In Antsohihy, people sat on their stoops and peered at the sky, wondering why the rains had not come. It was late November and the clouds should have rolled in weeks ago, heavy with rain to settle the dust and quench the soil desperate for moisture. But there were few clouds, and the days persisted, achingly hot and dry. All the population of Antsohihy could do was sit, and wait, and watch the sky with a quiet, nervous tension: for rice does not grow in dry ground.

Walking the streets of this ramshackle city, it is not difficult to understand how the rains here are invested with a certain anthropomorphic quality; they are exasperating but intransigent; like anyone else in this country, they arrive when they feel like it.

On the second floor of the Antsohihy commune building, in a meeting room with broken shutters and rusty file cabinets, I stood before a group of local guides and environmentalists, asking: “What do you think global warming is?” There was a long pause and many blank looks, until at last someone stood: “Well,” he began hesitantly, “we all see there are many big fires here. The big fires are making the earth hot. And then where there were fires, the earth is bare, so it soaks up all the heat from the sun, and that makes the earth hot too.” There was a long pause, then another man rose: “It is like when there are a lot of people crowded in one room and that room gets really hot. The earth is just too crowded and we are heating it up.”

There is something to be said for the latter of these two theories: it could be either right on or wildly off. And the participants of this seminar were not be blamed for such localized world-views. Madagascar is a country where the immediately surrounding elements can be, and often are, thought to comprise the world entire, where the forest is not born of the rain, but is rather the very thing that draws it in from the sea. It is a peculiar relationship of cause and effect, but it generally prevails.

Thus, climate change is a challenging topic to approach, not only for its complexity, but also for its demanding acceptance of the interconnectedness of this world. Malagasy people- many of whom have never traveled further than the rim of their horizon- can have a difficult time accepting that what happens on the other, incomprehensible side of this globe can powerfully affect what they have always known right here. I do my best to explain that in developed countries we are driving too many cars, burning too many fossil fuels, using too much electricity, filling the sky with planes; that the world over we are cutting down the forests that could trap all this extra carbon and methane; that this means the heat from sunlight is not escaping the atmosphere (in my Malagasy, global warming is translated as “mampafana tany” or, “making the earth hot”); that the ramifications of this are profound, from changing global weather patterns to rising sea levels. And as we add each link in the chain, I think, really think, that they are getting it.

It is difficult to move with great speed though, as we are routinely hung up on smaller, but no less bewildering concepts. Lands of only ice and snow; ice cores; glaciers. We are stuck on a picture of a polar bear for nearly twenty minutes. Countries where everyone drives their own car, and people keep the lights on all night. Satellites. Deserts, where there is only sand, sand like waves, but no ocean. I, inadvertently, oh so carelessly, use a diagram of Sugar Maple growth in North America. What is a Sugar Maple? What is special about your Sugar Maple? Wait, wait, are you telling us that you Americans eat tree blood? (Think about it, then tell me how you would explain maple syrup in Malagasy).

By the end of the second day though, after pages and pages of hastily drawn diagrams, after countless tangential explanations, we were there. One man threw up his hands, “there are no solutions.” He then mimed picking up the phone, “I am calling God.” Another participant rose to leave: “I am going to pray now; I am going to talk to God about our planet.” The training organizer glanced at me: “We took a little bit of their innocence today.”

There is validity to that statement. For these local guides and environmentalists, acknowledging the interconnection of incomprehensible worlds- of ice and snow, of six-lane highways and city grids- with their own fragile life on the coast, a life of rice-agriculture, mangrove-fishing and cow-herding, is a difficult task. And do not for a second be mistaken about the resentment they feel for this discovery. As one woman said in a long, impassioned speech: “In the wealthy world, they created most of these problems. And here, in the developing world, we could suffer for them. And yet they want to tell us that we cannot develop like them, and worse, they want to tell us to stop doing what we have always done.”

Just before we left our ramshackle classroom, a guide raised his hand. Looking out the window at yet another dry, dusty day in Antsohihy, he asked: “You have spoken about global warming and changing weather patterns. Do you think that could be why the rains still have not come?”

For those of you who have wondered what life looks like for a Peace Corps volunteer in Northern Madagascar, look no further. The following video, filmed over the course of several days in the summer of 2011, exposes just how harrowing such a life is: the peering children, the long water-hauls, the taxi-brousse rides, the cartographic mishaps. It may look like we are having fun, but peer a little closer, this is no child's play.

*Special thanks to Katie Minton for providing the equipment, filming, and editing. All I did was bring the camera presence.

The plane lifts off from Antananarivo two and a half hours late, but as we are all still operating on Malagasy time, no one is- as is said in Madagascar- “working their head.” We are homeward bound for the holidays, on our way to the land of milk and honey, leaving behind the heat-stifled chaos of Madagascar for the calmer and cooler pleasures of civilization. We sink into our delightfully comfortable chairs, stretch in the expansive legroom, peruse the endless entertainment options, and marvel at how all that magical food can be crammed into a single plastic tray. This is heaven, we declare to each other, what could possibly go wrong?We land in Paris thirteen hours later and three hours behind schedule, a wrinkle in “making up time” that only a pilot outbound from Madagascar could claim with pride. We disembark confident that our two hour layover will prove more than adequate, for we know that in this world all proceeds like clockwork, rigid within the laws of logic and efficiency. We bask in the glory of this disillusion for nearly three minutes, until we find ourselves in the back of a line that refuses to move. A rabble of more aggressive travelers have disregarded the line altogether; they push with insincere apologetic gestures to the front. I am appalled. I had believed these ropes to be a divine mandate, now I see their true nature, flimsy and easily ignored. A part of me yearns for the land I just left behind, where at least there are no pretensions of order that I feel obligated to be obey.After a static hour, we are told, scoffingly, to proceed directly to our terminal, 2E. We board a bus, only to discover that there are two terminals 2E. We exit, of course, at the wrong one and find ourselves at the back of another line, this one so long and chaotic that we cannot even determine what it is for or where it is headed. We are told to board a train to the other terminal 2E; I begin to feel as though I am trapped in a hellish children’s transportation book. The second terminal 2E proves even more chaotic than the first. We are commanded to re-board the train and return to the original 2E: we refuse. At an impasse, we are then informed that we need to be on the other side of the security barrier, look, you see, right through there. How do we get there? Oh no, you cannot, you are on the wrong side.We look at the clock and realize that we have missed our plane.We exit through passport control- stamp, stamp, Welcome to Paris. Glowering through the sheet glass window at the border guard, we turn and encounter a maelstrom; suddenly in all the chaos it all makes sense. Swirling hordes of people are packed underneath the domed ceiling, chanting and shouting. Bullhorns echo and harried travelers shove between the riot police. The security personnel at the Paris airport have gone on strike. I feel myself developing a sudden strong aversion to European labor unions.We dodge the strikers and the riot police, trying our best not to look like strikers, and find, at last, a customer service desk without a line. Glancing at the itineraries our new savior tsk tsks, consults her watch, and says, this may take a while. She clacks away at her keyboard while we stare determinedly at a twenty-second loop of birds gliding over an estuary. We are not soothed; we hate civilization. A half hour passes before she looks up suddenly: your plane has not left yet, hurry, see if you can catch it!Now we find ourselves running, back through passport control (oh, yes, we just adored Paris), and up to security. Off with the shoes, off with the belt and jacket, out with the electronics. We are almost through and then a hand stops our progress: is this your bag? Yes, the man before us replies. Are you aware, sir, that you are not allowed to carry on kitchen knives? A precious two minutes are lost as the man defends his god-given right to carry on kitchen knives. Running again, this time past swanky shops and well-dressed travelers. I see the gate; I see the doors open; I see the green lights on. I am thirty yards away, twenty, ten. The door closes.We have missed our plane, again. We have somehow missed the same plane twice.I nearly cry. Tatum- the other half of the we in this story- does cry. We stand there and watch our plane pull away from our gate and we curse this horrible place known as civilization. Then we get in the back of another line. We are split up, I through New York and Tatum through Detroit. We bid each other farewell, after yet another train ride and yet another panicked run through a terminal that starts with 2E. I board my plane, finding the seats not quite so comfy, the legroom restrictive, the entertainment options uninspiring, and the magical food, well, no longer magical in a positive way. We depart Paris an hour late.When we land in New York I have exactly one hour and thirty-seven minutes to catch my connecting flight to Greensboro. This would be entirely manageable if it were not for the fact that my flight has landed at JFK and the next is departing from LaGuardia. Again, I find myself running, through the airport, through passport control (Welcome back to the United States!), through baggage claim. I shiver and shiver as I wait for the bus. We circle JFK for ten minutes, collecting other nonexistent passengers, then crawl along the highway as the bus driver hums Christmas carols. We circle LaGuardia, dropping off all those other nonexistent passengers. I am left at baggage claim and, of course, I am running. The check-in desks are deserted except for a single one. Hi, IthinkImissedmyflightbutIwouldliketotryandcatchit, I gasp. He types in the info, glances at the screen and says, in a deadly serious tone of voice, don’t ask questions, just RUN. Through security: Off with the shoes, off with the belt and jacket, out with the electronics. They are paging me over the intercom: final call, passenger Browne, final call. Is that you? The security guys ask. They are throwing the bins down the line in excitement. RUN! Jacket, belt, shoes, and bag in hand, I am streaming through the nearly deserted airport, a half-undressed madwoman returned from an uncivilized land. I see the gate, the door is closed. I keep running, more out of momentum than enduring motivation. Gasping, I entreat the woman behind the counter: did I make it? Sure, she said, you didn’t have to run.I have made it. My legs are like jelly; I am still straining for air; does anyone have some water? I collapse into my seat, a mere shred of the human I was when I left Madagascar thirty-eight hours ago. I cannot decide whether this is a miracle or if civilization has betrayed me. Katie, a shocked voice says, Is that you? The neighboring seat is occupied by a friend I have not seen since high school. Katie, she repeats, what the hell happened to you?

Max

Lina

Erik

Amina

Soa

Diolen

Sofa

Vola

Beret

Karany

Che Che

Jinette

Fazi

Molidy

Lito

Pinjana

Baby Dudu (accompanied by his mama Erafiny)

A Refutation of the Malagasy Myth that Foreigners Fit Five AcrossOne vazaha*, two vazahathree vazaha, fourcan you fit in one vazaha morewithout putting one on the floor?

One vazaha is comfyhe's got room to swing his armshe can peer out the windowand work his subtle charms

Two vazaha are settledand appreciate the companythey can conversate across the spaceand sit without touching a knee

Three vazaha are getting toastybut still have room to breatheit's getting fairly close nowthey're sitting sleeve to sleeve

Four vazaha are comfy cozyeach in his own way pressedit's bordering on painfuleveryone's a bit stressed

The Malagasy people claimthat five across is easybut Americans aren't skinnyour hips weren't made for the squeezy

Five vazaha aren't pleasednow we all feel like cryingeach smiles but is thinking

that five across is like dying

One vazaha, two vazahathree vazaha, fouradd that one vazaha moreand their falling out the door

*Foreigner

As much as we all may joke about Peace Corps goggles (it is not a joke: it is an affliction!), many of us have switched those spectacles for another pair of late. Long ago, when it meant little to me, I heard through the usual twisted, time-distorted chain of Peace Corps wisdom about the rose-tinted glasses. These, the legend went, slip down over your eyes during your last weeks in your village; they distort your once reliable vision and suddenly you find all that once irritated you to no end now terribly endearing. As the conclusion of my two years lay yet far off, I patently disbelieved in this rose-tinted phenomenon.

But then, without warning, it happened. Awww, I caught myself thinking, this is the last time I will be harassed by that guy for English lessons, that woman for plastic containers, that kid for dictionaries I lent out a year ago and never got back, and that drunk for harasses me just for the hell of it. Shucks, this could be the last of seven hundred times that I explain to my neighbor that I do not speak French (really, not a word), the last of five hundred vague acquaintances to demand "gifts of the road" (oh come on guys, I was gone ten minutes!), the very last of a hundred times I have had to lug two giant buckets of water up a never ending hill (who invented this torture slalom?!).

Possibly it is relief, or could it be these strange feelings are what is known as emotions? For now, I cannot help but dwell upon how I have moved through seasons in this place and with these people. Through the seasons of my Malagasy; through days of ceaseless, drumming rains and dry, endlessly dusty months; through mangos, apples, oranges, and the dark, dark days without bananas. We have moved from polites hellos to "what's cooking?," from tompoko (my lord) to drako-eeee (girrrrrrrrrrlfriend!). Parents no longer ask me to teach their children English: they ask me to adopt them and take them to America. (I say that the paperwork for that sort of thing is awfully complicated).

What is also surprisingly complicated in the application of this term "emotional closure" which everyone throws around with such confidence. I am not quite sure what it entails. I can eat my way through the last of my American food stash, can clean my mud house and pack up my odd assortment of belongings. I can give away my maps, my books, and my soccer balls, can take portraits so that I will not forget the faces that filled my days. I can, and have, bid my farewells. But when I say that I am leaving, people look mystified and reply, but you just got here. My kids cock their heads, only momentarily stumped: yes, but when are you coming back?

I remember in the beginning (and sometimes towards the middle and even occasionally at the end) when the days would drag on interminably. Now- and I am aware it sounds like Peace Corps is paying me to say this- I do not want them to go. It is bittersweet to watch them slip away. I am without doubt lost in the rose-tinted haze.

Time, it seems, has toyed with me since my arrival in Maromandia. Even in my final days I oscillated between a desperate desire to leave this very second, and a strange, dangerous desire to stay forever. I will never forget stepping out of the Peace Corps car on my first day and allowing a long string of expletives to parade through my mind. Where did the two intervening years go? How is it that I find myself watching the town- an unremarkable dot on an unread map to most, a million experiences to me- pulling away out of the rear window? I will not forget this feeling either of moving forward and knowing that Maromandia will stay right here where I left it.

