Hello everyone.

I'm in Tana right now because PC M/car has been suspended. I am heading to S. Africa tomorrow to take care of paperwork, medical checks and such. Still not sure what I'm going to do after this, but I might come home or might go to another country.

The political problems in the country have gotten a lot worse in the past week or so.

Ok, gtg. Will be in touch.

23- PCVs in the Education 2008 Stage

3- Early Terminations from my Stage

4- “Tropical” illnesses I’ve experienced: fleas (does that count?), foot parasite, strange fever, weird GI thing

6- months I’ve been in country

85- in kilometers, closest PCV to me

175-my current number of students

250- my previous number of students (before my classes were changed in the middle of the semester)

4-classes I teach. Two 7th grade, two 10th grade.

3- hours of English news supposed to be on TV six days a week. Note: this never happens. I have no idea what’s going on in the world, barring the month old Economists my parents send me. Thanks guys.

1.39- In US$, pork, ravitoto, and rice at a hotely for lunch

1.17- In US$, an Aerogram to the US

.95- In US$, a .65L beer. Too bad the only beer available, THB, is nasty.

3.5- In miles, the average distance I bike daily (my thighs are insane)

6- abandoned buildings in my housing complex. Need to do something with those.

9:00- Time I usually fall asleep

5:45- Time I usually wake up

2- Pairs of flip flops I’ve destroyed so far

0- times I have worn socks since moving to site

Too numerous to record- amount of rice eaten (I can really pack that stuff away. You’ll see upon return. Watch out Joey Chestnut. That’s a shout-out to you, quizzo crew.)

What’s life like here? Well, I guess the best comparison I can think of at the moment is to the film Pan’s Labyrinth, minus the Spanish Civil War. My house feels like an insect exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. I bet if researchers came here they would be able to identify at least 10 new species. And if anything sends me home early it won’t be the boredom/isolation, but the constant fly attacks. I hate those things, plus they are disease vectors and go right for your flesh wounds: after picking a worm out of my foot two weeks ago (they’re called “parasy” and everyone gets them on the coast), it became infected. Like gross infected: pus; oral antibiotics needed; the whole bit. I’m convinced it was because of the constant fly bombardment. Or maybe the standing water I accidentally stepped in. Six of one, half dozen of another. I try to avoid going out of my bedroom at night, but I have to cook dinner so I’m forced to. By that time the flies are gone, but out come the mosquitoes, flying roaches which ALWAYS FLY ONTO YOU, massive praying mantises, and these cricket things to name a few. The most common words uttered by me after 6PM are “What is that? How did it get in here? Damn, it flies, too?!” My mosquito net is worth its weight in gold. I’ve also taken to using this insect spray in my house that the French military left me. It’s amazing, but there’s too much ground to cover to kill everything. It doesn’t kill plants, so I doubt it’s Agent Orange-like and don’t think it will kill me. Plus, it says non-toxic. At least I think that’s what it says. My French is still shaky. On the plus side I have these reddish geckos. Tons of them. And lizards. And my favorite- an albino frog that lives in my shower. That guy is awesome. Also, thank you Brian for confirming my suspicion that, indeed, birds do not come out of one’s roof at night. I doubt that any of these are actually eating any of the bugs, though. There’s just too many. It’s not possible.

What else, oh, evidently I am the funniest, most interesting thing to ever happen to this town. Back home I thought I was somewhat clever, but here I’m a riot. Look! The Vazaha is riding a bike! Look! The Vazaha is eating rice! Look! The Vazaha is buying bananas! Look! The Vazaha is speaking Malagasy! Look! The Vazaha said Bonjour! That’s to be expected, of course, as I am foreign and they don’t get too many foreigners around here, but sometimes it’s just exhausting. Some days I laugh- about two weeks ago two children who were about two years old and shared an uncanny likeness to oompha loompas saw me from about ten yards away. One said “Salut” while the other said “Vazaha” in rapid succession in their little high pitched voices, and they proceeded to do this for a good five minutes as I walked by them. I’m not doing the scene justice, but it was one of the funniest things I have ever experienced. Some days (like today) I ignore it, and some days (like yesterday) I just want to kill the person. Case in point: I am sitting with my friends the clothes dealers at the market shooting the breeze, eating come compose and some lychees when a guy sits down and tells me (in English) he loves me and what do I think about that. So I said (in Malagasy) why is he different from all the other men who tell me they love me everyday and that he needs to get in line. This elicited laughs from everyone else, but the guy persisted, so I ignored him. Then, he proceeded to take pictures of me on his phone when he thought I wasn’t looking. So I told my Gasy friends not cool and they told him to stop. It bothered me because if you pulled that with a Gasy and started taking pictures of them without asking they wouldn’t have it, so I’m not going to sit there and take it either. But things like that have happened before and I haven’t cared.

