Since I just celebrated my birthday last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about age lately…especially the implications of turning 25. I’m no longer going to be in my early 20s and I’ll soon be in my late 20s. And before I realize it, I’ll be in my 30s! I’m sure to my middle-aged readers, that still seems really young, but when I’ve spent a majority of my life thinking of myself as a teenager and then a young adult, it’s a significant milestone entering my mid-20s.

The other reason I’ve been thinking a lot about age is because of the recent adult English class I held in my new community. I had been trying for several weeks to set a date with the interested community members, but we had trouble finding a time when all of us could meet, and then things like unexpected meetings and funerals kept coming up and causing us to postpone our lesson. So finally this past week I held my first conversation class. I had about ten students. Many of them were really sharp and already knew quite a bit of English. A few had a hard time, but they all did really well in general. All the students were teens or young adults. A few were teachers, a few were middle school students a few were middle or high school dropouts who wanted to get back into learning. It was great to establish rapport with the young adults in the village. We started out with introductions and greetings. At the end of the lesson, one student wanted to practice asking, “How old are you?” and so consequently I found out everyone’s age in the class. Much to my surprise, I was the zoky be, or, oldest one amongst them! Their ages ranged mostly from 20 to 23. It really surprised me to find out that all of my students were so young, because looking at some of them I would have thought they were at least my age, if not a few years older.

In general, Malagasies always seem so much older and more mature than their actual age (with the exception of some of the annoying guys who think it’s their job to verbally harass women all day). In an impoverished setting like rural Madagascar with such a rough lifestyle, a lot is expected of kids at a very young age. As soon as they know how to walk, children are expected to fend for themselves, and as early as 6 or 7, they start contributing to the household. Whether it’s hauling water from half a kilometer away, washing the family clothes and dishes at the river, working in the fields, taking care of younger siblings, cooking lunch over the open cook-fire…they do it all. Many of those little kids are more competent than I am at such household tasks. I cheat and use a gas stove, so I don’t know the first thing about starting a charcoal or wood fire. The kids in my last village used to wash my clothes because they were used to doing everyone’s laundry and could do a much better job than I (I’m so lazy and unskilled at scrubbing laundry by hand that I just soak it in the powdered detergent, swish it around and rinse it a few times.) The mundane chores we give our kids in America, like setting the table, taking out trash, feeding the dog and putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher in no way compare to the physical labor and hardships that some of the Malagasy children are expected to bear at such young age.

Malagasies have to grow up fast, especially when you consider that the typical Malagasy family consists of five or six children, the parents are often away working in the fields and half of the kids don’t attend school because the family can’t afford the fees for all of them to study. If the kids do study, it’s usually for only half a day anyway. Hence the kids are unsupervised starting at an impossibly young age and have to figure out how to survive on their own with no amenities like electricity and running water to make their lives easier. So perhaps because of the fact that Malagasies have to grow up quickly, they often seem so much older than they appear.

I think back to my childhood and how I used to consider it a difficult time, especially compared to a lot of my peers—certainly not for economic but rather for emotional reasons. My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I as only in second grade and she was very sick for much of the time that I was growing up. I remember at her funeral when I was fourteen, my cousin said to me through teary eyes and a comforting hug that I’d have to grow up fast. Looking back on the trails and suffering of that period of my life now, I’m starting to think it still doesn’t compare to how quickly the Malagasy children have to grow up.

True, there was an immense amount of emotional pain and stress in our household when my mother was severely ill from the chemotherapy treatments, and a lot was expected of me, like helping to take care of her and to pitch in with the cooking and laundry. However I had loving support from my father, relatives and older siblings through it all and I never had to worry about basic needs like where my next meal would come from or where to find clean water for the house when all the wells dried up. I lived the entire first twenty years of my life with such luxuries of the developed world as indoor toilets, running water, 24/7 electricity, uninterrupted, quality education, ample quantities of healthy and tasty food, loving and caring family, quality healthcare, reliable means of public and private transportation and safety and security. Many Malagasy children simply do without a majority of these basic amenities which we Americans take for granted everyday.

The other aspect of Malagasy life that often makes especially the women seem older than they actually are is the early age at which they start bearing children. Since Malagasy culture values fertility highly, the average family even in this day and age still aims for four or five children. If the women actually space out their births by two years, having this many children requires them to start early. In addition, many women in the rural areas end up dropping out of school at the primary or secondary level because their family can’t afford the school fees or the secondary school is in a larger town that is too far away from their home village for them to continue on after finishing primary school. Since these women no longer have their education to focus on, they start thinking about starting a family, even though they may only be in their teens.

Birth control is available for free at government clinics thanks to the Malagasy ministry of health and outside aid from developed countries, but these clinics are still often too far for women to walk all the way there every month from their village to pick up the medication. For those who can access the clinic, their husbands or boyfriends still often reject the idea of using birth control, so their partners either have to use it secretly or not use it at all. And then many of the clinics face problems with frequent stock-outs, so the women periodically have to return home from the clinic without having received their shot or pills because the regional health centers weren’t able to replenish the supply of birth control in the rural areas.

With all of these barriers to birth control, Malagasy women start having children as young as 14 or 15 and continue having them into their 30s and 40s. The stress that pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and child rearing puts on these women’s bodies makes some of them appear as if they are 40 when they are in fact only 20, simply because they may have already had three kids.

On the reverse side, Malagasies often think that I look much younger than I am. I do have a young face, but I think it has more to do with it than that. When they hear that I am not married nor have any kids, they immediately respond that I’m still a child. Since I haven’t yet taken on the responsibilities of head of the household, I must seem somewhat young and immature compared to the average Malagasy mother taking care of 5 kids and a husband. I also tend to present myself in a way that makes me seem younger, because of language and culture barriers. Even though my Malagasy has steadily improved over the two and a half years that I have lived here, I still end up communicating at a more basic level or talking around vocabulary that I don’t know, which probably makes me sound like the way most kids or adolescents would talk. Since I’m still sometimes unfamiliar with cultural norms or expectations and because I’m generally shy anyway, I also tend to hesitate or act unsure in a lot of social situations, making me seem younger and less experienced.

So returning back to the situation at the english class in my village, I think it was as much a surprise to my English club pupils as it was to me that I was the oldest one in the classroom that day!

I have had one crazy adventure after another these past couple months in Manompana! The weather has made things especially interesting. I’m not sure whether it’s just this part of the island or just an unusual spell or the affect of global warming but I’ve never seen so much rain and flooding in my life. One night earlier this month it started raining in the late evening. At my usual 8 o clock bedtime it was still raining, and not just a sprinkle but a full-on downpour. I woke up several times during the night to the sound of rain still pounding down outside. And at 6 in the morning the downpour still had not ceased nor even let up a bit. I opened my front door that morning to find that the entire village was underwater. There was a lake right in front of my house reaching all the way up to the fence near my front door. There was also a river flowing down the foot path from the school a few 100m away down past my house and into what was now a lake in the center of the village. Everyone was wading through calf-deep water in order to go about their daily chores or buy things from the shops. A few days after the flooding I had to bike from my village 10km north to Manompana to meet up with my NGO staff and help them with their work. I was a bit apprehensive, as I wasn’t sure how much destruction the flooding had done to the roads. I had heard from some of my friends in the village that none of the ferries from Soanierana going north to Mananara were running because all the flooding had made the river currents too strong for the ferries to be able to cross. One ferry up north towards Mananara had apparently been swept away in the torrential water flow. There had been no vehicles traveling north or south on Route National 5 the past several days. As I biked the three kilometers north to the ferry crossing at Fandrarazana, I found that the sand was actually nicely compact from the rain and the lack of large trucks passing and messing up the road. There were a few spots where I had to bike through water that was almost up to my knees, though, which was an interesting experience. At the river crossing I took a canoe with my bike laying over the top of it, since the ferry wasn’t running. Normally the river basin has only a weak current but that day it was quite strong as all the extra water from the tributaries was still emptying out into the ocean. The canoeman had to paddle especially hard to counter the brisk flow of water. After the river crossing the road was still nice and compact although there were washed out ruts, a few bumpy sections and some large puddles to bike/wade through. As I approached Manompana, I was shocked to see that the little concrete meter-long bridge over the marsh entering into town had sunk down into the water and there was now a canal a few meters long that I had to cross in order to complete my journey. Since the canoe was free I opted to cross that way, though it felt kind of silly to ride in a boat for all of three meters. The work in Manompana went well and the sun came out to make it a beautiful day, so the intrepid journey ended up being worth it. Together with the NGO field staff we went around to random households in town to talk with families about the advantages of using improved latrines and strategies for building their own. I helped by bringing along a poster I had made of a simple latrine using locally available materials that effectively prevents against the spread of diarrheal disease. I also prompted the field staff to come with me to inspect the latrines that the families were already using if they happened to have one. Though it’s not so pleasant venturing into the dirty, smelly places that people use to relieve themselves, we gained useful information about the conditions of sanitation facilities that people were already using and were able to give recommendations to the families we visited on how they could improve their existing latrines to cut down on the spread of intestinal iillnesses. Most of the latrines we observed were very basic made of materials that ranged from old tires to metal barrels to rotted wood with shacks built of bamboo and palm leaves on top. A clean, healthful latrine can be made of such local materials, but it needs to have a lid for the pit, a ventilation pipe to release the smelly air, and door that closes. The pit itself should not be dug too closely to the water table below and should have some kind of lining to reinforce it. We found that many people in Manompana already had latrines, but very few had improved latrines that effectively prevented against the spread of disease. One of the major challenges is the type of soil in our area—all sand with a shallow water table less than a meter under the ground. The only real solution for this type of soil is an above-ground latrine, which means that people can’t simply dig their own pit and stick a shack on top of it. They have to at least find a metal barrel or a mason who can construct some type of cement, super-terrain “pit.” Even the simplest models of such latrines are still cost-prohibitive for poorer Malagasy families. Another barrier in a larger community like Manompana is the lack of space to build a latrine. Most families we visited had only a very small piece of property where they had their main house and maybe a small shack for a kitchen; hence they didn’t really have a good place to build a latrine close to their house. We suggested communal latrines with surrounding neighbors to address the problems of expense and lack of space, but sharing can also be challenging in terms of cleanliness and shared responsibilities for maintenance. Although I probably grossed the NGO staff out by making them go with me to look at people’s latrines, it was all in all a very interesting day. On my way out of Manompana at the end of the day the canoe wasn’t there, so I had to wade through the mucky mess on the other side of the bridge. The small detour made me sufficiently dirty and provided quite the entertainment for all the kids and other spectators crowded around the broken bridge. Otherwise I made it uneventfully and safely back, only wetter, muddier and sandier for the wear. A little over a week later, it decided to rain absurdly again. I was all set to go on a canoe ride over to Ile St. Marie for my birthday, the small island off the east coast from where I’ve been living and working for the past few months. I had already postponed my trip by a few days on account of a meeting with NGO staff and local community leaders concerning rules and regulations on the usage of our newly installed pump-wells bringing potable water to rural villages throughout the Manompana commune. It was quite an interesting meeting, where we decided on how much to fine people for things like latrines and trash pits built within thirty meters of the new water points, washing or herding animals near the pumps and even swearing or fighting at the pumps. I was glad I stayed and helped with the decision-making process, but I was ready to get to St. Marie already to celebrate my birthday with overpriced cocktails at a nice resort on the beach. Unfortunately it decided to rain absurdly again for three days straight, so I wasn’t able to leave my village, but rather sat in my house shivering and wrapped up in a sweatshirt and blanket until the wind and rain decided to let up. Finally a few days after my birthday I was able to leave for St. Marie with a motor-powered, Malagasy-style wooden canoe leaving from my village filled with lots of wooden planks (I’m hoping legally logged) bound for sale on the small island. I biked 3km north to the ferry crossing at Fandrarazana to meet the canoe and we threw my bags and Carlton (I’ve named my bike since we’ve been on so many adventures together now) on top of all the wood. Then I sat on top and we headed off. It was a bit scary passing over the point where the waves brake at the sandbar barrier where the basin of the Fandrarazana river and the ocean meet. We went over a pretty steep wave and I got a nice salty splash in the face. From there on out to the tip where the mainland makes a steep point was smooth sailing for several hours. The narrow strip of land that juts out to almost meet the island of St. Marie protected us from the strong winds blowing in from the southwest. The wind died down and the sun even fully came out making it the warmest I had felt in three days. Once we arrived at the tip however, we saw that the open channel separating us from St. Marie was too choppy for us to cross. We decided to park in the small village of Antsiraka at the very eastern tip of Madagascar. After a lunch of rice and freshly-caught fish we waited around, hoping for the weather to improve. Unfortunately the Indian Ocean was still too choppy for us to cross over to St. Marie, so we had to stay the night in Antsiraka. It was probably the roughest night I have ever spent during my two years in Peace Corps combined with all of the camping experiences I have had in my life, which is really saying something. We slept in a bamboo shack close to the beach that belonged to a friend of the canoe captain. The owner of the shack slept in his bed while two of us slept on the ground with nothing but a woven grass mat as cushioning. I was wedged in a small space between a bicycle leaning precariously against the wall of the shack and our captain, also sleeping on the ground. There wasn’t a place to wash or change so I slept in the clothes I wore on the boat that morning, muddy and sandy scraped up feet and a salty face covered in dried layers of sunscreen. I didn’t even have a blanket or sheet and it was freezing cold with the strong ocean wind blasting through the thin bamboo walls. Since Malagasies are afraid of the dark, the owner of the shack made sure his oil lamp burned all throughout the night. At one point, as I shifted to relieve the pressure from my sore, boney hips, the bicycle fell on top of me. Needless to say, I didn’t get even five minutes of sleep throughout the entire, longest night of my life. I listened to the rain pattering and wind blasting all throughout the night and stepped out of the shack in the dim morning light to find that we probably still weren’t going to be able to leave for a while. I legitimately almost had a meltdown as I walked through the cold drizzle to the river where I washed my face and legs. The morning slowly took a turn for the better, though. I spent several hours in the kitchen of the family with whom we stayed, chatting, drinking coffee and sitting by the warmth of the cook-fire. Even though it was the most basic of living conditions, I was grateful that the Malagasies lived up to their reputation for good hospitality, offering us hot food, company and a place to stay for the night without asking anything in return…only that we come back another day to visit them again. By mid-morning the weather miraculously cleared up and the water quieted down enough for us to finish the last seven kilometers of our journey to St. Marie. It was still rough going in our tiny boat filled with lumber. I was gripping the side of the boat with white knuckles, but I never legitimately thought that we would capsize. I was more worried that some of my stuff would fly overboard or get soaking wet (although I did waterproof everything inside with plastic). I certainly got a lot of salty splashes in the face, but we amazingly made it over the whitecaps and swells in our tiny little motorboat without any problems. Only as we were trying to dock into our arrival spot did we run into trouble. We ended up getting stuck on top of a rock under the water. The boat tilted 45˚ and my bags and Carlton spilled out into the water. Luckily we were only waste-deep, but it was quite a shock and made for an awkward departure out of the water-filled boat. Though it was a wet and shaky landing, the day got much better from there. Carlton and I walked not even a kilometer north to this beautiful set of bungalows with a lovely outdoor patio and a quiet private beach for swimming. As it is low tourist season right now, there was only one other couple staying at the hotel and I got a very reasonable and Peace Corps budget affordable price for the room. The staff was lovely too, and I enjoyed chatting with them in Malagasy and learning more about the island of St. Marie. The sun stayed out for the rest of the afternoon so I was even able to go for a swim and sit out on the lounge chairs without having to bundle up in three layers of clothing, much in contrast to the cold and windy wetness that I had experienced at the point in Antsiraka that morning and the day before. The next day was unfortunately cold and rainy again. I was low on cash however, so Carlton and I braved the terrible weather and got very very wet biking the 13km south to the largest town of Ambodifotatra where there is the only bank on the island. Even though I was chilly and soaked, the vistas where the road hugged the steep cliffside looking down and out to the coast were absolutely beautiful and the stormy weather made for some dramatic skies. After a bit of shopping and banking I biked a few more km south to another very lovely hotel with a long, private jetty running out into the deserted blue water and a charming restaurant and seating area by the waterfront. There were quite a few more guests since it was closer to the main town of Ambodifotatra, but it was actually kind of nice having the livelier atmosphere. Unfortunately it stayed very cold and rainy and all of my clothes remained soaking wet. We finally got a full day of sun the next day. I was also able to meet up with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who was teaching English at the local high school on the island. We had a nice time chatting over lunch and enjoying the sunny weather. In the afternoon I headed further south to explore more of the island. I hope to make it to the little island off of the southern tip of St.Marie, not only because it’s supposed to be beautiful, but also so that I can say I’ve been on an island off of an island off of an island. Hope to head back in a few days, but its all really dependent on when the weather will let me go.

After many unexpected delays, I was finally headed off to the east coast of Madagascar again. Only this time around, a little farther south of where I had been for the past two years. It was already a month past my expected departure date to start my new, short-term assignment with Peace Corps, so I was eager to get out in the field. Don’t get me wrong…a break from the developing world with 24-hour electricity, running water, a much wider selection of food and entertainment options and regular interaction with native-English speakers was refreshing. But after a few weeks of the easy life, I was ready to get back to a more simple existence in the muddy, wild and lively “ambanivolo” or, countryside, of Madagascar. Moreover, I was certainly eager to start working again.

On a rainy day in mid-February, a Catholic Relief Services 4x4 stopped by the Peace Corps transit house in our capital of Antananarivo to pick me up and drive me out to my site. Since the CRS vehicle was also carrying a few other staff and all of their equipment, they didn’t have room for all of my belongings that I intended to bring with me to my new house. Instead, my Peace Corps safety and security officer had left with a vehicle and most of my stuff a few days earlier. They were heading out to the volunteers’ sites on the east coast that had been hit by the recent cyclone. After the reconstruction at the other volunteers’ sites was finished, the Peace Corps car would head up to my site…hopefully soon after I moved in, so that I wouldn’t be waiting around too long for all of my cherished belongings (including a gas stove, lots of books, and some clothes.)

