Pioneer Team October 2009: Diary No.3

Posted on 11 December 2009

We arrived back in town from the bush on Friday the 13th October, ironically no camion break down this time! Suddenly the flushing toilets and running water seem like a luxury to be savoured. Thank god for the long house in the rain and bless those pineapples, vitamin C never tasted so good!

We’ve been working on 4 projects while we’ve been in town: building sanitation platforms (sanplats); health and sanitation education, beautifying the latrines on shipwreck beach and pot packing.

Sanitation platforms involved building 26 concrete squatting platforms for individual families who requested and collected materials. The families dug a hole 2m deep in their back yard and we then built a wooden box to structurally support the hole and installed the sanplat on top of the hole. The family was then responsible for constructing the cubicle around the latrine so they could enjoy some privacy! This project was carried out alongside the beautification of shipwreck beach (which was used as a public defecation site in the past) and allows them to use an alternative and more sanitary toilet facility. The “Dude” as he was known (the assistant chief of the village) was a definite highlight of the work. Who says you can’t get past a language barrier? He cracked us up as we worked by adding sound effects to even the most mundane activity. The local people were customarily generous, giving us coconuts and many smiles and thanks.

Health and sanitation education was typically embarrassing but a lot of fun. Making pooing noises, eating off the floor and pretending to be dogs were all parts of the stuff we performed to highlight unsanitary behaviour. They then had to identify all the points at which we should have changed our behaviour e.g. washing our hands.

For the next two weeks we’ve been haunted by the “washing-your-hands-song” (zaza manasa tanana). It was really heart warming. We’ve never seen children who were so enthused by soap before! Not five hundred yards down the beach the old dilapidated latrines built a few years earlier served as a constant reminder of the importance of community awareness and active participation. It was with high hopes that we fenced, painted and planted around the new latrine (easily the nicest building in that area) and attended the opening ceremony with most of the rest of the villagers. Our resident art director got to make this artistic contribution with a stylised squatting man and maki shop inspired male and female logos. The Australian ambassadors’ secretary also came to the opening (the project was funded by AusAid) and made a speech thanking Azafady for their efforts.

“Pot packing”: the art of packing soil mix (part sand, part compost) into a small plastic bag. These bags are used later to plant seeds in. We reached over our goal of 4000 bags of soil. It was a close call towards the end of the time in town, we even had to employ uber competitive tactics. In the final two days we packed over 100 bags – just goes to show that you can leave things to the last minute!

Two of the pioneers opted to do an internship while in Fort Dauphin. They’ve been conducting research and interviews with local authorities and experts to write their reports about rural/urban planning and climate change.

As a treat for us one weekend we were able to travel to Lokaro – a nearby beach paradise accessible by pirogue. The hard pirogue ride there and enormous walk back was worth it for the beauty of the location and the quality of the food –fantastic fish! All in all a fantastic 3 weeks in Fort Dauphin – ready to bush it up again!

N.B. Some things we’ve learned about the guides [a group of Malagasy guides travel and work with the Pioneer group throughout the scheme] so far:

Guide to Volunteer language translation guide

• Later = never unless you’re extremely persistent, in which case it might be in a month!
• Just over there = About 3 hours away
• 5 – 20 minutes = All morning
• I don’t know how far away it is = you’ll never get there
• When you notice the guides saying zaza (child) more than usual, they’re talking about you!
• Vazaha = pioneer
• Zaza = pioneer

To summarise, the guides always “joke”, don’t trust them unless they’re being serious, but always trust the guides when they’re being serious! *The contribution of the guides to the pioneer scheme is immeasurable and without them the whole experience wouldn’t be as much fun. Thank you to all the Malagasy guides!*