To make a LONG LONGLONG story really short, silk rearing involves planting enough of the host plant trees to feed the silkworms (at least 250 per farmer)....

waiting for the trees to have enough leaf volume to host the silkworms (1.5 years), attracting a silk moth (with your most attractive outfit)...

mating the moths (which requires no encouragement) and moving the female moths to a tree to lay her eggs...

caterpillars hatching from the eggs and eating all the leaves (which happens more or less automatically)...

the mature caterpillars spinning a cocoon to protect themselves while they go through metamorphosis, and a moth emerging from the silk cocoon....

The silk cocoon is then collected and sewn together into a raw textile that people make cool things out of...

Then we do it all again :)

This story will be narrated by NONE OTHER THAN…. Morgan Freeman! Hooray!One Friday afternoon, Katie and Kerry were strolling down the street in Maroantsetra, when SUDDENLY….. a thought occurred to the crazier of the two. “GASP”, said Kerry. “I have an idea. We should bike to Mananara.” Katie, being the agreeable and only slightly less-crazy person that she is…. And knowing that Mananara is a mere 75 miles (120 km) south on the worst national TRAIL in the country… spotted with no fewer than 25 decaying, decrepit excuses for bridges, not to mention countless sand pits, bamboo bio-rafting ferries, and gaping, car-swallowing holes…. Promptly… agreed. The crack-headed couple agreed to depart at 4 am the following morning. They also agreed that there would be no need to talk until at least 7 am. So the plan was consummated, and IN FACT, the first words were not exchanged until hours in, when contemplating a GIANT, GAPING hole in the road into which a person with good eyes could see the fiery core of the earth. It was here that the “sometimes-integrated-Maroantsetra-bike-gang” encountered its first friend… a nice young man so desperate for a traveling companion that he forged the language barrier and asked two RANDOM WHITE GIRLS if he could share in the adventure. YES.

Well, shortly after the GAPING HOLE OF DOOM, and after the first of many harrowing, slightly out of control, downhill descents, the “sometimes-integrated-Maroantsetra-bike-gang” could no longer claim to be such. Its newest member was tragically left behind with his tire flat and his ego deflated. He would not be the last to fall.Later, in a STUNNING display of confidence and athleticism, Katie took on the first of many disintegrating “bridge-like structures” and while yelling “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t”, plunged painfully into the wooden cracks. Deciding that the fault of the incident lay with a confidence issue, the theme of the trip hence forth became “CAN CAN CAN” and the pair continued courageously on into the great beyond where there were fewer and fewer signs of civilization and a significant increase in mud and peril.

Arriving in the small village of Anandrivola, our beloved heroes came upon a crowd of former-raft-captains swimming in the river around a sunken taxi truck and attempting to extricate it by roping a single floatie to its roof (perhaps the least effective place to attach a floatation device considering that the roof of the car was the only part above the water). Meanwhile, a second, not-to-be-discouraged taxi truck was attempting to board the bamboo-stick-raft off of which the first had just fallen. SOLID PLAN.

Katie and Kerry quickly removed themselves from the impending disaster and climbed across yet another perilous bridge requiring serious gymnastical skills. (Imagine Morgan Freeman pronouncing the word gymnastical). It was at this point in their journey that the road actually became WORSE, if such a thing is conceivable, and began to wind through the mountains. The boulder-field which was formerly a road/trail, blew out both travelers brakes within an hour and left the two screaming down the hills of DOOM in terror. Nevertheless, in a perpetual state of unchecked OPTIMISM, the two were unfazed by the likelihood of their imminent deaths and continued to yell “CAN CAN CAN” ! UNTIL…. With a final yelp, Katie suddenly reached a point where she couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t, and gracefully CRASHED into the bushes in a mangled union of bikes, rocks, and legs.

It was only shortly thereafter, in the heat of the afternoon, that their perpetual state of OPTIMISM started to falter briefly and the pair decided that they HATED rocks of all types and varieties. And also hills. And also small children who scream “SALUT VAZAHA” (which means “I HATE YOU, SAY HELLO TO ME!” in Malagasy). JUST THEN, by the grace of GOD… or whoever… the weary couple stumbled upon a slice of heaven…. A tiny little rice shack in a dusty little town full of warm coke and chicken sauce. Then followed a period know as the “GOOD TIMES” when their stomachs were full and Mananara seemed too close to be true… a mere 60 km left! BUT… just when everything seemed to be going swimmingly, the travelers reached the dreaded BRIDGE TROLLS of “insert name of small unknown village” where a group of swaggering, underemployed teenagers promptly demanded all of their money in exchange for passage across their rickety, shameful excuse for a bridge. By the time the couple reached the next ferry crossing, and a helpful stranger informed them that “there was no possibility of reaching Mananara that evening”, the two rapidly entered a period known as the “DARK TIMES”.

The sweaty, mud-splattered, brake-less, companions reached the point of the day called “DUSK” and launched themselves down yet another hill which unfortunately ended in one of those wooden bridge-like things. Kerry began in the traditional way by confidently screaming “CAN CAN CAN” until the point at which her bike wavered and she adopted the CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T frame of mind. Moments before crashing VIOLENTLY into the wooden planks, she yelled “I’m DEAD, I’m DEAD, I’m DEAD” and shoes, bikes, and limbs all found their own paths to destruction. BUT, the UNDAUNTED travelers sent a drunken man into the river to get the lost accessories and continued valiantly on their way. The co-travelers now forged on in the darkness, intermittently and frustratingly falling into pockets of quick sand and wondering if the existence of Mananara had been a LIE all along. JUST THEN, our story’s beloved heroes stumbled upon a man who announced that Mananara was no more than ONE kilometer away. Katie restrained Kerry from attempting to kiss the man and the two picked up a perky, re-energized pace. FINALLY, 16 hours from the birth of the trip, after 120 kilometers, 260,000 SALUT VAZAHA’s, 1000 decrepit bridges, at least that many falls, the bloody, weary, smelly, muddy mess of human beings reached the final river, where they WERE NOT ripped off by the last ferry manchild and happily climbed over the last little rise into Narnia (aka MANANARA).

