Health Promoters Stop Cholera
The other villagers thought hard, and this is the conversation they had:
9
We can make
pillows from the
cotton of the silk-
cotton tree and
sell them.
We can raise
livestock that
eat the pods of
the carob tree.
We can carve
handicrafts
from the
nuts of the
tagua palm.
These are all great
ideas! And they
give us even more
reasons to plant
trees. I had an
idea myself that I
wanted to share.
Does anybody here
like honey?
Gloria said, “If we grow trees with flowers that bees like, we can start a bee-
keeping project and sell the honey. It will take only 1 year for the flowers to
blossom.” The villagers liked this idea. Even Eduardo agreed to try planting
trees if he could learn how to produce honey.
Eduardo stopped Gloria as she was leaving. He told her, “When my
grandson was sick with diarrhea we made him a drink from the pods of the
carob tree. It cured him better than any medicine from the doctor. I think it
would be a good idea to plant carob trees. Then we can make the curing drink
and use the honey we produce to make it sweet.”
Gloria returned to the health center excited about these new projects. After
thinking about how the meetings had gone, she realized it would never work
for her to tell the other villagers what to do. She had to learn to hear their
ideas and understand their needs if she was to be an effective environmental
health promoter.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012