It’s been a hard couple months in some ways. I had this idea in my head that when I returned from America at the end of Oct., I would have 2 full months to finish up work, see friends, and prepare to transition to, yet another, completely different life. One with normal workday hours, in an actual city, at an office, with (gasp!) no 3 hour siesta in the middle of the day.

And while I’ve had those 2 months (well almost) they were nothing like I expected. I have been on the go essentially since I returned, with VAC, a training at Mantasoa, a conference in Tana, trips out of town to help with projects and a couple last minute necessary trips for my PCVL duties; I’ve hardly spent any time in Diego at all. When I have been in town, the only real time I’ve found to spend at PSI has been when the power cuts out, my computer dies and I literally cannot continue working.

With all the last minute changes, and the very large change looming ahead, I had been feeling a little bit overwhelmed with things. At some point I realized that most of my support network for the last two years, had decided to end their service (like normal volunteers) and would, in fact, be leaving the country (despite my repeated attempts to get them to live in my spare room). And the ones who would remain would not be as accessible to me as they currently are. I got a bit emotional about it. I may have even cried.

And then I found myself in Anketrakabe with Kelly, talking at night while listening to her town practice their Christmas songs (clearly they don’t know the day after Thanksgiving rule). We got to talking about how unimaginable it would be to have a life where practicing Christmas songs is an event significant enough in your life every year that you would start in November, staying up into midnight, in the dark, because of the excitement of it.

And it was at this moment that I made the switch. I realized how grateful I am for change in my life. (and this was my ‘thankful’ comment for thanksgiving dinner) It really is amazing to have had a life where I am constantly being challenged by dramatic change. And not to belittle life in Anketrakabe, but I am so glad that my world is so much larger than that. And perhaps more importantly, even more than being grateful for change, I am grateful for how hard making the change is. I have had amazing people become a part of my life over the course of the last 2 years of Peace Corps and here in Diego I have become especially tamana, and have found very fulfilling relationships. The fact that I am so reluctant and sad to leave them is testament to that.

The northern crew on New years eve. Going to miss this bunch!

A Peace Corps Thanksgiving

Literally an all day event, started with an early morning trip to the market

ooo spices

And Careful selection of produce

Foregoing the large possibly-not-able-to-fit-in-the-oven turkey, and buying 3 chickens instead

mmm pineapple

the source of mango chutney

Bags full and ready to cook

stuffing making

round one of food: eaten on my floor in the afternoon

Dinning room table assembled in my bedroom

Chicken

And a couple more of Peace corps family

Its official, I am going to be a peace corps volunteer for an extra year! I am currently at PC Senegal attending an Africa wide training for volunteers and staff working on the Peace Corps Malaria Initiative next year in their respective countries. This is really amazing stuff, where PC is partnering with many international organizations to work towards eradicating malaria in Africa. Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Stomp-Out-Malaria/208478415859361 (and 'like' the page!) or at http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/stomp+out+malaria. More information to come when I arrive in America in a couple weeks!

Over the course of the last 2 years one of the truly wonderful things about being a PCV are those moments where you get to relax and cut loose with other volunteers after spending weeks working and speaking gasy day in and day out. But as time goes on, even the way we do that has progressively changed. Our bars of choice have become more and more 'gasy' to the point where my favorite bar in diego is not one of the cute, european places but a little place called 'bar brasil' (or as we like to call it, the ambiance bar) which can hardly even be classified as a bar. On the weekends this little hole-in-the-wall place, blocks off the street and scatters plastic tables and chairs around with a projection screen and large speakers playing the best clipys (music videos) the malagasy have to offer. Add in some rotating blue and green lights and you have a place we can hardly resist. We discovered it from atop the rooftop bar at a hotel, and needless to say despite the beauty of la terrasse, we've never made it back up there.

Similarly, while I now have an assortment of other vazaha friends in town, from France, Britain, India ect, I will always pass up hanging with them to go out with my malagasy co-workers. So this past weekend when some of my favorite people at work invited me to participate in their 'friday night program' I immediately agreed and promised to bring my friend Kelly along. Now when other volunteers arrive from the bush, going to the bar with Malagasy people is not on the top of their list of priorities for town, but I convinced Kelly that this would be worth it. PSI knows how to have a good time. And a good time we did have. It was probably one of my favorite nights since moving to Diego.

They brought us to a little bar with a live band and dance floor and about 25 of my malagasy co-workers were impatiently waiting for the party to start and an epic dance party ensued. Highlights definitely include MANY dance circles, my supervisor leading the entire staff in an interesting version of the Macarena, and ending the night slow dancing, middle-school-dance style. And perhaps the best part were the exchanges between my malagasy friends and kelly and I. Doing the malagasy swan bow to formally invite them to dance, explaining to them that carrying around 2 drinks is called 'double fisting' in English and teaching them that the panicked look, means "save me from dancing with this man!"

And then as the night sped on and we decided to migrate downtown to hang with some of our other vazaha friends, we said goodnight to all my co-workers and found ourselves and two of our british friends at a foam party at the 'black box' (too ridiculous to even explain) and getting 'caught' by the very same co-workers we just left and proceeding to dance with them in our new location.

Im not sure when the switch over happened, but spending time on the weekend with my gasy friends has definitely gone from, a once in a while obligation, to sometime i look forward to and then reminisce about for weeks.

After 6 months of working with PSI, I continue to find more things that impress me about them, in both their methods and in their work ethic and efficiency, which is not something to be taken lightly in a country like Madagascar. And while they are continuing to knock my socks off in a professional sense, I also have never seen a group of people that work so well together; as both colleagues and friends, there is always such a respective, positive attitude in the office. And that extends outside of the office. They truly care about each other; and while some of that is cultural, I think a large amount of it is testament to the awesome people that they are.

Every month there are meetings for all of our health educators to report on their work from last month, discuss any issues that have arisen and plan out their next month. But this month it was particularly special because we have 14 new health educators joining our team. Nine in the youth education program (the Jeunes-doubling the current number!), 3 for our education program for men (lehilahy cool or 'cool guys') and 2 for the sex-worker education program (Felana). I even decided this was an occasion momentous enough to share some of my highly-coveted, candy from my care package stash. Everyone got to enjoy some 'bonbon americain' more commonly known in america as: a jolly rancher.

And while the meetings tend to drag on in malagasy (especially if you are an american who doesn't quite catch the funny part of most of the jokes, and even more so when the meeting has gone on for 5 hours, straight through lunch...)I couldn't help but being incredibly impressed and proud of all of our health educators and what they do in a months time. By the numbers:

One Sex-worker peer educator:

+Talked to 41 sex workers one-on-one and 80 sex-workers in small group presentations. After her sensibilizations, 73 women took coupons to visit a doctor at a Top Reseau Clinic (PSIs private, subsidized clinics) in order to be treated for an STI or get tested for HIV/AIDS and she accompanied 27 of them on that visit.

+And in all, 50% of the sex workers she spoke with purchased female condoms from her.

One 'Lehilahy cool' peer educator (for men over 25):

+Spoke with 64 men one-on-one, 131 men in small groups and had a longer 'reception' with 60 men. Within that total, 115 of them were men he had never spoken with before. He distributed 47 coupons and accompanied 23 men to the doctor for treatment or testing.

+ Within his presentations he did a total of 43 condom demonstrations and also sold multiple boxes of condoms.

There is a lot of work to be done still; in every presentation I have observed the majority of men don't know how and have never used a condom and most men will openly admit to having had or even currently having syphilis or gonorrhea, but these health educators are making progress, even if it sometimes seems painfully slow. The increased numbers of health educators will continue to contribute to that progress.

And Perhaps one of the things that impresses me most about the peer educators is their ability to sit down at the end of the month, discuss their strong points and then critically approach the problems they are having. Even when they started getting antsy and hungry, when someone had a question or problem, each and every peer educator gave a thoughtful response and a discussion about what the best practice would be, arose.

Good things are going on here and I can only hope everywhere I work in the future will have such a great environment.

The Whole PSI Team at our Re-branding Event Last Month

Ok so there were a lot of reasons why medevac was awful. One, I was very ill for a very long time (roa volana mahery e!) and while I was there it was incredibly stressful, with no one being able to give me a definitive answer on when or even if I’d be allowed to return to mada. But throughout it all there was never a moment that I wavered on wanting to return to my new home. I was consistently telling the doctors that I could handle the pain, I’d adjust my daily schedule, I’ll never eat another fish sandwich again! (ok, at least not often; I do love me a fish sandwich…); whatever the compromises I was determined to come back. And luckily it all worked out for me.

And it’s wonderful to be back. Getting off the plane to Diego and receiving a big American-style-hug from Kamar almost brought tears to my eyes. And I was so excited to see my friends at PSI, where I work, that I made Kamar stop on the way back to my house so I could inform them that I was, in fact, not in America, but coming back to work that week. With each of my friends that I ran into around town I felt myself feeling truly joyful to see them, and I am still feeling that after two weeks.

I’ve found myself wondering where this came from. For a long time I found myself telling people that I loved Madagascar, thought it was one of the most beautiful places in the world, but that I didn’t like it enough to stay. I enjoyed much of my first year in Mada, but I was holding onto those first-year-feelings about moving to another country and adjusting to a different, at times very strange, culture. It was almost as though I was holding myself back from loving this place. But I do love it. Along with the fact that I moved to the coast (I’m sorry but it’s infinitely better than living kind of near a large marsh…) with a culture that is more open and outgoing, and started working at a ‘real’ job, I am also well into my second year. I have more language under my belt, have become comfortable with the new dialect, have made friends and love my work. And all of those things leave people with more trust in you and only positively affect your relationships both at work and home. Sure there are still things I dislike about mada, heck there are things I downright hate, (including, most recently acquired: returning to the Ankify port); but they seem to matter less.

Spending those few weeks in South Africa and having to work to get back, gave me the chance to realize the change that happened in my feelings towards Madagascar. Now I’m not just considering staying on an extra year because of great work opportunities it would provide, but because I truly don’t think I’ll be ready to leave in 6 months. I spent so long getting to this point, learning the language, finding work, making friends; that it seems like a real shame to leave just when I’m really starting to love it.

But don’t worry too much over there in America, I won’t be staying here forever (I'm not 'going rogue', dad), my return will just be delayed a while if everything works out.

"Boribory ny tany dia mety hifankahita indray atsika"

(Because the earth is round, we'll meet again)

I mean who could honestly leave a place, within a days drive from this...

Well the last couple months of my life have been anything but typical, but I guess that, in itself, is typical of my peace corps experience.

I happened upon an article ’10 Urban Food Legends’ about three weeks too late, the following is important information to know while living in a developing nation:

“Food Poisoning is just a temporary nuisance. A bout of food poisoning is bad enough. No one wants to go through the gut-wrenching vomiting and diarrhea that seems endless. But most people assume that they’ll get over their food poisoning in a matter of hours or, at most, days. Not always. In a small percentage of cases, food poisoning can lead to long-term consequences. Among them: Guillain-Barre syndrome. This terrifying disease starts as tingling in the arms and legs and progresses to paralysis that can last for months. Reactive Arthritis. It’s an inflammation of the joints that’s triggered by an infection, and can last for years. Kidney or nerve damage. E. coli 0157:H7 is the bacterium that contaminated Jack in the Box hamburgers in 1993 and fresh spinach in 2006. A small number of victims end up with permanent kidney or nerve damage, and some die.”

After a very painful month (some days resulting in the inability to walk due to joint inflammation all over my body) and visits to one of the only rheumatoid specialists in Madagascar, as well as the only MRI machine, Peace Corps shipped me off to Pretoria, South Africa for further opinions. I was promptly diagnosed with Reactive Arthritis, triggered by the bout of food poisoning I had over two months ago at this point. Along with painful, inflamed joints, I also experienced eye inflammation and spinal pain. Who would’ve thought? Apparently you can be genetically prone for this happening, which I now know, I am. Luckily, as a PCV, I had possibly the best medical care I will ever have in my life, and they sorted me out just fine. I got to spend almost 3 weeks healing and enjoying the company of other medically evacuated PCVs from all over Africa. The fact that I couldn’t explain my story without cracking up (I mean c’mon a 23 year old with severe arthritis…) and the fact that I had a group of positive, good humored pcvs to hang out with, made my time go by about as pleasantly as possible, given the situation.

I also got a little taste of the developed world, complete with malls, grocery stores and movie theaters. My first trip to the grocery store resulted in me returning with just Oreos and apples; I was too overwhelmed with the options to decide on anything else. I got my fill of Sushi, played with baby lions and saw ‘Pirates of the Carribean 4,’ in 3D (I heard people watch tv this way in the states now!); but by the end of my time there I was itching to get back home (the Malagasy one). And arriving back in Diego was just as great as I imagined it to be.

The group at our first bbq in pretoria.

With 3 month old lions. they were stealing my shoes and gnawing on my jeans.

After our regional VAC (volunteer advisory committee)meeting we decided to head out to visit Emerald Bay. I had heard it was pretty great, but it ended up being one of the most beautiful bodies of water i had ever seen.

Katie and I in on the boat, upon arriving in the emerald bay

Enjoying the view

The whole Diego Region crew (minus a couple)

paradise...we almost didn't come back

mmm lunch on the grill

There are so many times here that I don't completely understand what's going on, but I've learned to develop a very easy going attitude, in which i just find out where and when i have to be places and hope for the best. Woman's day was no exception. I was told that i would be given a tshirt and cloth to wear and that we were meeting at our bureau at 7 to go to the carnival. My original attempt to find out what the event entailed, resulted in them looking at me in disbelief and repeating more slowly "a carnival." How silly of me to even ask.

Turns out the 'carnival' was essentially a parade of womens groups from the area. Maybe there was supposed to be more to it, but we were poured on for almost the entire hour long parade route. Luckily the PSI staff refuse to ever have a bad time and kept the whole group singing, clapping and dancing literally for the entire duration of the event. Our group was the only one that had men in it(because we all work for womens health) and not surprisingly, the only one with a vazaha. I played my part as the token vazaha well and danced around and spoke gasy on command. The addition of men and vazaha, as well as the fact that we may have been one of the loudest, rowdiest groups present, resulted in us making our way onto Malagasy TV (a different kind of MTV, if you will).

In the afternoon all of the peer educators for all of the PSI programs went out together to do education on family planning. PSI is offering a special promotion for womens day and all week long women can get a IUD for free at the Top Reseau clinics. We would arrive in an area of town, 3 landrovers of peer educators and a speaker system and then spread out to talk to women and hand out fliers, while the cinemobile staff played music and ran contests. It was pretty awesome and so much fun to get all of the staff working together.

The PSI women getting ready for the parade. Walking advertisements for family planning.

Even the men at PSI got into it and wore wigs and lipstick.

Watch this! It’s apparently nominated for an Oscar and does an awesome job of depicting Madagascar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaWEzsLVGiA

Yesterday afternoon, after spending most of the day tackling my first monthly report for PSI (aka the first time I have had to sit down and write something legitimate in over a year) I ventured out of the house to go for a walk and run some errands. Now, I have seen Diego when a cruise ship comes in before, but this time struck me as particularly hilarious, maybe just because I am now more used to what Diego is like on a normal basis.

I see a lot of vazaha everyday here, but they are almost solely groups of retirement-aged men (usually with malagasy women not older than me) and I don’t converse with them, mostly because it’s not really possible. I’ve experience it too many times already—they say something to me in French, I understand but respond in Malagasy, we both feel awkward, smile and walk away. The first sign that there is a cruise ship in port though, is that these groups of Vazaha walking around include vazaha women. By the time I hit the main street and start climbing the hill, it has already become blatantly apparent because every single person selling vanilla, model ships, paintings and every other possible trinket--including carved giraffes and elephants; native species to madagascar—has come out of the woodwork and has begun harassing me as well.

Usually a simple ‘no thank you’ in malagasy reminds them that they do, in fact, see me walking by everyday and I am actually not interested in buying anything. One man who sells paintings and likes to practice speaking English with me, actually told me yesterday that he had already done so well with the cruise ship tourists that day, that he was going to sleep in the rest of the week. There are the few sellers, however, who don’t get it, and hilariously (annoyingly?) believe that I am just that ‘malaky mahay’ (fast at learning) and stepped off the ship and learned how to speak gasy. I mean c’mon man.

Yesterday, I made the entire walk to the market, and thus got to witness the whole tourist loop. Off the ship; stop off at the town center where a temporary craft market has sprung up, maybe a stop at one of the fancy patio restaurants for a taste of the local brand (notice the lack of plural) of beer, and then on to a real food market where people do their shopping. Including this less-than-thrilled vazaha trying to actually do her shopping.

It was all good though, I got a huge kick out of the private 4x4’s carting loads of tourists the less than 2 miles to the port and back, and the police and gendarmes placed every 500 ft or so along the main road. And I actually laughed out loud a few times when a group of 4 or 5 vazaha all stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to take a picture of a woman in a lamba (cloth) or a destroyed old building.

There is a lot to get used to in my new life: a real work schedule, reports, daily internet access…but the fact that I am not the only vazaha in town is going to continue throwing me off for a while.

http://www.psi.org/psi-and-peace-corps-partnership-action#Nicki

and while youre at it check out PSI madagascars webpage, where I'm currently spending my days as a PC volunteer

picture taken by my very mahay taking photos friend-katie b...enjoying christmas day sunset in Isalo with my favorite girls.

Its been quite the ride since i last updated. Moving out of my village, going on vacation to southern madagascar for christmas and new years, going to my mid service conference, and moving to the beautiful Diego-Suarez, with an ocean view from my third story apartment.

There are many things about Diego that makes it seem like I’m in a completely different country. For starters it’s a tourist city, on the coast, thus making it a much livelier place in general than the good ol’ Lake Alaotra region. But more amazingly, it’s a clean city with things like stop signs, ice cream stores, pizza places and not a single, simple, gasy hotely (hole in the wall restaurant that serves rice) in sight. I’m training myself to not be shocked by the groups of vazaha all over town (mostly old French men with young gasy girlfriends) and to not gape at the tour buses of elderly people coming into port from their cruise ships. Apparently a ship docks every Sunday evening and a large crowd gathers to watch them roll in (even in a city like Diego, there’s not much going on, on Sunday afternoons). And when I go for my morning run, not a single person points, laughs, or mimics me running by. They don’t even seem to notice or care, mostly because there are groups of young people running also, an unheard of concept in my old town.

I have two jobs at my new home. First, is as the Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (PCVL) for the northern regions. I will be working with Peace Corps to help run the regional office and transit house for volunteers, as well as working on site development, helping with trainings and just doing general coordination work for PC. My second job is with the NGO, PSI (population services international). I am still working on developing my actual work plan with them, but right now I am observing all of their education programs relating to reproductive health and HIV/STI prevention for youth and sex workers, as a general orientation to their programs.

It’s through these interactions and observations that I am quickly realizing just how different life is here. For starters, the dialect is very different, more laid back with lots of French mixed in with the Malagasy. Luckily, even when I don’t understand them, they still understand my official Malagasy and usually can help me figure out what’s being said through a mixture of official gasy, French and sometimes even English. The staff at PSI are all amazing, in so many ways. They are all so good at what they do, with these great positive attitudes, and they instantly welcomed me to the team and seem genuinely excited to have a new PC volunteer working with them. We made a program for me to do observations of the Family planning educators, the youth peer educators, and the sex worker peer educator programs over the course of the next couple weeks. At the end of it, they want me to give them feedback about what I saw and where they can make improvements. From the very first one I observed though, I was so far beyond impressed that I don’t even know what I can say at the end of it. I went with a couple women to give small group sensibilizations to women at their homes and in their communities. These women approached strangers with confidence and humor and every time gathered a small crowd of women who asked great questions about rumors and concerns they had about family planning options. The educators were knowledgeable and weren’t fazed by anything, even drunken men interrupting the conversation. They put the focus on getting women to use long term birth control methods, either the implant (good for 3 years) or an IUD (good for 12 years). PSI offers these at their private clinics, Top Reseau, for only 1500Ar (less than $1). In Ambohitsilaozana, women were pretty shy about talking about sex and were extremely hesitant to use even BC pills or the injection, and I don’t think I ever met a woman with one of the long term methods. I have already met 2 women who got IUDs after talking to one of the health educators and one of the women we talked to on the first day called us in the afternoon to go with her to get an implant.

I just found myself watching the interaction and thinking that the women here are so awesome. They want the information, and want to talk about it, and PSI is offering this really great peer educator system to provide them with that service. I am going to have to think long and hard about how I can be useful to programs that are already running so well, but I am really excited to work and learn from them and hopefully provide them with some worthwhile free labor.

And while Diego is a city, it also has a town feel, and I am already finding myself running into people daily and meeting friends. It helps that there have been many volunteers here in the past, because I am inheriting some really cool friends of former volunteers.

I have been very busy already, which is a strange adjustment from life at site in my village, but I am very excited for the year to come here in Diego.

So the other night I decided to watch the animated movie “Madagascar” before going to bed. I didn’t get through all of it, but I was cracking up about some of the things that happen; especially the fossa. At one point when the zoo animals first arrive on the island and are talking to the lemurs, the lemur king tells them they are in the ‘wild’ and they respond:

Alex--“you mean like live in a mud hut, wipe with a leaf kind of wild!?”

Lemur King responds, “Who wipes!?”

I was literally laughing out loud in my house, alone, for way longer than necessary. I feel like this could be a conversation between a PCV and anyone back home in the states. I do usually have toilet paper on hand (although newspaper is the malagasy paper of choice), but most PCVs live in some form of a mud or palm leaf hut and have a ‘latrine.’ These things have become completely normal to our lives, and I would prefer a latrine 9 times out of 10 (think no water pressure and less than sanitary cleaning methods…). But I was reminded many times by my parents the ways in which I have ‘gone wild,’ actually my dad put it as, ‘going rogue’ (though not sure exactly what he meant by that). So while, Madagascar, may be pretty inaccurate in many senses, I feel like they hit that one right on the mark.

To add to this comment, I am going to describe the scene that went down at my house last night. About a week ago, Lucette and I were talking in my house at night, like we always do, and as she got up to go to bed, we noticed that there was a chewing noise coming from next to my house. When I shined a light on it Lucette got really excited and ran screaming for the girls in her house to bring her a large stick. She said that it was a ‘tandrika’ and is really good as a laoka (dish with rice). Tandrika was not a word in my annoyingly small dictionary and from what I could see it looked like a big tailless rat. It got away and that was the end of it for a week. Last night Lucette and the students that live with her during the week were coming home after dark from watching a movie at a neighbor’s house (my town is all fancy with their electricity). I was already in bed, lights off, watching a movie on my computer when a huge commotion breaks out outside my house. Lucette and the little girls managed to chase down the tandrika, capture and kill it; not being even a little bit quiet, resulting in myself, and ALL of the neighbors coming outside in our pajamas to watch. There was a whole group of adults screaming and laughing like a bunch of little kids. It was hilarious. Once killed, I got a good look at this tandrika and it looked a lot like a possum only without a tail; aka definitely not something I would ever want to eat. Lucette showed it to me again while it was cooking and told me that it tastes just like pork. I took off before lunch today; eating a rat/possum like creature is not on my to do list for Madagascar.

Ok and now for Thanksgiving. I will begin by saying that my first thanksgiving dinner was a huge success. I started by going to Ambato to shop and bake some desserts at the flop house the day before. I think one of the hardest parts was trying to figure out how much food I needed for the 15 or so people that I would be feeding. I have been cooking for myself, or maybe on a very rare occasion, one other person for the last year and I couldn’t seem to get my mind around how much food 15 people would need, so I just bought a ton of everything. I got up and started preparing things at 530am on Saturday (this is a normal wake up time, even on saturday) and almost immediately a man showed up and started constructing a tent in our backyard. I mean I knew Lucette and Noeline were excited about this, but I didn’t realize they were that excited. The tent was followed by a man coming and hooking up his inappropriately large speakers, in true gasy fety fashion, and preparing to DJ the party (aka play the 3 cds he owns over and over). By the time Tom rolled in on his bike at about 7am the party was in full swing, complete with a tent, DJ and 40 or so small children dancing. This meant that we had an audience for everything we did; luckily the whole idea of cooking a turkey in an oven was ‘hafa hafa’ (different) and so by acting like we knew what we were doing, everyone believed we did. In reality, Tom and I were following the 10 steps that I had found online from a man who cooks turkey on in a wood burning oven and improvising the many times that, even then, we couldn’t possibly follow his directions. Ohatra (example) on Friday I suddenly came to the realization that we didn’t have a pan to cook Ted on. Solution (thanks to Lucette): Fold a large piece of scrap roof metal in half and stick it on top of some tin cans in the stove. I’m not joking. Problem number 2: no thermometer. Solution: add some time to the times that the directions state and hope for the best. They also say to take it out of the oven and cover it with tin foil for a half an hour at the end, in order to let it finish cooking. Our solution, cover it with plates and an Air France blanket until we were finished with the rest of the side dishes.

Once Ted was cooking away in the oven, we got started with the sides. We had stuffing, mashed potatoes, cheesy potatoes, sweet potatoes, green been salad and brouchetta. It was a little potato heavy, but aren’t all thanksgivings? Half way through we had to flip Ted, while he was cooking in a crazily hot oven, on a piece of tin. We attacked the problem with our arms covered in spare clothes and large serving utensils in hand; all the while having a crowd of about 45 people watching. We lost all of the juices into the abyss of the stove, but we successfully rotated Ted. Everything else went according to plan (ha! Like I had a plan) and Lucette and Noeline were preparing their own dishes that they had decided to contribute. At about the 3 hour mark, Lucette came running into the house and told us we had to check on the turkey. The stove had gotten a little too hot, thus catching the doors and the logs that were bracing our piece of tin on fire. Since the whole back yard was tented, we were literally engulfed in smoke. Tom and I made the executive decision that Ted was matsaka (ready/ripe) and proceeded to pull him out of the stove with our large serving utensils and into a laundry basin. He got a little charred in those last few moments in the on-fire-oven, but the meat inside was still delectable. Following this was, perhaps, one of the most funny scenes that has ever occurred in my house. I was finishing up the many potato dishes, Tom was ‘carving’ Ted with my leatherman and megan was sitting on my bed with one of the huge mortar and pestles, making peanut butter. I have pictures that I hope to post one day.