Part Two: Going HomeSo I was told by a number of friends that this story deserves a separate entry. After a third or fourth attempt to find transportation back to Mananara or convince someone to let me walk, I finally made it back to Mananara just after sunset on a four-wheel drive truck that could have blazed the Oregon trail back in the day. I stayed with a family in town and got up at 3:30 the next morning to reserve a spot on the taxi to Maroantsetra. The taxi was supposed to leave at 5:00, so we arrived at the station shortly after 3:30 to reserve our spot (by sitting at the station). Sometime after 8 AM, the taxi finally arrived (which is normal), and 11 of us climbed into a 4WD truck that was built for 5 people (which is normal). I mistakenly thought that that the next step was to leave, BUT no, first we drove around Mananara doing-I-don’t-know-what for a few hours… We picked up the driver’s girlfriend at the beach… we drove around to find a pastor who supposedly knew someone who wanted to go with us… then we waited outside the church until the pastor was done conducting the mass so that he could tell us who we were waiting for. Around 10 AM, we returned to the taxi station and all got out of the car and then got back in for no particular reason. A little after 10, we finally left Mananara. Goal 1: Check! I’m feeling pretty good at this point. We are on the road, doing great, making progress. Now, there many river crossings to deal with between Mananara and Maroantsetra, 7 of which involve using a ferry system. On this particular road, there are a few ferries that are REALLY nice; big, sturdy, steel ferries complete with thrusters underneath that allow them to be fairly maneuverable. The very next ferry, however, could be the type of ferry that I would not trust to transport my bike across the river; small floating mats made of bamboo poles and sticks that my dog would happily eat that supposedly carry the weight of an automobile. The car is loaded onto the “ferry” by way of two wooden planks and if the “ferry” only sinks about one foot under the surface of the water, it is considered safe and ready to go. Anyway, we accomplish one or two of these ferry crossings successfully before we came upon a river crossing with no ferry. It was an intersection between the river and the ocean, and at low tide, the technique is to just drive across. Well, it wasn’t quite low tide anymore, but the driver decided that it was close enough and he gave it a try. The car stopped moving about 3 feet from dry land and slowly sank into the sand. We tried to push the car, and it rebelliously sank even deeper. Eventually about 30 people showed up to help, 20 of which were under the age of 10 (which is normal), and began helpfully digging in front of, and behind each tire so that the car continued to sink straight down until we could only see one inch of the wheel wells and the belly of the car was flat against the sandy river bottom. The main problem, at this point, was that the tide was still rising rapidly and the waves were now crashing against the sides of the car.A couple of people dragged over wooden planks and began to shove them in random crevices of the car. This was decidedly unhelpful and it took quite a while to work out an efficient system. In the meantime, the waves were now breaking over the top of the car and we had to intermittently stop to rescue some of our smaller “helpers” who were swept away by the rising tide. The water inside the vehicle was at the same level as the seats and the engine slowly sputtered out. Now the group of us were diving under the water, using a board and a rope as a lever to lift the car out of the sand, and using another board to place under each tire. After the 4th or 7th try, we were finally successful in pushing the car out onto dry land. Miraculously, after a brief drying period, the engine started. We had only made it 10 kilometers from Mananara, it was already 3:30 in the afternoon, and we were salty and wet, but we were thrilled to be on our way. It was short-lived. After about 5 km, we heard the characteristic sound of a tire deflating. One of the boards we had shoved under the tire to rescue the car apparently still had nails in it. BUT NEVER FEAR, we had a spare tire on the back of the car. So we all get ready to change the tire, and the driver even has a jack (which is rare), but the jack is broken of course, so we walk to the nearest town, borrow a shovel, dig a hole under the wheel, put the new wheel back on the car, and return the shovel. No problem. Ready to go. BUT, now the car can’t get out of the hole we dug, so we return to the town, borrow the shovel again, fill in the hole, return the shovel, and escape from the hole. Now everything is going well and we are on our way again. Just like the ferries, the bridges are an adventure. There are probably at least 20 bridge crossings along the way, and some of them are really nice, strong, sturdy, concrete bridges. Many of them, however, are broken, rotted, stick bridges with two single beams (one for each tire) that the driver has to hit just right so that the car doesn’t fall off one side or another. All the passengers get out of the car to cross the bridge (just in case) and walk ahead to “fix up” the holes in the bridge and throw a couple extra sticks on it for good luck. After that, the driver drives like the Blues Brothers to try to mostly jump over the ravine so he doesn’t have to touch the bridge. This technique actually works pretty well all things considered. The tricky part is the mud ruts. The mud on the road is similar to the kind that you can make pottery out of and it has been repeatedly soaked and dried by the sun and the rain until it makes a cast of messy tire prints as deep as the wheel wells of a monster truck. The car has to try to follow the wheel well tracks in order to continue moving, but the ruts are often too deep for the car and the belly of the vehicle gets stuck in the mud. The borrowing of shovels from other towns follows shortly after… accompanied by jokes about the foot-traffic from Mananara passing us on the road and a discussion about whether or not the foreigner (me) is telling the truth when she says that you can travel 70 miles in one hour in the United States. Now it is about 8:00 at night and we are only about halfway to Maroantsetra, but we are happy because the road should be a little better from here out. The car battery, which was formerly submerged in salt water (as you may remember), as well as the alternator (which may have never worked), are now dead and the driver takes the battery into a local shop with a light bulb to charge it. We sit around in the rain while the battery charges while people tell me about their dreams to go to Africa one day to visit me in New York. Africa, it turns out, is the same place as America... who knew. After a couple of hours, the driver returns with the battery and we are on a roll. The battery is strong enough to start the car, but not strong enough to run the headlights. NO PROBLEM. Someone in the car has a big flashlight, so we hold the flashlight out the window and point it at the road ahead. Well, it doesn’t really light up the road, so we find some rope-like-weeds and tie the flashlight to the front of the car. Now we are doing great and making progress. Everyone is happy. About 20k outside of Maroantsetra, just when we THOUGHT we might make it home, the car hits a particular rough patch of road and the battery falls out of our flashlight into the mud… NOW… we can’t find the battery because we don’t have a flashlight, but NO PROBLEM- the foreigner (me) who is traveling in the car and one other person happen to live nearby (20k away) and know the road well – they can direct the driver. SO NOW … we are driving in the dark rainy night with Kerry and the other “local” are telling the driver when there may-or-may-not-be a turn coming up or a bridge, at which point everyone gets out of the car and walks ahead to find the supposed bridge or turn. When we find it, the people wearing white shirts (almost as good as having a flashlight) stand on either side of the bridge so the driver can guess where to put the tires so he doesn’t fall through. It is an extremely safe way to travel and I can assure you that we exercised extreme caution. At midnight, we are so close that I can see the faint glow of Maroantsetra on the horizon (about 15k away). We come up on another shallow river crossing so the driver gets out to check it out and accidentally stalls the car when he gets back in. Now the car is dead. Absolutly, 100% dead. Huh. Welp, the driver shrugs. The passengers shrug. That’s it. Sleeping in the car. It’s midnight, pouring rain, there are 11 people in a 5 person car (with only two doors), I am crouched behind the driver’s seat on the floor, squatting in about 5 inches of lingering saltwater from the morning, with a chunk of metal pressed into my side and two sets of knees in the other side, it’s 90 degrees, no one will open the windows because of the rain, I have been trying to get home for three days, I have been wearing the same clothes for a week that I walked 90 miles in, I have been awake since 3 o’clock in the morning, and it’s already the 16th hour of a trip that would have taken one hour in the States. I had truly enjoyed our automobile adventure, but I was VERY ready to go home. I asked to be let out of the car and announced that I was going to walk. My request was met with total shock and appall by all passengers. People here see no problem with getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning when it is still dark out to begin a trip, but almost no one will travel when it gets dark in the evening. It doesn’t matter that it is equally as dark and there is absolutely no difference at all… it is simply not “the way” people do it. Do you know that it is dark out? Do you know that it is far? Do you know that it is raining? YES. I climbed over the other people and the seats in the car, squeezed out the front door, grabbed my pack from the roof, paid the driver, and set off down the road. The driver could NOT believe that I was serious about walking, but he reluctantly decided that if I was going to walk all the way to Maroantsetra, he might as well walk too and get a battery for the car. I never did find out if he was successful, but at 2:30 in the morning, I climbed into my very own bed with not a care in the world. And so ends the story of what it is like to travel in NE Madagascar.

