well project funded!

good news! my well project has been fully funded. you can read about it on the following website: http://watercharity.org/node/210. theres a button to donate to the project, but it has already been funded. but if you still want to donate, the extra money will go to another peace corps volunteers water project in country. thanks so much for reading. merry christmas and happy new years. hopefully ill be in Ile St Marie for new years celebrating with some other peace corps volunteers (if i can find a way to make it over there).

17 Novembre 2010

Last week we had mosquito net distribution here in the SAVA region complements of USAID, the President’s Rollback Malaria initiative and the NGO Population Services International. Every house in every fokontany (village) in the commune (county) was supposed to receive enough long lasting insecticide treated bed nets to protect all members in each household. It was quite an operation to say the least.

When I came back from my regional meeting with the other volunteers down in Antalaha at the beginning of November, I was greeted by about 200 huge white bundles of mosquito nets sitting on my porch. Each bundle had about 40 bednets plus packaging, weighing about 50lbs each. I guess since I live in a huge house right next to the hospital, they figured it would be the best place to store all of said nets. At least there was a small pathway on the porch conveniently left for me to enter my house. So as soon as I got home I helped the president of the hospital roll all the hefty packages inside.

A few days later there was a training session for the workers who were to distribute the nets. Before the distribution week began, the village leaders had to go around to each house in each village and record the head of household’s name and the number of people currently living in the house. The leaders then had to assign each household a number and write said number on the outside of the house.

A big truck came by to drop of mosquito nets at several distribution centers in the commune: one at my house, one 7km north and one 9km south along the main road. Then people from villages further away had to come to the three distribution centers to carry the huge 50lb bundles by foot all the way back to secondary distribution centers (some as far as a 2hr hike away). During the distribution week, bed nets were given out to a different village in the area each day of the week according to a set schedule. The end of the week (Saturday) was a free for all, with all those who had not received a number on their house the week before scrambling for the remaining nets that were left over from the past week.

Since there were plenty of people to help with distribution in town, I went out to a smaller rural village that I frequently work at to help with bed net distribution there. I assisted mostly by giving health talks during the week on malaria prevention and with some of the paperwork. I also requested the public health NGO PSI to come with their cinemobile at the end of this week to show a film on malaria prevention.

It was interesting just observing the whole process to see what the hang-ups were and how such a public health intervention could be improved in the future. The trickiest part was accounting for the middle school and high school students who study in big towns during the week and go back to their homes in the rural villages on the weekends. Some people thought the students were supposed to be accounted for back in their villages while others believed the students should receive a net in town where they study during the week. Other people were sneaky and sent multiple family members to pick up nets at different times of the week, claiming that they had never received a number on their house when in fact they had. Others missed the whole number-on-the-house thing the week before and never received a net at the end of the week when some distribution centers ran out.

The program might have worked better if the count was done by number of beds per house rather than number of people. The ratio was three people to one net, which would work if there were two adults and a small child; however three adults sleeping in separate beds in the same house should probably receive more than just one net. Other people who have only one bed in their house received as many as three nets, because they have a lot of small children or children studying in other towns that they still counted as part of their household. The discrepancies caused a lot of frustration among community members and bed net distributors. If the village leaders had simply entered each house and counted the number of beds, which should equal number of nets distributed, their might not have been as many discrepancies. There’s no reason for someone to receive three nets when they only have one bed in their house. But at least a lot of people got insecticide treated nets, and hopefully the herd immunity effect will help protect everyone against Malaria this year. Rainy season is coming up, and there have already been several deaths this past month at the hospital due to Malaria so I hope the program proves successful.

Either way, there were a lot of angry people crowded outside my house Saturday evening fighting over nets, with distributors working on my front porch from 8am until 7pm. So I decided to have dinner at my neighbors’ instead that night. It was actually kind of nice…we hung out, chatted, took some shots of home-made Malagasy whiskey and had some kind of fried insect that they eat here along with our rice for dinner. Being the adventurous Peace Corps volunteer that I am, I partook of the local fare, which was actually surprisingly tasty.

Unfortunately I found out later on that evening that the insect must be in the same family as yellow-jackets, which I am very allergic to. As I was getting ready for bed, I started breaking out in hives, so I popped two Benadryl and called the Peace Corps doctor. He advised me to use my handy Epi-pen if the symptoms got worse. So once my face swelled like a balloon, I couldn’t hear because my ear canals had closed up and my chest started tightening, I decided to bite the bullet and jab the unpleasantly gigantic needle into the side of my thigh. The stick was surprisingly painful, but at least I could breathe after that, and I started calming down. I was still very itchy but was finally able to fall asleep and woke up the next morning much improved. The only remnants were a very sore right thigh and still slightly swollen eyelids. I guess that’s what I get for trying to integrate into another culture. But at least it made for a good story.