As we passed through Brickaville on our way to Tamatave, the provincial capital for the east coast region, we were able to witness some of the destruction brought on by the recent category three cyclone that had ripped through Madagascar. There were roofs blown off, uprooted trees, an abundance of fallen branches, metal billboard signs bent over sideways, fallen power lines and trash scattered about (although the trash may have very well been there before.) It was depressing to see a country, already struggling with extreme poverty, shaky governance and dwindling resources, further crippled by such a merciless natural disaster. Now people who had hardly anything beforehand were forced to somehow rebuild their lives again.

After a short day of driving we arrived in Tamatave, where I spent my last night in nice accommodations with running water and electricity before heading up the coast. Although it was overcast and drizzly the next morning, the ride up the mid-east coast was absolutely gorgeous. For the first half of the drive, we were surrounded by lush, green forest and farmland dotted with quaint Malagasy villages and a few rustic, touristy, bungalow beach “resorts.” At last, in the mid-morning we reached Soanierana Ivongo, the head of the district where I would be working for the next few months. After popping in to say hello to the local gendarmerie and police and notify them that their Peace Corps volunteer had arrived, we drove up to the river-crossing to take a ferry over to the other side of the road.

Soanierana Ivongo is the point on the east coast at which Route National 5 ceases to be a paved road and becomes more of a joke of a national road. That is, it’s pretty much all sand, ruts and potholes from here-on up the coast until one arrives in Mananara, where there are giant boulders thrown into the mix for the travelers added driving pleasure. The road apparently deteriorates even more towards Maroansetra, where it ceases to exist completely, as the protected Masoala national forest complex begins (no vehicles are allowed past this point, but only bikes, pedestrians or canoes).

Saonierana Ivongo is also well known as the town where most tourists take a boat to get to Ile St. Marie, the little island off the east coast of the main island of Madagascar. We however were merely headed further up the coast. I was actually surprised at the quality of the ferry that took us and several other vehicles from one side of the river to the other. It was a legitimate ferry made out of metal with a motor and a flat space for probably five or six vehicles, granted we crawled along at a very slow pace. There were also small wooden canoes alongside us on the river, taking pedestrians and bikers across at a much faster pace. The brackish lagoon we floated through that was bordered by tropical forest on one side and a deserted isthmus-beach on the other was simply beautiful. Once we reached the other side though, we had to wait for ten minutes before we could get on the road again, as two giant “camions,” or cargo trucks, tried to maneuver and scrape past each other on the narrow road leading up to the ferry.

As we finally made our way on the now sand road, my jaw dropped…for two reasons mainly. One: it was spectacularly beautiful. We were right along the coastline with deserted beaches and coastal, tropical forest and hardly another soul around. And two: at points the road was literally the beach. Just as I had thought on my trip a few weeks earlier to Maritandrano in the Black Hole of Madagascar, I kept thinking, how on earth does this qualify as a national road??? How the heck does a beach qualify as part of RN5? And supposedly this road was in much worse shape 5-10 years ago. And the road apparently gets worse further north towards Mananara?!!

My thoughts were interrupted at that moment as our 4x4 inevitably got stuck in the sand. Somehow our top-quality, off-road NGO vehicle had managed to bury itself in the deep ruts and piles of the beach along RN5. As we stepped out of the car to assess the situation, I looked in disbelief at the fact that we were maybe all of five meters from the crashing ocean waves. Unfortunately we did not have a shovel with us, so we commenced to dig the car out of the sand with our hands. I felt like a 10-year-old kid again, as if I were building castles or burying my friends’ bodies under layers of sand. Finally we managed to hand-dig ourselves out of the sandy mess and drive off again just in time, as storm clouds moved in and he rain started pattering down more forcefully.

Fairly soon we reached our second ferry-crossing. As it was lunchtime, we got out to wait at the little shack by the riverside so we could grab a bite to eat as the vehicles slowly loaded onto the metal slab, one by one. Since we were right next to a river and an ocean, we had our choice of fried fish or fish with sauce, and of course a huge mound of rice, this being Madagascar. As we finished our meal, we loaded onto the ferry. One of our fellow co-workers took his meal with him—plate fork and all—as he wasn’t finished yet. The owner of the restaurant shack wasn’t too worried…he would get his utensils back once the ferry made its return trip from the other side of the river.

At last we reached the strip of land where my new village was supposed to be…though we had no idea where within the next 20km it lay. Every time we passed a cluster of shacks, we would ask where Tanambao Ambodimanga was, and we would get the same response: “Aloha aloha areeeee!” which is pretty much as descriptive as, “oh just ahead up the road over there.” Finally we reached my village, only to find that my house, after waiting over a month, still was nowhere near being finished. It was pretty much in shambles, since the last volunteers who had lived there were way back in 2007, and no one had inhabited the house since. Note: there had not even been a drop of rain here from the cyclone, as it had passed much further south of this area, so no excuses! At least there was a teeny little bungalow guest house for me to stay in temporarily at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s local NGO office off at the edge of the village.

For the next few days, one of the MBG staff showed me around the area and introduced me to the community. Everyone seemed really friendly and nice, though I was frustrated at their lack of motivation to start improving the house that was part of their agreement to rebuild in exchange for the free labor of a Peace Corps volunteer. The message had apparently gotten lost somehow in the mix. Meanwhile, the MBG environmental educator took me around to the local schools and introduced me to the teachers and students. I expressed my enthusiasm to stop in periodically and talk to their students about clean water, hand-washing and hygiene, although I was dismayed (but not surprised) that they initially had expected my main purpose in the community was to teach everyone English.

One of the communities we went to, Fandrarazana, was just a few Km up the road at the next ferry crossing. A quiet community right on the coast and surrounded by tropical forest, it was breathtakingly gorgeous. Before the environmental educator started his session with the kids at the local primary school on reforestation, he took me over to the beach to show me the coastline and to see if we could pick up some fish freshly caught off of the boats coming in from their morning trips. He also pointed out the shady, long stretch of land that was Ile St. Marie just across the water, which was surprisingly easy to see as it was a mere 7km away. Apparently one can take a canoe from several different launching points nearby. Some of them were Malagasy-style sailboats that, when the wind is strong, can get you to the island in as little as 30minutes to one or two hours.

We managed to pick up two small piles of 5 fish each for 1000Ar, or 50 cents, per pile and then headed back to the school so I could sit in on the environmental educator’s session with the kids. The educator was really great with the kids, and even taught them a song about protecting the environment. I had a feeling I would enjoy my next few months here. The next day, my Peace Corps safety and security officer showed up and was unhappy to see the state of my current housing situation. None of the community leaders were in the village, so he took me up to the larger town of Manompana to meet with the head of my village and figure out what was going on. The 10km drive up to Manompana was again absolutely gorgeous. After crossing the third ferry at Fandrarazana, the road weaved in and out along the coast and back into the tropical forest and small villages, along bridges over small creeks and rivers and into the quiet coastal town of Manompana. We stayed in a collection of hotel bungalows along the beach. The area was absolutely beautiful, though the roofs of the bungalows leaked from the rains that passed during the night.

We were able to have a productive meeting with the head of the village to flesh out the program with the community for constructing the house. Then we had a lovely dinner of calamari with rice. The next morning I talked with the mayor of Manompana to look into the possibility of having a second house in the town of Manompana, where there was a previous Peace Corps volunteer, since most of my work would be in Manompana anyway and since the house in Tanambao Ambodimanga still wasn’t finished either. He promised to organize the community to fix up the house in town as well, so I would have somewhere to stay when I came in for meetings and programs in Manompana. Then we headed back to Tanambao. I said goodbye to the Peace Corps staff and felt good about the fact that the community had started working on the house and was already almost finished with the shower and latrine area. The walls of the main house still needed to be improved before I could move in, but I would stay in the guest house at MBG while the community was working on it.

After another week I finally was able to move into my house, though it still needed a few improvements. Work started picking up as well. I headed to Manompana one day for a festival led by my partnering NGO to celebrate national latrine day. There was a parade, some speeches on hygiene and sanitation by local authorities and the NGO reps, a trivia session on hygiene with the local students, canoe and swimming races and dances, songs and poems performed by women’s groups and youth from the surrounding community. The festivities were all quite amusing: the canoe race involved one boat purposefully crashing into another to botch their chances of winning, the swimming race ended with the contestants running through the water which ended up being too shallow and the songs performed by the women’s groups included lyrics about pooping in the woods.

I also attended a village savings and loans meeting in the nearby community of Fandrarazana, led by one of the NGO workers. It was neat to see how well-organized the group of fifteen community members were. They had been meeting every week for several months and had saved up a significant amount of money. Some were able to successfully borrow and pay back chunks of money to invest in business opportunities and a few were even planning to use their savings to build improved, household latrines once they had gathered enough funds.

On March 7th and 8th I celebrated International Women’s Day with my community in Tanambao Ambodimanga. The morning of the 7th involved planting saplings from a local pepenier established by Missouri Botanical Gardens in one of the designated reforestation areas just south of the village. Though it was a scorching hot day with little cloud cover and no shade (as it was a deforested area), it was great to be working alongside the women and girls in the community to protect the local environment and promote sustainability. On the 8th, everyone donned their best outfits and we all lined up at the village flag pole to sing the Malagasy national anthem. Then we headed to the tranom-pokonolono, or town hall, to listen to the kabaris—the speeches given by all the local authorities. Our tiny little rural village was even graced by the presence and wise words of the Chef de District of Soanierana Ivongo…the American equivalent of a state governor. As this was a Malagasy “fety” the community also slaughtered two cows, which I did not partake in, sticking to my vegetarianism. In the afternoon, we were entertained by songs and dances performed by the local primary school students and a dance troupe from the nearby town of Manompana. In the evening there was a baliny, or dance party in the town hall. I didn’t attend, as I was planning to get up early the next morning to head to Fenerive Est, but I could certainly hear the music blasting from the hall nearby all night and into the wee hours of the morning.

Aside from all that, its just been raining raining raining because of all the cyclones and tropical storms that keep hitting Madagascar. The weather gives an added challenge to my work, as transportation is near impossible when everything is flooded and the roads or ferry crossings are frequently cut.

When I left my original site in January to start working with a water/sanitation/hygiene NGO on the east cost, I wasn’t planning on having to wait around for my new site to be ready. After coming to Tana and having a meeting with Peace Corps and my partnering NGO, we found out that the house and latrine still needed repairs. That meant I had a few weeks to kill. At least I was able to get some business things taken care of during the first week in town. The next week I was invited to go on an adventure with several of their staff out to the district of Mandritsara in the central-northern region of Madagascar.

This region that we were headed to is known to many here as “The Black Hole,” because it is so difficult to get to and completely in the middle of nowhere. The purpose of the mission was to train some of the NGO field staff in mobilizing the communities to build latrines, use and properly store clean water and improve household hygiene. I was to observe the training in order to get a better sense of the kind of information and resources that the staff had access to and what was expected of them for their work out in the communities. This experience would help me figure out where I would fit in with the work that the NGO’s field staff are doing for a similar project on the east coast where I will be posted.

Although it doesn’t seem geographically far from the capital, there is no direct route to drive to the Black Hole. You have to go all the way out towards the west coast, then up a little north and then back east again. The first part of the journey heading out west was all well-paved with deforested, empty hillsides making the ride fairly boring. Once we got closer to the west coast towards Port Berge, the water level had risen considerably over some of the roads due to the recent rains. The area was almost like a bog or wetlands with low-lying roads, so they often have problems with flooding. The frequent flooding was also evident given the fact that many sections of this particular road had meter-stick poles by the side so one could gauge the water level and determine whether it is crossable or not. The road heading back east towards Mandritsara—although supposedly a paved national road—was mostly eroded with giant mud pits and boulders added in for a little extra fun.

One of the worst parts of the journey lay between Antsohihy, the transit town where the road splits north towards Diego and east towards the Black Hole, and Befandriana, a large town halfway to Mandritsara. Malagasies have a clever way of naming their towns. Befandriana literally means “many beds” and Mandritsara means “good sleep.” I guess it makes sense that an area with a lot of beds would be a good place to sleep. The only aspect I noticed about the area however was how much mud and boulders there were all over the road. It took us a day and a half of driving to get to Mandritsara and, just as I thought the journey was almost to an end, the road became ten times worse.

Our final destination was called Maritandrano, a small town about 30km beyond Mandritsara. It didn’t sound that far, but the fact that any semblance of a paved road disappeared made the distance seem to stretch on forever. There were some points were the bordering rice paddies merged into the road, so it was just one big mud-plain. Then there were steep sections with washed out ruts and boulders the size of small cars as well as several deep ditches and potholes. As we approached the town of Maritandrano we were greeted by a large cement bridge/dam covered by water, which the car had to “wade” through before finally reaching our destination.

After a couple of days of listening to behavior-change strategy talks and getting to know the field staff in Maritandrano, we had to head out on the “road” again. Even though it hadn’t rained much over the past few days, the road was still a muddy mess. It took us all afternoon as we slowly ambled over the boulders and mud pits until we finally made it safely back to Mandritsara. The next morning we headed to Antsohihy after a nice rest in the town of “good sleep.” We made good time as the road wasn’t as bad as the one from Maritandrano the day before, but the giant mud-pit outside of Befandriana was still a slight obstacle. There were four “camions,” or large trucks, in addition to a few passenger-vans stuck in parts of the road where the mud was several feet deep. Luckily our hearty 4x4 vehicle operated by our very skilled driver was able to weave around all the stalled vehicles and mud, and we made it safely back to the paved road and into Antsohihy in time for lunch. After a few more road stops to buy mangos and pineapples we finally arrived back in Tana.

The road trip to the Black Hole was unlike any other car ride I have ever been on. It was quite the adventure, but I was glad to head to my new site to start working again. I was all packed and ready to go the next day when the Peace Corps medical office called to let me know that I was being medically evacuated to South Africa. It was quite a shock that I was being sent all the way to Pretoria to the regional medical office for Peace Corps in Africa just for a skin biopsy. I was frustrated that the move to my new site was postponed yet again, but grateful that Peace Corps is concerned enough about their volunteers and make every effort to ensure that they get the best medical care possible.

So the next week I was off on a plane to Johannesburg. As we flew over the city, I was surprised to see aerial patterns of suburban, cookie-cutter developments with brilliant blue swimming pools in each rectangular yard. A volunteer driver holding a sign with my “Peace Corps” written on it picked me up in the airport. I almost got in the wrong side of the car, because I forgot that former British colonies typically drive on the left side of the road and have the steering wheel on the right. It was surreal to be riding along on a paved six-lane highway to Pretoria. All the development and infrastructure made the car ride quite surreal. It was almost like being in America again, which was jarring since I haven't been back to the States since I left in the fall of '09.

Peace Corps puts all the injured/sick volunteers in a guest house (basically like a fancy bed and breakfast) in the suburbs of Pretoria, close to their main office. Though I was bummed that I had to postpone my move for another week and a bit nervous about the biopsy, it was really interesting to meet the other volunteers who were staying in the guest house and nice to take advantage of all the amenities of the developed world. There were several PC response volunteers going through orientation and getting ready to start their work in South Africa in addition to the other medically evacuated volunteers who came from countries including Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia.

After my biopsy, I had a few days to kill waiting for my results, so I went to the nearby mall and did some shopping and saw a few movies on the big screen. It was also nice just staying at the guest house, drinking water straight from the tap, sitting out by the beautiful garden, pool and patio area and enjoying the included breakfast every morning with cereal, yoghurt, fruit salad and French toast and omelets made to order. I also made sure to pick up some South African wine, cheese, grapes, hummus and real bread (as opposed to the stale French baguettes that we get in Madagascar) from the grocery store.

After a normal result from the biopsy, my stitches were removed and I was cleared to return to Madagascar. It was sad to say goodbye to my new Peace Corps friends that I made while in Pretoria and to clean water and bathrooms and real roads, but it also felt good to know I was healthy and ready to get out to my new site on the eastern coast of Madagascar. The trip was actually good timing, because I missed the category three cyclone while I was in South Africa waiting for my biopsy results. The cyclone thankfully didn’t do much damage to the area where my new site will be, but most of the volunteers on the east coast were evacuated to the capital to wait out the storm and then had to head back to their sites afterwards with the safety and security officer to assess the damage to their houses. I hope the rebuilding process goes well for the other volunteers and I’m excited to see what new adventures await me as I finally travel out to my new site.

My last month at site has been quite a roller coaster. While I’m not yet leaving the country, I have had to say goodbye to the community with whom I’ve lived and worked for the past two years. I will admit, there are some things I’ll be glad to say goodbye to and many new adventures I’m excited to move on to. However I’ve made so many close connections—both professional and personal—with Malagasies and Peace Corps volunteers in my region, which has made the moving process difficult.

Even though I chose not to end my two years before the holiday season so I could be with family back home, like most other volunteers in my “stage” (training group), I still had a wonderful Christmas here in Madagascar. A few of us in our region of the northeast corner decided to get together at a volunteer’s house in one of the larger towns and celebrate with close approximations to American traditions and a little Malagasy twist. Instead of mulled wine or cider we had tropical sangria with leechies, pineapples and mangoes. Instead of turkey and mashed potatoes we had a big tropical seafood feast at a fancy hotel on the waterfront. Instead of Christmas special marathons on T.V we watched a few Christmas movies that someone had on their laptop. Instead of large extravagant gift-giving, we had a “Secret Santa” exchange. Instead of tons of baked goods we had chocolate fondue with dark chocolate from Madagascar, coconut rum and fresh fruit to dip in it. We even had a tiny little artificial Christmas tree that we decorated with tinsel and plastic sparkly balls all imported from China. And we played twister. It was quite a memorable event, and I’m so grateful for all the awesome fellow Peace Corps volunteers I got to share it with.

I chose to spend New Years, or “Bonne Anne” in my village, as it was my last big “hurrah” before leaving my site, and as New Years is a huge holiday for Malagasies. During the few nights leading up to New Years, we had “Podium,” the Malagasy equivalent of a talent show. My counterpart had me practice dance routines with his wife and children and our neighbors, which we then performed on stage in front of the community. It was a blast, and I also enjoyed watching all the other acts. One of the teenage boys requested me to dance a few reggae songs with him and his buddy, too, which the audience enjoyed thoroughly.

New Years Eve brought the first big rains that we had seen in many months, which was certainly something to celebrate. After the epic semi-final soccer match between two neighborhoods in our town, which ended in a draw and then a dramatic shoot-off, the rains finally came. Everyone ran out into the main path through town and paraded around chanting and singing, welcoming the life-giving precipitation. Many had planted their rice a month before, assuming that the rains would have already come to water their crops, but it has been unusually dry this season so there were quite a few initial plantings lost to the drought.

