Blog #7: When it Rains, it Pours, Pt. 2: Cyclone Giovanna

2/19/2012

I was in Moramanga with my fellow “Atsinanana/Toamasina” PCVs for a regional meeting last weekend when we started to hear more news about the cyclone coming straight for Madagascar. At first, we weren’t really worried, and some people who live right on the coast said they were just going to go home. We learned a little later that it was a huge storm, a category 4 cyclone (hurricane in the Southern hemisphere that rotates the other way) and that it would hit somewhere between Tamatave and Vatomandry, basically ensuring that none of our sites would really be safe.

So we were told to get to the capital and stay at the PC transit house until the storm passed and we could find out the damage to our sites. When the storm passed over Tana, we didn’t really see much. A few trees and poles fell, and some very low-lying areas flooded, but the worst the PCVs suffered was about an hour of time when the generator outside ran out of fuel before actual power was restored to Tana (First-world problems!) The day after the worst of the storm, we were able to go around town and do things normally.

But for a few days we didn’t know anything about our sites because electricity and telecommunications were out on the east coast. Finally we started to get information. Corey, my friend near Vatomandry got a text saying her house, made of local materials, (i.e., sticks and leaves) was completely destroyed. Few people heard anything else before riding toward the coast in a car with Peace Corps to assess things. The doctor in my town, who is also my neighbor, called me once the cell phone network was back up, and the first thing he said was that my roof was gone because of the wind. My house, structurally, is probably fine other than the roof. If you look above, you’ll notice it’s concrete, which I am lucky as a PCV to have. Without a roof, though, it’s likely that I’ll come home to some ruined things. He said the town was hit pretty hard. I think that power has not been restored to Lohariandava yet because now the cell phones are dead.

So I head back to site tomorrow morning and I’ll start to assess the damage to my stuff and my house, and I’ll see how everyone in my town is doing. I have a place to sleep at my doctor’s house if mine is still flooded or whatever the case may be. I don’t regret evacuating like Peace Corps told me to do, but it definitely brings to mind the ways that I am still not as much a part of my community as is seemingly possible. If I get seriously ill, PC will send a helicopter to my site. If there’s a big tropical storm, I have somewhere to go stay until things are safe. If my site is really bad, and my house will take time to be repaired, I’ll be put up in a hotel somewhere or brought back to the capital.

Anyway, I’ll get updates out when I can, but I’m fine, and I’m not that worried about my “stuff”. I’m more worried about my community. I actually had a pretty decent time in Tana because I was able to talk to some of you and see some friends.

Here’s a picture of the cyclone right as it’s over Mada, showing how it’s basically the same size as the entire island.

As for other updates, I just had a great trip on the east coast with my counterpart Jonathan. The photos are all up on facebook finally, so I didn’t post them here. We basically saw some more water systems outside of my commune and were able to talk about work and research ideas.

That’s it for now. I’ll post soon-ish. I also am only posting the link to this thing today, very much later than these were actually written, so that buys me some time

Blog #6: IST and Christmas Vacation

1/10/2012

So I got back a little over a week ago from my first vacation here in Mada. Before that was In-Service Training (IST), which is like a three-month check-point from when you first get to site. It was awesome meeting up with everyone again, and it almost seemed like no time had passed. IST was typically 12 hours of sessions, so that was pretty mind-numbing. But just before the training and just after, we all got to hang out in Antananarivo, which was nice.

Then a large group of us started our trek north for vacation. We had a nightmare of a brousse ride because it kept breaking down and all. At one point, the driver pulled over and opened the radiator to cool the engine down. Just opened the radiator to the engine, which is actually inside the vehicle under the driver’s seat, so steam and hot water shot up to the roof while people were still sitting inside.