On a side note, when I was helping out with bed net distribution in one of the other villages, a guy came in to pick up his net and was wearing the most unique outfit I have seen yet here. That’s saying something considering some of the ensembles the Malagasy manage to put together. They have some of the funniest used clothing here, which probably is shipped over in bulk from Salvation Army or Union Mission or something. I have seen everything from pink frilly princess gowns to college mascot t-shirts to 80s style Technicolor warm-up suits. But this guy came in wearing a bright yellow plastic construction hat, a t-shirt with a cartoon of a Rasta-man playing bongos and a black, faux leather trench coat with fake black fur along the hem and the collar of the jacket. It was a pretty amazing site.

Today was election day…the Malagasy are voting on a referendum on the constitution, which meant every one was at the polls (the local elementary school) and the rest of the town was really quiet. It also meant that there was no school today, so I could finally have my very first meeting with the healthy teen club members!

I headed to the CEG (local junior high school) expecting maybe 10 kids to show up, but there were actually around 85. We met and talked about what my goals and hopes for the organization are: to improve the health of community members in general and youth in particular, and to help the youth develop skills to set goals for themselves and to make healthy choices in life in order to achieve those goals. I also asked them to think about what their goals for the organization were. Then we shared ideas for health projects activities the organization could do in the community and started to come up with a program and schedule of how often we would meet.

Everyone seemed really interested in learning about HIV/AIDS, STD prevention and family planning, so I’m very excited about that. To end the meeting, I taught them a song in Malagasy about HIV/AIDS prevention (to the tune of Shakira’s World Cup song “Waka Waka”). We had a great time, and some of the students even walked me home and hung out with me for a while at my house. We chatted about Peace Corps and the U.S. and about life in America versus life in Madagascar. I explained to them about how young adults in the States often wait longer to get married and have kids, because they like to graduate from college first and get a job to earn money before starting a family. It’s a totally different concept to them from what they see every day here: fifteen year olds leaving school to have children out of wedlock and families with an average of five to seven kids. There are still high rates of illiteracy and elementary and middle school drop-outs. Some of the students in the group seem very smart and have a lot of potential, so I hope they get something out of the program I’m trying to start up with them.

In the afternoon I went over to one of my friend’s houses to hang out. We had the most interesting conversation about homosexual, bisexual, transgender and transvestite individuals. I think it’s so cool that I can actually talk about those things in Malagasy now. It was just really fascinating to hear about local people’s perceptions of the LGBT community here. My friend seemed totally fine with the idea of homosexuality and bisexuality, but she seemed to have a negative perception of transvestites (men dressing up as women in particular). Apparently there is a whole openly gay neighborhood in Antananarivo and quite a few men that dress up as women in Nosy Be! It was funny to see her reaction when I tried to explain about transgender individuals and sex change operations. I’m sure it seems far-fetched to people here, in a country where a majority of the population can’t afford clinic fees for the most simplest of procedures, such as properly setting a broken bone. And to think that the whole conversation started with the topic of earrings.

Parents are coming soon, and I get to go on my very first vacation since I left the States in October of last year. I’m very excited for everyone here to meet them, and I’m also looking forward to seeing more of this unique and amazingly diverse island over the coming weeks.

Things I am grateful for

Things I miss most about home (U.S.):
Privacy
Efficiency when trying to get things done
Family and friends back home
Laundry machines
Clean, indoor bathrooms (both public and private)
Sinks with running water
Ice
American stoves, ovens and microwaves
Refrigerators and freezers
Lack of constant cockroach, ant and rodent infestations
Easy access to clean water
No malaria and no schistosomiasis
Good dentists
Hi-speed internet, especially at home
TV Shows: The Daily Show, Colbert Report, South Park, The Office, Lost, Anthony Bourdain, Top Chef
Movie Theaters
Going out to bars and cafes with friends
Coffee shops (lattes and iced coffee)
Pandora Radio and NPR
Having my own seat when using public transportation
Good telephone connections
Speaking English whenever I want
Hot tubs and pools
Good wine, beer, margaritas, mojitos
American food (pretzels, whole grain bread, crackers, baby spinach salads, chips and salsa, cheese, ice cream, olives, apples, broccoli, mushrooms, cereal and cold soy milk)

