Blog # 1- "SUPER LATE!!"

Blog #1!                                                                                                                     9/4/11

“Super-Delayed Ramblings About Pre-Service Training”

Okay so this is the very first entry that I’m doing since being in Madagascar (warning it’s long). I have had internet a few times during training for a few hours each time, but I didn’t have the foresight to start writing before I had access. It’s been at least a couple of months since I’ve talked to most of you, though I have been able to receive some Skype calls from the fam and from my sipako (Malagasy for girlfriend), Tricia. I’ll go ahead and put my number here because I can receive texts (Skype is pretty cheap) and can send to your cell and it’s not too expensive if it’s just every now and then: +261-32-26-228-42

It’s crazy to try to boil all of what’s happened down to a few pages, and it’s hard to imagine what parts are most important or how I can best paint a picture. I’ll start with homestay. We got to the Peace Corps Training Center (PCTC) in our bubble of a town, Montasoa, on July 13^th and had a couple of days of introductory “survival language” before being driven into town and dropped off. The beginning of homestay was the first day that we felt like little kids. Our host-moms were waiting to walk us home, and all we had were bookbags and an extremely limited vocabulary. Below are a couple of pictures of some of the family. My mom, Veronique, sister Oni, then below is a photo with my other sister Felana and brother Njaka. I had 2 other brothers that I met a couple of times each, but who lived in the capital to go to school. My dad was a merchant, and traveled a lot around the larger cities, so I met him only once for a couple of days.

My mornings started around 5:30 A.M. when I’d help my mom heat up water on the fire for a warm bucket shower (it was usually around 50^oF in the morning). Afterwards I’d eat breakfast, then spend some time cleaning around the house, primarily sweeping and brushing the floors with half of a coconut, called a “cocobruss”. This was used to keep out and kill parasy (fleas), which some people had a big problem with during homestay. By 7:30 I’d leave for the E.P.P., the children’s school, where we would begin with some kind of game and then move into classrooms in small groups of 2 or 3 to start learning Malagasy. This was another reason to feel like children, having class in a room for 6-7 year olds, where we couldn’t fit in the desks, starting the day off with games, and becoming very dependent on snack time at 10:00 everyday. We walked home for lunch and came back in the afternoons for tech sessions in health. The day was done at 4:30 P.M. and then I’d play with my sisters and their friends around the neighborhood for a couple of hours until dinner. By 7:00 P.M. I would be escorted to my room and given a candle. People go to sleep pretty early, which was an adjustment for me, but I’d read or write, maybe get to talk to Tricia(!), and by 9 or so I’d be ready for bed.

About those tech sessions…Meghan and I fit underneath the public health umbrella better than environment because here environment is mainly about protecting natural resources (especially forest), gardening, etc., while a big part of health is education in sanitation and hygiene. It also looks better on paper for the particular funding we get through some of the partners and when we wrap up, the major water project is due to wrap up as well. We received trainings in a lot of areas though, like STIs, nutrition, vaccinations, and malaria. A lot of the health volunteers work closely with their doctor’s offices, (CSB I or CSB II) which will either have one doctor and a nurse, or just a nurse. Rural access to medical services is a problem, and often a CSB II, with just one doctor, is the only option for places from miles around.

My host family was great, and I think I could have easily stayed with them for the other half of training. With them, I learned a lot about Malagasy culture and life. My sisters loved helping me with language so much that part of every day was filled with little quizzes. About 2 weeks in, Felena and my host mom started making fun of Oni because she had been talking in her sleep, saying “hoditr’akondro” which is banana peel. I knew at this point that I was really attached to these people. I made fun of her for it during the rest of the time I was there, just like I would for Brandon.

She got me back a little later though. One day when I was practicing new vocab, I was trying to give directions from the school to our house in Malagasy. To turn left is “miviliana”, but I said “mivalanana”, which instead is a command/imperative form of “have diarrhea”. So yeah, my sister had fun with that… I wish I could remember more of the little stories like that, but I was a big slacker about writing things down during training.

The PCTC…

Well after 4 weeks with the families, we got our things and moved out. This was pretty familiar seeing as we’d all just left our real homes a month before. We came back to the PCTC to dorms, a dining hall, classrooms, a lake, volleyball court, basketball court, and a general summer-camp vibe.

We continued with language and technical training, but had a new thing to deal with: immersion rules. Being in the same place as all the other Americans tends to make you want to speak English (whoa, really?), which tends to work against any kind of immersion for a new language. So we had rules against speaking English from 7 A.M. to 7:30 P.M., the beginning of breakfast to the end of dinner. If you were caught, you’d be given a red card, which made you pay money at the end of the week. You could receive green cards if you avoided red cards for an entire week, or if you had general conversations in Malagasy with the staff. Some people hated this, but I didn’t care so much. Overall it was pretty awesome living here with all of the other volunteers. We’d do our work, hang out and watch movies after dinner, then “fety be” or party on the weekends. I made some real connections and am looking forward to In-Service Training to see these people again, along with my Malagasy family.

RANO HP!

So this acronym has multiple meanings. In English, it stands for Rural Access to New Opportunities in Health and Prosperity or in Malagasy, Rano HamPivoatra, which means literally “water for progress”. I want to quote the UN on water really quickly, to help explain the theory behind the overall objectives in the provision of water and sanitation. “Water is fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite to the realization of all other human rights” – United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights¹. It is also a factor in productivity and general development. If we can keep people from losing time for work and school because of easily preventable, but potentially deadly illnesses, then we give the people a better chance at success in other areas as well.

Before leaving for Madagascar, we received a few maps and plans from USAID and RANO HP, all in French. It didn’t really mean much to Meghan and I, other than that our sites would most likely be in the eastern half of the country. Honestly, we were a little uneasy that the trainers, our “boss” in health, and even the country director were all unclear on what our responsibilities were. People at least knew of our projects and that we would work with water more so than with the CSB, but people were surprised that we didn’t know more than they did. We also had no access to internet so we couldn’t really talk to Jim, our advisor at USF, about it.

But just as we were getting to be pretty anxious, we finally met our counterpart, Jonathan, on week 6. He did the health training on water and sanitation for the health volunteers. Jonathan is also a former student of Jim’s who did his MI program in Madagascar and ended up staying to keep working here. He’s a really nice guy and we’re really lucky to have someone who can relate to us as a resource. He works for RANO HP and played a part in linking USF to the overall water project.

He worked out a way for us to come see the headquarters and hear the general presentation about the project. This also meant a nice trip to Antananarivo (Tana) for a night. We ate at a cool place that used to be a train station and saw a live performance from “Olombelo Ricky”, who is pretty great. The next day we saw the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) office and the broad overview and progress in the project. We didn’t exactly find out our role in the whole thing because that’s actually still up to us. The research will deal with water supply and/or water quality, and we’ll use our sites and our communes to collect data or do case studies, but the specific topics we have to come up with. We can also work in other areas within the commune if we see a need. I could do a project about cookstoves, for example, and have my research be on the totally different water project.

We finished training and swore in as official Peace Corps Volunteers on August 16^th in Montasoa. The very next day people started leaving out for the process of installation…

If you read my blurb all the way to here, then thanks. I miss you guys and hope I get to post this soon.

Ref

1. United Nations Economic and Social Council. Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. (2002). General Commitment No. 15. Substantive Issues Arising in the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: The Right to Water. Twenty-ninth Session. Geneva, November 26.