4 Juin 2011

So I have come to the conclusion that my community is really awesome. After about one year in Peace Corps, I had started to really feel at home in my host country, Madagascar. Now I’m finding that after one and a half years in (once you only have six months left), I almost don’t want to leave! It’s kind of sad realizing I don’t have much time left here, and I still have so much to do. Having finally become fluent in the language and having made so many friends will make it even harder for me to leave, as well.

My well project still isn’t finished, because we ran across several obstacles building the second well including a very deep water table and soil erosion when digging the second hole. The community had to re-dig the second well twice and ended up having to use much more cement than expected. I’m hoping we will be finished with this second well soon! Everyone is working really hard to get it done, so I have faith that the project will still be a success regardless of the frustrating obstacles and delays.

My solar panel project for the rural clinic in my village was funded very quickly, so now we are just waiting on the community to gather their 25% of the funds before we can purchase the solar panel in Sambava. The doctor supplied the head of each neighborhood in our village with a receipt book, so that we could keep a clear record of who has donated to the project. People in the community have been really great about contributing their share, and it won’t be too long before we will be able to make the purchase. Some neighborhoods are already out of receipts, and the community is having a meeting today to see how close we are to reaching the total. The mayor of the commune also announced that he would pledge half of the 25% community contribution out of his own pocket if the village members were able to contribute the other half. I was really impressed with the mayor’s generosity, especially given the general global perception that there are many problems with corruption within African governments!

My Healthy Teens Club has been going really well. We have been having great discussions about HIV/AIDS and Teen Reproductive health at our meetings lately, and are hoping to hold an AIDS prevention festival in late June or July with testing and an outdoor movie projection about HIV/AIDS. It gets tiring biking the 10km from my village into town to meet with them every week, though, as there are many steep hills in my area. I am in really great shape now for sure!

I have also been enjoying working with the local nutrition workers. The one in my village who is also the doctor’s wife has been great about counseling the mothers of young children on nutrition, weighing babies every week and holding cooking demonstrations. I have assisted her with the health education and weighing both in our village at the clinic on vaccine days and in a neighboring village we walk to once a month to meet with the mothers. Yesterday I also biked 10km into town to meet one of the other nutrition workers in my commune; we hiked for an hour into the woods to weigh babies and hold a cooking demonstration with mothers in another rural area. It was an exhausting day, especially since it has been raining non-stop for the past few days and the path was absurdly muddy and slippery. The hike through the forest was still absolutely beautiful, and the work was rewarding.

Many of the babies we weighed that day had lost weight from the time the nutrition worker weighed them last month, which we were surprised at as it is harvest time. Theoretically the mothers and children should be getting enough food now that there is so much new rice around. After talking with the mothers, we discovered that many of the children had had diarrhea during the last month, which makes sense as it has been very rainy lately. There has been a huge spike in malaria cases as well, even though we just had insecticide treated bed net distribution not too long ago. I have a health talk on diarrhea prevention, stressing hand-washing with soap, boiling water for consumption, exclusive breastfeeding for children under 6 months and rehydration for those children suffering from diarrhea. We also individually counseled mothers on nutrition and feeding strategies, especially for those children who had lost weight or were already underweight for their age. Overall it was a successful and rewarding, yet very tiring day.

I’ve also been staying busy with goal 2 of Peace Corps, learning about the culture of one’s host country. Rice harvesting season still isn’t over, so everyone has been working extremely hard, picking, drying and pounding rice (vanilla season is coming up soon). The other week, one of the women in the village gave me a rather large quantity of rice that she had picked from her field. It was really sweet of her, and it was a great opportunity for me to learn how to dry the rice in the sun and to pound the rice by hand in order to get the husks off. Thankfully I had neighbors and kids that helped me with the whole process, as I have never farmed rice before and am clueless about how the whole process works.

After setting the rice out in the sun on a mat one morning, it was dry enough to pound. Then I and a bunch of the young neighborhood girls who often come to visit pounded the rice. It was really fun learning from them, and I also took pictures, which they absolutely loved. They were very amused by both the picture-taking and my lack of proficiency in the rice pounding and winnowing. Rice pounding is hard work, but it didn’t take as long as I thought it would to pound all of my rice. It was very satisfying when I was finally able to cook my first batch of white rice that I had dried and pounded myself! I also gave a cup each to the girls who had helped me and promised them that I would bring them back developed pictures that I took once I go to Antananarivo in August.

26 June, the big celebration of Madagascar’s Independence is coming up, too. Everyone is preparing for the huge party that lasts almost a week long. The doctor’s wife has already requested me to perform with her, her daughter and some of our neighbor lady friends in a song and dance competition called “Podium.” We will be rehearsing several dances to some current, popular Malagasy songs and then performing them over the course of a few evenings in front of the whole village, along with other contestants. We are even getting matching outfits made for the occasion. I had to meet them in Sambava to buy the cloth and get fitted at the tailor. I think it’ll be a lot of fun, even if I do make a fool of myself dancing in front of everybody!