Not long ago, a friend of mine said something she clearly thought would be shocking. “Katie,” she began tentatively, as if bracing me for devastating news, “You know most people don’t really consider Peace Corps a world changer.” There was a heavy pause. I was not shocked—my list of world-changers would be fairly short—but I was caught off guard. I am much more accustomed to dispelling assorted myths born of distance, exoticism, and Peace Corps recruiting posters. No, I do not dig wells with my bare hands and bloody knuckles, nor have I contributed to the search for the cure for AIDS. I am sorry to say that I haven’t rescued a single stranded dolphin. For those who criticize the world-changing effectiveness or impact of Peace Corps, this may be the crux of the issue, an incompatibility of expectations and reality. Peace Corps is exceptionally good at what it does; I just don’t think that most Americans know what it is we do. In defense of Peace Corps, I offer you one word and then ask for five paragraphs to explain it. The word is kludge, and it is defined as “an awkward, inelegant contraption that somehow works.” Setting aside entirely the personal growth of each Peace Corps volunteer, the private, complex and completely individual journey each of us undertakes, this is my strongest (or at least, most unique) argument for the value and very existence of Peace Corps. But first, I have to give due to the awkward and the inelegant. Peace Corps is a lumbering, bureaucratic machine. Often there are snafus and mishaps, as one might expect from an organization that places 10,000 volunteers in 10,000 far-flung location. One feels occasionally isolated and unsupported, as if after your hurried months of training you are slapped on the butt, told “make us proud,” and promptly creamed on the line of scrimmage. You hear horror stories of volunteers abandoned; you hear stories, too, of volunteers who partied away their 700+ days. But those are the exception, not the rule, and most volunteers leave Peace Corps feeling that they were respected and served with integrity. Despite these shortcomings, Peace Corps somehow works. For two years, volunteers do a unique and challenging thing, integrating in the truest sense of the word. We live among our communities, adopting their ways and sharing the rituals of life, learning the language, adjusting to the pace of a different place. This is a means to an end, helping the community, but also an end in itself: struggling across a vast portion of the cultural divide as a good faith gesture. As a result of this struggle we see our world and particularly our country of service through a new lens. And, in turn, the citizens of our host country—neighbor, co-worker, mailman, coffee lady—see us as much more than the foreigner we initially appear and thus the United States as more than just a vague distant nation. In this way, Peace Corps volunteers are ambassadors and embodiments of an ideal of cultural tolerance and exchange. This change of perception works slowly and yet powerfully on two sides of the world. Here in Madagascar, the second a word of Malagasy comes out of my mouth, people know that I am American and a surprising number know that I am Peace Corps. It is this demonstration of effort and nod to longevity, this crossing of the divide, that sets us apart. Peace Corps volunteers are a presence in a country: not tourists, not disconnected development workers, but something altogether different. Through pure hearsay, I have heard the American Chargé d’affaires say that Peace Corps is the reason the United States has a good reputation in Madagascar. Think of that magnified on a seventy-country scale, or even the 139 countries in which Peace Corps has served since its inception 50 years ago. Yes, much of what Peace Corps does is symbolic, but that symbolism matters. Now cross an ocean or two. Each year thousands who have experienced a change of lenses, an alteration of values, return to America. Their collective voice broadens our national worldview, enriches our perspective, enlivens and informs debate. These are returned volunteers who will always remember their time in a dusty or drenched, distant corner of the earth, who will not forget the people who were kind to them there, or the subtle ways that the conduct of a world power can affect them. Peace Corps volunteers know how small this world is, and in these increasingly interconnected times can be a unique voice for people who may be left out or left behind. Forget not that volunteers do good and effective things during their service too. This argument is not to devalue these works or their impact, but rather to point out that the framework of tangible success is not the only way to measure Peace Corps’ value. For Peace Corps, like any agency striving for improvement in the developing world, has encountered mountains of missteps, false starts, and dead ends. This is another awkward and inelegant side of the kludge. But the side that matters, the side that somehow works, despite the difficulties, is that the thousands of volunteers whose countless actions and exchanges operate in a small, daily way to increase understanding and improve their small corner of the earth. Thus, after a heavy pause, I reply: Peace Corps may not be a world changer, but in a world that is changing, it is more relevant and necessary than ever.

I, as an American, am inherently fond of boundaries. I am helpless to this particular penchant: it both runs in my blood and has been enforced since youth – from colonial homesteading to Frost’s fences (“Good fences make good neighbors”), from my kindergarten cubby to my college cubicle. Ingrained with deep set notions of personal space and private property, I proceeded through life never recognizing these as just another cultural construct. That is, until I moved into a small town in Madagascar. For the two years thereafter, my concept of space has been under attack, barraged relentlessly, eroded in the most subtle, creeping ways. I am simultaneously fascinated and frustrated by this process, as I (stubbornly American) keep erecting boundaries and my community (persistently Malagasy) keeps gobbling them right up. Under construction for six months, my fence has also, unfortunately, been under the counter process of demolition for eighteen; it has been a steady, painful, stick-by-stick decline. And as the fence has fallen, my neighbors have crept in with quiet assurance of my inability to resist. First the yard was conquered, by the infiltration of soccer games and the enjoyment of afternoon shade. What remained of the fence was soon a jungle-gym; my laundry line rarely held my own clothes; kids hung from the branches of my trees, grabbing at the fruit, as their mothers chattered, harvesting my moringa. Even my latrine was involuntarily committed to the neighborhood and I was forced to ask myself why I felt such a strong sense of ownership over a hole in the ground. At last my porch was consumed: now a marbles arena, a nap location of choice, a terrace we can all enjoy. My neighbors lounge at ease within the remains of my shattered boundaries. Once I left for a single night to return and find that someone had quite literally moved in under the overhang, mat and cooking pot complete. It might have been this final incident—this most blatant and unapologetic invasion—that forced my recognition of a simple fact: these boundaries exist only in my mind. Malagasy people conceive of space in a fundamentally different way; they do no perceive the world as I do, neatly partitioned and clearly delineated. This is a product of my culture, a culture that values boundaries and allows them to dictate behavior. Instead, Malagasy culture hesitates to circumscribe space, to award its possession, to declare what is public and private. What boundaries do exist are fairly porous and born of necessity; within a village almost all is shared and communal. As proud as I am of my integration, the collapse of my private space can still drive me to wit’s end. When this happens, I think back to my first months when I entered as the ultimate outsider into a closed, comfortable world where everyone knew everyone and everyone knew their place. I hardly realized it, but I was just a little pocket within the larger confines of my village, ensconced and inaccessible behind my sturdy fence. Now the fence has fallen and as a result I have been invited into the communal world by the very actions of invasion I once despised. I do not feel myself that I am entirely integrated (it is clear I need a husband and a baby for that) but I am no longer an outsider either. I am another sort of anomaly, accepted, even embraced, within the physical bounds of my community, but not its fundamental social structure. It is ambiguous but it is progress, and I will give up my sole right to a hole in the ground for such any day.

Backyard, Maromandia

Overlooking Tana

Market day, Maromandia

Rickshaws, Moramanga

Lemur Festival, Antafiabe

Classroom, Ambolobozo

The Struggles of the Soda Truck

Maromandia

If I was three feet shorter and Malagasy I could have been part of this...

Maetsamalaza

Epicerie, Antanambao

Max and his coconut

Antafiabe

Market, Antananarivo

Antafiabe

Evening down by the river

**Italics represent journal excerpts

I. That time when 30k became 70k… (July 2010)

Due to various misreadings of the map and misconceptions of distance, not to mention various conversational misunderstandings if not misleadings, I embarked early one morning for what I thought would be a straight-forward 30 kilometer bike ride to Ankarafa, home of the blue-eyed lemurs. I met my accompaniment at an inconspicuous dirt-road turn off. The dusty sign announced Ambolobozo 65k; I was really happy I was not going to Ambolobozo. It was a beautiful morning and at first the going was fairly smooth. Then it became rather hilly, then mountainous; as my friend’s bike had no operable gears and little in the way of brakes, we were forced to walk up and down the numerous steep slopes. The road also began to deteriorate rapidly, whole gullies were washed out and we had to walk long, impassibly rocky stretches as well. We started to climb…and climb…and climb. Pushing my bike was like hiking with an extremely heavy extra limb. The road curved forever up and away, and I began to regret every item I had packed, including every single page of the Brothers Karamazov. We stopped for rice just after noon in a quiet, dusty little village that as much as I wanted it to would not admit to being Ankarafa. When we continued, I began asking those people we passed if it was still far, and invariably received the answer “mbola lavi-davitry,” which I interpreted as “sorta far” but in retrospect might well have meant “REALLY [EXPLETIVE] FAR.” At last someone gave a quantifiable answer: 12k. It seemed a manageable distance. Afternoon pushed on and I continued to push my bike, hating each of the Brothers Karamazov in turn. One of our party’s members now mentioned “stopping by” Ambolobozo: remembering that 65k my optimism evaporated. I wanted to cry. The sun sank lower and I began to wonder if we would make it by sunset. Internally, I gave myself permission to cry if we didn’t. I was informed, with a look of extreme pity, that 15k remained. I began to distrust that these people had any sense of distance at all. The sun set; the moon rose; I had left my house at 5:45am. I pushed my bike, stared at my feet, and thought: this road can’t go on forever. Then I looked up and there were huts and tents and welcoming faces. I dropped my accursed bike with a clatter and raising my arms in victory, shouted out “TONGA!” Literally, this translates to “arrival” but in my desperate state it clearly meant: “we made it! somehow….” This is, by now, the stuff of legend, my indecorous arrival, a story told and retold to the general amusement of all. I don’t mind. I’m just happy I didn’t cry.

II. That time I was attacked by a suicidal goat (April 2011)

A tried and true method for survival of long, hot, cramped brousse rides is the zone-out. Don’t count the miles, don’t shift positions: sheer endurance zen. Of course, this is often easier said than done. One day, you emerge from your zen-state of higher consciousness wondering how it can be raining when it is so beautifully sunny. Slowly, you realize that everyone is yelling, somewhat illogically, the word “goat” or the command “close the window, idiot.” Now thoroughly back on the plane of mortal thought you recognize that you have been the victim of bladder limitations and gravitational fate. Oh well, all the better for your quest for transcendence that no one will sit near you. You focus on the landscape whizzing past, the green melding with the blue of the sky, yes things are clear now, you are beginning to understand that – WHAM! All you see is a struggling mass of brown fur, hooves, and panicked eyeballs. Somebody is screaming. No wait, that is you screaming. Everyone else is screaming: “hold it up!” Hold up what? Oh, the goat. The goat that just wriggled loose of its bindings, leapt tethered by a single hoof suicidally from the roof rack, and, in a parabola of terror, slammed into your window. Someone with greater presence of mind rescues it and immediately reattaches the goat. Zen you decide to leave for another brousse ride, another day.

III. That time I was Adrift on a Sea of Despair (October 2010)

For days we had hop scotched in and out of the boat composing lists, in search of stamps, asking in exasperation “your president fokontany went where now?” Today was our final day and when we had woken up our navigator/anchor hauler, a teenage boy in faded, Hawaiian print shorts, he had yelled: “Home today! That means beer!” After asking directions—a humorous endeavor on the open seas—we arrived at a particular break in the mangroves. A few K on foot, talk to some folk, check who died since 2006 and who still has chickens. Done at last, beer here we come. But back at the boat we discover our navigator/anchor hauler (and dare I mention, boat guardian) missing, along with another young (female) passenger we had collected for the return trip. Forced to push out by the retreating tide, the first hour passes. It is brutally, shadelessly hot (in fact, my dialect’s word for hot, “mai,” which translates in official Malagasy as “burnt,” was the most relevant term for what was happening to my poor, Caucasian existence). I am attempting to hid every exposed inch of skin under fabric without suffocation. It is a tenuous balance. A long and spirited discussion is conducted on the ethicality of abandoning our young ship hand miles of open water from home. Another hour plods by and someone is sent off in search. As I begin to muse over sunstroke and other negative thoughts, he returns empty handed. Adrift on a sea of despair, another half hour passes. Clouds drift everywhere but over the sun. I begin to feel the borderline insanity of my brain boiling. At last they reappear, this pair responsible for the leeching of all my future intelligence, all a-giggling in a way I suddenly despise about teenagers. Without a word we push off, I still harboring a deep, deranged sentiment for leaving them to the fishes.

IV. That time I had a Bag of Vomit thrown at me (November 2010)

Again, a brousse ride has forced to seek a sanctum of inner zen. But today it is not even worth the effort. This particular road looks like has been bombed and your driver, a possible victim of said bombing, is a maniac, plunging in and out of the gaping holes in the asphalt as though he is behind the wheel of a tank not that of a beat-up passenger van. Everyone is throwing up: women, children, full-grown men, white-person. Needless to say, morale is low, and the general feeling is that you would all rather die than proceed one more kilometer down this godforsaken road. Your van comes to a halt before a cluster of huts, where an older woman is most fastidiously sweeping a patch of dirt. Someone exits the vehicle and someone else tosses their bag of vomit on to the patch of dirt. This is gross, certainly, but you are all in a weakened state: a minute ago none of you cared to live. It is a second before you all realize the gravity of this mistake. The women turns and, with full force of fury, begins to harangue you, culprits and innocents alike. Though her language is profane and her manner truly fearsome, you all dare to find this a little ridiculous; it is, after all, just a patch of dirt. But then she picks up the bag of vomit and advances upon you. Fun quickly turns to panic. Doors and windows are slammed shut; mothers selflessly shield children; the maniac driver slams on the gas. SPLAT! You all stare at the back window in horror at a fate narrowly escaped.

V. That time when Wrenches Flew (September 2011)

I surveyed our transport. We were to take the soda truck, or rather the beer truck. But now was not the time to be picky as I had resolutely refused to walk, bike, or otherwise locomotor myself to our destination. Want to know why? Kindly revisit Part I: we were to return to that dusty little town I had so desperately hoped was Ankarafa. We were sixteen adults crammed in a space originally designed for, at most, eight. Of course the vehicle had long ago strayed from its original design: stripped bare, wooden benches riveted to the floor, a backseat that constantly threatened an unexpected exit through the rear door. As its occupants did not appear particularly concerned though, I decided I wouldn’t be bothered about it either unless I observed a noticeably lighter load. The usual situating, an unidentifiable screech from the cassette player, a hand slammed into the door, and we were off. But at a hardly admirable pace. This was the kind of bumpy transit where wrenches were flying off the dashboard, and the occupants were flying all over the vehicle. (Although one could fairly ask how positive an indicator the wrenches on the dash were in the first place.) It’s an apt play on words, for we were in fact wrenched about mercilessly, rattling about until our brains hurt, vision shakily impaired, and internal organs hopelessly jumbled. Our vehicle, unlike its overly equipped American counterparts, completely lacked the “Oh [expletive] handle" that would have been oh so handy. Thus we clung to the frame, the windowsills and, more often than not, each other in a desperate attempt to stay upright and sane. When we arrived 36k and four hours later—having pushed the car through five impassible sections and walked many others—we were demonstrably neither.

For nearly two years, I have lived a world away from the Nacirema, that cult of American culture from which I have so thoroughly defamiliarized myself. Now duty was calling me home to the tanindrazana, land of my ancestors. The Nacirema were to wed and my presence was required, to hold the bride’s “bouquet” at rehearsal (her “bouquet” was alcoholic; so was mine), to “fluff” her train at the altar (I received specific instructions), and to kindly request at the reception that my older sister return that young man’s outfit and take back her cocktail dress. Two things were apparent about this wedding, I was going to be indispensable and it was going to open bar.

Crossing the world is no small venture. It required four flights, no fewer than ten take-offs and landings, five airplane meals, twelve visits from the beverage cart, 38 hours and one loop around a hurricane. That is airport to airport and just one way, though I understand the hurricane was a bit exceptional. Traveling is its own peculiar form of disconnect: lost in time zones, sharing a half a day with a stranger, setting up camp in airports.

Then suddenly, I am walking out into America, the climate-control kingdom, the land of packaging, the hungry, why wait? world. All at once I have regained my personal telephone-booth of space; lines are orderly and exchanges efficient; people are, gasp, polite. Everyone is extraordinarily clean and, yes, well-fed. My skin color is no longer my defining feature and, until I spot the Lemur Lovin’ poster and a gaggle of greeters, I am anonymous.