I guess what I’ve just discovered/just learned to accept is that everyday is really the same, it’s just me and my mood that varies.

PS. I feel like all the posts are about the same thing, but I don’t know what else to write about…Any ideas?

Logistics:

If any mail was send to the address in Tana and got there starting in September chances are very high I have not received it. Hopefully I will get it over Christmas. If you send things, try to send them in an envelope of some kind, preferably to my site. It’s faster, there’s less of a chance something will get stolen, and I don’t have to pay to receive envelopes.

Also, I’m sorry, but mail is too expensive on my budget to send anything but letters, especially now that the prices rose. Expect a nice haul when I return. If you want anything in particular, let me know.

I haven’t been able to get to the internet until now, so I’m sorry if I haven’t responded to emails, etc. I think the last time I was online was the first week in October.

If anyone is planning a trip to this part of the world, or think they will plan a trip, let me know! Vacation days are limited.

For some reason my keyboard is deciding to work so here we go.

Thought that I would post an introduction to Malagasy food. Tried to craft the recipes as well as I could, but nothing is really exact because I don’t use exact amounts of anything…Hopefully this will give you a good outline.

Some Basics:

The Malagasy eat huge amounts of vary (rice) rice each day. If you go to a hotely (cheap restaurant) there is always rice included in the meal. The ro/loaka (guess can be translated as “side dish”- Malagasy the word differs depending on the dialect) is meat, fish, beans, etc. in some type of sauce. “Foreign” dishes are found everywhere- Fried rice and lo mien with pork/shrimp are a hotely staple, as are French Fries and steak.

Street Food:

Different fruit juices are common, along with numerous types of little rice or wheat-based breads. They have brioche, doughnut type things, and a pork-bun type dough filled with jelly, for example. The Malagasy are heavy on the oil, so sometimes the bread can be soaked in it. Sambos (samosas) are big, along with nem (little egg rolls). Fruit is also common, but most of it I’ve never seen or heard of before, nor do I know the English names. Truthfully I don’t like most of it and kinda just want a banana, though lychees are in season as I am writing this and it’s amazing. The only problem is EVERYTHING stops for lychee season in my part of the country so there currently are no bananas. Oh, I tried explaining how people put lychees in cocktails and no one understood this.

Vary amin’ny Anana: “Rice with greens.” A rice porridge that is commonly eaten for breakfast. This is the recipe from the Head PC Chef, Gaby. He’s awesome.

2 cups rice

¼ chopped meat (optional, or can put a sausage link on top, that’s what I do)

2 small tomatoes, chopped

1 small bunch watercress

6 cloves garlic, minced

1-2 tbs. ginger, minced

Other types of greens that I can’t translate into English

Cook the rice, make it on the watery side. Sauté the meat in a frying pan, add the greens, garlic, and ginger. After 10 minutes, add the meat and the vegetables to the rice. Season with salt and pepper.

Ravitoto: Mashed up cassava leaves (Mitoto means to mash/pound). This is one of my favorite dishes, but Kinsey thinks this looks (and tastes) like wet grass clippings. If you can find some cassava leaves try it out and let me know what you think. We made this at Lauren’s site with the help of her friend Jari.