On New Years Day, my counterpart invited me to his house to eat with his family. We shared a few beers, had a nice chat about American versus Malagasy traditions for celebrating New Years and then had a delicious feast with his family, which surprisingly didn’t consist of mounds and mounds of rice. The day after New Years is also still a “fety” for Malagasies, unlike Americans who either go back to work or use it as an extra day to recover from hangovers. My counterpart and I headed to Antsirabe Nord (my old site) to have a farewell lunch with the women’s group president, the nurse from Antsirabe Nord and their spouses. It was a joyful affair with good food and good drink and a wonderful chance for me to say goodbye to my friends and co-workers from my old site.

The following weekend was also filled with fetys, though of a much more emotional kind. On Saturday all of us Peace Corps volunteers in the area headed to Sambava to say goodbye to the two of us who were leaving the region. It was especially hard to say goodbye to our friend Caroline, as she is leaving the country for good, whereas I’ll still be around for a few more months. Again, there was lots of good Malagasy and American food, ample amount of drink and wonderful parting words shared between all of us volunteers who have shared some great triumphs and some rough times together. There were lots of laughs and lots of tears, and I will miss all of my fellow American co-workers and friends dearly. No one else can truly understand the unique experience we have shared in this beautiful yet sometimes harsh country.

While Caroline headed to the tarmac to take off for Tana on Sunday, I headed back to my site for a goodbye fety with my community. I had already set aside all of my belongings I was going to sell off in an auction as a fundraiser for my solar panel project. As soon as I got back and changed, the women’s group came to my door in a singing and dancing procession to gather all of my stuff and take me to the “bazary be” (central meeting place) for the ceremony and auction to follow.

As we made our way to the ceremony, tears started streaming down my face. I think it had finally hit me that I was leaving all of these wonderful, caring people for good, and was not sure if I’d ever have the means to return in the future (or if so, only after a very long time). It was so touching that all the women in the community had gathered together and donned their women’s group uniforms to celebrate and see me off. After raising the flag and singing the national anthem we took our places at the “bazary” and my counterpart started off the program.

In succession, the president of the village, the women’s group president, the president of the clinic, my counterpart (the nurse and head of the clinic), I and then the doctor from Antsirabe Nord all spoke. When the president of the women’s group gave her speech, she started crying, which in turn made me start crying again. Luckily I was able to compose myself before I gave my speech, and, even though after two years my Malagasy still isn’t quite up to par for orating, the community seemed to enjoy listening to me (or at least they laughed and clapped at all the right parts). There were lots of thank-yous and promises to keep in touch, and I left the community with parting words of encouragement that even if they don’t get another volunteer to replace me, they will still be able to do good work and continue on the path of development. There is such a strong sense of community and good leadership in their village.

After the speeches, the auction of all of my belongings that I couldn’t take with me on the airplane ensued. I was a little nervous, as I didn’t have a lot of stuff to offer, and there were many friends, co-workers and community members who wanted a chance and getting a “souvenir” from me. Thankfully, the women’s group and community leaders did a good job of running the auction fairly and keeping everyone under control. Some of the items (like bookshelves and chairs) went fairly expensive, but others were cheap, which gave more people the chance at buying items. Overall, we ended up raising a lot of money for the solar panel fund, which will go towards replacing the battery after a few years or making any other necessary repairs that come up after the one year warranty. Part of the money also went towards helping the pharmacy purchase extra medicines for poor patients who come to the clinic and can’t afford the necessary treatments.

The day after my big going-away fety in the village was mostly quiet, as it was a Monday and everyone was out in the fields working. I was busy packing up my life, but managed to take a break to have lunch with my counterpart and then sat on a neighbor’s porch to catch a little bit of a breeze. All of a sudden, I heard clapping and singing coming from the other end of town. Three folks who were still in town that day were walking hand in hand down the main path. As they got closer, I realized the song they were singing in beautiful yet raucous harmony was about me! They had made up a goodbye song for me and came over to where I was sitting on the porch to sing and dance. Pretty soon the few people that were hanging around the village came over to watch and join in the song and dance party. It was quite a touching moment.

That evening, the nurse and I brought over my belongings that I planned to donate to the clinic, which included a small table for the birthing room, shelves for the office, a hammer and a new broom. As he turned on the lights powered by the new solar panel, put all the papers that were piled all over the table and floor in the office onto the shelves and placed the table for newborn babies in the delivery room, I realized how much better the clinic looked. It’s amazing how a few small additions to the clinic could facilitate a significant improvement in the nurse’s ability to carry out his work.

On Tuesday, I headed to Sambava to get ready for my flight to the capital on Wednesday. That morning, the nurse helped me pack up, and we did the final accounting for the money from the auction to be donated to the clinic and solar panel fund. Some of my friends saw me off at the road and one of them even rode with me in the bush taxi to Sambava. It was a nice way to say goodbye, as I treated myself to a stay at a quiet bungalow on the beach and had a chance to see some fellow volunteers again before I flew out on Wednesday.

My next adventure will take me to the east coast near a town called Manompana (near the small port where the boats go over to Ile St. Marie). I’ll be working with a Malagasy NGO, training their field staff in community mobilization, behavior change methods and community analysis relating to clean water, sanitation and hygiene projects. I’ll update again when I move out there and work actually starts up.

I’ve had some interesting conversations with people lately about traditional Malagasy healing practices coming into conflict with western biomedical treatment. So I thought I’d write about the differences in worldviews and practices and how those differences have affected the health of rural communities here. The issue of traditional medicine came up a few weeks ago, when a very sick women came to the clinic. She was suffering from some sort of stomach illness and her family had brought her to our village to seek medical treatment too late. Her condition was quite grave at this point, and there wasn’t much the nurse could do except suggest that they travel as quickly as possible to the regional hospital in Sambava with better facilities, where they might be able to do something for her. The nurse’s wife explained to me later, that this family practiced “Ody Gasy,” or traditional medicine, and only after they had tried every possible alternative treatment did they decide to come to the health clinic as a last resort. Practicing traditional medicine had delayed their seeking western medical treatment, which limited the amount of help the nurse could offer, as this woman’s condition had deteriorated so rapidly.

I often here people in the community mention traditional healing methods, such as eating, drinking or breathing in the vapors from the leaves of medicinal plants in the forest or going to traditional healers for special therapies or “massages.” I had even met a traditional healer once, who claimed to be able to cure sexually transmitted diseases and illnesses causing swelling of the legs and breasts (filariasis/elephantiasis). Every market day, there are always a few stalls of people selling dried leaves, powders and various bottles of tonics that claim to have healing properties for every kind of malady. So I was curious to find out what the possible motivations were for those who opt for the traditional methods rather than seeking treatment from the medical clinic first.

My initial thought was that money may play a role in the decision-making process. I often here people at the clinic talking about not having enough money to buy the necessary medicines for their illness at the pharmacy. Perhaps people who were worried they wouldn’t be able to afford the medical treatment seek out other alternatives instead. This idea was quickly dispelled when the nurse’s wife explained that many traditional Malagasy treatments are actually more expensive, especially if the family requests a home visit from the traditional healer. While an initial diagnostic consult at the health clinic is free, even just a visit with the traditional healer can cost several thousand Ariary (a few US dollars, but still quite a sum for those in rural areas). Many of the simple, government subsidized medications like Tylenol, cough medicine and vitamins at the pharmacy cost 10,000Ariary (5USD) or less (and some, like Malaria treatment, are free), but some of the medicinal plants needed for traditional healing can surprisingly cost 30-50,000Ariary (25USD). Additionally, vaccinations for children under 1 year are free at the clinic, but many of the people who practice traditional medicine don’t get their children vaccinated. These facts made reconsider my initial conjecture.

Another thought was that the physical distance from health centers might influence people’s decision, especially if there are traditional healers living in the more remote, rural areas. If one couldn’t make the three hour trek through the woods to get to the health clinic, it would make sense that they would at least seek out a healer living in their community or in a village nearby. This factor may influence those living in isolated regions, but it is not a factor for the community where I live. Our village has a clinic with a very competent and reliable nurse and a pharmacy stocked with basic medicines, so the community members don’t have to travel more than 15 or 20 minutes to reach good medical care. However, there are still several traditional healers and many people practicing traditional medicine right in our village and in some of the surrounding communities. Some people in the vicinity of our clinic still choose to seek out traditional methods rather than making the short trip to see the nurse.

Another possible factor could be the clinic staff. Some Malagasy are embarrassed to seek medical treatment for things like sexually transmitted diseases for fear of judgment by the doctors or midwives. In particular, many people complain about the health care providers in the referral clinic down the road. I have frequently heard from community members that they are afraid to seek treatment at the larger health center in town, as they claim that the doctor and midwives who work there are often short with the patients and chastise them for not completing their vaccines, for being illiterate, or for not having money to bring with them to the clinic to purchase their prescribed medicines. I could definitely see fear of the medical staff as a reason for Malagasies choosing to seek alternative care, especially concerning the larger clinic down the road. However, I have a feeling this boundary isn’t as big of an issue in my immediate area, as the nurse at the rural clinic where I work treats his patients very well and is viewed as a friend and well-respected community member by many of those with whom he lives and works.

This idea of embarrassment was also reinforced during a group discussion with the SIDA Club (anti-AIDS club) students at the local middle school. We were talking about treatment of STIs, so I asked them about the possible reasons they thought some Malagasies might use “Ody Gasy” to treat their STI rather than going to the clinic. Several of the male students said that they would be embarrassed to go to a clinic, especially if a female provider such as a midwife were the one providing the treatment. Additionally, some of them offered that people might be afraid of getting a shot, which might be a reason for them to avoid the clinic.

Relating to the issue of embarrassment over seeking treatment at a clinic, there are frequent occurrences here of young women using the leaves of medicinal plants as a form of abortion. There have been several cases at the clinic of teenagers still in school who have miscarried after consuming leaves of particular plants they had collected from the forest to take care of their unwanted pregnancies. As abortion is illegal in Madagascar, these young women are faced with the dilemma of telling their parents that the precious savings they have spent on expensive school fees for the year is wasted, so they seek out other means of dealing with the issue. The fact that traditional medicines are used in this instance could reinforce the idea that embarrassment plays a role in the decision-making process, especially considering that family planning methods are free and confidential for anyone who chooses to come to the clinic, regardless of their age or marital status. However, lack of forethought and lack of power and status of the women in the said relationship also come into play with this issue of unwanted pregnancies.

After my conversation with the nurse’s wife, I’ve come to think that the Malagasy’s worldview, especially with respect to their view of the particular cause of their illness, may be the biggest factor in deciding which type of treatment to seek first. While there does seem to be some flexibility in many people’s worldview here, in the sense that they are willing to practice both western and traditional medicine, many do seem to prioritize based on which practice they ascribe more validity to. Their values and belief system may have a significant influence in this prioritization. Very interestingly, the nurse’s wife noted that most people in our community who attend church (i.e. ascribe to the Christian faith) do not practice “Ody Gasy.” She explained that for the most part, only those who “tsy mivavaka,” or, do not pray, seek out the traditional healers. This pattern seems to suggest that those who value the traditional belief system over adopted western practices tend to value traditional medicine more than biomedicine, which would make sense. Additionally, it seems that if a person suspects witchcraft has played a role in the particular illness, they will seek traditional treatment accordingly.

In one particular case a few weeks earlier, a child in family living down the road had died of a fever, because they came to the clinic too late. Apparently this family had gotten into an argument with another family in the area over rights to some farmland. Soon after the argument, their child felt sick. The family believed that this illness was brought upon by the other angry family, who had essentially “cursed” them. Because the family believed the illness was due to malicious intent from someone in their community practicing witchcraft, they decided that traditional healing methods rather than western medicine would be the best treatment for the child. Only when they had tried everything to counteract the curse did they contact the nurse. At this point, the child unfortunately was already on her deathbed.

According to his wife, the nurse has frequently asked people who practice traditional medicine to avoid waiting until it is too late to go to the clinic. His suggestion to those who use “Ody Gasy” is to only try it for a short time and then also to seek treatment at his health center. It shows a respectful openness and flexibility on his part that he is does not invalidate the community members’ belief systems, but simply attempts to get them the best healthcare possible. I also wonder if it would be possible to go a step further and work with the traditional healers themselves to encourage them to promote concurrent use of benign traditional healing practices and western biomedicine.

In particular, eliminating any traditional medicines that could cause harm to the patient would be very helpful. One of the issues is that some of these plants from the Malagasy rainforest do actually have legitimate medicinal qualities, but most who use them do not know in what quantities and in what forms to take them. Consequently they end up doing more harm to themselves than good. Training traditional healers in proper use of more benign medicinal plants and discouraging the use of self-medication in addition to a timely referral process to the health clinic could be a potential middle ground for those wishing to maintain their cultural practices and belief systems.

So this is a morbid, yet interesting, entry in honor of the recent holiday on Nov 1st/2nd, “Fete de Mort.” Though most don’t celebrate it in the U.S., I think it’s somehow related to Halloween, and those in Latin America definitely know it as “El Dia de Los Muertos.” The tradition has very similar roots in Madagascar: visiting the graves of the deceased and honoring the ancestors. I found it an interesting vignette in which to compare the Malagasy world view of death with that of Americans.

In general, I’ve found through attending funerals, talking with Malagasies about the dead and participating in a “Fete de Mort” event, that the Malagasies on average are a bit more concerned with the spirits of the deceased than most Americans tend to be. Part of it may stem from the Malagasies’ traditional African religious practices and ancestral beliefs, and some contrast may come from the diverse range of beliefs in the U.S. and our tendency as an industrialized nation with more influences from globalization to abandon the traditional beliefs and take on a more agnostic or scientific view of death the afterlife (or lack there of).

Either way, my counterpart (the nurse at my local clinic) was kind enough to invite me to attend a “Fete de Mort” celebration with his family in his hometown. We were initially supposed to go on November 1st, but there was a death in the village! As the death occurred just across the way from me, and many of my friends and co-workers knew the family well, we had to reschedule our plans for the 2nd and attend the funeral on the 1st. So on November 2nd I traveled with the nurse and his wife to Anjinjaomby, a small town between…a 4 hour car ride from our village with a transit stop in Sambava. We left early in the morning and arrived around 10am. The dirt road out to his home-town was very scenic, bordered by lush forest, rice paddies and quaint villages.

Though the town of Anjinjaomby was a commune head, there was no electricity, and only a few spigots served as the public water sources. When we arrived at my counterpart’s mother’s house, we went through all the greetings with the relatives and then sat under a leechie tree, chatting until lunchtime. After a humble meal of rice and boiled beans with green leaves, we gathered all the relatives around and headed out to local graveyard. The walk was only fifteen minutes to the cemetery at the edge of town. I was surprised at how small and sparsely populated the space was. Many of the small, cement tombs were above ground and protected by makeshift, rusted tin sheet metal roofs.

Finally we approached their family’s tomb: a small metal shack, bolted by a wooden board nailed into the front side. Before opening the tomb, one of the older brothers said a prayer. Inside were four wooden coffins—three small ones and one longer one. The family only had the key to their father’s coffin, so they removed it from the little tin house, openened it up and lifted out the bundle of blankets and woven mats and clothes piled on top so they could clean out the bottom of the coffin of dirt and dust. Then they placed the bundle and the clothes back in the box, slipping in a few bills of money into the father’s pants pockets (a present for the next person who cleans the tomb) before closing the box and placing it back inside.

Later they explained that the longer coffin was that of their aunt’s who was more recently deceased. The process goes as follows: when the person first dies, they are buried underground in a regular coffin, like many of us do in the U.S. After a few years, when the body has decayed a bit, they dig the coffin back up and put the corpse in a smaller coffin above ground. A few years later, when the corpse is just bones, they re-open the coffin, gather the bones together in a new bundle of cloth and put it in an even smaller container. Now I know why so many of the Malagasy coffins I’ve seen are so tiny!

The process of opening the tomb and rearranging the bones does not necessarily take place during “Fete de Mort.” It’s often accompanied by a big celebration, called a “famadihana,” or turning of the bones ceremony, in which many people attend and party all night long, partaking of heavy drinking, singing and dancing. It was fascinating to me that the Malagasy take such care in rearranging the physical remnants of the deceased. Many of them also believe that the spirits of the dead often rise up from the grave to visit the living. I also took the opportunity to explain to them the practices of burial and cremation in the U.S. Many were shocked at the idea of cremation, but some were familiar with it, as many of the ex-pats, Muslims and people of Chinese or Indian descent and practice cremation here in Madagascar.

Though some Malagasies do bring offerings such as “toaka” (local moonshine) and plastic flowers to the graves of the ancestors, it’s not quite the extent of those who celebrate “El Dia de Los Muertos,” bringing favorite foods, trinkets and candles and staying through night. The Malagasies for the most part seem to visit the graves for a short time during the day and use it more as an opportunity to tidy up the tomb and the surrounding area. Its also a chance for the relatives who life far a way to visit their hometown and their family members. Some of my counterpart’s family members hadn’t been back to Anjinjaomby for several years.

Other cultural practices worthy of noting: if a child dies within the first six months of it’s life (before it starts developing teeth) it is not laid to rest with the bodies in the regular graveyard, but rather buried underground in a specially designated place in the woods outside of the village. Also, people of all faiths (Christian, Muslim, traditional) may be buried in the same cemetery.

Concerning funerals, since our Fete De Mort plans were delayed due to one, they are an all-village affair. In many cases, people from neighboring communes and even further away will even come to attend the funeral. It usually takes place the day of or day after the person dies, as Malagasies don’t have access to nor practice preservation techniques such as embalming, and it is a very hot, humid climate. For this most recent one, I got a front row seat, as the family lives right across from me.