Now I, master of the third-world squat, must return to the first-world I once thought complete. I must return to the first-world I once thought complete. I must reabsorb these truths, these standards and structures of my native society. It is not an easy task to relearn much of what I had diligently unlearned. Sleeping without a mosquito net felt dangerously exposed; drinking out of the tap reeked of an invitation to doom; ice cubes popped out of the refrigerator door and I nearly had a heart attack. I could barely eat (but so valiantly I tried!) and it took more than a week for me to get up the nerve to drive a car. I dumped the entire contents of my suitcase into the washing machine: a symbolic readjustment of my definition of clean.

These things, the physical aspects of America that failed to correspond with my world away, turned out to be the easy part. Within a week, the feeling that I was treading an alien landscape had passed. Like riding a bicycle (or more pertinently, driving that car) I fell with surprising ease back into the physical grooves of my life before. It was in many ways an elaborate muscle memory test.

But I learned slowly and somewhat painfully that these grooves, while physically adequate, were maladjusted to the real stuff of life: family, friends, the people we love and care for; their dynamics and relationships; their passions and the direction of their lives.

In Madagascar, we toss around a term, “same same but different,” to describe the general state of stagnation. Surprisingly, and somewhat paradoxically, I found no other term more applicable to what awaited me in America. The country itself, embroiled in political conflict, struggling through financial woes, was not all that different from the one I knew in Fall 2009. Many of the people I care for I found fundamentally the same, yet dramatically changed, grown and adapted to new places and situations. I often felt lost in a swirl of dynamics I could not understand, my navigational system to years outdated. The back-stories lost to me forever, I realized just how I can never relive the events of my absence.

Similarly, I am changed, “same same but different,” but few seemed to have noticed. Time and again I was told, “I expected you to be different,” and I don’t know whether to be flattered or appalled. I feel nothing the same but the changes occurred a world away. And Madagascar does not exist to America as anything but that- somewhere far, beyond, removed, apart. I struggled again and again to make my experience accessible- to open a little hole to that world- but I failed.

I thought that I might have some trouble reconciling my two worlds. I have found them instead to be utterly incompatible, equally unable to conceive of the other. It was fitting that days of travel were required to reach my hometown from my village, because my mind cannot comprehend a planet on which both the United States and Madagascar exist simultaneously.

It is a sort of cognitive dissonance, this tug between worlds, uncomfortable but also liberating. If they are irreconcilable than so am I.

Yes, much like a college basketball star pondering the pros, I stood before an adoring crowd that chanted defeaningly, “ONE MORE YEAR! ONE MORE YEAR!” OK, it was nothing remotely like that. A few people said, hey, you’re pretty tamana (well-settled) here in Madagascar; you should stay. Peace Corps said, sure, make it happen. An NGO said, you speak Malagasy? Prove it.

In government speak a third year of Peace Corps is referred to as an extension of service, a term which, somewhat disappointingly, lacks an acronym. I do my best to make up for the deficiency though, dropping the phrase “go go gadget Peace Corps” on any and all relevant occasions. Again disappointingly, these occasions are sadly few.

My new position will take me to a different part of Madagascar. Maroantsetra, a city of some size but considerable isolation (accessible half the year only by plane, boat, or four-days on foot), is on a similar latitude to my current residence but opposite coast. It is the primary access point to a number of protected areas, including Masoala National Park, the largest swath of virgin rainforest in the country.

I will be working with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), an NGO highly active throughout Madagascar and particularly so in the Maroantsetra area. My position will (theoretically) be two fold: first, helping WCS to its pre-existing Environmental Education program at schools in and around the protected areas, and second, performing data analysis on a series of community diagnostic surveys. The notion behind this latter task is that a better understanding of community goals and needs allows for greater cooperation and more effective conservation efforts.

No small number of people (fellow PCVs included) have stated their belief that I must be a little crackbrained for signing on for an extra year, but I find there to be no small number of compelling reasons for doing just that. From a logical perspective, I have invested a great deal of myself here in Madagascar. I spent most of my first year struggling to persuade my town that I was not on a long and exceedingly strange vacation; at last they believe me. I speak a ridiculously obscure and (off this island) all but useless language; I want to use it. I worked hard to adapt to Malagasy culture, to the way and pace of life, and developed a skill set that is not as relevant elsewhere. From a purely logical point of view, these are all investments I am not yet ready to walk away from.

There are practical reasons as well. I have not completed my hundred classics booklist (my pace slowed markedly as I rediscovered what it was like to have a life). Likewise, I am nowhere near completion of my Madagascar bucket list. And, of course, I have by no means run out of things to blog about (though, I warn in advance that the blog address could well be renamed “Adventures in Ego-tripping”). OK, maybe these reasons are not “practical” in the truest sense of the world, but they are their own brand of persuasion.The most compelling reasons for my stay, however, are of a decidedly emotional nature. I love Madagascar and though I may occasionally lapse and even dwell in cynicism and pessimism, I believe that it is a country of astounding beauty and resilience, home to a remarkable people at a certain crossroads of their future. It is also a place where incredible things happen. For now, for a little while longer, I want to be a part of that.

I have to believe this in order to spend another year balancing life on this antipode. For it is rarely the physical challenges that force me to question my time here. It is not the monotonous diet, the heat or illness, not even the hole in the backyard. It is instead the distance and the disconnect, the lives unfolding far away from me.

Anyone who received a call from me during the decision-making weeks know that I agonized. I was looking to be told that ONE MORE YEAR would not permanently relegate me to the realm of lost marbles or things forgotten on the roof of the car. One can never receive complete assurance on this front, but I feel that in the realms that really matter I will assuredly be welcomed back whenever I wander home.

**My extension of service is still officially pending medical approval, so cross your fingers that I have not developed a severe case of Wriggling Worms or Tropical Spinal Implosion Disorder. No, really, cross your fingers.

Djangoa

Diego

Anketrakabe

Ambatoloaka

Maromandia

Ambavani'Djangoa

Maromandia

Ramena

AmbatoloakaRamena

Djangoa

Djangoa

Djangoa

Maromandia

Djangoa

Diego

Ampanilahy

Djangoa

Ramena

Maromandia

Bongo Angorony

Maetsamalaza

Madagascar, one sometimes forgets, is a country of incredible crushing poverty, a result less of disease and not of war, but of decades of poor governance and missed economic opportunities. Of a population just over twenty million, 75% live below the poverty line. Half are under the age of eighteen and, with the average mother giving birth to 6.6 children (one of the highest birthrates in the world), the population is currently due to double every twenty years. 15% of Malagasy children don’t make it to their first birthday and more than half are chronically malnourished. Madagascar’s literacy rate hovers at 45%, and a third of their children receive no formal education whatsoever. It is as easy to quote statistics, though, as it is to disregard them. In these sweeping generalizations, people become numbers and numbers are easily divorced from reality. The prevailing poverty of Madagascar, however, is quite real. It is expressed a thousand ways by the people who bear it: swollen bellies and bowed legs, names signed with an ‘X,’ heads bald with skin fungus, gaping holes where teeth used to be, clubbed feet, humped backs, and hair lips. It is all around: crumbling infrastructure and dirty water, empty medical clinics, devoid of doctors and supplies; schools, where they are to be found, falling to pieces, with leaking roofs, broken windows, and rickety desks; a country with few jobs, scarce opportunity, the most limited social mobility. Life here, on this beautiful island, is hard. Annually, a three-month hunger season must be endured: this year’s rice is planted but not yet ready to harvest, as the most intense period of manual labor coincides with last year’s haul running low. Markets sit empty; no fruits, no vegetables, there is nothing to buy, nothing to sell. Commerce essentially grinds to a halt as the rains pour down. Whole villages are cut off as roads turn to mud and rivers run too high to navigate. Cyclones arrive with little warning to wreck a fragile world of palm houses and rice terraces. The only choice is to hunker down and bear it. It is a delicate task, when you are privileged, to write about poverty. It is easy to paint with a broad brush, to hide behind numbers, to evoke pity rather than empathy. It is easy, too, to adopt a sort of arrogance of privation and self-sacrifice, to assume that brief residence in this world of poverty gives one the right of callousness towards it. I catch myself thinking sometimes “hunger is not hardship here,” or, “early death is not tragedy, it is just a normal part of life,” and while these things may be true, it is not necessarily my insight to provide. I cannot speak for poverty, because while I may life within its confines, I will likely never live within its mentality. There is something I do believe I can say, though, something that is far too often set aside in conversations about poverty and by those who study and work to alleviate it; something that photographs often fail to express and numbers do entirely no justice to. This is something I witness everyday as I move through the fringes of life in Madagascar. An American author of an era departed once famously said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Often it is this desperation and only this desperation that we see in the impoverished people of this world. From afar, we heap pity upon them and lament their struggles. Maybe we feel a little bit good about how bad we feel. But the vast majority of Malagasy people are not aware that they are such objects of pity. Simply because they are not. Their lives, just like those of the world’s wealthier half, are defined by their passions and routines, are cast within a swirl of characters and dictated by personality all their own. They are just people living life. What we do when we describe the poor in sweeping terms, when we rely on statistics to say what we don’t know, when we are dutifully moved to a distant pity, is reduce their individuality to a caricature of their poverty. We deny them both their dignity and their humanity. What should be said then is that while the poverty of Madagascar is indeed crushing, the people of Madagascar are far from crushed beneath it. The resilience of the Malagasy people, their joy in a difficult life, their sometimes boisterous, sometimes quiet dignity is a most human experience. It is this humanity that should never be disregarded or devalued in discussions of how to alleviate their poverty.

Life in the Peace Corps Madagascar is weird, unfailingly, unflaggingly weird. But after some time, I just forget it. It is only when things proceed to a further extreme that I realize anew. I am, for example, perfectly at ease being dive-bombed by bats when I step outside with my headlamp at night; it is what I deem an acceptable risk (and when I say “perfectly at ease” I mean that I have ceased screaming and thrashing). But when I spend nearly an hour trapped inside my mosquito net, desperately needing to pee, waiting for the world’s worst sonar-equipped bat to recognize that the wide-open door is the only escape, then I think to myself: this isn’t normal, this is not one bit normal. But this is my life: ninety-five degrees in the shade; a half hour late and the first one there; a thousand lost staring contests a day; bug spray after a bucket bath; scorpions in my shoes and centipedes in the bed; rats, the Resident Evil; continuing adventures in Katie Cannot Cook. The heat, and the strange things it does to one’s mental capacity and physical bearings, becomes a non-entity as a result of its very monotony. One hardly pauses to observe a friend curled up in a sleeping bag in the, wait, check the thermometer, ninety degree weather. I have learned to minimize movement to prevent excessive sweating (there is, of course, no preventing the standard variety). And I still chew gum, even though all the sugars have long secreted out and I find myself with an unappealingly slippery and flavorless piece (gum, after all, is more about the entertainment). I have accepted the hazards of distance and comically-restrained communication: the tenuous connection and awkward delays (“you go…no wait, sorry…you first…oh, I, sorry, no you…YOU DAMNIT!”); the involuntary Toy Story alien voice, “You have written me a letter, I am eternally grateful;” the passing of notes on a countrywide scale; the sad, near-friendship devastating announcement that as we’re not on the same cell-phone carrier, we may not be able to talk much for the next nine months…sorry. Even the many varied aspects of my community integration no longer seem all that odd. The fact that I routinely witness the not-a-shred-of-clothing nudity of every person in town, from the postman to the mayor to the tomato lady (apparently such is river culture); to the three primary flavors of my diet- salt, oil, and coconut- from which all other flavors somehow emerge (though I suppose this is less of a miracle than the primary colors, as all my food tastes essentially the same; to the way that two taxi-brousses hurtling towards each other, slowly and casually reclaim their respective lanes and pass with the narrowest of margins, while the whole time I am screaming in my head, MAYBE A LITTLE MORE URGENCY! When I am occasionally struck by the oddity of this life, I try to utilize the nostalgia curve (one day I will find this all terribly endearing/adventurous/authentic/young and free/insightful) without getting too far ahead (right now I find this to be none of those things). Passing premeditated nostalgia aside, it is just another day. Call it strange but I would not have it any other way.

A Cowardly, Shameful Return from the Road

In Madagascar, when one returns from a trip one is expected to bring voandalana, “gifts of the road,” for friends and family. I know what are you thinking: yea, souvenirs, we do that too. No, not like this you don’t. When I arrive in my town, exhausted and barely able to stand, I am immediately and unmercifully accosted by small children, neighbors, surly teenagers, acquaintances only of greeting, and ‘friends’ that magically appear out of the woodwork on only these occasions. Bread, they yell, where is our bread? Walking the backstreets home, voices call out from deep within houses: oranges, Katie, did you forget the oranges? It is a gauntlet that only a fool would run empty-handed. As terrified as I am, I have been forced to face the fact that the deliverance of such expected goods is not only a financial but physical impossibility. Calls to Jesus’ Loaves and Fishes department have gone sadly unanswered. So now in a shameful act of cowardice, I have resorted to return under the cover of darkness. It is with the greatest stealth that I creep through the streets. Inevitably, though, I trip; a head is raised and a sleepy voice calls out: the apples, Katie, we’ve been waiting for the apples!

Dead Man Walking

Second-hand clothes are a first-hand affair here. Next time you donate a shirt to Clothes for Africa, or even Goodwill, picture the shouting and shoving, the concentrated haggling that erupts over a newly revealed pile of faded jeans and worn jerseys. This is frippery, or deadman’s markets- the malls of Madagascar- and that shirt you thought you were giving away is actually up for sale.(Don’t be outraged; from a development point of view this is actually a good thing.) Here one finds the cast-offs and misprints of the wealthy world. Who wouldn’t want to sport World Famous Guss brand jeans or the jersey of Brazilian soccer star Ronald? (Exposed as an English import!). Would you not fight for a Jennifer Loper t-shirt? Sometimes one wonders if the screen-printers have all gone insane, as their products range from the awesomely incomprehensible (Big Mac Attack Attack Attack) to inspirational missteps (Success Covers Many Blunders) to screaming paranoia (Does Everything Taste Fake or is it Just Me?). And the Victor is Carried Off by the Crotch!

Morengy- Malagasy boxing- gives a whole new meaning to the term promenade. It is one part sport to four parts spectacle. Long after the crowd has gathered, the competitors continue to stroll and flex, remove and replace shirts, and strive in their quest for the perfect stance to display their rock-hard calf muscles. Though there is much shouting and manly gesticulating at potential opponents, it is hours until contact is made. Even then most of the strutting roosters will merely settle down to watch. And watch closely one must, for when the action finally occurs one dare not blink for fear of missing the flurry of badly-thrown fists and misaimed kicks that constitute a fight. Before you know it, one of the men, ostensibly the victor, is being carried off by his crotch. Yes, it is difficult to explain: the crotch. I Found Eternity in a Malagasy Meeting

Small-town meetings in this country start late and end much, much later. They are marathons of tedium, mockeries of efficiency; they drain the spirit of my soul. For hours, one is cramped in a desk designed in 1964 for a eight year old. Complete lack of blood circulation is mirrored by a total absence of circulation. My very existence stagnates. Participants unfailingly begin with a noble and enraged demeanor, but as formalities drag on they drop one by one like flies in the heat. At last a higher percentage have slipped into a semi-comatose state than remain cognizant. Every minute I fear that I will perish from the sheer monotony, but the minutes drag on and somehow I continue to live. The only hope for escape is the occasional and unpredictable meeting that goes in the exact opposite direction. This is a boiling, simmering mess of small town politics, meetings where these ancient desks are transformed into rickety soap boxes, platforms from which one can advantageously yell down on his foes. In this arena, I have been witness to highly contested votes of the women’s group third secretary, to slammed fists and flying spittle, to staged walkouts. Grateful for the entertainment, I have been known to climb a desk just to shout LOUD NOISES and get the blood re-circulating.