We finally sat down to eat and I made everyone play the ‘what your thankful game’ before we ate. They didn’t totally get it, since I started and talked about how thankful I was that a year ago I got to Ambohitsilaozana and didn’t have any friends and didn’t know how to speak Malagasy, and now I am having a fety in my town and have friends and malagasy family to celebrate with. It started a round of how all the malagasy were thankful that they have gotten to know Americans, which I guess works in a way. Anyways, it was really great to have my two closest Malagasy friends and their families celebrating with me. We ate so much that Meg, Tom and I were talking about how much pain we were in for hours afterwards. And even though there was rice and traditional gasy food, I didn’t eat anything but the American food (there was no more room!) and was still stuffed. Unfortunately, Malagasy people are not mahay about how you are supposed to nap after eating turkey. The food was cleared away and the dancing started up, with crowds of people from my town wandering through to watch. We didn’t get a break until almost dinner time (which Meg and I couldn’t bring ourselves to eat) when we did the dishes and then escaped to my house to drink wine and eat no-bake cookies. I took the entire next morning to sleep and recover in my house. The fety was great though and it left me feeling very thankful for the time that I have spent in Ambohitsilaozana. I am incredibly thankful for the ways in which Lucette and Noeline have made me a part of their families and made me feel so at home in a town, culture and country so different than my own. I was blessed with a wonderful town to be placed in for Peace Corps and an equally wonderful group of PCVS to leave near. It’s been a great year with a lot to be thankful for and I am glad that I got to have my Thanksgiving, although slightly unconventional, here in Madagascar.

11/16/2010

I’ve gotten used to the intense scrutiny my life is under, by my whole town, everyday here. I can’t so much as leave my gate without having at least three people ask where I am going, and you may think that these people are my friends and close neighbors, but no, on a regular basis I can leave my house and have a person who is still a complete stranger to me ask “Nicki, where are you going?” And I am not even safe within my own house. Even though you can’t see my door because of my fence, my windows are visible from the street and thus people know if I am awake or home. If I accidently sleep in, (say to the late hour of 6am) I will have to answer to the rice ladies on, why I was so lazy today and do all Americans spend the whole day sleeping?

In some ways it’s been a good thing. When I first got here, having people constantly asking me questions, helped me learn the language and made me feel like more of a part of the community. And I can’t blame them, I mean what I, the crazy American, am doing is infinitely more exciting than the usual topics of conversation: the rice, the weather, and what’s at the market today. I mean even when I am included into those basic conversations it becomes more interesting. “Wow look, nicki bought tomatoes and carrots at the market too. What are you going to do with those? Are you going to eat them with your rice today? You are going to eat rice, right? Do they have tomatoes and carrots in the Etaz-Unis (not to be confused with America)?” Tomatoes and carrots (or insert any food in their place) suddenly become a lot more interesting. There’s never a lack of something to talk about in Ambohitsilaozana, just sometimes a lack of anything intellectually stimulating.

The constant scrutiny and intense interest in my life will also leave me immune to certain phrases and actions for the rest of my life, and maybe cause me to pick up some bad habits of my own.

1. I love you.

This phrase has probably become my cue to tune out anyone in the future or maybe to laugh if it’s said particularly passionately. When someone tells me that they love me here, I take it as a free license to ignore all future statements that come out of their mouth. I recently let the future middle school teachers that I help train, in on the secret that you can’t just say I love you to a girl on the street. ‘I like you’ comes first, and ‘I love you’ only follows after a very long time when you are serious about the relationship. Their response: “what if I said ‘I love you’ right now, because I want to be serious right away?” Hopeless cause.

2. Ngezabe ianao! Or ‘You’re so fat!?’

Oh, this one comes in many forms and luckily you develop a thick skin to it right away because people don’t mean it in a bad way at all. Some of my favorites are:

“How do Americans get so big and fat so young?”

“You must have eaten well on vacation, you’re so fat now.”

Or just the classic, “look at the big vazaha!”

Luckily, I don’t really give this phrase a second thought anymore and all of us female volunteers often joke about it. Some people like to respond with the, “oh thanks you’re a fatty too!” but I usually just smile and say yup I’m fat. Americans are fat. The only time it really bothers me is when a woman who is probably 2 or 3 times my size, decides to take an interest on how huge I am. Like common, our row in the bus is crowded, but I am not the issue this time. How do the rest of you not find this ironic?

3. Starring

For some reason, unfathomable to me, it is completely acceptable for Malagasy to stare endlessly at you, and meeting eyes with them does not give them that embarrassed feeling causing them to look away, but rather is seen as an opportunity to start a conversation with you, sometimes from all the way across a room, a street, from out a window, you get the idea... The sad part is that with cultural integration, this has become more ordinary to me, and sometimes when there is something particularly interesting happening (or maybe there’s just another vazaha around that I don’t know), I find myself unable to look away from what’s going on. However, if I get caught, I still avert my gaze, it hasn’t gotten that bad yet.

4. “How much did that cost?”

It is completely acceptable here to ask anyone and everyone how much they paid for something they have on their person, or something they have mentioned in conversation. At first I thought that they were only doing it to me because I buy ‘extravagant’ things (an entire box of laughing cow cheese! Oh my!) or because they were testing my malagasy knowledge, but really it’s just part of their culture in some weird way. And further, people will often offer up the prices of things as part of their conversation. If I spent a lot of money on something I often tell people that I don’t remember how much it cost, which I’m sure they don’t believe in the least. The bad part of all of this, I notice that I have taken this on in my everyday life. When I am with other volunteers I regularly ask how much they spent on things, and it seems normal when we’re all together. I realized though that this might not be polite when I was on vacation with my parents. We we’re trying to find out how much another hotel was, but didn’t have the time to go to the actual place and my solution was going to be to ask some other vazaha we happened to run into if they were staying there and how much it was (remember our no ATM/no credit card situation). At one point I had to stop and ask my parents if that was acceptable behavior. They told me that it was more weird than impolite, but that it was definitely not normal vazaha behavior.

11/21/10

Well, the vote for the referendum of the constitution is done, and the attempt at a military coup d’etat has been quelled. I was a little shocked when I got the text from a friend saying that BBC was reporting a military coup since local news was still reporting a successful election day and ‘all calm in the capital’, and a then little annoyed that it extended the PCV standfast (first step when there might be a risk to our security, which prevents us from leaving our village). I got a couple texts from friends along the lines of standfast=cabin fever, and I couldn’t help but agree. I mean, I know I stay in my village for weeks at a time normally, but there was something about the fact that I couldn’t leave that had me incredibly restless all week.

On a happier note, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I realized that this will be my third Thanksgiving in a row that I haven’t been home for, and strangely enough, I have now celebrated Thanksgiving in three different African countries. First in South Africa on the end of my road trip where we got fish and chips and made my german roommate participate in the going around the table and saying what you are thankful for game. Then last year, preparing to leave Niger and eating more potatoes than I have ever eaten in my life, and now this year I have plans to celebrate in my village in Madagascar.

I feel like I have missed out on the good American Thanksgiving food, so I am going all out for this Thanksgiving, exemplified by Ted, the absolutely HUGE turkey I purchased yesterday. I’ve been talking about how I want to get a turkey to fatten up and eat on thanksgiving for months, mostly because I thought having a turkey in my yard would be fun, and I finally followed through. He was an expensive little bird, but it’s going to be really fun to cook him and have my malagasy friends participate in the holiday. I think most of them only want to come because turkeys are really expensive and they are jumping on the chance to eat one. When I explain what the holiday is: the holiday of thanks, they all immediately ask, “thanks for what?” When the answer ‘everything’ didn’t satisfy them, I moved on to the task of explaining the Indians and the Pilgrims. Haha but when I finished and told them the story isn’t actually true, they gave up on understanding what it means and went back to talking about eating the turkey….they’re like Americans already!

A previous volunteer constructed this huge wood burning brick oven in my yard and I have been talking about how I have to try it out for the last year, but have yet to follow through. This Saturday (I am postponing thanksgiving by a couple days because there is no way I am going to kill and clean the turkey without lucette’s help!) I will take on the task (with a couple other volunteers) of cooking my first turkey, inside a wood burning stove. Now don’t forget, I come from a household where only half of the adults currently living there even know how to cook scrambled eggs, so not surprisingly I do not have any experience cooking any thanksgiving foods, except mashed potatoes. The turkey will start out alive and not only do I not know how to cook a turkey, but I’m pretty sure there is nowhere to look up how to cook one inside a wood burning stove when you don’t have a thermometer or even a pan to cook it in. It’s going to be an adventure, one I’m sure that we’ll have to consume a few THB beers to survive. It’s going to be a strange combination in the ‘kitchen’ of young Americans who have no idea how to cook these foods, especially with no oven, and Malagasy women who will have never tried these American dishes. If nothing else, we’ll be able to rest assured that the rice will be great (its Madagascar, we can’t cook a meal without it…).

So while you are all enjoying good company and good food this Thursday, think about Ted’s last days of life before I attempt to cook my very first thanksgiving dinner with no recipes and no oven. It should at least make you smile a little. I’ll be thinking of all of you and hope you have a great holiday!

You don’t even realize how connected to information you are until you are completely cut off from it. And I was not even someone with a fancy phone that could get on the internet in the states. And forget about fancy phones, the iphone, ipad gadgets that some of the new volunteers are bringing with them to country kind of just blow my mind. When I was helping to install a new volunteer to their site, one of my other friends suggested he copy the names and numbers of all the emergency contacts that his town had provided Peace Corps with so that he would actually know the names of the people in his town. (It’s amazing how many of my friends in my town remain so and so’s wife, or the lady that works at this place). Anyways, instead of getting out some paper and a pen, he busts out his iphone and took a picture of the paper. What? I was dumbfounded and there were iphones before I left for PC.

Anyways, with the lack of internet capabilities to answer my many questions about life, I have to resort to other resources. I remember joking in college with friends about what the hell we would do without google in our lives? Would we actually have to go to the library and use an encyclopedia or something? Turns out without the infinite wisdom of google, you don’t refer to other legitimate resources, but rather use a little thing us Ambato volunteers have coined ‘Google Madadgascar’. Google Madagascar is essentially 2 or more PC volunteers sitting around making up answers, that we deem logical, to all of life’s questions that we have no way of answering. This can take place at any point in time, ohatra (example) while riding our bikes back to site from Ambato:

“Why do you think the rivets form only in the center of the (dirt) road?”

“Well I bet it has something to do with the cars compacting the dirt on the two sides”

“Yeah, that makes sense, because it would then loosen the dirt in the center, huh”

“Yeah, and the same type of thing happens with concrete roads when the hot and cold causes potholes right?”

Once a decision has been made, some involving more arguments than others, it becomes a perfectly logical fact in our minds. I’m pretty sure that these two years in Madagascar will forever ruin any of my chances at jeopardy or a trivia game of any sort…

Once in a while a particularly important question will pop up while we have limited access to internet, such as the day when we realized that if the mayonnaise that we love to eat with our fries in Ambato is homemade AND made from raw eggs, then how is salmonella prevented? Turns out, there is a precise process of heating the egg to a temperature that kills the salmonella but doesn’t cook the egg. Aka something they definitely don’t do here in Ambato and thus we are always at risk for salmonella while eating mayonnaise. We didn’t deem salmonella dangerous enough for us to stop eating mayonnaise though, and decided not to google it to find out if it was. There are some questions though that have me completely stumped, which is where google mada 2.0 comes in. You all tell me the answers.

1. First and most importantly, I have recently learned how to make yogurt. Essentially you just have to add a little bit of yogurt to whole milk and the cultures do the work of making the milk into yogurt. But what if you don’t have yogurt? Where did that first culture come from? Can you make it or find it naturally?

2. How does international mail work? If the package has to travel through multiple countries then who is picking up the tab on it? Do governments pay per item or by weight or is it like a set agreement of 1 cargo load of mail is a certain price? And when you’re sending mail to or from a country like Niger or Madagascar where there is no money and government is corrupt, does that bill ever get paid?

3. What is the difference between regular corn and popping corn? Was popping corn naturally grown or was it some sort of weird mutation that we created?

***NEW ADDRESS***

As I will be moving out of my current town, at the end of December, please stop mailing things to my former address. If you feel the urge to mail me something in the next month (always welcome!) Mail it to:

Nicole Keusch

BP 12091

Poste Zoom Ankorondrano

101 Antananarivo

Madagascar

This is my PC general address and mail will always find its way to me through it. Though it sometimes takes a long time if I don’t go to Tana for business so, Starting in mid-January, my new permanent address will be:

Nicki Keusch

6 Rue Commandant Marchand

Place Kabary

Antsiranana 201

Madagascar

Have I mentioned lately how much I love getting mail?

On October 13th my parents graced Madagascar with their presence. As a ‘world traveling gypsy’ (as declared by my father) I may have overlooked the level of comfort they were expecting in the beginning of our whirlwind trip together. Directly from the airport we started our journey to my town, and said journey might have been longer than the actual amount of time spent there. They got to experience the infamously horrible taxi brousse ride on the road from Moramanga to Ambato, and even though we were right on time (averaging 6 hours for the 159 kilometers), they had had just about enough taxi-brousses for life and were less than thrilled that the arrival in Ambato was immediately followed by another short brousse ride to my town. For the next 24 hours I dragged them all over my town meeting my friends, where they sat and patiently waited for me to translate and received a whole array of gifts that they didn’t exactly know what to do with. Haha I mean my doctor gave them a rolled up wood screen—not exactly the easiest thing to fit into their brand new internal frame backpacks. My dad did receive a “Tiako i Madagaskara” t-shirt with a picture of Ravolamanana, the former president’s promotional t-shirt. I have been wanting one of these for months and my dad created a deal with me that if I come home in a year, its mine. Otherwise he’s auctioning it off to PCVs in Madagascar. Haha we’ll see how that turns out. To my utter enjoyment, Lucette cooked a traditional Malagasy meal called Ravitoto for lunch. Ravitoto is pounded cassava leaves that are cooked with pork (or in our case pork fat). So basically it looks like green mush that you put on your rice. It’s actually quite tasty, but all of you that know my dad, know how much this stuff terrified him. Nevertheless he was obliged to stuff some down while my mom and I were thoroughly enjoying it.

We then headed back to Ambato to hang out with the Ambato area volunteers for the night. Mom and Dad experienced a true Friday night in Ambato, only missing out on the Ibiza trip because they were too tired. We had a little Pineapple rum and fresh papaya juice (dad went for the THB beer) our favorite bar, Naina’s, and sat around on the miniature stools talking about life in Mcar. We then went to hang out with the Frenchies for a while and then called it a night. In the morning we got a cab to the train station. This in itself was a little ridiculous. The train station is 25 kilometers away and taxi-brousses regularly go to it. Dad could not bear the thought of another brousse ride and so we paid an absurd amount of ariary (though not such an absurd amount of dollars) to be driven by a cab. When I got up in the morning one of the other volunteers asked if we were going to walk to the road and wait for a brousse and I said,

‘no we’re getting a taxi.’

His response ‘oh, you’re taking a taxi to the brousse station?’

‘No…we’re actually getting a taxi to the train station’

‘hahah you’re so vazaha.”

This was my first time taking the train and I don’t think I will be returning to the brousse route. The trip on train took less than 4 hours and got us to Moramanga at 11am (rather than around 3pm on a brousse). We then had to catch a brousse to Andasibe National Park, which was our next stop. We ended up in a brousse that is basically a covered truck bed with benches in it. This is a normal ride, and while it started out very crowded, (but nowhere close to my record of 26 adults and 6 children in one truck bed) after a few minutes the majority of the people got out and we had almost the whole thing to ourselves. For reasons I cannot understand, this was a ridiculous way to travel according to my dad and he began asking about private cars for rent. After the whirlwind of going to my site and taking taxi brousses, my dad had declared Andasibe, paradise. It is really nice and peaceful. There are bungalows and an outdoor restaurant overlooking a small lake. Sara joined us sporting her chicken lamba (cloth) and we had a fun dinner together. I ate a delicious pineapple, vegetable stir fry that was served in a pineapple. In a pineapple!

If the previous taxi-brousse rides hadn’t been enough, during our trip to Tana we happened to get a brousse that broke down, thus leaving us to grab a local brousse. I also had not booked a hotel, but rather decided to just find a hotel near the airport, which resulted in us getting locked into a strange castle. It was a little bit of a failure of a day on my part, azafady.

Once we got to Maroantsetra things calmed down and went a lot smoother. Actually life slows down to barely a crawl up there. We did have one problem that stuck with us the entire time, when upon arriving we realized that there was no ATMs and no Visa accepted anywhere. Luckily we had just enough money (after I bartered the price on many usually non-barterable activities) to get us through the week. We spent 4 nights in Masoala National Park, and though our guide was incredibly annoying in Malagasy and English, and there really weren’t very many trails to walk, it was a paradise and very relaxing. Perhaps the best part was the 3 course meals we we’re served for lunch and dinner. I had forgotten that there were other things that you could eat for meals besides rice, and was shocked that Malagasy people are wrong and that you can get full without rice. We were given fresh seafood, like squid, shrimp and tuna and lots of different veggies. AND MY DAD ATE ALL OF IT. The whole trip my mom and I were talking about how we should have brought the camera with us to dinner every night because none of you will ever believe the things that my dad ate, and more importantly, liked. At one point he made a comment about how this food could be served at any fine dining restaurant in the states, and he couldn’t understand why my mom and I were close to tears in laughter. (sorry dad but they do serve it there, you just won’t eat it).

All in all, the trip was really great. It was wonderful to see them again, even though it kind of felt surreal when I went home. You know like when you have one of those dreams that mix people you currently know, with people they would have never met, like from your childhood. It probably definitely helped my parents understand my current life, though I was surprised about the things that shocked them most. Like my refusing to use a hand sanitizing wipe in the rainforest right after I just washed my hands with soap and water. Or that open bed truck brousse. My dad actually hated those brousses so much that he doesn’t even want me to have to ride them. He even made the suggestion that they rent a private car to take me home, which I, of course, had to shoot down. I made fun of them both a lot, but they were both great sports about all of the activities I had planned. Who would I be if I didn’t give them a little bit of a hard time? And I may be a travelling gypsy in my dad’s eyes now, but maybe that’s not that far from what I really am these days.

27/9/10

Let’s see, it all started back on Sept 4th, the day before I left for Tana. It was the regional foire in Ambato. From what I can obtain a foire is a fair/exposition and it includes everything from fair games and rides, to booths with information and products from all the NGOs, communes and businesses in the region. It was pretty awesome in itself, but on Saturday the president came to give an opening speech. Which means, yes, I got to see the one and only, DJ-turned-self declared-president in real life. It was pretty awesome. We got together with all the French people that night (there are a bunch of 20-30 year old French people working at NGOs in Ambato, a much better group than the old creepy French guys with teenage girlfriends you see in the rest of the country) and had a potluck dinner. It ended up being a lot of fun and I think that we will probably be spending a lot more time with them in the future during banking weekends. It’s a little embarrassing on our part, they all know multiple languages whereas we can only speak English, and there are reasons why Americans have the stereotypes of being loud and obnoxious (we may or may not have started an across the room, throwing peanuts into each other’s mouth contest. Who are we?), but they keep wanting to hang out with us anyways.

Upon arriving in Tana, to help train the new volunteers at Mantasoa, I checked my email and had received a letter from the staff congratulating me on being chosen for the Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (PCVL) position. I was more than a little shocked because after applying I hadn’t heard anything about when or how they would be making a decision, but excited nonetheless. This means that come January, I will be moving to Diego Suarez (google it, or check out my vacation pictures) a beautiful coastal city in the North. There I will be living in and managing the Peace Corps hostel and working as a coordinator for all the volunteers in the north of the country. I’m not entirely sure what that will entail at the moment, but I know that I will be involved in site development, trainings, project proposals and other things of that sort. At the same time, I will begin a new primary work assignment, which I am hoping to do with PSI (Population Services International). It’s going to be a huge change from the village life that I am currently living, and I am really sad to be leaving my community and the group of volunteers in my region, but I am also really excited for the opportunities and work experience that this job will provide.

I then headed to Mantasoa for 3 days to train the new volunteers who were just finishing up their Pre-service training (PST). It just so happened that the stage before them was doing their In-Service Training (IST) that same week. It was pretty crowded in Mantasoa (even though the PSTers were staying with host families) but it was really cool to meet everyone from those two newer stages, and hang out with all the other trainers from my stage or the re-instatement stage. We were pretty short on time because they were trying to fit a lot more into the final couple weeks of training, but I think our sessions went really well and we got to spend some time just answering questions that the trainees had as well. The week was complete with a toga party, in true Peace Corps fashion, with the IST stage. I definitely had a moment where I realized that while many of my friends have ‘grown-up’ and gotten real jobs this year; I was drinking THB, in a toga, dancing, on a Thursday night in Madagascar. I don’t think I need to even say more about that.

As soon as we arrived back in Tana, Operation Smile started up. In case you haven’t heard of it, Operation Smile is an organization that travels around the world and does medical missions to fix cleft lips and cleft palates. I believe it was started in the United States (though I could be wrong) but this mission was out of the South African branch. They regularly invite Peace Corps volunteers to partner with them as translators. I was a little bit nervous to participate, I mean my language is sufficient for my village but I wasn’t sure if I would really be an effective translator for something important like this. Turns out I had nothing to worry about, and didn’t really even have a chance to think about whether I could do it or not; I was basically just thrown right into a crazy day of translating and did just fine.

The first two days were screening days, in which we saw over 400 potential patients. Each patient had to go through medical files, the nurse station, surgeon station, anesthesiologist station, dentist station, speech therapy and finally the ‘gate keeper’ before they could leave for the day and return on the announcement day to find out if they were a candidate for surgery. The first day I spent the day taking vitals with the nurses and asking patients their medical history and the second day I moved into the anesthesiologist’s room and helped them with medical history. For these first few days it was both really fun and really hard. It was really cool to get to meet parents who had brought their patients from all over the country, in the hopes that these doctors would be able to fix their cleft lip. At the same time, when the child did not qualify, because they were too young, too small, too old or would just not make the priority cutoff, we were the ones that had to explain it to the mothers. It broke my heart to tell a mother who had come from far away, probably with all the money that they had, to try again next year. There was one case where a girl would have qualified, and even had a priority card from the previous year, but she had just happened to get an ear infection while traveling. The doctors had to send her home with antibiotics and ask her to try a third time in another year.

At one point a mother and grandmother showed up with 8 months old twins. One twin was healthy and was approved for surgery, but one was very underdeveloped and even at 8 months didn’t make the 4 kilogram cutoff weight. I had to tell the mother that we would be able to operate on the one, but unfortunately his brother would have to wait another year. It was awful. A couple hours later, I was talking with another volunteer about how awful it had been to tell a mother that only one of her children qualified, and they informed me that when the surgeon saw the babies, he also agreed that they couldn’t only do the surgery on one of the twins and had decided to take the risks of the case on himself and would be performing the surgery. It’s amazing how quickly you become attached to certain families, and I followed these kids through the whole process. The mother would come and find me to ask questions, and the smaller of the twins was one of the happiest babies there.

During the surgery days we started at 7am and when I left at 8:30pm the doctors and nurses were often still finishing up for the day. This was an amazing group of people. I have my opinion about short term ‘service’ projects, which I am sure many people reading this have already heard, but op smile is in its own field. It was so amazing to see the ways in which this mission can change an entire family’s life in a few short days. Their child who would have been stigmatized, could now go on to live a normal life. And the kids came back looking so good. The entire staff worked ridiculously long days to try to get as many patients in as possible, and the patients who didn’t qualify for surgery were still treated in other ways. Over 170 surgeries were done, 109 obturators (an orthodontic piece for inoperable cleft palates) were made and patients with other aliments were treated when possible. The staff who had come from South Africa, America, Italy, Egypt, Panama, Namibia and I’m sure many more places; worked together and were all tied together with the same optimism and dedication. Further, as busy as they were, everyone on staff took the time to teach, whether it was a curious peace corps volunteer wanting to understand why one medicine was given over another, a malagasy translator asking about the cause of cleft palates or local staff scrubbing in and learning from these experts from all over the world. I know I learned a great deal about cleft lips, surgery, anesthesia and nursing in general. Not sure exactly what I’ll do with this knowledge, but it made the week so much more interesting.

Working in the pre and post- op area with the nurses was really awesome because I got to follow patients from start to finish. I was there answering nervous mothers’ questions and getting them the things they needed prior to surgery, walked them down to the operating room, and when their babies came back they would call me back to see how beautiful the operation had gone. I had more than one mother stop me on her way out, after discharge to thank me for everything I did. I had to keep telling them that I was not the one who did anything. Women were insistent though, and it made up for all of those families that I had to turn away the first couple days. There was one little 4 year old boy and his dad who I had been talking to throughout the process. The dad was really cute and wanted the doctor to listen to his heart too and had a million questions. When he was discharged the dad called me out into the hall to say goodbye, I bent down to give the little guy a fist pound and he ran up and threw his arms around my neck and gave me a huge hug. I seriously felt my heart melt.

People over 14 years old with cleft lips were candidates for local anesthesia and even though we told them what was going to happen, I don’t think they knew exactly what to expect, and were therefore pretty scared. All of the media had been following this one boy, Alfred, who was 18. He had a pretty intense cleft lip and had never been to school because he was ashamed of it. His dad was this cute little man from the countryside who replied to everything with a smile and encouraging words for Alfred. When it came time for him to go to surgery, his dad had disappeared so I walked him down. Alfred squeezed my hand the whole way and kept asking if it was going to hurt. I kept reassuring him and when we got downstairs he saw the other little boy that had gone before him, and how good he looked. I told Alfred that he had said it didn’t hurt and that he shouldn’t be afraid. And you could literally see him relax a little and get excited for the way he was going to look. I think the whole experience must have been really great for all of the families involved. In their own villages, their child is probably the only one who has a cleft lip and then all of a sudden they are surrounded by hundreds of other families just like them. They were always helping each other when one group didn’t understand what was happening, sharing food, watching each others’ children when they left the room. The local anesthesia patients were old enough to hang out together before the surgery and when one would come back they would all gather around and congratulate each other. It was really amazing.