Get cassava leaves and somehow make them very small. Here I’ve seen it done in a hand-powered meat grinder, but usually it’s done with a mortar and pestle. I would suggest using a food processor. Add garlic and ginger to the leaves when you are mashing them. For flavoring, cook some pork in oil in a frying pan, then add the leaves and some water and simmer the on the stove for about 30 minutes or so. Can add shrimp when cooking the leaves, too. You will probably have to add water when it is absorbed/burns off. You will have to add some salt at some point. Serve over rice.

Vegetarian option: Use coconut milk for flavoring instead of the pork and add peanuts.

Lauren’s Malagasy Pasta: The Malagasy do eat pasta and you can find this dish everywhere on the side of the road.

Cook any type of pasta. Cut up peeled carrots and string beans and put them in some boiling water until slightly cooked. I think there’s an actual term for this, but I don’t know what it is. Add vegetables to the pasta, with some oil, salt, and pepper. Can add ground beef.

Carrot Salad:

Peel and shred carrots, then mix with some vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper. Top with a sliced tomato and onion.

Alternative: can use cucumber instead of carrots.

Lauren’s Papaya Salad: This stuff is really good, but requires an unripe papaya.

Take an unripe papaya and shred the inside into long, thin strips. Boil it. Cook down a tomato and onion in oil. Add the cooked papaya to the tomato mixture in the frying pan for a few minutes. Mix it all together with curry powder, salt, and pepper.

Note: The salad is going to be neon colored.

(As you can see, Lauren is the Malagasy cooking maven. I make a lot of eggs.)

Jari’s Tomato Sauce: A standard sauce that can be used to flavor anything. Tastes really good over shrimp.

Dice a tomato. You can remove the skins if you want. Cook it for 10-15 minutes in a fair amount of oil with onion, garlic, ginger, and salt.

Compose: This is really random, but it’s a good 10 o’clock snack/light lunch. If you’re carb loading for a big race, make a sandwich out of it. Make sure there’s two types of pasta. Who knows.

Put a small portion of each in a bowl: carrot/cucumber salad, Malagasy pasta with spaghetti noodles and ground beef, Malagasy pasta with macaroni noodles, potato salad. Serve with hot sauce.

Mama Josephine’s Banana-Rice Bread: My host mom used to make this for breakfast. It’s really good, but I still can’t figure out the correct proportions. Which makes this “recipe” extremely unhelpful.

Mix rice flour, baking powder, salt, and a little sugar. Add water to make into a thick batter. Add a mashed banana or two and an egg. Spread into a pan, bake. It won’t really rise. Serve with honey.

Tip: Can mix in shredded coconut for extra flavor.

Ranonapango: everyone drinks this after meals. I know it’s because you can’t drink the water. It’s an acquired taste. You probably won’t acquire it, but here it is. It’s also really hard to make correctly. This is the worse bunch of recipes ever. Haha.

Cook extra rice. Leave about .5in of rice on the bottom of the pot and burn this rice. Fill the pot with water and boil the water. The water will be yellow-ish and have rice floating in it. Yum!

Bonbon Voanjo: “Peanut Candy.” This stuff is amazing. During training all of us consumed tons of this stuff. Don’t burn it though. Adapted from PC Mad Cookbook “Mampalicious”

½ cups sugar

¼ cup water

¼ cup butter

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup coarsely crushed nuts

Stir sugar, water and butter together in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook rapidly, stirring occasionally until mixture starts to turn golden brown, then stirring frequently to avoid burning. Remove from heat and blend in baking soda and salt. Stir in the vanilla and nuts. Pour onto a buttered plate and let cool just until you can touch it. Pull candy as thin as possible, letting ribbons form and break into pieces.

Bonbon Koko: More street candy. I don’t really know how to make it, but the basic idea is that you get some shredded coconut, add some sugar and fry it. I will ask someone about this and get back to you.

Mofo Akondro: “Banana Bread.” Don’t be fooled, this is a banana dipped in batter and fried. This recipe goes out to Uncle Glenn with the deep fryer. Adapted from Mampalicious.

Mix two parts regular flour to one part rice flour. Add some baking powder. Take a banana, coat it in batter, and fry it.

Oh- and one of my proudest accomplishments thus far- I make my own yogurt now! Cut up some avocado and banana and mix it with vanilla yogurt for dessert. So good! Can add raisins and granola if you want. Here avocado is always eaten with sugar.