What Horrors Await Us?

Malagasy music videos are best described with varying combinations of the words ‘wonderful’ and ‘horrible.’ (Go ahead, try it. It’s fun.) This is particularly true when one considers that super stardom on this island by no means requires a voice that can bear listening to. Nonetheless, there is no understating the manner in which these ‘clippies,’ masterful in their comprehensive cheesiness, captivate their audience. Boasting appallingly bad special effects and totally unremarkable backdrops (think: gas station parking lots, a field of dead grass), they are often driven by strange and incomprehensible story lines (wait, she did or did not overcook the rice?). While none of the above are a necessity, matching outfits, coordinated dancing, and a mindboggling array of ass-shaking techniques are a must-have. I imagine that if you are not capable of disengaging your hips from your body proper, you are simply not welcome on set. As unbearable as these videos can become in a repetitive sense- one PCV used to ask with only a half-feigned dread, “What horrors await us?”- they take great pride in Malagasy culture. In many ways, they exemplify the admirable and irrepressible joy of life one finds all over Madagascar. And of course, after a beer or two appreciation of the art of the clippy is bound to elevate. (She did burn the rice. That bitch!).

Dedicated, with sincerity, to the special people of the world who airlift cheez-its despite the recurring fear that their daughter has truly, irrevocably gone rogue.

1. You have come to the belief that the color “dingy brown” actually compliments your skin tone quite nicely.2. Eating rice with a fork is not just a challenge, it is a physical impossibility.3. You take great pride in your clean-swept dirt porch. Hours a day are spent tending to it. Shamelessly, you gossip about the shabbiness of your neighbor’s dirt porch. 4. In your town, you have acquired a theme song, “Arovy, arovy, arovy ny tontolo ianatsika,” (Protect our environment!). You hear it wherever you go; it is played for you at parties. While feigning the necessary indifference, you are secretly quite pleased and walk around with the inflated tree-hugger ego of Captain Planet. 5. Often, you simply cannot tell if you are hungry or if you are ill. 6. You do not panic when your friend tells you, “I think I have chikungunia.” Again, you refrain from panic when she reports, “I have something worse.” But when she says, “I may have to go home,” YOU SERIOUSLY FREAKING PANIC.7. You have entire conversations without uttering a single fully-formed syllable.8. Endlessly, you and your friends play games such as “What would you eat at this exact moment in time?” “City names with only the vowel ‘A,’” “Closest guess to today’s date wins a cookie,” and “If your name was a verb what would it mean?” None of these, however, compare to the most enduringly popular “Things I do not care about.”9. The Peace Corps doctor kindly inquires, “Do you read a lot?” and recommends you use proper lighting as you are “straining your eyeballs.” He forgets, or neglects, to ask about you romantic life. It is only hours later that you think to be offended by this insult of omission.10. You have lost all human empathy; you read about prison and think to yourself- applesauce and air conditioning- that sounds nice!

In April (yes, I am aware that it is July), a rabble of wildly enthusiastic volunteers descended upon my town for a week to help with a long planned map and cookstove project.

The primary goal of this project was the painting of a large map of Sahamalaza National Park and the Commune of Maromandia at the entrance of the commune building.

The vertical portion of the map depicts the National Park and the horizontal the Commune. Park boundaries, roads, rivers, and footpaths are all included.



"Call-out" boxes (I swear someone told me they are actually called that), highlight special environmental features of the park and surrouding area, such as endemic species, coral reefs, mangrove forests, etc.

Taking advantage of all the helping hands, the rabble of volunteers held a cookstove construction demonstration at the town EPP (elementary school).

Over a hundred students and teachers participated.

There was a lot of enthusiasm...

A lot of mud...

Teachers just adore fuel-efficient cookstoves.

And then more cookstoves a few days later with the Environmental Club.

Fun times were had by all!

Hell-ville, Nosy Be

Ambatoloaka

Ranomafana

Antananarivo

Bongo Angorony

Maromandia

Maromandia

Ambatoloaka, Nosy Be

Route National 6

Andilana, Nosy Be

Maromandia

Andilana, Nosy Be

Maetsamalaza

Antananarivo

Andilana, Nosy Be

Ranomafana

Near Fianarantsoa

Andilana, Nosy Be

...act like hippies.

...fail to compete.

...have narcoleptic moments.

...miss an opportunity to integrate.

...disregard sound sanitary advice.

...slip into "gasy moments."

...pass a snack stand without stopping.

...allow claustrophobic conditions to dampen morale.

...lose their sense of scale.

...have off days.

...forget to dress for success.

...resort to conflict.

...struggle to make ends meet.

...fail to appreciate the beauty.

...turn their backs on a crowd of children.

...dance alone.

...have ANY fun.

Yes, that is a lemur. Yes, I am snuggling with it.

Yes, my life is now complete.

EPP, Maromandia

Overlooking Anjiabory

One bunch of lobster claws: 1000Ariary. Fifty Cents.

Women in the Rice Fields

Ambodivoanyo

Let's play motorcycle: the world's loudest, rowdiest game.

Maromandia

Ferry crossing the Ramena River

Amabanja

One develops many ways of passing time.

Anjiabory Andoharano

A faty, funeral.

Watch out! There is an angry chicken in here!

The Sambirano River

The Road to Maevatanana

My neighborhood ruffians

I am not necessarily one for the Hallmark-ey things of the world. I do not watch Lifetime specials; I did not cry at the end of Titanic; Valentine’s Day makes me borderline nauseous. The last familial birthday card I sent was addressed, “From one deeply emotive heart to another.”

But occasionally one encounters in life a person so delightfully cheesy and wonderful that even the least emotive heart cannot help but be swept away by their joy and charisma. It is as if one is suddenly and all at once caught in the throes of a Lifetime marathon, awaiting with bated breath February 14th, afloat in the icy waters of the Atlantic (“I’ll never let go!”). As complicated as it may seem, what I have just described is now a regular emotion for me. I have found my living Hallmark card and his name is Zama. He drives my town brousse.

I should preface with two disclaimers. One, Zama is pushing fifty and balding; he sports a distinct rice-belly; we are not in love. Two, my town brousse- which runs the ninety kilometers to and from Ambanja daily- is, excepting the personality of the driver, no different from any other harrowing Madagascar travel experience. In fact, it is often worse.

The car routinely runs at double capacity, which is to say that a van designed for fifteen carries over thirty; children are stuffed in the cracks like peanuts in a packing crate. The trip is long, arduous, and unpredictable, stops frequent, prolonged, and often unexplained. Seven AM departure is no guarantee of reaching Amabanja by noon and the Three PM return trip often leaves after nightfall. Body odor, debilitating joint pain, and contact with infectious diseases are routine hazards.

But the van is bursting with more than its sheer human cargo, reeking of that which is more powerful than body odor, and threatening the spread of something far more infectious than simple skin fungus. No, this vehicle is alive with, crawling with, exploding with…joy and laughter. It emanates from Zama, seeps into the narrow cracks, works its way into the crushed and stifling backseats, beats out through the speakers.

Zama honks and shouts, dances and sings, greets everyone- best friend and stranger alike- with his signature two handed wave, now and then breaking it down to a goofy, slow-motion version that requires a full ten seconds of knee-steering. He bounces the van to a halt in keeping with the frenetic beat of the Malagasy music and declares beaming, “Karibo an-trano!” (“Come into the house!”).

He offers free rides and says without hesitation: “when you are troubled, come with Zama.” To one and all, two hundred times each way, he yells “ARAHABAINA!” (CONGRATULATIONS!). Growing weary of this repetition, he unfailingly expands as the ride proceeds, at first on more routine topics – the time of the day, the weather- then to more creative observances such as “that lovely bunch of ripe bananas” or “your house with a very small door!”

Zama is a local celebrity and as the good-karma mobile rolls through village after roadside village children appear, running as fast as their little stumbly legs will carry them to dance and wave, to chase the car. This is the highlight of many road-watchers’ and weary walkers’ days: men drop the reins of their ox-carts, women drop babies, comatose old people show sudden life.

The first time I hitched a ride with Zama I feared for my young life, as I had clearly placed it in the hands of a lunatic. But now I revel in these rides; it is like hopping the “It’s a Small World Boat,” with slightly less grating music, or better yet, living a tourism commercial (Madagascar: We Won’t Rob You While You’re Looking!). When I manage to leverage my status as town celebrity, dignitary, and novelty, and snag the front seat, I grin stupidly for two hours, pretending they are all waving to me.

On more than one occasion, Zama has tossed out candy, an action roughly equivalent in this sugar-crazed country to flinging out gold nuggets or hundred dollar bills. Bikes crashed. Children screamed. Entire herds of cattle were left to fend for themselves. It was chaos and I could not help but think: I know where Santa vacations and I get to ride in his off-season sleigh.

There are, of course, practical reasons why appreciate Zama: he does not drink, is not rude, creepy, or outright lecherous, does not even run over chameleons. But these things alone could not elevate him to Hallmark status. It is the simple fact that he takes a potentially monotonous routine and stretch of road and day in, day out makes it a vehicle of joy, utilizes it as a way to spread happiness. This is what gets me all goose-bumpy and tear-eyed, all choked up in the throat like I just in the name of love kicked Jack off the flotation device.

Then again, it does not hurt to be able to brag that I am routinely driven through a tourism commercial by Santa, who unfailingly congratulates me on my house with a very small door. That is certainly the kind of Hallmark card to be found only in Madagascar.

I. The Great Cyclone Wind

One evening, I sat on my stoop and watched the approach of a storm alive with lightning. Distantly, I was aware of a cyclone hovering somewhere off the coast. But this is Peace Corps: news of impending doom is routinely delivered via highly condensed and often cryptic text messages. (Cat 3 cyclone: approx 30k from town [you do not know and cannot find on map], landfall expected half-hour [before you find service on your phone], prob 2 late, do not panic, but RUN 4 LIVES!).

Ok, that is not at all fair. Peace Corps duly informed us of the cyclone’s approach and thus I had no one but myself to blame for the surprise I felt when a wall of wind- seemingly from out of nowhere, preceding even a drop of rain- slammed into my house. One minute all was calm, the next the neighborhood was abuzz with activity. People scurried about collecting children and chickens, tossing rocks onto the flapping metal roofs, battening the hatches.

In the midst of this maelstrom, I was suddenly concerned with determining the lee-side of my house, recalling with alarming clarity dire warnings of cyclone-created vacuums. A headline flashed across my mind: PCV Fails to Alleviate Pressure Imbalance, Sucked to High Heaven. Thus, I was running about, opening and closing doors like a deranged game-show host when WHAM! the backdoor flies off its hinges and lands in the yard.

The frantic activities of the neighborhood screech to a halt. All heads turn my way. Katie is in crisis.

II. The Great Theft

A different evening found me absorbed in my nightly routine of killing bugs and watching the candle gutter. One should not underestimate this entertainment value, for my absorption level was complete enough to allow somebody to stroll into the backroom of my house and take 100,00Ariary (about fifty dollars). Needless to say, upon discovery of this brazen attack I was little peeved; my town, on the other hand, was downright incensed.

But it took some time to shift into crime-fighting gear. When the police commissioner at last appeared from the corner bar, he did not hesitate to set the tone of a serious investigation. His first inquiry, made with a poorly-suppressed giggle, was as to why Fred failed to protect me. Fred, for those of you who do not know, is a teddy bear. My confidence was not bolstered.

After the collection of invaluable eyewitness reports- well, I was cooking rice, well, we were talking, well, how could we have seen anything? we were busy- the investigation halted for the night. It was, after all, long past seven and, let us be honest, in Madagascar, crime does sleep.

The next morning commenced a memorable journey through the intricate and often mystifying inner-workings of Malagasy bureaucracy. Forms were painstakingly typed, double and triple stamped. Cigarettes were smoked to a nub, the morning beer-drinking drill of the gendarmes interrupted, more cigarettes bought, and by afternoon- do not ask me how- the thief apprehended and the money returned.

But some miracles must be paid for after the fact; in a final act of bureaucratic attrition I was detained for hours more to compose the official report. Primarily, this entailed my avoidance of comically unprofessional hints (“you know, this wouldn’t have happened if you had a boyfriend”) and questions (“can I be your guardian and sleep at your house?”) posed as the gendarme clacked away at his Soviet-era typewriter. Presuming all to be rhetorical, I chose to stare determinedly over his shoulder at the Poisonous Fish of Madagascar poster tacked crookedly to the wall and muse over which I would beset upon this unabashedly eager fellow.

III. The Great Allergy Attack

It was on yet another day that I awoke with the dim, groggy awareness that something was not as it should be: my left eye was swollen completely shut. But this is Madagascar, weird, inexplicable occurrences are a matter of routine and it was on such a basis that I dared to tempt the wrath of the gods and find it all rather funny. Oh how I would live to regret such folly!

The mysterious ailment spreads and swells. By the next morning my whole body is afflicted and both eyes refuse to open. Through slits I perceive a face in the mirror that is not only unrecognizable, it is appalling to behold.

I lie helpless and incapacitated in my sweltering house as children gather in silent awe at the fence and friends, neighbors, and those types drawn to freak-shows stop by to ogle. Somebody I do not know appears and crushes a root to an orange, pulpy mass; he is deeply offended when I refuse to eat it. I awake from a delirious sleep to find a strange, toothless woman slathering me with white paste as other look on approvingly. I am defenseless.

On the third day, foreigner medicine and traditional remedies equally ineffective, I travel 100 kilometers to meet the Peace Corps doctor. This, of course, necessitates a taxi-brousse ride (helicopter request: denied). As I appear bound for a leper colony, my entrance into the vehicle is met with unrestrained looks of horror and loud admonitions to children to NOT TOUCH.

In Malagasy culture no question is inappropriate, no timing untactful. Thus, for three hours I am relentlessly interrogated, argued about and over, besieged with endless advice. I emerge into the dusty-haven of the brousse-station feeling as though I have just survived a circle of hell even Dante could not have imagined.

The doctor takes one look at me and says (with only a Peace Corps doctor’s mastery of understatement): “Yes, that is rather bad.” He mutters on the phone about ‘lesions.’ Much to my chagrin, he informs me that I am not going to die. I am left with extra-strength benadryl and instructions to wait it out.

The next day is my 24th birthday.

Behold, The Wonder of the Commons

Sometimes, it seems that the tragedy of the commons is the fact that I am living in it. It can be exhausting, the ceaseless streams of visitors, the ever-peering eyes. It can be overwhelming, the sense of endless expectation. It can also, somewhat conversely, be isolating, feeling so alone among so many. A life lived in the commons, in other words, can be difficult to bear. But in my times of minor hardship- these and other less entertaining tales- I have again and again been struck by the support unhesitatingly offered by a community that is rarely emotive about its enthusiasm for my presence.

