Update from Diego!

Hello everyone!

Here we are again, after a week of absence . Hope you guys didn`t miss us too much J. We don`t have internet in Anivorano  (the place of the Maventy project) but at the moment we are in Diego Suarez, a city about 2h away from Anivorano. So, here we go!

On Friday the 13^th, we took the taxi-brousse from Antananarivo to Anivorano du Nord. To give you an image about a taxi-brousse: it`s a mini-bus, mostly an old one. Ours was in that view kind of fine though. Then, they try to fit in as much people as possible. It`s not uncommon  that there are more people on the seats than there are seats. The roof is totally packed with luggage, packages, … They transport the craziest stuff.  Our departure time was at 15.00h, and, as real northern Europeans, we were there at 14.30h. Unfortunately, we didn`t really count in Malagasy time, so we finally left at 16.45h. Shortly, we can say that the roads make the Belgian roads seem brilliant. We don`t know were the drivers get their license, or whether they need a license at all. But after doing my (Alex) drivers exam 3 times, I`m probably not in the position to complain about that. After 22h of driving, trying to sleep in every position possible, we arrived in Anivorano. We got to our hotel,  “it’s tiny, but really cute and really nice”  (quote Renée). We don’t have warm water, neither electricity all day. But we manage to shower with a bucket, wash our clothes by hand (a Malagasy women teached us how to, after we we’re making a total fool of ourselves doing it) and cook our dinner on some coals . Compared to the rest of the village we live in the Hilton though, so you hear no complains from us. 

We met Presley, the coordinator of the Maventy project locally, who is an extremely nice and warm hearted man. We would really like to give him appreciation for the work he’s doing.  Beside us , there are currently 4 more volunteers at the project site; Ottilia and Emilie from Denmark and Krushi and Alethea from the UK and Scotland, who all are really nice to work with. 

From Monday on, we started with our work. We are doing the screening program, which includes measuring and weighing all kids under the age of 5 in different villages. The outcomes are immediately checked in the laptop for malnutrition. In that case, we provide the kids with multivitamins and peanut butter. The other job is helping the doctors out in the clinic. The medical students try to help out wherever they can which is helpful since there is only one doctor.  Besides that, we’ve been cleaning the delivery and maternity room, which included moving spiders and geckos. This week, those rooms will be repainted.

Every day, we wake up at 6 in the morning. Then we go to the market to buy some fresh bread, tomatoes and cucumber. With that, we create a self-called “Subway pro-ana”. You have to be creative when you don’t have any Nutella, ‘Hagelslag’ or ‘Speculoospasta’. 

So end, some remarkable notes:

-          One evening, just before going to bed, we found a frog ON TOP of our mosquito net. Luckily, Pierre saved us, wearing surgical gloves, after Renée tried to scare it with her flash light.

-          The car that we are using to go to the villages only starts by pushing it.

-          Today, we were able to fit with 27 people in a bus, which is about the size of a Renault Espace. After that, we got in a taxi, a yellow Renault 4L (yes, they are still used and common here), with the 6 of us.

Unfortunately, Lara decided to go home, we wish her a safe trip!

All the best and if we have internet, we`ll blog again!

Alex & Renée, (Pierre and Patrick)