Valo Mars (International Womans Day)

There are so many times here that I don't completely understand what's going on, but I've learned to develop a very easy going attitude, in which i just find out where and when i have to be places and hope for the best. Woman's day was no exception. I was told that i would be given a tshirt and cloth to wear and that we were meeting at our bureau at 7 to go to the carnival. My original attempt to find out what the event entailed, resulted in them looking at me in disbelief and repeating more slowly "a carnival." How silly of me to even ask.

Turns out the 'carnival' was essentially a parade of womens groups from the area. Maybe there was supposed to be more to it, but we were poured on for almost the entire hour long parade route. Luckily the PSI staff refuse to ever have a bad time and kept the whole group singing, clapping and dancing literally for the entire duration of the event. Our group was the only one that had men in it(because we all work for womens health) and not surprisingly, the only one with a vazaha. I played my part as the token vazaha well and danced around and spoke gasy on command. The addition of men and vazaha, as well as the fact that we may have been one of the loudest, rowdiest groups present, resulted in us making our way onto Malagasy TV (a different kind of MTV, if you will).

In the afternoon all of the peer educators for all of the PSI programs went out together to do education on family planning. PSI is offering a special promotion for womens day and all week long women can get a IUD for free at the Top Reseau clinics. We would arrive in an area of town, 3 landrovers of peer educators and a speaker system and then spread out to talk to women and hand out fliers, while the cinemobile staff played music and ran contests. It was pretty awesome and so much fun to get all of the staff working together.



The PSI women getting ready for the parade. Walking advertisements for family planning.



Even the men at PSI got into it and wore wigs and lipstick.