When my door blew off its hinges and the frantic cyclone-onset activities of the neighborhood screeched to a halt, nobody- least of all me- knew what to do. But through the sudden downpour came my neighbor, a woman whose past standoffishness had always mystified me. Soaked to the skin and shivering, she was clutching a handful of rusty nails and shouting, “Don’t be scared. We’ll fix it.”

When I was brazenly relieved of 100,000Ariary and my town shifted to crime fighting mode, I received troops of visitors offering condolences and assurances that the thief was an anomaly. I was given three separate envelopes of cash to help see me through my difficult time. (It was irrelevant that my difficult time was only the length of a day). When I attempted to repay these largely anonymous donors, I was told that the money was not a loan. It was a gift.

When my face was swollen past recognition and I fled town, my friend and coworker followed me the hundred kilometers south and began methodically searching the hospitals for a “foreigner with an itchy face.” At last finding me holed up, she insisted on taking me out to eat and explaining away my sorrows for all those who inquired. When she remembered it was my birthday, she bought me a coke.

Each time I have hit the cement bottom of life in Madagascar, when I have been at my most sick or scared or miserable, somebody has unexpectedly appeared to pick me up. That is, after all, something to behold.

Recently, on the phone with my parents, I burst into an insane-sounding cackle at my own rather lame joke. While expounding on my endless powers of self-amusement, my mother interrupted across the delay: "Honey, when you laugh like that at your own joke, it means you have been living alone too long." It was at exactly that moment that I began to dread my re-entry into society...

Once, in my religious theories class we read an essay about a strange tribe known as the Nacirema. It described in great detail the odd habits of its members, their extraordinary interactions and societal constructs, not to mention the profound weirdness of its various religions. It wasn't until the end of the article that I- not so quick on the uptake- realized that I was reading about my own culture. Nacirema is, of course, American spelled backwards.

The point of this little mind-bender was defamiliarization, a process in which we disengage from what we think we already know, step outside of it, and embrace a new, removed perspective. In the case of the Nacirema, I was tricked into buying in. In the case of Peace Corps- far, far from the land I was once so familiar with- the disengagement process has been gradual but no less shocking. Or effective: I cannot tell you how weird America looks from the outside.

Recently, however, I was able to test (pinkie-toe test) the waters of societal reintroduction when I visited my family fora week in Italy. No, Italy is not America, but as my parents are leading a study abroad program, a fairly large continent of the Nacirema (fervid, collegiate Nacirema) were present to reinforce just how unfamiliar it had all become.

For months, I had set aside my best and cleanest clothes, saving them in my locker where they molded anyway. From the minute I set foot on the plane, it was clear that despite my best efforts I was the grungy kid and I was treading an alien landscape. All those innocent tourists undoubtedly wondered who I was, hoarding snacks and shoving small children aside at the drink cart. I may have actually clapped when my airplane was placed before me and I know I had to resist the urge to stand up and announce "CLEAN PLATE CLUB!!" Despite the fact that Charles de Gaulle airport was an overwhelming behemoth of cars and trucks, trains and planes, I thought it the greatest place on earth because it all made sense. This rousing reintroduction to the world of logic may have been reinforced above all just how distanced I have become. And of course, a 12-hour delay was devastating, until I found solace in the flavored-yogurt paradise that was the breakfast buffet.

Upon arrival, a day late and ever the grungier for it, I faced the true onslaught of the Nacirema as they wielded their dual weapons of current events and pop culture. In my PC life there is a clear divide: what came before and what falls after October 2009 departure. You might understand then why it might be shocking to not only learn of the existence of Jersey Shore, but also to be told with a straight face that it "defines" American culture. Strange indeed, this tribe where the haircut of a 16 year old boy is not just news, but more, an event of the utmost culture importance.

As unfamiliar as this all was, I managed to keep it together. I never once stood up in a restaurant and yelled, "for godsake, where is the rice?" I didn't ask a single stranger if I could have something they were wearing. In fact, by the end of the week, I had pledged my undying allegiance to both Team Jacob and Team Rihanna.

Thus, societal re-entry was not as difficult as dreaded, the attack has been beaten back. Returned to the relative normality of Madagascar with much to mull over (I mean, it's just a haircut), I maintain awe at my homeland's profound weirdness and continue to enjoy my outsider perspective.

For now, at least, I still prefer American spelled backwards.

As it falls apart before our eyes, Madagascar is a beautiful disaster. Roads disintegrate. Hillsides collapse. All crumbles and slides, helpless to withstand the irreversible acts of water. Overgrown trails run red with their own demise and wide, sweeping rivers empty murkily into the sea. Vegetation creeps, tendrils not long beaten back by human hands. The earth is in sway and civilization itself fights a slow-motion collapse. In villages of tumbledown shacks and ramshackle backways, even houses of residence share the architecture of those abandoned: a tilted geometry of failing angles. My house too, though of stone sturdiness, is carved out from under and within by industrious ants and determined vermin. Vines creep up the porch and spiders extend their webs out of reach. Termite dust drifts down from the rafters, water leaks from the corners, and one awaits the day of total, irrevocable roof, or wall, or foundation collapse. Even, or maybe especially, the cities of this country-- with their worn and tattered centers, their dirt-roaded, rust-roofed sprawl-- speak to the more prosperous days past and the steady corrosive passage of time since. In decrepit Diego, the university looms like a bombed-out, Soviet era establishment, the glassless windows of the dormitories aglow at night with the light of students' cooking fires. Palm trees twine their way up through the foundations of a colonial mansion, seeking the sun. Only the hulk remains- stone steps that lead to nowhere, shattered, spidery marble, frames that gaze emptily over the vast and placid bay- a remnant of something gone but not forgotten. The fabric of the nation itself clings tenuously. Linked by an infastructure that is frail and failing, the federal government- in perpetual limbo- attempts to right its ship and cohere its state. But as the vegetation enfolds, as stone houses crumble and palm houses tilt with the sliding earth, as rivers pour brackish-brown into the sea, Madagascar's periphery retreats to a local existence long-trusted. Compartmentalized, it follows ancient rhythms and disregards the call of modernity with few taxes collected and fewer services provided, a cycle of indifference further divorces national politics from the vast peripheral populations: police are supported by bribes, teachers are paid in rice. This is the state of decay. But there is beauty of untold scale in this collapse. In those crumbling roads and failing angles, in the tattered cities and ramshackle villages, on finds a world apart and a world resilient. Here, one believes, what falls apart may once again be.

Turtle: It's what's for dinner!

Ambolobozokely

Emerald Bay, Diego

It's not easy being the dirty kid.

Diego Suarez

Ambolobozokely

These are NOT friendly.

Emerald Bay, Diego

Ambolobozokely

Modernity is overrated.

Ambolobozokely

Bay of Diego

My preferred method of travel. I am not joking.

Diego Suarez

1. You wake up with your teeth chattering...to discover it's 84 degrees.

2. You take coffee with your sugar, consider any rice-less meal merely a snack, and think fossilized sponge bread is the greatest thing since, well, sliced bread.

3. You lie consistently; you feel no guilt about this.

4. You begin to seriously consider the marriage proposals of cow herders.

5. Sorry, I fell asleep: what was this list about again?

6. You no longer notice the following: flies, garbage heaps, mud puddles, cat calls, bug bites, nudity, public urination.

7. Likewise, the absence of the following is no longer of note: flavor, social tact, entertainment, motivation.

8. You have lost the capability of sarcasm; your humor is (generously) one-dimensional; you laugh when a small child falls off his bike.

9. You just spent four hours on the side the road, counted three cars pass, and felt not the slightest twinge of boredom.

10. You...just...might...not...leave.

There are perks to being a fly site.

Evening in the village.

Yes, I have a chameleon problem.

Marovato Sud

Round the Corner

Maromandia

Never lacking for company.

Despite indications otherwise, this is a road.

This is what it looks inside a cyclone.

Marovato Sud

Yes, this mango is indeed the size of my head.

Rice Paddy Fishing

Plaid!

Rainy Season Sunset

This little tree will save the world!

The kids from Ambodimanga

Yes, they are this excited about planting trees...

Who says I don't have friends?

Ampanilahy

The cyclone fails to damper enthusiasm.

Textbook!

The kids from Marovato Sud AGAIN win the cutest outfit award.

Picnic

No really, it was raining quite hard.

They love trees.

Tree party!

Maximum number of passengers in... 15 passenger van: 38 5-seater taxi: 14 (adults) Longest wait for a taxi-brousse: 9 hours Separate occasions on which I have thrown-up out the window of a taxi-brousse: 12 Pages in a Malagasy/English dictionary: 103 Pages of words beginning with the letter 'M:' 40 Town population: ~10,000 Town population under th age of 15: ~5,000 Children under the age of 15 resident in my four neighboring houses: 16 Consecutive weeks without a drop of rain (dry season): 13 Consecutive weeks without a trip to the water pump (wet season): 10 Students in my 7eme class (5th grade): 63 average age: 13 Students in my 3eme class (9th grade): 46 average age: 19 Separate occasions on which I have been robbed: 4 Books read: 110 Journals filled: 7 Mefloquine taken: 67 Sleepless nights: ~67 Cost of secondhand “Does everything taste fake or is it just me?” shirt at the market: 2,000Ariary = One dollar Ounces in a THB: ~22 Cost (with bottle return): 1,600Ariary = 80 cents

Walt Whitman, in his “Salut au Monde,” speaks in praise of the Red Mountains of Madagascar. He cannot be blamed for his failure to mention that these mountains- even 150 years ago- were melting irreversibly into the sea. A natural leveling process to be sure, but one which, in the modern world's neglect and disregard, has accelerated to an astronomical degree. This not a casual word choice: astronauts orbiting over Madagascar have observed that as the red rivers fan out into the ocean blue, it appears the island is bleeding itself to death. On the ground, it is not difficult to connect the dots. Deforestation is rampant. Communities- a small cluster of houses, a single house- are surrounded by rings of destruction, protruding stumps and bare ground. In the dry season, one cannot scan any horizon without the interruption of smoke pyres; land is being cleared for rice cultivation, or just for the hell of it. Come the cyclone rains those charred and scarred hillsides are simply gone, swept into rivers choked with mud and debris, rivers that sweep away their banks and hemorrhage their red sediment out to the sea. Rice fields are silted, limited top soil lost, local fisheries interrupted. To all this, people offer only a fatalistic shrug: we gotta get by, gotta eat. This is by all means a valid point, but also a terrifying one on an island of exploding population growth. Someone once told me: “We [Malagasy] think only of today, never tomorrow.” The same might be said of the powers that be, though a PCV must be very careful treading this particular ground. [Peace Corps is a working partner of the Malagasy government]. Suffice to say that wide-scale and highly profitable logging and mining operations, nearly all foreign-owned and operated, double, triple, quintuple the damage wrought by any Malagasy environmental ethos. It is difficult at times- in the face of such wanton and senseless destruction- to maintain optimism, difficult to feel so small and helpless, so limited of scope, so feeble of effort, a Lorax among a sea of stumps. Forgive, but I am not alone in succumbing to this bleak outlook. The island's default travel guide offers this among its opening quotes: “My advice is to see Madagascar before the Malagasy people finish with it.” That is a travel guide, hardly a genre known for peddling pessimism. So yes, sometimes it feels quite hopeless: the scale of destruction is so vast (almost 90% of Madagascar's primary forest is already lost), the cultural mindset that permits it so deep-rooted, that one struggles to find the rays of light. Frankly though, after an inordinately depressing series of paragraphs, I feel honor-bound to deliver them to you. The Lorax is not always the bearer of bad news. Thus I offer you this: over the past month, three large-scale reforestation projects were undertaken in my area. Though “organized” (in the most flexible and generous sense of the word) by Madagascar National Parks and various other agencies, the community was undeniably the force behind the effort. They raised the trees in peppinieres, turned out in droves to climb hillsides and muck through the mangrove mud, high-fived over tree-holes, killed cows and picnicked and were generally jubilant in their environmental efforts. It was refreshing. It was astounding. It was, for someone who was spent the past year among stumps and gullied hillsides and thick muddy rivers wondering if anyone else cared, genuinely inspiring. So take heart. Madagascar may be bleeding but it ain't dead yet.

Time is an unreliable property; here in Madagascar it performs particularly convoluted tricks. Mornings, afternoons, hours, days can stretch on interminably, punctuated only by the cicadas’ buzzing, the roosters’ crowing, the cries of children’s games- a time loop infinitely folding back on itself. Yet when the sun goes home (masoandra mody), it somehow feels as though the day has been snatched away. Whole blocks of time disappear in such a manner; weeks, months are suddenly past and I am left wondering at the crosses on the calendar.

I call this the Time Paradox and despite dedicating endless afternoons of thought to the matter, I can offer little account as to the occurrence.

The Malagasy conceptualization of time is a world away: it is as though the modern, western 12-month calendar has been transposed over a considerably more fluid, elastic construct. Malagasy time stretches and bends, flows through and around the structures of the 7-day week, the 24-hour day, refusing to conform to its mandates, its expectations. Time is not indicated by the workweek and weekend, the onset of a new month or quarter or school year, but rather by the rising of the river and the running of muddy water, the ripening of the mangos, the Northern winds.

As the seasons melt into each other- hot, hot and rainy, hot and windy, slightly less hot, hot and it might be cycloning- a semi-nomadic population meanders about from the roads to the rice fields to the rivers, following the dictates of an unreliable weather God. In town, hot days run into hot nights run into hot days and it all sort of makes you lose your train of thought…did I mention how hot it is?

For the Malagasy this is how time has always proceeded and how they will continue to follow it. For me, this rootlessness, this state of perennial summer, remains fleeting in my grasp. Of course that’s the rub, but it often leaves me perplexed- unable to name the month, unable to summon the season- caught bewildered between a fluid, flexible shifting time and its modern manifestation I can no longer trust.

Thus, I am trapped in what an insightful outsider once called a Bird’s Nest of Time. A place where a day often feels like a year, but after a year I look back and it feels like one strange day.

I wonder sometimes, what do you think of me? Not me personally, but rather the eight, nine, ten thousand of me scattered across the globe: the Peace Corps volunteer at large. What image does the label conjure up? If you are susceptible to the whole “Life is Calling” campaign (clearly I was) than it is probably that of a young American, taking pause between exhaustive rounds of well-digging/baby-weighing/tree-planting to wipe the sweat from his or her brow and stare thoughtfully into a beautiful and very foreign-looking distance. This is of course done with an expression that simultaneously conveys the deepest self-fulfillment, the most profound worldliness, and yet a serene sense of humility. [In attempts to master this look before return to the states, mine time and time again turns out like Blue Steel].

Or maybe you go the other direction in summoning up your Peace Corps image. Hippies, you grumble, generations too late and none the better for it; bleeding hearts that couldn’t staunch the flow; tree-huggers who lack the nerve to chain up to a bulldozer; those quiet, thoughtful types who really needed their time alone; deadbeats, not just pushing the snooze button on life, nope, they're throwing the whole alarm clock against the wall.