Along with the incredible interactions with all the families that I got to be a part of, I truly enjoyed meeting the doctors, nurses and other staff. One of my favorites was definitely ‘Bosey’ actually Adrian Bosenberg, a South African, turned Seattle resident who is the Director of the Anesthesiology Department at Seattle Children’s Hospital. We bonded as redheads, well his hair isn’t red so much as gray these days, but he got out his old drivers license to prove it to me. I spent a lot of time that week just joking around with Bosey, and he let me come down a couple times to watch a surgery and even help out a little in the operating room. He explained everything he was doing and tried to convince me to take the med school route after Peace Corps. I told him that that might not happen, but ill at least consider Wash U for my Masters degree. He was great to work with and I hope we stay in contact. Secondly, I got to spend an incredible amount of time with Francesco, an Italian pediatrician; Kathy, an American nurse; and Galima, a South African nurse. They are all absolutely wonderful people and I truly enjoyed getting to know them. It’s amazing how well such a diverse group of people can work together and they were all cheerful and helpful throughout the entire week no matter how tired they got. On the last day they had a big party for all the staff and volunteers, and Galima invited Kelly and I to come take a hot shower in their hotel room and enjoy ourselves. Afterwards she said this was her good deed for the week. Our response was, yeah, that was the only good thing you did this week Galima….

In general I think the entire staff got a pretty big kick out of us. They think we’re super fluent (ha yeah right) and they think we are absolutely insane to be living out in the middle of nowhere alone, but were really excited to learn about what it was like. Everyone on the staff kept sneaking us candy and American snack food, and as soon as they saw how excited we got about it, they only increased the supply. One day we were sitting down during the mandatory tea time break that Galima had each day and JaJa looked at one of the nurse’s socks and said ‘whoa look how white your socks are!’ They then made Kelly show them her socks, which were completely brown, and this started a whole new discussion about our crazy lives. At the end of the week they gave us all kinds of stuff and one of the nurses handed out new socks. Haha the things that we get excited about these days.

I got no sleep for the week and each day did about two weeks worth of site work, not to mention developed a pretty wicked cold probably from exhaustion, but Operation Smile was one of the coolest things I have ever done and I am going to plan my schedule around it again next year.

I conveniently didn’t bring my camera on that trip with me, but you can find pictures at milesofsmiles.org, I think, and I will also post a blog I found about the trip from one of the photographers.

All about the famadihana in madagascar...crazy that this appeared just now. mazatoa (enjoy)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/world/africa/06madagascar.html?_r=1&ref=africa

There must be something in the Air?

08/23/10

“There must be something in the air?” This is how I feel when reflecting on my banking weekends in Ambato. We all went in to greet the new volunteers who were visiting their sites this past weekend and stayed for a couple nights to do the annual survey for Peace Corps. But I’ll get to that in a minute…

The few weeks I spent back at site after being gone for so long were a little bit tough this time. Readjusting to village life alone, after spending so much time being extremely busy with friends was a little bit of a shock. I had to go back through the whole, “what exactly am I doing here?” question again, and learn not to be so productive with my tasks. (Getting everything done in one day, only means you have nothing to do for the rest of the week.) To add to the readjustment, and probably most significantly, Lucette’s dad got sick and so she took the kids to go visit him for three weeks. This meant (and still means) three weeks with no Malagasy family around. Usually, even when I stay in my house to do work, little Yanza is constantly coming over and chatting with me, asking what I’m doing, watching me type. Haha sometimes I would call it ‘pestering me’ but without her here, It was lonely. Not to mention the fact that Lucette is the one that takes me to all of the things I should do in the town, and Popa is my helper for whatever project I am working on. It’s been mangina be (very quiet) in our yard these past few weeks.

I was kind of bumming about all of it, especially after I realized the Pastor and his wife, and Madam Noeline and her family, were also all out of town. I even went to visit my 12 year old friend, Nadia’s family, but she is going to be visiting relatives until the new school year starts. That’s kind of what has happened, the kids all finished school and are visiting other family members in other towns, and a whole bunch of new kids have shown up here in ambohitsilaozana.

For the last week and a half though things have started to feel like they fell back in place. I started my garden (my burrowing fleas count was up to 6 before I started wearing shoes and socks to dig in the garden) and little things started happening to make me feel tamana (at home) again. When I was talking about how I needed to go get sand in the afternoon to add to the holes for my moringa trees, one of the rice ladies showed up with it at my house after lunch. I thanked her by giving her some seeds and explaining all about moringa. Then one of the other women, Pepe, came to get me to go pay respects to a family, when she realized that Lucette wasn’t there to do it. And then the Noeline’s family from Ambato stopped by my house and invited me to lunch. It’s these little things that really make you feel like people care whether you are here or not.

All this taken into consideration, this was one of my harder months at site, but it still went fast and it ended on much better terms that it started. When I arrive in Ambato it’s always the same. I feel like I spend 3 days laughing more than I possibly could in any other situation. Our lunches at our favorite Gasy place often turn into silly laughing fits that last for hours. We end them usually with a “Are we drunk? Why are we still here?” but in actuality we are still completely sober, leading us to believe there must be something in the air: in that restaurant, our house, and maybe just in the city in general. I think it stems from the fact that the 3 weeks we spend in village are severely lacking in American humor. I have funny Gasy friends here, I laugh with them, I laugh at myself pretty often, and I laugh when I don’t understand what the hell is going on; but I don’t get that laughter, where everyone knows exactly what you mean and all parties find something really funny. Even though much of our laughter stems from us relentlessly teasing each other on our inability to speak English and how weird we’ve become as Peace Corps volunteers, it’s extremely therapeutic. We definitely consume more than enough bottles of THB over the course of the weekend, but it’s the laughing; and laughing hard and truly that is the real high.

I think that while we all get each other, and are all ridiculous in the same ways at this point, we might have scared the new volunteers a little bit. They’re probably wondering, ‘Will I act this weird in a few months? Will I loudly talk over other people about random things? Will I forget how to speak English and relentlessly make fun of other pcvs?’ The answer to all of the above questions is of course, yes, but we’ll have to wait for the newbies to discover that for themselves. We have a great group out here in Lake Alaotra and if they don’t already love it, they’ll grow to.

08/26/10

So yesterday was my first day working with the teachers at the training center in Ambohimanga (the next village over). I showed up after lunch and spent 45 minutes with them just answering questions and speaking in English. They will all be English teachers at the middle schools in the Lake Alaotra region starting in Oct, but they are still in ‘training’ right now. I use this term loosely because I don’t exactly know what they are doing yet. They want to get used to a native speaker’s pronunciation and I think essentially just hang out with me because I’m American. Yes being American makes you that cool here.

It was really fun, but the majority of the class just watched with blank expressions while the director, Serge, and this one other teacher who speaks pretty fluent English asked me questions. Serge is a young guy, and I didn’t think he spoke very much English because when he came to ask me to work with him he was really struggling and so I just spoke to him in Gasy. Turns out he just must have been nervous because he was surprisingly mahay speaking English and was really funny. It’s too bad most of his hilarious questions were lost on the crowd. Some of the simpler things they understood, like when I told them about my family or when I talked about cooking, but I imagine it was how it’s like when they throw me into a meeting with all Gasys and I, frankly, just don’t understand. One of the first questions Serge prompted the class to ask me was if I am married, and my answer excited all the males in the room. Typical Gasys. Noeline is also in the class so when we finished I went to the soccer game, that the women’s team from the school was playing in, with her and her husband and I think all the teachers were pretty excited that I joined them. While watching, one of the guys was practicing English with me and told me in English, “I like slow music, because I am a romantic boy.” Haha why are there no other Americans in my daily life to laugh about this stuff with?

Despite the fact that I may have an unwanted suitor on my hands, I think that working with them will be a lot of fun. I was having a conversation with another volunteer the other day about having ‘real’ Gasy friends. I consider Lucette a real friend and I love Noeline and her whole family, but it’s not the same as having friends your own age. Noeline’s husband was teasing me the other day when he realized that he was 22 years my zoky (elder- usually used in terms of brother/sister). And even Lucette is 15 years older than me, though she’s way sassier than me. And their kids, most of who are in their teens, fight over my attention and, I think, generally wonder why I am friends with the ‘grown-ups.’ In the beginning interacting on a regular basis with respectable women in the community was the best thing that I could have done. They were great people to learn everything from culture, to cooking to language with, and generally speaking I have more in common with that age group than women my age, because my age group sort of disappears in the ambanivohitra (country). Now that I feel more at home with the language and the culture, I would like to get to know some people closer to my age; have some ‘real’ friends here. And teachers are one of the avenues that, that might be possible with. We have more of a shared experience that a lot of other people. Most of them have been to University and are now teaching in a different city, if not region, than they grew up in. That may not sound like much, but believe me it makes a huge difference.

With these teachers, I may run into the same situation as with the interns working with CALA; they probably will only be in the area for a couple more months before they go off to their respective posts, but getting to know them will probably lead to me meeting other teachers already working in the area. I’m optimistic about it though, actually I’m just really optimistic about life at site right now. I had a great vaccine day at the hospital today and tomorrow I’m going to see a ‘turning of the bones’ festival with the rice ladies and then Saturday I’m going to watch some of Noeline’s family get married. I’m busy and meeting new, interesting people. You can’t ask for much more out of site than that.

On a completely unrelated note I remembered an interaction with a Gasy person and feel the need to share it because I found it so funny. On the day after the Gasy independence day (june 26th) I got up really early to catch my brousse to Tana to go on vacation. Now most people party all day, and sometimes all night, on the 26th, so there weren’t too many people out. In fact, I had to take 2 bikes to Ambato because no drivers were up at their usual time. Lucette was waiting with me, and there was a man who came out of his house and was eating some bread and he was dressed up like he was going somewhere. Naturally, Lucette asked where he was going (Gasy people you don’t even know will ask you where you are going, every time you leave your house). He looked down at himself, chuckled and called out “Mbola omaly.” Literal translation: I’m still yesterday. Haha not only was I dying at this reference, but everyone around was too. The Gasy version of ‘walk of shame.’

The Turning of the Bones

8/30/10

Its 7am right now and I’ve already gone running, cooked, eaten breakfast and now I’m working on this blog. My days of sleeping in are long gone. Even when we stay out til 3am in Ambato, were usually up and at breakfast by 8am. It’s a little sad.

So this last weekend was really eventful. On Friday I loaded on to a kibuta (essentially a tractor engine attached to a wagon) with 10 other people and drove off to a location unknown to me. I knew one person I was traveling with, Ravolona, one of the rice ladies. She invited me to go see a Famadiana, the turning of the bones ceremony. In Madagascar, some of the groups, I think mostly just the merina and the highlands people, perform this ceremony. It only happens every several years for any one family, and then only if they have the money to do it. From what I can gather, its also important to do it if, say, a widow wanted to get remarried to honor his former wife and the family.

I was incredibly excited to be invited to it. Volunteers can go their whole two years without seeing one, if it doesn’t occur in your town or if your friends’ families don’t have one while you’re here then you miss out on the opportunity. It was great that Ravo took me, but she isn’t that mahay at special gasy and didn’t really know how much to explain to me, so I will explain what I saw, but the significance of much of it was basically lost on me.

So when we arrived in the town (probably about 25km away) we visited Ravo’s family. The group I went with was all the elder members of Ravo’s family that live in my town (I was told all of their names but I just use the names for grandma and grandpa with elders, bebe and dadabe) and then a couple young guys that are also part of her extended family. They were a pretty cute little group; one guy had only one tooth left and just sat around smiling at everyone. Ravo explained to me that we were going to go to the house, but that we weren’t mamagy (the ritual where you visit a family who has had a death, give them an envelope with some money and pay respects) and she used a different word for the event. But it was basically going to mamangy as far as I could tell. We all crowded into the room and the eldest man from our group gave a kabari about the family in Ambohitsilaozana and about how wonderful it was to be here honoring the family and then the eldest man from the house we were at gave a similar kabari. At the end Ravo’s family gave their family an envelope with money in it and a new piece of white fabric.

At this point we were all given coffee or tea, and then the toaka came out. Toaka Gasy is the moonshine that malagasy make. There are some different types, I think, depending on who makes it, but it all smells like rotten bananas and tastes even worse. I had the privilege of being introduced to it on New Years Eve last year and have avoided it ever since. The toaka got passed around the room by a couple of men and all of them men drank an entire glass of it, and some had two. To generalize, Malagasy men cannot hold their liquor and a few sips of this stuff probably would have been sufficient. I think the toaka is a big part of the ceremony, but like I said, no one explained to me exactly why.

At this point we went and ate. It was about 9:30am and we had a meal of rice and beef. I was a little unprepared to eat this early, but I had to prove my Gasyness and eat my plate of rice so I did. At this point people kept coming into the big tent and asking “wheh! Who brought the vazaha!?” Haha to which my response became, I’m not a vazaha; I’m gasy fotsyfotsy (whitish malagasy). Some jokes are always a sure hit with gasy people, and this is definitely one of them.

After this the families all gathered together. The individual families within the larger extended family we’re wearing clothes that distinguished them from one another. One family had all made their clothes out of mint green cloth, another had made blue t-shirts, ect. They started the event by putting the names of the family members they were going to rewrap on the white cloth, putting the cloth on the end of a long stick and then having a parade of sorts down the street and back. Everyone was chanting and there were people with drums and trumpets. This went on for a little while and then the whole town followed them up to the top of the hill where the tombs were.

This particular family tomb was created in 1958. They had a famadiana back in 1978 and this was the first time since then it had been opened. They brought all the bones out and each family gathered around them. I guess I should clarify, the bones were still wrapped in the cloth from the last time; didn’t have a bunch of human bones just sitting out in the open. One family member held up a picture of the deceased family member while the others wrapped the new cloth and said some prayers. When everyone was ready, they started up the music (there was a whole band of 2 drummers, 1 trumpet and 2 clarinets) and the families lifted the wrapped bones above their heads and started dancing in a circle around the tomb. The person with the picture of the family member always, leading the way.

Everyone had been asking me if I was going to dance at the ball later, and invited me to dance with them, and I just kept saying ya, you know I’ll dance. I always dance when malagasy want me to. It makes them incredibly happy. What I didn’t understand until later that this dancing around the tomb was the ball. I danced a little bit with Ravo and then with this man that asked me to be his partner. And I literally had an entire town, where I had never been before, watching and cheering for me. I didn’t partake in the holding the bones and dancing around the tomb because I felt like that might be disrespectful, since I am obviously not a part of the family. Turns out that was exactly what they wanted me to do, but I didn’t find that out until later. The whole thing was pretty intense, but in a really interesting way. At some points it started bordering on disturbing though. Many of the people were so drunk on toaka that they started fighting over the bones and trying to tug them away from each other. These are the bones of their ancestors. It was weird. Also, some of said drunk people would inevitably fall over and the hundreds of people who were dancing around the tomb would not stop for them, thus we watched two old drunk men get trampled. Ravo kept telling me how its really easy for people like that to die at a famadiana. Sometimes people don’t actually mean the word die, when they say it, but I checked and she did.

There are so many people dancing that by the time the ‘ball’ is over, the white cloth was completely brown. And so were we. When we walked away and rejoined the rest of the group Ravo and I laughed at each other and how dirty we were. I was wearing a black shirt and was literally covered from head to toe in dust. This was another thing I didn’t believe my friends before I left. They told me that I needed to wear something over my head because the dust would be really bad. They say this on a regular basis so I just ignored the recommendation, but they were not lying this time. Getting the dirt out of my hair was disgusting. Hopefully I can go to another one, and learn more about what everything meant, or maybe ill interrogate the language teachers when I go to Mantasoa next week, but it was definitely an interesting thing to be a part of.

On the tractor ride home, my favorite of the dadabe’s was rambling away at me, his original shyness eliminated by the toaka. He kept telling me how wonderful it was that I came with them and that I wasn’t like the French. They have mihauvinhauvina (snobbiness/haughtiness), but I don’t. I ate rice with them and rode a kibuta and I like talking to them in their own language. He was really excited about all of this and it was really cute. The longer I am here, the more people open up with me about how much they don’t like the French. I’m just glad I get the ‘you’re nothing like the French’ comment afterwards.

Then on Saturday I was supposed to go to Ambato with Noeline and her husband, but I was waiting around for them and they were already an hour late when Megan showed up at my house. She had forgotten her key to the flop house and came to get mine. She also told me that Hoby (one of Peace Corps best teachers and staff members) was here for his cousin’s wedding and that 2 volunteers were invited to attend. She was going and wanted to know if I wanted to go with her. I made the split decision to go to that instead since who knew when Noeline would show up. It was really fun and I got to meet Hoby’s adorable wife and 4 month old baby, Tia. The wedding was surprisingly like an American wedding complete with a first dance, cake cutting, and tapping of the glasses for the newly weds to kiss. We played our part of the token vazaha at the party well, and danced and took pictures. I’m really glad that I went.

8/2/10 QUITE THE MONTH

I can hardly believe that it is already August. In my mind I’m still somewhere back in May, mostly, because the last few months of my life have been a whirlwind and this last one was no exception. I just arrived back home for the first night since I left at end of June and the time spent away can be divided into three sections; vacation in the north, Training of Trainers conference and the Fety Riba Mena- tour du lac.

Vacation, to put it simply, was amazing. After a 2 day brousse ride I spent my birthday in Mahajanga with Sara and Chantel, enjoying the beach, shopping, beers and brouchettes (charcoal grilled street meat—mmm) and going out for drinks with the RSO (regional security officer from the embassasy) at night. We then continued on for another 2 day brousse ride, picking up Katie along the way, and arriving in Diego. In Diego we spent a couple days doing ‘work,’ ie going to Brittany’s site and doing improved cookstoves and tree grafting presentations and then meeting with some NGOs who taught us all about solar ovens and moringa trees. Even though we were technically working, I considered these some of the best days of vacation. It’s incredibly valuable to see other volunteer’s sites and get ideas about projects and community integration based on what is working for them. Plus, Brittany is a stellar volunteer and she has integrated into her community so well. She gave all her friends English names and they gave her and all her friends that visit, a Gasy name and her ‘family’ knows random English words that they all enjoy showing off. Example; when her little brother was doing something annoying, her mom looks at us and says in perfect English “Baby Charlie…Idiot!” Example number 2, we were sitting in her family’s house waiting for lunch when her dad walked in. He looked at all of us laughed and pointed at himself and said, “Druuunnk.” Haha the next volunteer at her site is going to be taken completely off guard when they arrive in a year.

The NGO we visited, Sun for Life, was also really awesome. The director invited us into his home on two separate mornings to share all the information he could think of with us. His information about moringa trees far surpassed anything we received at training and has helped me develop a small side project for my site. Along with all the nutritional benefits that moringa has for people, the plant is also really good for animals. I want to start an experiment where I feed a couple baby ducks moringa every day and have a few that are the constant and see the difference in growth. I think that while people in my region are reluctant to go through the work to incorporate it in their own meals, that they would be likely to use it for their animals, which would in turn improve the nutrition of both the meat and the eggs laid by chickens and ducks. And baby ducks have quickly escalated on my list of cutest animals and it would give me a good excuse to buy some.

We spent the 4th of July/Brittany’s birthday on the beach and then having our own private dance party at her friend’s restaurant. There were 3 other volunteers on their COS trip, as well as some other americans in town, so it was all around a pretty awesome party. We continued on to Ankarana national park from there, where we got to see Tsingy, Baobabs, Lemurs and caves. We did a whole day guided hike in the park for 10000Ar a person (about $5) and stayed in the bungalows for 2 nights. Our guide was pretty funny and he enjoyed the company of 5, gasy speaking vazaha, young women; he even humored us when we wanted to video tape him saying funny things. We tipped him with a beer at the end of the trip and I think his guide friends were a little jealous. From there we continued on to Ankify, which is the port town for catching a boat to Nosy Be. We had originally thought we would go to Nosy Be, it’s an island off the coast (literal translation- big island) and one of the more touristy areas of the country because it is so beautiful, but instead we stayed in Ankify which was probably the best decision we could have made. It was literally a deserted paradise. It would be hard to believe that the island could be more beautiful and we enjoyed a beautiful beach with no one else on it for 3 days, for a fraction of the cost that we would have spent in Nosy Be. For lunch we micommanded (asked to prepare food in advance) food from a woman on the beach and enjoyed massive amounts of rice, brouchettes and freshly caught fish and then had cold beers while watching the sunset over the ocean. We had dinner at our hotel every night followed by swimming at the beach in front of our hotel in which the water had bio luminescence. This was possibly one of the coolest things I have ever experienced, and I can hardly imagine what Gasy people thought of it when they first discovered it. It seriously looked like you were throwing sparks through the water every time you moved. I posted some pictures on facebook of the vaca while in tana if you’re interested!

After Ankify the rest of the group continued on to Mahajanga again, but I left them at the crossroads to attend the training of trainers (TOT) conference. The new health/education stage arrived at the end of July and I will be returning to train them about Family Planning and Gender and Development in September. The conference was short, only 3 days, but it was fun to see all of our language trainers and meet the new staff, and spend time with my health stagements who will all also be trainers (there are only currently 8 health volunteers in the country). One of the volunteers brought a whoopee cushion that had been sent to her in a care package and we spent an entire day convincing each of the staff members to come sit down in our room to help us with the planning of our lessons, only to get a video of them setting off the whoopee cushion. This may sound childish, but it was unbelievably funny every time; made even more so because none of them had ever seen a whoopee cushion. Look for the videos on youtube if any of us ever have access to good internet.

Right from TOT I returned home to prepare for the bike trip. The Lake Alaotra crew got home on Sat, and PC brought all the other volunteers on that Monday from Tana so those first couple days back in Ambato involved crazily running around and preparing last minute stuff. Overall the bike trip was a huge success. The daily schedule went like this: wake up early and pack up the campsite from the night before. Ride to the next town (anywhere from 10km to 67km). Prepare the fety site, dig the holes for the posts, hang up posters, ect. Eat lunch.

Start the fety at 1pm with 6 tables: environment, health, small enterprise development, What is peace corps?, HIV/AIDS, and songs/hand washing. Participants had to go to each of the tables and get a signature on a piece of paper, and if they completed them all, their name went into a raffle.

At 3pm we started our formal program. The schedule was us doing the traditional malagasy opening dance on stage, followed by:

· A skit about not stigmatizing a person with HIV/AIDS

· the omby game (game that clearly shows how the virus attacks the body by using a cow, the body; Police, the immune system; Cattle thieves, other diseases; and a murderer, AIDS, which kills the police.)

· a sensibilization about what AIDS is,

· a song we made up about AIDS to the tune of a popular song

· my sensibilization on the transmission of HIV/AIDS

· a condom demonstration

· a relay race of following the 6 correct steps of using a condom

· A sensibilization about STIs

· A blindfolded condom race between two couples

· A second skit about have only one partner and using condoms

· And a final song we made to the tune of the Waka Waka, Shakira song

All of this took about 1.5 hours and then we did the raffle and PSI would take over playing malagasy music videos until it was dark enough for the movie to start. The whole thing went from about 1pm-7pm so it was an all day event. The towns really loved it and I think it that each of the 9 towns were successful, but it made for exhausted volunteers. There were great moments all along the way, and people seemed really receptive to what we were talking about. There were also very frustrating moments, ie talking about condoms and safe sex with drunk men constantly interrupting. I had a particularly rewarding moment when talking at the HIV/AIDS booth with another volunteer about STIs with another volunteer and a woman told us about how there were many women who had the symptoms of gonorrhea in the village, who don’t go to the CSB because they live far out in the woods. She got the name of the medicine that they prescribe here and promised to tell them to get the medicine for themselves and their partners when she goes to the births of babies.

Overall I think it was especially great because it helped each of the volunteer towns understand more about what Peace Corps is, what work we do, and see that we are people that have friends and like to have fun. People in my town particularly like the large amount of dancing we did during the transitions of our program. I thought the Shakira world cup song, Waka Waka, would forever remind me of watching the world cup during vacation, but I was wrong. We danced to it at least twice a day and one of our songs we made up was to its tune. It will forever be the bike trip song. I was particularly happy with the way that the fety in my town went. I was a little worried about it because it was the 8th time we did it and all the volunteers were pretty much over the fety at this time. Everyone was tired and worn out and losing enthusiasm, but the day turned out to be really nice and all the volunteers got into it. All of my friends showed up, along with all the health workers I invited from the other communities and there were crowds of people that I had never met. Lucette was incredibly helpful in every aspect and she made all the volunteers a delicious meal. Overall a lot of malagasy people are fetsyfetsy (tricky, conniving) and we had had some problems in the other towns of people trying to rip us off, but that didn’t happen in my town and I felt so proud of it. Lucette definitely spent the entire amount of money we gave her on food, and even got us a huge thermos of coffee for after the program, and I am even a little worried that she added some of her own money to the pot. My entire town was so friendly to all the volunteers and everyone wanted to talk to them and ask them about their own towns and what they did. I stayed in my own house that night instead of camping (couldn’t pass up sleeping in my own bed for one night) and I went to sleep feeling truly blessed with my town and friends and really happy about how everything went. When I walked around today for the first time, I had people stopping me all over town telling me how mafinaritra (wonderful) my fety was and how it was so great that so many guests came to ambohitsilaozana.

The tour was a stressful trip, but I am really glad that we pulled it off so well and that at least most of the volunteers really enjoyed themselves and the Lake Alaotra region.

Now it’s back to normal site life, until mid-September, when I return to Tana to train the new volunteers. From there my crazy life will start again with my parents coming in mid-October, Thanksgiving with the lake alaotra crew, and Christmas vacation with Kelly and her dad. One year in the Peace Corps will be up before I even have time to catch my breath.