September 23rd, 2011So last week I went on an adventure. My counterpart left on a business trip and I can’t yet travel into the field on my own, so I had a week to focus on my language skills. One of our farmers invited me to attend an exhumation ceremony, the Malagasy tradition of celebrating a loved one’s life five to seven years after death. Family members are buried in the ground after death, but five years later, the exhumation process involves digging up the bones of the family member, removing and wrapping the bones in beautiful fabric, and ultimately laying the person to rest in an above-ground tomb. There is a two-day long party to follow that usually involves eating at least one or two cows and consuming a copious amount of alcohol. The location of the ceremony was 90 miles south of Maroantsetra on a road that is notorious for being the worst in Madagascar, and also the most beautiful. We decided to walk it. At 4:00 in the morning, a group of three Malagasy men showed up at my back door and we set off down the road with backpacks on our backs and sandals on our feet (the only appropriate and useful form of footwear in NE Madagascar). The “road” is undeniably gorgeous, hugging the coast the whole way and defining the intersection between the foothills of the rainforest and the endless white sandy beachfront and brilliant blue ocean. The road/trail is also relatively flat, intermittently detouring inland to pass through a village and then promptly returning to the coast. On that first day, we walked 39 miles. 39 miles, by the way, is really freaking far and it is also 17 more miles than I have ever walked in one day. We ate lunch at little restaurant or “hotely” along the way and finally stopped at 6:30 PM to ask a school teacher if we could sleep in the school for the night. The teacher handed us over to a friend who made dinner for us and allowed us to take over some of their floor space. My legs were exhausted and my feet were sore, but I was happy and also selfishly relieved to find out that two of the Malagasy men I was with (who walk long distances everyday) were in worse shape than I was. Day two was another 30 mile walk, ending at the house of another school teacher. There, we stopped in for a day to rest and visit with a family friend of our group. Mananara is a sweet little coastal town with delicious bread and lots of ship yards where people are building big wooden boats (essentially with only wood and bare hands for tools). There are also lots of signs that read “Mividy vato ato, lafo be” (Buy rocks here, very expensive). If I was a true pirate, I would happily call it home.The next day, we finished our walk out into the countryside and arrived in a tiny little village to meet up with my friend’s wife and her nine siblings who were hosting the exhumation ceremony. By the end of the day, 40 people had arrived and I was beginning to wonder where they were going to put everyone, but I should never doubt the capacity of the Malagasy to find space for people. By the time the ceremony started on Thursday, there were 380 people filling every available inch of floor space in the whole town. Most people slept on the floor on woven mats. I was lucky enough to share a single bed with three other women. There is no such thing as plastic plates for an occasion like this so the whole group of us ate on huge, beautiful leaves from a tree called a “ravinala” or “leaves of the forest”. We also made spoons and bowls out of the leaves. And we made rice, of course. Pounds and pounds of rice. We had at least 9 big pots (about half the height of my body) cooking rice all day long. The group also ate two full grown cattle; one on Friday, and one on Saturday. All and all, it was an amazing production. The ceremony itself was “miresaka” (busy/happening/festival-ish). All 380 of us walked to the grave site on Friday to participate in the ceremony and exhume the bones. Many people asked me to take pictures (which I was a bit uncomfortable with at first), but I took a few of the process. After spending 5 years in the ground, there is nothing left but bones and old clothes, but the bones are carefully extracted and placed in a clean, white cloth. The cloth is then wrapped in many layers of colorful fabric and the family members place small amounts of money in the layers of fabric. The bones are then taken into an above-ground tomb where they are laid to rest. Then the real party begins along with the singing and dancing and drinking and general jolly-making. I, unfortunately/ fortunately had to go home. The party was really fun, but 380 drunken people who are not used to having a foreigner around was eventually tiring. By the time the 140th person tried to hand me a metal spoon while shouting at me in French and trying to serve the side dish for me (followed by shock and surprise when they finally noticed that I was fully capable of feeding myself just like everyone else over the age of 1), I had to find a lot of excuses to go down to the river for a quick break. By the time Saturday arrived, I felt happy and lucky to have been invited to such a special ceremony… and also very ready to go home. 380 people cross the rice paddies...

Earth Day Celebration during PC TrainingHost Siblings!

