Tsina Endor, Azafady’s Head of Volunteering in Madagascar is featured in National Geographic in a fantastic, entertaining and informative piece.
“People in rural areas who can’t afford zebu can’t do anything,” said Tsina Endor, head of volunteering at Madagascar-focused NGO Azafady, who gave a series of lectures onboard Peace Boat last month. “Some people in the south say they only work to have zebu; they don’t care about having a good house or wearing good clothes, they just want to get zebu so that they can do the work their ancestors want them to do.”
Zebu are recognisable by their horns and humps
In some villages it is taboo for women to speak at community meetings, and Endor has to outwardly defer to male elders in order for her public health recommendations – such as installing a long-drop latrine – to be implemented. “We have a saying, if a woman speaks too much she is like a clucking chicken. If I don’t know where I should stop, I will be treated badly. I should not speak a lot in public otherwise I will be compared with a chicken,” Endor said.
Tsina Endor on Peace Boat
Like her grandfather, who fled to the city to avoid an arranged marriage, and her mother, who went back to school after conceiving at the age of 13 to become a pharmacologist and eventually a local political leader, Endor has had to both contest and work within cultural expectations to succeed with Azafady. In the vein of King Andrianampoinimerina who undertook the near impossible task of uniting the highlands and the coastal region, Endor’s great achievement has been neither deferring to or breaking with Malagasy culture, but making it fit.
Please check out the full article at: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/16/does-it-fit/
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