Adventures to Spare

A lot has happened in the past month or so. I’ll start from the beginning, with our GLOW (Girls Leading our World) camp in Tana during the first week of September. I worked with four other volunteers all from my region (central) of Madagascar to hold the camp for adolescent girls from each of our towns. Each of us selected four girls, ages 14-16, and one chaperone to participate in the camp, making a total of 20 girls and 5 chaperones in addition to the 5 volunteers. It was difficult for me to select only four girls from Ampefy; however the girls I chose exceeded my expectations in their participation and growth over the course of the week.

We had three full days of activities and visits focusing on three themes: health, work and education. The first day, two different organizations, PSI and MAHEFA, led sessions to teach the girls about reproductive health, family planning and nutrition. The second day, we visited the American Embassy and had women who work at the Embassy in addition to members of a professional women’s association in Madagascar talk about their jobs and the balance of work and family life. On the third day, we visited the University of Antananarivo as well as the EducationUSA Advising Center to give the girls the opportunity to learn about higher education both in Madagascar and abroad. The last day, we were able to do some sightseeing and shopping in Tana as many of the girls don’t have the chance to make the trip to the capital city often. And now the real work begins, as the girls will pass along the information they learned to their peers in town.

After the GLOW camp, I had about a week back in Ampefy to get things in order before heading out east to the port city of Tamatave to help translate for a medical mission. Members of the organization CRMF (Caring Response Madagascar Foundation) make a trip to Madagascar for a few weeks every year to run rural health clinics and this year, to lead training sessions for midwives. It was my first real experience with the health system and the problems that accompany it here in Madagascar. Each volunteer was partnered with a doctor during the clinics to translate for the patients, which was difficult for me in the beginning because of the different dialect of Malagasy out east. About half the time, I was partnered with an OB/GYN, the other half with a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. One of the most incredible things was the doctors brought a portable ultrasound machine with them to the rural clinics, so pregnant women who never could have imagined seeing their unborn child (and not to mention know the sex before it is born) were both shocked and excited to see their babies, healthy and kicking.

Of course with new life, there is also death. One of the most difficult patients that I had to translate for was a 30-year old woman experiencing heart failure. If she had not come to the clinic, she would have died within a few weeks, and even so it is hard to know what will happen to her. I listened to her heartbeat; it had no clear rhythm and instead a galloping beat – it sounded like rushing water. She also had severe edema in her legs and overall very poor blood flow. We immediately sent her to the hospital in Tamatave, luckily she was able to go in the organization’s private car and the doctors covered her medical expenses. She has six children, the youngest of which was 3 months old and still nursing, so she took her infant to the hospital with her to be able to care for him. Now, I still think of this woman and can only hope that her and her family are ok. Overall, the mission was an incredible experience and I am so glad to have witnessed that side of life here, even if much of it was difficult for me to come to terms with.

Last bit of big news - my mom visited during the first week of October. It was an adventure to say the least, we joked about calculating the likelihood of our survival over the course of the week. We first spent a few (calm) days in Ampefy and had a chance to visit some of the people I work with in the neighboring town of Soavinandriana, including a dairy farmer and a potter. My mom also got the chance to meet some more of my friends in Ampefy and witness firsthand both the joys and frustrations that I experience here on a regular basis. Then what I thought would be the real, relaxing part of the vacation began with a surprisingly smooth AirMadagascar flight up to Diego.

First, we headed south to Ankarana National Park, staying at a lodge on the west side. After a 4-hour drive on a pot-hole filled road, past villages where pigs run around like dogs and hordes of smiling Malagasy children waved to us as we drove by, we arrived at our lodge buried deep in the massifs of the park. I was caught a bit off guard by the organic nature of the lodge, no windows or doors, completely open to the elements. One of the biggest surprises we encountered was a toilet full of frogs once we returned from hiking in the park the first day. We spent about twenty minutes, laughing and screaming, as we attempted to fish the frogs out of the toilet.

The west side of the park is mainly known for it’s large, spacious caverns. We walked through three of them – the first one stunned me by its sheer size as we continued deeper and deeper into the darkness and silence, accompanied only by our guide and small, sleeping bats hanging from the walls. I’ve never been so happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel as when we saw the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the mouth of the cave. We then reached the bottom of a large canyon and quickly entered into the Cathedral Cavern, which resembles a cathedral with its high ceiling and large holes at the top looking up to the sky. One difference were the cackling fox bats, the largest bats in Madagascar that call the cave their home, their shrill voices filling the air of the dark space while guano lay and cockroaches crawled at our feet. The final cavern was the Crystal Cavern, the stalactites and stalagmites sparkling like chandeliers as we shone our headlamps into the darkness.

The eastern side of the park was tamer, relatively speaking. This time we hiked over tsingy (the limestone rock formations found only in Madagascar that formed under the ocean millions of years ago) and through riverbeds. As it is the dry season, we were able to see where two rivers meet to form a giant whirlpool before streaming underground when the rain comes, starting around December. People have died here as it is impossible to tell the flow of the river when the rains arrive. That afternoon, we headed back to Diego and spent a night at the luxurious Grand Hotel before taking a Tuktuk out to Ramena beach the next day.

Thus marks the last of our death defying adventures – this time by the way of boat, crossing the channel to the Emerald Sea at the windiest time of the year. Our wooden sailboat with cloth sail was certainly a bit more weathered and us soaked through by the end, though the sea was beautiful and clear of a color unlike I have ever seen. And we survived to tell the tale.

That’s all for now, pictures to come!