How Peace Corps Made Me Proud to be an American and Madagascar Surprises Me Once Again

My post-World Malaria Day life has continued on at a slower pace. A crippling countrywide teacher’s strike has shut down the entire education system here, and subsequently squashed my hopes to get my Peer Educator project (PHELT!!) off the ground any time soon. But after almost a year here, I’m no longer concerned with these Western notions of “time-frames” and “schedules.” So it is what it is. I’m working a few days a week at the health center, and spending a lot of time riding my bike around visiting the new Peace Corps volunteer and my old friends at Azafady. Also as anyone familiar with my Machu Picchu Peruvian trek would know, I can use all the extra bicycle-practice I can get. Jekka, I am happy to report that so far I have NOT crashed over any cliffs! Although I have found it very challenging to bike through sand, it’s literally not possible. And it’s very frustrating. But enough about that. 

Madagascar’s Quest to Always Defy My Expectations

Living every day in a Third World country really makes you thankful for what you have at home. I guess after so long here, I’ve developed certain desensitization to things, but I was really struck when I brought a group of 8 or so Azafady volunteers to see the health center. The health center of Commune Rurale Mahatalaky is very basic. It is made up of five cement rooms: an office where the nurse sees all sick patients, a maternity room/sick ward, a dispensary, a delivery room, and another office where the nurse does prenatal visits and family planning appointments. The maternity room/sick ward is made up of four metal beds. The dispensary has one fuel-powered refrigerator where we keep the vaccines on ice blocks. The delivery room has one bed with stirrups and a water bucket. The two offices have a desk and a few chairs. It’s very simple. I think it’s pretty nice! But taking these visitors there for whom this hasn’t become the norm was an eye re-opening experience. They were shocked at the lack of amenities.

“So what if something goes wrong during labor?” someone asked.

“Umm…then they get on the truck to go into Fort Dauphin, if they have enough money.” I replied.

The other day as the nurse and I were doing the standard 50 prenatal visits, a very extremely pregnant woman walked into the delivery room with her mom and grandma, her birthing team.

“She’s in labor!” exclaimed the mother.

My wonderful, hard-working, ever-patient nurse sighed and paused the prenatal visits and walked over to the delivery room to check on this mother-to-be.

“She’s not nearly dilated enough. Come back tomorrow” the nurse kindly informed the woman.

“But she’s in pain! She needs to push now!” the over-eager grandma-to-be said forcefully.

Throughout this whole exchange, the nurse had kept her cool, but after that comment, her cool slipped a little, and the animated and confident and adamant nurse I’ve come to know and love emerged:

            “Labor MUST hurt! It is painful work! COME BACK TOMORROW!”

I stifled a laugh, and the expectant mother and her team meekly headed out the door.

This is just a day in the life at the rural health center. One hard-working and committed nurse with her vazaha sidekick (me!) doing the work that an entire department would do at a Western hospital, with about 1/18^th of the amenities available at one. When I stop to look around at what I’m doing and where I’m working, it really is a learning experience. Waiting 6 hours for a prenatal visit in the rain? Women here do that every single month. Walking 10km in the early stages of labor just to give birth in the hospital? Normal. How lucky are we to live in a place where it is culturally acceptable for a woman to scream obscenities at her husband during labor? How lucky are we to live in a place where people are impressed at a mother who chooses not to get an epidural? How lucky are we to never have to worry about malaria? And these are just off the top of my head. Madagascar never ceases to amaze me.

