bravo, Dr. Robert!!!

Last Friday, our daughter Rachel attended the graduation ceremony for her medical school cohort master graduation. On the Saclay campus next to ENSAE (and so did we!), with nice and short talks by medicine professors and the University President, with a massive (?!) conflict of interest as her own daughter was part of this cohort!  And learned that she will work her first medical internship semester in French Guiana, next month, as part of her choice of a medical specialisation in internal medicine in the French Caribbean departments, over the five next years. Congrats to her and all of her fantastic friends for this massive achievement!!! And [fatherly and a wee bit anxious!] best wishes for this new and exciting period of her life!!! (And concerned thoughts for her female doctor colleagues at the French Institute for Mothers and Children in Kabul, like Dr. Arifa and Dr. Shoranghaize. interviewed in Le Monde the same day.)

pictures at an exhibition

Last weekend we went to a local cultural centre to check on the exhibit of pictures from Madagascar our daughter and her friends had set to a month, following their humanitarian trip there last summer that was supported in part by the town council. While we had already seem these pictures, it was nice to see them in perspective. Hopefully inducing more volunteers to spend time in this particularly poor country, facing a silent humanitarian crisis. Including numerous cases of pneumonic plague… Donations can be made to MadaClinics, the NGO supporting medical rural centres. (USAid also has a program specifically aimed at Madagascar.)

humanitarian project in Madagascar

As the budget of the humanitarian trip to Madagascar our daughter organises with other students of the Paris-Sud Medical School next summer is still short of several thousand euros, I repost the call for support I made a few months ago.

Their project is called Mada Tsatsaka, mada for Madagascar and tsatsaka for a local lizard. The team plans to bring basic drugs and educational material and to work in a dispensary, an orphanage, as well as a shelter for women victims of violence. (More below!)

I thus bring this project to the ‘Og’s readers’ attention in case they wish to support. The best approach is use this web site for donations (in English) to Evadeh Mada Tsatsaka. (Evadeh is the mother association for all humanitarian projects in the medical school.) A free-of-charge (!) alternative is to shop on amazon.com following this associate link as I vouch to transfer all my associate gains in the next four months to the project.

Upon request, more details on the project:

• 2 weeks in Maventibao working in a clinic : Mada Clinics, helping two nurses with free medical examinations and providing extra medical equipment and drugs. And also helping with drinking water improvement. The team further hopes to help with the purchase of a car associated with the clinic and linking with the hospital in  Diego (4h away) and with hiring a doctor in the nearby clinic of Amboangamamy.
• 2 weeks in an orphanage in Antananarivo, Ankanifitahiana, in collaboration with BLOC Léo Madagascar, helping in financing and installing a library and a music room, and participating in classes and games with the children. Depending on the funding, the team would also like to help with installing a solar oven.

Mada Tsatsaka

Along with other students of the Paris-Sud Medical School, our daughter is planning a humanitarian trip to Madagascar next summer, following a long-term tradition in her school with groups sent to Madagascar as well as Vietnam, Peru and Nepal. The project is called Mada Tsatsaka, mada for Madagascar and tsatsaka for a local lizard. They plan to bring basic drugs and educational material and to work in a dispensary, an orphanage, as well as a shelter for women victims of violence. They have been now working for several months at meeting the budget for this project, from selling pies and quiches on local markets (I helped with the quiches!) to wrapping gifts at supermakets all around, to engaging local authorities and charities, but are still far from reaching this goal.

I thus bring this project to the ‘Og’s readers’ attention in case they wish to support. The best approach is use this donation form (in English) for Evadeh Mada Tsatsaka. A free of charge (!) alternative is to shop on amazon.com following this associate link as I vouch to transfer all my associate gains in the next six months to the project.

the Force awakens… some memories

In what may become a family tradition, I managed to accompany my daughter to the movies on the day off she takes just before her medical school finals. After last year catastrophic conclusion to the Hobbit trilogy, we went to watch the new Star Wars on the day it appeared in Paris. (Which involved me going directly to the movie theatre from the airport, on my way back from Warwick.) I am afraid I have to admit I enjoyed the movie a lot, despite my initial misgivings and the blatant shortcomings of this new instalment.

Indeed, it somewhat brought back [to me] the magic of watching the very first Star Wars, in the summer of 1977 and in a theatre located in down-town Birmingham, to make the connection complete! A new generation of (admittedly implausible) heroes takes over with very little help from the (equally implausible) old guys (so far). It is just brilliant to watch the scenario unfold towards the development of those characters and tant pis! if the battle scenes and the fighters and the whole Star Wars universe has not changed that much. While the new director has recovered the pace of the original film, he also builds the relations between most characters towards more depth and ambiguity. Once again, I like very much the way the original characters are treated, with just the right distance and irony, a position that would not have been possible with new actors. And again tant pis! if the new heroes share too much with the central characters of Hunger Games or The Maze Runner. This choice definitely appealed to my daughter, who did not complain in the least about the weaknesses in the scenario and about the very stretched ending. To the point of watching the movie a second time during the X’mas vacations.