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")