Candy From Strangers

The combined vaccination team covering the eleven villages, including Manambaro.

Pierrette administers vaccine to a squalling child.

Meat tree!  Not related to polio.

Pierrette handling the vials of polio vaccine.

Shiny new bike!

Written January 28, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    “It’s candy!  It’s candy!  It’s sweet!  Don’t cry, kid!”
    Repeat for six and a half hours without respite.  That was my Friday.
    This week the health workers in almost all of the villages around Manambaro came together for a polio vaccination campaign.  As many of you know, polio has been wiped out in the developed world because of health professionals administering the vaccine effectively and thoroughly.  Polio is spread through fecal-oral transmission and often causes the muscles in the legs to atrophy or become paralyzed.  It is a particularly insidious disease because it is possible for children to go for years as carriers, infecting many other children, without showing any symptoms themselves.
    There are two versions of the polio vaccine: injectable and oral.  Many health workers in the developing world use the oral solution developed by Albert Sabin in 1962.  Children under five require three vaccinations of two drops each spaced one month apart to achieve full immunity.
    And guess who got to administer the drops to these wriggling, bawling toddlers?
    In truth the kids followed a pretty predictable bell curve in terms of crying and/or struggling.  Some took it obediently with nary a doubt in their minds as to our benevolent intentions.  Some wailed piteously.  The worst were a scattering of four-year-olds who were big enough and panicked enough to really put up a fight.  I suspect that these kids were smart enough to grasp the concept of poison-- “poison” in Malagasy translates literally as “medicine that does harm,” making it that much easier for kids to visualize.
    And all the time we kept assuring them it was candy.  Pierrette, one of the health workers, seized on my vazaha-ness and further elaborated it into American candy.  It’s sweet, it’s sweet!  But it wasn’t sweet; the vaccine is bitter and salty.  And anyway, not one of the kids trusted us that it ever was candy in the first place.  You might wonder why we even bothered calling it candy.
    But we got it done, the whole town.  And I’ve now seen more of Manambaro than I ever realized was there.  Some of the town appears to defy the laws of space, TARDIS-like, especially in the Maromoky neighborhood.  From the outside it looks like a small cluster of trees, maybe the size of a city block.  But inside the trees there are dozens of households, and they’re not even that close together.
    This is the first major hands-on Health project I’ve done in Manambaro, and it was a success.
    Early I got my bike in the mail and assembled it.  Totally brand-new, straight from the factory.  Smooth as silk, glossy as jade.  I’ve yet to try it out for any significant distance, but I will soon.  Now I’ll be able to accompany AVIA on their trips to the bush, regardless of whether they have space for me in the 4x4.
    But the first thing I have to think about is my mental state.  The fleas in my bed have gotten more aggressive than ever, robbing me of sleep.  I’ve had a lot less general patience of late.
    This deprivation coincides, like two storm fronts colliding, with what must be my Six Month Crisis.  It’s a thing that every Volunteer goes through, though for me it’s hitting in my fourth month, and for others I’ve talked to it’s come as late as their tenth.  Basically, the novelty of living in a foreign country wears off, suddenly and jarringly.  You start focusing on the negatives, like how there’s trash everywhere and too few kids are in school and no one wants to eat greens, even though they’re chock-full of vitamins.
    But it’s just a phase, a phase I’ll get through.  It can only get better from here.
    And the first step towards It Getting Better is clear: murder the hell out of these fleas by any means necessary.

The Children of Tsihary

A villager receives a tetanus shot at the CSB.

Rodin photobombs my picture of the neighborhood boys.

A group of kids before class at Tsihary.

Tsihary students brandish the sticks they've brought for the school cooking fires.

Purple flowers on the rice paddies north of Manambaro.

Women harvesting rice to the east of town.

Some of the posters I got for Christmas, plus the new setup I rigged for my mosquito net.

Written January 19, 2012
Manambaro

This post is dedicated to the Volunteers and staff of Peace Corps Morocco, as well as the Peace Corps Africa Transition Team.  One year ago they gave Peace Corps Niger help and comfort when we needed it most.