Ok guys,

My keyboard is broken, so I'm sorry no one received emails this time and there's not anything interesting here.

To hold you over:

1. My friend got run over by a pousse-pousse (richshaw) in Tamatave. It was funny.

2. A man came to my house at 6am on a Saturday to should me a bird in a cage. Seriously.

3. I eat, and love, French military rations, thanks to the awesome French dudes who were living next door to me for a few days. Don't worry everyone, NATO approved. And there was pate.

4. A guy in the Malagasy military jumped through my window. The Gasy military was camped outside my house for a week and a half. It was a learning experience.

5. I teach two sections of 7th grade, with 40 students each, and two sections of 10th grade with 70 students.

6. There is a lizard living under my TV. I know, I have a TV. It's the only way to get any news at site because there's only one radio station and it only plays gasy pop music.

Michelle and I killed a chicken. And it was a mess.

It was late afternoon, the day before Swearing-in, during the “PC Olympics.” We were separated into teams based on region. The first task was to collect water from the lake, while wearing a fake baby on your back, and run it around the PC compound. Lauren, Jessica, and Michelle finished this task admirably. When the water returned, each team had to boil it using a charcoal fire. The winners of this part received one point. By this time, we had no chance in winning, but hey. Finally, our water was boiling with the help of numerous Malagasy PC staff members (illegally I might add) and I went to fetch the chicken from the box. I grabbed it and then had no clue what to do. Michelle, and our PCV trainer Casey, helped me step on it. Then we plucked the feathers from around the neck in preparation for cutting it. Note that on our team, Michelle and I were the only ones who would get within 10 feet of the thing, alive or dead. And Michelle is a vegetarian. (I am from Queens. She is from Long Island. We don’t do these things everyday, but we are “in it to win it.”) Ok, so I am stepping on its wing with my left foot and its feet with my right. Michelle is holding its neck and beak. The knife I have to use is too dull, so they give me a better one. Not great, but better. I start to try to slit its throat, but it is really hard and the chicken was taking a really long time to die, so I freaked out. It didn’t help that some others on my team were telling us what to do, although they had no interest in doing it whatsoever and it wasn’t possible to actually do what they were saying...details…So I was really upset and am trying to cut the thing’s neck. Michelle is staying really calm, btw, and had the foresight to roll up my pant legs. Casey comes over and spares me, cutting the chicken’s neck off entirely. Then it starts spraying blood all over me, so I pick up my feet. And then the chicken proceeds to run around like a chicken without its head- until Casey can get control of it about 5 feet from where I was standing, leaving a huge trail of blood all over the mat and grass.

Every other group managed to do this task quite swiftly.

I was reading Vanity Fair a while ago (the one with Angelina Jolie on the cover) and the Proust Questionaire asked whomever it was what he/she believed was the most overrated virtue. He/she responded “cleanliness.” This celebrity (I cannot remember) has obviously never lived in Madagascar. If you don’t clean your feet twice a day, and even sometimes when you do, you get parasites that lay eggs beneath your skin. If you don’t filter and bleach your drinking water, dish cleaning water, etc. you could be vomiting for the next two days. If you don’t scrub your meat and vegetables you could ingest a worm that can grow to epic proportions in your intestine. If you don’t bleach down your counters daily, the ants will take over your kitchen. If you don’t kokobrousse your wood floors, the flea eggs will be able to grow and your bed will cease to become a refuge. If you don’t keep your nails very short, parasites can grow under there, too. And, if you don’t sweep daily, roaches will certainly find their way into your space.

While I would be considered a “clean freak” at home, I am not exaggerating. Most of my day (I have not yet begun to teaching) is spent cooking, then cleaning. Dishes, floors, counters, food, myself. You name it, I clean it.

And this is not far off from what the Malagasy do. For example, my host mother was adamant that I kokobrousse each day and would never let spilled water sit for more than a minute.

