Walkin on Sunshine

Over the past couple months I have been involved in some really fun projects that I wanted to share. After starting to doubt that it was even possible to actually accomplish anything in Peace Corps, I suddenly am busy with a lot of work that I really believe in, which is a pretty awesome feeling. It also makes me suddenly highly aware of the time limitations in place.

Cinnamon Peanutbutter

Cacao Workers tasting the chocolate

Chocolate Making

This is one of my favorite projects that I’ve done so far. Around Ambanja is where almost all the cacao grows in Madagascar and most small villages farm it. There are several NGOs working to organize small farmers into co-ops and help coordinate their transactions with collectors. Madecasse, the gourmet chocolate company founded by two former Madagascar PCVs (and which produces the most delicious chocolate ever) works with several co-ops in the Ambanja area with the help of my friend and fellow PCV, Jonathan. Once the beans are collected, however, they are sent to Tana for processing and then made into chocolate outside the country (the final product isn’t even sold in Madagascar). After doing several health trainings with the different groups of farmers, we realized we should try to make chocolate with their beans. It turns out that though the farmers grew and harvested the cacao, they had no idea what its relationship was to chocolate. We started doing trainings to teach the farmers and cacao workers how to make chocolate, experimenting with different additives, and they loved both the final product and knowing how to make it. Since then, I have been going back to visit the groups regularly to do health trainings followed by chocolate making (or sometimes just to make chocolate!).  So far we have experimented with coffee, coconut, peanuts, cinnamon, sakay, citron, pepper, ginger, and oranges, and the results have been delicious! (Dear Madecasse: I haven’t seen a chocolate bar of yours with ginger in it yet and, having tried the combination this morning, recommend it for a new flavor!)

Chocolate Making:

1.     Harvest the beans from the fruit, dry the beans

2.     Roast the beans and peel the skin

3.     Grind the beans until the oils come out

4.     Add sugar to taste and pound until mixed

5.     Add whatever flavor you want or eat plain!

Suggested Usage: Sprinkled on top of bananas and/or oatmeal in the morning

Teaching in Nosy Be

Condom demonstration

HIV Week

Back in February, I spent a week at the lycee (high school) on Nosy Be where my friend Ja’Nel teaches English. We saw six classes of anywhere from 60-90 high-school students each for three-hours at a time. I taught about HIV/AIDs, safe sex, and STIs, while Ja’Nel gave the corresponding English vocabulary in between section breaks. I was worried going in that the students would be unmanageable, but as soon as I started talking about sex in Malagasy, I had their attention for the rest of class. I also quickly caught on to the magic classroom management technique of picking out the rowdiest boy, the one who was clearly already showing off for his friends in front of the white-girl teacher, as a volunteer for our first activity. The boy would usually be one of the ones to act disinterested and smirk but to make sure he got up before all the spots were already taken; to swagger up to the front of the room nodding to his friends and brushing just a little too close to me to get to his place in line. First I assigned six of the volunteers to be gendarmes. Then I asked for one special volunteer. He would always step forward. Izy omby, (“He’s the cow”), was all it took for the class to burst out laughing and for the air to visibly escape from his deflating ego. Smooth sailing from there. The week was exhausting, but the students seemed to learn a lot, asked intelligent questions, and were even fun to joke around with in class.

The snigger that I hear without fail every time I talk about needing to use condoms is ALWAYS Tsy matsiro. (“It’s not delicious”). Though I didn’t get a chance to read through it, I saw an article recently about Bill Gates starting to talk about needing to recognize the real reason most people don’t use condoms: because they significantly diminish sexual pleasure. Especially in developing countries where the condoms that are sold have been sitting for months in a hot, dusty, wooden shack, are not lubricated and can end up being painful, and often break anyways. Would you use them? Maybe if the Malagasy teenagers had access to a CVS with strawberry-flavored, glow-in-the-dark, heat-inducing, exotic-oil-lubricated condoms I would feel like less of an idiot when the only response to tsy matsiro is “Well maybe, but sex with a condom is more delicious than an STD would be.” Or “true, but there are lots of other things you can do to increase pleasure too!” Anyway, the article caught my eye because it addresses a major issue in teaching about adolescent reproductive health here.

In two weeks I am scheduled two do a smaller version of the same curriculum at the lycee here in Ambanja and I’m excited to do it again!