Rice fields in the village of my host family

Maroanstetra

One of the villages we work in with SEPALI

July 3rd, 2011Today we went for a “picnic”. The Malagasy use the English word “picnic” to describe this event, but I think a more appropriate description of the event would be to say that we moved the whole house into the woods for a day, and then moved it back out. After going to the market in the morning and buying a collection of food that I thought would be easy to eat at a picnic (such as fresh bread, fruit, and peanuts), I was joined by two local students only to find out that all of my food was apparently inappropriate and why wasn’t I going to bring any dry rice? Let me begin by saying that there is no such thing as sandwiches in Madagascar (except for in the Capital which is the exception to all rules). No one has ever made one or eaten one or heard of one. There is bread. There are plenty of things to put on the bread, but for some reason, there are no sandwiches. Instead people eat rice regardless of how inconvenient it is to bring. So at the last minute, I skeptically packed a couple of cups of dry rice in my backpack and we set off on our adventure. The two students borrowed a couple of bikes from their friends for us that still contained most of the functioning parts that bikes should have (usually you get the choice between brakes, pedals, or a seat), and we set off down the road. There are a few kilometers of paved roadway in Maroantsetra, but after we passed the cow-shaped lawn mowers that trim the grass at the airport, we were back on narrow sand roads that are exclusively used for foot traffic. Sand is an interesting beast to ride a bike on. Sometimes it looks flat and simple, and the next moment your bike stops dead as if you had encountered a brick wall and the Malagasy onlookers watch while you decide whether to fall off the bike right away, or try to fight the sand for a few peddle strokes first and then fall off. After about a half hour of riding, we reached the second river crossing. This river crossing, as most in Madagascar, consists of a “ferry” or barge boat with a long rope strung across the length of the river. The barge is loaded with people, bikes, livestock, and whoever and whatever else needs to cross the river. Two barge managers pull the barge from one side of the river to the other and charge each person the equivalent of 10 cents when you reach the other side. The ride continued for another hour through various villages and across precarious single I-beam bridges until a bolt on one of the bikes bounced into the sand and the front wheel came loose. The girl with the broken bike climbed onto my handlebars and we rode to a bike repair shop in the next village with the broken bike in tow. Forty minutes later, we finished the ride and arrived at our destination where we surprise-informed Marie’s grandmother that we were going to need to borrow a stove, utensils, a bucket and all her pans. We also needed to borrow her uncle for some reason and his machete, so the five of us set out to hike up a nearby mountain and have a “picnic”. On the way we borrowed a woven floor mat and bought some greens at a market stand. It was only then that I realized we were actually going to cook rice in the woods, at which point I suggested that I had enough food to share if anyone was interested in skipping the rice. Apparently unacceptable. No one even understood what I was talking about. So, once we had collected all our materials from the good-natured people of the village, we left the main track and traveled on narrow mud switchbacks, weaving our way through the rice paddies to the foot of the mountain. The terrain rose sharply as we hiked and just before the sugarcane and clove trees gave way to lush rainforest vegetation, we decided to have a snack. The uncle-that-we-borrowed skinned a few wild sugarcane stalks with a quick swing of his machete and we sucked on the sugary snacks in the shade of a big mossy rainforest tree. Our final destination was a patch of shady paradise overlooking a deep river valley with mountainous rainforest on either side. The uncle-we-borrowed hiked down to a stream to fetch water while we gathered firewood and started two cooking fires under the little triangular metal stands that we brought. The uncle returned a few minutes later with a bucket of water and the roots of a cassava plant he had found in the woods. We chopped up the root with the machete and had another snack. Malagasy meals always consist of two things; rice and the dish that is served on the rice (“ro”). Today, we were making spaghetti…. spaghetti on rice is not weird in Madagascar… just so you know. We also chopped up cucumbers and onions for the side dish or “lasary” (which is not considered an essential part of the meal and is commonly left out entirely). Intermission: How to make rice:The pot to cook the rice is purposely burned a bit on the bottom to bring out the flavor of the rice. The first 4/5 of rice is eaten during the meal, but the last 1/5 is left in the bottom of the pan. The pan is then refilled with water and heated to make rice tea or “ranonapango”. This serves a duel purpose: 1- the burnt rice in the bottom adds some flavor to the water, and 2- boiling the water ensures that the water is safe to drink. There is virtually no other way to properly sanitize water in Madagascar. Back to the story:When the rice was ready, we cleaned the pan and cooked spaghetti, a couple of tomatoes, a bit of ground beef, and the green leaves we bought at the market. We borrowed a couple of enormous banana leaves from the forest to sit on and used the woven mat for a table. A woman and her baby (supposedly more family members of Marie) walked out of the woods to join us. (I’ve gotten used to having random loosely-related family members join me for most meals in Madagascar). After we ate our delicious meal of spaghetti on rice and had a quick hair braiding session, we officially declared the picnic over and began our 3.5 hour journey home. The journey included hiking down with all our stuff, returning all borrowed equipment, taking 3 or 4 photo requests of families that needed to be photographed, riding to Maroantsetra, returning the bikes, and arriving home well after dark. So there you have it. A “picnic”. Or something like it. But nonetheless fun. Love, Kerry

Hello all! My life has suddenly been reconnected to the world via the interwebs so I will attempt to catch everyone up on the past three months. I’ve been keeping a journal, so I’ll just select a few of the entries and put it together that way. This most recent blog entry will be at the top, so if you want to start at the beginning, start at the bottom. First of all, thank you so much for all of your letters and news!! I miss everyone so much and I can’t even tell you how nice it is to hear from everyone. On this end, I have also written a bunch of letters to people, but I am still working on how to send them from my new site so don’t worry- they are coming!Today I’m running an experiment in our tree nursery on seed germination rates with a couple of co-workers from SEPALI. Communicating in Malagasy is still challenging, especially when I am trying to use technical vocabulary, so I am happy to have hands-on activities that we can do together. Mario and Bertrand are already experts about growing trees and rearing silk worms, but reading and writing are challenging for them, so they teach me how to prepare the seeds and plant them properly, and I work with them to set up the experiment and keep track of the process. My counterpart Mamy speaks English, French, and Malagasy, but he encourages me to learn everything I can about the silk process in Malagasy. It is really challenging sometimes, but it will also be very useful for the long run, because I am learning about the silk process and learning Malagasy at the same time.