Women wear kisalis—colorful, patterned cloth sewn in a circle and worn either as a tube top dress or skirt with a matching shawl. There is no particular dress code for men…even shorts and a tattered t-shirt is fine. Everyone donates either a cup of rice or 500-1000Ariary and the family usually slaughters a cow or several if they can afford it. If the family is very poor they may just purchase some meat from a local butcher or substitute beans or lentils. All day the women prepare and cook the rice. It is the men’s job to slaughter the cow and fetch water. Others sit around chatting outside the house of the family. One may enter the house where the corpse is lying on a bed, covered by a sheet. It’s mostly women in the room, but men may enter as well. If the family is religious, they often sing hymns. At lunchtime, everyone eats the rice and beef together. If there are a lot of people, someone will announce the visitors by village to come get their food. Afterwards the women wash all the dishes while the men head off to the cemetery to bury the corpse. The women follow later on to attend the burial. Both the night before and the night after, people stay up all night with the family, chatting, drinking toaka and singing hymns.

A lot of Malagasies were asking me if funerals are similar in America. I suppose in a sense they are. Many people bring over food and the family and close friends may eat a bit and drink together after the ceremony, though tuna noodle casseroles and pies don’t really compare to sacks of rice and a live cow. We all seem to find our own ways to process the idea of dying and to cope with the fact that we will never see that close friend or family member again. One thing I like about the Malagasy funeral process is how the whole community comes together to support each other. It’s an amazing feat to cook so much rice and beef for hundreds of people, and the company and camaraderie shared during the process is priceless to the grieving family.

So the last entry I posted was actually written back before hot season started. I no longer have to use a sleeping back at night...sometimes I even a light sheet is too much. Now I go running at 5 because its already too hot by the time I get back at 6. And its harder to be active in the afternoon, since Im pretty much dripping with sweat in my house until 4pm. Its not even the peak of hot season yet (thats in January) so I cant even imagine what its going to be like this year!

It hasnt been raining hardly at all, so everyone is struggling with wells and rivers drying up. Even in the big towns where there is running water/public taps like Vohemar and Andapa, the water keeps going out. People have been going out to the fields to clear their land, so it's almost time for rice-planting. Im wondering if some will wait, though, in case the rains still dont come for a while. Last year the rains were late as well, and many lost their initial crops that they planted in November.

I think the heat has brought fruit season early this year, though, which is perhaps a silver lining on the cloud. There are already bunches of pink leechies popping out of the mess of green forest along the roadside and mangoes are already showing up in the market. My neighbor asked me for a container so she could make me some leechy jam from the fruits of her tree near her rice field, which Im greatly looking forward to. Pineapples will be coming soon as well.

It's been difficult for me to get projects going, as I've been gone from my site a lot recently. I just got back from a wonderful week of vacation visiting my father in Rwanda, and then spent a week in Tana at Peace Corps' Close of Service Conference. Though I am planning to extend my service until May of next year, the COS conference was still really helpful and it was great to see all my fellow volunteers with whom I went through my initial training in Niger and then again in Madagascar.

During COS we talked about job hunting strategies, the readjustment process going back home, how to document our skills that we have gained over the past two years and how to say goodbye to our communities with whome we have spent two years of our lives with. We also had to say goodbye to each other, as many of us are leaving the country at different times and may not be able to meet up until possibly when we are back in America. There are four or five other fellow volunteers from my group, who are extending, so I look forward to possibly still running into them in the coming months.

It's been great to be back at my site and to reconnect with everyone. It's going to be a challenge to plan short-term projects that I can finish before january, though. Although I am extending, I will be switching to a different location in Madagascar after the holidays, so I still need to think about wrapping up and saying goodbye to my community up here in the north. Im still planning to do some small activities though, like a kitchen garden with the village mothers, a financial literacy class (how to save/how to budget/family planning) with the womens group, a scholarship project for disadvantaged youth at the local secondary school and some health education in the local schools as well. Hopefully Ill get to play some more soccer with the women too, although one of our balls is already busted!

It's 4:30am. The house is still pitch dark. The crow of a lone rooster and the chill of the 60° winter morning air pull me momentarily out of sleep. I grab my light sleeping bag and throw it over me for extra warmth in my semi-conscious state.

At 5:30 the chorus of crowing roosters arouse me again and my bowels send me walking outside to the pit latrine to empty my "po" (plastic bucket Malagasies use as a chamber pot) and do my morning routine. As I walk the 50 meters back to the house, the village awakens with the echoes of rhythmic rice-pounding,the whining of drowsy babies and the quiet chattering of women starting their cookfires and fetching water.

It's still quite chilly, but I throw shorts and a tank top on and head out the door for my morning run. Most families are still waking up and cooking breakfast as the sun rises, so the path out of the village is almost empty. I pass a few early morning travellers as I jog slowly up the steep, 1km hill to the main road.

The wind brushes a delicious fragrance of tropical, blooming flowers as I crest the hill, bringing with it the faint memories of childhood trips to visit family in India. As I reach the tarmac, one of the small roadside shacks emits rich wafts of roasting, earthy coffee and sweet, drying vanilla, sending my thoughts back to Madagascar. I run three and a half kilometers down the southbound road over rolling hills,, past ricefields and patchy, tropical forest. Then I head back home, a sprinkle of cooling rain and a beautiful rainbow archway celebrating my return.

A few fellow villagers call out to me as I pass, and I invite them to join me, though I know they never will. Their lives are too full everyday with hard physical labor. They have no energy to spare for my purely whimsical, recreational exertion. I reach the path descending back into the village, my lungs and gut rejoicing, but my knees and hips dreading the relentless pounding of my weight on them as I jaunt down the hill in my four-year-old sneakers that have no shock absorption left to lessen the blow.

At last I reach my wooden hut after greeting my neighbors. I chug some water and take a refreshing, shockingly cold bucket bath in my 3-sided, roofless shower made of Traveler's Palm leaves. Then I bundle up with a light sweater and get ready for a morning of weighing babies and teaching mothers about nutrition and family planning. Around noon, I am back at my house. I make rice and cucumber salad for lunch and then read lawily into the afternoon qs the nighborhood kids come over to color and play cards on my porch. Some of them even offer to fetch my water, knowing they will receive a marble or a sticker as a small "thanks" for their help.

Around 3pm some of the neighborhood women come to my gate and beckon me to come join them on the soccer field. Though I'm somewhat dissuaded by the afternoon heat and tired from my morning run, I put on some shoes to go play, knowing it will be really fun and good opportunity for me to bond with the village women.

After we finish playing and I take another bucket shower, I head to the elementary school to see if any of the motivated adults in the village have come to learn English at our weekly classtime. I teach them body parts and the "Hokey Pokey," which we all thoroughly enjoy, laughing at each other as shake our left arm or right leg or butt and dance in circles. At dusk we wrap up the session, as it is too dark to see in the unlit classroom.

I take a walk through the village to buy some produce for dinner (usually tomatoes and some kind of green leaf). Then I cook before it gets too dark. I read and write letters by the light of my solar-powered lamp to pass the time and eat a quiet dinner listening to the BBC Africa News program on my shortwave radio. After I clean up and get ready for bed, I listen to the sounds of people outside chatting as they take their evening walk through the village. The faint chatter of my neighbors' Malagasy radio or a good book I happen to be reading finally lull me to sleep at around 8.

Just came back from a wonderful week in Diego, a large port town near the northern tip of Madagascar. Since I didn’t take hardly any vacation last year I’ve been traveling quite frequently now to use up my 48 days before the two years are up. It’s worked out well, since my counterpart has been gone from site a lot recently for regional and national health trainings and meetings. I wouldn’t have gotten much done without his help anyway.

It was two Mondays ago now that I and two other volunteers from my area met up in Vohemar and made the long, stuffy trek in a bush taxi up north to Diego. Theoretically, our destination isn’t that far from my site on the northeast coast—maybe 300 to 350km. However the road and the vehicles are in such poor condition that it took us 15 hours of car travel to get there. The 200km between Vohemar on the east coast crossing over to Ambilobe near the west coast is a rocky, hilly dirt road with many potholes and deep tire tracks left from semis. That section of the road is the longest and most frustrating. It’s also incredibly dusty during the dry season, as a lot of dirt is kicked up from the frequently passing vehicles and blown across the road from the strong, seasonal winds. After the ten hour journey to Ambilobe, we all stepped out of the 15 passenger van looking bedraggled and burnt orange in color from the thick coat of dust. In Ambilobe we hopped in the covered bed of a rickety pick-up truck, known as a “quatre-quatre,” which took us all the way to Diego. This stretch of road is “paved,” but probably hasn’t been repaired in over twenty years, so it’s more dirt road than tarmac in some spots and filled with potholes. Hey, it only took us five more hours, though! Needless to say, we were exhausted once arriving in Diego, and in desperate need of some relaxation and fun, which is pleasantly easy to find there.

Throughout the week, we had wonderful fellow volunteers show us around or suggest the best spots to spend our vacation. We went to some delicious restaurants where we were treated to great seafood and surprisingly decent (or maybe not terrible?) wine. One of our daytrips included a sailboat ride out to Emerald Bay, aptly named for its brilliant turquoise water, where we relaxed on the soft, sandy beach, ate freshly grilled barracuda and crab and got terribly sunburnt. Another day we hiked around Amber Mountain national park, which was very wet and cold but a great opportunity for us to see some wildlife, including the pygmy chameleon (the tiniest chameleon in the world), two species of lemur and a giant earthworm more than a meter long among other things. We also spent a day lounging at Ramena beach and another day drinking bloody marys and mimosas poolside at a fancy hotel with a swim-up bar. Hard life as a Peace Corps volunteer, huh? It’s times like these when it really hits me how lucky I am to be living on a tropical island for two years!

Diego almost felt like a different world compared to where I spend the majority of my time in this country. While there is absolutely still poverty in and around the Diego area, it’s not as ever-present and obvious and perhaps not quite as desperate as it seems in rural areas like my site. In the big city there is so much infrastructure—running water, paved roads, every kind of fruit, vegetable, fish and meat in the market, every kind of restaurant, well-built schools including a university, electricity 24/7, running water, wireless internet at cafes and in the regional PC transit house.

From Diego heading back south toward Vohemar along the dusty road winding through rural villages, I find myself transported back to the “real” world, with pothole-plauged roads, huge families with raggedy clothes living in one-room, dilapidated shacks, mothers digging holes in the dried up riverbeds in search of water, market stalls with nothing to offer but brown bananas and miniature tomatoes, communities scraping together a living panning for gold or digging for precious stones in the harsh, dry deforested terrain. This country is beautiful in so many unique ways, but it can be painful to see right before ones eyes the blatant, widespread destruction caused by the developed world’s exploitation of Madagascar’s environment and its impoverished people.

Even though the ride back from Diego was long, uncomfortable and incredibly frustrating, as our vehicles kept breaking down in the middle of nowhere, it was a helpful transition for me back into my life and work in my small village near Sambava. I came back refreshed and happy to see my friends and coworkers. I do have to admit, though, that I secretly wished Sambava or Vohemar had some of the nice things that Diego had to offer (even just one good seafood restaurant or beachside bar would be great.) Perhaps I’ll make another long journey up there before the rainy season starts in January.

P.S. haven't posted pics from Diego yet, but if you're interested in looking at my other pictures, Ive set up links to them on picassa. Just go to my past blogs in the archive and click on the title, and it should send you to the picassa album website if there are any pictures from that post. thanks for everyone's support, and keep reading!

Been back at site for a few weeks now. Things are pretty slow, since my counterpart has had to attend to a lot of meetings and other obligations in other towns. It’s been great to be back, though. Everyone in the village has been excited to see me, especially the members of the women’s soccer team. I was able to get jerseys and two small soccer balls from the NGO “Friends of Madagascar” while I was in Antananarivo for training, so they’ve been motivated to start practicing more frequently now. Even though none of us get to play very often and we’re not very good, we still have a lot of fun.

I’ve found that while language, education level and cultural differences sometimes prove difficult barriers to transcend in order to connect with people, playing soccer is an easy and fun way to enjoy each other’s company and camaraderie without having to worry too much about how to communicate with one another. When I play with them, I feel a sense of solidarity—among the women, among amateur athletes, and among the community members of my village. We recently sent a letter over to another neighboring village, requesting their women’s team to come over and play ours. Everyone says their women’s team is really good—they play like men—so we’re excited to test our skills against them and to break out our new uniforms.

Training the new group of volunteers in Tana went really well. I was there for two weeks and got a chance to meet some really excited and motivated new health and education volunteers fresh from the States (there’s about thirty of them in all). I was impressed with how positive they were and how much energy they had, even faced with the incredibly overwhelming challenges of adjusting to a new culture and learning a new language during their first weeks in-country. I was able to help by sitting in on their technical and cross-culture training sessions and offering a realistic perspective for what their experience and what their potential challenges might be, working out in the field for two years. I was happy to hear that we’re getting one health volunteer in our region who can replace the two of us leaving in December.

Since my two major projects (the solar panel at the clinic and the two wells ) are pretty much finished, I’m going to try to use up my last remaining vacation days before my two years are up in December. I’m hoping to head up to Diego, meet my dad in Rwanda for a week, and at some point hike Marojejy, the beautiful mountain and national park in my region. On another note, in honor of one of my Peace Corps friend’s recent texts to me, I’ll answer her question asking,

“You know you’re a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar when…”:

(many of these probably aren’t country-specific)

*you’re stuffed in a fifteen passenger van with forty other people

*you have eaten a full plate of rice four times in one day

*you have eaten rice with rice water as a side dish for a meal

*the neighborhood kids bring over a dwarf lemur tied up on a string

*you get asked to take someone’s three year old child back to America with you

*you get four marriage proposals in one day

*a woman asks you if you can find her a white man from America that she can marry

*there’s a rat stuck inside the balance at your village clinic

*there’s a renegade chicken circling your house and clucking incessantly for two weeks trying to get in

*the most common gifts you get from people are cucumbers, breadfruit and rice

*the most common visitors at your house are six-year-old kids

*your regular bedtime is 8pm

*you are told by someone that you are fluent in Malagasy and terrible at speaking Malagasy both in one day

*everytime you come back from somewhere, even if it’s only for two days, you get told you’ve gotten fat

*the majority of your daily conversations with people consist of the following: “Hi..how are you…what’s new…okay see ya later” (In Malagasy—“Mbalatsara,” “Mbalatsare” “Ino vaovao?” “Mangina fo, ino maresaka?” “Mangingina fo!” “ye”)

*a mother randomly hands you her 5 month old baby to hold while she goes to take care of something

*you are climbing up a muddy, slippery hill with your Tevas strapped to your feet and get passed by a barefoot, forty-year-old woman in a sarong with a baby strapped to her back, a basin full of wet laundry in one arm and a bucket full of water balanced on her head

*you frequently get asked if people in America eat rice, cook rice or farm rice

*the whole village talks about the fact that you bought bananas in the market today

*there’s a hog living next door, a cow behind your house and flocks of chickens and ducks wandering through your yard

*you have eaten bananas with rice in more different forms than you can count

*your favorite hot drink becomes water boiled in a pot lined with burnt, crusty rice

*every kid within a 10km radius of your town knows your name and shouts it repeatedly when you pass by

*from inside your house, you can hear your next-door neighbors talking about you from inside their house

*people come to your house selling anything from bananas to pineapple to cucumbers

*you have so much free time on your hands that you know how to find someone selling a coconut, crack it open, grate it, and make coconut milk from it in order to cook coconut rice (vary miaro vanio.)

*you can cook all your meals without a cutting board, pot handles, timer, recipe or measuring cups and with only one dull kitchen knife, one pot and one pan

*the only shoes you ever wear are plastic flip flops, even if you know you’ll be walking in the forest for several hours (and even if you have other shoes you could wear)

One of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers came up from his site up in the highlands of Madagascar to visit me on the coast a few weeks ago, and we went on quite the adventure through the SAVA region down into “Parc National Masoala,” ending up in Maroansetra. It all started with a text message I sent to Tom. I had been wanting to hike through Masoala for the longest time, as it’s so close to where I live, it’s the largest expanse of protected rain forest in Madagascar and it’s a good chance to catch a glimpse of the elusive and strange-looking Aye-Aye lemur in its natural habitat.

Because it’s so heavily forested and on a peninsula on Madagascar’s eastern coastal peninsula, Masoala also gets the most annual rainfall of any other part of the country. I’d heard that the hike was quite long and challenging and involved camping in the woods for a week, so I knew Tom was my best bet for a hiking partner, as he’s the only Peace Corps friend I know in country who was truly interested, capable, reliable and crazy enough to be up for the challenge. Since I knew I only have six months left at my site, and Tom’s school year working as an English teacher had just finished up, I thought I’d shoot him a message to see if he was still interested. Little did I know that this would be the seed that blossomed into the wettest, muddiest and most grueling physical challenge I have ever subjected myself to (and that’s saying something, considering I’ve hiked up Kilimanjaro and done quite a bit of outdoor climbing and hiking in Kentucky, Tennessee and Oregon).

To my surprise, Tom responded back and actually bought a plane ticket to Sambava for early July, so I quickly got in contact with a guide through Antalaha’s national park office, ANGAP. We set up a hike starting from Cap Est, the Eastern most point in Madagascar, through the forest to Maroansetra for a total of seven days and six nights. Tom arrived right after our SAVA regional Peace Corp volunteer weekend meeting in Sambava (which was a lot of fun now that we have 11 volunteers in the region), and we headed up to my old site, Antsirabe Nord, since I had an AIDS awareness festival planned there for that evening.

Unfortunately the AIDS festival was kind of a bust, as most of the local CEG (junior high) students who were supposed to be involved with the project had already gone home to their villages for the summer and there was a big soccer match 10km up the road that afternoon that I had been unaware of. Even though we walked around the whole town advertising free HIV testing at the clinic, no really came to get tested. PSI’s cinemobile came in the evening, though, and most people were back in town by then, so we had a great turnout for their outdoor film projection about STIs and HIV/AIDS. PSI does a great job of rallying up the crowd with music and announcements over their loud sound system, and all of their health education films are produced by local actors and film makers in Tana in the local Malagasy language. The crowd seemed to really enjoy the film and hopefully absorbed some good information through watching the movie and reading the pamphlets on HIV/AIDS and STIs that we had distributed earlier that afternoon.

That night we stayed at my friends’ Nana and Qaddafin’s house in town, since I live in a different village now, and no longer have a house in Antsirabe Nord. They were great hosts, and they had a lot of fun talking with Tom, as his Malagasy dialect from the highlands is so different from our way of speaking on the coast. We had a wonderful dinner and went to bed early since we had plans to hike the mountain, “Andrangohitra,” just outside of town the next morning. We had made sure to get special permission from the mayor to climb the mountain the day beforehand, so after a light breakfast of coffee and Malagasy rice flour bread, we set off with Nana’s brother as our guide.