    The percussive CRACK outside my window could only have been a lightning strike.  There’s a seventy-foot-tall radio relay tower in the yard, the highest thing around for miles.  It was around midnight, and outside the rain was coming down in sheets.  Another CRACK startled me awake a few hours later.
    Last week a tropical depression moved through the south of the island before angling off towards South Africa.  The Malagasy Weather Service (the “Méteo”) didn’t detect it until it was already buffeting the southeast coast.  Luckily, Peace Corps staff were monitoring international reports and sent out mass texts warning Volunteers beforehand.
    My house is built like a fortress, so I’ve a lot less to fear from storm winds than the average Volunteer.  Nor is flooding a concern.  I live on a hill, and many square miles of rice paddies would have to flood before the water could even reach the foot of it.
    But the storm definitely made things soggier around the town.  In some areas there’s no other option but to wade through ankle-deep streams that have formed as water drains from one field to another.  Makes me wonder what’ll happen once we get a proper cyclone.  My Floridian mother brought me up to be much more excited than frightened at the prospect.
    This week I’ve decided to test out some of the presentation methods I’ve had in mind for the rest of my service.  I figure since my title is Health Educator, I’d better start educating.  Otherwise I might just stay inside and write letters, like during the first three months here when I had carte blanche to do nothing.
    My normal health talk at the CSB went well.  The women there who show up are mostly pregnant mothers coming for vaccines and prenatal consultations.  Instead of trying to interest them in general health subjects, I decided to talk almost exclusively about breast-feeding.  At first it seemed like they were determined not to pay attention to this foreigner, this male foreigner who thinks he knows about babies.  But after the third round of my insisting that breast milk will make their babies strong, they seemed to come around.  They still looked dubious when I said that babies don’t need coffee.
    I finished up the lecture by explaining that in order to have the best breast milk, a mother needs to eat well.  I suggested eating greens for iron and mangoes for Vitamin A.  I allowed that meat is usually pretty expensive, so beans and peanuts might be better sources of protein.  Several women looked as if, “Huh, this vazaha sorcery just might work.”
    More and more women arrived during the course of the lecture, because that day we were giving the full range of vaccinations instead of just the prenatal ones.  Unfortunately, Dr. Jean-Claude was detained by two of his superiors from Fort Dauphin who wanted to talk about malaria eradication.  So while we waited for him I decided to give another lecture, elaborating on the nutritional habits I’d talked about.
    Since there were over a hundred women there by this point and I didn’t feel like shouting, I directed my talk at Isabelle, one of the mothers who’d been most inquisitive and forthcoming during the first one.  About twenty people around us listened intently, while others eavesdropped out of curiosity.  I brought two posters from my house, with eye-catching pictures of food.  I explained about how there are three food groups: carbs, proteins, and fruits and vegetables, and one needs to eat from all of them to stay healthy.  People seemed intrigued.  But when I suggested that it’s not good to eat an entire meal of plain rice or cassava, Isabelle told me gently,
    “But we like rice and cassava.  They’re part of Malagasy culture.”  People will never stop eating meals of plain rice or cassava.  Save your breath, outlander.
    So I left the CSB with mixed feelings on my success.  We’re having a week-long polio vaccination campaign next week, so that’ll keep me busy.  It’ll also bring more people in from the surrounding villages who still don’t know me.
    The next day I got up at 4 to walk to the primary school at Tsihary with M. Dieu-Donné.  I was under the impression that the primary school (EPP) was just behind the middle school, which abuts the main road to Manambaro, not far away at all.  I was wrong.  People said afterwards that the walk to Tsihary proper is three kilometers, but it feels like five at least.
    The school is comprised of three buildings, two of which have large rusted holes in the tin roofs.  There are about five hundred students.  I ended up talking to all four classes about hand washing.  When I asked, “Who already knows when to wash your hands?”, one little girl answered, “Every Thursday.”  The oldest kids seemed to get it when I explained that even though soap costs money, it costs more for medicine if you get sick.
    Thing is, Tsihary is a bush village.  I’d guess that close on 100% of its residents are farmers, herdsmen, woodcutters, or charcoal burners.  The average income for the first three kinds of work is maybe 1000 ariary a day (50¢).  Charcoal burners do a little better.  But even the smallest bar of soap costs 150 Ar.  No one’s gonna spend money on soap when they can hardly afford to buy rice.
    As I was walking back to Manambaro I had a brainwave.  Ash!  I forgot to advise the kids that scrubbing with ash from a fire works almost as well as soap!  Oh, well.
    As much as the kids at Tsihary need help with basic health concepts, my duty is to the children of Manambaro.  As painful as it is to admit, I have to help people who have the resources to help themselves.  Being a bush village, Tsihary has rice and cattle and wood, but precious little cash.  It reminds me of Gala Beri, my site back in Niger, and it makes me despair for my chances to make a difference if I had stayed there.
    But there is hope.  Soon I’ll go speak to the director of the EPP in Manambaro and start giving health talks there.
    This morning I thought of going to Karamena to give lectures in the market, but then decided it was too far to be worth the trip on foot.  It’ll be much easier to start that once I have wheels.  I’m going into the city to pick up up Israel’s bike tomorrow, so next week transportation will be a lot easier.
    I still haven’t decided on a major project yet, but I’m starting to see how I can rack up the numbers of people whom I have talked at about health topics.  Who knows?  Maybe I can get kids to start washing their hands on Mondays as well.