People in the states have been asking “how is your Malagasy coming along?” Let’s put it this way- I was able to explain the plot for the Pirates of the Caribbean last night to our guard (who watched it with me), but the story was a little different in Kerry language. I told him that the movie is about a rower (there is no word for pirate) named Jack who is looking for a big evil canoe with black cloth and holes. The rowers that work on the big evil canoe are already dead because they stole money from a secret place. There is a taboo that if you steal money from the secret place, then you are dead until you return all the money. You also need blood from a man named Turner. Turner is already dead, but he has a son who is a knife maker in a small town. The son likes a rich girl, but he doesn’t have money, so the rich girl’s father says that it is not okay for them to get married. The rowers on the big evil canoe come looking for the last piece of money and the child of Turner. The rich girl lies and says that her name is Turner so the evil rowers take her to the secret place to use her blood. The knife maker and the rower named Jack go to get the girl and the big evil canoe. There is also a rich man with a lot of big canoes who wants to get the girl. When everyone gets to the secret place, they all try to trick each other…. The rest of the movie is easy to understand if you know the story. So that is about where my Malagasy stands. As long as the listener has seven hours and an overactive imagination, I can communicate basic ideas. It is still difficult for me to understand Malagasy people when they speak to each other, but I can usually understand when they speak to me. It feels like a really good day for me when I can ask questions that require explanations and, more importantly, understand the answer.

Today I bought a bed. Before last night, I slept happily on the floor, partly because beds are expensive and partly because they are difficult to find in Maroantsetra. But my happy feeling left last night I woke up to the sound of many legs traveling across my foam mattress. I figured it was Leader (my cockroach) or one of his gang, so I turned on my flashlight to brush him away and remind him about the rules. Instead, I found a 10-inch long CENTIPEDE in my bed…. Not okay. Now, people had told me that there are big scary centipedes in Maroantsetra that can bite with both their head and their butt, BUT I did not believe them. However, there before my very eyes was a giant centipede. And it was terrifying. So BRAVELY, I decided that I would run outside and ask our guard to kill it, but it looked very dark outside, so instead I grabbed two kitchen knives and put a dish towel around my arms (just in case), and went about wounding my mattress and thoroughly missing the centipede on all attempts until I finally made a big enough hole in my mattress that the centipede accidentally fell in and I was able to chop him into 7 wiggly pieces. I then deposited him into my Frisbee and put the Frisbee under a heavy box (just in case the 7 wiggly pieces decided to escape and seek revenge). Then bravely, I went back to sleep on my holey mattress. So today, beds were suddenly not as difficult to find. I said to a carpenter, “please build me a bed.” And he did. It’s a great bed. I love it. So much.The end.

In Madagascar, I am a vazaha (“vah-zah”). It means foreigner technically, but many people also assume that it means rich person, and usually also French person. Kids ask you for money. People whisper it or shout it when I go by, mothers teach their children that “bonjour vazaha” is a nice thing to say, and vendors are quick charge you double. Occasionally it is used fairly maliciously, but most of the time, people say it in an excited way, as if they were pointing out a hot air balloon. In fact, watching vazaha is somewhat of a national pass time for the Malagasy (especially children). Watching the vazaha walk, watching the vazaha eat, watching the vazaha while the vazaha is watching another event…. It is all very entertaining. Also, no one really understands how I could possibly be a white person and not speak French. The vendors are convinced that secretly, deep down, I MUST know French. So they continue to speak to me in French even though I tell them (in Malagasy) that I don’t speak any French, and they respond (in Malagasy) “You don’t?”, and then they continue to speak to me in French…. Sigh. And yes, sometimes it’s frustrating to always be the one who is different. Sometimes I don’t want to be under a microscope. Sometimes I want to buy a carrot without explaining who I am and where I live and why I speak Malagasy and why I came to Madagascar and why I want to buy just one carrot instead of a kilo of carrots and why I cook for only one person and why I don’t have a Malagasy boyfriend, and no, I am also not looking for a Malagasy boyfriend. Malagasy suitors, by the way, do not waste any time getting to the point. Sometimes I run in the mornings, and I have started to look very favorably on the men who come up to me on their bicycles and say at least 3 or 4 sentences before they tell me they love me. More often the conversation goes, “hello… I love you”, or “I love you… I would like you to be my girlfriend.”On the other hand, people are usually very welcoming when a vazaha actually attempts speak in Malagasy. Suddenly you are no longer an interesting phenomenon, but a real person that they might be able to communicate with. People’s faces light up when you say a simple greeting in Malagasy and no one is ever too busy to sit down and chat.I ran into a four year old boy last week who happily shouted “Bonjour vazaha!” I responded with the Malagasy greeting, “Mbolatsara e!” The little boy looked ecstatic and turned to his friends to explain to them that he had found a Malagasy foreigner! “Bonjour vazaha gasy!”

5/14/2011I have been in my new home for a week now! Maroantsetra is at the edge of a big bay (or what I refer to as the “nook” of Madagascar). The town is big enough to have a tiny airport, two open air markets, more than one school, a post office, police station, bank, and a collection of little restaurants called “hotelys”. It has big, wide sandy roads, but there are only about 15 cars in the whole town because the road that follows the coast to the south is slow and tedious most months of the year due to a number of river systems that you have to cross by ferry (raft). There are no drivable roads into the forest to the north or the west. The river system that runs through the town serves as a highway for transportation into the forest, and a port for the businesses before it dumps into the ocean. A narrow sand spit between the river and the ocean separates Maroantsetra from the saltwater bay. The ocean is gorgeous. Forested, rolling hills surround the bay and gently drop down to meet white, sandy beaches. You can see miles and miles of gently curving sand beachfront without any man-made structure besides a couple of dugout canoes for fishing. There are also two mountainous islands in the middle of the bay with uninterrupted forest. I live and work at a small NGO called SEPALI. In short, SEPALI is a Malagasy NGO that works with farmers in villages surrounding the Makira and Masoala protected areas (two extensive areas of rainforest near Maroantsetra). The NGO attempts to marry conservation and development by providing supplemental income generating activities for farmers who have been economically displaced from the protected areas. The traditional way for farmer’s to acquire farmland is to burn a section of the forest and plant it. It is not the legal way, but it is recognized by the communities. The land is then subdivided between the children and the children’s children until the land is too small and the process starts over again by burning a new piece of forest. SEPALI works to limit this process by increasing each famer’s capacity to make a living with the land they already have. The project that SEPALI is currently working on is the production of wild silk. SEPALI provides training and resources to farmers to plant native trees that the silk worms eat, raise the silk worms, and harvest the cocoons (silk). There is also a counterpart American organization called CPALI which provides a stable market for the silk by purchasing the silk that each farmer produces and securing a market for the finished products. The SEPALI “compound” is a beautiful little piece of property by the river that consists of two houses and 300 hundred small trees for our silk worms. A fence made of palm leaves surrounds the whole property (about a half acre all together). The NGO office is also the house that my counterpart lives in, and I live in two rooms of our silk worm breeding house. The whole SEPALI team consists of about 7 people: the director of the NGO (my counterpart), his wife, two trainers who also serve as watchmen for the compound, a technician who runs our other demonstration site, a development volunteer from Ireland, and me. My counterpart is amazing. He has a couple of masters degrees in agriculture and entomology and he is basically fluent in English (which is really helpful although we speak Malagasy together most of the time).Also, his name is pronounced “mommy” which makes me really happy in a childish way. So basically, if you haven’t already guessed, I’m really happy.