Things I will miss about Madagascar when I leave:
Malagasy friends
PCV friends
Lush tropical forest
Deserted beaches
Rice paddies
The variety of fresh, local tropical fruits
Biking and hiking around my site to do health outreach activities
Malagasy music
Fresh, local, pesticide-free, cheap, healthy food
Malagasy hospitality and sense of community
How easy it is to make friends here
The slow pace of life
The funny sounds people here make when speaking in Malagasy
Speaking in Malagasy in general
Frip (used clothing) markets and lambas (colorful, Malagasy cloth wraps)
Malagasy peoples’ unique sense of style
Warm weather all the time
How easy it is to live “green” (water conservation, no electricity, public transportation only, eating local and organic, lack of processed foods)
Free healthcare from Peace Corps
A non-office job
Lack of TV and Internet (I read more books and am more productive)
Fresh, homemade soymilk

My Favorite Fruits in Madagascar

Ampalibe (Jackfruit)- This is probably the funniest looking fruit in Madagasascar. It is spiky, bright green and very large, but there is no particular uniformity to its shape. When you cut it open, the smell hits you like a barn door in the face: sweet yet somewhat pungent, like it’s already rotting. Ampalibe is very, very sticky and there are many yellow pods of fruit that surround white, lima bean-shaped seeds. I think the fruit is delicious if you get a good one; sugary, juicy with a hint of banana flavor. It’s addicting, but can give you a stomach-ache if you over-indulge. The tree is tall and grand, with wide, round, dark green and orange leaves. When it fruits, it looks like it has huge tumors all over it, because of the large irregular shape of the fruit. The trees are all over the place here, lining the side of the road and adding to the dense, lushness of the forest. Always in season.

Manga (Mango)- The mango tree makes up a majority of the forest here, along with jackfruit and breadfruit trees. Their huge trunks and massive branches make for good shade and climbing. Need I say anything about the fruit? It’s wonderful; juicy sweet, fragrant, and a beautiful, orange color inside. There are several different varieties here and they are all delicious. They fruit twice a year too! You can also make good salads by grating the unripe mangoes when they are still green.

Mapaza (Papaya)- They are always in season and I even have a tree in my back yard (although there seem to be more papayas around now than there were before). There are two varieties: one that’s got smaller, elongated fruit and another with larger, tear-dropped or round-shaped fruit. The ones picked fresh off the tree from my back yard are ridiculously sweet and juicy. They are even better if you squeeze a little fresh lime on them. The flesh is soft and orange and there are black, round, tiny seeds that run down the center. The outside is green when unripe and turns yellowish when it ripens.

Mananasy (Pineapple)- a very cool looking plant. I had never seen the plant before (just the fruit) until I came to Madagascar. It’s very spicky and the fruit pops out of the top of the plant. Apparently you can plant a pineapple by cutting off the spiky green top of the fruit and sticking it in the ground. I haven’t tried it yet, though. I have three growing in my back yard, they are magenta colored and small right now, so still not ready for harvest yet. They are in season right now, though, and the pineapple here is amazingly sweet; sweeter than any pineapple I have ever had in the states. When I get a good one, it’s probably my favorite fruit here. You have to be careful about eating too much though, because it’s highly acidic and can give you sores on your tongue and heartburn. I think they are in season about twice or three times a year.

Avacado (Gavo be or Zavoka)- Avacado season (April/May) is amazing. They have a giant, darker skinned variety and a smaller, lighter green variety here. The inside is sweet, creamy and light green in color. Both varieties are delicious and make good guacamole, although there’s no cilantro here. By the time my cilantro in my garden was ready to harvest avocado season was already over.

Saoñambo (Breadfruit)- The saoñambo tree is the most spectacular tree in this region of Madagascar. It is one of the tallest in the forest here, with lush, giant, shiny green leaves that fan out and big, bright green, round balls hanging from every branch like Christmas decorations. The fruit can be eaten ripe or unripe, but needs to be cooked like any other starch. It grows wild here and is all over the place. People should use it as a staple food more than they do…they are too hooked on rice here. My favorite way to eat the fruit is when it is still firm and unripe. You can cut it up and fry it like french fries, and it almost tastes better than potatoes, because it stays a little soft and moist inside. People here make these really delicious fried bread-like balls out of them too, with salt, pepper, onions and garlic inside (really good with spicy cucumber salad.) When it’s soft and ripe, it’s surprisingly sweet. You can make a sweet porridge out of it by boiling it and mashing it up, although I’m not a huge fan.

Sakoaña (???)- Don’t think there’s an English word for this fruit. I have never seen it before coming to Madagascar. You can eat it when it is still green, but I think it tastes best when it’s ripe and orange-brownish in color. It tastes like crossed between a mango and a peach or nectarine, but you can’t eat the peel. It’s one of the juiciest fruits I have ever tasted. The pit is really funny looking, with spiky fibers sticking out of it. The only bummer is that they easily get worms or bugs in them, they are very messy to eat and the fibers get stuck in your teeth. But I guess most of the fruits and vegetables here get buggy very easily since there’s no pesticide use. It’s in season around the same time as avocadoes. The tree is huge; one of the tallest in the forest.