But, their food preparation cleanliness is certainly not up to par, probably because they had no concept of germ theory. While the PC Medical Officers went over germ theory with our host families, they thought the food preparation techniques had to be used because we are “vazaha.” In some cases that may be true, but in many ways the Malagasy have a different concept of illness. While I would consider pooping 5 times and day and having liquid stool being sick, they, at least my host family, did not. When my host mom had a hacking cough for 2 weeks she wasn’t marary (sick), but just “coughing.” But, I digress.

Well, now I’m at site. Currently, it is 8:45 and, while tired, I am writing this locked in my room, afraid to go outside to the shower because the stray dogs are going crazy. I live in public housing in South Central Tamatave region. How hardcore is that? Actually, it’s not at all. My house is amazing by PC standards. I have three rooms: a bedroom, kitchen (with tile!), and bathroom. The bathroom has a sink, a flush latrine (who knows…), and a shower. It seems the house was set-up for communal living, so each room can only be entered from the outside patio. It’s also made of concrete so it doesn’t blow away during cyclone season, making it ugly, but practical. I am about a 7 minute walk from the coast. So far, I only have an infestation of termites and ants (and annoying little children), and I am hoping things stay that way. Thankfully, again, most of my house is concrete, because I think the termites would eat the entire thing in the two years I will be here if they could. I’m praying they don’t become interested in my bed…I did battle with a roach in my kitchen last night and have one living somewhere in my bedroom, but I can’t catch the sucker. And it’s not even one of the cool Madagascar Hissing Roaches. I now have a new-found respect for ants, as I watched them eat the entire dead roach in a few hours, but I still don’t like that they crawl all over my dishes, making me wash everything twice. I’m also convinced something is living in my ceiling. Too bad it’s not a lemur. I have really stable electricity- only one blackout so far! The only (small) problem is that my kitchen sink is completely unusable and my bathroom sink and shower are barely working. There is no water pump around here, so doing any cooking and cleaning takes forever. The local authorities are supposed to fix it for me (it’s too expensive for me to do on my own), which tells me it’s never going to get done. My town: it’s pretty big as far as PC towns go- about 20,000. It’s also on the main road out of Tana so we get a lot of Malagasy tourists and some vazahas, too, so they are pretty used to me already. I mean, they still constantly try to rip me off, talk to me in French, and call me “cherie” in a really creepy way, but hey. The main road through town is the highway. And by highway I mean one paved lane. Off the main road are streets of sand that stretch to the beach. There is a lot of rotting government infrastructure, especially along the beach, but most of it is in use. It’s hard to build along the coast because of the cyclones. The high school is there and the roof blew off last year. Umm, what else, there are two markets daily that sell fresh meat, seafood, vegetables, and fruit. Right now the selection is quite poor, but fruit season starts in October. There are numerous bungalows for the tourists, hotelys (restaurants), some video rental places, a general store or two- the usual. Not very exciting. I’ve heard that people go “out” at night here, but I live too far outside of town and don’t feel comfortable riding back alone at night, so I do not partake. Maybe when school starts and I make some more friends…Currently, my buddies include: a retired teacher, the second-hand clothes sellers at the small market, the gas station guys, and my eight year old neighbor.

I listen to BBC World Service basically every minute I am not in class and this was one of their leaders. I didn’t actually catch the segment, but I saw the “unique way” for reals about a month ago, so I will relay it to you. Plus, Madagascans isn’t actually a word, so who knows what kind of info they are actually peddling over there.

The tradition (fomba) is called a “famadihana” or exhumation. I probably butchered that spelling. Sorry. It’s central to the highland culture and is very different outside the plateau, if it is practiced at all.

Exhumations occur rarely because they are incredibly expensive, so I got really lucky that my host-family’s one occurred in the eight weeks I was staying with them. One other PCT went because we are related. She’s my niece.