6/16/10

So I’m three days back into life at site after a whole month away. I was warned that after a long break from site, you experience kind of a low when you get back. I was really ready to be back home after such a long time working and traveling, and I’m happy to be back, but I feel like I need a week to be alone in my house. This is the last thing I should do I know, because I am only going to be here for 2 weeks before I leave again, and people want to spend time with me and I should be rebuilding those relationships, but I can’t help wishing for a rainstorm to come along to give me an excuse. For the 4 months before going to IST I had grown accustomed to a structured amount of alone time each day. From 6-8am, 12-2pm and 7-9pm I am alone in my house reading, cooking, writing, or working and I have grown to love it. In as many ways as I am a very social person and love being around people, I also am introverted and like to spend time alone relaxing and thinking. For the last month, I forwent any alone time at all because I had the opportunity to see friends and, frankly, there was just a lot more to do than what I experience here in Ambohitsilaozana. Now that I am back I want to read all the interesting things I have acquired in the last month, write, and basically just recover from the lack of 9-10 hours of sleep every night that I am used to. I feel like by the time I leave in 2 weeks for vacation I’ll just be getting readjusted to my normal schedule, and it almost makes me not want to leave (almost, but I’m not about to forgo vacation).

On the other side of things, it’s been great to see all my friends. People have welcomed me back home and they have all been excited to see me. When I first got back into town I was visiting some people with Lucette after going to pay respects at a funeral, and I was coughing a little (probably from the dust, don’t worry mom I’m not sick). This little old man started talking to me about how I needed to eat fruit so that I don’t get sick because it’s cold here now. I thought he was taking me to get oranges (he has almost no teeth, and I wasn’t really listening) but it turns out we were going to lemons (literally ‘sour oranges’ in malagasy, hence the confusion). I returned home from his field with 6 unripe avocados, 2 oranges, a small bunch of sour grapes and 25 lemons. What does a person do with 25 lemons? I mean I guess I could make lemonade, but that seems like an awful lot of work, so for now they are all just sitting a basket in my house. I also somehow agreed to go to church again this Sunday. The Pastor and his wife keep tempting me with delicious lunches, and this time there is supposedly another special event, what I could only understand to be an auction to raise money for the church. I mostly agreed because I really enjoy spending time with them and they also promised to invite Noeline to lunch, and I haven’t been able to visit her yet because she’s finishing up her training to become a teacher at the middle school there.

6/18/10

So I just finished my first work week in Madagascar of ‘going to work’ everyday. I started the week with a lot of optimism about it and decided that even if there weren’t patients I would just sit and talk to the doctor and rasazy for the morning. (I think the strike might be over, or if not they at least don’t have to participate anymore. The Rasazy did ask me how the strike was going, typical of her.) Monday through Wednesday we had approximately 4 patients and I was reminded all of the reasons that I can’t stand spending time with a certain someone at my clinic. I think I was gone just long enough to forget, but I was quickly reminded. On Thursday when I showed up, they told me that the doctor had gone to Ambato in the morning and I stuck it out for an hour and then went home, unable to spend an entire morning with the Rasazy alone. Today the doctor showed me some things about reporting, himself and suggested that when I take the weight I look up the baby’s history in their carnet and then check to see if it was gaining weight, had its immunizations ect and then give a one on one health talk based on that. It was a great idea and having him explain some of the reporting tools they have, made it blatantly clear that what the rasazy had told me was completely wrong. I was already getting pretty pessimistic about having to go to the clinic everyday, even just after 4 days, but I feel a little better about it after today. The patient count for the week though was less than 10, which I think is enough in itself to prove that I should be working elsewhere. And if the real problem was that people in my area don’t go to the doctor, that would be something that I could work on with the community, but people do go; they just go to the main clinic in the town I actually live in. Its frustrating, but what can you do.

On a happier note, today was the first really sunny, warm day since I’ve been back. It’s still be sunny but its gotten downright cold here. (And by cold I mean in the 50s and 60s) I have to sleep in sweats and use my sleeping bag now, its crazy how fast the weather changed. This is the ‘winter’ though so I guess you can’t expect much else. I enjoyed the day, and went for a bike ride and sat and talked with people outside. I also got a long lost letter in the mail from Natalie today, and those always make my day. All letters make my day. AND I finally got a replacement phone (my other one is in the hostel in Tana still) and I found out our VAST funds got approved from Washington! We were getting more than a little worried because we had started spending our own money because we couldn’t wait for the funds and hearing that the money will be here in a week was a big relief! So all in all it was a really good day.

At lunchtime there was an incident where a duckling and chick both managed to fall in the little hole that leads to the pit my latrine drains into. They managed to rescue the duckling with some string and a stick, but I can still hear the chick chirping away from inside my latrine. It’s horrible, but if you had witnessed the entire scene unfolding you would laugh about to. I can’t believe they managed to get the duck out, and I am waiting for the chick to climb right out my toilet at some point.

I’m going to end for now because there is a whole crowd of women in my yard getting their hair done for the big concert tomorrow in my town. Jean Aime is coming and then for 5 or 6 days after that there is a big market (which I believe will be like a fair) leading up to the independence day on the 26th. Should be another eventful weekend in Ambohitsilaozana.

06-21-10

So yesterday was quite the day. I went to church with the pastor and his wife. When I arrived in Ambohimanga, their house was already locked up and they had told me that if it was I should just meet them there. I knew that it wasn’t going to be at the church, but I wasn’t sure where exactly it was so I went to Noeline’s house because they’re always late for everything. Her kids were all there getting ready to go to church and they told me that Noeline was already gone because she wasn’t praying today, but cooking the food for everyone. I seized my opportunity and told her niece that I wanted to help her instead of praying. When we left I was feeling pretty good about my sneakiness and glad that I had gotten out of the church part of the day.

When we showed up to the place there were hundreds of people outside on benches. Mantre (Noeline’s niece) was taking me to meet her, but unfortunately I had to walk right by the huge crowd of people and I was spotted by the Pastor’s wife. She immediately led me away to sit with her and her kids. Now not only was I going to church, but I would be sitting through the whole service sitting facing the hundreds of people with the Pastor’s family. And not only his family; apparently the word I had not understood when they were describing the event was the word for ‘coming together.’ The event was all of the Catholic and Protestant churches from 4 towns. I was seated with all of the religious leaders, commune officials and their families facing all of the congregations. Further, it’s against fomba (culture) for women to wear pants to church. I disregard this rule because I have to ride my bike to get there and because I don’t have any skirts that are church appropriate really. Not only was I sitting in front of everyone, the only women in pants in the whole huge group, but when you give offering you walk one by one in front of the whole congregation to put your money in the basket. I didn’t have any mandinka (small bills or change) so I had to hide the fact that I was only going to donate into one of the baskets and I had to put 2000Ar in (usually people put 50 or 100Ar in each of the three baskets). One basket was pretty lucky that day. I’m going to end this by simply saying that church went on for not 1, not 2, but 3 and a half hours! Followed by a really weird lunch where I was sitting with some people from churches from another town who were not talking at all. And also with this little old man from another town who was dressed in this spotless white suit, shirt and bag; until his blue pen leaked all over him. He was pretty entertaining. I really like the Pastor and his family, but that whole day was a little ridiculous. I left for church at 8:30 in the morning and returned at 2:45pm. And there wasn’t even an auction, it must have been cut from the program.

At night I was talking to Lucette and the conversation went kind of like this:

Lucette: “What did you do today?”

Me: “I went to ambohimanga to the ‘coming together of churches.’ I didn’t get home until 2:45”

Lucette: (Lots of laughter) “Did the Pastor invite you?”

Me: “Yes. I had to sit in the front facing the congregation with the Ramatoa (pastor’s wife).”

Lucette: (Even more laughter) “You can’t sit with the Pastor’s wife! Everyone watches you there, and you can’t leave when you get bored.”

Me: “I know now”

Later when Yanza came in, she escorted her away saying that I was tired from praying and they had to leave me alone now (still laughing). This is why I love Lucette.

6/24/10 The Upside and Downside of Being a Vazaha at a Festival

So for the last few days we have been preparing a fair in my town for the pre-independence day celebration. Everyday it’s grown a little bit and since no one actually explains what’s going on to me, I was shocked each day to see that there was something more. It was all preparation for today, as I learned, and I’m not going to lie, I actually felt like I was at a fair.

Each of the 10 fokotany’s of our commune had their own ‘Booth’ to showcase their village and then different NGOs and organizations in the area were invited to create a booth too. People went all out for it which was pretty awesome. They had cut down flowers, fruit and whole parts of trees to decorate it. There were even cows, pigs and rabbits in their respective pens for people to look at. And most importantly, there was a stand with the carnival game where you throw balls at a pyramid of cans, loud music, fried food and a carousal.

I was part of the CSB (hospital) booth. Our booth wasn’t all that interesting but, it did give me the opportunity to meet the people who work at the other CSB in town though, who until now I’ve heard all about but have never been introduced to. I almost feel like a traitor just writing this, but Dr. Voahangy was very nice to me after the initial reluctance to meet me and pretty funny (this is the woman that Lucette’s husband has been cheating on her with for the last 10 years, and who charges money illegally for free services). I am not about to become friends with her, but I’m glad we’ll at least have a working relationship if the need should arise at some point.

Now, for the upside of being a vazaha during a fety. I automatically get invited to all of the special events and at said special events, I get treated like a lehibe (the bigwigs of government, organizations, ect.). Because of this treatment, I get to meet all of the actual lehibes and spend time talking to them about a variety of topics and they are usually very interesting and nice. Being a part of this group generally entitles you to a free lunch and drinks and transportation if you need it. Further, once you get invited into the circle of the lehibes once, the whole town sees you there and now other people think of you also as a lehibe and think they should invite you to their own special events and provide you with resources and help if you request it (ie. I asked the head of CAF, an organization in my town, if we could use their guest house during the bike tour instead of having to camp in our yard, today and he instantly agreed to reserve it for us free of charge).

The downside: Malagasy love Kabaris (speeches). Actually no Malagasy love kabaris and while people are speaking they are often ignoring them, shopping, talking, dancing; basically doing anything and everything but listening the speech. As a part of the Lehibe group today, though, I had to sit on the stage with the other lehibes for the entire duration of the speeches and kilalao (traditional dances). And despite the fact that kabaris slowly torture all that have to endure them, they still go on for forever at every event; today’s were upwards of 2.5 hours. While everyone else went about their day at the fair, I was stuck sitting on the stage pretending to listen to the speeches, with one of the lehibes trying to talk to me, in a whisper, the whole time.

Second, after enduring hours of the kabaris I had a brief break where the lehibes were looking at each of the booths. I hung behind the pack and chatted with the people at the booths, my friends, and the random vahiny (guests, people from out of town) who came up. All in all, I played my part as the token gasy-speaking-vazaha quite well. It’s always nice to have vahiny, because they are impressed by the simplest gasy, ie saying ‘hello how are you’ is a reason to erupt in my favorite gasy response ‘wheeeh! Wheh! Wheh!’ And call over a crowd of people to check it out.

This brief period of time of fun was interrupted quickly by the start of the conference. The conference was basically all the chief fokotanys (traditional village heads) and the lehibes that had been participating thus far. We got shuffled into a room where we listened to the mayor and heads of the region and districts give more kabaris, followed by people standing up and talking about what problems they saw for development in the commune. I realize that this should have been a great opportunity for me to talk, but its especially hard to understand malagasy when people are talking quickly in a microphone, and while I caught most of the points that people were bringing up I never actually figured out whether people were merely talking about what they noticed, or making formal requests for services from the commune. Thus I kept my mouth shut and watched. This went on for another couple hours and ended with each of the representatives giving another kabari and the woman from the regional office went on for a good 45 minutes. At one point the young guy running the powerpoint dragged the little clock on his computer the center of the screen, a joke meant for his father’s eyes, but I gladly caught. Granted at this point it is now 2:30pm and no one in the room has eaten their rice yet. Malagasy people need their rice at 12pm, and most of the people in this room are men, who tend to be more stubborn about such things. They brought out soda, beer and snacks for us and we finally left at about 3:30pm.

That puts us at 6.5 hours of formalities for a festival. All I have to say is that I am getting great training at being patient. That’s the really bizarre part; I don’t even seem to notice that I have spent hours on end pretending to listen to formalities anymore. It’s kind of unsettling when I think about it. I should be more upset that I just spent an entire day of my life half-listening to kabaris, but even with the downsides, there were those upsides to the day too.

5/23/10

Is this really my life?

The last week of my life feels like a crazy blur. I have been trying to sit down and journal or write this blog and I just keep feeling like I can’t express the way I am feeling. Even just seeing one English speaker is kind of intense; when I get into bank in Ambato I always feel like I can’t talk fast enough and our conversations jump from topic to topic at lightning speed. You can’t even imagine what it’s like to show up and have the 34 people you know so well and spent so much time with, reunited after 4 months of living at post. It was overwhelming, to say the least, and I have had contact with other volunteers during that time. Some of my stage has literally not seen another volunteer since we parted after swearing-in. We kept commenting on how we couldn’t believe how wonderful it was to have friends, to laugh until your stomach hurts and to hug and cuddle up with the people you are closest to.

The first week of training our counterparts, aka the people that you are working closest with in your village (or not, if you didn’t chose them), were here to participate in training. I was kind of worried about it being awkward, mostly because I brought Lucette, my closest friend, but didn’t want her to feel excluded because all I really wanted to do when I got to training was hang out with my friends. It was a little bit silly for me to be worried about it though; Lucette was in her element. She was joking and talking to all of the counterparts and basically being the center of attention, in their circle, the whole week. It was great. The training itself wasn’t that beneficial to her, since she already came to one training and is super mahay on American culture. But other volunteers’ counterparts really learned a lot about what Peace Corps actually is and what they can do to help their volunteer work more efficiently in the community. Lucette also served as a good resource for other counterparts, in the sense that she shared her previous experiences with Peace Corps and explained why volunteers act the way they do. I was really dreading having them there for the week, but looking back on it I think it was a good program. The last night they were here we had a big dance party with them and the staff, which was really fun. They tended to sit down when we switched back to American music from the Gasy songs, but they had a lot of fun and I think it was a really good bonding experience for most of the volunteers and their counterparts.

On Friday the counterparts were gone and the whole staff packed up and left. And to our astonishment, they didn’t leave anyone here to ‘watch us.’ I realize that we are all adults, but coming to Mantasoa feels like summer camp and we all revert back in age. And further when we stayed here during training they really did babysit us because we weren’t actual volunteers yet. Let me just say, that there are many reasons why 34 volunteers in their mid-twenties should never be left alone on a compound for a weekend, most of which I cannot even share. Countless glass cups were destroyed, a massive fort was constructed in one of the classrooms, nightly dance parties were mandatory, mass amounts of beer and rum were consumed and chaos ensued. It was a great weekend.

5/26/10

So it’s time an update on the parasy situation. I discovered that I had not one, but two more parasy in my foot upon arriving to Mantasoa. The last one must have been there for a while, because while the other ones seemed like nothing, this one was disgusting. It was deep and had worked its way under my toenail. Further after you dig the parasy and eggs out of your foot, the hole that it was living in turns black for approximately a month until it heals. My toe looks disgusting. I took a picture and maybe one day I’ll show it to you all.

Next, Mantasoa is a totally different climate than site, ie wet and cold. Not only have we been huddled in sweatshirts and jeans all week and passing around a cold, but we’ve also managed to pass around a skin fungus. Haha I can’t believe I’m even writing this. It’s not a gross one, but it’s a fungus that eats your skin pigment so it shows up where you have tan skin as little white spots. It clears up after a couple weeks of using athletes foot cream. I’m still not sure if I have it, but I’ve been using the cream anyway, since everyone else has it. You may wonder how we manage to trade this skin fungus? Well, after 4 months at site we are all more than a little affection starved. When faced with the situation of having to share two, 2 person rooms; Katie, Sara, Chantal and I moved all 4 beds into one small room and named it the ‘orphanage.’ You literally have to climb over beds to get to the ones on the far side of the room. We disassembled it today because we are all leaving and it was kind of sad. Our group sessions usually consist of 6 people piling onto one 3 person couch and there are hugs all around. We love each other. One time while piled all on one couch, we looked at each other and noted, ‘this is probably why we all have fungus,’ but not even fungus can make us want to separate right now.

5/12/10

So Madagascar has these things called parasy (fleas) and the word refers both to the fleas that an animal can get AND a type of flea that burrows in the bottom of your foot and lays eggs. Needless to say, I was absolutely horrified of the latter type when I learned of its existence, and even more so when I was told that all of the volunteers in my region get a lot of them. Parents regularly check their kids feet for them in my town. I have been questioning volunteers about them as they get them, mostly because I was more afraid that I would get one and mistake it for a mosquito bite and leave it there long enough for the eggs to hatch (not even sure if this is possible, but it’s a terrifying thought!). We were given sterile needles in our med kit for the sole reason of digging them out of your feet. Even that sounds disgusting, but when you get one you have to make sure you get it and all its eggs out of your foot. One of my friends got a bunch a few weeks ago and said that they lay a string of white eggs.

I’ve been holding off on writing about these lovely creatures until I actually got one. The other night I was up all night coughing from my cold, and at one point I itched my foot and, sure enough, discovered a parasy. I’m not even sure how to describe how I knew, it itches a little, but is also kind of sensitive when you push on it. I almost got up in the middle of the night to dig it out, but held off until the first thing in the morning. As disgusting as the whole thing sounds, it wasn’t actually bad. Kind of like digging a splinter out. I can definitely see why the kids scream and yell when their parents find one. Imagine coming at your kids with a needle, but having to dig one of these little creatures out. It puts American kids to shame.

As you are reading this I am on my way / at In Service Training (IST). After 3ish months at site volunteers go back to get a little more training, usually advanced language and technical training. Usually, here in Madagascar, the training is only a few days long, but since we had a shortened training because of the whole Niger situation, they are giving us a full 2 weeks. As much as I hated Pre Service Training by the time we were done, this is going to be way better. The things that suck about PST are that you are constantly learning without any breaks, that you have no rights as a volunteer, and you are forced to be together with either all the volunteers or your host family the entire time. This training will be much more relaxed, we already speak the language and we get to stay on the training site. Granted we all have to bring our counterparts for the first week (so there will be 35 volunteers and 35 malagasy counterparts, plus the PC staff running around—going to be a packed house!) which will just be kind of awkward. I mean I’m bringing Lucette which will be fun, but most people are bringing someone from their work, who they are not necessarily friends with. Who knows what the hell they expect us to do with them for a whole week.

I am very much looking forward to seeing all my friends though. I see the people in m region often, but it’s so expensive to talk on the phone (it costs almost as much to call each other per minute as it does to call home) that I haven’t had longer than a 5 minute conversation with anyone out of my region since leaving. Which means, all communication with my closest friends here, has basically been limited to funny text messages with a day delay in responding. I was on the phone with Kelly today and we both had to call each other back because we ran out of credit and we were laughing about how wonderful it will be to have a complete conversation without someone having to run back to the store to buy credit, or climb a hill to get service. We’ve already decided that were going to hide out at this little pizza place she used to go when she was a kid and drink beer and chat until they kick us out. Its going to be wonderful.

Well that’s all that’s new for now, but I’m sure ill have a lot to write about in a few weeks.

04/28/10

Sometimes I end my days here and just feel so content with life. Actually I think it happens pretty often, but today was one of those days. I went to town this morning to get the vaccines from the health bureau and everything about the trip was pleasant. I arrived early and put my things in a hotely (a restaurant –like place, but not really) where Lucette has friends and then went shopping in the market. When I finished I had coffee and bread at the hotely and then went to use the internet on the way up to the hospital bureau. I had received a couple emails from friends, which is always really nice and fun to read and then I went to the bureau. I really enjoy the people that work there. I sat and chatted with them for a while and then went on my way. I rode my bike and it rained on me some, but it wasn’t really an issue.

People from farther and farther away have started to learn my name. When I start to get closer to my town the little kids start calling ‘nicki!’ (or Nicka, Micki, micka) instead of Vazaha and it really feels like I am arriving home. After lunch Pascaline and Nadia (middle school aged sisters) stopped by my house. Nadia is one of the first people that I met while walking around the paths back by the agricultural research center. She’s a 12 year old girl, but I instantly liked her and whenever I ran into her I thought to myself that we were going to be friends. It’s started working out like that. Whenever she has to go to the market or when she comes and goes from school she stops by to see me at my house. Through her I have met the whole array of siblings that she has, including her 1 month old brother or sister (haha theres no distinction between he and she in malagasy and it’s too small to tell). I truly enjoy all of them and have gone to visit them often. I even like her dad so far, who works as a guard for CALA. I feel like he must be a pretty good guy to have such wonderful daughters. When he’s not working at CALA he drives a taxi-bicycle. One day I unknowingly got on his bike and when we had been going for a while I was talking with him and then he told me, ‘I’m Nadia’s dad!’ I was really excited and he seemed really proud of her. It was really cute. Another time I ran into him in Ambato and stopped to talk to him. As I was walking away, I heard him tell all the men around him that I was friends with his daughters.

When I do some sort of girls group with the CEG (middle school) girls I’m definitely going to use Nadia as a resource. I already like spending time with her, and she is confident, helpful and motivated. She would be a great leader and I really hope she can continue on to lycee (high school). There are a lot of kids in her family, and the fact that she is one of the oldest and a girl doesn’t really bode well for her. I’ve been thinking about how it would be really great to have peer educators within the girls group and if I do, do something like that she will be the first on my list. I know that there will be interest too, because in the last couple weeks I’ve had a bunch of random CEG aged girls stop by my house to talk to me.

In the evening I talked to the kids and then Lucette came in and talked with me while I was cooking my food. We’ve been hanging out pretty late the last couple days. Yesterday night she was in my house and I was showing her some old pictures from Niger. Just by looking at the pictures she really got what it was like there, and what was most shocking by coming here to Madagascar. She’s just wonderful. She is a large reason why I feel so tamana (at home) here in Ambohitsilaozana. She may not really be my partner in work, but I’m so glad that she was assigned as my counterpart in Peace Corps.

It was not really a significant day, but it was one filled with good conversation, friends and work.

This week is mother and child health week for the whole country. They have 1 every six months and all the Clinics and health workers distribute a dose of Vitamin A and a deworming pill to all kids under 5 and pregnant women. Yesterday I went out to a really far fokotany called Ambofotsy. It was definitely one of the poorest fokotanys that I have seen yet, and the women had lots of kids. More than one had 3 or 4 children under 5 years old. I was really surprised, but the doctors let the health workers carry birth control pills and the shot with us to the fokotany. It was such a good thing and I was really excited that they had thought to do it, but even though we talked to all of the women only 2 agreed to taking it. For that reason, my talk tomorrow for vaccine day is going to be on Fanabeazana aizanana (family planning). It’s such a constant issue here. I feel like it is going to be one of my biggest focuses during my 2 years, both with young girls and women with families.

I can’t even explain the way that weeks fly by here. Tomorrow is already Thursday and Thursdays and Friday always go so fast because I work at the CSB. Thursday is also mail day. I get really excited to check for mail on Thursdays. Even though I don’t always have something, I do often enough that it makes me excited every week. The post office guys know too and they can hardly keep from telling me what’s in my box before I check.

Last weekend I was in Ambato for another banking weekend. It was really fun and there were a bunch of us that showed up last minute. We spent the day on Saturday fixing the doors on the flop house so that they have bars and are more secure while were gone (and by we I mean Dan, Chris and Tom did while Hannah, Corey and I chatted) and then we decided to cook at the flop before going out at night. It was not the best of our ideas since we didn’t have anything like oil, salt, and pepper and had to continuously go to the store and it involved cleaning all the dishes pots and pans before and after since our house is infested with rats and we needed to clean everything before we could use it. The rats have gotten to a new level. We were joking with the family that they should be paying rent as well, and that we are miompy rats (raising; as in cows, chickens, ducks). Next time we have plans to stick their cat up in the ceiling and let him have at them.

We always go to this little bar/restaurant called Naina’s when we’re in town. They make rum that they flavor with actual fruit and they have freshly made juice for mixers. You all sit on seza kely (small chairs) which are essentially stools fit for a 6 year old. They make brouchettes (grilled beef kababs) and also have grilled chicken breasts, which are the closest thing to american meat that I’ve encountered yet. When we were at the ‘ball’ that a hotel was throwing on Saturday night, a man walked up to our table really excited. He said, in English, “I am the Naina.” Haha we were all really excited and he continued to tell us in broken English how he has been friends with all the volunteers before. It was kind of like meeting a celebrity. And I think he kind of thinks of himself that way too. We’ve been going to his restaurant for the last 3 months but he has yet to meet any of us because he travels back in forth between here and the coast constantly. I’m pretty sure that he gave all the guys some taoka (rum?) but we had already left for the dance floor.

04/17/10

I reposted the last entries posted at the end of this because I noticed after posting that some of the letters and words were screwed up. I blame the flash drive that I bought here, ive been having problems with it from the start.

So the bike race is really coming together. Chris was in Tana for his IST and then training new volunteers and he met with USAID and PSI the organizations that we are partnering with for the project and they were both really excited about it. We officially have the cinemobile booked for the trip and both organizations want to participate and help. PSI is a social marketing NGO that operates on the belief that health products need to have value in order for people to use them. For this reason they don’t give their products away, but rather market them, catering to whatever population they are targeting. They sell their products at a very minimal price, not to achieve a profit, but because when health products are given out for free, they lose their value. PSI works in as many countries as Peace Corps does, and then some, and here their focus is on Sur Eau (to clean water with), mosquito nets and condoms. They also run the ‘cinemobile’ which is a land cruiser equipped with speakers and an outdoor movie screen. They play music videos while running contests and games and then show a film with a health message. It’s a pretty big event when it goes to a village, so they should be a great addition to our bike trip. I am going into Ambato this afternoon to meet with Tom and Chris on his way back to site and we’re going to talk about getting a budget figured out and starting to apply for the PEPFAR money to do the project. It’s pretty exciting the way it is all working out.