So I don’t have a dog, but I do have a cockroach. Actually, I have many cockroaches, but I have one in particular (named Leader) that I meet with on a regular basis to discuss house rules and the residency status of the other cockroaches. Yesterday we discussed the newly instated speed limit in the house (because cockroaches are far too scary when they move quickly), and the rule that there will be no hissing inside the house. If they need to hiss, they can go outside. The geckos and moths are allowed in the house, but centipedes are certainly not allowed and I have asked the cockroaches to keep an eye on them for me. The spiders are negotiable, but I would prefer that the big ones and the fuzzy ones live outside. My house crab is a questionable topic that is still open for discussion because he is usually harmless, but occasionally he threatens me with his big claws while I am showering and I don’t appreciate it. I wrapped up the meeting by telling Leader that, overall, he is a pretty good cockroach and I am sorry for being so strict.

5/4/2011It feels strange to think that training is over! Yesterday, I officially swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! The ceremony was really beautiful. It was definitely a little bitter-sweet as well because it marks the end of our training and tomorrow we have to part ways with the first 50 people we have gotten to know and love in this country. Tomorrow I will start my journey to my new home for the next two years! This is what I know about my new home… first of all, it is a big town (or a small city) called Maroantsetra and I will be living there for two years and working with an NGO that teaches farmers how to raise silk worms and produce silk. All the Malagasy people who asked about my site smiled really big when I told them I was going to Maroantsetra (I’m going to take that as a good sign). One person even told me that the city was founded by pirates, which of course made me extremely happy and I promptly packed all my bandannas. I received a series of information packets from the Peace Corps about it over the past couple of weeks (all in Malagasy) which informed me that the town may have a population of either 4000, 8000, 18000, or 38000 people… angamba (maybe).Apparently it is somewhat of a tropical paradise. It is surrounded by two huge areas of protected rainforest and is one of the few remaining places in Madagascar where the rainforest meets the ocean. Because of the two protected areas, it is also one of the most isolated cities in Madagascar. The Peace Corps is going to send another volunteer from the environment sector (David!) to Maroantsetra as well (which is essentially unheard of) because of the isolation of our site. The roads are said to be virtually impassible for 6-8 months of the year and the only other way to get to the city is to fly in from the capital of Madagascar, or take a speed boat up the coast for eight hours. Since the area is also hit annually by a series of cyclones, the Peace Corps is not too keen on the speed boat idea. All of the above leads me to believe that Maroanstetra is truly a pirate city and I’m super excited to build a boat and adopt a parrot. It is also supposed to be really hot… which I am more than a little nervous about… but maybe I will learn to be a warm-weather creature…. or hopefully at least I will learn how to “not die” (as Anne put it). My house is supposedly only five meters from the river (which should help), and it has two rooms, one of which I will live in, and the other will be used to store silk (or silk worms… or something... I’ll let you know when I learn Malagasy properly). I am also going to be VERY spoiled because my house has not only “running” water, but electricity. Whoa. Electricity can be sort of a loose term in Madagascar though, because it usually just means you have some power for some portion of the day, so I’ll have to see when I get there, but I’m already feeling fairly spoiled.

Last week was our tech trip to visit some of the current volunteers and learn about agricultural techniques in different environments. One day in particular, we loaded into vans and camped in the rainforest. We ended up sleeping in tents under a pavilion (which I thought was fairly redundant until it started raining harder than I have ever seen it rain and suddenly our open-air pavilion had four liquidly walls). I felt pretty good about the pavilion after that. The next morning we went on an amazing little hike through the rainforest to look at some of the native flora and fauna and of course take a peak at the lemurs. Apparently, no one informed the plants of Madagascar that giant, healthy cacti do not live in the rainforest and no one informed the marine life that it was supposed to live in the sea. Tree crabs were living in harmony with tree frogs, and snails in giant conch shells frequently interrupted the paths through the woods. It was all very confusing. Anyway, when we finished marveling over the misinformed marine life, one of my friends stopped me and asked me to take a look at her eye because she thought there was something in it. It took me a few seconds to figure out that the giant slimy black thing that was attached to the white of her eye was a leech, and I may or may not have had to turn around and become interested in an imaginary bird really quick so I could look horrified for a second, BUT then I was feeling ready to tackle the situation. The leech was slimy enough that her eyelids closed over the top of it and it was already securely fastened to her eye and getting bigger all the time. It was definitely going to be a two finger job. Obviously I told her all about the big LEAF in her eye that we should probably try to get out soon. Despite all logic, I managed to convince her that we should probably not wait until we get to a bathroom (with a mirror). For some reason, she allowed me to stick, not one, but two clean-ish fingers in her eye and hold her eye open with the other hand for a solid half minute or so while I fished around for her slimy friend. BRAVE GIRL. Anyway, the end of the story is that I finally got ahold of the thing and ripped it out and told her the truth. And we both bonded over our newly developed fear of leeches in places we didn’t know it was possible to have leeches. On a side note, I also have to share some signage with you because it may or may not have been one of my favorite things. This was the sign (written in “English”) on the way into the park:“For reason achaiments of the pipelines on this road, Disturbances will be provide. Thank you for your comprention.”