The truth, of course, is that the average PCV falls somewhere in between: neither a snooze-button hippie (hey, we did answer the call) nor martyrs supremely self-fulfilled in our acts of goodness. In fact, the very state of “in between” is a most apt characterization of PCVs, the life we live, and the culture we create and inhabit. For two years, we live poised between worlds: no longer fully of the one we left behind, yet always in some manner set aside from the one in which we currently reside. Psychologically we are forever shuttling back and forth, a state of emotional transience that begets neither stability nor normality.

But in this void, in this perennial state of in-between, we PCVs build a world of our own, a world built of both necessity and just plain fun. It is a cultural mumbo-jumbo, in which proverbs are traded like baseball cards and TIME magazines are treated as currency. A place where the more languages we learn, the less we are properly able to speak any of them and as result communicate in a garbled, bastardized tongue that confounds the outsider. And do I even need to mention that bad things happen when individuals who are used to being stared at gather in groups?

This is a micro-culture in which statements unacceptable to wider society (“usually I don’t bathe until my skin starts to fall off in chunks,” “Yea, when I’m traveling I don’t eat until I get the shakes”) elicit hardly a blink of surprise. Yes, there are deviations of opinion (“what counts as chunks?”) but no one throws up their hands appalled, no one actually throws up under the table.

You see, in Peace Corps one gets used to certain things: constant and often mysterious illness, finding (with your molars that is) the rocks in your rice, listening to blown out headphones…loneliness. It is only logical that from these common experiences and struggles a particularly strong breed of camaraderie emerges, one that incubates fast friendships and allows them to endure long, requisite periods of dormancy.

If the manifestations of this camaraderie are anything but logical (see above catalogue of inter-PCV behavior), can we really be blamed? We are strangers in a strange land and, for now at least, the only place we truly belong is with each other.

“For this crew, nostalgia is like seasickness: only the hope of dying from it is keeping them alive.” -Thomas Pynchon

...not necessarily normal.

...inclined to take the path less traveled.

...well-versed in geography.

...willing to eat anything. ...into self-expression....affection-starved. ...oh so adventurous. ...rabidly patriotic. ...unfailingly optimistic...

...reliably mature.

...team players.

...comfortable in their surroundings...

...even when their surroundings aren't comfortable with them.

...not to mention...way too comfortable with each other.

...are NEVER the type to miss home.

Indian Ocean Starfish

Cattle Country

THB is beautiful

Tsingy Rouge

Outside Isalo

Overlooking Ambositra

Mangily

Taxi-brousse travel is a team effort. It starts at the parcage- that mud-puddled, trash-strewn gathering of old vans and inebriated men- for empty cars only circle in Madagascar; a critical mass must be reached for departure. This means that whole days of your life can be lost in waiting, eating yogurts and stating forlornly at that piece of paper that guy swore four hours ago was a ticket; for this is the arena of liars and thieves, schemers and scammers, ruled by young men whose primary talent is the ability to simultaneously drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and chew qat; trust when I say that mixing uppers and downers is the least of their offenses.

Everyone- not just the highly conspicuous- is desperate to get out of there. Recruitment becomes a shameless and occasionally violent endeavour; new arrivals are beseiged, tugged hither and thither, decieved on all sides, sweet-talked and cajoled, fights break out over their baggage. Once you have survived this gauntlet and put your money down on a brousse, you now have a vested interest in the battles that follow. You plead with your eyes, please pick my van, and are not rarely a selling point: look, you can sit by the foreigner, she speaks Malagasy.

Once critical mass has been reached (about double the number of persons logical in a time interminable), the driver, who has spent the past hours of assemblage indifferently drinking beer in the shade, is suddenly in a tremendous hurry. He repeatedly leans on the horn, yells at the teenagers still strapping an entire living room set to the roof, yells at his newest customers, do you think we have all day? We passengers, who have been helplessly trying to express that very fact for the past short eternity, can only grumble as we squeeze in like cattle for the kill. With another yell, a qat-chewing, cigarette-smoking, didn't-bother-to-put-down-the-beer crowd is gathered; all hands on deck, much unnecessary shouting and last-minute exchanging of bills, and it is at last time to roll out. You rejoice as you try not to look at those poor souls you are leaving behind like convicts in barbed wire. Then you remember that the journey has...just...begun...

When describing bush-taxi travel, one must be prepared to use the constant refrain: "And then I almost cried..." Thus necessarily arises amongst us victims of a cruel system, us captives of a dictatorial regime of the roads a common ethic of endurance, a spirit of survival that transcends the heat, the sweat, the long inexplicable delays, the cavernous car-eating potholes, the sheer disregard of personal identity.

Food is shared and babies are passed. We bond at the most trivial of opportunities (Yes, Barack Obama is president of the United States...No, surprisingly he is NOT Malagasy but...). We cling to each other for dear life as the driver plays a high-speed game of reverse frogger (avoid chickens, goats, small children, herds of cattle and oncoming traffic; extra points for chameleons). We look discreetly the other way as the key falls repeatedly out of the ignition, snigger at the the petty bribery of the national police (Oh no sir, it only LOOKS like humanity is busting out of the seams of this vehicle), and offer up a chorus of outraged disbelief when the car slows for yet another passenger: Where are you going to put this one? On the roof??

There are musical malfunctions, the deluges of sudden squalls, numerous traffic jams, a term which here refers not to the number of cars on the road but rather to the complex extracation strategy required to quit the vehicle (move that arm...whose leg is this?...hold the baby...wait, watch my toes!). Through it all we are pecked by chickens and peed on by goats, accordion blares at an ear-splitting volume. When it finally comes time to escape you can no longer claim among your abilities that to either hear or walk properly.

Your bag is tossed down, the driver gives a half-wave, a final half-hearted attempt at customer service, and roars off, leaving you to limp on counting the hours of your youth lost on the past two hundred miles...

[In lieu of explanation, check out the Flotbots song, as I have shamelessly grafted to my purposes.]

I can ride my bike with no handlebars

no handlebars

no handlebars

I can ride my bike really, really far

really, really far

really, really far

Look at me Look at me

One year later and still a PCV

Alive and a local celebrity

Even when the days proceed endlessly

Entertainment never lacks for me

I can show you how to plant a pineapple

eat eight mangos before the day is final

I can read Moby Dick

and can almost pretend I understand the metaphor

I can wash my clothes without falling in

I can tell you about the cyclone wind

I know all the words to "zah' tsy kivy"

but I guess I'm still an American

Me and my friends rode a camel

Me and my friends came from Niger

And guess how long it took

I can survive anything now 'Cause

Look

I can sleep right through the rooster crow

the rooster crow

the rooster crow

I can say a hundred times a day: "ino vao-vao?"

ino vao-vao

ino vao-vao

Look at me Look at me

Just called to say that I'll still be

Alive in such a big world

So be a pal and don't forget me please

I can kill cockroaches in my sleep

I can live off two dollars a day

I can squeeze into a dugout canoe

ride the winds out on the bay

I can collect water off the roof

I can understand the man with one tooth

when he leers and starts to say

"need a second wife, ain't that the truth?"

Geopolitical musers and wandering souls

Me and my friends travel where there are no tolls

I can trust trust the system system

I can do anything just have to listen 'Cause

I can dry the ink of a thousand pens

a thousand pens

a thousand pens

I can split the atoms of the M&M

and share it with a friend

and share it with a friend

Look at me Look at me

Peace Corps in the community

Alone and wondering what impact will be

The cause may be noble

and goodwill secure

progress global

Here: harder to be sure...

I can grow weary with self-doubt

or bid farewell, peace, i'm out

I can walk away and not look back

first world luxury, that's a fact

or I can smile into the rising sun

and I can plant a garder when the right time comes

I can stay for years in Madagascar

I can have some impact afterall because

I can be a different king of foreigner

kind of foreigner

kind of foreigner

You can ask for me, I'm right next door

right next door

right next door

Cause

I can ride my bike with no handlebars

no handlebars

no handlebars

On November 1st, it was though someone had flipped a switch and the rains began to fall. Six long months and many a fruitless rain-dance had produced hardly a drop, now, the opening of the sky is a daily event, one that requires due consideration for the afternoon schedule. For these are torrential downpours and venturing out in them is much akin in my my opinion to snorkeling: extreme difficulty breathing, high likelihood of drowning, thus high risk to low reward.

Fortunately for the captives of the resulting mild afternoon hours, when only the dull roar of rain lashing the roof fills the ears, a three-fold blessing comes hand-in-hand with the change of seasons: mangos, mangos, and more mangos. For months I had watched them grow heavy on the trees, kicked them under-ripe down the back roads of my town, eaten them as an accompianment to street-corner brouchettes. For months indeed I tendered my patience and then, suddenly, as the rains arrived, the mangos ripened and Nothern Madagascar was swimming in both. Four for ten cents at the market, or better yet, send out a brigade of neighborhood children. Fresh mangos on a rainy afternoon: one starts to think this island life ain't so bad...

In fact, I have begun to suspect lately that there is a larger metaphysical scheme at work here: that shifting global weather patterns, a butterfly flapping its wings in Australia and a ripe mango falling on my roof Madagascar, whales migrating up the coast and "stars that go" criss-crossing the night sky, have all, in some vast and untold manner, properly aligned in their patterns to ensure that all is simply well in the world right now.

Given, I am two months behind in my knowledge of the world's dysfunctions, am only vaguely aware that America's current political gridlock makes Madagascar appear a smoothly operating democracy, and persist in the delusion that I will be able to get a job back in America, but who are you to rain on my "mangos as an expression of universal goodwill" parade? Who are you to demand that I get over my Peace-Corps-tree-huggin'-hippie-metaphysical-shenanigans?

While I wholeheartedly refuse to do so, I can offer some logical and quantifiable reasons why the turn of seasons has brought a sense of peace and purpose to my life in Madagascar (besides, of course, fewer trips to the water pump!). It is a hardly a rare affliction for volunteers, but for much of the first year I have felt that I was simply floundering: butchering and bungling the language, struggling to reconcile my training and personal expectations with the broader goals of Peace Corps and the needs of the community, often owerwhelmed by my failure to create a cohesive understanding of my role here. It was difficult and for months I felt I was just treading water and keeping my head above, waiting for the pieces to fall into place.

Which to a certain extent, they finally have; though let's not get carried away, this is hardly a 3-D, scale-model Big Ben we're putting together here. Rather, it is reaching a point with the Malagasy language that I deem adequate for continued survival; not holding forth discourse on the space-continuum but it will do. It is starting environmental education programs at the local elementary and middle schools and watching your first supervised game of tag degenerate into complete mayhem as the students run home from school to hide. It is seeing a few small projects make headway and feeling like you just forced the Mississippi to flow backwards.

Underlying these tangible and tempered signs of progress, however, is a broader sense o being at peace in my village life. The Malagasy word for it is 'tamana,' meaning settled or content in a place; urban dictionary would probably go with 'gone native.' It means moving slow in the heat and accepting a mud house will never be clean. It is the recognition that time spent in another's company is never wasted; that this whole notion of wasted time should be up for reconsideration. Above all other things, though, it means patience. Patience with the pace of life and the slow roll of progress; patience while the rains roll in and the mangos ripen. Patience while the workings of the universe, intricate and unknowable, bring to you what you need...

At the outset of this Peace Corps venture, when the bugs started crawling on my friends, I would only laugh. They would wake telling tales of dreadful midnight manifestations: bugs all over, couldn’t find the flashlight, trapped in the mosquito net. Not of hardy constitution, I would tell myself. Then, not months later, the bugs started to crawl on me; alone, in the pitch dark, I would come to fully convinced that I was being consumed alive by ants, or cockroaches, or freshly-hatched grasshoppers.

Mefloquine makes a mockery of sleep. As a malaria prophylaxis, I grudgingly admit its effectiveness: at least, as of yet, my brain hasn’t melted into my skull. As a weekly regimen, it is a steady yet unpredictable form of low-level psychological torture. Among its legendary battery of side effects: insomnia (“is it not like 3am in Madagascar? Yea, it’s a mefloquine night…”), tingly limbs (“I have the dreaded restless leg syndrome!”), and surreally realistic dreams. As for the latter, mefloquine messes with the mind; it is like descending down the rabbit hole.

Anything goes. One night I can wake up yelling such inanities as: “it’s not a salad bar without chickpeas!” The next, debilitated by the fear that I might one day grow sick of rice and bananas. And, of course, there are the bugs. You can imagine the funhouse effect when four or five mefloquine-doped volunteers sleep in the same room. “Did you grab me?” “What were you mumbling about?” “Who was yelling?” It is only unfortunate that mefloquine cannot be blamed for corresponding frequent lapses in maturity.

For me though, mefloquine could be aptly renamed “disorientat-quin.” Often, I wake up with no clue as to where am I. For whatever reason, I usually “conclude” that I am sleeping in the woods (weird, I know, get down the rabbit hole and roll with it). Once, in what I like to refer to as the “dying ember incident,” I was spending the night with another volunteer and awoke in just such a state. Normally- regaining slow degrees of logic- I gradually realize I am asleep in a house after all. But this time, sitting up confusedly, my eye caught the orange glow of the surge protector on the floor and I thought: “a dying fire! I am in the woods!” Triumphant in my mefloquine logic, I leaned over to inspect closer, brushing the volunteer asleep next to me, and… “AAAAHHHHH!!! There is someone here!!! I am in the woods with an ax murderer!!”

That one required some explaining in the morning. But I stand by my statement about the chickpeas…

Direct translation rarely works with the Malagasy language and is more often a sure bet to raise eyebrows. Even if I know every word of the vocabulary, I will still be receiving mystified looks. It is less about the placement of words or their grammatical structure than about the very ideas that underpin them. What I would say is simply not what people say here in Madagascar. For example, I would tell kids “go play outside;” their parents tell them to “go play on the earth.” I would say “this seat is uncomfortable;” Malagasy say “this seat is making me suffer.”

It makes sense: languages represent cultural values; they are thought paradigms, ways of looking at the world. And when I step back and look at Malagasy culture, it dawns on me anew just how different it is. Among other things, it is extraordinarily blunt: if I had a dime for every time I have been I look like a boy, Peace Corps would actually be a rather profitable venture for me. And believe, I don’t dare ask: “what’s funny?” unless I am braced to hear the exact answer.

This bluntness is just an extension of a Captain Obvious cultural takeover: Malagasy people just adore telling you what you can see with your own eyes. In fact, it commonly passes as fulfilling conversation for each party to simply state what the other is doing, as in “I see you are washing clothes,” “I see you are going to the market;” good talk, see you out there. Therein lies the art of the Malagasy exchange: subtlety is lost; hints are a waste of energy; it you want something, just ask for it already. How many times have I had the conversation: “Will you marry me and handle my passport?” “No, because you are ugly and quite obviously too short.”

So, we can declare whatever sensitivity I once had officially lost. That, however, is less of a problem than the fact that after a year of round-the-clock experiments, I have been forced to conclude that I- as an individual, as a personality- simply do not translate. Certain concepts- independence, sarcasm, restlessness, stubbornness, goofiness- many things that make me quintessentially who I am, just don’t have Malagasy equivalents, words or ideas (excepting possibly the umbrella term ‘hafa hafa:’ ‘different different’ or ‘weird’). Forget staring off into space or imposing logic or playing with language. Don’t even think about attempting to translate ‘wanderlust’ literally.

