Life at the Lycee and New Volunteers

Apologies for my lengthy absence from my blog…

Things here at the lycee hit a bit of a rocky point recently. We found out that the secretary of the lycee has been stealing money. Some of the teachers are paid by the state and some are paid by the FRAM (which is the equivalent of a PTA). The secretarty has been stealing money from this PTA fund which meaning several teachers went almost two months without getting paid. In this country that means to you starve. Anyway, those teachers have since been paid, but the secretary still works here even though everyone knows he is a thief. Unfortunately, he is an employee of the state and therefore can only be fired by the Minister of Education here in Madagascar. The lycee cannot fire him. Yes, I also thought this was unbelievable.

Many of you know I am already working on a project to build a library here in Ampasimanjeva, but Peace Corps rules require that the community contribute at least 25% of the project’s total cost. The FRAM was all set to be a big help until this minor hiccup with the secretary. I don’t know how much was stolen, but I do know that it was an insane amount even for American currency. It seems we are close to getting back to normal here and people still seem to want to put money into this library project so that is encouraging. I am sending my library proposal to Peace Corps today for their review. Fingers crossed that it gets approved. Hopefully will find out in the next month or so.

Early April was vacation time for teachers. I went to a national park with a few other volunteers: we saw some lemurs, hung out at a waterfall and had a good time in the bush for a few days. We also managed to get robbed in the middle of the night in our bungalow. Even still, had a great time.

But enough of the doom and gloom…on to the bright side.

This past month was Malaria awareness month. Malaria kills tens of thousands of people in Madagascar every year so it is still very much a problem. Peace Corps countries in Africa had a competition to see who could put on the most Malaria-related event. I painted two murals with some other volunteers – one on the hospital in my town and one on a primary school in another volunteer’s town. I used to scoff at the idea of Peace Corps volunteers doing murals on buildings. It seemed childish and a like a complete waste of time. But man was I wrong. Our murals showed ways to prevent Malaria, how to take care of your mosquito net, symptoms of Malaria and what to do if you have Malaria. The amount of attention these things attract is like something I never could have imagined. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people go to this hospital every week and will see the mural. Not only that, but a lot of these people genuinely don’t understand things about Malaria that you or I may have picked up because we have gone through school or been or a hospital in our lives. After we finished the mural in my town we gave a little speech to the people who were there explaining Malaria and the mural itself. They seemed to enjoy it. I also gave Malaria lessons in my three classes. Our region won the Malaria competition within Madagascar last year. Hoping for a repeat.

                My buddy Nick and I after we finished the Malaria mural outside the hospital in my town.

New volunteers will arrive at their new sites in a few days. I will also have a new site mate who I am very excited to meet and show around like my old site mate Al did for me. Pretty weird to think I was in her position only a few months ago and now I feel so comfortable in this environment.

Speaking of new volunteers, there will be more education volunteers coming in July. I applied to be one of the trainers and got the position, so that is pretty exciting. The position also means all the trainers have to go to the training center before they arrive to talk about how Peace Corps wants us to train these new volunteers This meeting takes place during July 4^th weekend so it will be cool to be with a few other Americans for that.

I was also offered a position at a small library for kids in a town called Ifaty for the summer. I’m hoping I can still do it now that I have this training position. Anyone who knows me know that I don’t like a lot of down time so this will be huge during the school vacation. Also, I can get the opportunity to see how a Malagasy library functions before I hopefully open up my own in my town.

Three times a year the volunteers in each region get together to talk about policy changes that Peace Corps is making or talk about any changes that volunteers want to see or problems they are having. I am in charge of organizing the meeting for the volunteers in the South East region. Another volunteer (who lives close to the spot we have picked for our next meeting) and I have set up a camping weekend in what could roughly be described as the middle of nowhere. Very excited about it. There is a waterfall, we are gonna do some hiking, and just hang out in the woods for a few days at the end of June. Should be a good time. you can imagine how important these meetings can be to volunteers after being at site for a long time, not seeing other Americans or getting to speak English.

I have more to say, but I think that is good for now. Maybe I'll come back tomorrow and add a few things if there is time. The new volunteers for the South East arrive on Sunday, which is why I am in Manakara for the weekend. We are going to welcome them, help them buy stuff for their house and then go with them to their new site, which will be their home for the next two years.

Peace! Go Wings!