The Wall, the Wind, and the Play

Guava season is winding down, unfortunately.  Without strawberries, guavas are the next best thing.

We put some of the kids to work shaking the paint cans in place of a mechanized shaker.

Painting the borders around the pictures on the mural.

The kids with their dream banners.

One of the Pioneers playing a mosquito.

Monica's hands after we finished the mural.

The mandarin oranges in Mahatalaky are like candy.

Written May 2, 2012
Manambaro

    “It’s like it has a mind of its own,” Monica groused.
    “Yeah, it’s like the evil sentient water from that one episode of Doctor Who,” I remarked.
    The blue paint was turning out to be a lot less well-behaved than the other colors.  Already it’d spilled twice, marring the steps of the pristine CEG (middle school).
    It was early afternoon on Tuesday the 24th, and we were despairing of ever finishing the mural that Monica had begun for World Malaria Day.
    Monica lives in Mahatalaky, a small but significant town north of Fort Dauphin.  ONG Azafady, a British NGO, has an outpost there for its short-term volunteers, called Pioneers.  The Pioneers had recently finished building a new CEG to replace the village’s dilapidated one.  Monica got permission to paint a mural to teach the students about malaria, days before the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
    The mural is divided into quadrants, with a circle in the middle.  The outer sections show mosquitoes coming out at night and biting villagers, notably a prideful man who has a mosquito net but doesn’t use it.  The bugs also bite a baby.  The mother takes the limp baby to the local clinic and gets medicine, but since she still neglects the net her baby falls ill again.  In the middle circle a family sleeps soundly under their mosquito net.  They have also closed their windows and lit a mosquito coil, which burns like incense to drive away mosquitoes with its scent.
    It’d taken all day of the 23rd for Monica to grid the wall in pencil to transfer the image.  The angle of the white wall to the sun made it reflect blindingly for much of the day.  By the time I got there at about 4, Monica was quite sunburned, but still resolute.
    “We’ll get it finished tomorrow,” she declared.
    That night we used her electricity to watch The Hunger Games on her laptop.  Great movie, although the producers should’ve said to hell with the young adult audience and taken it to an R rating.  ¡Mas sangre, siempre mas sangre!  Ah well, if I want gore, that’s what HBO is for.  You can definitely tell the movie was filmed in North Carolina; the woods in the arena look exactly like those on Guilford College campus.
    We started early the next morning, with help from some students who had the day off from school.  We made good progress, but after lunch a windstorm kicked up.  The pieces of cardboard we’d been using as palettes flew everywhere, and that was when the blue paint tipped over.
    We carried on painting as best we could.  We held onto the belief that at some point the Azafady Pioneers would show up like Monica said they’d promised.  Finally they arrived, all 19 of them, mostly British, but also two Canadians, a girl from Maine, and four Germans, who spoke English so fluently I just assumed they were English.  Half of them grabbed brushes and started painting with a will, while the other half discussed the finishing touches on their play.
    The play, just like the mural, was to educate the village kids on malaria.  A Mahatalaky couple, played by two of the Volunteers who are actually married, sleeps under a mosquito net but leaves their baby, played by the American, outside the net.  Swarms of mosquitoes, the other Pioneers wearing paper cones on their noses, buzz around menacingly and poke the baby to show they’re giving her malaria.  The next morning the parents wake up and find that their baby now has a high fever.  The father mixes some herbal medicine, which doesn’t work.  Then they go to an ombiasa, a witch-doctor, who chants a spell.  The ombiasa takes the family’s only chicken as payment.  The spell doesn’t work.  Then Monica, played by Monica, shows up and tells the parents to take their baby to the CSB immediately.  They get medicine and the baby is saved.  The next night the couple brings the baby under the net with them and everyone is healthy and happy.
    Judging by the audience’s reactions, the play was a big success.  The kids giggled when the parents first lay down and snuggled with each other as a Western couple would; snuggling is a relatively new concept for rural Malagasy.  I chuckled when Lloyd, who looks like no one less than Harry Potter, came out in his ombiasa costume.  He really got into the role, too, hobbling around and glaring at the kids like a cranky old man.
    After the play Monica led the kids in making “dream banners,” pictures of what they want to be when they grow up.  Cultural differences were very much in evidence here: give an American kid a crayon and paper and they’ll start scribbling away.  But Gasy kids wait to be told what to be told what to draw.  They eye the paper with a touch of incredulity and fright, as if it’s a set mousetrap into which you’ve told them to stick their fingers.
    When we cajoled them into drawing, reassuring them that it was all just for fun, they came up with a relatively wide array of ideas.   Teachers, drivers, builders, fishermen, soldiers.  No athletes, astronauts, or race-car drivers, but then this is a village that only got electricity a few years ago.  A good portion said they wanted to be doctors, nurses, or midwives, because that’s what they thought we wanted to hear.
    And here’s where things got strange for us.  Only a few of them drew themselves as a teacher, a doctor, etc.  The rest drew a picture of a house.  Single story, four windows, a palm tree on either side.  As far as we could tell, it was the same house, over and over, Twilight Zone-esque.  But I guess it was just the kids equating success in life with having a nice house; not having seen very many nice houses, they all gravitated towards one they’d all seen.
    That night Monica and I watched the first episode of the second season of Downton Abbey.  It was a step up from Season One, if only because of the Great War battle scenes.  Ah, PBS, I see you’re taking hints from HBO.  Good show, lads, keep it up.
    Next day, the 25th, World Malaria Day, we buckled down and finished the mural.  The day was cloudy, so we didn’t have to struggle against blindness.  The end result wasn’t perfect, but neither Monica nor I have much experience painting.  It was just good to be done.
    And this was only my first World Malaria Day.  I wonder what next year’s will be like.