Katie Gannett profiles MHOP director, Caitlin Cohen (with photos)

(Mali Health Organizing Project)Katie Gannett                                
                              
Making Change Happen with Passion, Commitment, and Ambition

    Caitlin could not understand why her host family in Mali always laughed when she would tell them that her cat had kept her up at night.  In a very logical decision, she had named her cat “Jakama” which means “cat” in bambara, the local language in Mali.  Only later did she learn that “Jakama” is also slang for “penis.” 

    “I was mortified, but you know, you get over it,” said Caitlin, taking the discovery with a grain of salt and changing the cat’s name to “Kuma,” meaning “to speak.”



    It hadn’t been the first time that the locals of Sikoro, Mali, had found something amusing about Caitlin Cohen.  She generally emerged from her room at 9 a.m. in the mornings with the rest of the community having been up since 5.  She would show up to meetings sweaty and somewhat dirty from the sweltering and dusty atmosphere of Mali, while the community members would somehow always arrive looking composed.  Nevertheless, none of this diminished the respect of the locals for Caitlin, the first “tubabu” (white person) to have ever resided in Sikoro for a significant period of time.
  
    Caitlin has lived in Sikoro on and off, ever since having spent more than a year in the town while taking time off from Brown.  Though originally having left for Mali the summer after her sophomore year with the intention of working with the Global Alliance to Immunize against AIDS, Caitlin’s interests drew her away from research as she “fell hopelessly in love with the country.”  She was interested in addressing issues based on local priorities, not international ones.  Caitlin wanted to help a women’s association in Sikoro, which was comprise of various midwives Caitlin had met.  These women knew what they wanted and needed in life, but lacked the resources, funding, and research capacity to see their projects through.  Figuring that resources would be something that students could help to mobilize, Caitlin moved back to Brown, fundraised $14,000 during the 2005-6 school year, and returned to Mali to start a small project in Sikoro, a town just north of Mali’s capital city, Bamako.  The project took off, and now Caitlin is the co-founder of a non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Mali Health Organizing Project (MHOP), with a budget of $80,000.  Caitlin created MHOP as a way for residents of slums to design and build their own health systems.  It is a particularly unique program in its efforts to bring slum residents and their government together in order to organize communities for positive change in health outcomes.  MHOP is working on a variety of projects that range from microfinance to in-house education and health care to women’s empowerment educational courses. 



    Staying on top of all the activities for MHOP keeps Caitlin on her toes.  It is no surprise that running an NGO is by no means a simple task.  Her days are filled with non-stop meetings, research, discussions with community members, planning for fundraising, and more meetings.  Usually, Caitlin begins her day with a bowl of “seri” (porridge) and coffee, before heading to meet with the Malian director of MHOP named Modibo Niang and the organization’s interns.  On average, between one and four American and Malian interns work with MHOP at a time.  The group has an office, which in no way resembles a typical office.  It is located in the apartment of MHOP’s Peace Corps volunteer, who kindly offered one of her extra rooms for the group’s use.  Caitlin loves to draw on the walls—not literally, but rather on large sheets of butcher paper that have been tacked up to use for brain-storming ideas.  Members of the group generally sit on jerry-cans or a thin mattress on the floor, unless they happen to be the one lucky person to get the only chair in the room.  These meetings cover a variety of topics, ranging from debates about innovative health finance tactics to discussions about the establishment of MHOP’s organizational ethical code.  



    After finishing up at the office, Caitlin heads to MHOP’s Hakili community center.  Recently refurbished by MHOP, the center has one main classroom with tan-colored walls, a wooden floor, tables and chairs, and 7-foot-tall blackboards.  American and Malian flags hang on the walls.  Caitlin usually works at the center for some time, doing e-mail-based work, talking to funders and various health partners, and conducting research about such topics as health financing.  If she is still around the center in the afternoons, she gets to take part in the classes, organized by MHOP, which involve 30-40 women all crammed into the small classroom to be trained in literacy, math, and basic marketable skills.  Wearing their “fulaards” (head wraps) of all different colors and designs, the women love to chatter and dote on Caitlin. 

    “It’s quite reminiscent of my Jewish family’s reunions—minus the cheek pinching,” says Caitlin.



