The Tech Presentations

Written on September 15, 2011
Peace Corps Training Center, Mantasoa

    Tomorrow’s the day.  Tomorrow everything changes.
    Since we returned from Tech Trip, we Health Trainees have been busy as ants.  Immediately after my last blog post from Tana, we went on another trip: Demystification, or Demyst.
    Luckily the destination wasn’t so far afield this time; the fourteen of us were divided into four groups to visit current Volunteers relatively close to Tana.  Kim, Kimball, Monica, and I traveled with Health Volunteer Brianna Janz to her site in Ankazobe, about three hours northwest of the capital.
    The four days of Demyst passed pretty sleepily.  We slept late, cooked American-style meals with Brianna, and explored the town.  I’d been expecting a little more excitement, but I’m certainly not complaining.  And that’s the point of the Demyst trip anyway, to show you what life’s really going to be like at site.  Looking back on the week I spent in Gala Beri, it’s much the same.  If there’s no clinic-related work to do, your chores for the whole day may take you half the morning.  Time passes at a crawl that can actually be quite pleasant.
    The chance to see Ankazobe up close carried a special significance for me, since Manambaro is a town of about the same size, around 25,000 people.  That may seem tiny to a city-dweller, but I’m from Clarke County, Virginia.  And not even from Berryville, but from the middle of the forests and fields, the definition and epitome of countryside.  Gala Beri had 400 people, and that number seemed perfectly manageable for me.  But 25,000?  That’s like a metropolis, at least in my head.
    However, now that I’ve had the chance to walk around Ankazobe, my site down south doesn’t seem so intimidating.  Brianna seemed close with her neighbors and the many shopkeepers near her house.  And it was easy to get out of the town and find the open fields and country roads that I’m used to.
    This time next week, Manambaro’ll be my home.
    When we got back from Demyst, we hit the ground running on our three Technical Presentation.  This presentations are basically designed to make sure you can competently give health-related lectures to Malagasy audiences in our respective Malagasy dialects.
    The first presentation was a short ten minutes, to be performed for the language training staff.  I chose to speak on vaccines (“vaksiny”), because I had an idea in mind for a short allegorical story, a fable, that would communicate the importance of vaccinating children.
    Here it is, in short version:

There is a strong wrestler.  He can defeat all of his opponents.  But one day, he hears of six opponents whom he will not be able to defeat, because of their special moves.
    The wrestler’s friend comes up with a solution: he will watch the six opponents and study their special moves.  The wrestler and his friend train hard.  When the opponents come, the wrestler defeats them, because he knows their special moves.

The wrestler is a person, his friend is the vaccine, and the six opponents are Tetanus, Whooping Cough, Diptheria, Measles, Polio, and Meningitis.  After the story, I had a spiel about how mothers should think of the diseases that can be beaten, but only with proper vaccination.  Tovo gave me feedback on how I could improve the presentation with more illustrations, or even by getting actual wrestlers to act out the parts.
    The second presentation was to be at a school.  We had to speak in pairs for two classes for an hour each.  Kimball and I prepared an interactive lecture on nutrition (“sakafo ara-pahasalamana,” literally, “food for health”).  We were assigned to teach Cinquiéme (seventh grade, approximately), and Troisiéme (ninth grade).  Having never taught a group of kids before, Kimball was dreading the task, groaning about how he has no patience for children and how the whole thing would probably end in disaster.  I assured him that, if anything, he would come off as cantankerously charming.
    We filled up forty minutes for the Cinquiéme kids by explaining the three main food groups to the kids: grains, proteins, and fruits and vegetables.  Then we divided them into two groups and went out side to read from a picture book.  The book, Boky Ara-Pahasalamana, “The Book For Health,” was put together by former Madagascar Volunteers and has text for the stories in both English and Malagasy.
    Kimball had gradually warmed to the kids over the hour.  He read faster than I did, and ended up with a final three minutes with nothing planned for the lesson.  So, since the story had been about hygiene and had-washing, he improvised.
    “Oh no, maloto ny tànana, my hands are dirty, don’t let me touch you!” he cried.
    The kids shrieked in glee at the game of tag Kimball had started.  They chased each other round and round the school yard, darting around the other groups of children each surrounding a Trainee.  The students clustered around me stared longingly.  Clearly they had received the less cool of the strange, bearded white teachers.
    After the first class, teaching Troisiéme was a piece of cake.  A little less enjoyable, though, since the older kids were more skeptical of the nutrition lecture.  I guess it takes a lot to convince a Malagasy that you need less rice, not more.
    All of us left the school feeling pretty good about the day.  Teaching Health topics to schoolchildren turned out not to be nearly as hard as we’d thought it would be.
    But after that it was a mad scramble to finish our third Tech Presentation; we only had four days to work on it.  This one was supposed to be on the topic that we hoped to make our main focus at site.  I chose AIDS, STIs, and condoms.  As a flourish I added a little bit at the end reminding teenage boys that getting a girl pregnant may not just ruin her life, but yours as well if her family insists you get married or decides to make you pay child support.  Rigobert, my Antanosy teacher, was very patient in helping me translate the whole six-part spiel.
    We presented in the school in Lohomby for our families on Tuesday the 13th.  The lectures took all morning, but everyone did a fantastic job.  We arrived back at the Training center for a late lunch and a well-deserved nap.
    That night we got the news that all twenty-seven of us in the stage had passed our final Language exam.  So no one gets left behind.  During Training, no one has Early Terminated, nor been Medically Separated, nor been dismissed.  The twenty-seven of us that met in a hotel in Philadelphia will all take the next step together.
    Tomorrow.