They Don’t Have Toilets, But They Do Have Coffee.

Well after finally kicking that bout of food poisoning and getting back up to full speed like 1200 cups of coffee later, I’m back in the game and recently did some more field trips with minimal shady toilet experiences. Whew. We, and by we, I mean I have my trusty Malagasy intern with me along with another American intern, and we recently travelled down south to do more observations of the project we are helping to improve. While in America, to travel the same distance it would maybe mean about ten hours in a car, here it would mean about two days in a car, on a shoty road, creeping around mountains then slowly turning into a sandy path curving its way through the desert. We were lucky and got to fly, compressing a two-day trip into an hour flight then a three-hour drive, whew again. We originally flew into Fort Dauphin, which is at the southern edge of Madagascar. Even though I have been at the tip of South Africa and living in Lesotho seemed like the farthest place from home in the world sometimes, it is always startling to think that if I were to just to jump in the ocean and take off swimming I would not hit land again until I got to Antarctica. It is kind of thrilling, but also a touch nerdy to muse over. Back to the point, so after our convenient travel arrangements, we landed in Fort Dauphin, which, for Madagascar is a pretty hopping place… I mean people stay out past 8pm, so it is like hold on to your hats folks, it’s going to get wild. However, after getting here and planning on traveling on to Ambovombe, where we were to do our research, we learned there is a local political disruption and that there is a militant group of cattle thieves and we are unable to travel after dark. So we stayed one night in Fort Dauphin (rats! But not really though) where we got to watch the sunrise over the ocean and mountains. Not too bad. But, as things usually go, we turn off the beaten path and 3 hours on a ‘road’ listening to Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits, we land in Ambovombe. Ambovombe, well it felt kind of like what a ghost town in the west feels like, but with people and a lot of beggars. However, they did have moofbalsl and coffee so I was happy. We were there for a solid two days, talking to village health workers in other outlying villages, so it was kind of like going to the middle of nowhere and then going two more hours past that. I know this is going to sound rather closed-minded, but I’m still trying to figure out why people live out there. There is no water, no food, it is difficult to grow food and people think it is taboo to live in stone or cement houses, so they all live in these super drafty wooden shacks, oh and did I mention it is the middle of a desert? But I guess that is just my overly American viewpoint and maybe that is what people in New York City think when I tell them about living in St. Libory—no fast-food, no relatively close shopping places or Starbucks. Anyways, as always it is super eye opening to see the health obstacles people face out here and it kind of makes all your problems diminish pretty quickly. Lately me and the other interns have been playing a bit of a game with it. Those problems at are real problems get the honor of being called real problems and all those that are just inconveniences or dealing with petty emotions have been labeled ‘white girl’ problems. An example of a white girl problem would be: I have to walk to work today or this restaurant only serves meat filled dishes and I don’t eat meat. But a real problem would be more along the lines of I have no food or my baby has an abscess in her mouth and the doctor at the local clinic hasn’t been there in three months because he feels he is not being compensated enough for being a doctor out in the middle of nowhere so he just stopped showing up and has probably been on holiday for the these past months. It’s times like that when the American health system, regardless of what state it is in doesn’t really seem so bad…. Regardless, I thank my lucky stars I only have ‘white girl’ problems. Once we arrived in this outlying village, we immediately take about 20 more photos of the baobab trees, then crash a funeral (just a tad awkward), after which we enter into a discussion on the food situation here and why they are having troubles with the food program. Long story short, they just do not have a ton of food available and during the dry season they have to eat cactus fruit 3 times a day. We tried cactus fruit, and it is not good. It is like eating a slimy watermelon, but does not really taste much like anything and there are just a lot of seeds. Let’s just say it left a lasting impression, so much so that I do not need to try it again anytime soon. While our discussion was very informative, the most excitement happened while we were on our way out of the village. So being the big, red headed foreigners that we are (me and the other intern are at least a foot taller than most Malagasy and we have red hair) we wanted to use a toilet before taking off. So they marched us to this latrine after about a 10 minute discussion about why we needed a latrine and couldn’t just drop trow in the middle of a field like everyone else. Anyways they lead us to this wooden latrine and, me being the oldest, volunteer to go first. When they first opened the door it didn’t look too bad…then I looked at the floor. You know that scene in Raiders of the lost Ark when Indiana Jones looks down at the floor of that hidden temple place and he sees the floor and they are like ‘It is moving…” but then they realize it is snakes? Well it was just like that with the floor of this latrine, but replace the snakes with gigantic cockroaches. We opted not to use those latrines and the villagers made so much fun of us. We left to the sounds of cackling villagers as it spread far and wide that the big red foreigners were afraid to use the latrines.

The rest of our stay in Ambovombe was extremely helpful as I ransacked the office there for weight documents and then we spent our last night in Fort Dauphin again. The morning we left we got up rather early to visit the beach. It was, not surprisingly, gorgeous. We decided to climb around on some of the rocks on the beach, which doesn’t sound that daring, but we soon found out they were rather sharp, tricky to jump around on, and to top it off, we had to dodge the random piles of poop that were speckled along the rocks. It is taboo in the southern part of Madagascar to poop in a latrine, near your house, or to store all of your poop in one place, so to the beach they go to do their business, causing a fun obstacle when rock climbing. And thus we ended our trip to the south. It was informative and insightful, and it wouldn’t be a field trip with out at least one toilet mishap. I am now beginning my last week here in Madagascar and will soon be on my way back to the US. My last week will be full of scrambling to get in my final reports and souvenir shopping. I hope to get up one more blog, to let you all know how I will miss all the vanilla and fat babies, but I’ll be happy to be back to the states and enjoy some serious summer time! Take care!