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.
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| Beach in Ankify, reminds me of LOST |
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| Hiking in the tsingy |
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| Lemurs! |
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| Huge Baobab! |
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| 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.
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| Mpanentanas (health workers) and the community meeting about sanitation |
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| This doesn't count as a latrine |
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| 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.
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