Okay. So what have I (the guy) been doing, in between battling rats and bats (3 bats dead now, but we have screens on most of our windows finally!), helping raise a puppy, and reading a ton of books? Well, three main things: Teaching Information Technology (mostly Microsoft Office stuff, and typing); trying to get some traction working with local farmers getting into aquaculture (fish-farming for sale in local and international markets); and trying to lower the suicide rate. I’ll talk about that last one for a bit here.
We’re in the region of the country (10 regions in this country, the country itself the size of Idaho, 11th-largest state) with the highest suicide rate. We’re in the specific village collection that drives up the suicide rate of this region. There are four villages together on this road, about a twenty-minute bikeride across each, total population just under 2000. This is the breadbasket of the country, provides enough food for every man, woman, and child, with more for export besides. The main rice and sugar productions are mostly right around here, and the area also provides a crazy amount of fruits and vegetables. Seventh-graders struggle to read, but third-graders can have heated discussions about the exhaust pipes of tractors (no joke), and when harvest-time comes (there are two growing seasons per year here), students disappear from school in droves to help out. Okay, so there’s the basic setup, as much as you can describe a specific region in another country in one paragraph, anyway.
Out of fewer than 2000 people, there are 5-6 attempted suicides per month. I’ll say that one more time, and I’ll add in some math. 2000 people in families of about 4 – 5, so 450 families. 60+ suicide attempts per year. Think about those numbers over a 20-year span (and this problem has been ongoing. Not every attempt leads to a successful suicide, but enough do, and there are repeat-attempters as well.
And 450 nuclear families in an enclosed area means that not only does everyone know everyone, but that everybody is related to everybody else. I don’t think I’ve found a person yet that hasn’t a lost a cousin, and most have lost a brother or sister or child or parent, to suicide.
So, that’s the situation. The typical method is poisoning via farm chemicals and pesticides; there are stories of people leaving this area for the States, living there a half-dozen years, then killing themselves in the same way as people here, and for the same reasons. It’s a cultural response at this point, and people carry it with them their entire lives. The reasons most typically involve an argument with a girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse, or occasionally with a family-member. Also, the majority of attempts are men, and most of them were drinking heavily at the time, came home, and had some sort of altercation about drinking or money or something. HIV/AIDS sometime play a part as well; this country was one of 15 in the world highlighted by the recent PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) grant money.
So. Some of the things I’m doing, developing, or thinking about:
I see the 7th, 8th, and 9th-graders once each week for a Guidance and Counseling class. This was a weird idea for me to get used to, but it’s working out great. I’ve developed a curriculum focusing on suicide prevention; it targets increasing a future- and goal- oriented mindset, increasing coping mechanisms (particularly relational support, talking about things, which doesn’t seem to happen here at all), working with alcohol, HIV/pregnancy issues & protection, life skills, & career counseling. I’ve been asked by my government program to do a presentation on the curriculum for the rest of the volunteers in the country when we go all go into the capital in December for training, which is pretty neat. We’ll see how that goes.
A guy from North America who was born here but spent most of his life up north is trying to do stuff right now as well; a professor he knows is coming down at some point to run a national seminar on suicide, he’s helping get some sports equipment into the area, and we’re talking about trying to set up a suicide hotline.
Trying to get as much sports equipment as possible, and I want to do the footwork to get some adult sports leagues started. I was in a softball league back home, and the organizer tore his hair out; but the rest of us, about 250 people, had a great time with no work involved on our part. Softball won’t work down here, but other things will, hopefully.
I’ve contacted the main in-country producer of the chemicals, and they have agreed to give pamphlets out to all of their distributors and retailers at point-of-sale with any chemical purchase; I need to get grant money to fund it, but what I want is a simple two-sider: One side deals with intentional suicide, maybe lets people know about the hotline if we can get that going, and the other side warning about accidental suicide. One local farmer died tragically because his water and chemicals were next to one another on his tractor. Grabbed the wrong one for a drink. Some of these chemicals shut down your internal organs, you die within minutes.
What would be wonderful, WONDERFUL, would be to find a professor in the States or Canada who does counseling and research on suicide. During my Master’s, I did research with a professor focused on Peace Studies; she helped expand a Teacher’s College in an African country to include counselors as well; the counselors’ training was focused on PTSD due to that country’s ongoing external and civil wars (20 years of these now, in which a lot of child soldiers are involved). To help catalyze something like that, get long-term specialized knowledge and funding available, here, for this problem, would be amazing.
So that’s where I am right now. One thing going, another couple in the works, a hope, and a pipe-dream. Welcome to development, huh?
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