Konokono- (“Coeur de boeuf” in French, custard apple or cherimoya in English??) A small, round, pinkish, soft fruit shaped like a heart, which is probably why it’s called beef heart in French. The flesh inside is whitish, soft, custardy and sweet with little black seeds. It’s like eating a creamy, rich desert. Not sure if there is an English equivalent or if they have this fruit in South America or something. They were in season in October.

Voazato- (custard apple or cherimoya??) Like Konokono, but a little bigger and the skin is thicker and yellowish in color with dull spikes or eyes on the outside. The name in Malagasy literally means “100 seeds.” Suffice it to say, there are a lot of big, black seeds inside. The flesh is a little more firm and juicy than konokono, but still very custard-like and sweet. Both Konokono and voazato are best eaten with a spoon. It’s in season around late May, June, July.

Voanio (Coconut)- I love the unripe ones that have a lot of sweet water to drink and a little bit of soft flesh inside. They are really delicious, especially on a hot day. The ripe ones are also great to cook with. Vary aharo voanio (coconut rice), bonbon coco (coconut candies) and añantoto aharo voanio (pounded cassava leaves with coconut milk) are my favorites. The coconut milk is also good cooked with beans. They are hard to open though, especially if the outer husk is still attached. It’s a lot of work to grate the coconut by hand, too.

Polmosy (Grapefruit or pomello?)- Basically a large grapefruit. It has a thick, yellow rind and pinkish fruit inside. You can get juicy ones, but they are usually a little dry for a citrus. I like them, though. They’re tangy and sweet and have lots of vitamin C.

mailing info

hey, planning to change my po box to sambava soon, so dont send letters to my old adress anymore. you can just use the peace corps one I have posted now, and Ill post the new adress when I get it set up. updated wish list:
all set on the playing cards, thanks!
more coloring books or small interactive toys for kids
pens
lighters
suture kits (if you can find and are feasible to send)
photos
magazine and news clippings
letters
dental floss
toothbrushes
tea (especially herbal)
spices
herb seeds for gardening (cilantro, basil, rosemary, oregano, citronella)
other vegetable garden seeds are great too
cds and dvds (malagasies really like music videos if you can find)

27 Octobre 2010

Lots of adventures this month! I’ve still been going around to different villages, doing cooking demos and baby weighing with the nutrition workers. More baby weighing than anything else, though, because it’s hard to do cooking demonstrations when the nutrition organization has no money to pay the workers. We’ve been telling the women in different communities that if they want to have us cook with them, they need to supply the rice or corn or whatever staple food is locally available. Since many of the poorer villages don’t really have any rice to spare, we’ve mostly been doing just the baby weighing and health talks. It’s still been really great getting a chance to see more villages and work with new people, though.

The new volunteers came this month as well. I have an English teacher just 90km north of me, a health volunteer a 4 hour hike from my site, a health volunteer in Antalaha and an English teacher in Andapa. Last week, I biked down to Ambavala (a market town/taxi brousse stop 20km south of me) to meet up with the environment volunteer who is 25km south of me. From there we biked along a windy, bumpy, hilly dirt road out to the coast to visit the new health volunteer. It was quite an exhausting trip (4 hours on a bicycle for me). Though the bike ride was tiring, it was really neat to go down a road I’d never been down before and to see a new town I’d never been to but often heard about.

Once we met up in Ambavala, the other environment volunteer and I biked through dense forest interspersed with small villages and rice paddies. After about an hour and a half the path flattened out and became sandy. We passed a coconut grove and a lot of vanilla fields and crossed many rickety bridges over small streams and rivers. The road was fairly dry, though I can see how it would be impassible during rainy season. The health volunteer there has a really nice set-up, but he is very isolated from any big towns. People have told him that during the rainy season, he might not be able to leave site for several months. When we got to his site, we had a very warm welcome from the mayor and other community members. We mostly just hung out and talked, as it’s always so great to converse effortlessly with other English-speakers. There was also another French aid worker from Medecins de Monde who is posted there for two months. He doesn’t know much Malagasy, but converses with community members in French and is currently working on a cyclone relief project as well as a Morenga nutrition project and other community development projects. I look forward to working with the health volunteer there, because the commune I live in borders his, and there are a few villages out his way that I’ve never worked in before.