America the Beautiful

I spend a lot of time hanging out with Europeans. The Peace Corps community in Southern Madagascar is small, but luckily enough for my sanity and social life, Azafady is around to keep me company. Among fellow Peace Corps volunteers, being a Californian is reason enough for ridicule. (You all just WISH you were from the Golden State!) But among my Euro friends, hailing from the Land of the Free is all the ammunition needed to make an average joke an excellent one. I don’t get it, obviously. I mean they’re all just jealous right? So I’ve come to the conclusion that America is the place everyone else loves to hate, but secretly wishes they could be from. Take that, haters! Where else can I get away using vocabulary like “holla” and “bummer” and “haters” and spelling things with a “z.” Additionally, living outside of the US makes you appreciate all the mundane inside the US. Boy, do I appreciate a sandwich now! And all those other little things you never realize you’ll miss until you do. For example, cuddling up under the covers on a cold morning, eating popcorn in a movie theater, and running down to Walgreens to pick up some Scotch tape. But seriously, there really is something so sweet about the companionship of a fellow American when you’re far away from home. They just GET me. I would also like to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the disgraced former governor of California, is one of the few Americans that are also famous in Madagascar. This list consists of fellow superstars Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, and the one and only Barack Obama. You’re welcome World!

            I recently found myself sharing a Mexican dinner with a few of my awesome British friends on Cinco de Mayo. As we happily ate our bean burritos I commented on how glad I was to be doing something on Cinco de Mayo.

            “What’s Cinco de Mayo?” asked one ill-informed British person.

            “You know, Cinco de Mayo! Fifth of May! Mexican Independence Day? Cinco de            Drinko? NOTHING??”

I was flabbergasted. What kind of country doesn’t celebrate another country’s independence?? As it turns out, Cinco de Mayo isn’t even the real Mexican Independence Day, so that’s my bad. But I still caringly explained the joys of Cinco de Mayo to my poor, unknowing friends. To which they responded along the lines of “Oh how typical of Americans, any excuse for a party, celebrating a day that’s not even the real independence day of a country that’s not even them!” That comment was about the last I could take. I mustered all the patriotic fire I had and proudly declared:

            “CUT ME OPEN AND I'LL BLEED RED WHITE AND BLUE!”

             “Sooo…the same colors as the Union Jack then?” retorted my snappy British friend.

England: 1. Monica: 0.

But never fear, they may have won the Battle of Cinco de Mayo but I will win this war! AMURICAAAA!

In conclusion, please everyone send out good vibes that this strike ends soon so I can get back to work instead of sitting around all day musing about my love for America. God Bless the U.S.A.!

World Malaria Day!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks on my side of the world! A lot of things happened, including (but not limited to) the completion of my first secondary project, feeling stressed for the first time since I can remember, walking around more of my commune than ever before, and lots of fun hanging out in between.

World Malaria Day: The Good!

For those of you who did not know, Happy World Malaria Day (on April 25)! I wrote in my last blog about the plans I had to commemorate the event and I am proud to say that I successfully-ish completed everything I set out to do. It was a lot of work, but such a rewarding investment of my time and effort. I broke down my activities into three parts:

1.     Wall of Fame

a.      The week before World Malaria Day, I spent walking around with my camera, a full liter of water, and my malaria teaching aid pictures. I walked to every little village hamlet within 5 kilometers of the village I live in and talked to around 100 different people and families. In each small community, I showed the sketch of the mural we planned to paint and explained it to my little audience, highlighting why they should use a net, and also who should use a net. Then I inquired as to whom all already used bed nets within the little village. I would say generally about half the families in all the small villages I visited actually used a bed net to sleep under. I did hit the jackpot though in this little village community called Maromoky that literally means “lots of mosquitoes”…every family there uses a bed net! I took pictures of all the people and families with their nets and then invited them to Malaria Day on the 25^th where they would be able to pick up their photos. This was really effective in recognizing the people and families who used nets and making them an example to other families who don’t use nets. Photographs are very highly valued and so the fact that I was taking their pictures and then giving the photo back was a great source of pride for people. Canvassing the entire commune of Mahatalaky kind of felt a bit like campaigning for myself and my work, but it was a really great way to get out there talking to people about malaria.