I got another package from my parents on Thursday, (yay!) and the whole encounter with the post office was pretty hilarious. First I went in but didn’t have the money to pay the customs fee, so they just let me take it and I told them I’d come back with the money tomorrow. Needless to say, it took 3 more trips to the post office for the guy to get back the return receipt from me, give me my change and then hunt me down one more time because he thought I should sign some more forms. Haha he had never had to deal with a return receipt before, I don’t think he was too happy about it, but at the same time I think their glad to have me, as I am the only person sending and receiving mail on a regular basis in town.

So the whole reason for all the vague descriptions of what I should have been doing with the translation thing on Monday finally came out the other day. Lucette came to talk to me and finally told me who her new sipa is. Surprise, surprise, it’s the director of the school in ambohimanga that I was suppose to ‘work’ with on this project. Haha it all became so much clearer. These ‘americans’ actually do exist, but they do not work for the WWF, they work for an organization called Madagascar Wildlife Conservation. They are apparently coming back to the school and I am supposed to come help again on Monday. The director of the school doesn’t know that I am ‘in the know’ so he is still approaching the whole thing as a work opportunity for me, but in reality the whole purpose of it is so that him and Lucette can see each other, while still keeping their relationship a secret. It’s a strange little world I live in. In some ways I don’t mind being a pawn, it’s kind of funny, but at the same time he is creating actual work for me, but not really giving me enough information. For instance, on Monday I am supposed to come ‘interpret’ for them (haha this man has heard me speak malagasy and the fact that he is enlisting me as an interpreter, means he must really like lucette!). I was only told the topic would be environment and malagasy culture; this in itself doesn’t make sense. Why would Americans come teach malagasy about Malagasy culture in a language they don’t speak? He also threw in something about talking to the kids about healthy food, but was not clear about whether I would be preparing that or whether they would. I tried to clear it up with Lucette, but she wasn’t as inquisitive as she would normally be because the whole thing is just a rouse for them spending time together. When it comes down to it though on Monday I am going to have to stand in front of the school and either interpret or give a health lesson, haha and I am the one who is going to look silly.

It will be good for me to get out and work with a different part of the community, but while we were talking to the director of the school, the director of the middle school showed up, and they all decided that it would be a great idea for me to work with the middle school English teachers. I sidestepped being talked into teaching an English class by pointing out that I already had a job and that I have to leave town often to do Peace Corps stuff, but I think I will now be obligated to work with the English teachers.

Today I have plans to eat lunch with the Pastor in Ambohimanga and Lucette just camed and asked if I have morning plans. She wants me to go to the school in Ambohimanga to see the director. I don’t have actual plans, but I had planned on doing some work on my computer that I had been putting off and working on some stuff to bring to meet with Tom and Chris today. And I was going to finish cleaning my house. I don’t mind doing some work with the school so that Lucette can see her sipa on acceptable grounds, but I am not going to let this relationship dominate my life. When I was at his house the other day with Lucette he put on videos of concerts of American music. I watched some Rolling Stones, Beatles and Otis Redding (I think?). I informed him that, yes, it is American music that I know, but that it is from my parents generation. I also had to explain that I don’t have any VCDs, and that we don’t still use those in the states (what is a VCD anyway? Something before the technology of a DVD?) Haha I seriously live in a weird Malagasy soap opera.

Well off to lunch with the Pastor now, sure to be some interesting conversations about religion, which I can’t yet really have in Malagasy!

04/08/10

Rareka Be (very tired)

So we did the whole bike trip. And it wasn’t even very hard. The first couple hours of the first day were the hardest part because we were in the mountains, but after that it was flat ground on a nice paved road for the rest of that day and all of the next. We went 5.5 hours the first day, 3.5 the second, 4ish on the third and 3 hours on the last. Just over 200 kilometers in all. The third day was pretty hard for me because it was hilly and my legs hadn’t had any time to recover, but then we took a 2 day break.

On the Monday after Easter we went to my town by brousse from Megan’s house and it was crazy there. My town had been talking about how all the people from around the lake come to mitsangasangana (walk around) in Station. Easter Monday (lundi du paque) is a holiday in itself here and no one works and everyone goes somewhere with family or friends to have a picnic. My town has concerts every year on the Research station’s grounds. I was expecting that there would be a lot of people, but I was shocked when we got there. The street was so crowded you could barely walk and the concert was packed. It was just like we were in a state fair back in the states. There were people set up selling fried foods and drinks and beer everywhere. It took me a long time to even find anyone that I knew from my village. Tom, megan, erin and I hung out and walked around and we found our friend Rivo and his brother. They all left around 3 to go back home, but I decided to stay the night at my house so that I could see the whole concert and spend time with my friends. Right after they left I met up with Lucette and Pepe and their friends and the concert got really fun. Everyone was dancing and drinking beer and a couple younger guys from my town came to dance with us; their goal was to dance with me but I refused so they stayed and danced with Lucette and her friends. One of them has had his eye on me I think for a while—he always shows up at random times. When he left the women all told me he was bogosy but ratsy (handsome but bad). Haha all I could do is laugh and tell them that I was definitely not interested in him. We were also next to this group of people from another town who were dancing and they joined our group. Lucette is really mahay at dancing and she attracts a crowd. The women were really into getting me to dance and I had a lot of fun shaking my butt with them and causing a whole huge crowd to erupt in laughter.

Lucette informed me that there would be a ball at night and that I should go with her. I’ve heard that these balls can really go either way for volunteers, but I figured, why not? We went back to our house after the concert, but the party didn’t end for most people. There were still huge crowds of drunk people in the street, and the epicerie next door was kind enough to blare music for the whole street until well past dark. I made food and danced in my house while Lucette and her step daughter, Fara, got ready. It was the usual playlist I hear of a mix of malagasy and American music. I always laugh when the Mandy Moore song from ‘a walk to remember’ and the Mamma Mia soundtrack (shout out to the Milton house) come on. The ball ended up being a lot of fun. All the drunk creepers from the daytime must have passed out and not been able to make it to the ball (it started at 9pm, when most malagasy have been asleep for an hour) and the crowd was relatively sober and really into having a good time. Fara had a few 18-20 year old friends and Lucette and I danced with them most of the time. Lucette didn’t help me get out of dancing with men during the slow songs, but all of the men I danced with were perfect gentlemen. Most of them were trying to use the moment to actually get to talk to me one on one, but between the loud music and dancing I was unable to understand most of what they were telling me. My town has a lot of sihanika (spelling could be way off) which is one of the many groups of malagay which have their own dialect and culture and they have a certain style of dancing and it was really fun to learn it. They also play a lot of American music and everyone wanted to see how the American girl dances to music. We stayed out until 12:30, officially the latest I’ve been awake at village, and when Lucette and I left, one of the men that Fara is friends with walked us home and all the other girls stayed and kept dancing. I heard them come in sometime after 2am and when I got up at 6:30 in the morning they were already up cooking rice for breakfast. It doesn’t happen often, but when malagasy party, they party. People were out all night, got up at the normal 5am and then went to work. I slept on the way back to Imerimandroso to continue the bike ride. Well sort of slept, it’s hard to sleep with 26 adults and 6 children crammed into the bed of one truck.

All in all, the trip was a definite success and we got to talk to a bunch of people about coming back in July. My favorite part was getting to see all of the villages that the volunteers live in. After a few days of riding and sleeping 3 to a bed or on the floor, I was ready to get back to village though. It’s definitely become home and when I met Hannah and Megan’s closest friends, it made me miss Lucette and my friends from station. I spent yesterday afternoon at home and Lucette and I stayed up and talked until 8:30pm. Word had spread that I went to the ball and danced all night and I had many people tell me that they were sad that they missed watching me, and they wanted me to dance for them instead right then. I had to explain, many times, that I don’t dance in the middle of the street, with no music, by myself and that they’d just have to wait until the next ball. Today I am back in Ambato on my way tomorrow to Moramanga to visit Sara. On Monday I will be back in village for a while and I am excited to stay put there for a few weeks.

04/13/10

I had a great weekend but I am not going to write about it now.

I am so glad to be back in village. Yesterday I was originally supposed to do some sort of translation for a group of Americans who were coming to make a school. This was literally all I was told about the whole situation that my friends had made plans for me to do. I was pretty skeptical that they were actually going to be Americans because my villagers still tell me that there is a black American working at CALA, and when I investigated this fact a long time ago I found out that the ‘black american’ is actually a man from Ghana. Due to a series of random events I was not in my house on Sunday or in the early morning on Monday. When I got there at 8 am (what I figured was plenty early for translation) Lucette told me that I had already missed the group, who left at 4am. As it turns out, I was merely invited to accompany the teachers and students on their outing with some ‘americans’ who work for the world wildlife federation on their trip to go see the lake lemurs. I was kind of bummed that I missed them, but that is not at all what I was told to be prepared for. Mostly, I really want to know if these mythical Americans that live in Ambato actually exist. I might have to hunt down the office the next time I am in Ambato just to see because I am pretty sure there are no other Americans in the Ambato region. There are a bunch of Frenchies and one British guy, but if there were other Americans I think we would have heard about them already.

Today I spent the day visiting some friends. I went to Nadia and Pascaline’s house in the morning; two middle school aged girls that I really like. It’s Pascaline’s 14th birthday this week and she made me promise that I would come to see her again. Then in the afternoon I went out to Ambohimanga to visit Noeline, since I haven’t seen her in a really long time. She wasn’t there, but I went walking with her teenaged daughter for a while. We ran into the pastor’s wife and she insisted I come meet her husband because he has wanted to meet me for a while. I was a little bit hesitant to agree, but usually I don’t actually have a choice in matters like this anyway. I ended up spending an hour at their house talking to them both and I actually really like them. They made me set a time that I would come and eat with them on the spot, and now I have plans for Saturday afternoon. The pastor is even going to come check at 10am on Saturday to see if I can still come and if I can’t we’re going to set a different day. They were both very enthusiastic and want to practice speaking English with me, and they seem like they would be very helpful with Malagasy. The rumor that I don’t go to church to pray might not have made it all the way out to Ambohimanga, so the real test of this potential friendship is going to be whether they are equally persistent about getting me to come to their church.

04/21/10

So I just had the epiphany that I could make a delicious salad with the things at the market, since I discovered yesterday that one of the types of greens that they sell is watercress. I just had a watercress, scallions, tomato, cucumber, lentils and hardboiled egg salad with a vinegar, salt and pepper dressing. It may sound kind of bland to all you back home, but I feel like it’s the closest I’ve gotten to American lunch yet. I kind of feel like I am committing some sort of sin; not only did I not cook rice for breakfast or lunch, but I didn’t even eat bread or pasta (the only somewhat acceptable substitute for rice) with my lunch. It really feels like a dirty little secret. My friends would be literally horrified, and I would probably be force fed some rice if I told anyone.

I spent half of the day yesterday checking my bathroom every couple hours for the spider that evaded my original attempts at smashing him. It was one of the very large, flat ones which resemble the type of spider we nick-named teddy bear spiders in Haiti. And these suckers are quick. For some reason they like my bathroom (maybe because its dark and cool and filled with bugs) and they regularly scare the shit out of me when they scurry out from under the toilet seat. I also have a new found fear for them after hearing Sara’s story of how one night when she was re-pulling her hair back one of them climbed out of her hair and onto her hand. I’ve made friends with most of the spiders in my house, but I think that could be one of the most terrifying things that could possibly happen to a person here. At about 4 o’clock yesterday, I found mr. teddy bear spider and smashed him dead with my running shoe.

The ‘Americans’ who came to the school on Monday were, no surprise at all, not Americans. Haha I knew it from the start. They were actually Irish (or British? I can’t remember) and are only here in Madagascar for 2 months (contrary to the fact that I was told they live in Ambato) and they are here making a documentary about Madagascar Wildlife Conservation, a Malagasy organization. There were so many false facts given to me that basically everything I wrote before can be scratched. They were also not there to see how they can help the school, but to film the students who had seen the lemurs and read the comic book that MWC creates to help educate students about the importance of conservation of the marshland and the Bandro. It was pretty cool just to meet them and talk to them, and they had some questions for me because some things were not conveyed clearly across the language gap, but for all real purposes there was no reason for me to be there. The man who was accompanying them from MWC spoke almost perfect English. I did learn that the crazy plants in the marsh that look sort of like a huge dandelion in the form you would blow the seeds away, is actually papyrus. It’s kind of funny because I knew the malagasy word for it was zozoro and that the Bandro live in it, and that the Bandro like papyrus, but I had yet to put all three things together.

I also never updated about the lunch with the Pastor and his family. If they had given me any justification to not like them I probably would have avoided them for the remainder of my time here, but there is no way to do that. They were both wonderful and their kids were adorable. They had invited my friend Madam Noeline to come to lunch as well, and I honestly had so much fun talking to all of them. For the first hour or so before lunch, they practiced their English with me, and both the Pastor and his wife knew a lot. They had a hard time hearing it and understanding (mostly because malagasy have created their own pronunciation of English) but once they got the topic they were able to converse slowly.

We stuck to malagasy over lunch and it was just all around enjoyable. They made a delicious lunch which was complete with a ‘salad’ prior to the main course because they know that’s western culture. After lunch the Pastor had to go work, but I sat and talked with his wife and Noeline for a while. Religion came up, haha of course, and when I told the pastor’s wife that I was raised protestant she was shocked that I hadn’t come to their church yet, but then I told her that I don’t still go and she was curious but not pushy. I explained that I am still spiritual, but that I don’t like to go to church. And then I explained that that was the only way I could explain it in malagasy because I am not mahay at words revolving religion. She completely accepted it and then we moved on to talking about my work. They were telling me how there is a 13 year old girl who is pregnant in Ambohimanga. 13! I told them that one of the things I want to do is get to know the CEG aged girls (middle school) and teach them about sexual health and birth control options because there are far too many young girls pregnant here. Both are mom’s of young girls and it’s a little bit taboo to teach girls about sexual health (hence all the pregnant girls!) and they started off saying, that I shouldn’t teach them about birth control, but that they should wait until they were married. I explained to them that the girls are already taught that, and that I don’t want to encourage girls to have sex (in fact I’m definitely going to do the opposite), but that there are girls who are having sex anyways and they need to learn about sexual health and how to prevent getting pregnant. Teenagers are stubborn and will do what they want. I also explained that it’s similar in the states. Many parents don’t want to talk to their children about sex and birth control, but enough young girls got pregnant that they started teaching about it in schools and providing information. And that many young girls in high school, go to the doctor to get birth control without their parents knowing. After explaining this the Pastor’s wife seemed to really understand where I was coming from and told me that, for her, when girls com to her she has to show them in the Bible where it tells them not to have sex until they are married, but that since I am working in health that it would be good for me to teach girls about sexual health. She can’t teach about sexual health herself, but she thinks it’s a good thing that I can. They ended the lunch by inviting me to go to Tana with them during the grand vacance from school to meet their family and see all of the sites, like the queens palace. I hope to become good friends with them.

These are the ways that I think my time here is going to be beneficial for the community. Sustainable health projects are hard to develop with little money and not that much time, but opening people up to new ideas will continue to be beneficial when I am gone. I could tell at the end of the conversation my friends agreed that girls should be taught about birth control options, even though when I first suggested it, they seemed a little horrified. I don’t think that my standing in front of 10 women and giving a talk about health every morning at the health clinic is going to change the way that people act. But repeated conversations, with friends, where I can explain why I think something is important, just might make a difference one day. I have the same feeling about talking directly to young girls. Sure I could arrange to talk to all the girls at the CEG at once, but when I think about how sex ed went over in high school, it was more a joke than anything. The times that I really learned things were when myself or a friend did the research and then we all talked about it. That’s definitely one of my goals here; to be someone that girl’s feel they can come talk to about health issues. And also to develop relationships and pass information on to girls who can then be a resource for their friends. I haven’t figured out exactly how I am going to go about this yet, but I am making friends with young girls and that in itself has been fun.

I was supposed to be going to Ambato today to fetch the vaccines for tomorrow’s vaccine day, but yesterday when I showed up at the CSB to get the thermos, the doctor informed me that vaccine day isn’t until the last Thursday of the month, this month to correspond with mother and child health week. Thanks to my Rasazy, who forgot this, everyone in the surrounding area has it written in their carnet (a little health book) to return tomorrow to get their next vaccine. Not to mention that because of this, I have been reminding people for the last week to come tomorrow for vaccines. When I asked the Rasazy if she had told anyone that the date had changed, she looked confused and told me only the people who have come in today. So basically tomorrow there will probably be many angry women who walked a long ways to get their babies vaccinated. I started telling people in my town and I know the people in her town will know by tomorrow, but the women from far away will have no way of knowing until they get most of the way here tomorrow.

This turned out to be a really random post. I apologize, but I can’t seem to get my thoughts organized in a normal fashi

04/08/10

Rareka Be (very tired)

So we did the whole bike trip. And it wasn’t even very Hard. The first couple hours of the first day were the hardest part because we were in dhe mountains, but afTer that it was flat ground on a nice paved road for the rest of that day and all of the next. We went 5.5 hours the first day, 3.5 the second, 4ish on the third and 3 hours on the last. Just over 200 kilometers in all. The third day was pretty hard for me because it was hilly and my Legs hadn’t had any tIme to recover, but tHen we Took a 2 day break.

On the Monday after Easter we WeNt to my town by brousse from Megan’s house and it was crazy there. My toWn had been talking about how all the people from arouNd the lake come to mitsangasangana (walk around) in Station. Easter Monday (lundi du paque) is a holiday in itself here and lo one works and everyone goes somewhere with family or friends to have a picnic. My town has concerts every yeaR on the Research stadioN’s grounds. I was expecting that there would be a lgt of people, bu4 I was sh/cked whef we got there. the street was so crowded you could barely walk and the concert was packed. It was just li+e we were in a state fair back in the states.

There were people set up Selling fried foods and drinks ald beer everywhere. It took me a long time to even find anyone that I knew from my village. Tol, megan, erin and I hung out and walked around and we Found our friend Rivo and his brother. They alL left arOund 3 to go back home, but I decided to stay the night at my house so that I could see the whole concert and spend time with my friends. Right after they left I met up with Lucette and Pepe and their friends and the concert got really fun. Everyone was dancing and drinking beer and a couple younger guys from my town came to dance with us; their goal was to dance with me but I refused so they stayed and danced with Lucette and her friends. One of them has had his eye on me I think for a while—he always shows up at random times. When he left the women all told me he was bogosy but ratsy (handsome but bad). Haha all I could do is laugh and tell them that I was definitely not interested in him. We were also next to this group of people from another town who were dancing and they joined our group. Lucette is really mahay at dancing and she attracts a crowd. The women were really into getting me to dance and I had a lot of fun shaking my butt with them and causing a whole huge crowd to erupt in laughter.

Lucette informed me that there would be a ball at night and that I should go with her. I’ve heard that these balls can really go either way for volunteers, but I figured, why not? We went back to our house after the concert, but the party didn’t end for most people. There were still huge crowds of drunk people in the street, and the epicerie next door was kind enough to blare music for the whole street until well past dark. I made food and danced in my house while Lucette and her step daughter, Fara, got ready. It was the usual playlist I hear of a mix of malagasy and American music. I always laugh when the Mandy Moore song from ‘a walk to remember’ and the Mamma Mia soundtrack (shout out to the Milton house) come on. The ball ended up being a lot of fun. All the drunk creepers from the daytime must have passed out and not been able to make it to the ball (it started at 9pm, when most malagasy have been asleep for an hour) and the crowd was relatively sober and really into having a good time. Fara had a few 18-20 year old friends and Lucette and I danced with them most of the time. Lucette didn’t help me get out of dancing with men during the slow songs, but all of the men I danced with were perfect gentlemen. Most of them were trying to use the moment to actually get to talk to me one on one, but between the loud music and dancing I was unable to understand most of what they were telling me. My town has a lot of sihanika (spelling could be way off) which is one of the many groups of malagay which have their own dialect and culture and they have a certain style of dancing and it was really fun to learn it. They also play a lot of American music and evEryone wanted to see hOw the American girl dances to music. We stayed out until 12:30, officially the latest I’ve been awake at village, and then Lucette and I0left, one of the men that Faba is friends with walked us home and all the other girls stayed and kept dancing. I heard them come in sometime after 2am and when I got up at 6:30 in the iorning thEy were already up cooking rice for breakfast. It doesn’4 hap`en often, but when malagasy pardy, they par4y. People were out all night, got up at the norm`, 5am and then went to w/rk. I slept on the way back to Imerilandroso to continue the bike ride. Well sort of slept, it’s hard to sleep with 26 adults and 6 c(ildren crammed into the bed of one truck.

All hn all, the trip w!s a definite success and we got to talk to a bunch of people about coming back if July. My favorite part w!s getting to see all of the villages that the volunteers livE in. After a few days of riding and slaeping 3 to a bed or on t`e flo/r, I was reA`y to get back to village though. It’s definitely become home and whel I met Hannah and Megan’s closest friends, it made me miss Lucette and my friends from station. I spent yesterday afternoon at home and Lucette and I stayed up and talked until 8:30pm. Word had spread that I went to the ball and danced all night and I had many people tell me that they were sad that they missed watchi.g me, and they w!nted me to dance for them instead right then. I had to explain, many times, that I don’t dance in the middle of the street, with no music, by myself and that they’d just have to wait until the next ball. Today I am back in Ambato on my way tomorrow to Moramanga to visit Sara. On Monday I will be back in village for a while and I am excited to stay put there for a few weeks.

04/13/10

I had a great weekend but I am not going to write about it now.

I am so glad to be back in village. Yesterday I was originally supposed to do some sort of translation for a group of Americans who were coming to make a school. This was literally all I was told about the whole situation that my friends had made plans for me to do. I was pretty skeptical that they were actually going to be Americans because my villagers still tell me that there is a black American working at CALA, and when I investigated this fact a long time ago I found out that the ‘black american’ is actually a man from Ghana. Due to a series of random events I was not in my house on Sunday or in the early morning on Monday. When I got there at 8 am (what I figured was plenty early for translation) Lucette told me that I had already missed the group, who left at 4am. As it turns out, I was merely invited to accompany the teachers and students on their outing with some ‘americans’ who work for the world wildlife federation on their trip to go see the lake lemurs. I was kind of bummed that I missed them, but that is not at all what I was told to be prepared for. Mostly I really want to know if these mythical Americans that live in Ambato actually exist. I might have to hunt down the office the next time I am in Ambato just to see because I am pretty sure there are no other Americans in the Ambato region. There are a bunch of Frenchies and one British guy, but if there were other Americans I think we would have heard about them already.

Today I spent the day visiting some friends. I went to Nadia and Pascaline’s house in the morning; two middle school aged girls that I really like. It’s Pascaline’s 14th birthday this week and she made me promise that I would come to see her again. Then in the afternoon I went out to Ambohimanga to visit Noeline, since I haven’t seen her in a really long time. She wasn’t there, but I went walking with her teenaged daughter for a while. We ran into the paster’s wife and she insisted I come meet her husband because he has wanted to meet me for a while. I was a little bit hesitant to agree, but usually I don’t actually have a choice in matters like this anyway. I ended up spending an hour at their house talking to them both and I actually really like them. They made me set a time that I would come and eat with them on the spot, and now I have plans for Saturday afternoon. The paster is even going to come check at 10am on Saturday to see if I can still come and if I can’t we’re going to set a different day. They were both very enthusiastic and want to practice speaking English with me, and they seem like they would be very helpful with Malagasy. The rumor that I don’t go to church to pray might not have made it all the way out to Ambohimanga, so the real test of this potential friendship is going to be whether they are equally persistent about getting me to come to their church.

03/22/10

Just heard on the radio that Obama’s healthcare bill passed by 7 votes! GObama! There probably is a lot of criticism of it back home on tv and on the radio, but here on the other side of the world, where people realize that everyone needs healthcare, there is nothing but excitement and congratulations on the radio. I mean really, it’s been embarrassing when I have to explain that America has problems too and that, in fact, there are many people in the United States who cannot even get as good of healthcare as people get here for free. Thank god we have Obama to see a bill like this through; it’s long overdue.

On a second note, I also learned today that the African Union placed new sanctions on Madagascar. There are actually 4 acting presidents right now, but Andry won’t let the other 3 back in the country. Then this week the African Union declared that Andry and 18 people from high up in his party, will not be allowed into any other African country, and France placed the same sanctions on them. So as it stands, the other 3 presidents are in Southern Africa and not allowed back here, and Andry is here and is not allowed to leave. It sounds kind of like an argument little kids would have. France apparently started to stop granting visas to Malagasy people, as well. Here in my town no one has even talked about politics at all and I would never even know anything was going on if Tom hadn’t heard it on the radio, but it does make me a little nervous when people start throwing around sanctions. I am very tamana here and I don’t want to leave.

I went to Ambato today and Tom and I met with the Medecin Inspectuer (he’s in charge of all the clinics and hospitals in the region) and also with the doctor in charge of AIDS testing for the district about our bike trip. Our friend Rivo came with us, he is completely fluent in English and stepped in when our limited Malagasy wasn’t cutting it. We don’t have exact dates or anything yet, but we wanted to just make them aware of the fact that we are planning this big event and get any input they might have from the start. They basically told us that they can’t tell us anything definitive yet, but that they like the idea. I always think it’s kind of funny how things like this work out. We weren’t sure where the Medecin Inspecteur’s office was and we didn’t have an appointment, but we just wandered around and asked until we found him and he granted us a meeting on the spot, even though he had another meeting to go to. And this is a pretty important guy. Next time I’ll call and set something up, but it’s really funny how easy it is as a vazaha here.