(You’re welcome)

A “typical” day:First of all, there aren’t any “typical” days, but during PC training there is a lot of structure and planning that goes into each day. I wake up around 5:30 with my host family (and with the sun), fetch water, take a bucket bath and eat breakfast by 6:30. Some days, I start a 40 minute walk to the PC training center at 7:00, and other days I study for a while until it is time for class at the neighbor’s house at 8:00. We have about 14 Malagasy teachers and every one of them is absolutely amazing. We have at least 4 hours of Malagasy language class each day and our class size is between 2 and 4 students to one teacher. I have never had a class like that before, but it is amazing how much you can learn when you have that much attention. From 12 to 2, we go home to our host families to have lunch and get ready for the afternoon classes. Cooking in Madagascar is a time consuming process because it involves walking to the market (because you can’t keep any food more than one day) cutting firewood, fetching water, lighting the charcoal cooking stoves and then preparing the meal. So two hour lunch breaks are really necessary here. Then at 2, we go back to a neighbor’s house to start our technical session for environment as a big group. We usually discuss a new technique or learn about an existing technique and then head out to the fields to try it out or see it in action. (On other days, we also have health, safety and security, cross-cultural, or administrative sessions.)After our tech session, there is an hour of optional language tutoring and then home for dinner. My family does not own a functioning clock, but you could set your watch by them. They do things at exactly the same time every day. It gets dark at 6:30 and my family lights a candle. Dinner is always on the table at 6:50, and at exactly 7:30, everyone goes to bed and I get escorted to my room by my host mother. (And I even go to sleep!)As promised by other volunteers, I have already started to forget how to speak English properly… and I don’t yet know enough Malagasy to communicate with anyone above the age of three, so I now speak a new hybrid language called Malaglinglish that effectively very few people (except maybe other Peace Corps volunteers) can understand. Good job Kerry. Way to effectively integrate into your community. Okay, despite my frustration with being a 3 year old again, the language program with the Peace Corps is truly exceptional. After only one month, I can ask simple questions and communicate basic thoughts and needs. Granted, it may take me a half hour to get to the point (ex. I have to ask for the name of a tree by explaining that it is a plant that you can put in the ground and it needs water and sun and food, but it will grow tall and it also has leaves which are usually green), but I can also communicate with the people around me on some level and it feels really good to be able to do that. The credit for that one goes to our teachers and staff for sure. Not only are they wonderful people and excellent teachers, but they are also remarkably good at the tougher side of the job. It takes thick skin to listen to a bunch of foreigners openly discuss and adjust to a new culture and it didn’t escape my attention when cultural insensitivities from both directions were gracefully processed by the staff on more than one occasion.

Here are a few of my favorite things that have happened so far:Church- On the first full day with our host families, everyone went to “church”. Apparently in this particular town, “church” is kind of an all-inclusive word that includes 2 auctions, 6 baptisms, 4 weddings, 2 money collections, and a variety of singing and dancing activities. All things considered, the whole process was very efficient- 4 hours long, with an optional extra 2 hours of singing and dancing afterwards. Rice- Life in Madagascar is all about rice…. Rice for breakfast, rice for lunch, rice for dinner… rice again the next day.The people eat it. The animals eat it. There is a full time job that involves throwing rocks at the birds that eat the rice field. One day, I happened to mention to my host sister that we feed our livestock corn in the US (instead of rice) and she looked at me with the type of horrified expression that you might receive if you purposely dropped a baby. After that, we reached a silent agreement that I would stop telling my host family that I only ate rice once a week in the states and they would stop looking at me like a starving child (even though their other favorite activity is to tell me how big I am). Spoons- There are at least 5 different names for a spoon in Madagascar, but my host family had to check with the neighbors when I asked about the name for a fork. Apparently, forks are not important in Madagascar.Snow suits- Yes, snow suits with puffy insulation, zippers, and mittens with a string are culturally appropriate to wear in Madagascar if the temperature dips below 75 degrees F. Meanwhile, I am sweating and trying really hard not to take off all my clothes. Mefloquin (my malaria medication) occasionally has side effects of vivid dreams including a giant killer beta fish who eats purple people in an orange lake. Matt- your sister is finally on drugs. Spaghetti- Malagasy food is really delicious, but the Peace Corps informed our host families that it would make the Americans really happy if they occasionally cooked spaghetti or pancakes for us. My family took this to heart and served plain pasta on plain rice on a semi-regular basis. (The pancakes that they made, however, were some of the best I have ever had.)Language- One of the other volunteers killed his first chicken the other day. Unfortunately, the word for chicken (akoho) in Malagasy is very similar to the word for banana (akondro) and he shouted to his host father in Malagasy- “Hey Dad! I killed my first banana today!”