When we finally got to Ambanja, a place where many PCVs up north do their banking and hang out, we had a great time. We also went to the beach in Ankify. Later, we went to the National Park Ankarana for a couple of days and went hiking. The last place we went was Diego (or Antsiranana). In Diego, we even spent a day on an island off the coast where we were fed an enormous amount of fresh sea food and we could see all kinds of fish. I put a few photos up below, but will have a lot more up on facebook by the time it’s posted. Admittedly, that’s made this blog post a little lazy.

Beach in Ankify, reminds me of LOST

Hiking in the tsingy

Lemurs!

Huge Baobab!

On a boat to an island

As for site…

RANO HP is starting to count latrines in these different towns in my commune, where they’ve been promoting sanitation and proper construction for a long time now. It’s a little disheartening to see some of the examples (pictured below), and to realize just how low the sanitation coverage is, but that’s why there is still time left in the project life. There are also meetings going on with the private sector for companies with trained technicians and engineers who are bidding to work on the system after it is constructed. The idea is that the people receiving this new water infrastructure will have counters and will pay 1 Ariary (roughly 0.05 cents) for every liter of clean water consumed, the private sector will come out to collect and will provide maintenance services with that money. The people will be paying 1000 times less than they would for bottled water, which hopefully will be affordable and perceived as worthwhile.

Mpanentanas (health workers) and the community meeting about sanitation

This doesn't count as a latrine

This is a broken latrine...no impetus to fix it

For now, I’m going around with my friends here and looking at latrines, etc., and soon hope to figure out/refine some project and research ideas.

In a few days I will have been in Madagascar for a full six months. That makes no sense to me. I’ve really not been able to keep up with time ever since training. That’s probably a good thing? Well, maybe I’ll have something else soon, I’m thinking early March I’ll be in Tana.

Blog #5 "When it Rains it Pours"

Blog #5

11/8/2011

“When it Rains, it Pours”

So the title may make it seem like things are bad in general but they’re not. It’s just a true statement for today. Last night I was woken up a couple of times by how hard it was raining. I’d roll over and go back to sleep…until at 3:30 in the morning I felt water dripping on my forehead. I sat up, dazed, wondering how I could lay down in some way to not be bothered by the rain so that I could sleep and deal with it in the morning. Just then, part of my ceiling (which is made out of some kind of board that’s thicker than cardboard and kind of looks like the material of a thumb-tack board) gave and a lot of water came down right onto the bed where I was just laying.

So I got up, moved the bed, grabbed a bucket, dried the mattress, changed sheets, and then went back to sleep for another hour or so...kind of anyway. Now I have the fun task of getting my ceiling and/or actual roof fixed today or tomorrow. I knew coming into this the ceiling looked suspect in a few places, but I guess I thought it wouldn’t happen. Anyway, this is really nothing. Just last month I met a Volunteer who is about to finish up, but in her first month at site a couple of years ago she actually fell into her latrine. The floor broke because it wasn’t built correctly in the first place and she fell into her latrine. Think about that for a minute but not in too much detail. She has a great story now but that’s a pretty bad situation to be in and for some people experiences like that during the first few months “alone” seem amplified and all compounded anyway, so for some people it could have seemed like the right sign to go home. Little things like my roof leaking are really not even enough to make me angry. It’s actually refreshing to have things like that or like losing some food that I thought was safe to a rat or the ants happen and my reaction be all about how to fix it and what to do differently rather than think about coming home.

For other site stuff, I’m in the midst of starting my Community Diagnostic Survey, which is a site overview and report to help new PCVs get integrated quickly. It requires meeting with local officials and with different recognized committees in the community. The main idea is to summarize the different needs and assets of the community as objectively as possible by gaining perspective from a good cross-section of the population. The results should help lead to project ideas too and keep us from subconsciously pushing our own agendas and ideas when coming up with projects. I’m excited to meet with different groups of people and to see how they view their community.

In-Service Training (IST) is coming up in the middle of December. It will be the first time that a lot of us see each other since PST. We’re trying to plan some cool vacation stuff afterward, so I might be going north to Nosy Be (pronounced Noo-see Bay). Traveling is still super-expensive on the PCV budget, especially if we need to fly, so we’ll see how it works out, but something like a week to a week and a half shouldn’t be too bad.