The Bittersweet Weekend

Israel in teaching action.

The three Community English Classes at the Lycée Pôle.

Relaxing in Israel's house.

Israel and Harry ringa.

We're all gonna miss this guy.

 Written January 12, 2012
Manambaro

    Friday brought a bombshell:
    Israel is leaving.  Going back to the US.  Early Terminating his Peace Corps service due to a family emergency.
    For those of you who don’t know him, or at least haven’t heard of him from multiple Volunteers, Israel is a force of nature.  He is the guy who can walk up to any group of Antanosy, from poor cassava farmers to high-powered school officials, and instantly be welcomed.  He’ll fling slang and witticisms around like a sushi chef sliding dishes to a circle of customers.  He’s certainly in the top ten of the most tamána (well-settled) Volunteers on the island.  His leaving Madagascar is like Kublai Khan packing up his Chinese palaces and moving back to Mongolia.
    And Fort Dauphin will mourn his absence.  He taught three English classes at the Lycée Pôle, plus a fourth on the weekends open to all community members.  He was making plans with Skar and Fabrice, two other teachers, to get a projector and show English-language movies to the community.  And who knows how many people benefited from the messages he inserted in his lessons about proper health practices and equality between men and women.
    Monica and I got to his house on Saturday, and volunteered to help him with the community class in the afternoon.  Before that, though, we all walked to the beach and played in the surf.  I wanted to swim out to the breakers, but Israel said there might be riptide.  Two older French guys on vacation watched our stuff.  Later I would see these same guys at the bank, each with a twenty-something Gasy girl on his arm.
    Leaving the water, Israel began hailing beach-goers left and right.
    "Hey, you want to ringa?  You!  I bet you're pretty good at ringa."
    Ringa is traditional Antanosy/Antandroy wrestling.  All it takes to lose is for your head to touch the sand.  It's a lot more cerebral than American wrestling, with a pretty intricate rock-paper-scissors system of holds, lifts, throws, feints, and lunges.  That being said, the emphasis that Western wrestling places on brute strength means that it's very difficult for a Malagasy to defeat a vazaha with wrestling experience.  Israel, Paul, and Harry all wrestled in college, so I'd say Peace Corps is set to have a ringa reputation.
    We changed quickly and hurried to the English class, where the students had already gathered.  They were divided into three rooms, with Israel teaching Advanced English.  The lesson moved fluidly from the students describing their holidays to more technical stuff, like the difference between expressions of doubt and expressions of uncertainty.
    A boy of about twelve, by far the youngest in the class, piped up,
    “Is it... all right to say... ‘my mind as good as yours?’”
    “‘My guess is as good as yours!’” Israel exclaimed, beaming with pride.  “Come up here.”
    The boy, Charles, moved nervously to the the front of the class.  Israel put his hands in the shape of a crown over his head and declared,
    “You all see this boy up here?  One day this boy will be the President of Madagascar, he’s so smart.  Okay, sit down, kid.  Never stop studying.”
    It was interesting to think that that might actually be the kind of power that Peace Corps Volunteers hold, the power to influence the future of whole nations by setting one kid on the path to success.  I remember how Souleyman, my boss in Niger, always attributed his attending college to a Volunteer’s advice over thirty years ago.
    On Sunday night Harry arrived, getting back from his sprawling Christmas vacation, bearing some new movies he got from Ava.  I introduced him and Monica to Game of Thrones, which they loved.  Ha ha, my obsession is spreading!  I can only image how it’s exploded in the States.  The four of us broached the wine Monica brought from Paris, cooked some brochettes, and watched X-Men First Class and Youth in Revolt.  If you haven’t seen it, the first is incredible.  The second is also pretty good, if you can get past the stilted dialogue.  And really, how could a girl who’s that much of a hipster prefer anyone to Michael Cera’s character?
    Since I hadn’t gotten any packages at the post office on Friday, I decided to stay until Tuesday.  Tuesday morning it rained so hard that gurgling streams of runoff snaked through the streets.  Monica and I hailed a cab, and we each got two packages.  Mine were from my girlfriend Kelsey, one with food and one with posters and books.  Thank you, Kelsey!
    Israel’s house will continue to function as a Peace Corps-sanctioned “flophouse,” a place where Volunteers can stay for free when they come into the city.  His friend Ari’s sister Annika, my third cousin, is arriving soon with the SIT Study Abroad program.  And he’ll be in close contact with Fabrice and the school to see if the film showings can’t take place after all.  Things will go on.
    We said goodbye at the taxi brousse station and I watched him jog off into the gray day.
    Travel well, brother.