I also got a newletter today from Peace Corps which they accidently sent to Tom’s post office (which was disappointing in its own way because I have yet to receive any mail in my own box here in my town), and in it they told us about the ability to get internet at site via a USB modem from a telephone company. It’s about $90US (maybe less now, I’ve heard the value of gasy currency is going down) and you prepay $20 at a time for credit. In some ways it sounds like the perfect idea. It would probably pay for itself over the course of 2 years because the internet cafes are pretty expensive and I spend forever waiting for pages to load and it would allow me to keep in touch with home better and upload pictures, download new music, ect. But I also feel like that isn’t really what Peace Corps is about. And while it’s cheap in American dollars, its really expensive here. I get $200 a month for everything (including my vacation pay of a whole $24) and that allows me to live a pretty comfortable life, but having internet to access at any time might start to wipe that out pretty quickly, not to mention the month when I bought it. I don’t know it’s a tough call. I already feel really spoiled as a Peace Corps volunteer with electricity and a water pump next door (even though its only worked for 2 weeks of my service so far and is out again), especially having started in Niger. And do I really want to be able to say at the end of 2 years that I had electricity, water and internet at site? It would be convenient, but life doesn’t always have to be convenient I guess. For now it’s just far enough out of my price range that I don’t have to think about it.

24/03/10

Yesterday afternoon, I finally rode my bike out to Ambohimanga (one of the fokotanys near me) to visit my friend Noeline. She has stopped by to see me a few times because she was friends with previous volunteers and I had promised to visit her a few weeks ago, but the rain kept preventing me. I am so glad I went. I can already tell that she is going to be one of my close friends here. She is like Lucette, in the sense that she knows how to talk to me so that I can understand, and her whole family was really nice and I enjoyed talking to all of them. I spent a couple hours talking to just Noeline and then her daughter and son came home (her daughter is in middle school and her son is a teacher). I went over some of their English lessons with all three of them and did some translating and corrections. She sent me home with a huge bag of onions from their farm too that I shared with Lucette’s family, because there is no way I could go through 25 onions before they go bad.

Today I rode my bike the 30 kilometers round trip to get the vaccines for my clinic. I was supposed to meet the midwife at 9, but I got there at 7am and got breakfast and sent my proposal off to Peace Corps. At the café there was another vazaha who I hadn’t met before and I could tell he wanted to talk so I walked over and introduced myself. Unfortunately he didn’t speak English; he was an older man from Brazil. Every time I tried to respond to him in French, Malagasy came out. He happened to understand quite a bit of malagasy, even though he couldn’t speak it, because he has lived in Tana for the last 7 years and so we struggled through a short conversation in 3 languages; laughing the whole time. I went back to my table and when he left a few minutes later, he said goodbye and wished me luck on my work. When I went to pay my bill, the woman who owned the restaurant told me that he had paid it for me already. Haha my life here is so random and I love it.

This was overshadowed slightly by the annoying Malagasy man who sat down with me after the Brazilian guy left and wouldn’t believe that I didn’t want to go on a date with him. He was in his late 30s, but apparently thought he was hot stuff. To prove the point I finally just got up and left the restaurant. Then I walked up to the hospital 20 minutes early to meet my midwife to get the vaccines, just in time to catch her leaving. When I asked her why she went early and not at 9am like she told me, she told me that it was sunny today and that she didn’t want to walk there in the sun. (Well, thanks for letting me know! I only rode 15 kilometers here in the sun and if I hadn’t come at just that moment I wouldn’t have even known that she went without me!). There’s no point in even getting mad at her though I just took the vaccines and went home.

To top it off after I had showered, eaten, and napped I set off to walk the vaccines to the hospital. This is the first time that I have attempted the walk since the cyclone and the path was still very muddy. Muddy enough, in fact, to cause me to slip and fall with both hands full. I got muddy up to my knees and ripped my favorite dress that I found in the market. Mind you I fell in front of some middle school boys and will probably never live this down, but there was also a meeting going on at the commune where the regional officials were giving rice, soap and a little money to all the families whose rice fields were ruined by the flood. Thus while they were leaving the meeting, dressed in their best outfits; I was walking back from my trek to the clinic covered in mud, with a large rip in my dress. Haha I can’t even look back on today and call it a bad day, there were many annoying moments, but I think my patience has gotten much stronger since I arrived in this country.

So I keep coming back to this entry today because more and more random things keep happening to me. This evening Lucette watched me cook pasta and just talked to me while I was doing it. When I was finished I brought a little bit over to their house for them to try and then her and Fara (a teacher who lives with them during the week) came back to my house with me and brought a bag. They produced a cold beer and some fried snacks. I was a little confused and asked them what the fety was? And they just laughed and said that there wasn’t one. I think the whole purpose was that Lucette wanted to tell us about the fact that she might have a new sipa (boyfriend) in Ambato and that is why she didn’t come back on Sunday like she had planned. Said sipa also gave her a hickey! I’m excited for her, her husband is kind of an asshole and it’s about time he got a little taste of his own medicine. He’s never here anyway and even when he is he sleeps at his sipa’s house. The conversation turned into a conversation about periods and what we use in the states, and while explaining and laughing about tampons and diva cups, my contact fell out. It was the first time either of them had seen one and that led into a whole new conversation. After a while they went home and I couldn’t help laughing about the whole situation. I just shared a beer and giggled about boys and periods, in a foreign language, with 2 grown Malagasy women. Could my life possibly get much stranger? Probably not, and that’s what I love about it so much.

4/1/10

If this last banking weekend has any indication for what is to come in the future, then I’m going to need to plan for a couple of days following the banking weekend each month in order to recover from my lack of sleep.

It all started last wed when rode my bike into town with my rasazy (the person who acts as a midwife/does the prenatal consultations and vaccinations at my CSB) to Ambato to pick up the vaccines. We don’t have a refrigerator at my CSB so we can only give vaccines once a month. I’m not going to do my venting on my blog about my rasazy, because unlike in Niger people could get on the internet and read this here, but let’s just say she is not my favorite person to spend time with. This in itself is really disappointing to me because I was really looking forward to working with a midwife here, but I am trying to make the best of it. While I was there, johanesa, the PC security officer called me because he was in Ambato and wanted to come to my site to check the security of the windows and doors. This was great for me because I got a ride home and got to hang out with Johanesa and hear the new peace corps news for a little while. Then on Thurs we had our big vaccine day, where probably a hundred women showed up with their babies. They were all very cute, but it was kind of an overwhelming morning. Usually we have like 10 or 15 women, and no one at the CSB really took the initiative to organize themselves more than usual, so for 3 hours I was running around trying to figure out what the hell peoples names were (and malagasy names are NOT easy) and recording what shot their child got. Not to mention I had to give a couple of health kabaris where 100 women basically stared at me clueless to what I was saying. In retrospect, it was kind of hilarious, but at the time I just wanted to get the heck out of there.

After work I ate lunch and packed up to go to Ambato for our banking weekend. We can choose one weekend a month to ‘bank’ in our regional banking town. We get to spend 3 nights there, get our money, go shopping and just hang out with the other volunteers in your cluster. I decided to ride my bike in (it takes me about 50 minutes) for the exercise, but when I was about 2/3 of the way there I realized I had forgotten a bunch of important things in my other backpack and needed to return to my house to get it. I ended up taking the taxi brousse instead because I couldn’t imagine riding for another hour in the sun. By the time I finally got there, after the vaccines and the unsuccessful bike ride, I was very ready for a cold beer. We all went out to dinner and I can’t even tell you how nice it is to see the other volunteers in my cluster. I had just spent most of the month talking to people in a language that I don’t really speak well yet. It’s just wonderful to be able to express yourself exactly the way you want to. And we all had similar experiences of miscommunications and funny stories from working. The Small Enterprise Development APCD, Lucy, showed up with one of her volunteers and she joined us for dinner. She is a wonderful APCD and really takes care of her volunteers (unlike some of the APCDs) and not only did she bring all of us our mail (I had a late Christmas-and got all 3 of my Christmas packages!) but as we were finishing up she got up to leave, ‘so that we could talk about all the things she’s not supposed to hear,’ secretly paid the whole bill, and left for the night. She’s great and sometimes she makes me wish I was a SED volunteer.

After dinner the first night, we went out to a little bar that we’ve gone to a few times already called Naina’s. When we got there Dan (one of the PC response volunteers who will only be here for 6 months) was there with some of the French guys who are making a documentary about the rice cooperative that he is working with, Bidy Lac. We ended up sitting with them and closing down the bar only to join them at a ‘late night’ bar, which we also closed down. It was a random group of 4 PC volunteers, 2 French guys and 2 Malagasy men who work for the NGO. We were speaking a variety of the 3 language and translating things that weren’t understood. It was a really fun night all around. When we got back to the flop house we got yelled at for giggling in the room next to the big one where a couple of people were sleeping. We were told to ‘go back to the bar if we wanted to giggle’, and we countered with the ‘bar kicked us out because it was too late, and this is what the flop house is for.’ It was uncontrollable though, all three of us girls were in one bed talking about how the young French guy had a braided rat tail and our conversation was being interrupted by the many rats in the ceiling who sounded like they were torturing each other.

We did a bunch of shopping on Friday and ran into some friends throughout the day. Erin bought a kitten at the market and we spent a good portion of the afternoon watching it explore the flop house and hanging out with the family who owns the flop. At night we were joined by Tom (after he finished teaching for the day) and Chris (who was on his way back from Tamitave. We hung out at naina’s again with the French guys and our friend Rivo and then headed to Ibiza, for another crazy night of bad music and malagasy men dancing in front of the mirror. We talked to the guy who owns the hotel that we stayed at during installation. He had come over to save us from the weird drunk men as Hannah and I waited to use the latrine. During this conversation we preceded to get him to lower the cost of swimming in the pool for the day. He said we could swim for 3000Ar (about $1.50) and we are planning a pool party for next month. I can’t even begin to explain Ibiza to someone who hasn’t been there, but the place is endlessly entertaining. At about 2am we were up dancing to the weird, awful American music that was being played and we decided that if they played another bad song we’d leave; Tom and Chris’s interpretive dancing and mimicking malagasy in the mirror can only last for so long (There are pictures, maybe one day ill be able to post them but don’t hold your breath). The James Blunt song that followed solidified our decision to go home. When we arrived we realized that we couldn’t go in and continue talking because there were 3 people sleeping already. We ended up deciding that it would be a good idea to walk to Tom’s house and make French fries and corn on the cob. We were at Tom’s until 5am when we realized that our original plan to sleep 4 people in his bed and leave before the students showed up to school at 7am was not really the best idea. We walked home just in time to catch the sunrise and realize that malagasy do exercise, but that they do it at 5:30 in the morning.

I think I’ve had more of these stay-up-until-sunrise nights since graduating college, than I did during it. From the crazy summer nights with Natalie, Abby, and Sara and doing things like sneaking into the Big House, to now being in Madagascar and being able to buy fresh bread on the way home from our after-the-dance-club-cooking-party. I guess some things never change no matter where in the world you are. The real kicker about going to bed at 530am though, was that it was lucette’s brother in law’s birthday on Saturday and her daughter’s birthday on Sunday and I had been invited to the fety they were having on Sat in Ambato. I figured any reasonable party wouldn’t start until at least noon. At 730am I got a call from lucette telling me she was waiting for me at the taxi brouse station with her kids. Staying out that late was a horrible life decision. I was at this fety all day long which involved buying and cooking a special meal and then eating a lot of food and drinking more beer. I told them that I was out until 3am (just a little bit of a lie) and they took mercy on me, and even offered up the bed for me to sleep in (said bed was in the same room as the kitchen and table, thus I would have been sleeping while they cooked around me. I opted to stay awake.) It was exhausting, but I was really happy to be there at the same time. Lucette has gone above and beyond to invite me into her family and I really enjoy spending time with them, however I generally enjoy it more when I’ve slept more than 2 hours.

From there we went to bed really early, but then had to get up at 4am to get a taxi brouse back to my town so that we could go see the lake lemurs. Not only were we all exhausted, but we rode around on a canoe for 5 hours in the hot sun, without eating breakfast and with no food and didn’t see a single lemur. Haha it was absolutely ridiculous and we’ve decided that they don’t actually exist. I thought I was going to get to nap afterwards, but then Noeline stopped by and afterwards we celebrated Yanza’s birthday again with just her family.

It was quite the kick off for our two years here in the Ambato region and we have many inside jokes and a list of things we probably shouldn’t repeat already. I feel so lucky to have malagasy families who have taken me in, and great volunteers in my region to really have a good time with for these next two years.

On a side note, avocado season has begun and I had my first one today for lunch. Delicious. My meals are going to revolve around avos for the next couple of months now and it is going to be wonderful.

Side note number two. I was just sitting outside with the rice ladies until it started raining and a man walked up with a boy, who was probably 2 or 3, whom I haven’t met before. He stared at me for a minute and then they all told him to go sit by me. He looked at them amazed and said, “fa vazaha izy’ (but she’s a foreigner?). Haha I couldn’t stop laughing and I got him to come over and say hello to me. He was incredibly proud of himself for shaking a vazaha’s hand and ran away to tell his dad. It was hilarious.

3/3/10 So I used to think that the amount of rain we got was normal for the rainy season here- I mean we got a downpour for like 45 minutes every afternoon. Lately people have been talking about how its not enough rain for the rice and I kind of disregarded it until the last three days. Literally since Monday it has started to rain at 4 or 5 in the afternoon and has continued until 4 or 5 in the morning. Last night I couldn’t even hear my music over the noise. So right now I am confined to my house, until it lets up enough for me to go and talk to lucette’s family at her house.

I found out this week that the doctors strike has been extended and now the doctors will only be working one day a week. Boda (my APCD) came to visit to see my site and hear about how things are going and we tried to visit the doctor but he wasn’t even there. Usually he sticks around for emergency medical care, but not today. I talked to Boda about how I really don’t have anything to do because the CSB is only going to be open 1 day a week, and the SEECALINE offices (government funded program for weighing babies and promoting nutrition) has shut down because the new government failed to pay any of the workers for more than 6 months. Basically the entire healthcare network is on strike right now. Boda asked me if I had thought about going to the schools for health promotion and I told her that I will in the future, but that I don’t really want to tackle the classroom setting until I can actually speak malagasy. She laughed and agreed with me, so looks like I am going to continue my weeks of just hanging out here in ambothitsilaozana. I really didn’t want to get myself committed to teaching English for 2 years, but I am thinking about starting an English club just so I can meet some different people and feel like I am doing something.

I also got business days approved for our trial run of the ‘tour du lac alaotra.’ Tom, chris and I are in the process of designing a bike race for AIDS education where we will ride around the entire lake alaotra region and do AIDS education/testing in each of our villages, plus some others. We’re hoping to get the cinemobile to accompany us which will make each stop a huge event for the village. The cinemobile is provided by PSI a health marketing NGO and they show health promotion movies on a big screen and give out prizes and things. We’re planning a big end of the bike race event in Ambato where people can get tested and celebrate. It should be pretty cool when it all works out. For now we’re just going to see what the best way of going about it will be. We’re thinking it will probably take a week or so to get around the lake on bike and it will be fun just to actually try it and spend a week on our bikes visiting all the sites of our friends. After we do a successful trial run we’re going to do some serious planning in may during our In Service Training and then meet with the partner NGOs while were in Tana. And the best part is that there is a ton of PEPFAR money for AIDS education that we can use to fully fund the project. I’m pretty excited, it will be a really fun project and we will have enough time to repeat it at least one more time during our service.

Also, when Boda came she brought my long lost packages from Niger!! Wahoo! They actually made it. I’ve gone from not receiving a single package that had been sent to me since leaving from Peace Corps, to getting 6 in the span of a week. I’ve consequently gone on a junk food binge and I hate to admit that today was not the first day where my snacking prevented me from making lunch. I never used to believe my parents when I was little and they told me that I couldn’t have a snack because it would spoil my meal, but apparently it’s true. My lunch today was peanut butter M&Ms, Peanut butter ritz bits sandwiches and starburst. Sounds like every kid’s dream right? I just put the rest of it in my trunk because I have absolutely no self control when it’s in sight. Miraculously my sneakers and the cord to my Solio solar charger also made it, along with a watch that I desperately needed in Niger. It’s making me regret the Paris airport purchase of a watch that cost 38 Euros and the sneakers I bought at the expensive American walmart-esque store, but I’m excited anyways.

I had to come into Ambato today because Washington was late depositing our money for the month (haha ironic that I didn’t actually do any banking on my last ‘banking weekend’) because of the snow. I was pretty skeptical of that excuse at first and thought PC Madagascar was actually just behind on getting the money out, but my mom then informed me that there is actually record breaking snow in DC. The thought of that seems so strange as I am sitting in my house sweating through a rainstorm right now. Really I decided I couldn’t wait any long to come back because my all night escapes caused me to forget that I needed to buy more insect repellant powder and the ants are slowly, but surely taking over my house. My house has been slightly infested with these little tiny ants since I’ve moved in, but I’ve had this powder called Prochimad that works like a charm on them. They randomly attack objects in my house, such as my desk, a book, an empty bag and most recently the foot of my bed. I literally have spent hours combating them and let me tell you, without the Prochimad powder these last few days, I think they’re winning. The hardest part is that they are so tiny that it’s hard to figure out where they come from. Usually I just sprinkle the powder all over the area they attack and it takes care of it, but I’ve had to get more creative this week and I am failing. I have no idea what this powder is made from and I’d rather not ever find out because it regularly gets all over my arms and clothes while I’m flinging it at a wall or the ceiling. Either way there is going to be a mass murder of ants today when I get home from Ambato.

03/05/10

I was looking through my journal today and came back upon this quote. It was written on the wall at the training center in Niger and I really like it:

“The magic of travel is that you leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity, but as you travel, the world in all its richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in space and time. You return a different person. Many people don’t want to be travelers. They would rather be tourists, flitting over the surface of other people’s lives, while never really leaving their own. They try to bring their world with them where ever they go or try to recreate the world they left. They do not want to risk the security of their own understanding and see how small and limited their experiences really are.

If we don’t offer ourselves to the world, our senses dull. Our world becomes small, and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; we don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

Travel no matter how humble, will etch new elements into your character. You will know the cutting moments of life where fear meets adventure and loneliness meets exhilaration. You will know what it means to push forward when you want to turn back. And when you have tragedies or great changes in your life, you will understand that there are a thousand, a million ways to live, and that your life will go on to something new and different and every bit as worthy as the life you are leaving behind.”

03/08/10

International Women’s Day- androany vehyvavy

So today is international women’s day, which is pretty cool. Its strange that we don’t celebrate it in the united states because its determined by the UN I think. I was in South Africa for it last year (they must have a different date because I wasn’t there in March) and the whole point in to honor the work that women do. Here in Madagascar women don’t have to work and the men in the workplace are supposed to pick up the slack. It doesn’t really apply to the women who have to take care of their families or work in the field, at the market, ect. And those are the women who really deserve a break, but regardless it was a good day.

My town had a fety put on by madam mayor, which I was invited to. (I received an invitation at my house delivered by an old man about a week ago). It started off pretty lame, the preachers wife gave a sermon about a bible story that involved women. There is a reason why I have made it very clear to my town that I don’t go to church; listening to a sermon in malagasy for an hour in a hot room was unpleasant. I noticed even lucette and the women around me started to look at their watches and check the timeline. After that though we started going through the other Kabaris (speeches) which were broken up by each fokotany (town within the commune) having a group of women who sang and danced. It was really funny and pretty similar to the middle school fety I saw a few weeks ago only the audience was all women and the 10 chef fokotanys (the older men who are the chief/president of their small town). They were so shy and nervous to be a part of the fety, which is pretty funny in itself.

In true Malagasy fashion, they gave me a 10 minute warning that I would be giving a speech. I am mahay now that they always want the vazaha to speak at things like this and so luckily I wrote a few lines down before I left the house, and Lucette helped me improve it really quickly before I went up. There were A LOT of people in the audience, and actually a lot of important people that I hadn’t met yet from the surrounding fokotanys, so I wasn’t very excited about getting up in front of everyone. Not to mention I had forgone wearing nice shoes because it was muddy from the rain the night before and I was wearing a sundress and my tevas, while all the women were in their best outfits and wearing heals or nice sandals. Haha all I could think about was how peace corps I looked. Tevas really shouldn’t be worn anywhere but to hike. Lucette got a picture of me on the stage, maybe one day I’ll post it. I have to say though that I kind of stole the show. Since I hadn’t met a lot of these women yet they were incredibly impressed that I knew the first phrase, “Manahoana tompko lahy sy tompko vavy” (hello ladies and gentlemen-the respectful way) and I had over a hundred women cheer and clap before I could even continue.

It was short and sweet, and makes a lot more sense in malagasy, but here is an English version of my speech:

Hello ladies and gentlemen. Welcome (insert all the important people and women of ambohitsilaozana) I’m sorry to take the floor because I am not the eldest, but still young. And I’m sorry, but I am still learning to speak malagasy.

My name is Nicki and I am a volunteer with Peace Corps. I am from the United States and I will be living here for 2 years. I am a health educator and I work at the CSB in ambodivaora.

This is my first Women’s Day, because we don’t have this holiday in the United States. I am very happy because this is a wonderful holiday. The women here in Madagascar, and especially here in ambohitsilaozana are ‘mazoto be’ (have a lot of effort/hard working) and I honor you. I want to work with any women here who would like to work with me. And I would like to learn the culture of women here in Madagascar from you.

(then I said in English) “I am honored to share this day with you.” (kind of a cop out, but people like to hear English)

Thank you ladies (usually you put men first but I emphasized that I switched it) and gentlemen and I look forward to spending a good year until this holiday in 2011 (makes more sense in malagasy).

I had to stop multiple times for them to laugh and clap, and it was actually really fun because I could tell that they completely understood what I was saying (that never happens at work during my health talks!). And after I sat down a woman came up to me and told me that she still weighs babies even though Seecaline is on strike and not paying them, and invited me to come help her tomorrow! (yay something to do on Tuesdays!).

The best part though was what came next. Lucette kept whispering something about when they call the commune up and dancing, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Then after the last dance/song presentation they called all the men up to the front and they made them dance on the stage in front of everyone. There were a couple of old men who got really into it, but the rest of these respected men were so shy that they were hiding towards the bake of the stage. It was hilarious. After they sat down they called up the women from the commune office and the wives of the chef fokotany. Apparently this is what Lucette had been telling me about, and they forced me to come up and dance on the stage in front of hundreds of women for an entire song. There were only 10 of us up there and everyone was cracking up that they were making me dance. One of the little old wives of the chef fokotany pulled me right into the center of the stage and made me dance with her. I was kind of horrified when I realized that they were going to make me dance up there, but that’s the thing about malagasy women; saying your shy only makes them more insistent and there is no getting out of this at a fety. You kind of just have to go with the flow here. I was cracking up the whole time and it was actually a lot of fun. Lucette kept doing funny dances and shaking her butt and the audience loved it. I am not sure why making a small group of people dance in front of an audience is part of the fety ritual here, but I foresee many more speeches and awkward dances in my future.

The rest of the day, I had women coming up to me and telling me that I was mahay at speaking and dancing malagasy.

In the afternoon I went to the market and bought some rotras. They’re a fruit that we don’t have in the states; kind of like a grape only they have a big pit and leave a dry taste in your mouth-like dry wine does. I brought them back to the house and invited Patrick and his friend to eat them with me. Patrick is Pepe’s son (Lucette’s helper- she watches the kids, cooks, cleans) and is 3 and basically lives at Lucette’s house. Yanza is his best friend, but she started going to school so now he plays with this other little boy. It was surprisingly fun to sit and talk to them. I couldn’t make out a lot of what they were saying; little boy voices are impossible to understand- especially when their mouths are filled with fruit. But I heard them talking about mpamsavys (witches) and I asked them if there were mpamsavys here in ambohitsilaozana and they assured me that there are. And then they told me something about them riding on the tops of cars. Not really sure where they were going with that, but I have two new devoted friends now. Patrick tells his mom that I am his sipa (girlfriend) and the other little boy, runs up to me yelling my name every time I leave my house.

10/03/10

Last Sunday I rode my bike out to Ambato to visit Tom, because yet another package had come for me. It’s amazing how after 5 months in the Peace Corps all my packages arrived basically at once. Two weeks ago I hadn’t received a single one sent to me and now I’ve gotten 7. While I was there we decided to hike the mountain (hill?) behind his school and do some planning for our bike trip. The view from the top of the hill was pretty awesome I really do live in a beautiful place. Our planning went really well, we’re going to leave on either the 31st or the 2nd (depending on when his students will be done with his exam) and we’ll spend 2 nights at each of the volunteers houses, assuming that they will all be at site, which will give us enough time to bike from one town to the next and then have a day to meet with the officials in town to talk about our plans. We’ll be spending Easter with either Megan or Hannah and then hopefully everyone will meet us when we get to Ambato for our banking weekend. We’re going to take a few extra days in Ambato (well I am-Tom lives there) to meet with the head of the hospitals for our region and organize a big end of the bike ride event there. We are hoping to organize something like a marathon/race in town. There is apparently a route that is a half marathon (I think) distance that they have done a race on before. This way volunteers who didn’t want to do the whole thing on bike could still participate and we could also get malagasy and other expats involved. There will be a big fety also with free AIDS testing. I am really excited. It’s going to be quite the epic trip though because we’re not really sure what the terrain is like between villages, but we know that the last 2 days will be pretty long and hilly. It’s 250 kilometers in total (so my doctor has told me) but Tom is pretty committed to whatever he starts, so I’m sure he’ll motivate me to continue even if I am exhausted. We have a total of 10 or 12 days free (after exams and before his girlfriend comes to visit) and we plan on stretching our trip as long as we’re welcome at our friends houses.

There is a tropical storm right now and we’re getting crazy amounts of rain. I went to weigh babies yesterday in Ambodivaora and I literally had to wade through knee deep water on my normal walking path. This was especially inconvenient because the rain also cooled things off, and so I wore jeans since it would be the first time I could wear them without sweating in the day. Not only did it get hot and I ended up sweating a lot, but I also got them filthy wading through mud and puddles. And then when I finally did show up to help with the baby weighings, no mothers showed up because of the mud and rain. Haha such is life here. I am glad though that I made the contact with the woman who works for Seecaline and she let me know what the schedule is, and I promised I would come back next month.