    Caitlin leaves the center in the early afternoon, hopping into taxis and buses in order to meet with representatives from organizations like World Education and from the local, regional, and national offices of the Malian Health Ministry.  MHOP deals most often with the regional mayor’s office in commune 1 of Bamako as well as the regional health center.  Involvement with the Ministry of Health offices has been essential to the success of many of MHOP programs.  For instance, through meetings with the Ministry, MHOP secured the provision of a trash truck by the government that would improve waste disposal in Bamako.  Caitlin has recently been working on attaining funding and a land deed grant for the building of the clinic that MHOP is planning to construct in 2009 that would serve 30,000 people from the poorest area of the city.  In most of Caitlin’s meetings, she attempts to establish partnerships and conversations between the government officials at all levels: national assembly deputies; regional and local mayors; and the heads of local, regional, and national clinics and hospitals.  While these meetings are central to the success of MHOP, they are never easy to maneuver.  Caitlin always travels to the meetings with a Malian intern and a member of MHOP’s community committee. 



    “The Malian ministries are kind of a disaster in terms of paper-keeping,” Caitlin explains.  “[The situation involves] literally stacks of papers from the floor to the eight-foot high ceilings in all of the hallways.  Whether [your file] is genuinely or fakely lost, you never know.  But one way or another, you really have to follow up on everything quite thoroughly, or else your paper will never see the light of day again—which makes me kind of grateful for U.S. bureaucracy.  I had never thought that I would like the IRS, but, you know, it’s growing on me.”

After countless experiences with calling and/or traveling to the offices of the health ministry every day for weeks to check up on her requests, Caitlin knows how best to approach the health officials.  Julie Siwicki, an MHOP intern during the summer of 2008 who has assumed the head position of MHOP’s student group at Brown, described Caitlin’s tactics.

 “She has learned how to strike the balance very well—wooing almost, but also being assertive,” Julie said.

Sometimes, MHOP gives officials an extra incentive to cooperate, by bringing them gifts such as portfolio binders from the United States.  Julie described one bureaucrat who essentially invited himself over to dinner at one of the MHOP member’s houses.  The group cooked dinner for him several weeks later.

Aside from time spent each day on meetings with MHOP staff, work at the community center, or appointments with government officials, Caitlin also attends to her American interns as they adjust to life in Mali.  Like Julie, Caroline Mailloux also interned with MHOP during the summer of 2008.  Caroline and Caitlin had already been great friends and roommates in the United States before the internship.  Caroline spoke to the enormous amount of time Caitlin put into making the interns feel comfortable.  She had to teach the interns all of the basics, such as how to bargain for a mango, how to get the attention of a taxi driver, and how to shake someone’s hand. 

Caroline recognized that “every day she was with us (and she was with us a lot, and there were five of us total), she wasn’t really working, but that work still had to get done.  So I imagine it meant a lot of extra time at the ‘Espace Internet.’”

Indeed, Caitlin needs to spend a large amount of time each day on the internet in order to work on a much less exciting but essential aspect of the project: fundraising.  One of the greatest difficulties of running an NGO, fundraising is a non-stop project.  Caitlin often spends 12 hours a day on her computer, contacting donors, setting up a database, and sorting out accounting issues.  She works a lot to encourage local fundraisers, knowing that the program will have to be capable of generating funds after she and the other Americans are gone.  Though she has grown to like fundraising more, as she has learned about the intricacies of the process, Caitlin still feels frustrated with being “on the treadmill of bureaucracy” and therefore having less time to spend on the aspects of the program she loves. 

She explains, “It’s very frustrating for me not to have local partnerships be the problem, not to have our programs be the problem, but to have funding be the problem…But obviously, it’s a really necessary component.”

In the evenings, Caitlin arrives home late.  She lives in a complex in Sikoro that has seven rooms (three of which have shared doors), and an external shared bathroom.  Caitlin has her own room with her own door, along with the other basics: a bed, table, hooks on which to hang clothes, and the ever essential fan to relieve the often excruciating Malian heat.



She lives with Hawa Gaku, her host mother who is “quite a sassy lady,” according to Caitlin.  Her host brother, named BaKante Korkoss is a medical student, with a wife and child who all live in the same complex.  At any given time, between ten and twenty-five people are living in the complex at once. 

“I’ve lived there on and off for three years and I still can’t figure out all the relationships…it’s ludicrously complex.  Plus, everyone universally refers to their relatives as ‘brother’ or ‘sister,’ even if it isn’t literal,” explained Caitlin.

Caitlin loves to spend time with her family.  They enjoy watching the second season of “Lost” with Caitlin on her computer when the electricity allows for it.  She and her family also cook for one another.  Caitlin’s host brother’s face lights up whenever she enters, from what Caroline remembers.  Though Caitlin often arrives home late and tired after a long day of work, she always takes the extra half-hour to talk with her extended family.  She has also enjoyed getting to know the other women who live in the complex. 