A few recent photos…

The part of the ceiling

Here’s a couple of photos of bats. I’m not really bothered by them, but this one was in my shower during the day because I’d left the door open all night. Every time I went to wash my hands at the tippy tap or went to grab something, he swooped at my head repeatedly. You’d think the sonar would at least tell him to avoid the giant thing in the room.

This photo is kind of funny. He looks like he has an afro, and it’s because he’s been electrocuted. He’s hanging from an electrical wire! It’s just like a cartoon or something. We just knocked him right down.

A better photo of that train wreck…

Here’s some fresh vanilla! There’s vanilla, cinnamon, and of course all kinds of fruit.

This is really common, unfortunately. Slash-and-burn at its finest…

That’s a new laptop sticker from RANO HP. It’s really a sticker people put on their houses to show that they are progressing and now use latrines.

Okay, that’s it. Hope to have cool updates next time, especially since the main infrastructure for the new water supply project is being implemented this month.

Blog # 4 "So How Does this Thing Work?"

Blog #4

10/19/11

“So How Does this Thing Work?”

So I’ve been at site a few weeks, and I still haven’t done too much actual work…but that’s the plan. It’s weird telling myself not to worry about not having something to do. I walk around and talk to friends, buy things at the market, and “mitsangasangana”, which is to walk around at leisure, like hiking. These things give me a chance to practice Malagasy and make myself familiar to the locals. To be honest, most days it feels like just sitting around. At least education volunteers from my stage have a job and responsibility already in their towns because school has started.

The health volunteers in general can help writing things down at the hospital or “menentana” (advise) about health. The big project and even the secondary projects are typically not started yet, but these other things can be done at any time. I’m getting some things ready and will start to do this semi-regularly soon. There’s still no pressure since my responsibilities lie more with the water project than with the normal health agenda. But WASH (water, sanitation & hygiene) education is a big component of the RANO HP project and plays an important part in the sustainability of larger projects, so it’s not too difficult to see that the hospital and schools are a good venue for this. I’ll advise people about other health topics too, like indoor air quality. I might even be able to do an improved cookstove project in my community and have my primary Peace Corps project be different than my research. Then again, it’s pretty early to get into all of that. For now I need to work on my community diagnostic survey, which does help to figure out potential community needs and spark ideas for projects, and continue doing what I’m doing.

I have been able to see some of the commune besides my town with Flavien, pictured below on one of our hikes. He is a health advisor in my town that works with RANO HP. We’ve gone to a few towns so far, one pretty close, just across the river and up a bit, one about 11k away on a pretty intense hike, and we’re going pretty soon to a place 22k away. Each town in the commune has 1 advisor, and their responsibilities go further than the WASH education, like helping the people prepare for the huge renovations that are about to take place over the next few months. Many of these towns are building latrines for the first time, and they are about to have very affordable access to safe water with new water systems brought to tapstands at a rate of 1 liter of water for 1 Ariary (the last I saw the exchange rate, it was about 1950 Ariary to 1 dollar, to give you an idea). This means we’ve been coordinating when certain events will happen and when to check on the progress with different facets of the project like latrine construction. We’ve also had some meetings about hygiene and all, and pretty soon I think I can lead when teaching about water and sanitation.

Flavien leading the way on the railway before we divert up into the mountains.

Here’s one of the towns. Many of the volunteers have houses like these, which is honestly what I expected, bamboo and leaves. But no complaints here…

This is a sweet aqueduct irrigation system I saw.

And here’s what looks like a derailed train. Actually, it was a head-on collision in 2009. Comforting I know, but surprisingly no one died. They also weren’t passenger trains. Anyway I don’t want my family to freak out, I feel pretty safe on the train. The roads are much worse, and much more dangerous. I find it strange though, that sometimes the train will sit in one spot for 8 hours if it’s been raining because they don’t want to derail…there’s a rainy SEASON, so I don’t see how that works. The only answer I get out of people is that it’s slippery, haha. Whatever we’ll see how reliable it all is here pretty soon.

