5.45am – wake up, manage to drag self out of bed, realise it’s already 37 degrees. Kill several cockroaches which have invaded my room overnight. Check to see if there is electricity – hurrah, fill kettle up from barrel of water, today will be a coffee day. Wash using 2 litre bucket ration.
7am-8.30am Malagasy lesson number one. Today Bako gave me a 50-question test on everything from the preceding week. I find the translating from Malagasy into French particularly challenging; it’s one thing to understand what a Malagasy phrase means, but to then have to rephrase it in French at 7am... All of my lessons are in French, which adds a certain dimension of challenge when I have to listen to explanations of Malagasy grammar, in French. After my test she taught me all numbers up to 1 million, the days of the week, and some grammar, and wants it learnt by this afternoon.
8.45am – Today MAF (Mission Aviation fellowship) are due for their monthly flight. There is a small field – ahem I mean airstrip – a couple of kilometres away, where the plane can land. Everyone’s really busy today, so Robert and I take the landrover out to prepare for the landing. Hi-viz vests, get the windsock out, whistles to clear the filed of local folks, goats and oxen. Get out the sole wooden bench that acts as the ‘arrivals hall’... Robert laughs at me when I try to directly translate ‘windsock’ into French and asks me why on earth I’m talking about socks. It’s a wind sleeve he tells me. Surely that is obvious?! Une manche à l’air. He then gives me a brief lesson in wind velocity and direction, and plane landing, and we’re ready.
9.30am – MAF plane arrives. Last minute panic as a stray goat decides to start eating the middle of the airstrip for lunch, and refuses to budge. Cue us standing in the middle of the airstrip trying to get the goat out of the way just a few seconds before the plane lands. Thankfully we succeed, and leap out of the way of the plane.
10am – Drive back to the hospital with MAF pilot, Debbie who’s just arrived back from furlough, and a few others. We pass long queues of folk waiting in line in front the one village tap that’s working, with big yellow water containers, the sun beating down on them – it is now 40 degrees. The water situation in the village is still pretty bad.
10.30am - Go to market to buy vegetables and rice, the staple food. It’s always pot luck as to what there might be to complement the standard tomatoes, onions and marrow. Today we found aubergines, and also a pineapple. The mango season has begun as well – people are complaining at the moment “lafo ny manga!” – the mangoes are expensive – 7p a mango?! Very soon they’ll be half a penny each... One of the big effects of the complete lack of power in town over the past couple of weeks, is that even though a couple of the small shop-huts have a fridge, they’ve not been able to use it, so there’s no margarine in town. We’re used to there being no cheese, or yoghurt – but when everything is baked from scratch, food certainly becomes more basic when you have no margarine and can't make pastry or cake.
12.00 – 2.30pm – lunch break. People have long lunch breaks here, partly to avoid the heat, and also because of the culture of everyone going home to eat proper lunch together. It’s completely impossible to get anything done between the hours of midday and 2pm, as everyone disappears!
2.30pm - start learning this morning’s Malagasy lesson. I’m not supposed to be working yet but I get a call from the ward to ask if I can come and do a neoflon (a cannula for a small baby). There are only a couple of us who know how to do them, myself and two experienced European nurses, both of whom are ill. The baby is very dehydrated but thankfully manage to get it in. I know the theory of intraosseous lines with white needles (we don’t have guns here) but haven’t had to do it yet, and I’m thankful that I can put that off for another time. I fashion a splint out of a cardboard box and a bandage.
4pm – 5.30pm – Malagasy lesson number 2. Bako tests me on everything I’m meant to have learnt from this morning, and then launches into the next thing to be learnt. Malagasy lessons are progressing very quickly, and it’s tough to keep up the pace, but I’m very aware at the same time that I only have a total of 8 weeks maximum, and it’s probably going to be less than that, before I’ll be expected to use it fluently in hospital work and outpatient consultations.
6pm – The thunder and lightening is building over the mountains and is getting pretty close with an almost constant rumble and flashes. Sadly hasn’t brought any rain with it though, and we need the rain so much. Once it’s less than 2km away we unplug all the electrical appliances including the fridge, as power surges are common and have destroyed appliances in the past.
6.45-7pm – Perhaps the most important part of the day, water time! In the evening, the hospital’s water tower is switched on, and for a glorious 15 minutes’ ration for each missionary house, water comes out of the taps. During this time we have a routine that is carried out with military precision whereby as many buckets are filled as possible, which will need to last us for the coming 24 hours.
7.30pm – Tues night Bible Study. This is perhaps a bit like a UK ‘home group’ with all of the missionaries working in the project – usually about 12 of us. I love these times, as I don’t understand any of church on Sunday, so it’s a great time to have fellowship together. It’s usually in French, but tonight’s was in English because of non-French speaking visitors, a rare luxury!
9.25pm – Suddenly remember to go and plug the fridge back in, Oops.
9.30pm – Swat a few more bits of moderate-sized wildlife that have decided to invade my room, and off to bed – it all kicks off again at 5.45am tomorrow morning, and here, you never know what each new day will bring. Which is part of the excitement and the wonder of serving God out here in this little corner of Madagascar – no two days are ever the same, and anything can, and will, happen...
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