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.