It's All the Same, Only the Names Have Changed, Every Day It Seems We're Wasting Away....

The two-week bike trip to raise awareness about AIDS, known as the Fety Ribà Mena: Alaotra Miady Amin’ny SIDA, is at an end! It was a pretty wild trip. We (the 6 local PCVs) had over 15 Peace Corps Volunteers from throughout the island come to our region to help us out. We visited 9 cities and villages in 10 days around Lac Alaotra (Madagascar’s largest lake), covering something like 250 km on our bicycles. I think a rough, yet safe, estimate of the number of people we reached directly would be about 3-4000 people. Plus lots more we stopped to talk to along the way (hence the idea behind riding our bicycles to reach as many people as possible!)
For those of you Madagascar cart-a-philes or Returned Alaotra PCVs longing to hear the names of the places we visited, look no further: we left Ambatondrazaka and rode 70 km to Amparafaravola, then Vohitsara, Tanambe, Ambohitrampirana (Imerimandroso), Antanandava (Imerimandroso), Imerimandroso, Ambatosoratra, Ambohitsilaozana (aka Station), and the final event was back in Ambatondrazaka!

Each event began at 1pm with a two hour openhouse, where people could wander amongst our five tables of knowledge-giving (sometimes you can only think of words in other languages… right now I could only come up with Sensibilization or Fanentanana… ) These tables were: AIDS, a Health table (featuring Malaria, nutrition, STD and family planning education), an Environment table (Moringa tree and Permaculture/Bio Intensive Gardening education), a Small Enterprise Development table (focusing on budget/ money manangement/ family planning) and a What Is Peace Corps table (also included a What is The Red Ribbon? Poster that described why we were giving people little red ribbons to wear). The idea was that each table would tie in, at least somewhat, to AIDS Awareness (hence the nutrition and family planning topics) – we also had three legged races (since people with HIV/AIDS need a supportive friend/family member/partner!) and a song table (a few PCVs created great AIDS Awareness lyrics, in Malagasy, to go with Shakira’s instant classic from the World Cup, Waka Waka, and a popular gasy song, Zah Tsy Kivy (Jerry Marcos and Farah Johns), as well as the usual hand washing and nutrition songs). People also were given a ticket that they got checked off at each table after hearing the presentation, and they then took these back to the front for a raffle after the event.

Then at 3pm our “real” program began, as we took the stage with songs, speeches, games and lots of dancing to entertain and educate the crowd. These games (ie condom relay races, the classic “OMBY” game, blindfold condom practice), skits (excluding people with HIV is wrong, 2 couples meet in the club…), songs (mentioned above, plus that one by Rihanna and Eminem which doesn’t really relate but is new to us and we couldn’t play it enough), speeches and dancing were designed to educate about sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS while also keeping people interested… as if 20 some Americans in the rural villages of Madagascar wouldn’t be enough to keep Malagasy people’s attention! We used lots of local volunteers and included health workers and other community members who gave speeches or performed. We wrapped up with a raffle and everyone seemed to really enjoy the presentation as a whole.

At 5 our partner organization, PSI, took over and showed a film about decision making/ sleeping around / STDs. This also was a big hit, especially in the small towns/villages.

As I mentioned, the whole event was quite successful, although as one of the planners I had very little time to enjoy it. I was often running around troubleshooting and preparing different things. And doing the same program 8 days in a row, and 9 times in 10 days, can be exhausting – especially after biking in the mornings! Really, the biking was the easiest part of the whole event, I think. Getting up emotionally for each new program was tougher… But I think the PCVs and communities all enjoyed themselves. It was really impressive to watch each sector’s PCVs rock their own stations/specialties… but it was even more impressive to see how quickly each PCV learned the other sectors’ projects. They were eager to gain cross-sector knowledge and present each topic. Very cool. And the community members who asked lots of good questions and really were excited to learn made all of the work, preparation and minor disasters totally worth it. Before we left to start the trip, I said: “This will either be a complete disaster or a huge success” Well, it was not a complete disaster! And really, what higher praise is there (at least in Peace Corps)?