It was quite a steep hour and a half hike up the mountain, with lots of scrambling over rocks and fighting against clawing thorns, branches and fallen trees. The pace of the hike made it especially hard, as all the guys were really strong and in shape and were practically running up the mountain, forcing me to huff and puff to keep up with them. I didn’t slow down or ask for many breaks though, because Nana’s brother kept giving me a hard time for being the weak little white girl, and I didn’t want to satisfy his preconceived notions.

After conquering “Veloma Baba,” a steep, rocky section that would be scary and painful if one were to slip and tumble down it (hence the name “Goodbye Daddy” in Malagasy), we reached the new Telma cell phone tower, standing quite tall in all its grandeur and quietly running off of current from eight or ten large solar panels. We gazed out over the valleys and surrounding mountains, and were able to spot the main road winding south towards Samabava, the river heading east towards Antanambao Doud and the coast and the towns of Tsarahitra and Ampanefena stretching north along the road towards Vohemar. It was really neat to get a glimpse of the Indian Ocean from there and to have a bird’s-eye view of the town where I had spent a year of my life.

After a short break, we headed up to the actual peak of the mountain, probably another 20 or 30 meters up. Unfortunately the last few meters up to the viewpoint were one steep, smooth boulder with no footholds and one dried out branch of bamboo considerately propped up against the rock to offer handholds for scaling up to the top. There was a steep crevasse dropping 20 meters down from the base of the boulder, so my slight fear of heights overcame me, and I surrendered any hope of going further as visions of me slipping off the rock and tumbling into the abyss played over and over in my head.

Tom, Qaddafin and Nana’s brother took off their shoes and scrambled to the top to enjoy the view as I waited down below. I asked Tom to get some good pictures with his camera for me. I was a little nervous for the return journey down the steep slope of the mountain, but it actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We made it successfully back down “Veloma Baba” and down to the base of the mountain, past the rice paddies and back into town. As we dropped off Nana’s brother, their mom invited us in for a chat. We got a chance to see a large basket of green vanilla beans she had recently harvested out in her fields, and she promised to send me home with some of the final product when it was time for me to leave in December. Then she gave me a parting gift of a huge 1.5L Eau-Vive bottle of sakay (really spicy little peppers preserved in salt and vinegar), which is perhaps one of the best “voandalanas” I have ever received—typical wonderful Malagasy hospitality. After a short rest and a delicious lunch at Nana’s with some of the “sakay” from her mother, we went for a walk down to the river that winds around Anstirabe Nord. We hung out for a bit and took some pictures, and then it was time for us to head back to my new village so I could pack up for our trip through Masoala.

When we got to my village, everyone was at the “bazary,” watching as the doctor installed the TV for the community’s evening viewing of the Malagasy national news. It’s really great that the solar panel was successfully funded, purchased and installed, because the community can now use it to run the community TV and satellite for the national news every evening and to power the lights at the clinic in case there are any medical emergencies or women coming to give birth at night. The next morning, after some last minute packing and quick good-byes to the neighbors and my counterpart, we headed off to Antalaha.

The bush taxi rides down to Sambava and Antalaha were surprisingly quick and efficient that day, so we were able to arrive in Antalaha in time to have a late lunch. Then we went to visit a fellow volunteer living in Antalaha. After a walk on the beach and a long chat, we had a great home-made Italian meal complements of our host. Even the pasta was home-made (yes, he has a pasta machine); quite a character with his strong Italian roots and heavy Boston accent, and our fellow volunteer was such a wonderful host.

The next morning we arrived at the ANGAP office a little after 7am to meet our guide. Of course the office wasn’t open yet, but the guide was at least waiting for us as he had promised over the phone. He promptly left us sitting outside with his teenage daughter as he went to fetch his tent and his boss to open up the office. After about twenty minutes, the ANGAP folks magically appeared, and we stepped into a dingy, empty room except for a few posters of lemurs plastered on the walls and some moldy chairs and a table sitting in the center. The guide quickly went over with us our “programme” for the next week we would be spending together hiking through Masoala. Tom and I were a bit nervous, as the schedule sounded a little more intense than our initial impression. The guide assured us that we would be able to complete the guide in seven days, even if we weren’t hiring any porters to help us carry our stuff.

After paying our 1000 Ariary entrance fee for the park and a small advance to our guide for provisions, we headed off to the market to purchase food for our trek. We would be planning to eat in small villages along the way for the most part, but there were one or two nights that we’d be camping in the forest and would have to prepare our own food. If it were up to Tom or me, we probably would have just relied on peanuts, bread and cliff bars, but Malagasies have to have their rice every day. We did actually buy a lot of bread, and then some lentils, peanuts, ginger, garlic, salt, oil and spoons. We planned to buy rice and fish further down the road near Cap Est. We also brought some peanut butter, honey and a few other snacks with us, and the guide brought along his “vilany” (rice cooking pot). Then we headed to the taxi brousse station for Cap Est.

Unfortunately not too many people travel to Cap Est, since the road is bad and the vehicles are even worse. If you don’t catch the “premier line” that leaves at 6am, you’re in for a long wait until the next vehicle fills up. When we got to the vehicle stand, we loaded our stuff on the next car heading out and gave my phone number to the driver so we could walk around for the next few hours until it was time to leave. After taking a stroll along the beach and watching a huge production of people setting vanilla out to dry in the sun on the field outside the local CEG, we headed back to the taxi stand, but it still wasn’t ready to go. We decided to walk on down the road heading towards Cap Est and have the car pick us up along the way. After a couple kilometers we came to a gendarme checkpoint, so we decided to sit and wait for the car there. The gendarmes were actually quite nice, and they had fun practicing a little English with us. One of them was originally from Maroansetra, so we were able to ask him a little bit about our final destination as well.

It was already past noon by the time the car picked us up, and we were finally on our way to Cap Est. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the road wasn’t actually as bad as everyone kept saying it was. It wasn’t paved, but it was relatively flat and dry since the rainy season had ended about a month ago. There were some rocks and a few hills, but the main problem was the condition of the vehicle. I have been in some pretty janked up cars during my time here in Madagascar, but this was one of the worst. Everything on the dashboard had been completely stripped out, including the radio, speedometer, odometer, fuel gauge and ignition key. The driver had to hotwire the car every time he wanted to start it. The gas tank had been reconfigured so that the tube ran from under the hood to the leg space of the passenger seat, where it fed into a large, plastic, yellow jerry can that had once been used to store cooking oil. The lid of the “gas tank” wasn’t properly sealed, so each time we went over a bump or a rock, poor Tom got splashed on the legs with gasoline. At least there was a second full can next to it, so we had plenty of fuel for the trip. The driver seemed less than concerned about the spillage inside the cab, as he casually lit his third cigarette of the trip.

We were no more than 10 or 20km outside of Antalaha when our vehicle inevitable broke down. By this time it was evident that our guide had a restless streak or really enjoyed walking, because he hopped out of the back and asked us if we’d hike ahead with him until the car was fixed and could pick us up further down the road. I figured we’d be doing a lot of walking the next few days anyway, and there really was no point in sitting and watching the driver and his buddies fuss with God knows what under the hood, so the three of us headed on down the road. I was surprised at how long the stretches of quiet, uninhabited land were. There was already quite a lot of coastal forest and swampy areas with only a few small villages spaced out along the way. We came across a beautiful, deserted beach at low tide that stretched on for miles with a few beached canoes scattered along the shore. After about twenty minutes we heard the car sputtering along and headed back to the road to hop in.

The car broke down several more times for stretches of thirty minutes to an hour, making what should have been a two hour journey a very frustrating and long four and a half hour trip. We finally reached a gendarme stop by the ferry we were supposed to catch across the river and into Cap Est a little before dusk. They were primarily stationed at that point in order to catch rosewood smugglers coming out of the forest and up the river, transporting their precious cargo up towards Antalaha. They also periodically checked the paperwork of drivers who transported passengers and cargo back and forth from Cap Est to Antalaha. Unfortunately, the last ferry had already left for the day, so we had to unload at the river, cross in a very unstable canoe and walk the five remaining kilometers to our destination for the evening. We ended up staying in what seemed like the outskirts of Cap Est, where a small enclave was set up for guides who work the Cap Est to Maroansetra route. After a dinner of sautéed octopus and rice, we turned in for the night.

The next morning we headed out to the small protected forest surrounding Cap Est to see some carnivorous plants. About half way into the circuit through the park, I started noticing that a small cloud of mosquitoes was swarming from behind and in front of me. They started biting relentlessly at my ankles, so I quickly rolled down my pants and we started to hightail it out of there. At one point the guide stopped us to insist that we take a picture of the famous carnivorous plant of Cap Est. He was very adamant that I get a photo of the plant, so I quickly pulled out my camera and snapped a picture of it while the guide swatted at my ankles with a leafy branch. Then we walked out of the park as quickly as we could as my ankles started to itch and swell up. At one point, I think I smacked three mosquitoes that landed simultaneously on my leg. I probably would have elected to skip the walk if I had known that we would be going into a mosquito forest just to take a picture of one plant.

By this time we were both pretty frustrated with our guide and were ready to get out of Cap Est and head out on the path towards Maroansetra. We had already committed to a short snorkeling excursion however, so we packed up our things, changed into swimsuits and had a quick breakfast of rice and fish before heading out to the beach. Optimistically I hoped that the saltwater would dry out the mosquito bites and squelch the itching. While the beach and the deserted island we canoed out to were quite pretty, the snorkeling was less than impressive. Most of the coral was either dead or infested with stinging sea urchins, and the saltwater was actually making my mosquito bites sting, so we swam around for a total of about ten minutes and then headed back to shore so we could hike the 5km back to the river crossing in time to catch a “lakana” (canoe) downstream to our starting point of the hike through Masoala.

After the guide picked up some fresh fish from the local fishermen at the beach, we headed out. We reached the river around noon and had a quick lunch at a Malagasy “hotely” before hopping on a “lakana” manned by a very buff, young Malagasy boatman. Aside from gazing at the surrounding forest, charming small villages along the way and other “lakanas” drifting by with loads of rice harvests and passengers, it was pleasant just to watch and admire the strength of the young boatman as he thrust the “lakana” pole with both arms through the water down to the riverbed in a slow, repetitive, fluid motion.

About half way through our boat journey, the skies darkened, and large threatening storm clouds poured cold rain down on us for the remainder of the trip. With raincoats and banana leaves as our only defense against the elements, our belongings got quite soaked, and remained that way for the rest of the week, producing a lovely, moldy stench. A little before dusk, the rain finally petered off just in time for our disembarkation. Since we hadn’t caught our canoe until after lunchtime, we didn’t make it to our intended destination for the evening, although the guide had assured us that we would have no trouble catching a canoe, even if we hung around Cap Est for the morning. So our boatman dropped us off at a village about 10km further up the path than intended, as it was already getting close to dusk, and he still had to make his return trip back to Cap Est.

Our campsite for the evening was on a soccer field at the fringes of a little village called “Sahafary,” as a group of kids crowded around to see what the two “vazaha” and their small, elderly Malagasy guide with a strange-looking circular pack strapped to his back would do next. After unloading our things, we started putting the tents up. The guide’s was a green, pop-out tent that takes two minutes to set up, because it’s made with one flexible, foldable, circular wire frame. It was kind of convenient, but very funny-looking, especially when folded up into its circular shape and stuffed into its circular green sack…probably came out of some fad from the ‘80s in the States and then was donated to Goodwill and eventually shipped over to Africa. The shape of the tent folded up was kind of like a satellite dish, and, when strapped onto our guide’s back along with the shape and the green color, was reminiscent of a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” costume.

After setting up tents, the guide went off to look for firewood and to fetch water. We chatted with the kids for a while, who got a kick out of the fact that we knew how to speak Malagasy. I asked if any of them had ever seen a “fosa” in the woods before, and one or two of them actually claimed that they did, though one can never be sure how truthful little kids are about those kinds of things. Eventually their mothers called all the kids home for dinner and we could finally relax around the fire and enjoy the rice and fresh fish (re-freshened off the side of the “lakana” on or way down the river) our guide had cooked over the fire. We ate off of banana leaves so we wouldn’t have to worry about dishes, and then had a nice pineapple that someone in the village had sold us for 500 Ariary.

We were grateful that the rain had stopped in time for us to set up camp and have a dry dinner, but it unfortunately started up again at 3am and drizzled on into the morning. We were dismayed to find that a wet tent was a great source of anxiety for our guide, and for the next several days he continued to grumble on about how his tent would never dry out since it kept raining every night. That morning, he delayed our start until 7:30am even though we were behind schedule, just so he could let his tent dry out for a while.

We got off to a wet, slippery, muddy start that would turn into a common theme over the next few days. The sun actually came out and stayed out from mid-morning on, but the path was quite muddy from the recent rains and the bordering rice paddies and streams. Though we had not yet entered the park, the surrounding mountains, forests, rice fields, quaint villages, rivers and streams make the path quite scenic.

I was enjoying the gorgeous surroundings, but poor Tom, who was carrying a pack twice the size of mine and who unwisely decided to wear old running shoes with no traction, was not doing so well on the steep, muddy slopes. Only an hour into the hike, he had already slipped and fallen a dozen times, so the guide suggested he try wearing his plastic, Malagasy “jelly” sandals. Though his sandals had seen better days (they were almost a year old and the heels were cracking off in the back) they still provided more traction than his sneakers. The guide started off with hiking boots, but soon went barefoot, as we crossed many small streams and oversized puddles and were mucking through several feet of mud at times. I was nervous about my “Tevas” giving me blisters, but they weren’t bothering me so far and were serving their purpose of providing me some traction and allowing me to wade through the water while protecting the bottoms of my feet.

Around mid-morning we reached the village where we were supposed to have slept the past night if our canoe had been able to take us the whole way before dark. It was quite a large village with a market and a very friendly woman who had been to secondary school in Antalaha and could speak really good French and a surprising amount of English. She apparently knew some German and Italian as well. She was so excited to have the chance to talk with us in English, so we chatted with her while our guide snacked on some fried cassava. Then we stocked up on rice and headed back out on the trail.

About an hour later we stopped to lunch on some peanut butter and honey sandwiches on the beach by the river. I noticed that our guide’s snack of choice was butter sandwiches, as I watched in disbelief as he loaded four, large heaping spoonfuls of margarine onto a small chunk of bread. After sterilizing some water from the river with my handy UV pen, we set off on the trail again. Our guide forewarned us that we had quite a long way to go and lots of rocks, sand and river crossing over and over again for the next several hours.

At a few hours in, the river crossings still hadn’t gotten too bad, but the sand and sharp rocks getting trapped between my wet sandal straps and the back of my heels was aggravating my feet. Sections of the trail hugged steep, rocky hillsides that steeply dropped off into the raging rapids below. The skin irritation and frequent fear of slipping off the trail into the swift-moving river was mentally draining, and by now, the weight of the pack and climbing up and down the rocky trail was physically exhausting.

By mid afternoon, we had entered “Parc National Masoala,” and the grandeur of the thickly forested mountains and hillsides gave me a mental boost. Although it was hard to tear my eyes from the challenging terrain in front of my feet, I periodically made an effort to pick my head up and gaze around at the pristine beauty of the natural, wild environment that encompassed us. As it was early in the tourist season (or guide informed us that we were the first ones on the trail this year) and most of what we were hiking through was protected forest area, we frequently had the woods all to ourselves. Only about every couple hours or so, we would come across a few Malagasies traveling from one village to another that bordered the park.

By late afternoon we still hadn’t reached our destination, so our guide called out to a boy washing clothes on the other side of the river to ask how much longer we had to the next village. “Mbola lavitrE!” (still far!) he exclaimed in Malagasy, and my heart sank as I thought of my now irritated heels and sore shoulders. After about another hour, we came to a clearing with a patch of forest to the side. “Lemur” our guide casually announces as he pointed to a tree on the right. We looked over in that direction and sure enough there was a black lemur perched on a branch staring back at us. We watched each other for a few seconds and then moved on as we still had some ground to cover before dark.

At the tail end of dusk we arrived at a small village where we would camp for the night. I was exhausted from fording rivers, scrambling over boulders and wading through mud. A few of the rivers had been quite difficult to cross, with depths reaching up to our hips and swift rapids. The guide had to hold my hand and cross with me for several of them, so I wouldn’t slip and fall in with my pack. Add to that all the mosquito bites on my lower legs from pulling up my pants to cross the rivers, and it was one exhausting day.

We quickly set up the tents in the light drizzle and then I changed and laid down in my bag while the guide fussed with the plans for cooking rice. If it was up to Tom and me, we would have just eaten some bread or cliff bars and gone to bed. But Malagasies MUST have rice or they won’t make it through the day. About an hour later the guide fetched us from our tents and we dined on some very salty fish over boiled rice for dinner. Then we went back to our tents and slept until daybreak.

The next morning we had tried to get an earlier start, although with the guide wanting to dry out his tent again and having to heat up left over rice and fish for breakfast, we didn’t end up leaving until after 7. Every village or group of Malagasies we passed that morning had the pleasure of hearing a sales pitch from our guide for pink, liquid medicine in small plastic packets. He was marketing it as a topical cure-all for back pain, tooth pain, leg pain, neck pain, menstrual cramps, etc. We weren’t quite sure what the actual substance was, but Tom suspected it was probably some kind of numbing agent or analgesic. At first I was surprised at how many of these impoverished villagers were willing to fork over the considerable investment of 1000 Ariary for a small packet of medicine from some stranger passing through their community. No one at my site back up north every buys the medicine that traveling peddlers try to sell them, but then I realized that’s probably because my community has an amazing, hard working nurse staffing the clinic that’s located right in our village.

Tom and I asked the guide where the nearest medical facility was from this point in our hike, and he answered that either the clinic in Antalaha or Maroansetra were people’s best bet for care in case of a medical emergency. We had just traveled by foot, boat and car for a full two days to get to this point from Antalaha, and Maroansetra was still even further off at the other end, so I realized that these people were probably desperate for any type of medicine they could get their hands on, even if it was something to delay or lessen the pain for the two day journey until they were able to reach the nearest health care provider.

