For the first time during my Peace Corps Experience I am really working, doing something that I can report to the Peace Corps as work and enjoying every minute of it. So this is what a day in the work life of a PCV looks like:
There are about 8 of us in town at the moment staying at this fantastic little hotel called the Marotia it is right on the ocean and yesterday we saw whales spouting. (that picture that I posted of the beach in Tamatave was taken right out next to this hotel) We wake up around 6 AM-ish and send someone out on one of the bikes to get breakfast, which usually consists of juice and a lot of really decedent French pastries.
After breakfast and a possible morning walk on the beach we split up into a couple of groups get our assignments for the day, gather up our wooden penises, condoms and other paraphernalia and head out to fight the race against HIV/AIDS.
Our speeches usually last about 45 min I usually do the introduction as that is the only part I am capable of at the moment-still trying to learn my HIV/AIDS vocab-but I am quickly branching out into the actual educational part of the speech. I'll be super mahay (good or competent) any day now.
The most exciting part of the presentation is inevitably the condom demonstration, the Gasy love it. They find it hilarious when we pull out our wooden penises and start talking about erections and how to properly use a condom. We have been asking someone from the audience to actually do the demonstration and this typically elicits whoops of laughter from their friends.
The people of Tamatave are already pretty knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS, unlike most people in Madagascar who often times don't even know what it is. Tamatave is one of the HIV/AIDS hot spots in Madagascar because it is the second largest city in the country and it is a port city with thousands of huge cargo ships coming in every year, which inevitably means many lonely men and lots of prostitution. Tamatave is also a large tourist town, which unfortunately means there is also a lot of sex tourism. All these factors have led to a higher seropositive rate than most of Madagascar which in turn has lead to increased attention by many NGOs hopefully leading to us winning this race. Because the people of Tamatave are already pretty well informed most of our work is aimed to trying to get them to go et tested and driving home the importance of condom use.
Thus far we have had about three speeches a day, though the pace is likely to pick up substantially next week, in between speeches we hang out and enjoy all the pleasures this city has to offer-copious amounts of ice cream, French pastries, delicious Chinese food, fancy hotels, a gorgeous beach and cheap beer. In the evening after we have finished our last presentation we head back to our fantastic hotel take hot showers and then sit on the white sand beach drinking wine, watching the local fishermen store their boats for the night as the sun goes down and discuss the next days schedule. Last night as we were quietly sipping our wine and unwinding from the day Brian gives a quite chuckle and says "all those suckers back home don't know what they are missing, this is work."