On Friday, around 1PM, we walked up into the hills surrounding our town. There are tombs all over the hillside, but once we got about 1.5 km out, you could here a band and see a line of people walking toward a particular tomb. We walked probably 1km farther and by that time, there were about 250 people surrounding it. The music kept going (the band had awesome matching uniforms) and the tomb was opened. You could smell the dampness in the air right away. Then, the men in the family who were most closely related to the bodies inside went into the tomb. In my family, only the men are allowed in, but this can differ. Soon after, bodies wrapped in white cloths and straw mats started to appear. Seriously. Bodies. There were five total in that tomb. Some were already decomposed and were extremely small; others were of the more recently deceased. The smell of dampness in the air intensified, but it was not overpowering. The bodies were placed on the ground and the family gathered around them. My family attended to my “grandfather.” The mats were taken off and given to one person- my host mother got the mat from her father’s body. Then, without taking the older cloths off, new white cloths were wrapped around the body and tied with string at the head and the feet. The attendants, there were about six-eight for each body, sat side to side on the ground with their legs outstretched and laid the body across them. What appeared to be perfume was poured over the body and they were blessed. The families sat like that for 10 minutes or so, stood up, held the bodies aloft, and danced around the tomb. Finally the bodies were returned to the tomb and everyone walked to another tomb about 1km away. A speech was given by the eldest male in the group when the bodies were being brought out, but I did not understand any of if due to my lack of Malagasy skills. (But, if anyone was wondering, I passed my final language test). Then we went home.

To put it in context, the Malagasy exhumation is a form of ancestor worship that wasn’t wiped out by Christianity and is a huge celebration for the entire extended family. For me, the entire experience was a blur as I was trying to mentally record what was happening. There were hundreds of people pushing for a glimpse at the bodies, which were about 3 feet away from me. A woman fainted because she was so upset, but there were also drunk men dancing on the tomb in apparent elation. One of my host sisters was smiling, and the other was crying.

On Saturday, we left before lunch to walk to a nearby town. I had never been there before and on the way Rachael and I got the usual number of Vazaha calls. One man also asked in English if we were Canadian. But, when we got to the town, it was incredibly packed with family and friends. None of whom I have ever seen before. We got to the makeshift party room where we would be eating the traditional exhumation meal of beef, beef fat, and rice. Yeah, just that. I believe my family killed three cows. A man started taking pictures of the two foreigners, which I was not thrilled about due to his over-eagerness with the lens. But, in the end, he turned out to be a cousin who was quite friendly. So we were getting ready to present our money envelope to the relative in charge so we could go eat and a man started screaming at us in Malagasy. He was obviously drunk, but he was being overly aggressive. Then he switched to English and started ranting about how he hated Americans and hoped we would die because of the war in Iraq. My family had to physically keep him away from Rachael and I while others were sternly speaking to him in Malagasy. I was just angry because the entire thing seemed so inappropriate at a family gathering and because we did nothing to incite him. Rachael got upset, so we left. That was possibly the worse part, as we had to walk by hundreds of staring and whispering Malagasy people. The entire thing really rattled both of us for obvious reasons. As we started to walk back to our town, we were stopped by the cousin who explained that the man wasn’t family (evidently, he was a neighbor) and we were, so we could not leave and we should experience the Malagasy fomba. We were lead to a SUV and sat in the back and were passed in food. Seriously. We were eating beef grease from a bowl in the back of a car. With people taking pictures of us the entire time. I felt like Brangelina. And it was horrible. Then we went to another tomb, repeated Friday and went home.

So yeah, that was it, I guess. It was an amazing experience, but one I don’t wish to repeat. Part of the problem was it would have been obvious we were extremely uncomfortable the entire day, but that subtlety of emotion doesn’t translate well in Madagascar.

Once again, this post was really long, but I tired to cut it down. Maybe the BBC version was better…

And Logistics:

I am moving to my permanent site this week! Woohoo. We are being sworn in as PCVs on Friday and I am off on Saturday. Therefore, I am getting a new address. The one posted will still work, so you can send mail there, but it will take even longer to reach me (if that is at all possible.) Please still send any kinds of packages to the posted address. If you want the new address (I can’t post it online) email me or write me a letter at the old address. Thanks guys.

Malagasy have a habit of pointing out the obvious. For example, yesterday at dinner, the “sotrobe” (literally “spoon big”) fell out of the rice bowl onto the floor. Everyone noticed because it was loud. One of our Malagasy language teachers was walking by and just pointed and said “sotrobe.” They also say mention it is cold about 20 times per day because it is, well, cold here.

