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.