I stepped on one of these nasty snail shells yesterday. There’s no way getting around walking in the water to get into and out of the canoes at the stages of the tide we cross to Betania and back. The shells are in the mud in the estuary, and the water is murky so you can’t see where you put your feet. I knew they were there.  Lurking. You just step lightly and pray.

Well, I found one yesterday. I felt a little pain as I put my foot down. I think the tip of a spine just barely was in the callous of my foot under my big toe, when I lifted it, and I thought it fell off, but it didn’t. When I put my foot back down, I drove the spine further into my foot. I thought it was a little painful, and a minute later when I moved my foot, I saw a blood spot on the dugout canoe floor. We motored around to a boat ramp where we could almost get the nose of the boat to dry land, but not quite. When I got off with my sore bare foot, it was a nasty bottom and there was fuel in the water we were walking through.  Basically a sesspool. Nice.

When I got to the hotel, I quickly cleaned off my foot in the shower. I looked at it and it didn’t look like anything was left from the spine of the shell in my foot, and the wound looked clean.

I mentioned it to my supervisor, and almost wish I hadn’t.  The next morning, as I was thinking how I wish I hadn’t forgot my first aid kit, I realized I had lots of hand sanitizer. So I slathered that over the little puncture wound under the ball of my foot at the big toe – where a callous always is, fortunately, and put some tp over it and then some tape to hold the tp in place with the sanitizer.

Knock-knock-knock. It was my supervisor from next door. I should have seen this coming. We want (meaning you must go) to take you to the doctor. I tried to get out of it but he insisted. I said you know we will be there all day, right. He understood that I understood the number of patients waiting versus the help available at African hospitals in populated areas. I reluctantly agreed, not wanting to stop working on my workshop slides for today’s big meeting at Betania.

He found a Catholic clinic instead. A very pleasant clinic and not many people waiting or in line. I saw a western lady inside. She was a nun and a doctor. About 60 seconds after I told my supervisor I didn’t want to jump the line or receive special treatment because I was a westerner, they called me into the room. I decided not to make a scene and just comply.

They set me on an exam table. After the doctor looked at the wound and marveled at the size of my boots, a young Malagasy nurse took a look at the wound, while another nurse held a flashlight from a cellphone for light. Out came a small scalpel, and I immediately said “what’s that for!”, like a 4 year old, as all the chatter between my supervisor, the nurses and interpreter had been in Malagasy to this point, so I didn’t understand. Just to cut the callous away. Whew. I thought he was gonna slice open the puncture to see if there was anything stuck in there. After he did this – and was very good at it – out comes a needle. My four year old self had the same reaction as to the scalpel. Just to probe down the puncture hole to be sure it’s empty and nothing lodged there. Again, he was very good at it and no pain.

He slathered the puncture in peroxide, then betadine, then some kind of brown salve, put a nice piece of gauze on it, and over that a clear bandage on the bottom of my foot- nice and tight. Couldn’t have got better care anywhere.

I sheepishly apologized to my supervisor, as of course this is was the proper course of action given the situation he was in as being responsible for me.

On our way out of the clinic, I gave the Sister my contact info in case she ever made it to Juneau.  As we passed the receptionist, I told her through my translator I was so relieved I wasn’t pregnant.  She almost fell off her chair.

On the way home, we went to a shop and bought some clear plastic we can use to bag my foot up, as I’m going to have to get to Betania and back today and tomorrow and so will want to keep the foot dry.

 

Crap this job is fun.

In Ecuador I saw power and home freezer, but where to get ice when it hit me: just freeze water in water bottles and clean the bottles off each day. Not perfect but a cheap start to chilling fish and improving fish quality. Then here I am in Madagascar. No power or home freezers in the village, but ice in blocks available in the town.

But with catches so sporadic now with the trawlers hoovering up the fish offshore so there’s not shit inshore it’s risky to buy ice knowing it will definitely melt but no certainty that there will be fish to cool.

I was just channelling my Peace Corps trainer Eileen and brainstorming to my supervisor and mentioned salt, knowing it’s usually a costly commodity. He says we got yer salt mine right here and it’s cheap! So I get cracking researching salting fish.

We go to get a bag and it’s two freaking dollars for a 60 kilo bag! That’s about a penny a kilo to salt fish at 3 to 4 kilos salt to 10 kilos of fish. We figured this out 2 days into the 5 day assignment, so we bought a bag of salt and some fish and the community women cleaned and cut the fish like they would to smoke them  and we salted them down today and didn’t uncle Mark get that little rush, like catching a king salmon or taking a deer.