Life back at my site has its ups and downs. The public taps broke again for several weeks, so everyone had to fetch water from the river. At first, I tried braving the treacherously steep path down to the water, but its way too hard to climb back up the steep, muddy hill with a pail of water in one hand. I’m not as skilled as the Malagasy women. Some of them can balance a bucket of water on their head while also carrying a huge bin full of dishes they washed down by the river in one arm and another small pail in the other. It’s really amazing how much balance and coordination they have. I however, gave up on trying to compete with them; I broke down and hired the lady who fetches my neighbor’s water to carry my water as well. It’s only 100 ariary a bucket (20 cents), although I feel kind of weird about it because the woman is middle-aged. At least I provided her with a little bit of income. The taps finally started working again after a couple weeks, though. I’m glad for that, since everyone bathes and washes their clothes down by the water, and no one bleaches their water that they use in the kitchen. I was worried there might be a rise in diarrheal disease if it lasted any longer.

Although I hired someone to carry my water, I still go down to the river to wash clothes. Even though the path is steep, and it’s still kind of hard to carry a big bin of clothes down to the river, I like going down there to hang out with the other women doing chores and to watch kids playing in the water. It also gives me something to do on Saturdays when everyone else is out working in their rice fields. It’s not uncommon for me to see kids fishing or a flock of ducks paddling by or children playing in a wooden canoe they commandeered from the man who makes a living taking people across the river when it’s too high to wade through in rainy season. The other day some kids were using large banana stalks to float down the river kind of like those foam noodles American kids play with in swimming pools back in the States. It was kind of a funny site!

As far as work goes, I’ve been pretty busy at the clinic and biking and hiking around to other villages to do health outreach programs. A few times I’ve biked to visit my friend who’s a nutrition worker 7km north of me. She likes to hike out to remote areas and weigh babies whose mothers don’t normally make it out to her weighing center each Tuesday. We’ve met up several times to weigh babies and give health talks to the mothers. I enjoy just hanging out and talking with her too, because she’s really sweet and helps me understand Malagasy culture better (which is also part of my job as a Peace Corps volunteer). One day she even took me out to her vanilla and rice fields. Her nephew taught me how to pollinate the vanilla flowers by hand (since Madagascar doesn’t have the natural pollinator for the vanilla plants that originally came from Mexico). It was really delicate and fascinating work. After pollinating the flowers, we hiked over to her cassava fields and she dug up a few cassava roots (one of the staple foods here) for me to take home. I don’t really like the starchy root very much, but she insisted that I take some as a “voandalana,” or, gift for the road.

This past week was health week, a government sponsored program to distribute vitamin A and deworming pills to all children under five as well as pregnant women twice a year. This time around we also distributed malaria prevention medication to pregnant women and measles vaccines to children under four. On Monday I went to the village 9k south of me that has a small rural clinic I frequently work at. There, I gave health talk and helped the clinic workers distribute the medications all morning. In the afternoon we went over to the one private school in the village and distributed vaccines, vitamin A and deworming medication to all the four-year olds in the kindergarten class. I was kind of on the fence about that one, because one of the workers was using a pair of scissors to threaten the stubborn kids who didn’t want to come forward for their medicines and shots. I spent the night at the doctor’s house there, because the next morning I, along with his wife and daughter and a few other workers, hiked two and a half hours from there out to a very remote village. We had to leave at 4:30 in the morning so we could get there early enough to distribute medications and vaccines and still have time to stop by two other villages on the way back to give out meds. By the time we got back to the doctor’s house it was 5:30 in the evening. I was so exhausted from having woken up at four in the morning and having hiked five hours that day. The hike through the dense forest and rice paddies was really beautiful, though, and I got a chance to see more of the commune that I hadn’t seen before. Going out to the remote villages was a eye-opening, because the poverty out there is much more visible than in town or even in the neighboring villages that I’ve been to. Almost all the houses were dilapidated shacks made of sticks and leaves and most of the children under 10 showed signs of kwashiorkor (protein deficiency). It’s unfortunate that the vitamin A and deworming distribution was only for children under 5, because the children over 5 were still, very clearly malnourished. Many had bloated bellies, ribs sticking out of their chests, skinny arms and reddish hair. Its amazing to me that even in an area as lush as here, where things grow so easily due to the frequent rains and heavily forested areas, that people still have a hard time finding the resources to farm and forage for adequate amounts of nutritious foods. I’m hoping that I can return to those villages again to do some gardening and nutrition projects if the communities are interested.