The problem is that they mention things that would be thought of as impolite or prying in American culture. (You’re fat, etc.). It’s easy to chalk it up to cultural differences and let it go is most cases. But, then there is the “vazaha” problem.

“Vazaha” (pronounced “vazah”) means “foreigner” in Malagasy. I actually think it was first used when the British came here. Its origins are in the phrase “already stamped,” meaning that the foreigner in Madagascar had his/her passport stamped and was allowed to be here. It’s almost always used to describe a white, French foreigner because white French foreigners colonized Madagascar and they assume that everyone who is white here is French… But, it’s also used to describe us PCVs. I really have no problem when a child calls me a vazaha because it is not meant maliciously, and we have taken to calling ourselves vazahas as a joke. But, I cannot help get upset when I get “Bonjour, Vazaha” from an (usually male) adult on the street, if someone yells it when they are walking past me so I obviously cannot talk to them, or if someone I have spoken to in Malagasy still feels the need to call me vazaha instead of my name. But, in many situations it is difficult to gauge if someone is simply pointing out that we are foreign, the same way they point out we are tall, or if they are pointing out we are foreign to taunt us.

Foreigners are still a rarity in Madagascar, especially in the highlands where we have been for our training. (For example, on market day last week, about 80 people watched four of us just throw a baseball around for 20 minutes.) So I can understand the fascination. Hopefully when I get to my site, the vazaha problem will begin to work itself out in my head. Two years is a long time.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense. It's 4:30 here and I am getting in precious internet time at the PC house in Tana!

Ok, I typed this up about 3 weeks ago, but could not upload it because the internet crashed. So here you go…

I have been in Madagascar for almost a month now so I obviously have many stories to report. Too many, in fact, so I will try to be as brief as possible.

I love summaries, so here are the talking points from this post. Have a good time:

Megan cleans her room with a coconut.

She had fleas.

The easiest thing, I guess, is to tell what a typical day is like for me during training, so here is goes. I wake up at 6:15. Which is awesome, because at home I would often go to be at 6:15, but there is nothing to do here when it gets dark and there are rabid dogs so we cannot go out anyway...Everyone else in my house is already awake. My sisters wake up at 4 to study and my mom is up by 5 to cook/heat water, etc. I wash up/ brush my teeth on the second floor balcony into the alley next to our house. Then (every three days, haha) I take a bucket shower in the “ladosy.” Basically, it’s a metal shack with a ledge to hold you’re water bucket and soap. It’s pretty cold here (around 55-62 degrees, though the sun is really, really bright) so I do not enjoy showering and watching my precious heat escape through the metal slats. After my ladosy, I eat breakfast. It’s tea, fruit, and bread (mofo) served with honey and peanut butter which I sometimes help make. Malagasy are big on fried food, which is horrible at 6:30 in the morning so I try to avoid that. I am take care of my chamber pot, but we are not going to go into that.

Then I go to class from 8-5 M-F and 8-12:30 Saturday. It consists of Malagasy language classes, tech classes (where we learn to teach English), safety and security lessons, cross-cultural lessons (for example, how not to flip someone off here-it’s harder than you think…) and health lessons/shots. The best part of the week are def. the health lessons because the two PC doctors are hilarious. For the upcoming three weeks we have “Practicum,” which means a lot less class, but we will be teaching actual Malagasy students English. It is going to be quite stressful because I don’t know what I’m doing yet…

We have 1.5-2 hours for lunch at home every day so I have time to study/relax. (Another note on food: Malagasy typically eat rice 3 times a day. In our language handbook is says without rice at every meal, the Malagasy feel “lost.” It’s really hilarious, but true.) My house is extremely close to the PC Center, but some PCTs have a 25 minute walk home. After class, we play some type of sport for about an hour (ultimate/basketball/volleyball/catch) then I head home to collect my bucket or two or three of water from the nearby pump. Lately there have been problems with the pump so we have to hoard a lot of water. We eat dinner around 6:30 and I am in bed by 8 and asleep by 9:30. It’s exciting. Last week I could barely even stay up to watch the Euro final. It started at 10 here. My host family still makes fun of me for waking up at 9 AM the first Sunday I stayed with them.