Pool, early morning in Ankarongana

Bednet hanging training

World Malaria Month

I just posted about these in more detail, but I’m still in the midst of this and it’s going well. We had a small set-back last week when the World Malaria Day Festival was stormed out but we are rescheduling this weekend and it will definitely happen within the next two weeks. The last event was on Tuesday and, if you had to picture the “romanticized-typical Peace Corps experience,” this might be it. Gerard, a community health worker from the fokontany of Ankarongana, wanted me to come out to his village and do a malaria training with the people there. I recently met a new friend, Vivian, who works for Tsiharofy, a French-financed NGO. His current project is really cool… they’re offering basic “health insurance” to families, who can buy a 5-person family membership for 10,000 Ar ($5.00) a year. For these families, the Tsiharofy will cover 75-85% of all medical costs including births, operations, consultations, medications, etc. Families will receive a card with photos with the five approved family members and all government hospitals, pharmacies, and doctors must accept the card. Who knows how it will end up working out, but people are already excited about signing up in Djangoa. Anyway, so I invited Vivian to come give his presentation in Ankarongana when I went out with Gerard to do the malaria training. Ankarongana is only about 11k from Djangoa, but the road is terrible and has many steep ascends and descents, so biking is impossible. To beat the heat, we decided to get an early start. At 4:45 am, I was shaken awake by Gerard knocking at my door. Oops. I offered him some VIA Starbucks coffee while I scarfed down some oatmeal, threw clothes on, and got the training materials together. The most time-consuming part was actually explaining to an incredulous Gerard that this powder from the tiny packet was actually coffee and you could pour it in water like tea to make the coffee come out, and that no, I wasn’t insane for putting honey in my coffee. The hike out to Ankarongana took about two hours straight up and down pretty difficult terrain, and we saw four people and two herds of cows the whole way out. We arrived in Ankarongana at about 7:30 am and were greeted by Gerard’s mother, Gerardine, who offered us coffee (yes, this is the morning from the story as below. While she made the coffee, Gerard took me into the woods to see the waterfall. Though it was too slippery to climb to the top, the bottom opened up into a crystal-clear pool in a clearing in the woods… the perfect swimming hole. After coffee and then the pooping parade incident described in the last post, Vivian arrived on his moto and we headed up to the primary school to begin the presentation. Almost 100 people ended up coming to the presentation. My new bribing technique of trading candy for people answering questions worked like a charm and the crowd was engaged and interested in what I had to say. We did a small skit demonstrating malaria transmission, talked about prevention and treatment, and I showed everyone how to hang their nets using the “circle” method, a much more practical hanging method for small ravinala huts. Afterwards, Gerard’s wife served us a delicious lunch of rice and chicken, and we spent the rest of morning signing people up for Tsiharofy’s program before the long walk home. Gerard took me aside before leaving and gave the most gracious thank you for going out there, and we agreed to do another training before I leave, as well as looking into building some kabones for the village.

Fixing the pump with Nicholas

Gerard's "bureau" in Ankarongana

Community Health Workers

Working with the Community Health Workers for the Malaria project was so productive that I am excited to continue working with them throughout the summer and helping them set up some more lasting structures. Some of them are already very motivated: Gerard (mentioned above) had his president fokontany build him a small “office” in the village, where he makes sure to keep the basic supplies like deworming pills, ACT (for malaria), paracetimol (fever-reliever), and rapid diagnostics tests for malaria. We are meeting almost every Friday in Djangoa to discuss programming, and have plans to do trainings in all the different fokontanies. We’ve also done small projects around Djangoa like fixing the water spigot at the hospital (still missing a part but finally works for the first time since I moved). The first time I used it my immediate thought was “Oh wow, I love running water” before I realized, it wasn’t really running water. On the other hand, fetching water does make your arms pretty strong.

The mural J and I painted on my house in Djangoa

Other

Besides work, things have been great. I went out to Anjiabory, a small site east of Ambanja, for Easter with Jonathan (who used to live there). The village is absolutely beautiful, tucked in the foot of big green hills covered in rice paddies and forest, and on the bank of a fresh-water river. We spent the weekend hiking around searching for fruit, celebrating with his old friends and family, and spent Easter Day picnicking at the river and swimming, as is Anjiabory tradition. I have three weeks left here until I leave for France to take the GMAT and meet my family and Luca, so I’m studying and working until then. My Ambanja family is throwing me a birthday party this weekend and we are celebrating in Djangoa on Monday with the doctor and his family. When I get back from France, I spend a week in the capital for my Close of Service (COS) conference back in Mantasoa, and then have about 8 weeks left in the north before coming home! The candidate list for the upcoming elections is being announced today, and supposedly the current president, Rajoelana, who promised not to run, is a candidate along with Lalao, the wife of currently-exiled ex-president, Ravalamanana, who also promised not to run. And so we shall see…

Amanaraka koa ("Until Next Time")