Where there is no normal

Posted on January 24, 2012 by mandy

If you’ve spent any time on the fringes of the earth then you are probably familiar with the popular book, Where There is No Doctor. It’s a household staple for us traveling types. (Even though we have a household doctor of our own, Jonathan has found this book to be a very useful teaching tool). All that to say as we pack our house and bags again and prepare to spend a few months stateside I have been doing a lot of reflecting about our wild and at times unwieldy life style where “normal” is hard to come by. Our little world has been turned upside down and spun around a few times since we left our home in Alaska in August 2009 to begin a grand adventure. From traveling across the US in our VW camper van to studying French in our dingy Parisianish apartment to settling into life on the remote island of Madagascar, its has definitely been a life-altering experience. We’ve been stretched far outside of our comfort zones; we’ve learned to adapt to new people, places, languages, custom, foods, weather; we have been challenged with how to respond responsibly to the extreme poverty that surrounds us and we have been sTrEsSeD…sometimes thriving under it and sometimes being crushed by it.

that's not snow

Our latest not normal experience has been living through the wet/cyclone/rainy season. Strange and unusual things are happening all around us. Namely massive amounts of mold and bugs. “Oh the ants come marching in” is a daily theme around our house. And something about wet weather makes ants ferociously hungry. A grain of rice on the floor will draw out hundreds. I have even seen an army of ants carrying away a live roach for dinner, unbelievable. I remind myself daily that I am bigger and stronger as I go to war against these tiny terrors. Crazier than the ants though is the mold. Things around our house are molding before our eyes: hats, jewelry, wall hangings, bags, toys. Jonathan came in the kitchen the other day holding Alex and exclaiming, “you will never guess what molded?” (a daily guessing game in our house). I exclaimed back in panic, “Alex!” I have just been waiting for it, fearing we are next. Thankfully that hasn’t happened yet, it was just a mat outside.

The Village Trip

Posted on December 10, 2011 by mandy

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Last month we took our first trip to the bush as a family. Our little family of four along with our teammates Jamie and Alissa, their kids, a short-term worker and 8 other Malagasy friends and partners hopped aboard a helicopter and a boat to take the rugged trip 120 miles south to Mahabana. Mandy and the boys experienced life village style while Jonathan worked with our partners to conduct a medical clinic and provide health education. Life village style means a few things: lots and lots of sand, lots and lots of rice, community meals three times a day, a tribe of kids always on our heels and a true rugged experience. It’s hard to sum up the trip because each of us had a unique experience of our own. In a word, for Jonathan it was fulfilling, for Oliver it was fun, for Alex it was rough (fevers several times a day) and for Mandy it was challenging. All in all we are glad we did it and we learned a lot. Mahabana is a special place with an amazing history full of darkness and hope (click here for more details on the history of Mahabana). We are blessed to take part in promoting health and healing in this far corner of the earth.

Barking Turkey

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Jonathan

It was a new experience celebrating Thanksgiving this year… our first in Madagascar. Preparing the turkey was my biggest feat. It started in the market picking out the least scrawny and youngest one I could find. I haggled over the price by pointing out the weaker points of the turkey while the seller promoted it’s finer qualities. We settled on a price, I picked him up by the feet, and we went on our merry way. The next step was changing it from a feathered, walking, breathing, clucking animal into one of those pieces of meat you buy in a US grocery store already plastic-wrapped. I won’t bore you with details but it involved chopping, dipping in boiling water, plucking and gutting. The final result on our Thanksgiving table was a roasted turkey sure enough but only a little bigger than a chicken. Oliver summed up the experience well when he told a new acquaintance: “Daddy cutted the turkey’s head when it was still barking.”

Sharing

Posted on November 20, 2011 by mandy

A hundred times a day we tell our kids to share. It’s a hard lesson to learn for our little tykes who want to rule the world…have their cake and eat it too, and then have some of everyone else’s.

Learning to share isn’t just a lesson we teach, it is one we are also taught everyday living here in Madagascar. Malagasy people excel at sharing. If there is food, everyone eats it. If there is a toy, everyone plays with it. If there is a bed, everyone sleeps in it.
Yesterday we headed out for an overnight family camping trip. The site we were headed to was only 40 miles away, however on the infamous bad roads of Madagascar it is not unusual for 40 mere miles takes 3+ hours. With one hour to go we passed a small cluster of grass huts and then noticed a man waving us down. He asked if he could have a ride to his village which was near to where we were headed.
Jonathan and I looked at each other, then looked around our car. Stuff everywhere, tired kids, car seats that would need moved for a stranger to sit in the back seat, or me moving out of the front seat and squeezing between my kids which usually doesn’t go well. All of this silently passed through our minds as we looked at each other with the nod of agreement and responded to the man, “No, we can’t give you a ride. Sorry.”
We drove a few feet forward, pausing before crossing a small river. A pause just long enough for us to reflect on what just happened and feel an undeniable weight of conviction. We looked at each other, “What are we thinking? Only about our own comfort and convenience. How selfish is that?” Jonathan hoped out to look for the man, I saw him in front of us and waved him back to car. We welcomed him in to the font seat as I hoped in the back. His name was Zoto and he had been walking for 4 hours, eager to get back to his wife and 8 children. I shared a snack with him, which he turn saved to share with his kids back home.