The next day I biked back to town and worked at the hospital, because we finally got HIV tests in to administer to all the pregnant women. Since I knew the midwife wasn’t going to do pre-counseling even though she’s had the training before, I made sure to talk to all the pregnant women beforehand about the HIV test, about the illness itself and about prevention measures. HIV/AIDS doesn’t seem to be as stigmatized here as it is in many other African countries, but the more concerning issue is that awareness levels are very low. Many simply do not know what the illness is or how it is transmitted, and those who have heard of HIV, think that it doesn’t exist in this part of Madagascar. Although the country-wide prevalence is still very low, it could easily spread very quickly, because nobody uses condoms, there’s a high rate of STDs and many are unaware of the illness and its consequences. Afterwards, the doctor gave a health talk as well. He stressed using family planning as he announced that on average, 60-70 births occur at the hospital per month. I knew there were a lot of pregnant women around, but I didn’t realize the number was that high! That’s not even including the many women who give birth at home or in the 4 other small, rural clinics in the remote areas of the commune.

In the afternoon I helped out with family planning. A lot of women showed up, but most of them were regulars who have been using the Depo shot for several years now. Every time I give a health talk to the women about the different family planning methods, I always stress condom use and talk about STDs and HIV/AIDS. Nobody takes the free condoms and too many of them are really young or have husbands that sleep around. It’s so frustrating when everyone here says that men won’t use condoms, but if I can just get one young person to take some home, it will have made my day.

Other than that, all three of my grant applications for funding health projects got rejected, since there’s not much government funding to go around here in Madagascar…so I resubmitted my well project under Peace Corps Partnership. If it gets approved, I’ll post the link to the Peace Corps website where interested donors can contribute online. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

And along with other unfortunate news, I found out that I had Giardia for the past two weeks. At first I wasn’t sure what was going on because the symptoms were so mild in the beginning. After it didn’t go away for over a week but got worse, and after talking to other volunteers and to the Peace Corps doctors, I found out that I probably had Giardia. So I went around to five pharmacies until I found the last stock of Flagyl (Giardia medication) left in the whole town and bought them out of it. After a day of taking the medication, I no longer had to run to the bathroom five times every morning. So I’m guessing that was the cause of my mysterious GI problem. Yay for fun tropical illnesses! Hopefully my next entry will be a little more uplifting.

18-28 Sept

18 Sept 2010

I’ve been doing quite a bit of traveling in the past month or so. I was back in Tana (the capital) at the beginning of September again to help train the new group of health volunteers that recently came into country. It was really great to meet all of them, especially the four new folks that will be coming to my area, the Sava region, although it was really cold up at the Peace Corps training site! I was only there for a few days and was already anxious to return to my site, where it is much warmer. The two who will be posted nearest to me are an education volunteer and another health volunteer. I’m looking forward to working with them in the coming months.

After only a few days back at site, I was off again, traveling to an environment volunteer’s site near Ambilobe. She lives way out in the boonies (ambanivolo be, as we call it in Malagasy) and her tiny village has very limited access to food. She requested me to come up and help her with a nutrition project in her village. The long trek up there was quite an adventure. When you look at it on the map, it doesn’t seem like her site would be that far from mine, but the road from Vohemar to Ambilobe is in terrible shape…and it doesn’t help that the vehicles are in bad shape too. On average it takes about 2-3 hours to get from my site to Vohemar, and then 10-12 hours to get from Vohemar to Ambilobe.

It actually took me 15 hours to get from Vohemar to Ambilobe, because the transmission blew out in the car I was riding in, just 1hr into the journey. Then we had to wait for three hours for someone to bring a new transmission, and then another hour for them to repair it (with no power tools). After that, a couple hours outside of Ambilobe, the engine started acting up, which delayed us probably another couple hours. The car kept stalling out every few kilometers, and then the driver would have to open the hood and tinker with the engine to start it up again. It was a nightmare. I really don’t think that tiny buggy-like four-seater was really meant to go on those roads. This is the kind of road that those absurd, giant SUVs that soccer moms in the states drive on paved roads are really meant for. We’re talking divots and potholes the size of a small Jacuzzi, a two foot layer of dust on some sections of the road, and boulders and rocks strewn across the entire stretch, just for added pleasure.