I then thought of all the mothers and pregnant women who were probably living out in these villages and asked if there were any knowledgeable midwives in the area. One of the locals we were temporarily walking with responded, much to my relief, that there were quite a few experienced and knowledgeable midwives in the area. I just hope a few of them had some kind of training at some point on proper hygiene and recognizing signs of emergencies or complications during childbirth. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later slipping over the wet rocks along the riverbank that the extreme remoteness of our present location and complete lack of cell-phone reception made me anxiously wonder what would happen if I myself fell and broke a wrist or ankle or something worse along this hike. I made a mental note to myself to be extremely careful.

Shortly thereafter, we were walking across the top of some smooth boulders, when I slipped on the edge of a puddle and went down hard, landing on my left arm and hip. I was nervous to move or sit up, worried to discover that I had broken something. The guide and Tom apprehensively waited in silence as they helped me sit up. Very luckily, I wasn’t in any pain, and we walked a few meters before taking a short break so I could sit and collect myself.

We hiked for several more hours, crossing more streams and sandy riverbanks until we stumbled across a quiet spot next to the river, shaded by a tall, beautiful tree. After more peanut butter sandwiches, a few pictures and a short rest, we trekked on, crossing stream after stream and entering into deeper forest. At one point in our river crossings, we met a young Malagasy couple heading back the opposite direction after what seemed like a picnic they had taken at the river. Then we came upon an older, toothless man carrying a few supplies on a stick over his shoulder and donning a thin, stretched out purple sweater, ripped up shorts and a faded baseball cap. He was heading out alone along the train in the same direction as us, but obviously at a much quicker pace.

Since we were planning to camp in the middle of the forest that night and the next village in that direction wasn’t for another full day’s hike, our guide asked the man where he was headed. He was planning to camp in the forest on his way to the next town we were headed to as well, so after checking out his ID card to make sure he wasn’t a shady character, the guide invited him to camp with us and share our company and fire for the evening. The lone traveler agreed and so we hiked on, climbing up what would be the steepest path I have every hiked on.

Before I even realized it, the path separated from the river and wound up and around into the forested mountainside above. We took high step after high step with our heavy packs, grabbing onto tree branches and roots for support. There were many steep, slippery and muddy sections I had to claw my way up. At one point I almost broke down with frustration, pure exhaustion and fear of slipping down over the sheer mountainside into the thorny valley below. Meanwhile, our surprisingly agile guide skipped up the trail with his satellite dish-shaped tent strapped to his back, and Tom—probably the most in-shape Peace Corps volunteer in country—powered up the steep slopes, pausing impatiently from time to time behind me as I panted and shakily struggled to haul myself and my pack up this ridiculous excuse for a trail. We stopped for a breather only once, as we came to a viewpoint looking out from the forest onto the opposite cliff-side, where a giant waterfall spilled over the top and down into the valley below.

“You stop to take picture. Nice place for picture. Here! Here!” the guide demanded. I was just grateful for the rest, as Tom pulled out his camera to capture the beauty of the scenic viewpoint. Only as we were about to leave did I notice that there was a wriggling, black leech biting the back of my pointer finger. I quickly flicked it off and then looked down to realize there was one sucking on my toe as well. I squirmed as I pulled it off and the blood pooled out. It must have been feasting on my toe for a while, because I had to squeeze it out of there and the blood didn’t stop running for quite a long time.

As we moved on, the trail seemed to get impossibly steeper and steeper until I freaked out a little bit, clinging to the mountainside. I had to take a minute to calm myself down and overcome my fear of slipping and tumbling all the way back down the trail into the valley below. I tried my best not to look down behind me as I pulled myself up the slope and attempted to comfort myself with the idea that Tom might be able to catch me or at least slow my fall if I did by chance happen to slip off the trail. Finally we reached the top and were able to catch our breaths and look out across the valley. It was at this point that I seriously wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.

We snapped some pictures and then hiked ten more minutes along the mountaintop over to our campsite by the water that fed into the grand waterfall below, which we had looked out on from halfway up the mountain earlier that afternoon. After setting up camp and washing off a bit in the river—probably not the smartest idea given the aforementioned leeches, but our first opportunity of the trip, which made it too irresistible—I bundled up in all the layers I had in preparation for a very cold night, and waited for our guide to cook the rice and lentils over the campfire. After a short, pre-dinner nap in my sleeping bag back in my solo tent, I joined the boys by the fire. Once the food was ready, we ate off a flipped over pot lid that served as a communal plate, as there were no banana leaves surrounding the campsite. Although it definitely wasn’t enough food, it was nice to have a warm meal before turning in for the evening.

That night was so cold that the guys had offered to share the big tent with our fellow traveler, as he was just sleeping out in the open. I got the single tent with all my layers, thick socks and a hot water bottle full of “ranompango” (burnt rice water), so I was thankfully warm enough. The guide was complaining the next morning that his tent had been drafty and cold during the night. Additionally, he claimed that he had a fever, though I’m not sure if he was just confusing a natural bodily reaction to the cold weather of shivering with that of fever chills. Nevertheless, he looked pretty pathetic shaking and whimpering as he stoked the breakfast fire, so I offered him some ibuprofen and an extra Mefloquine tablet I had, just in case it was Malaria or an actual fever. The offering was as much to quiet him down and placate him as anything else. Most Malagasy I have come across fortunately (or sometimes unfortunately if they keep asking you for medication) have a good amount of faith in western biomedicine.

After a few quick spoonfuls of burnt rice and cold lentils for breakfast, we headed off down the mountain. For the first half of the morning, I was confused as to our location on the peak, because we seemed to be going uphill more so than down. We crossed mud pond after mud pond, which were infested with leeches as we were still in the dense section of the forest. I was wearing a pair of Tom’s socks under my Tevas, as the sores on my feet from my sandal straps had gotten pretty bad. Although it wasn’t the most comfortable (nor fashionable) thing to be wearing wet, muddy, squishy socks, it protected my blisters and even helped a little with the leeches, though a few still tried to bite through the socks and one even ended up on my stomach somehow.

After a late morning snack of leftover rice and peanut butter (since we wouldn’t get to our lunch town until 2) we hiked on. After about another hour we finally reached the path dropping down towards our afternoon destination. For the moment, it was a relief to be out of the leech-infested mud puddles, to be going downhill, and to have beautiful vistas of the river and town below. We could even see the road winding back north up towards Antalaha. We soon unfortunately discovered that the maintenance of the trail was practically non-existent and the drizzly morning and past few days of rainfall had made the steep path down, one slippery, messy, red mudslide.

Because the mud was caked on the bottom of my shoes and probably because I was very exhausted at the point, I must have slipped and fallen over a dozen times. Luckily the landings were soft though, as there were no more rocks, but rather a lot of mud and grass. I was so tired and frustrated at the slippery path and my feet were hurting so badly that I had a small meltdown midway in our descent down the mountain. At around 2pm we finally reached the village of Ampokafo, where the path coming directly from Antalaha to Maroansetra intersects with the longer, circuitous path cutting through the forest from Cap Est, which we had taken. After stopping at a nearby stream to wash off all the mud caked on our shoes and pants, we headed to a “hotely” to have lunch.

I had my third serving of rice for the day, and I actually finished the whole plate (which is saying something for the huge quantities of rice they pile on those plates) along with some boiled greens, “sakay” and peanut butter. That was my first time ever finishing a full Malagasy plate of rice, and I kind of forced myself to do it since I was sure I hadn’t been taking in enough calories for the ridiculous amount of calories we were probably expending hiking over 8 hours each day on a challenging trail with heavy packs on our backs.

Our guide went to eat lunch at a church party in the center of town and probably tried to sell some of his pink medicine to the attendees while he was there. After he returned, we headed down the trail to the village where we would spend the night. I was reluctant to stand up on my feet again, but the guide promised we’d arrive at our destination by 4pm and the trail was supposed to be easy from here on out. We’d only have a few more rivers to cross and one more short, steep section.

The trail was thankfully much easier and still quite beautiful, as we looked out over the river down below, studded with big, round boulders and bordered by small sections of protected forest and small, Malagasy dwellings and rice paddies. There were still tall mountains on either side of the path, but our trail stayed mostly flat as it meandered along the lower part of the valley. Since we were no longer inside the national park, the deforestation along the hillsides was much more prevalent and depressing to see. All of the forest on the lower half of the mountains and most of it on the steeper mid-sections had been cleared by the surrounding villages for firewood, farming, building houses and possibly the rosewood trade. Only the very steepest sections of the top halves of the peaks were left sparsely blanketed with trees. It was disheartening to think that, with the continuously growing population and hence growing need for food, fuel and money, the mountaintops not protected by park boundaries would probably be completely bare in a matter of a couple years.

Around 4:30 in the afternoon we finally reached the village where we would spend the night. Though the trail through the park had been spectacularly beautiful and memorable, it was a relief to now feel 99% sure that I would make it out of this expedition alive. Back in the forest, I hadn’t been so sure—often worrying that I might slip and kill myself or tumble down the mountain or be eaten alive by mosquitoes and leeches. We would now be passing villages all along with trail, which promised to be much flatter and well cleared. Only a few fording of rivers left!

Before dinner we chatted with some of the young men hanging out next to the house of the family in whose yard we were camping. They all looked to be in their early teens, yet only one or two of them were still in school. We asked where the nearest CEG (junior high school) was, and they responded in Ampokafo, which was a two hour hike back where we came from. The nearest lycee (high school) was in Antalaha or Maroansetra. Antalaha was now a good few days hike from where we were now, and Maroansetra was still another one and a half days in the other direction. So it was understandable that only a few of them would continue past primary school and even fewer past middle school and on into high school, especially if they didn’t have any relatives to house them in Antalaha or Maroansetra.

The kids who weren’t in school worked in the rice fields and vanilla and coffee businesses. They also openly admitted that they looked for money cutting down and/or transporting Rosewood. According to the locals, one large tree could fetch them around 80,000 Ariary (about 40USD) or more, quite a good chunk of money for someone so low down on the chain of production. It was widely known among the locals that there are a lot of “patrons” in Antalaha looking to purchase rosewood for exportation, and we heard many stories of people floating logs of rosewood down the river as a way of transporting them from the forests of Masoala up towards Antalaha.

After my fourth plate of rice for the day (a personal record!), along with some lentils and the squash like vegetable we had found in the forest, we chatted with the guide about horoscopes (his favorite topic) and then hit the sack. The next morning, we had a rainy and late start. I struggled to hike down the slippery, steep hill with my sore feet to reach the W.C. while the guide went to search for firewood. This village was unusually devoid of early risers, so it was another hour before the guide was able to get the cookfire going for a breakfast of boiled cassava and leftover lentils and rice. I skipped the cassava, as it is my least favorite food in Madagascar and ate the rice that the guys couldn’t finish since they were so full of from the tasteless, starchy cassava.

It was only at 8:30 that we finally packed up and left town. The guide assured us that, since the road was easy from here on out, we would have no trouble reaching our destination for the day. The path wandered in and out of the small remaining sections of the park for the rest of the morning. Since the path was easy and the guide kept telling us that we had plenty of time, I stopped frequently to catch up on picture taking that I hadn’t done much of during the first half of the trip, since I was always trying to catch up with my two, strong, male hiking partners.

Unfortunately we still had quite a bit of river crossings left, some of which were quite deep and fast-moving. The additional maneuvering on slippery rocks was becoming increasingly painful for my blister-covered feet. I felt better about the guide having to help me across the rapids, though, when I saw a young Malagasy woman struggling to cross one of the rivers while two young men held her hands and carried her belongings across for her. The path was still quite muddy as we passed more rice fields and patches of heavily forested, poorly maintained trail.

At around 11:30 we passed a small village with “hotelies.” The guide offered us the option of stopping to have lunch or to keep going to another village two hours down the road, where he claimed there were better “hotely” options. I wasn’t hungry yet but quite exhausted and in a lot of pain from my sandals. So we went on, but took a short break a little ways down the road so I could rest my feet. The trail wound on and on through forested and deforested area and sections of rice fields. I started to get extremely frustrated at how much longer this was taking than expected and at how muddy and slippery the path remained.

We finally reached our destination for lunch around 3:30. Since we were way behind schedule, according to the guide, to reach Nahavana by evening, the town where we were supposed to catch the boat to Maroansetra the next morning, he made us gulp down our rice in ten minutes and get right back on the road. I was less than happy about the prospect of another three hours of walking, but he wanted to make sure we had a chance of catching the one canoe that left first thing in the morning from Nahavana. Otherwise, we’d have to walk an extra 10km to catch a boat down the river to Maroansetra.

Although the path was dry and flattened out, making it much easier than any of the previous hiking we had done, we walked on and on and didn’t make it to our evening destination until a good hour after dusk. One of the young porters from Sambava that we had happened to meet along the trail who was a friend of our guides actually caught up with us in the town a few km outside of Nahavana and offered us a place to pitch our tents next to his compound on the edge of the village. He was a very nice guy, and we chatted about Sambava and his work with the vanilla trade along the route from Antalaha to Maroansetra. Our camping spot was great as well, as there was live fencing all around the yard and it was right next to the beach, so we could hear the waves crashing and the wind blowing through the palms as we set up our tents.

The guide and our new friend decided to go out for some drinks and dinner, but Tom and I were so exhausted that we just had a few snacks and went to sleep. Unfortunately, we found out as we were coming into Nahavana that there were no canoes leaving from that point in the morning to head to Maroansetra, because the seas had been rough the past couple days and part of the route went along the ocean. It wasn’t safe enough, so we would have to hike the extra 10km the next day anyway to get to the village with river access and canoes running all day back and forth between Maroansetra. I was greatly disappointed that we would have to walk again for another few hours the next day, as my body was so beat up from the past couple of days from hiking through the forest and carrying the heavy pack.

Unfortunately the next morning was quite cold and rainy, and so we had a couple hours of wet hiking to look forward to after a quick breakfast in Nahavana. I was so ready to be done with walking that I powered through the next few hours while Tom and the guide stopped to take a break in the middle. I figured they would catch up with me anyway, since they were usually so much faster than me, but I ended up on my own for the remainder of the hike as the trail wound up into a small forested, protected park area and then back down along the coast to the beach and out to the village on the banks of the river that headed towards Maroansetra. There were many more people on this section of the trail, including Malagasy day travelers and quite a few white tourists (mostly French), who I speculated probably went on the easier trail coming directly from Antalaha or were on day trips leaving out of Maroansetra.

After grabbing a “lakana” for a little more expensive than we had expected—they were taking advantage of low supply of boats and high demand of travelers that day—we were sitting in a soggy, wooden canoe on our way through the drizzle to Maroansetra at last! As the river channel meandered past flooded rice paddies and other canoes transporting cargo and passengers in the rain, I reflected on how challenging life must be for farmers in the Maroansetra area. The walking paths seemed either very wet or non-existent, so most transport relied on the hand-made wooden canoes. Once we arrived at the port, we walked thirty more minutes through the rain to the center of town and found a cheap-ish hotel where we could finally put down our stuff and get out of the wet weather.

Though we didn’t have hot water, it was still amazing to be able to wash off all the mud and sweat from the past week and to hang up all our clothes to “dry out” in the damp air of Maroansetra. After a quick lunch, we met up with the guide to pay him his fee for the trip. I gave him a little extra, because I don’t think I would have been able to make it across all the rivers without his help. He then showed us to the ANGAP office, where we turned in our guide evaluations and then parted ways. Since Tom had to make it back down to Tana as soon as possible, he went in search of “taxi brousses” heading down to Tamatave and made a reservation for the earliest one, leaving Thursday morning from Maroansetra. The ride sounded like quite the adventure, as the road from Maroansetra down to Mananara is notoriously bad. The trip down to Tamatave was projected to take two or more days, even though the geographic distance between Maroansetra and Tamatave really isn’t that far. The road is just that bad. I was looking to the short and easy flight I had booked direct from Maroansetra back to Sambava.

With our time left in Maroansetra, we did a little souvenir shopping and met up with the Peace Corps environment volunteer in the area doing work with an NGO on income-generating activities relating to a local silkworm project as well as reforestation and improved rice farming techniques. We also stumbled across a fancy resort down by the beach whose owner happened to be a French lady who had spent thirty years in California and loved Peace Corps volunteers. She invited us back to her resort that evening for drinks and dinner, so she could hear all about our adventures in Masoala.

It was something else to end our long, treacherous journey through the muddy forest with an evening of wine and a fancy three-course dinner in a swanky hotel with several older French ladies and their friends, who included an American scientist doing research on the "Fosa" in the forests around Maroansetra. Everyone we met that evening was wonderfully nice to talk to and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Maroansetra, but I was ready to go back to the warmer and drier climate up at my site near Sambava and to relax in my house and not have to walk around for several days.

Yesterday, 26 Juin, was Madagascar's Independence Day, which is a huge annual celebration here. They give much more importance to it than we do our own July 4th. Especially since rice harvesting season has just finished and vanilla season is beginning, people are starting to have money again, so they begin planning several days or sometimes even weeks in advance for the big event of "vignt six." As I mentioned in the last entry, the doctor's family and I had outfits made for our dance performance at the talent show called "podium" leading up to 26. We've also been having dance rehearsals at my Malagasy counterpart's (the doctor's) house, where we have been practicing our choreographed moves complements of Oriana, the doctor's youngest daughter, to several popular Malagasy music videos. I had agreed to perfoming a set of 4 dances with the doctor's family and neighbors and then two dances with the local women's group, which included songs from such popular Malagasy artists as WaWa and Jerry Marcos.

Overall the performances went really well, and I had a lot of fun. Our outfits turned out great--bright orange haltertops with ruffly black skirts. I might actually wear the tank top out again on other occassons. The "podium" for 26 spanned over three nights. The first night we didn't go, because we were still practicing our dance moves. On the second night I performed the two dances with the womens group and two of our four dances with my counterpart's family and friends. I think the community got a kick out of seeing me up there dancing. We got a lot of cheers and took in a decent amount of money from the crowd. Malagasies have a great tradition here for "podium" of giving money to the performers up on stage. If you are part of the audience and really enjoy the performance, you can walk up on stage and give the performers a small amount of money, typically 200-500 ariary (the equivalent of 25 cents). Sometimes people from the audience will even dance with the performers up on stage for a little bit before giving their money.

