Tanya Knudsen 10/30/23 Tanya Knudsen 10/30/23

The Triple Problem with Teeth

Lessons from a pop up dental clinic

It’s all connected. Truly.

A French team of dentists, Nomade Medicale, descended on our village for a few hours to treat as many people as they could. While there was some confusion as to where they’d set up, they were uber clear on their mission: treat as many people as possible. And that they did.

An assembly line of equipment, expertise and somewhat reticent villagers filed through a clinic for treatment of a particular kind - cavities and extractions.

When asked what the problem is exactly, the dentists were singularly clear - sugar, the processed kind.

Bubble gum, sweets and all refined sugars are problematic for at least two reasons:

First- sugar is addictive.

Second - lack of education on how to brush teeth could mean refined sugars building up on teeth for years.

And how could we forget- all packaging ends up on the ground and in the atmosphere from burning.

My big a-ha: trash has a much bigger implication, affecting health, perhaps in profound ways. The 12 year old girl who needed treatment on eight teeth is not a singular example of just how bad it is. Poor dental hygiene is linked to diabetes, dimentia and heart disease for a start.

The dentists shared a powerful story- when they visit rural regions, where there are no shops and consequently no packaged candies, very few cavities and extractions are necessary.

Conclusion:

There’s a connection between eating poorly and having poor health. Go figure.

Students, and anyone who is reading this take note !

STOP eating sweets and all packaged sugars from the shops. Especially between the ages of six and twelve, this is when teeth are changing and are most vulnerable. If your teeth are healthy after 12, chances are they will be healthy for life.

Go for the sweet fruits hanging from trees instead.

Learn to brush properly - twice a day.

It’s simple - brush from top to bottom, NOT across.

Pro tip: swish a smidge of toothpaste over your teeth and leave it there !

Your smile, your health is worth education and care.

- how to brush properly -

think about brushing hair from the scalp to the ends. Same idea for bushing teeth.
add a dab of toothpaste to the brush.
start where the tooth meets the gum.
brush away toward the end of the tooth.
do this for every tooth.
This will get at what’s important:
cleaning at the gumline and removing food.

Brush morning and night.

This only takes a few minutes. You can do this. Your smile with thank you.

Protip: add a small amount of toothpaste to your teeth and swirl it around. Leave on. This is a brushless way of taking care of your teeth.

###

Tanya Knudsen 8/7/23 Tanya Knudsen 8/7/23

People are here for you.

“People are here for you.”

This is how an incredible moment started.

It is impossible to know when the amazing will happen. In fact amazing happens all the time. The planet recreates itself every day. It’s up to us to notice.

I was sitting at my desk overlooking the Mozambique Channel, enjoying a pretty amazing moment, when this message came to me. To have people here for me? No idea who it could be.

The head of the village and his entourage are waiting for me at reception. They want to hear more about this idea to clean up the village. Garbage, specifically plastics are serious problem across the village.

Soap, for example, is sold in individual packets. People don’t have the money to purchase larger volumes. Women take the laundry to river to wash clothes, leaving the soap and the empty packets in the stream.

Plastic wrappers, plastic cups, plastic containers, and even diapers line the villages’ otherwise cleanly swept dirt roads and floors.

There is no recycling, no composting, no contained designated garbage area, other than the random collections of it throughout the town.

Nosy Be is as beautiful as it is unsightly, unhygienic and unwelcoming with garbage.

Meanwhile, tourism is exploding. This life world is alive and well. Clients arrive in the famous fishing village of Ambatozavavy by the van load, have drinks in plastic cups and take off in traditional pierogues toward the wilderness for an excursion to visit the natural beauty Madagascar has to offer.

I asked a local tour guide about the garbage and why is it strewn everywhere, as opposed to being collected into one spot. “It's our character., “ he tells me. Wow.

The sun comes up another day and with it the opportunity to build awareness and move in the direction of intention. And so began #CleanupNosyBe

“What ideas do you have for this clean up, “ I’m asked by the village chief’s assistant.

And in a feat of creative victory I say it, “All big ideas start with a vision.” The vision is to transform this town into a model for health and artisanal life that sustainably attracts responsible tourism.

Nature is simply too beautiful to waste.

Tanya is a facilitator for creative process in problem solving and an instructor for English at Wings of Change This blog is reflection of her experience while teaching on site.

###

Village girl washing dishes in the stream

Wings of Change is a vocational hospitality school with a dual mission of transformation through education and impacting the community

#CleanupNosyBe

###

Tanya Knudsen 8/5/23 Tanya Knudsen 8/5/23

What’s important.

What matters most. Working list -

⁃ Some kind of light. Without it, we simply can’t exist. Day light, moonlight, phone light, candle lights, spotlights and the like. Guiding lights, at different times for different purposes make it true. We must have light.

⁃ Each other. No body knows it all or can do it all. And why try? That’s just arrogant. And there’s no love in that.