It’s hard because in many ways growing more comfortable in Malagasy culture has meant being less and less myself, and in no area have I conformed so shamelessly as in that of humor. Malagasy humor- as one may guess from what is already known- delights in the obvious and over-started: falls from bicycles, public rejection of suitors, ill-fitting clothes, white people. Without the tools of sarcasm and subtlety (tragically, even the eye roll doesn’t translate!) my humor has been reduced to a level roughly equivalent to that of Goofus and Gallant. Once, a fellow volunteer and I had every passer-by in fits, describing how she was cooking but I was just watching because I am lazy and “don’t know things.” Oh, you don’t find that funny? Come here for a while. I’ll have you bustin’ a gut over my standard go-to “I don’t swim because crocodiles like white-meat” joke. Conformity: it is a scary thing.

Madagascar is more than just a movie. It is a real place, populated by real people. What is more, it has a fascinating and telling history, one that greatly illuminates the present struggles of the country.

In “A People’s History of the World,” Madagascar is mentioned once, among a long list of French colonies. This fact is pretty indicative of the nation’s importance in the larger geo-political scheme of things. Madagascar is an out-of-the-way place off an undeveloped continent. It is neither a political, military, nor economic force to be reckoned with; it is a non-factor on the RISK board, an occasional blurb in the Times, just another vote at the UN.

Yet, its history matters, not because it is varied and colorful (though trust this amateur historian won’t steer away from its more exciting and entertaining anecdotes), but rather because it speaks to the injustice of colonialism, the missteps of young democracy, the struggle to keep up in a breakneck world economy. It is the untold story of a third world nation.

Author’s Note:

Scan through the chapter titles: this is NOT a scholarly work and makes no claims to be. It was written with limited sources and condensed to a readable form, which is to say the essential facts, the interesting facts, and the facts that Katie deemed to be the best foundation for humor and insight. That being said, it is as accurate as possible given the circumstances.

I. How the F did you get here?

Approximately a hundred million years ago, as the continents were going their separate ways, a land mass peeled off from India and Africa and, sticking close to the latter, drifted down into the Indian Ocean and, coming to rest off the coast of modern-day Mozambique. Madagascar was born; nobody was around to notice.

Fast forward 999,998,000 years, somebody in Indonesia gets a hankering to do some discovering. Not content with the island next door, or down the block, this ambitious soul sets his sights beyond the horizon. Four thousand miles across the open Indian Ocean there is a big, empty island awaiting. Accompanied by the most adventurous folks to be found, off they go in their outrigger canoes. Just as a certain carpenter walked the earth, these Indonesians crossed the water.

What is amazing about this journey is not necessarily that it was completed: whether hopscotching the Indian and African coasts or proceeding directly across, without the aid of maps or compasses, navigating purely by the stars, both routes have been proven possible by modern expeditions under matched conditions. No, what is amazing is that- much like the settlement of Australia or Hawaii- such a journey was even conceived, that propelled by the belief that such a landmass was out there such a leap of faith was taken at all.

Whether the first people stumbled upon it or were looking for it, Madagascar was quite the place to find. Early separation and prolonged isolation from the rest of had produced some odd branches on the evolutionary tree, most notably an array of megafauna: giant tortoises, dwarf hippos, lemurs the size of gorillas, and a bird species that grew to a height of ten feet and over six hundred pounds.

Tragically, for animated movies and the tree of life alike, the megafauna were quickly driven to extinction by hunting and indirect competition with their neighbors, but not before Marco Polo could introduce Madagascar to the world as home to a ‘giant roc’ capable of carrying an elephant in flight. Ever the reliable source, Marco Polo is also credited with naming the island, possibly mistaking it for Mogadishu in Somalia. [Insert lost in the swimming pool joke here].

II. Europeans Wade into the Swimming Pool (and Drown)

For a millennium and a half the Malagasy population grew and integrated in relative peace and obscurity. Coastal Bantu and Swahili migrations were absorbed in the north; short-lived Arab settlements exerted some limited influence in the south. Twenty distinct tribes gradually emerged, speaking markedly different dialects of the Malagasy language. Yet despite these variations and the mixing-pot effect of racial diversity, lingual and cultural homogeneity was maintained.

In 1500, the Portuguese established first European contact in a manner befitting their high level of civilization. Diego Suarez, a captain, waded ashore raped, pillaged, and murdered his way through the northern portion of the island, found himself surprisingly not the winner of local popularity contests and hastily departed, leaving behind only his name (as anyone who has ever caught me on the phone on a banking weekend knows: “yea man, I’m in Diiiiiiiiiiiego!”). The French and British, eager to display their own civilization, tried their hands at colonies as well, all of which failed in similarly spectacular style, due to disease and hostile local inhabitants. Thus- for a bit of a honeymoon period- Madagascar developed with a remarkable degree of autonomy and a fair amount of prosperity under its own rulers.

Not that contact with the outside was shunned; on the contrary, Madagascar thrived off of it, becoming the snack bar of the Indian Ocean, re-supplying the many ships that traversed the Indo-European trade routes of old. In the 1700’s, the island was a haven for pirates and slave-holders, who traded with and fought the local kings. Ile St. Marie, on the island’s east coast, briefly claimed independence as the world’s first and only pirate nation, Libertaria, at its peak boasting a population of over a thousand. Where’s our movie about that?

III. The Badass King

While the world snacked and stole on the coast, a powerful king was uniting the interior under the island-friendly motto “the sea is my boundary.” His name was, seriously, andiranampoinimerinadriantsimititoviaminandriampanjaka (which translates roughly to “the biggest, baddest mother on your block”) and by 1808 he had established rule over all the highland tribes by sheer badass force.

Andriablahblahblah, who was believed to have divine powers, actually enacted a fairly humane and far-sighted ruling policy: each family had enough land to provide for their needs (rice), large-scale irrigation projects were sponsored (rice), and burning of the forest was forbidden (might get out of control and threaten the rice). If there was still any doubt who the big, bad dude on the block was, the treaties he signed with the British in 1817 and 1820, recognizing Madagascar as an independent state, sealed the deal; not that it meant anyone would say his whole name.

In keeping the general nineteenth century vibe of Euro-African trade relations, in exchange for slaves the British provided arms and advisors that allowed the King and his heir to conquer most of the rest of the island. On the strength of this happy exchange, British influence grew and in 1818 a group of missionaries arrived at the King’s request. Of course, all but one immediately died of fever, but being persevering folk the London Missionary sent another batch who presumably took their mefloquine and spread out across the land to preach the dual gospels of Christianity and malaria prophylaxis.

IV. The Wicked Queen (or, how to rid oneself of irksome Christians in a lionless land)

With the death of Andriablahblahblah’s son, his widow Queen Ranovalona I came to power and quickly set out to rid Madagascar of all European influence, Christianity in particular. During her long reign she drove the missionaries out more effectively than any fever and many a Malagasy Christian was martyred as well. As Madagascar is devoid of lions (myth busted!), the Queen was forced to resort to more creative methods, namely tossing more than a hundred and fifty of them off a cliff. Still other Christians were subjected to the infamous ordeal of Tangena, which demanded as proof of innocence the successful regurgitation of chicken skin after forced consumption of a poisoned meal.

Ranovalona did, however, endeavor to improve her country, or at least force others to do so. In 1831, she put a shipwrecked Briton, one Jean Laborde, to work manufacturing muskets and gunpowder. Laborde turned out to be quite the fortunate wash up on the rocks, for within two decades he had overseen the construction (by forced labor) of a massive industrial complex and sparked a mini-industrial revolution that allowed Madagascar a surprising degree of self-sufficiency.

Alas, it was not to last; Laborde was doomed to go the way of all the other foreigners, his alleged role in a plot to against the Queen overriding his usefulness (as we will see, that may not have been the only thing he was up to with the wicked witch). The true tragedy of this treachery, however, is that not long after his hurried departure, the unpaid workmen who had labored to build and operate his complex in a an uprising. Thus, Madagascar’s short-lived industrial revolution came to a dramatic close.

V. The Wimpy Son

After Queen Ranovalona’s reign of creative terror, her son Radama II assumed the throne. Being of a peace-loving and pro-European inclination, he quickly reversed his mother's policies (history whiplash!) and invited all the missionaries to return. No sooner had they determined that they would not be chucked off a cliff or forced to vomit chicken skin then they were squabbling over royal influence.

Radama- who must have appeared a bit of a softy following his mother- was apparently a tad too malleable to foreign influence and internal concerns over this led to his assassination, strangled with a silken cord so that the fady (taboo) against shedding royal blood was not transgressed. It is aidely believed to this day, however, that Radama, exercising unforetold dexterity, managed to escape to the north and live out the rest of his days. As it is my duty to report the historical facts, I am obligated to mention the parallel belief that he was assasinated because he was the illegitimate son of Jean Laborde. Oh the intrigue!

VI. The French Play RISK

Following the dramatic assasination and possible escape, the Malagasy monarchy slipped into decline and power shifted to the prime minister. This was rather unfortunate timing as in 1883, the French- who has maintained a long-standing claim to Madagascar despite the long period of British influence- attacked and occupied the island's main ports. The resulting three-year Franco-Malagasy war concluded with the designation of Madagascar as a French Protectorate.

In 1890, the Suez Canal opened and the geopolitical implications of an Indian Ocean snack bar were instantly nullified. Consequently, the interests and unselfish intentions of the British Empire were signed away at the Convention of Zanzibar (where, presumably, the imperialists didn't cook but ordered out).

French rule was imposed by invasion in 1895 and the island officially became a French colony the following year; the monarchy was abolished and (was that really necessary?) and the Queen exiled to Algeria. The French colonists were of a radical conservative breed and their rule was correspondingly harsh. A Senagalese police force was imported and "volunteer labor"(not like Peace Corps volunteer, like 'volunteer or die') was enacted to build infrastructure. Revolts were brutally supressed; a 1947 uprising resulted in more than 80,000 casualties; its opposition leaders were thrown from airplanes.

VII. WWII (or, why small Malagasy children burst into tears when they see me)

46,000 Malagasy fought in WWII and over two thousand were killed for the Allied cause. The surviving 44,000 returned to Madagascar to describe the horrors of what white people will do to one another, including (and who am I to question the veracity of this claim?) eat each other. These tales of cannabalism filtered heavily into Malagasy folklore, particularly in the department of parental threats (as in, if you don't quit misbehaving I will feed you to that white person over there). Hence the terror that is written all over a small child's face when my presence catches them bu surprise...

In 1942, Madagascar fell under control of the Vichy French regime and, after a fifty hiatus, suddenly reappeared on the RISK board. Fearing that the Japanese navy would utilize the deepwater harbor of Diego to threaten crucial supply routes through the Mozambique Channel, the British invaded. The next year, however, rule was returned to the free French government; the Malagady, believing that their contribution to the war effort would earn them post-war independence, accept the trqnsfer of power. They are- how to put this delicately- tragically mistaken: just a few years later their opposition leaders are falling from the sky.

VIII. I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T (Do you know what that mean?)

No, it doesn't mean that the Malagasy got their own house and their own car in 1960, when trends of liberalism and anti-colonialism in France led to the granting of independence. But, Madagascar was a surprisingly prosperous nation at this juncture: a net exporter of goods with a population of only five million and 90% access to primary school.

For a decade or so- a period known as the First Republic- things proceeded if not swimmingly then satisfactorily, but in 1972, facing protests over neo-French colonialism, the president was forced to step down. Following a period of turmoil, a military directorate handed power to a naval officer, Didier Ratsiraka. (If this blog was equipped with sound effects, you would be hearing right now: DUH DUH DUUUUH).

IX. Christian Marxism (or, are we sure there are no lions?)

Ratsiraka quickly implemented a personal brand of Christian Marxism, guided by hos own manifesto, or "little red book." This manifesto included socialist policies of nationalization and centralization, which, coupled with a worsening of the terms of trade, rapidly ran the economy into a cement wall. Famine ensued, cash crops were destroyed, infrastructure crumbled. Despite this complete economic collapse, Ratsiraka was twice reelected, though accusations abound of ballot-rigging and intimidation.

After a series of strikes and demonstrations in 1991, Ratsiraka resigned and a transitional government- headed by opposition leader Albert Zafy- established the Third Republic (allowing for a pretty generous interpretation of the second). This experiment in parliamentary democracy quickly went the way of the others as Zafy refused to accept the limitations on his presidential power and was promptly impeached by the National Assembly.

Ratsiraka (maybe nobody else was running?) was reelected in his stead and hastily restored most of his previous dictatorial powers. And why not? During the decades of his rule and his years to come, Madagascar's GNP growth held steady...at 0%. With a doubling of the population the standard of living halved. A once moderatly prosperous nation was now among the poorest in the world.

X. Heavyweight Chaos (The Boy Mayor vs. The Stagnant Dictator)

2001 brought disputed presidential elections to and chaos to Madagascar. Marc Ravolomanana, mayor of the capital city won 52% of the popular vote but Ratsiraka refused to step down and declared martial law. Ravolomanana in turn declared himself president. Ratsiraka, ever the hardy dictator, retreated to his home town on the coast as supporters isolated the the capital, blocking off roads and dynamiting bridges.

Within a few months, fuel and food became exorbitantly expensive then extremely scarce. The impoverished of the capital succumbed to malnutrition and death. An infant manufacturing industry was choked off and 150,000 jobs are lost. Warfare in the streets not being conducive to visitors, tourism plummets. After nine months, a court-monitored recount confirmed Ravolomanana's victory, the support of the army shifted and the blockade was dismantled, but only long after considerable damage had been inflicted on an already struggling economy. In the breakneck pace of the modern world, Madagascar fell even further behind.

X and 1/2. I am not at Liberty to Say

It semmed that Ravolomanana had a good thing going. The economy was rapidly expanding. He had enunciated his Durbin Vision, a commitment to expansion and conservation of protected areas. Tourism was steadily on the rise. He was, all in all, a fairly popular leader.

Which is why it is somewhat inexplicable (especially if one is not already initiated into the complete illogic of all things Madagascar) that in 2008 when the newly elected mayor of the capital, incensed over the closure of his radio station, marched on the presidential palace, waves of supporters joined him and chaos again filled the streets; that when he stood on the steps and declared himself president of Madagascar, it...well...somehow...worked.

But now the realm of history is merging into that of modern politics, a pool into which PCVs cqnnot permissibly wade. So I will leave it at what it is, murky and somewhet tantalizing, comic and yet tragic too. That is the history of Madagascar for you.

Moonrise

Maromandia

FYI: Not a stable craft

Maetsamalaza River

Sure, they look innocent...

Maromandia

Over yonder thar be the osheanBongo Angorony

Maetsamalaza River

Village Life

Looking East onto the BayAnalamazava

A Fellow PCV Investigates the Charred Remains of her Home

Ampotsehy

Maromandia

Low Water in the Dry SeasonNear Ambilobe

Rickshaws: An International PhenomenonAmbanja

Rejoicing over the Destruction of my FenceMaromandia

Baie de Sahamlaza

Porch-Sitting: The Malagasy WayMaromandia

An Only Slighty More Stable Mode of Transport

And this...this is why I do not swim in the river

Sahamalaza

At long last, Mangos return!

