Rock Hill woman helping village in Madagascar

If you had told Rasheika Robinson two years ago how dedicated she would become to helping the people of Madagascar, she might have been surprised.

Not because the Rock Hill High graduate didn’t have a spirit of service – Robinson joined the Peace Corps out of college because she wanted to help those struggling with poverty in less developed parts of the world. She would have been surprised because, at the time, she wasn’t sure where their country was.

“When I got my notification I was going to Madagascar, I thought to myself: ‘Where in the world is that?’” she said. “Thank goodness for Google.”

Now 18 months into her Peace Corps mission, Robinson described her experience in the island nation off the southwest coast of Africa in a social media chat, using scarce Internet time to promote her efforts to improve the lives of the people in her rural village and to tell folks back home how to help.

Robinson is collecting donations online for a “Total Sanitation” project in her adopted village of Vinaninkarena in the Malagasy highlands. It’s an effort to bring sanitary bathroom conditions to people who live without access to the basic plumbing Americans take for granted.

“For the people that have latrines, they are located outside,” she said. “The majority of people do not have latrines and use fields for toilets. This is one of the main reasons we have decided to do this project.”

Robinson had never been out of the United States and had only been on an airplane once before she left March 5, 2013, on the 17-hour flight to Africa. She was the first member of her family to graduate from college when she received her psychology degree from the University of South Carolina. She said she’s enjoyed living with the tribal Merina people about 170 kilometers from the capital city of Antananarivo, but was surprised at the deprivation people there accept as a fact of life.

“Although we are located really close to the capital and the third-largest city, the disparity of wealth is very great,” she said. “Most of the population are farmers and make less than $1 a day.”

Robinson is a health education volunteer with the Peace Corps, working to improve the locals’ understanding of health and finding ways to fight off disease, whether it’s digging safe wells and latrines or just improving personal hygiene habits. The Total Sanitation program will provide locals with sturdy, multi-family outhouses dug deep enough to keep them from attracting flies or contaminating sources of water.

“Our rainy preseason will begin in November and lasts until May,” Robinson said. “During this period, we have many children diagnosed with diarrhea and other water-related diseases. Once the rain begins, the fecal matter from people pours into the water sources and leads to diseases, especially for children.”

It hasn’t always been an easy journey for her. Because she still has access to Facebook, she knows when friends and family back home are getting married and having children, and it makes her homesick. It helps that she can regularly Skype back and forth with her parents, brother and sisters back in Rock Hill.

“We really miss her, but what keeps us strong is knowing she had the head on her to go over there and make a difference,” said older sister Roche Robinson. “She’s shining the light of God on people, so we knew we couldn’t be selfish and keep her hostage over here for ourselves.”

Roche remembers Rasheika sending in her Peace Corps application at the same time she applied to law school. She told her sister, “Whichever one comes back first is the one I’ll go with.”

Rasheika Robinson said she still wants to go to law school, but her time in the Peace Corps will have a lasting effect. Whatever she does, Robinson wants to focus her career on international development issues.

“I would love to start my own (organization) one day to continue the efforts here in Madagascar,” she said.

For now, donors can help Robinson’s Total Sanitation project among the Merina by going to donate.peacecorps.gov and searching her name.

“I’m the only (Peace Corps volunteer) from South Carolina with a project online, so it should be easy for my fellow South Carolinians to find me,” Robinson said.

This story was originally published September 23, 2014 at 6:53 PM with the headline "Rock Hill woman helping village in Madagascar."