A Hint of What To Do Next

Written January 6, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    I’ve finally gotten on top of the work that has piled up since I went for IST.  Now the only real task left is writing letters to a few people.
    In the morning I went to see Madame Fleur, who lives beside the market.  Fleur is a former teacher who worked closely with the American missionaries who managed the Lutheran Hospital back in the 70s.  She rose steadily in her work with the Lutheran Church’s relief efforts in Madagascar, and has traveled all over the world attending conferences for them. 
    She’s fluent in English, and strives everyday to help her neighbors improve their lives.  Her house is medium-sized, built of concrete, and spartanly decorated with a few devotional Lutheran wall hangings.  She runs workshops for local women almost every week on subjects like poultry raising and tree planting.
    I was going to ask what she thought of my tentative decision to focus on STIs and malaria in Manambaro, or if there might be more pressing health problems from her point of view.  Instead, she told me about the QMM competition she entered for local development projects.  QMM is the national mining concern, and they sometimes undertake development projects to counterbalance the image that they’re tearing up Madagascar to exploit its minerals and gems.  Fleur’s proposal is to donate her yard, which takes up a fair chunk of the town center, to build a youth center for children whose parents are illiterate and can’t help them with schoolwork.  She explained that, due to irregular teacher attendance, many times kids from the outlying villages show up to school after walking four or five kilometers only to find out that class has been cancelled for the day.  In those cases, they could come to the center to learn instead.  It’s very possible that kids might use these days off school to goof off in the town, but at least those who sincerely want to learn will have somewhere to turn.
    And I could help with the center, certainly teaching English, maybe French and history.  Teaching small groups in a discussion-oriented fashion appeals to me much more than the strict teacher-student duality that prevails here.
    In the afternoon the twins and I, along with their 11-year-old friend Dolson, transplanted the second mango sapling from Dadabé’s yard.  Dadabé is Fafa and Rodin’s grandfather, and something of a neighborhood patriarch.  He reminds me of my own granddad, who died in 2002: gracious towards everyone, always smiling, and duly proud of the home he built for his descendants.
    Since it hasn’t rained in a few days, the soil was harder than last time.  But we also had double the number of people working, so even with the tougher soil the digging went faster than we expected.
    As we penetrated the first few inches of dusty topsoil, a familiar blue 4x4 pulled up, and out stepped Hanitra and Lalaina from Project AVIA.  I’ve been meaning to join them on their trips to the bush, but the CDS got in the way, and after that I’ve had to come to Fort Dauphin every Friday to check for packages.  With them was a tall man who I naturally assumed was Malagasy as well.
    Actually, he was Malagasy-American.  Andre lives in Minneapolis and works with the Lutheran Church committee that oversees the hospital and Project AVIA.  He told me about AVIA’s plans in the coming year to focus on getting clean water to some of the villages around here.  Then, once the water goals have mostly been achieved, AVIA will start a campaign to educate villagers on improved farming techniques.  Andre said the second part is especially promising, since some farmers in Sarisambo have already started using guano, from local bat caves, I guess, to fertilize their crops.  He said the organization would love to have my help.
    As he was talking I had the sense of a complete role reversal: the well-dressed Malagasy is talking to a sweaty, dusty American clad in a hat, sandals, and ragged shorts.  The vazaha is leaning on his shovel as the islander explains his ideas for development in the future.  Only in the Peace Corps.
    So there is hope for the future: even if I were to initiate no projects of my own, there would still be lots I could do to help the other development agencies in Manambaro.  I’m not alone in this fight, and neither are they.

