March 5: Margery Durant

| alexandersanger

I will be giving a talk at the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Rockland, Maine on Saturday March 5 at 1pm on my other grandmother, Margery Durant. The title is

No Dearth on the Nile: Margery Durant Flies in Style to Africa

In 1932/33, Margery Durant conducted an air-popularization tour of the Mediterranean and Africa. Recount her travels with her grandson, Alexander Sanger as he shares the family’s pictures and film from the tour.

Colombia Blogging: Saturday October 30

| alexandersanger

Today we visited Colombiaton, a new settlement on the outskirts of Cartagena, built to relieve the overcrowding of the refugee camps. The school we visited was new and spotless with a large playground. We attended a workshop on violence for Profamilia peer educators. The new wrinkle today was that Profamilia had asked 1200 students in Cartagena whom they wanted to hear from on this topic and other reproductive health issues. Out came a long list of movie and music stars. Profamilia contacted them, and many agreed to be spokespeople and to appear at events in schools. Today Tony Cruz and Johnny Legendario, rap stars, were scheduled to appear at the school.
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Colombia Blogging: Friday, October 29

| alexandersanger

Today we visited the Nelson Mandela Displaced Persons Settlement in Cartagena. Colombia has the dubious distinction of having, after the Sudan, the greatest number of displaced persons. These are refugees from the endemic violence that has wracked this country for years. In Cartagena, a city of a million, there are about 65-70,000 refugees, mostly in two main settlements. The Nelson Mandela settlement has dirt roads, steep hills, jerry-built huts, little electricity, no running water and no sewage system.
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Colombia Blogging: Thursday October 28

| alexandersanger

Today we visited Pasa Nuevo, a small fishing village with unpaved roads on the Caribbean coast, to see the Profamilia mobile brigade in action. We traveled down a dirt road for several miles to access the village, which has maybe 1,000 inhabitants. The Profamilia social workers had visited houses in the surrounding area for the previous two weeks to let the inhabitants know that they would be in town. Women traveled to see us from a two hour radius. Profamilia visits Pasa Nuevo every six months, this being the limit of the birth control pills and injections. (they leave behind enough supplies for six months).
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Colombia Blogging: Wednesday October 27

| alexandersanger

Today we visited the Robinson Pitalua public high school school in Monteria, in the north of Colombia. Profamilia peer educators were conducting games/exercises to bring accessible sex, health and violence prevention information to their fellow students. These peer educators get over 100 hours of training. I was immediately assigned to a team of three 13 year olds. The first game was to throw a dart at a dart board and then answer a question on contraception depending what ring you hit. The next game was a version of Concentration where we had to match questions and answers on violence. Another game involved rolling dice and having to answer a question from the square where you landed. My question was whether an IUD could cause uterine cancer. I had to think for a second. My team was probably thinking, why we’d get this guy? But I said ‘no’ and won a lollypop which I gave to my team. If it had been a chocolate prize, the scene could have gotten ugly. In the final game, I had to spin a wheel and answer a question. Mine was on economic violence and because of Monday’s session at the school with the Profamilia Wamba rock band, I was able to answer to great cheers from my team and high fives all around.
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