We had today off.  I worked on my workshop slides.  And napped during the heat of the day. Had an “American” breakfast in our hotel. Omellete, half a loaf of french bread, mango jam, honey, butter, yogurt, a big cup of fruit, milk, cereal and a croissant.  And coffee. It’s a meal for at least two. Now I know.

We went to the Avenue of the Baobob trees out from town a ways. The trees are incredible and look so out of place.  People along the dusty road live in mud houses with thatch roofs. People here look healthy, but myett goodness, how to scratch out a living on the arid climate in this part of the country.  The fishermen we are working with don’t have it much better. It’s somewhat surreal to be putting together talks to help them get more money for their fish when it’s pointless if there’s no fish.  Hopefully the fish will show up.

We arrived in Morondava, Madagascar a few days ago from the capital, Tana. A 3 hour ride to Antsirabe through endless agriculture fields worked by hand, a very cool town where we had rooms overlooking the town square, which is not square but a big long oval.  The roads here are very narrow. Not room enough for 2 semi trucks with trailers to pass I don’t think. The next 11 hours were through scrub and high arid country, a good 8 to 9 hours of it on poor roads. Did not pass many vehicles this time of year. Much less population and seemed to be mostly cattle herders here. Not much wildlife – a few birds and lizards. When we dropped out of the highlands to the coastal plain, we stopped for lunch. Local tilapia from the river nearby. Not bad.  Malagasy food is not very spicy – much unlike West Africa foods.

Our hotel in Morondava is right on the beach, and we can watch the fishermen leave in their brightly colored canoes starting at 3 in the morning, and then return all day. Many of the canoes are rigged with sails and an outrigger on one side. The boats just glide through the water.

We went to Bethany yesterday. We had to cross a small shallow river, and went by a motorized canoe. On the way back, we waded half way across the river because it was low tide, to an island in the middle, then the canoe took us the rest of the way. It was not a far crossing, nor dangerous.

Our meeting with the fishing families went well. We went through the usual feeling out of each other. After asking for a freezer and outboard motors, neither of which I happened to have in any of my pockets, we got more comfortable with each other and I started to ask them about their fishing operations, their fish processing and fish selling, the type of smoker they use, prices they get for the fish they sell, how they decide what fish to smoke and what fish to sell fresh, etc., etc. It was a very productive meeting for me. I often – I’ll say always- come into these assignments with a lot of trepidation – am I going to be able to provide any real advice to the peopleth hosting me? – and always I find I can and the trepidation turns into a sort of – high?- maybe? – putting together slides on the computer to talk about. Often I find my brain outpacing the speed of my typing. Sometimes  I’ll just put down the subject ideas in rapid fire so I don’t forget them and come back and fill in the blanks.

The meeting ended in the early afternoon, and it was hot. Real hot. The normally stiff ocean breeze had laid down. The sand was so hot I could not walk on it in bare feet. My supervisor (Zo) and translator (Andry) accompanying me were as hot and worn out as I was when we got back, which gave me a little solace. Zo had proposed at the meeting we go out fishing all day with the men and then have a workshop in the afternoon. I think we all saw that might kill us………

I was so hot when I got back I stripped off my skanky clothes, and put them in the sink to hand wash. It’s relatively dry here so the clothes dry quickly on the veranda. I put the shower on the coldest setting, which of course was not very cold, and it was just enough to take the edge off. I then crashed for a long nap to recover.

Today, we went to a second village where we’ll work next week, just to see it. We drove as far as we could, then hiked maybe a quarter mile down to the beach.  Fishermen passed us with their small gillnets draped over their canoe paddle that they carried on their shoulder.

We watched a couple fishermen skillfully surf their canoes to the beach. Women then helped to get the fish out of the boats. Men fish. Women process and sell the fish. Neither does the other job from what I can tell.  One of the women came over with a mackerel looking fish about 15 inches long, and a couple smaller fish to see if we wanted to buy any. We didn’t, but were able to engage her about the price of fish. From what we could tell, the price of mackerel – which she said is rare now – was about $1.75/lb. Which is a good price to fishermen for whole fish of many species in Alaska. Of course, that’s the dock price, and not what it would cost in a store or further down the supply chain. Great information.

The woman returned to the boat to help offload the boat. A young girl of maybe 3 years old was out playing in the heavy surf. Having the time of her life. Laying down and body surfing and just bopping around like 3 year olds everywhere do. Her mother chastised her several times to come in from the surf, but the girl kept playing as long as she could get away with it.