Tuesday, again, was a typical day. Although many things in Madagascar are unpredicatable, our mornings are always exactly the same. French for an hour, Malagasy for an hour, and then snack for 20 minutes. On Tuesday though, we had something new for snack! There were “fleurs d’amour” which are basically fried dough with honey and are incredibly delicious. After snack we split into 5 groups to go visit NGOs. I went with 3 other students to visit FISA, an NGO that works with the IPPF (or the International Planned Parenthood Foundation). The NGO visits various communities to talk to them about family planning (the average family here is very large and often can’t financially support all of the members). They also offer services at the office. Couples can come in to talk about family planning and their specific situations and people can also come in for free HIV/AIDs testing. Between January and September, there were close to 5000 people who came in for consultations and over 1000 who came in for testing (although only 2 tested positive). The woman we talked with was a program coordinator. She was really nice and spoke French and a little English, which is always fun (people really like getting to practice their English with native speakers when at all possible).
The afternoon wasn’t too special. We went back to the SIT center to eat and then I went to the Alliance Franaçaise to do some work and use the internet. After a while a group of us headed over to Quai Ouest, where I got what was called a pressed fruit juice, but was basically just a smoothie. It was unexpectedly delicious so I am super glad that I got it. After that I went home and just hung around with my family. My sister didn’t come home and my mom slept through dinner, so dinner was a late (around 9:30) quiet affair with just me, my little sister, my brother, and my dad.
Wednesday morning had a sad start. We learned that another student would be leaving us that night, so now we are down to 19, rather than the 21 that we started with. We had a long talk with Roland about the circumstances and what had already been done and then we had French and Malagasy. Instead of having a normal Malagasy class, we had what they called a “devoirs” (homework) but it was actually an open book/note quiz/test type thing. I didn’t think that it was too difficult, although I know that there were some people who had a fair amount of difficulty with it.
After snack (we had fleurs d’amour again because they saw on Tuesday how much we liked them!) we split into groups of 4 to visit public schools. I went with 3 other students to a public middle school about a 10 minute walk from our rented classroom space. When we first got there we were all surprised by how big the building actually was. It was a lot nicer than I had been anticipating, although I don’t know why I was expecting something not as nice, because I didn’t have any reason to think it wouldn’t be nice. We talked for a while with the principal and vice-principal to learn about the school (such as a typical day, how many students/classes there are, and the difficulties they face, just to name a few) and then we got to go sit in on an English class. The class was learning about greetings. The teacher would give some sort of greeting and then ask the class for synonyms. Afterwards we got to add some synonyms so they were able to learn something new from us! The teacher wanted us to come back again later but unfortunately I don’t think that it will be possible.
The student who was leaving came to eat lunch with us, so we were all happy to see her, although she was obviously sad to be leaving us. After lunch I had another ISP meeting with Roland just to go over some logistics. It is looking like I will be heading back to Tana with the group on Sunday and then going down to Tsiroanomandidy on Tuesday and to my village on Wednesday. On Monday I am going to run random errands around town (such as buying some things for my host family) and use the internet for the last time for a while.
After my meeting I went to the cyber café to do some homework and then I was able to skype with a friend from home (that is 2 times in 2 days! First Rose and then Shalli!). Afterwards I went to say a final goodbye to the girl who is leaving and returned home. After showering my mom helped me a little to prepare for my Malagasy presentation tomorrow (it will be pretty easy. We just need to talk about some aspect of the culture, in French, and then give 10 Malagasy words/expressions concerning the topic). After that one of her students, who is 11, showed me her science notebooks and I asked her a little about how her teacher teaches them the material, as that is what I will be looking at for my ISP in the village. It was helpful. Then my older sister came home and we made paper cranes together (I looked up the instructions online because she had previously asked me about them). I made cranes of 3 different sizes and then Miangaly took them all to play with. It was super cute to watch/listen to, because when she is playing by herself she talks a ton (and today it was mostly in French so I understood almost all of it!).
Thursday morning, after language classes, we were going to visit CSBs (centres de santé de basse). I went to the one in Amborovy, where I live, with 3 other students (2 of whom also live here). We were able to talk with 1 of the 2 doctors there and she told us a little about the different services they offer before taking us on a little tour. We were able to see the consultation rooms, meeting rooms, the room where women give birth, and the room where women can sleep after giving birth.
After lunch I made a quick trip to a cyber café before going to catch a taxi-be to go home. I ended up having to wait about 15 minutes for a number 6 to show up and then about 2 stops after I got on we had a flat tire so we had to wait while that got replaced. I finally made it home (thankfully we didn’t wait at stops for about 5 minutes like often happens in the afternoons) and did a little homework until my dad was ready to go back to school (he is the director of a public middle school). I went with him, thinking that I was just going to be able to sit in on a class and maybe talk with a teacher, but much to my surprise, I was introduced to a class of at least 50 students (but probably more), told that I had an hour, and left entirely alone. It was crazy. I asked the students what they wanted to do, and the hour basically ended up being an English lesson wherein a student would give me a word in French and I would then write it on the board in both languages. When we did colors I also had students write the Malagasy words on the board, more for my benefit than for theirs, although I didn’t tell them that. There was one boy sitting in the front row who spoke really good French and was able to help me a lot. At one point in the middle their normal teacher came by, heard that they were being loud, and gave them a stern talking to. I don’t actually know what he said, because it was in Malagasy, but they were much quieter after that. Somehow I managed to fill the hour by doing vocabulary and talking to them a little in English (and then translating into French for comprehension). When my dad showed up it was a big relief and I was happy to be able to go home, although it was certainly a fascinating experience.
That night we had fish to make up for the bad fish on Sunday. It was grilled and actually really good. I think the difference is that her the fish is incredibly fresh (we are on the water) so you get it just off the boats and it tastes really good. I don’t know what we are going to do this weekend, but it is sadly our last weekend in Mahajanga (we leave to return to Tana early on Sunday morning).
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