Phone Call with Katie (by Katie's Mom)

On Saturday, February 22, we talked with Katie…8:00pm in Madagascar and 11:00am in Minneapolis.  Here are a few of the highlights.

 

After the long trip over with little sleep the group arrived at the Training Center on Wednesday evening, February 12.  After the flight landed, they had a 2-12 hour drive with the last half of the drive over a dirt road, so rather slow going.  The volunteers spent Thursday and Friday in orientation and language training, which she described as a bit like a college dorm with a common room for meals.  Katie says the language is a challenge, especially sentence structure.  She feels like she’s struggling with it, but also is encouraged by how much she’s learned in the first week.

 

On Saturday, Feb 15 all the volunteers moved in with host families – one volunteer per host family.  The 18 health volunteers are all in the same village, Mantasoa.  The training center is a 10-15 minute walk from the village.  All the agriculture volunteers are staying with families in another village which is 45 minutes away on foot.  Katie’s host family includes Mom (Neny), Dad (Dada), a son and daughter.  The son is mostly away at school, and the daughter is 16.  Katie taught the daughter to make a friendship bracelet and that was a bit hit.

 

Katie spends morning in language training and afternoons at the training center learning other skills.

 

The village has electricity, but no running water.  She has washed clothes for the first time, and experienced cold bucket showers. She doesn’t know how to heat the water yet for the bucket baths, but I think that would be a good goal for the coming week.

Her days go from 5:30am until about 8:30pm.  She says they have rice at every meal among other items and also that dessert is fruit, except one day it was a sweet potato.  She was planning to get up early Sunday morning to help prepare breakfast.  She watched Neny kill a chicken one day for lunch the following day.  Her family has hosted other volunteers and they speak a bit of English, so can help when she’s trying to find the correct word in Malagasy.

She says there are strong rain storms that blow up and are over in just a few minutes, and that the dirt is red.

On Sunday all the health volunteers were planning to walk to the other village for a get together with the agriculture volunteers to celebrate a volunteer’s birthday.  Sunday would be the first unstructured time they have all had.

She will find out her permanent village placement on March 5, but will remain with her host family and at the training center for another 7 weeks.

Katie remains enthusiastic and is managing thru all the new and challenging experiences with grace and humor.  We are planning to talk to Katie on Saturdays and will post updates until Katie is able to connect.