On top of that, I have a feeling that car I was riding in was very old, as I could see the ground underneath my feet through a few rusted out holes on the floor in front of my seat. At some points, dust and sand was spraying up at my feet and covering the bottom of the car. I’m guessing the engine was held together with paper clips and rubber bands, too. When I finally got to Ambilobe at 10:30 at night, I was slightly darker in color, due to the nice coating of dust all over everything and the three hours I spent sitting in the sun, waiting for the driver’s friend to bring a new transmission. Luckily, my fellow environment volunteer was there to meet me. We spent the night at her friend’s house and headed up to her site the next day. Before we left, we made sure to stock up on veggies at the nice big market in Ambilobe (cabbage, leeks, green beans, carrots, garlic, onions, papaya…they even had cashews!). Then we hopped in another bush taxi and headed north. It took maybe an hour to fill up the bus with people, and then probably another two hours to get to Martaolana. From there, we stopped for a quick plate of rice and then walked three and a half hours out into the desert and grasslands to her site. It was quite a shock to see how different the area is from my region. I am very fortunate to live in a lush, tropical, rainy setting with easy access to fresh fruits and a beautiful surrounding of dense forest. Up north, everything is deforested, so there’s a lot of desertification. Instead of green, brown is the dominant color here, with strong winds blowing dust and sand at you every few minutes. I can see why it would be hard for her village to access fruits and vegetables. Before I came, she warned me that the people in her community mostly eat just rice and beans…sometimes tomatoes or greens if they can find them.

When we finally arrived at her village, I was shocked to see how small it was. I live in a town of around 6-8000 people in a commune (kind of like a county) of 50-60,000 people total. Her village has maybe 50 people in it! Very quaint to say the least. It was so wonderful and refreshing, though, to be in such a rural setting. Everyone I met was so welcoming, also. The village borders a forest that is known for the “ankomba joby,” or, black lemur. There is a Malagasy NGO posted in the village that has been working to connect sections of the forest, which once used to be continuous but has quickly been diminishing due to logging for firewood and lumber. They have a pepenier going down in the village, so they can transplant native trees into the deforested areas nearby. There are sections of the forest that once used to play host to the black lemur, but are now empty because the lemurs cannot cross the deforested sections of their previous habitat. In addition to tree-planting, the NGO is also monitoring the lemur colonies population and movement. The environment volunteer there works both with the NGO, doing an assessment on land-use in the area and also with the people who live in the village to help improve their quality of life.

The first morning I was there, I met with all the mothers in the village as well as the village leaders and talked about proper breastfeeding practices, vaccines, the three basic food groups (starches, fruits and veggies and proteins) and Morenga, an amazing tree that grows here whose leaves have tons of vitamins, calcium, protein and iron. The next day we met with everyone at an empty plot next to the creek near the village and built a community garden. The men built the fence and the women prepared the beds. We talked about double-digging, companion planting and caring for the garden by weeding and watering. We planted beets, eggplant, bok choy, lettuce, tomatoes, radish, cucumbers and carrots. The NGO workers said they would also work on a Morenga pepenier and transplant the trees around the garden to make a living fence, once they were big enough. A strong fence was definitely a must, as there are lots of cattle that roam around the village destroying fences and eating up people’s gardens. We also stressed the importance of making up a schedule for who would tend to the garden each day, and the women were already discussing it when we finished planting! Overall it was a great success. I was really surprised, because I generally set very low expectations for even the smallest of projects as things tend to be really unorganized here and move much more slowly than we’re used to in the states. I just hope that the women can keep up their interest in the garden and tend to it routinely over the long term so that they can reap the benefits. In the very long term, the NGO is hoping to turn the area into more of an eco-tourist destination by building some bungalows and a restaurant/lodge for visitors interested in seeing the lemurs and staying overnight. They are hoping that if the villagers maintain interest in farming vegetables, they can even supply the restaurant with produce to get some money flowing into the community. It’s a lofty goal, but it would be really cool if it actually happened.

The day I left I was fortunate enough to have the chance to take a guided walk with a member of the NGO into the forest to see the lemurs. Some of them have collars on them so they can be tracked and studied. I was fortunate to get a close look at maybe five or ten of them. It was so cool! They were really cute. It was also really interesting to get a look at the different sections of forest and see how they were trying to connect them into one continuous chain…a great end to my visit up north.

On the way back, I managed to catch a bush taxi that was in much better shape than the first one, although everyone was really crammed in there for the long ride. Only 12 hours this time, and I managed to get a ride direct to my site instead of stopping in Vohemar, since the bus was going all the way to Sambava.

28 September 2010

The new volunteers were installed this week. One of them stopped by my house to pick up some furniture that was being stored for him here. His site is actually pretty close by…only about a four hour hike, maybe a 2 ½ hour bike ride. I and the volunteer 28k south of me are planning to bike there soon to check it out. It’s near the coast, and I’ve never been there, so I’m excited to see his site.

