After a month at site, I can honestly say that I am starting to feel settled. The people I work and live near me are really helpful and have gone out of their way to make me feel at home. Establishing my own daily and weekly routines helped me go from the very structured schedule of training where I had little free time and control over my time; to my experience now; where I have complete control over my schedule and lots of time to allocate as needed. Every weekday morning I go and help out at the health center. I normally run errands (post office, buy phone credit, browse the local market) before having lunch and a siesta. The afternoons are normally set aside for working on my Community Diagnostic Survey (CDS). Which is the tool that helps me learn about the needs of the community and later will be helpful in planning projects and applying for grants. I have a book full of questions about history, demographics, gender roles, work, education, health facilities, and social problems. While it helps that the questions are translated in Malagasy it is still a challenge because in addition to asking questions, I still need to be able to understand their answers.
My evenings are spent catching up on reading, corresponding by letters, and journaling. Most nights I am in bed by 8 or so unless I am expecting a call from family or friends in the U.S., or if there is an event in my town during the evening. Which was the case this past Friday as there was a dance held for an opening of an office of a local Microfinance organization, I thought the office was already open, so I think they were just celebrating a new paint job after painting the building. I spent most of the evening rejecting dance invitations and moving around to different tables to avoid having to talk with people who’d had too many beers. I had fun practicing dancing traditional Malagasy dances and people were impressed with my knowledge of the dances already.
In addition to establishing routines, having furniture made and decorating my apartment has also helped me feel settled. Being able to finally unpack and stop living out of suitcases made a big difference. On one of my walks around town, I came across a carpenter who had an Ikea catalog. I was able to order (mi-command) a big shelving unit that I use to store my clothes in baskets and a small desk. I was very happy with his work and his ability to finish on time. It’s nice to be able to custom order Ikea furniture and not have to self-assemble them.
Flipping through the Ikea Catalog was a nice reminder of home. There’s been a couple of other instances where I’ve been reminded of home as well. In my last post I wrote about frippery in Value Village tag on the used clothing(frippery). At the dance last Friday I saw a guy wearing a Mariners jacket and a woman with a small notebook with a picture of the Space Needle on it. She was really surprised when I had a photo of the Space Needle.
This past week was Mother and Child Health Week. It happens every 6 months as a national health initiative. It is a week long distribution of vaccines for kids under 4 years of age, vitamin A, and deworming pills. I went out each afternoon to help in the four local villages. There will be a mass mosquito net distribution in November as well.
The update on the politics here is that the head of the transitional government is too young to run for president. There is a vote scheduled for Nov 17 to approve amendments to the constitution, included is a change in the age requirement for someone to run for presidency. I am not sure if the election will occur as planned as many were delayed in the past. There is a big campaign to get people to vote yes, but no opposition campaign.
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