Maetsamalaza

(or, am I an Old Lady?)

I may not look the part of the octogenarian, but you might be inclined to think otherwise when eight o’clock consistently finds me yawning, glancing at the watch, thinking: yes, yes, must hustle off to bed. Indeed, I fear that my youth has fled me not that crazy days mean adding powdered milk to my tea. The day I turned eighty was undeniably the day my neighbors proudly broke out there new generator; I scowled out the window, mumbling to myself crankily: “I don’t care if they are up and coming! Noise pollution! Light pollution! Plain and simple pollution! Did they consult the homeowners association? I think not!”

(or, Pandora’s Playground)

Day by day, my fence falls before the conquering hordes. The Huns did less damage to the Great Wall of China and they weren’t foaming at the mouth over marbles. The parents of these barbarians stand by bemused, only occasionally offering such helpful advice as “come on, just hit them.” Well, I protest feebly, in America…particularly not other people’s…They return to their housework indifferent as yet another battlement crumbles. If I am going to display such a lack of fortitude on the subject, it is not their job to help me out.

(or, Now I Know Why Dali’s Clocks Melted)

Each day, inevitably, it comes: the afternoon doldrums. The town settles into its quiet solipsism, its four hour hiatus from any and all activity, the only sounds the crackling radios and the crowing roosters. I lie on my cement floor, melt into it. I hum to myself “time keeps on tickin’ tickin’ tickin’ into the future” and am almost persuaded it’s true. Internal war is waged, less over the direction of my life or the moral predicaments of international aid than the contents of my food trunk. Peace Corps: Never a Dull Moment Unless You’re Bored to Death.

(or, Your Friendly Neighbor, Shamu)

You would think that after nine months, exempting the marbles, my novelty might wear off. But no, each morning I open my door to a continuing unrelenting state of scrutiny. My hour of rising, in fact, remains a daily hot topic among the nieghborhood (ten minutes later today, that lollygagger!). The day my hair finally went into a ponytail the coconut-connect was abuzz with the news. Unfurl a tent: Barnum and Bailey could not attract larger crowds. I have occasionally considered posting signs: FOREIGNER washing clothes, 10am at the river, GUARANTEED MORE EXCITING than a Sea World KILLER WHALE feeding!!

(or, Community Quirks)

Community, the world over, may mean “a group of people living in the same locality and under the same government,” but in my town, community means listening to the same hundred songs on repeat and never getting sick of them. It means everyone, from the tall to the small, falling asleep to the same music and waking up the next morning humming the same tune; it is like a commercial. It means spending months of your life with the perpetual suspicion that something is crawling on you. Community means stopping in your tracks as the town crier delivers the news and announcements from atop the commune building: “school starts tomorrow…our foreigner-in-residence is the proud owner of a new ponytail…oh, and I see some clouds on the horizon, might rain later.”

(or, Even on the Periphery I Feel a Part)

In some ways, I am pretty similar to my friends and nieghbors and those people who still stare, but in some ways I will always be something different. Both our roofs leak, but if mine blows off I will get a new one. We both fetch water, but my neighbors don’t stop traffic. We can all ride our bikes with no handlebars, but only mine has functional brakes. The children drive us all crazy but as you know, only one of us has issues meting out discipline.

And, occasionally, quite out of the blue, the fact that I am a visitor from another world will come startlingly upon me (yes, two years is a visit, not even a necessarily prolonged one). One night my six and seven year old ‘besties’ (‘onlies’) were pointing out the “stars that go,” those pinpoints of light that ceaselessly criss-cross the sky. Of course, they were satellites, but how do I begin to explain the concept? And just like that, you see, I am apart.

Life in Madagascar is often defined by the love/hate relationship. As in: Oh you adorable little children…Why don’t you ever leave me alone? Or, Oh you laidback, easygoing folk…why don’t you ever do anything? Or, even better, Oh yummy! Street food!...why am I throwing up??

But nothing in my life is more aptly characterized by the love/hate paradigm than my relationship with the Malagasy Post. It should not be difficult for you to imagine the love side of the coin: the daily excuses made to walk past the post office, the way my heart lifts when the postman glances up, how my heart catches in my throat as I say, “letters? For me??” And on these good days, the postman himself is so endearing in all the quirks of his trade: the solemn presentation of each letter with accompanying Q&A as to its origins, length of journey, and presumed contents; the elaborate signature ceremony required to claim a package (sign here and here and here and…here!); how every item is stamped with the deliberation and sacredness of ritual. (Though I should mention this last quirk is culture wide. Malagasy LOVE stamps; not the kind you lick, the kind you press to the inkpad and then slam down with the authority to shake the earth, or at least the building).

Of course, there are the bad days: letters that arrive comically out of order or, frequently it seems, not at all; the postcard that arrived with a big, red stamp across the back “MISSENT TO ANGOLA;” the package that was inexplicably returned to the states “MISSENT TO MALTA;” a text from a fellow PCV who lives five hundred miles south, “um, I got some of your mail?” These things make me wonder how many letters with my name on them are slowly turning to dust in, say, Myanmar or Suriname, places I consider synonymous with Madagascar as ‘the void.’

When things do arrive- two to three months after everyone has forgotten they exist- they look a tad worse for the wear. Packages, battered and misshapen, have invariably been opened and are now creatively held together entirely by wax and bits string. More often than not stuffed within one can find a piece of paper which, if remotely legible, would likely read: inspected by so-and-so, who only took what looked particularly tasty. But, as it thrice stamped with that earthshaking authority, one can take comfort in knowing that the graft was official.

Alas, I have reached my limits. The mailman does not know yet that I am breaking up with him; that I can’t deal with the way he toys with my emotions. As the letters dwindle off he will assume what he has thought all along: that I must not have many friends in the states besides my mother, except now he will be forced to conclude she doesn’t love anymore either. Tragic, he will mutter under his breath as I wander past not glancing his way.

So, ye of loyal correspondence, please henceforth direct mail to the address previously posted. [Whether of loyal correspondence or not, now would present the ideal opportunity to innocently inquire as to whether I have received your forty-three letters, your profession of undying love, that check for a hundred dollars, etc. etc.]

Katie Browne, PCV

6 Rue Commandant Marchand

Place Kabary

Antsiranana 201

Madagascar

A year ago, I got on a plane headed for the great unknown, almost threw-up somewhere over Timbuktu, and, if I was shoving my fellow trainees out of the way, it was that, not my desire to save the world, that had me rushing off. Well, we ended up in a different great unknown and –if you would like the honest truth- what I have been doing for most of the past year has been getting to know it.

I am well-aware that this blog trends toward the lighter-side of life; frankly, a sense of humor is often the only way to survive endless bush-taxi rides, weeks of brain-melting boredom, ceaseless scrutiny. Laughter is the best and only defense. But being a Peace Corps volunteer can be serious business: we are ambassadors of the United States and foot soldiers of international aid, we are profile and most of the time we are alone out there.

It is a unique experience and it offers a unique perspective. PCVs don’t flit over the surface. We are community members, we live like our neighbors- hot, dusty day to hot, muddy day- albeit with a much sturdier safety net to catch us when we struggle to find that middle ground between flitting and sinking like a stone. We don’t just shift worlds, we shift paradigms. We struggle with and eventually take on new thought structures: of time, of progress, of efficiency and productivity, of LIFE.

After a year, I can tell you what I am doing in my small town- I am trying to change people’s minds- though I can’t tell you if I am doing it with any success. Mentality is groundswell and Malagasy people are very traditional, a euphemism we all use for “resistant to change.”

I think many Peace Corps Volunteers have a vaguely preconceived notion of a village somewhere just waiting for an American, to throw rose petals upon their arrival and say: show us the way out of poverty! (Erm, guilty as charged!). But, often itd the case that upon arrival, a PCV discovers that the people of said village have always lived this way, are pretty durn content, and don’t necessarily aspire to much more. Which then begs the question: who wants things to change here?

Which is why international aid is a much trickier business than the commercials would have you believe. It does no good to tell a community what they want, what they need; to come, to build, to leave. The result- and believe me, it is all over Madagascar- is a graveyard of failed projects: broken water pumps and solar panels (no one trained to repair them), unused latrines (people are frightened, or they are taboo), empty schools without teachers (no salaries, no supplies).

To force people to charge, to force-fit Western notions on progress, can be not only ineffective but destructive; it can create backlash; it can close open cultures. When a PCV faces resistance, or more accurately resistant indifference, a certain crisis arises: how convinced am I if this gospel of change?

The people of Madagascar do not necessarily need what the Western world has to offer: big screens and Big Macs, wide highways and air conditioning. They are pretty happy with their stick fences and small houses, dirt yards and skinny chickens. But after living here for some time, one begins to realize that certain standards of humanity are going quietly and sweepingly unmet: 15% of children dying before their first birthday, widespread malnutrition, less than a third of the population finishing primary school, environmental degradation on a mindboggling scale.

Which brings it all back around to changing minds. There is an element fatalism wrapped up in these statistics and before they can be improved, one has to convince people that they are a problem in the first place. As long as communal memory this has been the way of things and when a foreigner shows up saying “hey, this is preventable” or “think about population growth,” there is an understandable undercurrent of suspicion.

So change must first manifest in small, simple messages: “wash your hands,” “grow a garden,” “stay in school,” “plant trees.” Most people will nod politely and go back to what they have always done, but a few will listen. Those few may start a garden and feed their children vegetables; they may build a cookstove or plant a tree where they cut one down. Through a receptive few, the groundswell may grow, change may begin slowly but in earnest, and the unknown may yet become known.

A year ago, I got on a plane headed for the great unknown, almost threw-up somewhere over Timbuktu, and, if I was shoving my fellow trainees out of the way, it was that, not my desire to save the world, that had me rushing off. Well, we ended up in a different great unknown and –if you would like the honest truth- what I have been doing for most of the past year has been getting to know it.

I am well-aware that this blog trends toward the lighter-side of life; frankly, a sense of humor is often the only way to survive endless bush-taxi rides, weeks of brain-melting boredom, ceaseless scrutiny. Laughter is the best and only defense. But being a Peace Corps volunteer can be serious business: we are ambassadors of the United States and foot soldiers of international aid, we are profile and most of the time we are alone out there.

It is a unique experience and it offers a unique perspective. PCVs don’t flit over the surface. We are community members, we live like our neighbors- hot, dusty day to hot, muddy day- albeit with a much sturdier safety net to catch us when we struggle to find that middle ground between flitting and sinking like a stone. We don’t just shift worlds, we shift paradigms. We struggle with and eventually take on new thought structures: of time, of progress, of efficiency and productivity, of LIFE.

After a year, I can tell you what I am doing in my small town- I am trying to change people’s minds- though I can’t tell you if I am doing it with any success. Mentality is groundswell and Malagasy people are very traditional, a euphemism we all use for “resistant to change.”

I think many Peace Corps Volunteers have a vaguely preconceived notion of a village somewhere just waiting for an American, to throw rose petals upon their arrival and say: show us the way out of poverty! (Erm, guilty as charged!). But, often itd the case that upon arrival, a PCV discovers that the people of said village have always lived this way, are pretty durn content, and don’t necessarily aspire to much more. Which then begs the question: who wants things to change here?

Which is why international aid is a much trickier business than the commercials would have you believe. It does no good to tell a community what they want, what they need; to come, to build, to leave. The result- and believe me, it is all over Madagascar- is a graveyard of failed projects: broken water pumps and solar panels (no one trained to repair them), unused latrines (people are frightened, or they are taboo), empty schools without teachers (no salaries, no supplies).

To force people to charge, to force-fit Western notions on progress, can be not only ineffective but destructive; it can create backlash; it can close open cultures. When a PCV faces resistance, or more accurately resistant indifference, a certain crisis arises: how convinced am I if this gospel of change?

The people of Madagascar do not necessarily need what the Western world has to offer: big screens and Big Macs, wide highways and air conditioning. They are pretty happy with their stick fences and small houses, dirt yards and skinny chickens. But after living here for some time, one begins to realize that certain standards of humanity are going quietly and sweepingly unmet: 15% of children dying before their first birthday, widespread malnutrition, less than a third of the population finishing primary school, environmental degradation on a mindboggling scale.

Which brings it all back around to changing minds. There is an element fatalism wrapped up in these statistics and before they can be improved, one has to convince people that they are a problem in the first place. As long as communal memory this has been the way of things and when a foreigner shows up saying “hey, this is preventable” or “think about population growth,” there is an understandable undercurrent of suspicion.

So change must first manifest in small, simple messages: “wash your hands,” “grow a garden,” “stay in school,” “plant trees.” Most people will nod politely and go back to what they have always done, but a few will listen. Those few may start a garden and feed their children vegetables; they may build a cookstove or plant a tree where they cut one down. Through a receptive few, the groundswell may grow, change may begin slowly but in earnest, and the unknown may yet become known.

1 In the beginning, there was only a blank wall without form, a void overlooking the schoolyard, and there was dust, dust, dust upon the face of the deep.

2 And the two creators said, Let there be a giant blue rectangle, and the passers-by were mystified.

3 And the world was gridded into a thousand little squares, and the gathering crowd said that they were straight and even;

4 And as the creators could find neither inches nor centimeters on their strange new world ruler, they called their unit of creation jellybeans. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

5 And the creators said, Let us draw the continents in the midst of the waters, and let us divide them according to the 1994 borders of our World Map book;

6 And the creators shifted the isthmus of Panama from Colombia (woops!), cursed the Phillipines in all the complexity, and wondered if Tibet was under or above the firmament of China;

7 And the hangers-about could offer no clues. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

8 And the creators said, let the waters of the great blue rectangle be gathered together in one place, and the continents appear distinct, and it was so.

9 And the continents were cast in lovely pastel tones, and in their gathering together clarified to all who observed that there are indeed five and not seven firmaments upon the earth;

10 And one creator at last confirmed the location of the great icy void Antarctica and saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

11 And the creators said, let us label each nation and people, and face many a quandary over what is inland lake and sea;

12 Let us admit (for creators can be humble), that the firmament has much changed since 1994, that the people are forever restless and their borders forever shifting, and might the creators have to return to the second day to redivide the former Soviet Bloc?

13 And the creators stepped back from divine creation and observed that in their polytheism there were two Fijis; And with wisdom they named one LOST island and saw that it was good.

14 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

15 And the crowd had grown, and they cried out to the creators: you have surely erred, you have gone astray in your judgment, Madagascar is too small, we can hardly see it in the midst of the waters.

16 But the creators did not hear, for they were otherwise occupied drawing stick figures of themselves in the distant void from which they hail;

17 And the Director EPP appeared to save them from their megalomania, reminding the creators to divide North from South so his followers could know the equator;

18 And he saw that it was straight; And the people declared that Madagascar remained the most important firmament upon the earth, and the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

19 And the creators said, Let there be rest after the task; let the earth bring forth rice to celebrate the occasion; let us rejoice in the hour of “rice o’clock.”

20 And the lingering people said to the passers-by it is good; and the creators saw everything they had made and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

[Pictures to follow…someday]