The Tree of Life

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Jonathan

What do you eat if you live on a sand spit between the ocean and a mangrove forest? Fish, of course…when where is some… but what else? What about a balanced diet? What about nutrition? Can fruit and veggies be grown in sand? These are questions I ask when I do medical visits to Mahabana. I see malnourished kids and I have mothers coming to the clinic asking for vitamins. But what can be done to provide a natural and nutritional diet that can be planted, grown, and prepared in the village?

… Enter the moringa tree. This tree grows up to 10 feet a year and thrives in arid conditions. The nutrition found in its edible leaves is astounding. Check out these figures: as much protein as eggs, 3x more iron than spinach, 7x more vitamin C than oranges, 4x more vitamin A than carrots, 4x more calcium than milk, and 3x more potassium than bannanas. On top of all of this, oil can be extracted for fuel, and the seeds can be ground up and used to purify water.

During our village clinic visit last week, we were able to give a presentation, hand out seeds, and show the leaves from an already established sappling. Before we left , I saw women collecting some leaves to cook. Now when patients ask for vitamins, I will have something to give… the “Tree of Life”.

Language and Medicine

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Jonathan

My notes were in English, my Power Point was in French, and I spoke in Malagasy… and people actually understood me for the most part! A few weeks ago I gave my first presentation to a group of nurses with an organization that does outreach to remote villages in our area. There were 7-8 nurses who were in from the bush with travel distances as far away as 6 days. It is exciting for me to use my professional and language skills to promote health in the remote areas of Madagascar. I look forward to seeing this role expand as I jump further into work and relationships here in Mahajanga.

Medicine in the Outback

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Jonathan

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Mahabana is, to say the least, beyond the end of the road. This fishing village is located on a sand spit with the ocean on one side and miles upon miles of mangrove swamps on the other. These villagers are connected to the outside world via traditional sailboats that can take anywhere from 3 to 10 days to get to the city. Over the last 10 years, our partners have started a church and have begun a reforestation program which has employed 100s and planted over 15 million trees. My role, is join with others to provide healthcare to the thousands of people in this region.

Our trip to Mahabana this week was a fruitful and rewarding time. We were warmly welcomed with hand-woven rafia hats and the butchering of a cow. My purpose was to treat patients and learn more about the possibilities of training village health workers. My translator was a high school girl who grew up in this town and is now attending school in the capital with aspirations to become a physician. She was excited to be back home and to see some medicine in action. I treated a range of conditions including parasites, cancers, and for some reason tons of acid reflux. I hope to be back soon to provide further treatment and develop some health education.

Be brave, bargain and bring back-up

Posted on August 8, 2011 by mandy

When girls just want to have fun in Madagascar, we go shopping. At least that is a hobby that my friend Alissa and I share. In Madagascar where there are people, there are sellers. People will sell anything, used water bottles, happy meal toys and most commonly loads of chinese products guaranteed to last 5 seconds max. Clothes shopping in Madagascar is a little different then anything I’ve known before. What we have learned is that if we persist through the dirty market, past the stinky fish, beyond the neon, Chinese clothing all the while dodging the market kids shouting “vazaha” (foreigner) there lies a diamond in the rough. Heaps of used clothes shipped in dry cleaned bundles from France, Italy and the US. Quality clothes that someone somewhere discarded and it sailed the ocean to the stalls of the Malagasy Sellers. Random and Awesome. So when our husbands agree to take on the kids for an hour or three we go dumpster diving and come home with treasures from all over the world. Its best to go in pairs because a girlfriend will tell you the truth about how something fits when there are no mirrors, or better yet try it on for you so you can get a better look at the prospect or help out with the mental gymnastics of insanely complicated currency conversions. Seller and buyer are satisfied when we walk away spending on average $1-3 per item. So there you go, that shirt or pants you donated to Good Will last month just might be sitting in a stall near us in Madagascar. It’s a small world after all.

Parting shots, lasting memories

Posted on June 30, 2011 by mandy

Sekoly ended today, that is the official part. If we have learned anything about language this past 1.5 years it is that it takes a lifetime to learn a language. The work is never finished. Our Malagasy teacher, Madame Lalao has been more than a teacher to us. She has been a cultural and spiritual guide as well. She has taught us to look through a lens different from our own and challenged us to understand the Malagasy way of thinking and speaking. A proverb she shared this week says, “Tondro tokona tsy mahazo hao.” In english, “One finger alone cannot get the lice.” Meaning, individualism is not acceptable, just like you need two fingers to rid your hair of bugs, you need to live and work together, not alone. In Malagasy there is no word for individual. The word “olona” means people and person; to the Malagasy the distinction is not important.

Our final weeks of class we took several field trips to broaden our understanding of Malagasy culture and art and provide opportunities for speaking. Here are some pics:

An artist and his work

Malagasy embroidery

Orphans and a Queen

Posted on June 26, 2011 by mandy

As we near the end of our official language training, our language class is taking our lessons to the road. These outings bring the Malagasy language and culture to life. This past week we visited a local orphanage, learning about the care and education available for these children. We spent the afternoon talking with kids and when our Malagasy word bank ran out we spoke the international language of play and soccer.

Beside the Baobab

Promoting Health and Healing in Madagascar

Category Archives: cross-culture