I’ve been going back and forth about the topic of this post, wondering if it may be a tad of an over share, which it probably is. But I guess, it is the reality of this field of work and an inevitable part of being in Africa, or any country where infectious disease runs rampant. And, well, despite all the warning signs and all the lectures of infectious disease epidemiology, there are no drugs that can cure the one bad decision to eat an egg sunny side up at a convent over 100 km into rainforest in central south-eastern Madagascar.
This past week me and the other Malagasy intern working on the same project went out to experience real field visits. It is the meat of our internship; kind of what our whole internship is based on. So last Monday we set out wide-eyed and bushytailed to do some heavy-duty research on how well these programs are running. Our first stop was a town about five hours away from Antananarivo, Ambositra. It was a really nice little place, full of orange and banana stands as well as little dive restaurants that all have a cup of coffee for about 50 American cents (thank God) as well as ‘moofballs,’ which are really just beignets without the powdered sugar. I would just like to say that for all the trouble Africa seems to have, they know how to do one thing really well and that is fried varieties of dough. I have yet to go to a place in Africa that does not have some sort of amazing fried dough. In Lesotho it was makoenya (literally translates to ‘fat cakes’) or in Zanzibar they had chapattis, which were kind of like tortillas fried in butter, and now I get moofballs. And they have a variety of moofballs too. Not just dough balled up and thrown into a deep-fat fryer, which I am by no means dissing. But, oh the variety, they have a savory type, where the dough is fried with onions, greens, and possibly s swirl of cheese, then sweet ones, glazed ones (which are really just doughnuts), and the best of all….the fried bananas. Take one banana, dip it batter, and then deep fat fry it, I would stay in Madagascar if I could eat these every day with no repercussions. They also have Nutella here….I’m assuming you can follow where I am going with this. IT IS DANGEROUS. And in more than one way, such adventurous spirits when it comes to food brings us directly back to the title of this post. Hmmmm…
Anywho, what the heck did we do in Ambositra besides gorge ourselves on fried dough? We did assessments to see if these kiddos are gaining some weight as a result of the implementation of these nutrition programs. It was interesting, we got to talk and really discuss (well via my co-workers) their nutrition practices. Which by doing so, we really saw how other indicators outside of just what the kids eat can influence their overall nutrition. Those mothers that seemed to be doing much better with their kids were much more hygienic, which makes sense because better hygiene leads to less instances of infectious disease, leading to less diarrhea, and better consistent weight gain. They also had better dentition. Man, oh man, were some of the smiles pretty empty. We also collected some numbers in attempt to run some statistical testing…wish us luck that something decent comes of all this. In Ambositra we were spoiled with all the fried dough, coffee, ample Coke Light (again, thank God), beautiful hotel, and soooo many bananas and oranges everywhere, only to find when we went to Ikongo, the only thing left of this would be the bananas and oranges.
After two days in Ambositra we drove about 100 km into the rainforest to Ikongo. Now this is where the real adventure begins, I know this because when we turned off the paved road and went vertical up a mountain in a rainforest, the Malagasy intern I was with turned to me and said ‘This is where the real adventure begins’ and when somebody from the country you are in tells you something like that you know you just stepped in it. And boy did we. After ohhh, about six hours of swerving around mountains on a muddy, dirt road through a rainforest, while it was raining of course, I mean we are in a rainforest, we land in Ikongo at our hotel…if it can even be called that. It is basically a two story building made out of wooden planks with a the wash room and toilet on the other side of some wooden planks which were made out of corrugated steel guarded by gigantic turkeys (yes real live turkeys) and smelling to high heaven of about 100 tuna cans left out in sun to concentrate their smell with poop on top, while also smelling very acidic. Oh and there is no toilet seat, it is just a hole in the corrugated steel, in hopes that all their travelers have good balance. You do not want to fall over because not everyone has the best aim. But Ikongo did make up for some of the shortcomings in comfort in that it was absolutely gorgeous. Me and the other intern named it Jurassic Madagascar because it looked just like the rainforest in Jurassic Park, which we obviously watched one night out there. And there were bananas and oranges everywhere. You could literally be in your car, feel a little rumbly in the tumbly, pull over and snag a couple bananas and oranges out of some nearby trees hop back in the car and be on your way. It’s God’s own gas station snack shop, just minus the fountain sodas and gas, unfortunately. That all being said, the next night in Ikongo we were able to find some better lodging, with some better company: the nuns. We showed up on their doorstep after one day of observations and asked if they could provide some lodging and literally, by the grace of God they took us in. It was considerably better, I mean I still had a hole in the ground as a toilet and there was only cold running water and the electricity ran out at 8pm, but it was scores better than the last place.