Our women's group took in about 10,000 Ariary and our other group, which the doctor's wife decided to name "Group Maya" took in around 5,000. Much more important than the surprising amount of cash we earned was how much fun it was to be up there dancing together with the women in my community and participating in the Malagasy cultural event. It also seemed to mean a lot to the doctor and his wife that I partcipated, because they said they would really miss me on New Years since my 2 years will already be up and I wont be there to participate in that "podium" with them.

Besides participating in the performance, I also enjoyed watching the show and the whole celebration in general. My counterpart did a great job as one of the emcees for the show, since he's an awesome community leader and everyone in the village loves him. Some of the performances were impressive. One very petite young man brought a bicycle wheel rim up with him on stage and did dance moves and tricks where he contorted and squeezed his whole body through the wheel rim at an incredibly fast pace. Another kid came up on stage with a large wooden pounder (pestle?) that they use for pounding rice and was picking it up by it's edge with his teeth! Another crippled guy in the community, who's legs are deformed to the point that he has difficulty walking, came up on stage and did an amazing dance performance using his knees, upper legs and arms, twisting up his body and doing moves almost like break dancing. I thought it was really awesome that he was able to turn something that most people would think of as a challenging handicap into a gift and a talent, and that the whole community was so supportive of him and truly appreciated his contribution to the "podium" celebration. One of my favorites was a traditional Malagasy "orchestre" made up of two hand-carved, wooden guitars, some hand-made cowhide drums and an incredibly talented vocalist. There music was very coastal African in nature, and it was really neat to see the hand-made guitars up close, as I had a great seat up on stage behind the performers.

On another, perhaps more exciting note, the solar panel installation is finished!! On wednesday the doctor, village treasurer for the solar panel and I went to Sambava and delivered the money to the local solar panel provider for our 100W, Italian made solar panel that will power the lights at our village clinic and the community satellite dish for daily one hour viewings of the Malagasy national news from Antanananrivo. The installers came up the next day and worked over the course of two days so that the panel, lights and electrical cords would be in place for us in time to celebrate the illumination of the hospital and the operation of the satellite dish for the 26 celebration. As is typical of the Malagasy culture, there were several community meetings and many speeches over the few days leading up to 26, most of which consisted of them thanking me for facilitating the "fampandrosoana," or developlent, that I helped bring to the village. So I'm relaying that onto those readers/family/friends who supported the project. The community itself did an amazing job of gathering their 25% of the funds and supporting me throughout the process. I have to say, it was wonderfully satisfying to have the installers leave on Thursday evening and then turn on a light switch at the clinic to see the doctor's office and the hospital porch illuminated. That evening someone came to the clinic to give birth, so the panel is already being put to good use. There are even community members that didn't give to the 25% community contribution and still wish to contribute, so the treasurer is going to continue collecting funds and set them aside for when a repair is needed or the battery has to be replaced, which will inevitable happen in 2 or 3 years. Thanks again to all those who helped out!

So I have come to the conclusion that my community is really awesome. After about one year in Peace Corps, I had started to really feel at home in my host country, Madagascar. Now I’m finding that after one and a half years in (once you only have six months left), I almost don’t want to leave! It’s kind of sad realizing I don’t have much time left here, and I still have so much to do. Having finally become fluent in the language and having made so many friends will make it even harder for me to leave, as well.

My well project still isn’t finished, because we ran across several obstacles building the second well including a very deep water table and soil erosion when digging the second hole. The community had to re-dig the second well twice and ended up having to use much more cement than expected. I’m hoping we will be finished with this second well soon! Everyone is working really hard to get it done, so I have faith that the project will still be a success regardless of the frustrating obstacles and delays.

My solar panel project for the rural clinic in my village was funded very quickly, so now we are just waiting on the community to gather their 25% of the funds before we can purchase the solar panel in Sambava. The doctor supplied the head of each neighborhood in our village with a receipt book, so that we could keep a clear record of who has donated to the project. People in the community have been really great about contributing their share, and it won’t be too long before we will be able to make the purchase. Some neighborhoods are already out of receipts, and the community is having a meeting today to see how close we are to reaching the total. The mayor of the commune also announced that he would pledge half of the 25% community contribution out of his own pocket if the village members were able to contribute the other half. I was really impressed with the mayor’s generosity, especially given the general global perception that there are many problems with corruption within African governments!

My Healthy Teens Club has been going really well. We have been having great discussions about HIV/AIDS and Teen Reproductive health at our meetings lately, and are hoping to hold an AIDS prevention festival in late June or July with testing and an outdoor movie projection about HIV/AIDS. It gets tiring biking the 10km from my village into town to meet with them every week, though, as there are many steep hills in my area. I am in really great shape now for sure!

I have also been enjoying working with the local nutrition workers. The one in my village who is also the doctor’s wife has been great about counseling the mothers of young children on nutrition, weighing babies every week and holding cooking demonstrations. I have assisted her with the health education and weighing both in our village at the clinic on vaccine days and in a neighboring village we walk to once a month to meet with the mothers. Yesterday I also biked 10km into town to meet one of the other nutrition workers in my commune; we hiked for an hour into the woods to weigh babies and hold a cooking demonstration with mothers in another rural area. It was an exhausting day, especially since it has been raining non-stop for the past few days and the path was absurdly muddy and slippery. The hike through the forest was still absolutely beautiful, and the work was rewarding.

Many of the babies we weighed that day had lost weight from the time the nutrition worker weighed them last month, which we were surprised at as it is harvest time. Theoretically the mothers and children should be getting enough food now that there is so much new rice around. After talking with the mothers, we discovered that many of the children had had diarrhea during the last month, which makes sense as it has been very rainy lately. There has been a huge spike in malaria cases as well, even though we just had insecticide treated bed net distribution not too long ago. I have a health talk on diarrhea prevention, stressing hand-washing with soap, boiling water for consumption, exclusive breastfeeding for children under 6 months and rehydration for those children suffering from diarrhea. We also individually counseled mothers on nutrition and feeding strategies, especially for those children who had lost weight or were already underweight for their age. Overall it was a successful and rewarding, yet very tiring day.

I’ve also been staying busy with goal 2 of Peace Corps, learning about the culture of one’s host country. Rice harvesting season still isn’t over, so everyone has been working extremely hard, picking, drying and pounding rice (vanilla season is coming up soon). The other week, one of the women in the village gave me a rather large quantity of rice that she had picked from her field. It was really sweet of her, and it was a great opportunity for me to learn how to dry the rice in the sun and to pound the rice by hand in order to get the husks off. Thankfully I had neighbors and kids that helped me with the whole process, as I have never farmed rice before and am clueless about how the whole process works.

After setting the rice out in the sun on a mat one morning, it was dry enough to pound. Then I and a bunch of the young neighborhood girls who often come to visit pounded the rice. It was really fun learning from them, and I also took pictures, which they absolutely loved. They were very amused by both the picture-taking and my lack of proficiency in the rice pounding and winnowing. Rice pounding is hard work, but it didn’t take as long as I thought it would to pound all of my rice. It was very satisfying when I was finally able to cook my first batch of white rice that I had dried and pounded myself! I also gave a cup each to the girls who had helped me and promised them that I would bring them back developed pictures that I took once I go to Antananarivo in August.

26 June, the big celebration of Madagascar’s Independence is coming up, too. Everyone is preparing for the huge party that lasts almost a week long. The doctor’s wife has already requested me to perform with her, her daughter and some of our neighbor lady friends in a song and dance competition called “Podium.” We will be rehearsing several dances to some current, popular Malagasy songs and then performing them over the course of a few evenings in front of the whole village, along with other contestants. We are even getting matching outfits made for the occasion. I had to meet them in Sambava to buy the cloth and get fitted at the tailor. I think it’ll be a lot of fun, even if I do make a fool of myself dancing in front of everybody!

Lately life at site has been a mix of a few busy days with stretches of a whole lot of nothing. Right now the schools have been on a two week vacation for Easter (like our spring break) so I haven’t had any work to do at the schools. It’s also harvest time, so everyone is out in their fields picking rice on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. On days that they’re not out in the fields, they’re laying out their rice to dry on mats in the sun or pounding their rice by hand to get the husks off.

Rice farming and processing is quite intensive work, which must be the reason why all the Malagasies are so strong and in such good shape. Both the men and women are really buff, they all have really low blood pressure, and can run through the forest for several hours without stopping to rest or drink water while carrying ridiculously heavy loads (especially for their small size) on their shoulders or heads. Malagasies seem to spend a majority of their life preparing the fields, building barrages, planting and transplanting, weeding, harvesting, drying, pounding, sorting and cooking and eating mounds and mounds of rice. I have never come across another culture so obsessed with rice in all my travels!

On another note, my well project unfortunately still isn’t finished, because the builders ran into some obstacles when digging the second well. They didn’t hit the water table in a good spot, so there was sand and dirt mixing in with the water where they had intended to build the well. The builders had to dig another hole (all of this is by hand, keep in mind), and the water table was still much further down than with the first well. They have finally finished digging, but the president of the women’s association still has to take some additional bags of cement out to the site since the second well is so deep. Once the well is finally finished, I’ll be able to go out there with the women’s group and hold trainings on proper well use and maintenance and other hygiene and sanitation measures that can prevent against schistosomiasis and diarrheal diseases, of which there’s a high prevalence in their community. Until then, I’m just waiting though.

My application for funds for the solar panel at the village clinic was approved by PC Tana and Washington, so it’s up on the PC website now. Just waiting for it to be fully funded and then for the funds to be transferred to my account so my community can move forward on that project.

I’m still helping out at the clinic every morning, but things have been fairly quiet. Last week there was a little more to do, because it was health week. On one especially busy day, I left my house at 6am and hiked with several other health workers out to three different surrounding villages to distribute vitamin A and deworming pills to pregnant women and children under 5. On the other days of health week, I helped out at the clinic where we vaccinated children under 2 and gave out the remaining vitamins. By the end of the week there wasn’t much to do, as most people had gotten their meds and vaccines during the first few days of health week.

Aside from work, I’ve been trying to stay active by jogging every other morning and playing soccer with the local women’s team. I’ve gotten up to 10km now, which I’m happy about. The soccer practices are really fun, too. I feel like we’re already improving, even though we’ve only had a few sessions. I also still meet with my adult English class every Thursday, which has been fun. Some of the students in the class are getting really good. They can have a conversation by asking and answering simple questions like “Where are you going?” or “What did you do on Tuesday?” It’s nice to be able to practice chatting with them, and one of the ladies on my soccer team is also in the class, so she’s become a good friend.

This past weekend we celebrated Easter, which is a pretty big thing here too, since a lot of Malagasies are very Christian. Most people just go to church on Sunday, but Easter Monday is the big celebration when people get together and have a picnic with lots of good food. Malagasies typically have meat on holidays. Any kind of meat here is expensive, so it’s more of a special treat rather than an everyday food. My neighbors raise pigs and decided to slaughter one and sell the meat for Easter. Unfortunately, that meant they had the radio blasting starting from midnight on Sunday and going all through the day till around noon…I think as an advertising tactic. People were coming by their house to chat and to buy meat starting during the middle of that night when they slaughtered the pig. Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep at that time.

On Monday the doctor and his wife invited me over to their house along with the neighbor’s family. All their kids were in town for Easter Vacation as well, so there were tons of people that came together to share the midday meal. They brought out chairs and tables into the backyard and had their generator running so we could watch music videos and hang out before it was time for the picnic. The doctor’s wife prepared some homemade noodles with greenbeans and carrots that she bought in Sambava. They mixed in ground meat but very thoughtfully set aside a portion for me without meat, because they knew I’m vegetarian…it was very sweet of them! After eating, all the kids gathered around the TV to watch a commando film, and the rest of us went out to the soccer field to watch a local men’s league match. Overall, it was a really nice celebration.

The past week has been really slow…haven’t had much going on and the clinic has been fairly quiet. I’ve just been hanging out and getting a lot of reading and crossword puzzles done. Since I’ve been at my house a lot, the village kids have been stopping by to visit and play cards frequently. It’s actually been really nice having them visit, because they do all my chores like fetching water and washing clothes. I have fun chatting with them, too, since they ask me all sorts of funny questions about America. They also found out that I love spicy things, so they brought me a huge pile of fresh chilies (“sakay” in Malagasy) from the plants that grow by their houses. I was so grateful, because I ran out of my stash and have developed a somewhat disturbing addiction to “sakay” since I’ve been in Madagascar.

The kids kind of went overboard though, so now I have so many chilies sitting around I don’t know what to do with. It’s kind of dangerous, because some of them are very VERY hot, but I can’t seem to stop eating them. We’re talking habanero hot. They come in the prettiest variety of shapes, sizes and colors. The hottest ones burn all the way from your nose through your esophagus, down to your stomach all the way through your large intestine. I think I will have destroyed my insides by eating too much sakay by the time I leave here. But hey, at least I can request as many antacids from the Peace Corps Medical Office as I need!

The trip to Andapa was a great success! I taught at the high school and middle school about STIs and HIV/AIDS. The kids were very receptive and really enjoyed learning the song about HIV/AIDS and the games we played to help us learn about the biology of HIV (how it affects the immune system) and how to use a condom. I had a lot of great and sometimes amusing questions from the students, such as “do condoms come in different sizes?”

I was even able to meet up with the wife of the head of the hospital there who does trainings on latrine building. I got some advice about how to organize and hold community trainings for latrine construction projects, which I’m hoping to do with my village. The instructions for latrine-building she provided me with use locally available materials and other thrifty strategies that will enable the community to afford building them. I even got a few electronic files with pictures that I loaded on my flash drive. Technology is amazing (when it’s not crippled by the ubiquitous viruses that plague any kind of external drive here in Madagascar).

Although I enjoyed the pleasant change of cooler climate and the laid back atmosphere of Andapa, I eventually had to return home at the end of the week. Before I left, my fellow PCV took me on a nice walk out to the edge of town to see a beautiful waterfall surrounded by forests and wildflowers. The walk through town and out to the beginning of the countryside was absolutely gorgeous.

The town of Andapa sits in a valley surrounded by rice fields and mountains further out. It rains there quite frequently, which keeps the scenery green and the climate refreshingly cool. It was nice having a little break from the heat up in the mountains. The market there is amazing; so many varieties of vegetables, fruits and legumes are available. And to top it off, my host’s house had electricity and an indoor shower and toilet, and it was fairly private and quiet as well. The people in Andapa are very friendly and like to chat; however they are not overly aggressive but rather pleasantly easy going. I was surprised at how many people had such good English skills, but I suppose it makes sense given the number of private and public high schools and middle schools they had there. Overall, it was a nice change of pace and a very productive week.

Since I’ve been back at site, I’ve mostly been relaxing at my house or catching up with neighbors and friends in the village. There hasn’t been much to do since the doctor has been in Vohemar attending trainings for the upcoming health week. On Tuesday I helped with a cooking demo and baby weighing with the local nutrition worker and some mothers who live just down the road. Then in the afternoon I had another meeting with my Healthy Teen’s Club at the local middle school just up the road in the other direction. Unfortunately there was an unexpected day off from school, so we only had about ten people attend the meeting. I was still able to review HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention with them, and we also talked a bout STIs and some plans for the organization for future meetings. I was also able to visit with my friends in town where the middle school is, and they gave me some oranges and avocados to take home.

I love this time of year, when there’s so much fresh produce around: giant cucumbers, breadfruit, avocados, oranges, limes, tangerines, cherimoya and the few lingering mangoes and pineapples. Some kids came to my house and sold me a giant pineapple for the equivalent of 25 cents the other day! Thursday is immunization day, so I’m sure I’ll be busy helping organize vaccine distribution and helping with the nutrition organization’s baby weighing and cooking demonstration. I think we are cooking breadfruit this week, though I’m not sure what we’ll mix with it.

Had a good past week at site and now I’m up in Andapa doing HIV/AIDS education at a fellow volunteer’s middle and high schools for a week. The women’s group in my village decided they wanted to start getting serious about soccer ever since we had a mini tournament with all the women’s teams in the area earlier in March for International Women’s Day. So we actually had practice on the local pitch the other day. We had to fight with the guys’ team to get them to lend us their ball and to let us play on the field for a little while before they started their practice. Unfortunately we only got to practice for 30 minutes, but it was still really fun. We just split into two teams and scrimmaged against each other. My skills have really gone downhill, since I haven’t played in over four years. It’s really great to see women out playing sports though, even if it was more like volleyball than soccer After practice the team was even strategizing about how they could increase practice time—like perhaps purchasing a ball for our own use and being more forceful with the guys’ teams to make sure we get an adequate amount of time on the field to practice. I’m also looking into getting uniforms for the team.

Last Tuesday I biked to the middle school 30 minutes up the road to meet with the elected officers of the Healthy Teens Club along with the English Teacher who’s helping me with the group. We strategized and brainstormed some potential activities we could do with the members of the organization. It’s really great that the teacher and the officers of the club are eager for me to hold some training sessions with them so that they will feel prepared to continue the club next year when I am no longer there.

Back in the village on Thursday we had vaccines, baby weighing and a cooking demonstration at the clinic. After helping with the paperwork I gave a health talk on vaccines, family planning and nutritious foods. The cooking demo went really well. The doctor’s wife cooked a rice porridge mixed with a sauce made from dried shrimp, tomatoes, onions, salt and a little oil. Before all the mothers and their children tasted the food, I did a handwashing demonstration and then had them all wash their hands with well water and soap to emphasize prevention against diarrheal diseases. In the afternoon I held my weekly adult English class, during which I taught them the English alphabet using the ABC’s song. It was a nice low-key session. I think they are even planning to meet up next Thursday and practice conversing with one another on their own, even though I’ll still be in Andapa.

On Sunday morning I got left my village at 6:30 in the morning and hiked a kilometer up to the main road to catch a bush taxi so that I would arrive in Sambava early enough to take care of some business in town before transferring to another bush taxi to head up to Andapa. I was able to finish up in Sambava and get on another bus around 10:30. Since the vehicle was pretty much full, I assumed we would be leaving for Andapa fairly soon. Little did I know that the driver was still planning to take several grand tours through Sambava again to pick up more passengers and then sit for another 45 minutes to load up more luggage on top of the bus. We didn’t end up getting on the road until around noon.