I am contemplating right now whether I can go to Ambato and use the internet to submit our plans for the trip, but I am afraid that part of the road, called the Kafe, will be closed. When there is a lot of rain the river overtakes the road and apparently the taxi brousses won’t cross it if it gets high enough. I have been ensured by past volunteers that this has never actually happened, but malagasys keep telling me that it is too deep.

10/03/10 later on

I got back from Ambato a little while ago and didn’t get to post this because the weather was too bad and I didn’t have time. I did have to walk across the Kafe and it was kind of ridiculous. I was literally wading through water that came up to my thighs with a woman who decided to be my friend and guide me and there were actually people there who would carry you or your things across. Everyone was gaga be (very astonished) that the vazaha was going to walk across and I had a small crowd watching from the bank.

I got to town around lunch time and Meghan happened to be in town also so we got lunch and talked for a while and then I went to the vegetable market and bought some things and then basically had to head back because of the rain. The Kafe was even worse in the afternoon and part of the road had washed away and they had placed a plank over the missing part. When I finally got to the other side there were no more taxi brousses and I had to take a taxi bicycle all the way home. It wasn’t really worth the trip, but I am glad that I got to see Meghan and eat some ice cream.

I am again without power tonight and sitting in my house with rain coming down so hard that I can’t even hear my music over the top of it.

03/16/10

I’m pretty sure I wrote some more before, but for some reason this file keeps coming up as corrupt on my USB so oh well. I hate rewriting things. Basically I have just been hanging out in my village for a week because the rains got much worse and there was no way for me to get to the town that I work in because all the paths were flooded up to your waist. It was pretty uneventful because of the rain, but I finished Anna Karenina and got halfway through the Frontainhead, which I consider quite an accomplishment since both are 700+ pages.

I became the proud mama of a kitten last night, which I named voanjo, pronounced voanzoo (peanut). I got the name idea from Chris who told us there was a previous volunteer who had a cat named voanjo and everyone has gotten a huge kick out of the fact that I named her peanut. She is adorable, but at 8am this morning she moved out and into Lucette’s house because I realized that I am still very much allergic to cats. I thought my will could overcome the allergy, but the mere 12 hours I spent last night blowing my nose and scratching hives, even though I made the crying kitten sleep on the floor, proved me wrong. As of now she is going to live at Lucette’s house and still be my cat (aka I have to feed her) but I’m thinking that I might try to give her away to another volunteer. It’s too bad, it would have been fun to have a kitten, but I am kind of miserable from the allergies today. She has been crying all morning because no one is holding her and poor Pepe has had to listen to it the whole time.

On Saturday I tried to bribe Yanza into going to school by telling her that if she went every day until Easter break then I would take her to Ambato over break and we could walk around and get ice cream. Yanza is 4 and realized after going to school for the first two weeks that she was doomed to go everyday for a very long time, and has since been using every excuse in the book to get out of going so she can play with Patrick. Her favorite lately has been that there is too much mud. She knows how to work her mom (and everyone for that matter) and she often gets out of going. The bribe worked for a couple days, she even got up and washed on Sunday thinking she had to go to school, but 3 days after the agreement was made, she skipped school today. When I asked her why she wasn’t studying she just ran away. This girl is ridiculous, but I too am under her spell and can’t help but laugh at her even when she’s being a little brat.

Lately her and Patrick (who they call Pa) have been showing up in my house to talk to me. They’re absolutely adorable and will try to have adult like conversations with me, such as asking me what laoka (anything you eat with rice) I am cooking today? They’re moms think it’s equally as funny and are always curious to hear what they tell me. I usually have to admit that I don’t understand most of it because their little kid voices are so squeaky, but I let them talk and I make them chocolate milk or play music for them to dance too and they seem to have agood time.

Rat Pee and New Friends

So I’ve officially survived more than 24 hours at my site! I was thinking that it would be e a good idea to quickly write about my first impressions of the town, and I almost didn’t because I looked at my watch and saw that it was already 8:15pm and didn’t want to be up ‘too late.’ Maybe I’m adjusting a little too well to Malagasy culture? I have to say that following with the description of Ambato, all if the people who told me about my region really didn’t do it justice. The road is completely flat leading to my village, but there are rice paddies on either side of the road, with mountains beyond them. Its beautiful. And even though I am nowhere near the coast, it has a little bit of a tropical feel, I think because it is so green and there are lots of banana trees bordering the rice paddies. Its kind of funny that I was disappointed when people kept telling me that there was a lot of rice in my area; I love rice paddies. I think I was just overlooking that fact because I was overhearing peoples sites who were being placed on the beach near coral reefs.

First impressions of my town: The first thing I remember thinking is that it was really weird that all the men were wearing jellies in the mayors office. I mean c’mon jellies cannot pass for dress shoes. Maybe that was the only thing that stuck out in my mind because during the first couple introductions I was still a little carsick from the drive, and really didn’t have the energy to pay attention to the conversation. My house shares a small yard with my counterpart, Lucette, and her family. They are really great and helpful and act somewhere in between a host family and friends. They gave me a lot of space yesterday and today to set up my house and do what I wanted, but came to get me when they were going to fetch water or walk to the market. They scolded me a little for not telling them I was going to get water in the middle of the day, but it seems very friendly and casual. The little kids spent most of the afternoon in my house, but I didn’t mind because I literally had nothing else to do. I’m the 4th volunteer who has lived in this house, so these kids have basically had PC here for most of their lives. Lucette’s son, Poapa, is probably 10 or so, but I can already tell he will be very helpful. He understands my strange way of speaking Malagasy, and when I talk in circles around what I am actually trying to convey, he then explains what I meant to the other kids staring blankly at me. They also seem to know that Americans need space and they know the boundaries that past volunteers set. They didn’t come into my house until I invited them and they didn’t sit on my bed, and when I got up to get ready to leave, they older 2 herded the rest out.

My house was a little intense when I first got here. I could tell right away that it would eventually feel really cozy and cute, but when I opened the door all I saw was the dirt and spiderwebs and couldn’t get over the smell of bat urine. I went to work immediately at cleaning. I spent most of the afternoon exterminating spiders and cleaning the shelves and ledges of bat poop and dust. It really made me long for the days when my mom would help me clean out my new apartment at school. I really still need a mop and the walls should be washed too, but I wasn’t prepared for this extensive of a cleaning job, as Boda had written in my site report that ‘my counterpart had cleaned up for me’. Not true.

After cleaning I unpacked about half of my things and did some organizing. Lucette told me I am mahay at preparing a house. I don’t know what that means for the past volunteers because I literally still have piles of things lying around. I’m waiting to hang pictures and things on the walls until I am sure that the bats are actually gone. The electrician, who reinstalled my lights, is apparently also a bat exterminator and I got a 2 for 1 deal. I’m pretty sure that getting rid of bats is more complicated than whatever he did though, because he wasn’t gone very long dealing with it. I guess for $1.50 US, I can afford to call him back again though.

I also have a weird indoor toilet/latrine and I haven’t decided whether I think it’s a blessing or a curse yet. I’ve heard from previous volunteers at this site that it can get quite smelly, but luckily they’ve let me in on some of their tricks. It’s not actually a toilet though and you have to throw water down after using it, which is kind of a waste of water. There was a flood a week ago that broke the nearby water pump and until they fix it, I have to go to a well that’s kind of far away. The shower is also just a pipe that drains the water outside. It’s strange. You basically are standing, showering in a bathroom and letting the water drain away, which it only does most of the way.

The doctors in Madagascar went on strike for better wages, so I haven’t actually met anyone at the CSB except for the doctor’s wife and baby daughter, but supposedly they will be there tomorrow. I prepared a short kabari incase I get coerced into giving one, which I am guessing will happen sometime tomorrow.

The people around, for the most part, seem pretty great. I’m getting a lot of people telling me how mahay Ben was (the last pcv) and wondering where he is, but I’ve had a bunch of people tell me that they are going to be my friends and one woman opened up her yard so that I could get cell phone service. There are 3 women who sell rice outside of lucette’s house and they told me that tomorrow I am going to sit with them and talk and that I have to bring my dictionary so that I can be mahay at speaking Malagasy soon. They seemed really funny and nice.

I only had one moment today when I felt a little overwhelmed by the fact that I didn’t have anything to do because the CSB was closed and I didn’t know anyone, the kids were at school, and I had to wait at the house for the carpenter, but I just cleaned a little more and jammed to some music (thank god for my speakers, living in silence would suck). I think cooking is going to become a large part of my day, too. For my first breakfast alone I cooked oatmeal with passionfruit in it and made tea. I was pretty proud of myself, and I even had a TIME magazine from a couple weeks ago to read while I ate.

2/6/10 — Tamana aho.

One of the first things that people ask me after they find out that I am not French and that I am actually living here is, ‘tamana ianao?’ Which means ‘are you at home and settled here?’ After spending the last 5 days in my town I really am starting to feel Tamana. Not in the permanent way that I will be once I am mahay at speaking Malagasy and have made some good friends, but I really like it here.

My house is really starting to feel like a home; I’ve been taking on one project a day. I now have a cork board that’s covered by one of my pagnes from Niger with all of my pictures and cards that I’ve received from family and friends. It kind of spills off the corkboard and I hung up a picture that my host siblings in Niger colored, my world map and some magazine photos. Today I bought some of this thick plastic material and nailed it to my tables so that I can easily clean up after meal prep. It has a tile print on it, so I think that might be what it actually is for. With most of the other additions to my house, Lucette has looked at them puzzled and then informs me of what they are supposed to be used for. Such as the woven baskets that are not holding most of my things on shelves—they actually are for storing rice and food to go to and from the market. She approved of my table top though, and actually told me how gaga she is with my abilities to mikarakara my house (how surprised she is at my ability to prepare a house—some words are just better in Malagasy).

The pump got fixed in our town too! Wahoo! I only had to fetch water from the well for 4 days. Now Lucette has a pump in her house that I am allowed to use, and I can wash my dishes in her sink. This may sound simple, but it completely changes the amount of time it takes me to go through the process of cooking and cleaning up from a meal. Having running water to wash dishes with makes me much more willing to cook with more than one pan, which will do wonders for the variety of my diet. I still try to avoid cooking in the evening, because you’re not really supposed to go outside after dark (even though I can hear the kids outside my door as I’m typing this) and I don’t like dumping food water down my drain in my toilet. Today I managed to have only 1 dish, a knife and a fork. And I had fruit salad, peanuts (that I roasted myself) and a cucumber, tomato and laughing cow cheese sandwich. I was pretty proud of myself.

I guess the important thing to mention about the pump being fixed is that while the convenience of it is amazing, it is some of the dirtiest water I have ever seen come out of a faucet. The water coming out of the hole in the ground was loads cleaner. My buckets of it are murky and I was afraid to use it for anything that involves cooking or cleaning at first, but so far so good. Showering with it probably isn’t really doing me much good. It’s kind of like taking a bath in a puddle. It apparently gets bad like this when there’s a lot of rain, so im hoping that it will clear up after the cyclone passes and the pipes recover from the last flood.

Yesterday I sat outside for a couple hours with the 3 women who sell rice, and the man with the rice grinder machine; the four people in my village that proclaimed themselves my friends. They got me a chair and they were teaching me new words and I would tell them how to say it in English. Every 15 minutes or so we would get a new crowd of people watching us, and at one point a young guy said something that must have been along the lines of ‘she doesn’t know how to speak malagasy’. The women all jumped on him and started yelling at him about how I need to practice and that’s why I was sitting there having a conversation and told him that he needed to leave. I mean they thoroughly embarrassed this guy. And the young guys in town can be really obnoxious. It was pretty awesome. I mean it wouldn’t have upset me anyways, I know I can’t speak Malagasy. Sometimes I finish trying to express a thought and realize that I don’t even understand what I just said, but it was great that they were already sticking up for me. I think I’m going to really like them.

Today, I went into Ambato with Lucette to go to the market. I wasn’t expecting to go to Ambato on market days every week, but now I think I might be going pretty often. It takes less than 30minutes on a taxi brousse to get there, and there really isn’t much at my market in town. I actually ran into a bunch of people from my village while I was shopping. It was fun though, Tom came down and shopped with us and Lucette wouldn’t let anyone rip us off. At one point someone tried to charge us 100 ariary too much for a bunch of green beans and she made us walk away and wouldn’t let us buy from the lady (we’re literally talking about pennies difference). She is also a huge gossip and I went with her on all her social visits to family and friends. Her husband apparently has a new sipa (boyfriend/girlfriend) in town and she was asking everyone about her. She’s really open about all of it, even though I don’t understand everything she tells me. She’s pretty great so far, and we both got invited back to Ambato for a valentine’s day fety next week by her younger sister. Not sure what that will entail, but I’m sure it will be hilarious.

For the last couple days where ever I go, I have had mothers bringing their babies and toddlers up to me. It’s absolutely hilarious. You can tell that they have never seen a white person before and they generally just stare at me completely confused. Some also cry and most of them toddle away behind their mothers if I try to come closer. At the CSB I picked up a baby because he was crying while his mother was meeting with the sage femme. He couldn’t decide whether he was interested in or terrified of me, and it apparently tired him trying to decide because after 5 minutes of looking at me wide-eyed and skeptical he fell asleep on my shoulder. The whole office was talking about it for the rest of the day.

I really have nothing but positive things to say about my life here so far. I mean the peace corps is pretty awesome. I go to work at the CSB in the morning (but I only have to work there 3 days a week if I want to do other things) and then I have the rest of the day to do whatever I want. And right now it’s basically my job to hang out with people, learn the language and make friends. I mean what an awesome job. My mom was asking me on the phone yesterday if I’ve been getting bored and I honestly don’t have the time to. Everyone takes a 2 hour lunch and then by the time I clean up, talk with some people and maybe do one other thing, it’s about to get dark and I go home and start my nighttime chores and cooking. Before I go to bed I try to actually read my book (currently The Grapes of Wrath) but I have been so exhausted every night that I can only get through a couple pages before falling asleep, and its not even 9pm. In some ways, I have nothing but time on my hands for the next 2 years, but in others ways I feel like I wish I had more time in the day to read, study Malagasy, ect. When I was telling my parents about all of this they told me that it sounded like I was living the life of a retiree. In some ways it kind of is, but what a great way to enter the working world.

2/14/10

So now that I’m 2 weeks into being at site, I have to say I feel really comfortable. I spend a lot of time talking to people and when I was with 2 other volunteers yesterday, I realized while telling them some of the gossip that I have gotten from the ladies in my town, that I really am understanding quite a bit. It’s sometimes frustrating because I can’t say exactly what I want to say to people, and I have to slowly talk in circles around my point, but people usually eventually understand.

At the CSB (clinic) last week, the Doctor tricked me into giving my first couple fanentanas (Health sensibilizations). The doctor is young and seems pretty mazoto (has a lot of effort) and is really nice to the patients. He’s always saingysaingy (joking) with them and takes time to talk to the women and children. He usually starts the talks by calling attention to the fact that he has a new vazaha working here and calling them out on the fact that they’re afraid of vazaha since none of them have entered the health room where I sit and study until the doctor and sage femme get there. The first day after talking about who I am and what I will be doing here, he slyly asked me to tell the women why there are only 2 children in my family, and why that’s normal in the United States. It was his way of leading me into talking about family planning and the benefits of only having a few children and spacing births. After I finish talking, he rephrases it in a way that makes sense to them. They generally just ask me random questions about myself and about American culture afterwards and the doctor jokes with them about it. They were asking me if I get paid a salary and I told them that peace corps gives me money for food, but that I am working for free. The doctor adds that peace corps gives me a house, a bike, food, money, a boyfriend… but he says it really quick so that I won’t notice and I called him out on it and everyone thought it was hilarious. The women who have come to the clinic have started stopping me and talking to me when they see me in town and it’s a really cool way to get to start knowing the women in town.

Last week I also met some stagieres (not sure what exactly that title refers to) who are working at CALA the agricultural research center in my town. I ran into 2 of the girls on the street and they invited me back to their house where I also met their friend Alda. They are all in their young 20’s and students at the university in Tana. They’re here working on some research for 6 months. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with insects and tomatoes, but I can’t be sure. I sat and had sweet potatoes with them and then they walked me back to my house. It was the first time that I felt like there was going to be someone in this town that I would consider to be a close friend. I really like some of the women, and Lucette is amazing, but these are people who I feel like I can relate to on a different level. I went home feeling like a little kid excited about meeting a new friend at school and since they’re from out of town they seem equally excited. I went walking with them a little the other day again, but I’m sure ill be spending a lot more time with them soon.

It’s kind of funny because everyone in my town is a little bit gaga (surprised) everytime I show up somewhere alone or am walking by myself. I learned the word for solitary (manginagina) very quickly and after I got a bunch of comments about it I started noticing the people, especially women, hardly ever do anything alone. Even to walk down the street they have a friend. I think it’s definitely a cultural thing rather than safety aspect, but I am blowing their mind. I don’t like being on someone else’s schedule and I would rather walk, run, bike or go into town by myself so that I can be on my own schedule. I think that was one of the parts of training that was really wearing on me. I had to follow their schedule all the time and be accommodating to what 35 other people wanted or needed to do. It’s so nice to be on my own. I feel like I’ll end up riding my bike into Ambato most of the time for similar reasons; even though it takes about an hour to get there, it’s nice to not be waiting for a taxi brousse. I can go when I want and when I’m ready to come home I can get on my bike and head home. I do miss my friends from training, but I think I am a much happier person now that I am finally at site.

Two of the other volunteers in my region came to my house for lunch yesterday and then we all rode our bikes into Ambato for the night. It was really nice to hang out, have a beer and talk about all the funny situations that we’ve gotten into in the last 2 weeks. We went out dancing at Ibiza again and then after only 6 hours of sleep I got back on my bike and came back here. It’s been a nice relaxing day, but I am exhausted so that’s all for now, I should have some more interesting posts soon.

Oh and I have a new postal address, since my town has a post office. It is:

Nicole Keusch

BP 29

Station alaotra 503

Madagascar

East Africa

Keep writing me letters! I love them and love hearing about everyone’s life back in the states.

1/31/10

Ambatondrazaka

So I’ve been hanging out in Ambatondrazaka for the last few days waiting to go to my site and it’s a really awesome town. I am really excited that I get to come in here for a few days every month and hang out.

I was feeling a little bit disappointed by my site placement for a variety of reasons, but especially because it was lacking in a few of the things I specifically requested (Such as I had really wanted to work with a midwife, and I am the only health volunteer without a midwife at my site) and every time I tried to get some information about the area, all anyone would ever tell me is that it was flat and there was a lot of rice there. Which doesn’t necessarily sound bad, but when you live in Madagascar and everyone is getting placed in the rainforest in national parks with lemurs, or on the coast in a tropical paradise, you start to feel a little bit gypped. They were completely underselling the area though. The drive out here was beautiful and it’s not even flat. The rice paddies make the area green and beautiful and there are mountains in the background. Ambato is this cute, clean city built on the sides of a couple hills. The people are so nice and are very familiar with Peace Corps, and different people all over town have been stopping us and asking us if we’re volunteers and telling us about the previous volunteers that have worked in the area. The town isn’t that big, but in the words of Chris, a volunteer who reinstated after being evacuated last march, “it’s a small town that wants to be a big city”. The only other banking town I have seen so far is Moramanga, which is about 5 hours south of us, and it was dirty, and basically just a transit town for miners and truck drivers. We definitely felt very fortunate after seeing Ambato.

We got per diem to stay at a hotel while they install us to our villages and our hotel is really nice, overlooks the whole city, and even has a recently filled pool. And it’s only costing us $15 USD a night to stay here. I’m actually sitting on the veranda writing this and it’s pretty wonderful.

We got ourselves invited to a new years fety (celebration/party) that the staff at Tom’s school was having on our second day here. Tom kind of had to go no matter what because he is the new English teacher at the school and it was a good opportunity for him to be introduced to everyone, and a few of us decided to tag along with him. Tom dressed up, since its customary for a newcomer to give a kabari (speech) to introduce themselves, but the rest of us just wore whatever we had on while we were shopping in the morning (it’s really hot here by the way, and we basically sweat all day- I can’t believe the change from the training site to here). When we arrived, everyone was dressed in their best outfits. They had killed a cow and had place settings set for all of the couple hundred people that were there. There were a whole bunch of Kabaris given by the lehibes (‘bigs’- such as the director of the school, of the school district, ect.) and then we ate a lot of beef, before having even more speeches, one of which was given by Tom. We were told to get there at 11am and by the time we ate it was almost 2pm. Next they announced each department of teachers one by one and when they had the whole department up in front of everyone, the group would have to dance for a song in the front of the hall. We thought it was hilarious for the first couple rounds, but it went on for about 35 minutes. And then they called the English teachers, and decided that all of the Peace Corps volunteers should come to the front. We had to awkwardly dance in front of all these people, completely underdressed, to weird Malagasy music. I’m kind of glad no one was there to capture the moment with a camera, but there was a Malagasy man videotaping the whole thing and I’m sure it will reappear at some point in my two years here.

Ambato is also home to the best nightclub in the region, called Ibiza. We checked it out on Friday night and it was hilarious. When we walked up, all the lehibes from the fety we were at, were still drinking and had moved the party to the club. Tom’s boss, the director of his school, bought us all beers and reintroduced us to some of the other directors. The ‘club’ had a circular room for dancing that all the other sitting rooms were attached to, but its real draw were the laser lights and fog machine. It was about 95% men and many of them simply danced facing the large mirror, watching themselves. There are a bunch of young French people working for NGOs in the city and we met a group of them that night, and all danced together. It was surprisingly fun/hilarious and we didn’t go home until 1:30am, which is the latest I have stayed out since joining the peace corps, and the party was still raging when we left. I can foresee many crazy nights at Ibiza after a long month at site in our future.

The first day we did courtesy visits to all the authorities in the town, since there are 8 of us who will be coming here once a month. During our visit to the chef de district (sort of like the mayor) a woman was just sitting in the room videotaping us while we listened to the chef talk. At the end she explained that she was the communications person for the region and wanted to interview us in Malagasy. 4 of us gave her interviews, which may or may not have made sense in Malagasy. Generally I would think that it wouldn’t really matter because no one watches stuff like that, but we had a lot of press at our swearing in, in Tana and when we walked into a small bar on the first night here in Ambato the lady who owned it started singing the song our stage sang during swearing in, because she had seen us on TV. So who knows there may now be really awful footage of me cycling around the region.

Tonight we cooked food at Tom’s house since most things are closed on Sundays and we were really proud of ourselves. We bought things at the market and had pasta with peppers, tomatoes, and onions and crushed peanuts. We even roasted and pounded the peanuts ourselves. We also made garlic bread (without an oven) and had fruit salad for dessert. It was delicious, and also the first real meal that hasn’t included rice that I have had in a very long time.

I haven’t seen my own village yet, but I think I’m going to really like it in this region. This is a really fun town and the group of volunteers clustered here are really great. I’m scheduled to move into my house on Tuesday. One volunteer is installed to their site each day, so that the Peace Corps staff sent to your region can introduce you to your village and ensure that your house is ready and safe and help you set up essential items. So far no installations have gone as planned and no one actually got left at their site until yesterday night, but we’re getting back on schedule and hopefully everything at my site will go smoothly since they’ve had volunteers in the past.

I’ve been getting cards and letters from people more recently and I love it. I’m fashioning a corkboard-like display from a mat that I’m going to hang on my wall and I am going to put them all up with the pictures and things that I have to make my little house feel more homey. Thank you all for the continued support. I will likely need it more, as I will actually be a real volunteer finally, and living on my own in a town where no one likely speaks English. But I should also be in better contact, since I will have internet once a month, and lots of time on my hands after it gets dark at 630pm to write blogs, letters and emails that I can send off when I come into Ambato. I miss you all and hope all is well back in the states.

1/23/10

Vita Training! I took my language proficiency test yesterday morning and we got the results back today and had our interview with the training manager. I still have to swear in on Tuesday, but I am essentially a volunteer at this point! Thank god! It’s been a looong road. The last 3 weeks with the host family went extremely fast, mostly because after class, there just wasn’t very much time before I went to bed at 9pm (Don’t judge- I got up at 5:45am and that was sleeping in).

The village, Lohomby, was beautiful. It was about 11k from the training site, but the road was horrible (and only got worse after the straight week of rain during the cyclone) and it would take us about 35 minutes to drive to and from Mantasoa. My house was on the top of a hill (tendrombohita) and overlooked a valley that had rice paddies and a river going through it with a road leading to the next set of hills on the other side. The house was three stories (the first floor was like a barn) and had to verandas overlooking the valley. I lived in a room on the second floor and the family all slept in the big room upstairs and then the kitchen and table was is the next room. They cook with wood fires, so the ceiling was charred black and there is always a lot of smoke, but it at least was on the top floor and had a couple windows. The latrine and shower room (and by shower I mean bucket bath) was right on the side of the hill also overlooking the valley and I always thought it was kind of funny to have a shower with a view.

My host family was amazing. I had 4 younger siblings. Two older boys 14 and 12, but both of them were too shy to really talk to me. The oldest one literally didn’t say more than hello to me until just this past week. They were both very nice and polite though. Then there was Fi, my 8 year old sister. In the beginning she was really shy, but her mom sent her to do all my chores with me and I just kept talking to her and in the end she was my favorite person in the family. Whenever I left the door to my room open she would come in and sit next to me and watch me study or bring her books down with me. Whenever I had a Kabari (speech) to give on a health topic, she would look it up in her health/lifeskills book and learn about it with me. We also were sent to sell the milk each day after I got home from class which involved us walking to the next fokotany (village) and going to the epicierie, where we had family. The walk took like 45 minutes round trip and she would quiz me on the names of plants, crops and animals along the way.