It is here that I met my nemesis…eggs sunny side up. So being nuns and being the amazing women they are, they wanted to accommodate us. We explained that I don’t eat meat, so they offered to make me eggs, which I gladly accepted. So when we went down to dinner there was a pile of sunny side up eggs, which I don’t normally go for, but they went through all the trouble of accommodating my stupid eating habits and they were watching us to make sure we enjoyed our dinner, that I scarfed down two of those fateful eggs. Oh and there was a nun there who spoke English and knew where St. Louis was, which made me like them even more. Fast forward to five in the morning and an ominous hole in the ground and I had learned my lesson. After that we explained the eggs were not necessary and due to the Malagasy’s obsession with rice and the abundance of bananas and tea, I was able to stick to the BRAT diet pretty well and, while a week later I’m still recovering, I think I got off pretty easy this time and just keep thanking my lucky stars that I got food poisoning at the nuns place and not at the first place where I would have to be doubled over that nasty hole in the ground with a gigantic turkey eyeing me from above.
After that things went pretty smoothly. We had another day of observations, which we learned kind of a lot from and could pinpoint where they are going wrong and what they are doing right and got some numbers (the epidemiologist in me shouted for joy when we got some numbers) and we even had some extra time to swing by Ranamafana National Park to hunt down some lemurs. We showed up to the park around 9 am and, naturally it was raining, which it had been doing for about four days straight. We then hiked up and down mountains on super slippery muddy paths to chase down some lemurs that were swinging around in the trees and we finally got to see some in the wild, woo hoo! Although such adventures, I have now learned, do not come without a price. When we got out of the forest we noticed some creatures crawling up our jeans. Which were curious because they weren’t really bugs, but rather looked like small worms, and you know what looks like small worms? Leeches. We were pulling leeches off our jeans, shoes, and socks for about ten minutes only to give up, high tail it to our hotel and get in our showers in hopes of steaming the leeches off. Once showered and rested we rested some more to recover from the rigorous activity in the morning and the creepiness of the leeches.
The next day we travelled back to Tana, moofballs and banana beignets in hand. I’m pretty sure by the end of our trip our driver was ready to kick us out and never see us again after all of our requests, and hopefully the food poisoning helped me make up for all the extra ‘moofball weight’ I had put on. Overall, though, it was a successful trip. We were able to really dig into the program and see how it was working in reality and could chalk some adventures up to experience and just better prepare for next time. It was pretty fun and pretty tiring but ultimately it was great to get out of Tana for a week and see how the rest of Madagascar lives and the troubles they experience that deters their good health. So hopefully I didn’t over share too much or gross anyone out. Take care and I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!
I’ve been going back and forth about the topic of this post, wondering if it may be a tad of an over share, which it probably is. But I guess, it is the reality of this field of work and an inevitable part of being in Africa, or any country where infectious disease runs rampant. And, well, despite all the warning signs and all the lectures of infectious disease epidemiology, there are no drugs that can cure the one bad decision to eat an egg sunny side up at a convent over 100 km into rainforest in central south-eastern Madagascar.
This past week me and the other Malagasy intern working on the same project went out to experience real field visits. It is the meat of our internship; kind of what our whole internship is based on. So last Monday we set out wide-eyed and bushytailed to do some heavy-duty research on how well these programs are running. Our first stop was a town about five hours away from Antananarivo, Ambositra. It was a really nice little place, full of orange and banana stands as well as little dive restaurants that all have a cup of coffee for about 50 American cents (thank God) as well as ‘moofballs,’ which are really just beignets without the powdered sugar. I would just like to say that for all the trouble Africa seems to have, they know how to do one thing really well and that is fried varieties of dough. I have yet to go to a place in Africa that does not have some sort of amazing fried dough. In Lesotho it was makoenya (literally translates to ‘fat cakes’) or in Zanzibar they had chapattis, which were kind of like tortillas fried in butter, and now I get moofballs. And they have a variety of moofballs too. Not just dough balled up and thrown into a deep-fat fryer, which I am by no means dissing. But, oh the variety, they have a savory type, where the dough is fried with onions, greens, and possibly s swirl of cheese, then sweet ones, glazed ones (which are really just doughnuts), and the best of all….the fried bananas. Take one banana, dip it batter, and then deep fat fry it, I would stay in Madagascar if I could eat these every day with no repercussions. They also have Nutella here….I’m assuming you can follow where I am going with this. IT IS DANGEROUS. And in more than one way, such adventurous spirits when it comes to food brings us directly back to the title of this post. Hmmmm…
Anywho, what the heck did we do in Ambositra besides gorge ourselves on fried dough? We did assessments to see if these kiddos are gaining some weight as a result of the implementation of these nutrition programs. It was interesting, we got to talk and really discuss (well via my co-workers) their nutrition practices. Which by doing so, we really saw how other indicators outside of just what the kids eat can influence their overall nutrition. Those mothers that seemed to be doing much better with their kids were much more hygienic, which makes sense because better hygiene leads to less instances of infectious disease, leading to less diarrhea, and better consistent weight gain. They also had better dentition. Man, oh man, were some of the smiles pretty empty. We also collected some numbers in attempt to run some statistical testing…wish us luck that something decent comes of all this. In Ambositra we were spoiled with all the fried dough, coffee, ample Coke Light (again, thank God), beautiful hotel, and soooo many bananas and oranges everywhere, only to find when we went to Ikongo, the only thing left of this would be the bananas and oranges.