⁃ Regular doses of nature, to put you in touch with your true environment, where vast beauty inspires and remains only through change.

⁃ Agility and strength for multidirectional movement. What would be the value of limitation without knowing the possibilities? Dance moves would be compromised. What else?

⁃ Tolerate the most common attributes of the man made world: ambiguity and complexity. While nature has systems for these, we do not. Develop capacity for doing something with information. Modern life depends on it

⁃ Be helpful, meaning be human. Life is hard. The world is even harder. What if every one person helped one other person? This shared experience called life would be so great. A lot better, for sure

⁃ Be sensitive to space times. It’s all what we have for now and for later as packaged memories of life experience. Think quality.

⁃ Be good to the mind. Go into sleep mode and reboot with intention. Your calm is your ally. Develop this warrior side as a peaceful pathfinder, intuitively knowing to do the right thing.

Tanya Knudsen 8/1/23 Tanya Knudsen 8/1/23

Summer Sun Like No Other One

I’m living in nature’s living picture.

For the last seven weeks, I have woken up to the sunrise every day.

And every day it’s the same: A spectacular marvel at the stunning beauty of nature’s quiet command over space and time. The dawn of a new day is as peaceful as it is yelling its presence in firey, blinding yellow.

Never have I experienced a more consistent awe inspiring regularity of beauty as a stimulant for life.

“Get out in nature,” we say. Really, nature must get into us. Expansive vistas clear the head and fill the spirit. Nature’s vast beauty inspires and remains only through change.

Education follows the same pattern that we observe in nature; the external nurturing of the potential growth that exists within. The element of self-creation is integral, define.s what it means to learn (Whitehead, 1929)

Tanya Knudsen 7/27/23 Tanya Knudsen 7/27/23

Working for Now. There is No Later.

The quality of now. The problem with later.

What if you spent most of your time today gathering or preparing food? You might be at one end of the food chain in catering or hospitality. You’d probably be processing already processed food.

At the other end of the food chain, you might be the individual food processor hulling rice, for example.

To say that rice processing is hard work is an understatement. I am numb watching this activity. The hunching, the hacking, the pounding, the shaking. It’s relentless. And for perhaps questionable results in terms of nutritional value. White rice is linked to diabetes in Madagascar. Villagers eat rice nearly three times a day. Backbreaking. Heartbreaking.

What’s the difference between food service in a poor country vs a rich one? Both are vital. Both provide a range of options. Both are poorly paid. Both significantly define culture.

Farming rice, fishing and tending cattle is what the villagers do on Nosy Be for food. Parents are either too poor, too needy for labor or both to send their kids to school.

I sense how families are torn. There is money to be made from tourism, lots of it. Money is essential. But if kids pursue education, who will be around to work the farm and pick the fruit? Real problem.

Meanwhile, island life is island life. The environment is bustling with tourism. Greater numbers of visitors are coming to this ‘big island’ from further and further away.

There’s more. Tropical, artisanal life is bucolic, seemingly peaceful and undisturbed. Except for garbage of course. Garbage is everywhere.

Destroy the environment and the tourists will move on.

In what ways is it possible to maintain traditional life that is sustainable and revenue generating while raising awareness among island visitors and residents about health and sustainability?

What comes first, management or vision? They go hand in hand for something, conscious or not.

It’s befuddling. While some go on holiday to tropical islands for sun soaked beaches, others are forced to flee the heat due to climate change.

Cleary, we in rich countries are living for now as well. Vast tracks of land and sea are literally burning up, melting down and wreaking havoc around us.

Go on on holiday these days and you may be cut short, caught in an environmental crises. For real.

There is power in every decision.
- UN Secretary-General Antόnio Guterres, 2020

We have this idea in the West to save for later. Later, there will be more disruption from fires, from heat, from flooding. I could go on.

Yeah, I’m thinking working for now is not such a bad idea after all. And when supported by vision, decisions now move in a direction of intention.

A drip feed of decisions got us here. What if we imagine something different? #creative leadership.
_____
Tanya is a PhD candidate for creative leadership. Action research dissertation requires reflection on lived experience. This blog captures some of Tanya’s experience as a researcher on sabbatical in Nose By, Madagascar where she teaches for Creativity at www.wingsofchange.co and facilitates for complex problem solving.

Many drops make a bucket,
many buckets make a pond,
many ponds make a lake,
many lakes make an ocean

- Percy Ross

Tanya Knudsen 7/23/23 Tanya Knudsen 7/23/23

A Wild Corner for a Connection

My intellectual fantasy to write this still mythical PhD mountainous work seems doable. Right now.

Disclaimer: this sentiment can change at any time, for any reason.

I had this big dissertation plan all mapped out before departure to Africa. Stall after stall after stall since arrival and I had to redirect.

I know what my fellow creative leaders would say, Tanya, what might be all the dissertation topics?

Not so fast forward (island life..) and I’ve found my destiny. Relieved.

A dissertation is on the horizon. Excited!