2.     Dream Banners

a.     In Madagascar, Malaria is the number on cause of death in children under the age of 5. In fact, 1 in every 14 kids here die of malaria each year. This statistic in unacceptable. To get kids thinking about their futures, Peace Corps Africa came up with the idea of dream banners. Basically, all the kids who attended my malaria day activities were given paper and crayons and asked to illustrate their answer to the question “When I grow up I will…” This was my favorite activity of all the things we did on World Malaria Day. Creativity and individuality are not things that are valued here in terms of the education system. Little kids don’t color in their free time, and generally don’t even know how to hold a pen until they go to school when they’re 6 years old. In their first year of school, they study how to draw and then get tested and scored on their drawing abilities. So this whole exercise in creativity was something that all the kids had actually never done before. Asking them to wrap their little minds around the abstract idea of the future was really challenging, but I am so happy with the way things worked out. They drew big houses and farm fields and flowers and happy families and cows. They wrote their names in huge letters and asked if they were allowed to keep their masterpieces. When I asked some of them to explain what they drew, their responses were simple: This is my house that I’ll live in, this is my family being happy, this is the flower that will grow where I live. I was really proud of the fact that all my kids were able to grasp what I was asking them to do in imagining their futures. It also made me so happy just to provide the opportunity for them to have this small creative outlet. Watching this small army of kids walk home clutching their small drawings created with the one color crayon I handed out per kid made me feel more validated than all the other activities I did on World Malaria Day.

3.     Malaria Skit

a.     Thanks to my great friends at ONG Azafady, I was able to enlist the volunteers in their Pioneer program to help with the various activities of World Malaria Day. One of the biggest challenges with malaria education is that a lot of families use nets, but only the parents or grandparents sleep under them. The kids who are most susceptible sleep on the floor or somewhere else. The other challenge is the fact that parents often wait a long time before bringing their sick child into the hospital for treatment. The volunteers and I acted in a skit that addressed these two main obstacles with malaria work in Madagascar. It centered on a Peace Corps volunteer (me!) going around a village doing malaria counseling and education. The volunteer (me!!) comes across a family who uses a net, but where only the parents actually sleep under it. Their baby gets sick with malaria and the parents try herbal remedies and visit a witch doctor before I finally tell them they need to visit the hospital for treatment. The whole skit was well acted and very clear and all the kids loved it! The volunteers did a great visualization of malaria transmission from mosquitoes and how a net works to protect you, which I loved, and all the kids really understood. It was a lot of fun.

World Malaria Day: The Good But Difficult!

1.     Malaria Mural

a.     This was so hard! I completely and totally underestimated the amount of work, time and skill that needs to go into successfully completing a wall sized mural. These things coupled with my lack of art skills made the whole thing way more stressful than it needed to be. It was really challenging for me to find myself in a situation where I needed to be kind of laidback and calm about things. I really wanted the mural to be perfect and a masterpiece on par with the Sistine Chapel, but obviously that was impossible. By the third day of work on the mural though, I reminded myself that I wanted this whole thing to be a community project, not just “Monica’s project.” So, yes, that meant imperfections and crooked lines and cartoon-looking people, but I am proud to report that the community of Mahatalaky loves and adores their kind of strange looking malaria mural! Furthermore, it is effective and clear as a malaria teaching tool, which at the end of the day, is all the mural really needs to be. But I will say that I do not intend to paint anything for at least another year!

And so completes the first part of my first big project! I consider it a huge success because I spent basically two weeks talking about malaria with everyone I came into contact with and it was also just a lot of fun. Right after World Malaria Day was the long-awaited grand opening of the secondary school built by Azafady in Mahatalaky. The whole community celebrated together which was wonderful and so amazing to be a part of. There was an all-night party Thursday to commemorate the school opening, and I had a great moment where I just looked around at my community gathered together dancing and having fun, and thought to myself how happy I am. :)


[Sidenote: I tried to upload some photos with the post and it just failed miserably, everything froze right before my uploads finished and I'm so sad. So anyone who hasn't seen the photos I already posted to Facebook can follow this link here to this album! http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150766217943232.436937.518898231&type=3&l=f3e5f83eda]