Oh, now here is the fun/interesting section for which you have been waiting:

1) I got fleas. Yeah, human fleas. It’s a big problem among the PCTs in my stage. I think that we track them in on our pants and then they get in our sheets. I have bites all over my body…That is really the only weird “illness” I have gotten so far, but there is a lot of time for much worse things to happen. We've already had worms and this gross foot parasite in people in my stage.

2) I clean my room with half a coconut every morning. It’s called a kokobrosse. Laugh it up.

Ok, I could go on forever, but I won’t because this post is already way too long and boring. Email/post comments if you want to hear about anything in particular. I will try to find myself in interesting situations so I can relay them back to you.

Hey Everyone,

I am rushing to get on a bus now (but not before I stop at Wawa) and I wanted to let everyone know that I won't be able to call or email for a while. They tell us not until August 23rd...but I will hopefully figure something out before that...they can't keep me away.

Basically, I'm not dead if you don't get an email/text/call/other electronic update in the next few weeks/months.

Alright, I have never blogged before so please give me the benefit of the doubt. To begin, I would like that thank those who have made this little blog possible: Parisa, Sasa, Beth, and Elizabeth. You guys are awesome. And here it goes… Beth’s Brother, Danny: Megan’s going to Africa?

Beth: Yeah.

Danny: Where?

Beth: Madagascar.

Danny: Madagascar is in Africa? As you can see, many people have questions about what is going on with my little trip. I will try to answer them all here. Get ready… 1. What are you doing there? Why, I’m teaching English. Everyone can stop laughing now. I love children. English was recently declared an official language (in addition to Malagasy and French) so hopefully I will be helping the kids. 2. So, you speak French? Not so much. I have some knowledge of it, gleaned from a Community College course and Rosetta Stone. Somehow my knowledge of Spanish convinced the Peace Corps I would learn French rather quickly. I will show them. I do hope to learn a lot more when I am there though. Obviously, I don’t speak Malagasy either, but they are going to give us intensive language courses during our ten week training period. I am hoping I am a whiz. 3. Malagasy? It’s a Polynesian language, most closely related to that spoken on Borneo, or so Wikipedia tells me. I read a book about Madagascar once a few years ago and I skipped over every Malagasy word because they tend to be easily over ten letters long. I will definitely post updates about how this is going, but only for the enjoyment of you, the wonderful reader. 4. Where are you living? During training we live with a family. My address is posted! Please write me letters!!! I will cherish them forever! There are about 25 of us going to teach English I think, and we are put up with different families in the same town/area. After that, the group is shipped off to different parts of the island for the next two years. I don’t know where I am going yet, but I will let you know when I do. And I will give you my new address!!! It can be anywhere from the tropics on the coast to the fairly cold highlands, so it should be interesting. 5. OMG! Have you seen that movie?! Madagascar! You’re from New York, they’re from New York! Actually, no, I have not. 6. Are you going to have electricity and internet and all that good stuff? It seems that I will have electricity, at the very least for a few hours a day. Education volunteers get posted to bigger towns because there has to be a school, and bigger towns tend to have electricity, which is good news for me. I don’t know if internet is going to be readily available, but all of you will know soon by the frequency of these posts. I will try to update as often as possible, but I cannot make any promises. Remember, I can always receive letters. And I promise to write you back. 7. When are you leaving? We have training in Philly, at the Sheraton University City no less, from June 8 to June 10. On the 11th we fly from JFK to Dakar, Senegal, to Johannesburg, South Africa. The next day we fly to the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo. (See what I am saying about Malagasy). 8. Are you coming home during that time? Can I come visit? We get three weeks vacation per year, I think. I am not planning to come home because I would like to travel around the island and the region as much as possible. Plus, the plane ticket is not cheap. But, everyone should come visit! I will put you up and translate! It will be awesome! I have my own house starting at the end of August so start planning now. Alright, I cannot think of anything else now because it is late, but if you do have questions leave them in the comments and I will answer them!