Bloody Sunday in Manambaro

M. Dieu-Donné and Desmond on the right.

Baking the hair off the pig carcass.

"Pork with pineapple?  What kind of abomination is this?"  "A delicious abomination, sir."

All of us together upstairs.  Dieu-Donné took the picture.

A typical Malagasy pork dish.

A gecko, just outside my door.

Written January 3, 2012
Manambaro

    If you’ve never heard a pig getting slaughtered, they are LOUD.
    This New Years was a lot more sedate than last year in Niger, when I’d only been sworn in as a Volunteer the day before.  My friends Emily and Nick, both veteran Volunteers, took a handful of us out clubbing in Niamey, and we ended up accidentally crashing a party reserved for super-rich high schoolers.
    The Antanosy are not very nocturnal folk, so most of the festivities take place on New Years Day.  I ended up going to bed around ten the night before, waking up just before midnight to receive a call from my girlfriend Kelsey back in the States.  So I was awake for midnight, but I didn’t mark the exact moment when 2012 began.
    I woke up again at 3:45.  It’s not that early, really, considering I usually get up at five, and hardly ever sleep in past 6:30.  It was still pitch black outside, but pleasantly cool.  Outside I found Dieu-Donné, Desmond, and two other guys who must have been hired butchers.  They dragged the big pink sow out of its pen and pinned it to the ground.  One of the butchers drew a large knife.
    Blood flowed.
    After the hog was all the way dead they piled dry brush on top of it to singe off the hair.  As they got down to the butchering in earnest I went over to where Rodin was helping slaughter a ram; after the animal’s death, butchering isn’t very exciting.  When I got back, the pig carcass lay in two identical halves, as if it had been cleanly guillotined from nose to tail.
    We rest of the morning preparing food.  Well, the women and I prepared food, and the men drank.  I made “American-style brochettes,” or simple shish-kebabs with the skewers my parents sent me.  Dieu-Donné took one look at the pork cooking beside deliciously charred pineapple and proclaimed in English, “I like not.”
    He likes not ANY kind of non-Gasy food that I make.  Recently he tried to persuade me to change my diet with the argument that it’s part of my Peace Corps mission to adapt to local customs.  Yeah, it is... but that adaptation does not extend to things I cook in my own kitchen.  My house is a little slice of America, to about the same extent that Robinson Crusoe’s cave was a little slice of England.
    The rest of the day I spent with the family, eating pork and drinking beer.  Dieu-Donné asked me to buy five bottles to contribute to the party.  Since everyone else was drinking rum, I ended up drinking four bottles myself.
    During the party I found out that I think I’ve made a breakthrough in Malagasy.  My vocabulary is improving steadily, but my fluidity and comfort with the language seems to have shot up in a very short time. 
    I actually won a brief argument with Plaisir, a cousin of the family.  I was drinking beer out of a glass multivitamin bottle, which I had brought from my house because I knew it wouldn’t get confused with the other glasses.  Plaisir said that such a vessel is unacceptable in Malagasy culture because it makes me look like I’m too poor to afford a proper cup.  I responded that in American culture I would be praised for having thought to repurpose a medicine bottle as a drinking cup.  To the Malagasy there are few things worse than looking poor.
    After lunch, after I stumbled downstairs looking forward to a long nap, I reflected on how the twenty-first century is moving along.  I mean it’s 2012 now.  It was easy to see the last decade as just an extension of the twentieth, because it wasn’t really substantial enough to stand on its own.  And 2011 was kind of an extension of that decade.  But 2012 represents something new.
    Think about the stuff that’s happened so far in the twenty-first: September 11th, the War on Terror, the economic collapse, the Arab Spring.  There's eighty-nine more years in front of us for the world to shift and change.
    Welcome to the future.