28 Avril 2011

Lately life at site has been a mix of a few busy days with stretches of a whole lot of nothing. Right now the schools have been on a two week vacation for Easter (like our spring break) so I haven’t had any work to do at the schools. It’s also harvest time, so everyone is out in their fields picking rice on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. On days that they’re not out in the fields, they’re laying out their rice to dry on mats in the sun or pounding their rice by hand to get the husks off.

Rice farming and processing is quite intensive work, which must be the reason why all the Malagasies are so strong and in such good shape. Both the men and women are really buff, they all have really low blood pressure, and can run through the forest for several hours without stopping to rest or drink water while carrying ridiculously heavy loads (especially for their small size) on their shoulders or heads. Malagasies seem to spend a majority of their life preparing the fields, building barrages, planting and transplanting, weeding, harvesting, drying, pounding, sorting and cooking and eating mounds and mounds of rice. I have never come across another culture so obsessed with rice in all my travels!

On another note, my well project unfortunately still isn’t finished, because the builders ran into some obstacles when digging the second well. They didn’t hit the water table in a good spot, so there was sand and dirt mixing in with the water where they had intended to build the well. The builders had to dig another hole (all of this is by hand, keep in mind), and the water table was still much further down than with the first well. They have finally finished digging, but the president of the women’s association still has to take some additional bags of cement out to the site since the second well is so deep. Once the well is finally finished, I’ll be able to go out there with the women’s group and hold trainings on proper well use and maintenance and other hygiene and sanitation measures that can prevent against schistosomiasis and diarrheal diseases, of which there’s a high prevalence in their community. Until then, I’m just waiting though.

My application for funds for the solar panel at the village clinic was approved by PC Tana and Washington, so it’s up on the PC website now. Just waiting for it to be fully funded and then for the funds to be transferred to my account so my community can move forward on that project.

I’m still helping out at the clinic every morning, but things have been fairly quiet. Last week there was a little more to do, because it was health week. On one especially busy day, I left my house at 6am and hiked with several other health workers out to three different surrounding villages to distribute vitamin A and deworming pills to pregnant women and children under 5. On the other days of health week, I helped out at the clinic where we vaccinated children under 2 and gave out the remaining vitamins. By the end of the week there wasn’t much to do, as most people had gotten their meds and vaccines during the first few days of health week.

Aside from work, I’ve been trying to stay active by jogging every other morning and playing soccer with the local women’s team. I’ve gotten up to 10km now, which I’m happy about. The soccer practices are really fun, too. I feel like we’re already improving, even though we’ve only had a few sessions. I also still meet with my adult English class every Thursday, which has been fun. Some of the students in the class are getting really good. They can have a conversation by asking and answering simple questions like “Where are you going?” or “What did you do on Tuesday?” It’s nice to be able to practice chatting with them, and one of the ladies on my soccer team is also in the class, so she’s become a good friend.

This past weekend we celebrated Easter, which is a pretty big thing here too, since a lot of Malagasies are very Christian. Most people just go to church on Sunday, but Easter Monday is the big celebration when people get together and have a picnic with lots of good food. Malagasies typically have meat on holidays. Any kind of meat here is expensive, so it’s more of a special treat rather than an everyday food. My neighbors raise pigs and decided to slaughter one and sell the meat for Easter. Unfortunately, that meant they had the radio blasting starting from midnight on Sunday and going all through the day till around noon…I think as an advertising tactic. People were coming by their house to chat and to buy meat starting during the middle of that night when they slaughtered the pig. Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep at that time.

On Monday the doctor and his wife invited me over to their house along with the neighbor’s family. All their kids were in town for Easter Vacation as well, so there were tons of people that came together to share the midday meal. They brought out chairs and tables into the backyard and had their generator running so we could watch music videos and hang out before it was time for the picnic. The doctor’s wife prepared some homemade noodles with greenbeans and carrots that she bought in Sambava. They mixed in ground meat but very thoughtfully set aside a portion for me without meat, because they knew I’m vegetarian…it was very sweet of them! After eating, all the kids gathered around the TV to watch a commando film, and the rest of us went out to the soccer field to watch a local men’s league match. Overall, it was a really nice celebration.

The past week has been really slow…haven’t had much going on and the clinic has been fairly quiet. I’ve just been hanging out and getting a lot of reading and crossword puzzles done. Since I’ve been at my house a lot, the village kids have been stopping by to visit and play cards frequently. It’s actually been really nice having them visit, because they do all my chores like fetching water and washing clothes. I have fun chatting with them, too, since they ask me all sorts of funny questions about America. They also found out that I love spicy things, so they brought me a huge pile of fresh chilies (“sakay” in Malagasy) from the plants that grow by their houses. I was so grateful, because I ran out of my stash and have developed a somewhat disturbing addiction to “sakay” since I’ve been in Madagascar.

The kids kind of went overboard though, so now I have so many chilies sitting around I don’t know what to do with. It’s kind of dangerous, because some of them are very VERY hot, but I can’t seem to stop eating them. We’re talking habanero hot. They come in the prettiest variety of shapes, sizes and colors. The hottest ones burn all the way from your nose through your esophagus, down to your stomach all the way through your large intestine. I think I will have destroyed my insides by eating too much sakay by the time I leave here. But hey, at least I can request as many antacids from the Peace Corps Medical Office as I need!