I’m definitely lucky to get to see some action so early and get familiar with the commune like this. It happened to be great timing because a lot of these facets of the water project are being implemented now. This opens the door to a lot of research opportunities, whether it be assessing the sustainability of the water systems in my community or something else like the point of use treatment technologies promoted in the places too rural and sparse to receive systems with significant infrastructure and safe water. There are a ton of ideas already bouncing around, so hopefully I can narrow them down in the next 3-6 months.

A little off-topic now…Clemson football is #8 the last I heard, and is still undefeated. Too bad it’s hard to believe when you can’t actually see any proof. Right now I’m listening to the new album “Major/Minor” by probably my favorite band, Thrice. It makes me think of all the new music coming out right now that I was looking forward to, and a lot of great shows that I can’t road-trip to with my friends. I’m looking forward to when I can come back and see some shows and make it to a Clemson and some Notre Dame games. The point is that I miss a lot from home, some things more important than others, and I want you guys to know that. Tricia swears in tomorrow in Panama along with some of my other friends from USF. It’s another little event that makes this all more real for me. Anyway, let’s hope they have a great time celebrating in the city and then get to site okay!

More details as I get them/have time to submit them. Bye for now.

Blog #3 "The Train 'Home' and a Cracked Screen"

Blog #3

10/10/11

The Train “Home” and a Cracked Screen

I copied much of this from my journal.

The train leaving Moramanga actually ran this morning, and it’s where I sit to write now. It even left around 7 A.M. instead of the scheduled time of 7:30. I barely had time to pay for my bedframe transportation and get my ticket “home”. It’s interesting to try and call my town “home”…

When I was at Clemson, even so close to home, able to get there in 30-45 minutes, I called the dorms—and later my apartment—“home”. It happened so quickly and so often that I stopped noticing this peculiarity after a while. It was the place I lived most of the time during college, and so with my life there, it followed that it was “home” for me. That’s not to suggest that it replaced Greenville for a minute, it was just different.

I was at USF for only a year but witnessed the same phenomenon, though truly a bit farther from the place I’d grown up. I believe that it took a little longer for me to feel like I had ownership in the new town and maybe several things played a part in this: I had a more measurable and palpable separation from my actual home, and my life had to be built up a great deal more than at Clemson because I couldn’t carry my good friends or family with me, and definitely couldn’t drop by on a weekend at random.

Now I’m on this train back to this place where I live, the farthest I can possibly be from my home (really, the other side of the world), with the greatest amendments to my daily life that I’ve ever encountered being made. Maybe this is why I can’t bring myself to call Lohariandava my “home”, at least not yet. I’m thinking now, though, about how I need to let this place be a part of me if I want to be able to affect people and help to bring about any sort of change and let it change me as it should. The attitude of being a visitor here would keep me from properly integrating, would keep me on a different plane than the Malagasy people, and therein would keep me from being a true stakeholder in my community or with projects here. The biggest advantage that the Peace Corps has in working in these countries an-dalam-pandrosoana, “on the road to development”, is that its volunteers live in the communities and really try to become a part of one before trying to accomplish anything else.

I think it won’t be easy or quick that I plant lasting roots here or mean it when I call my site my “home”, but I’ll be interested to see when, how, and if it really happens. I will say that during training, especially when living with my host family, I felt different than I do at this moment. Now I’m in the business of finding out what life is like out here compared to the training town of Montasoa and am looking forward to making some great relationships like the ones with my host family. It’s time to make this place my home. First reasonable goal: by January the people I see walking around town will know my name instead of saying “vazaha” all the time.

Also I cracked my laptop screen. It fell off of my hotel bed, so that's genius. It's hopefully not a big deal because there aren't exactly any Apple stores near me. Haha that sounds whiney. Anyway, that's all I have for now, but I hope to write again soon.