The effort that Caitlin has put into developing genuine relationships with her community in Mali has given the locals a better understanding of who she is, beyond the stereotype of the American.  She has developed credibility among them, and they trust her.  She has met hundreds of people who are part of the MHOP program and knows at least 70 volunteers by name.  At the same time, seemingly everyone in Sikoro knows Caitlin.  Caroline was amused that during her time in Mali, she was constantly approached by locals asking, “Do you know Ami Keita?” (Ami Keita is Caitlin’s nickname).  Julie described a very complex hand-shake Caitlin would use with all of her local friends.  Both Caroline and Julie were amazed by the natural way Caitlin fit into her surroundings in Mali, as well as her ease with the local language, bambara (though Caitlin downplays her language skills).



As Julie says, “She’s so comfortable interacting with Malians…it is instinctive to her at this point.”

A counselor to the chief of the village was once walking with Caitlin.  After a string of children called out to Caitlin, using her nickname, the counselor told Caitlin that she should run for mayor since she was such a celebrity.  Caitlin responded that she was not from Sikoro, but was then told that neither is the mayor of the village!  Caitlin jokes that, “I still hold no aspirations for political office [in Mali].”
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While Caitlin’s weekends are often devoted to work, she periodically takes trips or organizes other activities.  During the summer of 2008, Caitlin decided to take Julie, Caroline, and the other American interns on a day-trip to a town called Siby, about an hour and a half outside of Bamako.  The group took a rickety public transportation bus early in the morning.  Although having planned to see a waterfall, the rainy season was not yet in full swing and the group found the waterfall to be dry.  Instead, they enlisted the help of several young local boys to lead them to the top of a natural arch. The hiking would better be described as rock climbing, as they made their way up the mountain. 



“Once we got to the top, it was this incredible, incredible view,” recalls Julie.



However, it was a very typical day in Mali in that things did not go as expected.  When they arrived at the bottom, they found no vans that would be driving back to Bamako.  They ran into another group of Americans who did not speak French or Bambara, and the MHOP group felt obliged to help them get back to Bamako as well. 

“We ended up…learning South African freedom songs and singing them in rounds, because we knew that we could be there for hours and we might not get back to Bamako until 2 a.m. and all you could do was just say, ‘Alright, this will definitely work out,’” explained Caroline.

Both Julie and Caroline spoke of the trip as a highlight of their time in Mali over the summer.
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    Caitlin has given so much of herself to the Mali Health Organizing Project, which has already reached 60,000 people.  Not only have her efforts produced a great impact on the lives of many Malians, but Caitlin has also been recognized in the United States for what she is doing.  She has won various research awards and grants, and of particular interest, she was nominated for the 2008 Teen Choice Awards.  While quite an honor, Caitlin modestly described the experience as simply being “hilarious,” though she was indeed excited to gain $10,000 for MHOP from it all.  Caitlin has high goals for her program, seeking to expand it to nation-wide scale.  Yet, she also wants to become a doctor.  Having graduated from Brown, she also will be starting Brown’s medical school in the fall.   



    “My goal is to get myself through first year anatomy.  Medical school, I think, is going to be a challenge for me because it’s going to be hard for me to go from this wide perspective to ion channels—it’s a very different world.  And it’s also very important for me personally, because I think that my personal sustainability depends on me being able to actually, effectively do something not on the long term strategy for policy planning, but on the immediate ‘helping a single person’ element.  I want to work on the long term strategy planning—that’s what’s most important, I think, and that’s where I can have the biggest impact—but for my own personal sustainability, I do want to be a doctor.  I want to be a physician.”

      Caitlin is ready to go back to school.  She has an incredible drive for knowledge.  She wants an MBA, a degree in economics…anything that will help her to better understand the relationship between financing and implementation, and how the biomedical aspect is woven in.  Caitlin knows that she needs certain skills in order to be successful in what she wants to do—whether being a doctor or working in health care reform, politically or on the ground—and she is willing to do what it takes to achieve her goals. 

    Yet, Caitlin’s aspirations are based upon something larger than herself, on a desire to do everything she can to impact people’s lives for the better.  Julie characterized Caitlin as “very passionate, and very ambitious in the best possible way.”  Caroline echoed this point.  While interning in Mali over the summer, Caroline found herself in an enormous amount of physical pain, with a high fever, when she caught a parasite.  As she suffered in the 110 degree heat, Caitlin brought her exactly what she needed: a bottle of Coca Cola. 

 “Caitlin is someone who has strong bounds,” explained Caroline. “She is very dedicated to her friends outside of this project, and to her family, and to her individual academic and personal improvement.  I think that what’s most remarkable about her is that the amount of effort that she puts into [MHOP]—it’s not the only thing she does.  That same energy is definitely reflected in many other aspects of her life, which I’m sure will make her a fantastic physician when it actually happens.” 

    As Caroline explains and as others would agree, Caitlin will be exactly where she wants to be in ten or twenty years, doing something tremendous every step of the way.