, donated by Amani at Medicine shoppe Ojai, Direct Relief International and Sunglasses and readers by Eyes on Africa, plus supplies they (and we)had purchased.
Return to school
Today is a big day for the top class at Tamesna school. Most nomad kids stop school at the end of grammar school if they even go at all. This is because the only junior high schools are in towns and many have never even been to town. We are constructing a new elementary school […]
Niger mission 2017 starts here
Ojai Quarterly article–WATER the tie that binds us
Roadtrip Niger premier successful
So many old friends and new got together to celebrate the US premier of Benedicte Schoyen’s film Roadtrip Niger. The event raised $23,912 for the Nomad Foundation…Thank you to all who supported it. Hope you enjoyed the event.