Wow… where do I start? It’s been a long time already! First of all, Madagascar is amazing. The Peace Corps staff greeted us at the airport in the capital (Antananarivo- “Tana”) and we loaded into land rovers with engine snorkels and drove a couple of hours east of Tana to the Peace Corps training center with a beautiful lake. (By the way, I was disappointed to learn that the snorkels were entirely unnecessary for that particular drive, but the staff promised me that the snorkels have been put to good use in other parts of the country.)The colors in Madagascar are really stunning… bright red clay soil, neon green rice fields, black rocks, and dark green fruit trees and rainforest plants. The environment, of course, varies quite a bit depending on region, but in the plateau region and the east coast, it is green and lush and there are rivers and streams everywhere.Three days and one Malagasy lesson later, we were dropped off at our host families to fend for ourselves. My host family included an older couple with five grown children, four of which had already moved away, and one still lived in the house with her eight month old baby. Their 8 year old granddaughter also lived with us and occasionally other extended family of sorts came to stay with us for a few nights at a time. My family was extremely welcoming and patient with me, and they told me I was really smart when I said remarkable things like “hello”, and “hungry”, and “full, thank you”. My host family lives on the top of a hill in a tiny little town. They raise farm animals including 3 cattle, 2 pigs, maybe 35 chickens, 4 rabbits, a cat, a dog. As a side note- when explaining to a friend of mine about our animals, I accidentally listed the dog and the rabbits before the cattle and was soundly scolded by my host mother. “We have THREE CATTLE, chickens, pigs, and…”, she corrected me. Apparently it is important to list them in order of value, and dogs are quite possibly the least important animal in Madagascar. Dogs and cats are not for touching, or playing with, or petting, or speaking to. Sigh. This is going to be a very hard adjustment for Kerry. The cats exist exclusively to catch rats, and the dogs are there exclusively to …. I’m not really sure yet…. maybe to bark at night. Reciprocally, the animals are generally alarmed if a human touches them. They essentially have the same status as squirrels in the US. Our house doesn’t have electricity or water (the well is located on the neighboring hillside and we walk there every morning to collect water), but it is a sturdy little house. The house is made of a sort of concrete/mud mixture and is two stories tall. The first story has two rooms, one which the chickens live in, and one which I live in. There is a ladder to the second story which consists of a kitchen and the bedroom/dinning room. The whole family sleeps in the big bed in the dining room. The kitchen is an interesting place. It consists of an indoor fireplace and a mat on the floor, but my family (as well as many families in Madagascar) do not want to vent their kitchen because they want to keep in any heat that the fire can produce.(Everyone is always cold here even though it rarely drops below 70 degrees). So instead, they cook in the smoke and the soot builds up on the walls and makes little stalactites on the ceiling. We also have a pit latrine in a little stick hut and a concrete bath room (where we wash with a bucket of water). Aside from the lack of ventilation in the kitchen (which I don’t really understand because I am a cold-loving creature), I am really comfortable here and my family is really wonderful.Our yard is made of red mud, but we have tropical fruit trees all around the property. We have banana trees, coffee trees, avocado trees, orange trees, pilbassy fruits (english?), pineapple bushes, and this wonderful new vegetable called a sosety (which I am in love with). And of course we have a rice patty. Everyone in Madagascar has a rice patty and the rice fields take up every available inch of river valley and it is even grown on the surrounding hillsides. They are a brilliant color green when the plants are young and a beautiful rusty yellow color when they are ripe. The culture of children in Madagascar is also remarkable. EVERYONE helps. As soon as a child is old enough to hold a knife (yes, a knife), they are expected to help. It is not uncommon to see a 8 year old kid with her baby brother on her back while she is carrying water on her head and flicking a marble at a wooden goal post. When the child can walk, they are no longer carried, no matter how far the walk is. At age 4, you start helping with chores. At 5, you harvest rice with your family. By 8, you could be almost entirely self sufficient, and at 10, you could cook for your family by yourself if you had to. Kids are still kids, and every spare minute of the day is spent playing games and running around like wild things, but kids are also absolutely part of the team, and are expected to help with everything that their parent’s do. I have seldom, if ever, seen a Malagasy child cry or throw a fit when they are told to do something. They just do it, and whistle a song or poke their brother with a stick at the same time.

Welp, after a solid year of goodbye lunches and dinners and parties, I may actually be leaving! Tomorrow I begin my journey to Madagascar! 35 of us will fly to Philly, PA for a brief orientation, off to Johannesburg on Tuesday, and then to Madagascar to begin our training. Here we go!

If you want to write to me (please write to me!), you can send letters to:

(My Name)

Bureau du Corps de la Paix

B.P. 12091

Poste Zoome Ankorondarno

Antananarivo 101

Madagascar

How it works:

I will be a Peace Corps Agroforester in Madagascar for 27 months, but my specific job description will depend on which village I end up living in, what their needs are, and the climate in that area. For the first three months, I will live and train in the village of Mantasoa (which is near the capital, Antananarivo). During the first month, I will live with a Malagasy host family, but attend class in the Peace Corps training center everyday. For the next two months, I will live at the training center. After that... I will go to my village (I won't find out which village until I arrive in Madagascar), and hopefully, I will stay there for the next two years!

Thank you to everyone who has helped me get here. I will miss you all and I will be back before you know it!

For those of you who almost remember where Madagascar is.... here is a little refresher...

Madagascar is a BIG island off the southeastern coast of Africa. It is the world's 4th largest island (not including the continents). If you put the island next to the US, the length of Madagascar would run from NYC to Orlando, Florida.

Most of Madagascar is located in the tropics. The southern tip is desert. There is a long ribbon of rain forest along the east coast and a highland plateau in the center of the island. 80 percent of the animals and plants found in Madagascar exist nowhere else in the world.

The Malagasy people come from parts of India, Africa, and Indonesia. The main languages spoken are Malagasy and French. Capital: Antananarivo, Population: 21 million, Currency: Ariary

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ma.html

Change of plans once again! Yesterday the Peace Corps cancelled our trip to Guinea and today they offered me a placement in Madagascar! What a crazy roller coaster. I was really excited about Guinea, but I can already feel myself getting equally excited about Madagascar. I'm crossing my fingers that I will actually get to leave this time, but I'm learning not to hold my breath. Wish me luck!

Last week I received the news that the departure date for our group (G19) has been delayed six weeks to January 13th, 2011. "Flexibility is the key to the Peace Corps", she reminded me. I was bummed to hear the news at first. After packing, selling my car, visiting with friends and tying up my loose ends for the past few weeks, I was feeling really jazzed about starting the trip. I even had a going away party. As the news sank in, it was eventually a bit of a relief to have more time since the original departure date was closing in like a freight train. I will be here for Solstice and the other holidays now. I will have more time to learn French. I will get to throw snowballs at my brother. I might even get to see my friend Clancy who comes back from Mozambique in December!

I also understand the reason we have been delayed and I appreciate the caution on the part of the Peace Corps. Primarily, we were delayed for political instability following the recent presidential election. It was Guinea's first real attempt at a democratic election after the autocratic-type rule that has been in place since the French left in 1958. The election was supposed to occur in September, but it was pushed back twice and finally occurred on November 7th. The losing candidate suspected corruption in the voting process and is challenging the election results through the supreme court. The Peace Corps is giving Guinea time to get settled before they send us over.

http://af.reuters.com/news/country/?type=guineaNews

There are 14 Peace Corps volunteers in Guinea currently and they are living near the capital together until the election tension blows over. I've been able to talk to a few of them and they have been very helpful. They said that they feel totally safe and respected in Guinea despite the political tension and they are very anxious to get back to their villages and continue with their work. A few of them have also been helping me with my packing list- awesome! They suggested all sorts of things I didn't think of - a Camelbak, a USB cord to download pictures, a can opener, and a suggested reading list.

So for now, I will be "flexible" and enjoy the extra time I have with family and friends! :)

Good question. There are actually four countries in the world that have "Guinea" as part of their name.

Equatorial GuineaGuineaGuinea-BissauPapua New GuineaThe country I will be assigned to is simply.... Guinea:

Taking a leaf from Clancy's book, I'll give you a size comparison- Guinea is about the same size as Oregon:

It is bordered by six other African countries and the Atlantic Ocean: Guinea- BissauSenegalMaliCote d'IvoireLiberiaSierra Leone

CIA World Factbook of Guinea:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gv.html

Weather:http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/61832.html