Tratra ny Taona (Happy New Year)

Alright so it’s been sometime since we last spoke but that also means a lot has happened since. November was an incredible month for a number of reasons: lychees, mangoes, rain, Thanksgiving, and the start of Ambalona’s school lunch program. The program which now provides lunch to the EPP’s 180 students got off to hectic but successful start. One particularly entertaining part of the project was sourcing the materials to build the cook house. To do this we would require roughly 700 bricks, which would be reclaimed from nearby existing structure. On the first day we had 3 people bring in a total of 36 bricks, then the second day the word started to get out and we had over 200 bricks from a few more new faces, but by the third day most of the villages able bodied male population were hauling in bricks and we quickly had more than the required 700 and I was trying stop anyone I could find from bringing in anymore. It was amazing; using gooney sacks a few dozen men were able to transport over 700 bricks over a mile in a few days. Once stocked with materials, Fidy began building a two burner wood fired stove from which would cook all of food for the students. From there people hauled in a giant pile of fire wood and we were ready to go. As the giant pots of rice and ravtoto (pounded cassava leaves with peanuts) began to roar, the students showed their appreciation to Hope for Madagascar and Alpine Initiatives for their support with a few songs and dances they had worked on. Every student brought his/her own dish and utensils, washed their hands, and then eagerly waited to be served. Since that first day the program has continued to serve lunch every Monday and Thursday, and with rains our garden is in better shape than ever to provide for the program in 2013.

Got Bricks?

ravtoto and rice

I can safely say that in 2012 I celebrated the most atypical Thanksgiving of my life this far. A number of volunteers got together and did our best to replicate an American Thanksgiving, while lacking some key ingredients and hardware; principle an oven. We brought a live turkey and prepared it, however we had to be creative when it came to its cooking. So we initially boiled the turkey then crafted a sweet tomato based sauce that it would later be stewed in; I ate turkey this past year but unlike I even had. On other side of the plate we had standard mash potatoes, dressing, gravy, maple candied carrots, green bean casserole, salad?, and instead of pie we had fresh lychees by the bushel. A little different in the end, but I think it hit the spot.

The rooftop garden decided to relocate itself

So with the New Year comes new opportunities and new projects, and the one that I am most excited about is a pedal-powered rice thresher and winnower that a fellow volunteer and me are collaborating on. Currently Malagasy in our region thresh the rice underfoot and then separate the grain from the straw by hand, and then transfer it to a mortar and pestle in order to separate the husks from the germ, and then they finally sift prior cooking or sale. It’s a lengthy process, and one that could be significantly improved with a little ingenuity. So we started looking for alternatives, and we found our inspiration in a machine developed by technologyforthepoor.com. The machine which enables one to attach a bicycle to any number of machines such as: a table saw, lathe, water pump, or thresher winnower in our case; is relatively inexpensive to produce and should be built and maintained by rural 3rd world populations. So we are streamlining the design and in the process of finishing the design for our own prototype which we hope to have working by the end of February. A daunting task, but the people in our villages are very interested and can’t wait to have a little more free time in the day because of it. One of my key partners at this point is my village blacksmith, who has risen to the challenge on numerous occasions and has demonstrated that he is not only capable of forging a fine blade but custom parts as well: such as those needed to repair a wheelbarrow, and more interestingly he uses similar technology in his own forge, where bike wheels are hooked up to pulleys that run blowers and grinding wheels. So with our combined skills and ingenuity I think that this project will soon become a day to day life changing reality.

Furthermore January also meant that I got notice of my PCV Trainer application, and I was one of 10 volunteers selected to train the new Agriculture sector that is arriving in March. I will attend training at the end of February and from there I will be selected to train the new volunteers on gardening techniques and small scale food production. It’s amazing that it’s almost been a year since I first arrived in country, and the PCV Trainers really helped to prepare for the challenge ahead, and it’s going to be really exciting to see how I can try to improve upon my experience for the next generation. I’ll be back with photos in the coming month.

Salama

Nick