After two days in Ambositra we drove about 100 km into the rainforest to Ikongo. Now this is where the real adventure begins, I know this because when we turned off the paved road and went vertical up a mountain in a rainforest, the Malagasy intern I was with turned to me and said ‘This is where the real adventure begins’ and when somebody from the country you are in tells you something like that you know you just stepped in it. And boy did we. After ohhh, about six hours of swerving around mountains on a muddy, dirt road through a rainforest, while it was raining of course, I mean we are in a rainforest, we land in Ikongo at our hotel…if it can even be called that. It is basically a two story building made out of wooden planks with a the wash room and toilet on the other side of some wooden planks which were made out of corrugated steel guarded by gigantic turkeys (yes real live turkeys) and smelling to high heaven of about 100 tuna cans left out in sun to concentrate their smell with poop on top, while also smelling very acidic. Oh and there is no toilet seat, it is just a hole in the corrugated steel, in hopes that all their travelers have good balance. You do not want to fall over because not everyone has the best aim. But Ikongo did make up for some of the shortcomings in comfort in that it was absolutely gorgeous. Me and the other intern named it Jurassic Madagascar because it looked just like the rainforest in Jurassic Park, which we obviously watched one night out there. And there were bananas and oranges everywhere. You could literally be in your car, feel a little rumbly in the tumbly, pull over and snag a couple bananas and oranges out of some nearby trees hop back in the car and be on your way. It’s God’s own gas station snack shop, just minus the fountain sodas and gas, unfortunately. That all being said, the next night in Ikongo we were able to find some better lodging, with some better company: the nuns. We showed up on their doorstep after one day of observations and asked if they could provide some lodging and literally, by the grace of God they took us in. It was considerably better, I mean I still had a hole in the ground as a toilet and there was only cold running water and the electricity ran out at 8pm, but it was scores better than the last place.
It is here that I met my nemesis…eggs sunny side up. So being nuns and being the amazing women they are, they wanted to accommodate us. We explained that I don’t eat meat, so they offered to make me eggs, which I gladly accepted. So when we went down to dinner there was a pile of sunny side up eggs, which I don’t normally go for, but they went through all the trouble of accommodating my stupid eating habits and they were watching us to make sure we enjoyed our dinner, that I scarfed down two of those fateful eggs. Oh and there was a nun there who spoke English and knew where St. Louis was, which made me like them even more. Fast forward to five in the morning and an ominous hole in the ground and I had learned my lesson. After that we explained the eggs were not necessary and due to the Malagasy’s obsession with rice and the abundance of bananas and tea, I was able to stick to the BRAT diet pretty well and, while a week later I’m still recovering, I think I got off pretty easy this time and just keep thanking my lucky stars that I got food poisoning at the nuns place and not at the first place where I would have to be doubled over that nasty hole in the ground with a gigantic turkey eyeing me from above.
After that things went pretty smoothly. We had another day of observations, which we learned kind of a lot from and could pinpoint where they are going wrong and what they are doing right and got some numbers (the epidemiologist in me shouted for joy when we got some numbers) and we even had some extra time to swing by Ranamafana National Park to hunt down some lemurs. We showed up to the park around 9 am and, naturally it was raining, which it had been doing for about four days straight. We then hiked up and down mountains on super slippery muddy paths to chase down some lemurs that were swinging around in the trees and we finally got to see some in the wild, woo hoo! Although such adventures, I have now learned, do not come without a price. When we got out of the forest we noticed some creatures crawling up our jeans. Which were curious because they weren’t really bugs, but rather looked like small worms, and you know what looks like small worms? Leeches. We were pulling leeches off our jeans, shoes, and socks for about ten minutes only to give up, high tail it to our hotel and get in our showers in hopes of steaming the leeches off. Once showered and rested we rested some more to recover from the rigorous activity in the morning and the creepiness of the leeches.
The next day we travelled back to Tana, moofballs and banana beignets in hand. I’m pretty sure by the end of our trip our driver was ready to kick us out and never see us again after all of our requests, and hopefully the food poisoning helped me make up for all the extra ‘moofball weight’ I had put on. Overall, though, it was a successful trip. We were able to really dig into the program and see how it was working in reality and could chalk some adventures up to experience and just better prepare for next time. It was pretty fun and pretty tiring but ultimately it was great to get out of Tana for a week and see how the rest of Madagascar lives and the troubles they experience that deters their good health. So hopefully I didn’t over share too much or gross anyone out. Take care and I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!
1 comment:
well, it's true, isn't it? hopefully that's the last of your intestinal issues. leeches and lemurs, weeeee!
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