Things at my site have been going slower than I’d like, as usual. You have to be very very patient here in Madagascar when trying to get things done…and I think that probably goes for Africa in general and for Peace Corps too, for that matter. The three projects I applied for funding for are still waiting to be approved. I have gotten some things accomplished, though. I’ve been biking to the smaller, rural clinic 9km south of me and bringing their vaccines on my bike so they can vaccinate babies and pregnant women every Thursday. We recently got the swine flu vaccine, and all pregnant women are supposed to receive it along with their anti-tetanus vaccines now. When I bring the vaccines, I help by explaining the vaccine schedule to all the mothers and then recording the vaccinations in the clinic’s log book and in each baby’s or mother’s “karinem” (small personal notebook that holds all their medical records, which they are responsible for and need to take with them every time they come to the clinic). The nurse posted at the clinic is really great. He and his wife, who weighs babies on vaccine day as the village rep for the national nutrition organization, are very hard-working and are really great about including me in the activities that go on at the clinic. They always make me stay for lunch before I head back to my town in the afternoon.

In addition to working at the rural clinic, I also got a chance to head out to a village I’d never been to, that’s a 2 hour hike from my town. I went with one of the local nutrition workers whose sister lives out there. We planned to meet with the mothers in the village to talk about nutrition, weigh babies and do a cooking demonstration. I left the house at 5am that morning. We had headed out early, hoping to arrive at around 7:30, have breakfast there, and then meet with the villagers by 9am so we could start cooking by 10. As it turned out everyone was at church, so the town was really quiet until about 10:30/11…Africa time. At least I got a chance to meet all the village elders.

After chatting with the president of the village, I gave a talk on vaccines, breastfeeding and healthy foods, and then the nutrition worker started the cooking demo. It was probably around 11:30 at that time. Needless to say, the program took a lot longer than we expected. While the food was cooking (rice porridge with peanut butter and a milk and egg custard), we weighed all the babies at the village president’s office. It was really noisy and crowded. All the kids who were able to, stuffed themselves into the little house to watch us put the babies in big blue pants and hang them from a produce scale, so they could giggle and make fun of their little brothers and sisters being weighed. I will admit, the babies do look pretty funny hanging from those scales, but it was really loud and overwhelming with 50 people inside that one little room along with screaming and laughter and aggressive mothers pushing their babies’ “karinems” at me trying to get their kid weighed first.

Aside from the crowded weighing session, it was a really great day. The hike was absolutely gorgeous: through the woods, across a stream and past some rice paddies towards the mountains. On the way there, we stopped at a small village to pick up some fresh cow milk. I actually got to watch the guy milking the cow. The Malagasy were making fun of me because it was the first time I had seen a live cow-milking in action. On the way back, we were running a little late, and the sun had already set before we were half-way home. We walked by the moonlight, which actually wasn’t too bad, because the moon was really bright that night. There were a fair amount of people still out and about due to the moon’s illuminating glow. Even though I had never been down the path to that village, there were kids shouting my name at each village we passed the whole way there and back. Sometimes I feel like a celebrity or something. I was so exhausted by the time we got back at 7:30pm, since we had hiked a total of 4 ½ hours and had been awakes since 5am. It had been a really long but good day. I hope to do it again sometime soon.

Today I got a chance to meet with the parent’s organization at the local CEG (junior high school). I found out from the director of the school that they were meeting today to do some repairs on the school buildings, and I asked if I could stop by, because I’m planning to start a health club at the school this year. I wanted to let all the parents know so that they could encourage their kids to join. I also asked them to let me know if they had any suggestions for projects or health topics that we should focus on. I also let them know that there’s funding available for the club to do HIV/AIDS trainings or festivals if the kids are interested. All the parents there seemed fairly receptive.

I’m keeping my expectations low, but hoping that the health club can meet at least once a month to learn about a variety of topics, like malaria prevention, family planning, clean water and HIV/AIDS. I’d be really thrilled if we could do a program with the local radio station or do peer education outreach in the rural areas in order to reach the youth who have dropped out of school or who don’t study in town. I’m really hoping to focus on life skills and prevention of STIs, because there are so many kids who drop out of school due to unplanned pregnancies and a lot of STIs at the clinics too. I especially want the young girls to learn that they can say no to older guys and wait until they’re ready or negotiate condom use. If I can even get anyone to show up on a regular basis, it will still be really hard to talk about that kind of stuff in Malagasy. My language is improving everyday, and I have a few manuals on life skills and HIV/AIDS in Malagasy, but it will be challenging nonetheless. It’s difficult enough as it is discussing safe sex and how to make life choices in English!

That’s about it for now. On Thursday, I’m planning to do a cooking demo with the nutrition worker at the rural clinic where I help out with vaccines. Then on Sunday I’m planning to bike to another village just down the road with a different nutrition worker to do a cooking demo and weigh babies again. We’re going to go in the afternoon, though, so it doesn’t conflict with anyone’s church schedule.