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.