The happy dance gives way unforeseen stress of a different kind: intermittent internet connection. Power outages are random, ongoing and constant.

Remote tropical islands are reserved for disconnection. I get it. Me, I have the plain excuse that I am driven to get online to complete this dissertation.

And so, here I am on a Sunday, exactly one month before my return to the US and I have no internet connection, somewhat of a dissertation and high anxiety.

Where might be all the places to get online? A ha! Ask a creative question and let the mind wander…wait for it.

The only way to get around Nosy Be is by foot, by tuk tuk, or by pierogue. Ok, not quite true. Private cars are around. Car taxis tend to be completely stripped out. Dodgy options.

I’m anxious in paradise. I came here to write this dissertation. At the very least, I have to get the bulk of it done. And by that I mean 90%. Ok, that puts a number on it. That’s now a bit more clarity and focus. Better.

Becoming more stressed will only bring on more stress. And what will I show for myself when I get home? I feel ill at the spontaneous vision of my return without a solid piece of work.

Incubate. Read. Do something else.

An answer comes to me. Bingo! For real.

There’s a place further along the bay complete with solar panels.

K, new plan - go to the accessible-by-boat-only eco-loge and sit seaside to write.

Yep, I’m a creative problem solver.

They say the dissertation is a journey. That is it, by whatever it takes to get ‘there.’ Gotta stay open of this for possibilities to emerge.

On to work, with of course a break for a true Italian meal served to me by a former student.

The world works in beautiful ways.

Creative questions stimulate the mind to seek for possible solutions. More often than not, there is more than one answer to a problem, and that’s the secret sauce to deliberately becoming more creative.

Setting a new course on the PhD journey..

These auto body parts must have a new home..

Tuk tuks, with complete interiors, rule the roads.

What might be all the ways to find an internet connection?

Tanya Knudsen 7/22/23 Tanya Knudsen 7/22/23

Time off, Time out, Time to think

I have been away from my family for one month. In the broader global context, this is nothing. Plenty of families are separated. Already, this blog is one of privilege.

I miss my family. I really do. The random moments of silly intermixed among important conversations with the kids is what makes family life so rich. I’m also relishing simply talking with my teens. An audio call is a different kind of conversation. It even has a different name, to be distinguished for saving band width across the globe. Formerly known as phone calls, these chats with young adults are to be savored, like creme brulee. Break though the surface and rich connections await. I lean in for flavorsome details. Hearing the kiddos articulate colorfully over their summer adventures tells me they are maturing in both in vocabulary and life experience while still remaining downright goofy aw, (if that’s how you spell it).

I chose to come here. A sabbatical. A retreat. An opportunity to conduct doctoral research in person. A stunning place to visit. A place unknown to many. All of that made it all the more compelling to come here. A remote tropical island? A post - Covid opportunity to chronical research in a stunningly beautiful place far, far away. Yeah, it was pretty easy to make the decision to come here, to Africa, to an island in the Mozambique Channel.

Nosy Be, “large island,” is off the northwest corner of the ‘big land’ of Madagascar. It IS as beautiful as it is poor. It is as tropical as it is infested with plastic waste. I’m calling it rugged beauty.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the last month since living on my own in a hotel as a resident teacher/researcher on Nosy Be.

The quiet can be quite loud.

Waking up to a sunrise is an incredible way start the day.

Vanilla is a parasite vine plant.

Chameleons shake to look like the leaves and branches they steadfastly stand upon.

Zebu meat is tough.

The internet is spotty in 3rd world countries.

Here’s what I wonder.

What on earth did we do before the internet?

How can remote education become student-centered? Back to work….

Tanya Knudsen 7/4/23 Tanya Knudsen 7/4/23

Notes

Perfectly normal, from another perspective.

Sign of Strength

Confirming women are the greater sex. Case closed. Whether coal, bananas, bags of groceries, women do this too. Like its nothing. Ok men carry heavy things too, but not on the top of their head in a balancing act that defies gravity.

What an inspiration in balance, control, and that there sure are lots of ways to do most everything. And another lesson, on just how environment matters. What is considered normal largely depends on environment. Can’t imagine doing this back home, right?

Laundry, this way.

This is how it’s done. Once a week, all laundry is washed by hand. Rinsed, and squeezed, by hand. Find a good spot on the rocks and lay those babies out.

Airing your laundry. It has to happen. This way out here.

Room with a Serious View.

Still somewhat dazed and confused, and now by astonishing beauty and tranquility. This will be my spot for now, a long now. It’s tropical and there are no bugs. Ok, I’ve seen some ants and a few bees. Travel to the tropics during the dry season for a bug-free experience. Limited wild life too..

Made it!

Nosy Be is the largest of a group of Malagasy islands to the northwest of the grande terre, as the locals say. The big island, Madagascar, is across the bay for me now.

Cameraman - Dani.

Are we documenting this?? Yeah, we are. More to follow….