Unfortunately, whenever Fi came with me to do something, Hery, also wanted to come. Hery is 4 years old, and is in every sense the baby of the family. I thought he was cute for about 2 days, but that changed quickly after that. He basically is like any other 4 year old in the world, but it’s hard enough to understand a whining 4 year old in English, let alone Malagasy. I think by the end of my stay he didn’t really like me that much because I wouldn’t even look at him when he was whining or crying. I mean I literally sat through an entire breakfast one morning where he had not eaten anything and he cried throughout the whole thing. Finally as we were finishing his mom told me why he was crying, he had apparently lost the bracelet that I had given him and wanted me to give him another. These are the beaded bracelets that I got in Niger, and I didn’t want to give one to him in the first place, but when my host mom asked me to, I did. I asked him what he did with his and when he said he lost it, I said, I’m sorry but you can’t have another, I already gave you one. I think this may have been the first time that he didn’t get what he wanted while I was there and he was not happy, but I stood my ground and his mom gave him a piece of candy instead. They use the expression tabataba to talk about him, which means noisy in his case, but can also be used to describe political riots. I got a kick out of that.

My family was pretty well off by Malagasy standards. My mom had a small store on the first level of our house and would sell things to people in our village (as well as lots of chocolate cookies to all the trainees) and my dad was a farmer. There were two men who worked for my dad (at least I think they did since they were never introduced to me as family, but they were always around during the day) and they also raised lots of animals. They had three cows that they milk and one had a baby. I think milk is decently expensive, and that must have been a pretty good income for them. My mom taught me how to do all the chores that PC told them we needed to learn, like washing clothes in the river and cooking over kitay (wood fire), but I definitely saw her give away the family’s laundry to a washing lady the day after I did it in the river.

My host mom was definitely the one who learned how to speak to me so that I would understand. When I got there, we had no experience with understanding how Malagasy speak, since we learned everything in the active tense and all of our teacher would use that tense with us. So even though I knew a lot of the vocab for daily activities, I had no idea what my mom was telling me to do since she would be speaking in the passive tense (in which the beginning and end of the verb change slightly) and I wouldn’t recognize the word. The first few days basically consisted of her telling me something, me looking blankly at her and then her telling me to follow Fi and I would find out, Oh I’m supposed to shower right now, ok. After every meal we would sit and miresaka (have a conversation) and by the end we were talking about American culture vs. Malagasy and what the cultural difference are at weddings, funerals and when a family member was sick. I also hilariously tried to explain to her one night why I had to leave Niger. Since I didn’t know the vocab surrounding terrorist kidnappings, I told her that there were really bad people, who take foreigners. I’m just hoping the idea translated.

My host dad was usually working in the fields all day so I wouldn’t see him very much, but after dinner he would come and sit next to my host mom and listen to our conversation. He was really shy, but would sometimes ask my host mom to ask me something. It was really funny.

A lot happened in the last three weeks, but sitting here back at the training site it’s kind of hard to think of things. There were 9 of us living in my village (all of the health volunteers) and it was endlessly entertaining to listen to the gossip about each other that our families discussed during dinner. I mean literally everything we did was known by dinnertime by each family. One day Aaron got lost on his walk home and the families were laughing about it at dinner for days. They even knew if someone bought food at a little store and would ask if we were getting enough to eat. One day I left class to go home and shut my window because it was raining. There was no one outside (because it was raining) and no one was at my house, and on the way I slipped on some mud and just got my hand and feet muddy, I went inside closed the window, washed my hands and returned to class without seeing anyone. That night when I got home the first thing my mom and sister asked me about was if I was ok from my fall. I couldn’t believe it.

Meals in general were pretty funny with the host families. Malagasy literally eat rice three times a day and anything else is called Laoka (literally something you eat with rice). Peace Corps taught the families the way to wash and cook our food so that we wouldn’t get sick and so we would be getting protein and vegetables. They also included some recipes and ideas for Americanish food, but they didn’t really explain how we would eat it. One day I had rice and for the laoka I had mashed potatoes, French fries and hashbrowns. It was good, but hilarious and I was slightly overloaded on carbs. My mom would also make pasta that had vegetables and egg in it, and we would also eat that on top of rice. It was hilarious.

The Malagasy have all kinds of Fady (taboos) that their culture is based on, one of the ones that everyone follows is that you aren’t allowed to go outside after dark. It didn’t apply to us at the training site, but once we were in the host families they literally lock up the house at dark and you don’t leave again. I kind of realized at the end that I had never even seen if there was a pretty sunset because I was always inside by that time. If you have to go to the bathroom they have a bucket called the Po (basically like a chamber pot) that you use. It’s kind of hilarious. They also believe in mpamsavys (witches) and one night when they were setting up for a wedding someone pooped in Debra’s shower (most likely a drunk man who thought it would be funny) but her family was convinced that it was the mpamsavy. Either way it was disgusting but hilarious.

We had to give a final Kabari last Tuesday on a health topic and all of the training staff, the LCFs, Tovo (our assistant APCD) and all of our host families were invited to come listen to them. I gave mine on the 3 food groups and nutritious foods. I had been talking about doing that with my family and my host mom was so proud that she had already learned about it from the Peace Corps and for the whole last week she would point out which food groups each portion of our meal was from. The idea is that you need one carb, one protein and one fruit or vegetable with each meal. When I asked for a volunteer to give an example of a well rounded meal, she stood up and shared what she gives me for breakfast often, Mofo, sy Ronono ary akondro (Bread with milk and a banana). It was really cute. We all had a lot of help from the Language trainers with our kabari’s and we were reading them from note cards, but everyones presentations were really interactive and creative and the families love them. We were all a little terrified for the question and answer session at the end of each one, but it was really cool because our families asked really good questions and I felt like they learned some good ideas from us. They also thought we were really mahay (smart) afterwards and they were telling everyone else in the community what our presentations were about and how we were efa mahay (already know)Malagasy. It was a really cool way to end our time in the community.

We had a ‘thank you community’ party on Friday afternoon and all the families were invited to the training site and we had speeches and then music and food. It was kind of a big deal for the families and you could tell they were really excited. The peace corps cars even went to each village and picked them up (which was especially a big deal since there were around 300 people here). That night we had a big celebration party and all the LCF (language trainers) and staff and trainees drank and danced all night. It was really fun. We’d go back and forth between American and Malagasy music and I was pretty impressed with the LCFs they were up dancing with us until after 1am.

Well I can’t really think of much else to write about right now but I’m hopefully going to post some pictures with this (Check my facebook if they’re not here) and ill include commentary with them.

/2/10

Happy New Year! So I unexpectedly am going to get email access this wed when we go to Tana to get our banks set up, so I decided to write a quick update about everything that happened in the last week. Andasibe was amazing. We got there in the afternoon on Sat and after setting up our campsite the guides took us on a hike. Peace Corps arranged it with the government so that we could go to the park and have 3 guides take us on a hike in the evening and then again the following morning all for free. It’s really awesome that PC has such a great relationship with the government here, and that they arranged for us to do that! The guides warned us that hiking in the late afternoon is not really a good time to see lemurs since they are almost all asleep at that time, but we enthusiastically went anyways—that’s what 6 weeks of confinement to training sites will do to you! We saw a boa constrictor in the first few minutes of the hike, and then as we got further into the forest we started to hear the Indri’s (the largest species of lemur) territorial call. Our guide left us on the trail to try to track them down and while he was gone we spotted 3 of them just off the trail up in the trees. We spent the next 30 minutes watching them jump from tree to tree and look down at us curiously. They were so cool. On the way back to the start of the trail we also saw a bamboo, mouse lemur. I got a bunch of pictures of the Indri’s but the mouse lemur was much more timid and it managed to get away before I could focus on him. My new camera is amazing, thank you again mom and dad

After the hike Katie and I decided to go on a walk down the main road, mostly to get away from the huge group for a minute. Organizing 40 people for transport, meals, and hiking is a little much and I was quickly realizing again why I hate traveling in groups. While we were walking we found a little tiny chameleon crossing the road. A couple little old Malagasy men came over to see what we were doing and they told us that it was the smallest species of chameleon. I had actually read a lot about it in the book about Madagascar I was reading (The Eighth Continent) and how for some reason these little guys had evolved really well here and there are a lot of them all over the island, but they're difficult to find—he was only about the size of my thumbnail. We started walking back to the site to show everyone the chameleon and our two friends joined us, as well as another man on a bike who stopped to tell us we couldn’t keep the chameleon and a woman who spoke a little English and joined the conversation. I explained in Malagasy “I want see my friend”-- awesome Malagasy skills right there—and the woman got excited, called me mahy (smart/well done—yeah right!) and immediately started talking to us about Peace Corps. We talked with them the whole way back to the campsite about where we will be living, what sector we’re with, and told them our friend sara would be living near the park. It was the first time I had really gotten to talk to someone outside of Mantasoa and we were both really proud of ourselves.

After going to dinner in the townish area near the park, we came back to the site and listened to a presentation from Sean and then went to get ready for bed. To make things easy when we arrived, I volunteered with some friends to take the large group tent, rather than one of the 2 person tents we had brought from PC. Upon returning to the tent at night we realized, that not only was our tent situated on a solid concrete slab, but it also did not close up and had been infiltrated by both spiders and cockroaches that were hiding under our things. The idea of sleeping on the ground with cockroaches crawling all over me kind of terrified me, and I was seriously considering asking Tondi if I could sleep in the Land Rover until Katie told me to ‘suck it up,’ which seriously caused the first moment of tension in our wonderful friendship, until I realized she was right and tried to get over it. This was easier said that done and we all almost peed our pants laughing when, ironically, Katie thought that the string from her hat was a cockroach crawling on her face and proceeded to throw both her hat and her headlamp clear across the tent. Chantal dealt with the cockroaches by completely zipping herself up in her sleeping bag, with only a little hole to look out. After much laughter, we decided that it was way to warm to sleep zipped up in our bags and realized that the best alternative would be to just huddle together at the center of the tent, put on our ipods, and turn off our lights so we wouldn’t think about it. There were a few sarcastic ‘no one said the Peace corps was going to be easy’ comments,’ and even though it was not one of my best nights of sleep, we all survived. We literally cannot talk about the cockroach tent without bursting into laughter about our ridiculousness, but cockroaches are scary, and you can’t judge us until you’ve had to sleep on the ground with them.

We were woken up at about 430 in the morning by hundreds of lemur calls, and were all a little disappointed, one that we were awake at 430 and two, that we weren’t going on our hike until 8 or 9. I cannot wait to go back and go on an early morning hike. We went to breakfast, where they had prepared egg sandwiches and coffee for us. A great surprise after the fear-factor like akoho soupe (chicken soup) and heaping plate of plain rice, from the day before, which also brought back fond memories of the sandwich kwai man in Niger. After breakfast we set out with our guides on basically the same trail as the day before. We were having a difficult time finding lemurs in the beginning, but our amazing guide pulled through and we ended up chasing 2 sikafo lemurs down the side of a hill through the think of the rainforest for a good 30 minutes. At the bottom, they came down to the forest floor and were jumping back and forth on a log. Our guide told us that they were just playing with us. It was so cool. After making our way back to a trail, we ran into Matsubara (one of our language trainers) and he told us that there were more lemurs up the hill. We sprinted after him and at the top we found a mother and 5 month old baby sikafo lemur. I got some amazing pictures of them which I hopefully will be able to post with this blog. We saw some more Indri lemurs and our guide just walked around for a while longer with us, letting us practice our Malagasy (often with rigobert stepping in to help us when we made no sense).

On the way back to Mantasoa, we got to stop for a while in Moramanga again which is one of the banking towns for a bunch of people. It was nice for them to get to see what it was like, and for me since I’ll probably be visiting friends there sometimes. We were absolutely exhausted and starving and when we sat down at a local restaurant, we could not manage to say anything comprehensible in Malagasy. After several minutes of trying to ask what they were serving we decided to just take the approach of asking if they had chicken. We asked akondro instead of akoho, so after 5 minutes of the waiter looking at us like we were crazy vaza, he told us ‘yes we have bananas here.’ Kelly and I gave up completely and just got a coke and then bought a baguette and laughing cow cheese next door after our friends finished eating.

The rest of the week was just a typical week of training until Wed. when we had our practice language proficiency test, since we were half way done with training. That night we had a talent show and dance party with the training staff, since they had new years eve--Sunday off for holiday, but wanted to celebrate with us too. The talent show was hilarious, and hopefully ill be able to post some of it at some point, since I got a lot of it on video. We had our own New Years Eve party on Thursday night, which was also a lot of fun. We even had a ball to drop at midnight courteous of Tom, who rigged his exercise ball up over one of the support beams in the tranobe. We had planned on a bonfire, but the rain prevented it so we had smores inside at the fireplace. It was a really good time, and I think it’s definitely the latest I’ve stayed up since being in Peace Corps. Luckily they gave us most of new years day to recover.

Tomorrow we have to say goodbye to Tondi and Suleymon, who are heading back to Niger (its going to be a really sad goodbye) and then we move in with our host families. I am really excited to get off the training site and into the homestays. I know my language will improve a ton, and it will be nice to actually feel like we are part of the village life here. It will be weird though too, since my closest friends here are all in a village that is 15kilometers away from me. So I will go from seeing them everyday and sharing a room with them to only seeing them once a week. We all are ready to be away from the group, but I think it will be kind of a shock to be alone. I am ready for my service to start though asap. This has been a long 11 weeks of training. Thank god the end is in sight

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12/15/09

So before I get into life in Madagascar, I’m going to say a few things about how Mefloquine is slowly ruining my ability to sleep. After 2 weeks, if you didn’t have certain medical restrictions, Peace Corps switches you to an anti-malarial called Mefloquine (which I will refer to as Mef from this point on). It only has to be taken once a week, rather than every day like the other two options. It is known to give people crazy dreams and I didn’t think that it would affect me because I have never reacted to any of the different anti-malarials that I have taken in the past. Not true. For the last 2 months I have had dreams that range from extremely weird to terrifying. The first really terrifying dream I had involved a very realistic kidnapping of my younger brother, complete with ransom notes and phone calls from the kidnapper. As you all should know, I do not have a younger brother. In my dream I did and it was completely believable and realistic and I woke up like sweating. Other dreams involve people that I haven’t seen in years or people that I’ve never really known. Last night, I had a repeat occurrence of a dream that there were spiders crawling on me inside my mosquito net. It’s so realistic that it wakes me up from a dead sleep and then I sit awake for an hour feeling like there are actually spiders crawling on me. Last time I actually got my flashlight out and checked my bed for bugs because I couldn’t shake the feeling. When I finally did go back to sleep I had a dream that there was a flood and I was trying to help rescue one of my friends things from the overflowing river. My roommates, Katie and Sara, get to hear about my crazy dreams every morning, and moral of the story is I am getting pretty bitter about the fact that I have Mef dreams every night and therefore I am going to try to switch medicines soon.

12/20/09

I want to start by just saying that Madagascar is absolutely amazing. I don’t know if it’s partially just because of the comparison to Niger, but I literally have to stop and talk about how beautiful it is every time I walk down the mountain into town. There is such an extreme difference. It’s lush and green everywhere here and there are terraced rice paddies that remind me a lot of Vietnam. The houses are these cute brick houses that are painted bright colors and overlook the rice fields and they all have beautiful flower gardens with lots of hydrangeas and blossoming trees and vines. Our training center is located on a huge lake in a small town called Mantasoa. The lake is surrounded by forested hills. We have canoes that we can take out on it, and the other day I went out with a couple friends for about an hour and a half and every time we thought it was about to end it would just open up again around the corner. The training site is gorgeous, we’re pretty convinced that it was made to be a resort/hostel at one time. It’s located on a peninsula so almost all of the buildings overlook the lake. The cafeteria has a cabin-feel to it and the wall facing the lake is all windows, so the view is beautiful. We live in dorms and I share a room with Katie and Sara. They also keep bikes at the training site for us to use. Saturdays and Sundays usually consist of going on a bike ride through the mountains and canoe trips, followed by a cold Three Horse Beer (we’re all still adjusting to a culture where showing our knees and drinking a beer is acceptable). It often feels like Peace Corps is a glorified summer camp for twenty-somethings, but mostly I can’t believe how lucky I’ve gotten in life.

They shortened the length of training for us, since we already completed 6 weeks of PC training in Niger and our program will only be 6 weeks here. They also aren’t placing us in host families until after the holidays, because they weren’t prepared for us to come and they couldn’t find families quick enough that would be willing to take us in for Christmas and new years. They have been trying really hard to make the transition smooth for us, including bringing out training manager, Tondi, and the health APCD, Soulyman, from Niger. Tondi has this amazing laugh; it’s deep and jolly and you can literally hear it across the training site. It’s incredibly comforting to hear his laugh during the day. He’s been leaving for the weekends to go to Tana with the rest of the staff and I don’t realize how comforted I actually am by his presence until he returns on Monday mornings. I know how hard it is for him to be here with us and be away from his family during the holidays, and I want him to be able to return to them soon, but I am very grateful for the support he is giving us. The staff also is trying to make Christmas special for us and so they are arranging for us to go to the nearby rainforest National Park, D’andasibe-mantadia to camp for a night the day after Christmas. In an old TIME article I just read from April 13th, 2009 they describe it as, "There are at least 8 million unique species of life on the planet, if not far more, and you could be forgiven for believing that all of them can be found in Andasibe. Walking through this rainforest in Madagascar is like stepping into the library of life." (I don’t know how accessible old TIMES articles are back in the world of technology, but if you can find it it’s worth reading) The park is the only one in the country (and the world) that has the Indri, the giant lemur. The book I’m reading says they are the size of a 4 year old child and have a very unique call and that they don’t survive in captivity, so this is literally the only place you can see them. Tondi went with our training manager here, Robert, to set it up last week and he told us that the drive into the park was the most beautiful place he has ever seen. The guides will be taking us on a night hike, and all the staff said we’ll see loads of lemurs and interesting animals. I cannot wait.

Tomorrow afternoon we get our site placements from our APCDs (the director for our sectors- health, Small enterprise development, education or environment) and I’ll know where I will be living for the next two years, as well as get an idea of what my job will be. The 9 health volunteers will be placed either on the east coast, on a huge lake in the north or in the highlands outside of Tana. So basically I am guaranteed to being living in the mountains, on a lake, or in a coastal town. Rough, I know. I am really ready to be down with training, I mean I love hanging out with the people in my stage and learning the language and culture, but I would much rather just move into my village and get my service started. The health sector work here sounds really great too. We will all have a clinic in our town that we’re required to work a 9-5 at, at least 3 days a week. These will likely be the days that the clinic does vaccinations and baby weighing, and our job will be to assist the doctor in educating the patients and providing health sensibilizations (such as the importance of hand washing or how to make an oral rehydration solution). The rest of the week we can either continue to work at the clinic or take on our own projects, such as doing health education in the school, gardening, or informal health education sessions with community members. Buda, my APCD, seems really great to work with, and she is encouraging us to develop projects based on our interests and also said that she would sign off on Peace Corps paying for us to have a French tutor, after we master Malagasy, so we can work more efficiently with the doctors and NGOs. In general, Peace Corps Madagascar has a really high rate of volunteers extending their service for a third year and before the coup last year I heard there was around 60 former volunteers living and working in the country still. Buda said that they had one health volunteer extend 4 times, which is the Peace Corps maximum, and is now working for a health NGO in country. I think the general consensus from my good friends in my stage is, ‘why would I leave paradise if they’ll let me stay.’ So sorry everyone back home but there is a good possibility that I might be gone longer than two years.

Most of my close friends from my stage are all environment volunteers and will likely be placed in the National parks around the country, so we are already talking about the ways that we can collaborate with each other and get to see the country while ‘working.’ The country has extremely different regions and the island is the size of California and Oregon, so there is a lot to see from the coast where they grow vanilla, to the desert in the south, and the rainforests in the north. We get two days a month of vacation leave, but if you develop a project with another volunteer you can travel without using the vacation days, and by staying with volunteers you really don’t have to spend any money. So I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to see a lot of the country through ‘work’ and still be making my $10 a day. We’ve also been talking about arranging a bike trip for AIDS awareness where we’ll go cross country and do activities in a different village every day. It’s a rough life I have ahead of me, I know.

I’m really regretting my decision to not bring my running shoes to Niger (and by default to Madagascar) and now I really wish I also had a good pair of hiking boots, a tent and some more warm clothes. I’m planning on actually using some of those vaca days to go camping and hiking and wish that I was able to have been more prepared. I’m really missing running, especially now that I can move without breaking a sweat and unfortunately my running shoes were on their way to Niger when we were evacuated. We haven’t gotten to shop in Tana yet, but it sounds like I’ll be able to find most of those things so right now I’m anxiously awaiting a shopping trip.

I’ll have internet again on the 26th when we go to the National Park (internet and lemurs-its going to be a big day for us!) So I’ll hopefully talk to some of you then, also if you want my phone number ask my mom, Kevin or Craig (they are the lucky ones who I have their phone numbers memorized and called already) or I can email it to you upon request. Merry Christmas everyone, hope it’s great and you enjoy the snow and good food. Miss you all!

12/25/09

So Christmas with Peace Corps has been really great so far, but I just came in my room to type up a little more of a blog update before our big Christmas dinner and my computer won’t turn on (I'm using sara’s). It won’t even light up at all so I think it might be dead for real. I have no idea what could have happened to it but a couple of people looked at it and we can’t get it to turn on yet. Sad day. Mom and Dad you may have to inquire into my insurance policy for me…

I got my sight placement on last Monday. I am going to be living near Lake Aloatra, in a town called---(I just remembered were not allowed to post the names-get at my mom, or me by email if you want to know the exact place). It is near the lake and on a plateau area (I think) but really all I have been told about it is that there is a lot of rice, vegetables and cows. Literally. Another girl doing health, Hannah, is also going to be placed there and we cannot get anything helpful out of our language trainers about the area. Everyone else has been told how gorgeous their regions are and all the different things there are in the area; we were told that there’s good cell phone coverage. Makes me a little nervous, but I'm trying to have a good attitude about it. Supposedly we are supposed to get more information next week, but if you feel like doing some research on the internet and getting that to me via phone/text I would greatly appreciate it. I'm dying of curiosity.

We have a former volunteer who is now working with a conservation NGO staying with us for the Christmas weekend and he gave us the history of Madagascar in an hour, as well as an actual update about the political situation. The current politics are HILARIOUS and I highly advise doing some research about it. (I just paraphrased all that I learned and then realized that I don’t think I'm allowed to write about politics, so I deleted it. But seriously look it up). The acting president is a former DJ/Mayor who basically declared himself president one day and somehow it worked out for him. He then didn’t attend a conference with the transitional leaders and wouldn’t let them back into the country so he basically is the last one standing, and people are kind of listening to him? All political rallies and such don’t take place on Sundays and the general consensus is that the public is more concerned with preparing for Christmas than what was going on, so it’s all good here in Mad Land for now.

Hmm well I’d like to write more, but I think they're bringing out cheese and crackers right now (cheese!) and I'm really just kind of annoyed that my own computer isn’t working so I'm going to quit writing. I'm off to see the Lemurs tomorrow so hopefully I’ll be able to post about them soon! Miss you and hope your Christmas is great!

i cant figure out the french on this crazy comp so im writing hoping that you all can see this post. i just spent 4 days with a current volunteer and absolutely loved it. im actually pretty sad that i have to go back to training tomorrow! nigeriens are amazing and i cant wait to get my post. i know ill be in hausaland but thats it so far. i absolutely love sleeping outside at night and cant imagine having to be inside. ive also started to get use to the heat; yesterday my friend katie qnd i were talking about how plesant the weqther was at dusk and so we checked the thermometer and it was still 100°! Its movining into cold season thou and i even get in mysleeping bag most nights. im staying the night in the konni hostel with 14 other trainees and some current volunteers and looking forward to some more good food a COLD beer and relaxing.

ill write a real post when i get my own comp probably post training. miss you all! seriously send letters they will make my day!

So I have officially signed on for 27 months in Niger. I go to philly on Oct 20th at 7am and then leave for Niger from there. My dad thinks I'm insane (yes, dad i am still planning on going), my mom often seems to be on the verge of tears when discussing it, and my friends, well, I think aren't really that surprised given my prior travel experiences.

I am about 90% excited (especially now that i am meeting all of the great people i will be training with) and 10% nervous/terrified (Largely in regards to the potentially huge spiders and scorpions, the swarms of large biting ants, and stinging centipedes; that I have read make themselves at home in your hut. they will not be welcome in mine. im putting my foot down in the form of rambo which I read is the preferred Nigerien bug killing powder). Insects aside, there is also the thought of 27 months in a very intense place away from friends, family and anything familiar. Niger is one of the hottest and poorest countries in the world--in fact it came out last on the list of all the countries in the world on the UN development index, and it apparently is known as one of the hardest peace corps placements. I know this will make my time in all of the other developing countries seem like a relaxing vacation and I'm mentally preparing myself for some difficult times.

I will try to update this blog as often as possible, but while you're waiting please write me lots of letters (yes I said write-as in you mail it with an envelope and stamp)and send me photos of you so I don't forget your beautiful faces. I promise to reply and then you'll get snail mail all the way from Niger, and how many people can honestly say they've received something like that?

Nicki Keusch

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 10537

Niamey, Niger

And here are some mailing tips, thou they are mostly for packages...I of course would love packages too :)

Write 'Par Avion' and 'Air Mail' on the package/envelope - it should take on average around 4 weeks to reach meNumber the letters/and packages you send me so that i know if one is missing. i will do the same back to you

Put items in plastic bag and then into the packagePrint the address label in red, not sure why but this apparently helps prevent theft

Also to prevent theft: use envelope packaging rather than boxes when possible, tape all corners and place stickers over the edges so it will be obvious if someone opens the package, write sister in front of my name or add other religious material on the outside (haha plus ill get a kick out of it), or add a fake tracking number.Lastly, if you decide to insure the item(s), write in miscellaneous/personal. I have to pay a small fee to customs and if its specific I could have to pay more, ie. when i was in south africa i had to pay $103 US to receive my own clothes because my mom declared them as textiles. not cool.