The road up to Andapa weaves up and around into the mountains towards the plateau of the island, so there are steep grades and sharp curves the whole way. The nature of the road and probably the excessive heat and stuffiness from cramming in too many passengers gave the toddlers riding with us car sickness. One kid in front of me threw up almost the whole way and two other mothers had their plastic bags ready in hand for their queasy youngsters. Because we had to stop and let off or load on more passengers every 20km and since we broke down twice and had to wait for the driver to tinker around with the engine until he could get the car started again, a 120km drive that should probably take no more than two hours in a normal vehicle ended up taking us four hours…five and a half if you count the time we spent sitting around in Sambava.

At least the scenery was breathtakingly gorgeous. This was my first time on the road to Andapa, and I was swept away by how beautiful and grand the lush, forested mountains were, standing tall among the misty, swirling clouds above and the pristine, winding rivers, and the brilliant green rice paddies and banana plantations below. The roadside sparkled with dewy ferns, shiny breadfruit and banana tree leaves and brilliant blue orchids and white wildflowers. The great Mount Marojejy stood towering above everything else. I basically just stared out the window in awe for the whole four hour ride.

At the end of February I headed down to Sambava to meet up with the other volunteers in my region. Three times a year, the volunteers from each region are supposed to meet up and then each region sends one representative to a Madagascar-wide meeting in Tana, with the idea of facilitating communication between in-country staff and volunteers and to gather feedback from volunteers for improving the program. We had a nice time hanging out, although it was disappointing to find out that three volunteers from our region were unable to finish their service and went home early. We are down from nine volunteers to a mere six in our region up in the northeast! I hope we get some new folks soon.

I am always amazed at how much the other Americans among our group can eat. Whenever we meet up, it’s like a non-stop food fest for two or three days. I think we all get a little tired of the traditional Malagasy meals of rice three times a day and end up overindulging on specialties like ice cream, pastries, pizza, cold beer and french fries whenever we come to the big town (no matter how mediocre the Malagasy approximations of these American treats are). Unable to resist the pizza and cold beer, I myself took part in some of the gluttony, but my fellow volunteers went a little overboard—multiple pastries for breakfast and ice cream three times in one day in addition to a square lunch and dinner is too much for me! To top it all off, we had a food eating challenge on the last day.

During one of our breakfasts at the pastry shop, the lone guy in our group boasted that he could probably eat 10 pows (Chinese rice buns stuffed with meat and spices) in one sitting. One of the other volunteers challenged him to eat 20 pows in under 45 minutes. If he finished, he got a free, very large breakfast. If he lost, he would have to pay for the buns, and the rest of us (excluding me because I’m vegetarian) could finish the leftovers. After much hesitation and deliberation he decided to take on the challenge, so we put in an order for 20 pows for the next day. Leading up to the challenge, he was very nervous and unsure if he would be able to scarf down 20 of those large buns—each one approximately the size of a softball. The first 15 minutes in, he was doing well, eating about one every couple minutes. After about the 7th or 8th pow, he started to hit a wall, and in the last few minutes of the challenge managed to get to 10. The rest of the ladies in our group enjoyed a nice breakfast of pows afterwards! It was quite an amusing event.

After the meeting in Sambava I headed to Vohemar with the education volunteer who is posted up there, because she had requested me to teach about HIV/AIDS and STIs at her CEG (middle school) for six sections of one of her Malagasy colleague’s English classes. The English classes were supposed to have some health component to them this quarter, which is actually really great, as the public schools don’t have any formal health classes that all students are required to take like many American public schools do. I ended up teaching about 18 hours that week, which certainly kept me busy.

I had a lot of fun teaching the kids, as I had plenty of activities, games and songs to keep the sessions engaging and interactive. It was a rewarding experience, especially after teaching some of the sections that had really motivated and well-behaved students. Some of the kids asked great questions and did a wonderful job of participating and retaining the information I taught them. It was interesting to teach in a mix of Malagasy and English too, since I’m used to only using Malagasy in the rural areas where I usually work.

After I returned to site the next week, things were kind of slow so I have been getting a lot of reading done. I highly recommend Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, The Ukimwi Road and Botswana’s No.1 Lady’s Detective Agency. I’ve also gotten back into running and am happy to be up to 10km again. Work wise, I’m still helping out with health education at the local clinic every morning, periodically meeting with my healthy teens club at the middle school down the road, helping the local nutrition workers with cooking demonstrations and baby weighing and teaching about health at some of the surrounding primary schools. I’ve also been working on a proposal to get funding for a solar panel at my clinic, since we don’t have electricity and the doctor has to work by candlelight at night.

This past Saturday I headed to capital for a meeting with volunteer representatives from each region and the staff at the office in Tana. It was great to get a chance to see some of my fellow volunteers from the other side of the island that I rarely get to see. We had a great time hanging out, going for ice cream and beer and cooking together at the transit house. Now I’m headed back to site again, so I may not have internet for a while.

The past few weeks at site have been great, work-wise. I have been doing one weekly English class with elementary school kids and one with adults. So far I’ve had a great turn-out, and we’ve had a lot of fun learning greetings and introductions. I’m going to ask some of the education volunteers nearby for some pointers, though, since I’ve never really taught English as a foreign language before. The students have seemed to really enjoy the classes, though.

Additionally, I held a meeting with the youth in the community during which time I talked to them about HIV/AIDS. Very few people know what it is or how it’s spread, so I explained about how the virus affects the body, the progression or different stages of the disease, the modes of transmission, the methods of prevention and the importance of getting tested and using condoms. I’m so happy that my Malagasy is at the point now where I can explain difficult topics like HIV/AIDS progression in a clear way that they can actually understand. That was one of the topics that I really struggled with explaining for a long time. I made some great visual aids that helped as well.

In addition to the AIDS training, I did a session with the parent-teacher organization at the primary school on signs, symptoms and prevention of the various types of fevers (malaria, flu, diarrheal disease). We’ve had a lot of people coming into the clinic with fevers lately, so it was good to have the opportunity to explain the differences between the types of diseases and the best way to take care of someone with a fever. I talked about mosquito nets, removing standing water, vaccinations, covering one’s mouth when coughing, proper hygiene practices and how to prepare oral rehydration solution. The most important thing for them to hear was that they need to take their child to the hospital if he has a fever.

There have been several children with fevers so severe that seizures set in. Some people are hesitant to go to the clinic because they don’t have money and are worried about having to pay for medications. I’ve been trying to explain to them that the doctor will still treat the child since it’s a government clinic, and that preventions such as vaccinations (which are free) and boiling water are cheaper than buying medicines one the person has gotten sick. I’m also hoping to eventually cover family budgeting with people so that they understand the importance of saving money each month for emergency expenses like illnesses or accidents.

Other than that, I myself caught the flu that has been going around my community. A fever in 90° weather plus humidity is not fun. I think I must have gotten it from weighing all the sick babies and children that have been coming into the clinic to see the doctor. Mine only lasted two days, though, thank goodness.

Finally, the well project is almost finished. I cant believe how fast it’s been completed. I hiked out to the village (7km off the main road) with the women’s group president to check on the progress of the wells. One is completely finished, and it looks great. There’s a pully and a cover and the bucket stays inside so the whole thing stays clean. A few community members will be keeping an eye on the well usage to ensure that it is being taken care of properly (i.e. the lid is not left open). The second one is in the process of being built and is about half-way there. It’s amazing to me that all the labor is by hand and yet the two wells will have been completed in under a month. Just proves that the community is really eager to have access to clean water! Thanks so much to those who contributed money to the project.

After two weeks away from my site for vacation and training, I returned to my village in mid-January. While I was very glad to be back and see everyone in my wonderful new community, I was not happy to face the rats that have incessantly infested my house. The problem is that the rats are inevitable, because I live in a much more rural area now, and my house is made out of wood with lots of spaces between the walls, floorboards and roof. Additionally before I moved in, the house had been used to store sacks of rice which the rats had gotten into and basically made a home for themselves. So they were already used to living there. Before I left my new house for Tana I knew the rats were going to destroy everything if I left belongings like my books and clothes out, so I packed up everything in boxes again and stored half of it in my neighbor’s house. The other half I stored in my rat-proof, metal trunks.

Not surprisingly, there was rat poop everywhere when I got back—all over the tables, bookshelves, floor, rafters and on top of my mosquito net that was still hanging up. Luckily the only thing they had chewed through was the cord extending from my radio antennae up to the roof. After I cleaned up everything and moved all my stuff back into my house, it felt like home again. Pretty soon all the neighborhood kids came over and we spent several hours playing with the new games and coloring books that I had picked up from care packages I received while in Tana. Thanks, family and friends for sending great packages!

That night, the rats were noisy, scurrying back and forth across the tin roof and along the rafters and tables. When I woke up the next morning, I was dismayed to see that they had chewed holes all over the top of my mosquito net while I was sleeping in it during the night! That was the last straw. I could deal with sweeping up the rat droppings every morning, but now that my bet net was destroyed, I had to take revenge. Luckily I had an extra bed net that I received during the insecticide treated net distribution campaign that we had during the month of November. I switched the net out and went to talk to the doctor about how I might deal with my rat problem.

I had already tried poison, which obviously hadn’t worked. I ended up buying a large mouse trap and the doctor gave me one of his to borrow as well. Then I bought some dried, salted fish as bait and we set up the traps in the corners of my house. The first night I didn’t catch anything! I was so surprised because the dried fish I bought had a really strong, salty smell to it. I though for sure they would go for it. The second night I reset the traps so they were a little more sensitive and would close faster. To my delight, I heard a loud squeak and a snap during the middle of the night. When I woke up in the morning and checked the traps, one of them had caught a big, fat rat. Hah! But also gross. I wasn’t sure what to do with the carcass, so I started to dig a grave for it in my small yard outside my house. My neighbor saw what I was doing and came over. She just laughed when she found out I was going to bury the rat. She took the trap from my house and threw the rat out in the woods nearby. I suppose that’s a more practical approach. Some dog or cat or something will probably be happy to find it.

Unfortunately I’ve only caught one more rat since that one. I really want to get a cat, but haven’t found one yet. I’ve tried several different poisons and even mixed them with real food, but the rats don’t really seem to fall for that one. I’d really like to get a cat, but haven’t found one yet. At least there’s the occasional kitty that roams through my yard from some of the neighbor’s houses. I’m hoping that they’ve been catching some of the rats around my house for me too.

While I was cleaning my house the other day, though, I discovered part of the problem. The rats had made a nest in one of the corner’s of my house where there is a space between two of the wood planks on the wall. I stuck a pen in the crack to get the nest out and heard scurrying up the wall, which made me shudder. At least I was able to get rid of the nest, though. I just hope there aren’t more that I don’t know about.

That same day, I was planning to do laundry, so I had set my basin with my clothes in it out on the porch. Two of the neighborhood kids were on the porch playing with my picture books. I had just headed out onto the porch and was putting more clothes in the basin, when a humungous rat jumped out of the pile of clothes, scurried over my hands, out of the basin, across the yard and into the neighboring house. It was huge by no exaggeration. I yelled out a very loud expletive (very grateful for the fact that no one around me knows English), much to the surprise of the kids playing on my porch. I of course had to explain to them what happened, at which point they proceeded to run around to all the neighbors, pronouncing that there was a rat in my wash basin. That was quite the exciting event for the day.

A few evenings later I caught another rat in one of the traps I had set, but it unfortunately didn’t die right away, so there was a terrible, incessant squeaking coming from the corner of my house. I couldn’t sleep through that, so I had to get up and smack the thing with my broom several times before it shut up. Then I swept it outside on the porch for good measure and decided I’d deal with it in the morning. In my half-asleep state, I didn’t think about the fact that something might run off with the trap during the night if it was outside the house. Sure enough when I went outside in the morning, the rat along with the trap was gone. One of the dogs or cats that pass through the yard occasionally must have made off with it. I guess I’ll have to buy another rat trap to replace the one the doctor had lent me.

Unfortunately there are still rats scurrying around my house at night, even though I have killed two adults and a baby and have gotten rid of the nest in my house. At least they haven’t destroyed my other mosquito net. They haven’t really gotten into any of my food either, because I keep everything in plastic containers or in my metal trunk. The one exception is they made of with a whole banana that I left on the table one day by accident. There was no trace of it…the whole thing gone! I just hope none of the other stories I’ve heard from other volunteers happens to me, though. One person woke up with a rat chewing on his hair and another had a rat that bit his leg while he was sleeping. On the bright side, it does seem a little quieter at night than when I first moved in, and I don’t find quite as much rat poop around as I did before. I’m trying hard to believe that there really are less rats around now than there were before.

So all the folks in our training group that were originally supposed to serve in Niger met up to have our Advanced Service Conference, which is held a year into our service. It was so great to see everyone, since I hadn’t met up with many of them since seven months earlier at our In-Service Training. The overall tone of this training was very low-key. I think everyone was exhausted from their vacations. Many people had just come from visiting family in the States for the holidays, and the rest of us went on vacations around Madagascar.

We had a great time catching up and exchanging information about projects we’re doing at site (successful approaches and challenges or roadblocks though. There was also an awesome NGO fair, where some of our Peace Corps partners came to the training site to talk about how we could get involved with other ongoing development projects and initiatives here in Madagascar either during or after our service if we want to stick around after our two years are up. I made a lot of great connections and got some helpful resources and information during the training. Now I’m ready to get back to my new site to continue working!

The next day I headed to Sambava to catch a flight to Tana. My other Peace Corps friends who were already in Ile St. Marie had been calling me frequently, while I was still at site, asking when I was getting there, so I was pretty anxious to start my New Year’s vacation. After arriving in Tana and taking care of some business in the office I woke up early the next morning to catch a flight to Ile St. Marie. Once I got to the island, I took a cab from the south end, where the airport is, to the center of the island, where the big town is and where my friends were staying. After meeting up with two of them at a café and catching up on our lives at our sites and various vacations we had taken over the past few months, we headed over to their hotel to grab another room for me. Then we swam in the ocean and walked around town.

Although I was only in Ile St.Marie for a few days and didn’t get to see much of the island, it was still beautiful and I had a great time hanging out with Peace Corps friends. We went swimming in the ocean, walked up to a viewpoint where you could see both sides of the island, drank some punch coco (coconutty, homemade rum), ate some delicious seafood and spent some just hanging out. I really enjoyed seeing everyone and was refreshed and ready to head to Tana for mid-service conference on January 2nd.

Unfortunately we had a rough time getting a boat back to the mainland, because all the morning ones were full and the next boat we had a reservation for broke down. We eventually found a boat in the afternoon and got to Tamatave in the evening. The next day we took a bush taxi to Tana to be there in time to start our Mid-service training.

So once I got back from vacation, I had to work on moving to a new house. For the past year I have lived in a large town and have worked at a large clinic that serves a commune of 50-60,000 people. While I learned a lot during my time there and made some good connections, it wasn’t a great fit for me. The population I was working with was too large and I felt that I was spreading myself too thin and not making a lasting impact. Additionally, there had been four volunteers at this particular site before me, making me the fifth American to have served there. I felt that most of the people I worked with were overly used to Peace Corps and were somewhat disinterested in the trainings and cross-cultural activities I was attempting to carry out. I would have much preferred to have been living and working in a small community that had never had a Peace Corps volunteer before.

I approached my programming director at Peace Corps with the idea of moving to the small village just 9km down the road where I often biked to help out at their rural clinic. The director was fine with the idea and the doctor at the rural village found a house for me to live in, so once it was ready the mayor and one of the wealthy business owners in town helped me move my things over to the new village. They community had a wonderful welcoming ceremony for me and helped me move my things into my new house.

Even though I don’t have the amenities that I did living in the big town (public taps, concrete floors and electricity in the evenings) I love my new house. It feels more like home to me, because it’s not a public space where the hospital stores things and crowds of people sit on my porch from dawn until dusk. In my new village I have my own little house with a gate around it. I actually like using candles at night and listing to BBC radio after dinner.

The sense of community is absolutely amazing. The women’s groups are very strong and are already asking to work with me. I have already met with them twice to start carrying out community analysis before we begin a development project. We have created a seasonal work calendar and a map of the community with important locations and resources. I have also set up weekly English classes, one for adults and one for children, because there were so many requests to learn English. The doctor has asked to set up a work schedule with me, and is really interested in doing health education outreach in the surrounding rural villages. We are also thinking of doing a small garden next to the hospital that would supply food for the local nutrition organization that’s headed up by the doctor’s wife. Finally, I have been carrying out household surveys to learn more about the community’s health and hygiene practices, awareness levels of health issues, and relative education levels and economic statuses. The surveys have been very interesting and informative, and everyone has been wonderfully open and helpful when I have interviewed them.

On Christmas Day, the village held an awesome ceremony to welcome me into the community. All of the women’s groups in the community dressed up in their uniforms and marched into town with banners. They made up songs about me which they performed along with dancing and clapping. Then the doctor, president of the village and I all gave a speech. I put in some Malagasy proverbs, which everyone loved. Then the women paraded around town with me and led me back to my house.

A few days later, there was a carnival to get ready for New Years, which is a huge celebration here in Madagascar. In the afternoon there was a parade which ended in the center of the village where everyone was singing and dancing to music that was on loud speakers. There were people dressed up with paint on their faces and others carrying around huge jugs of Taoka Gasy (Malagasy moonshine). Everyone had a great time, and I enjoyed watching.

That evening was the start of “Podium,” which is like a Malagasy talent show that occurs during big holidays like their Independence Day and New Years. Everyone forms dance groups and rehearses dances to popular Malagasy songs, which they then perform in front of the whole community for several nights in a row. I had to perform in a dance group with the Doctor’s wife, kids and some of our neighbors. It was actually really fun, and I enjoyed watching the other dance groups too. Some of them were very talented. Luckily, I was heading to Ile St. Marie for New Years, so I only had to perform on the night before I left for vacation. I was a little sad to leave my new community, though, because they are so awesome.

November was quite an exciting month. Right around Madagascar’s election on the referendum, my parents flew into Tana to start their travels through Madagascar. I was a little nervous, because we as volunteers were supposed to be on “Standfast,” a precautionary security measure in response to potential activity such as protests in regional cities. So we were not supposed to leave site on election days and for a few days afterwards in order to avoid large groups of people.

Fortunately, the first part of my parents’ trip was to come up to my site to visit me, which worked out well. It was very quite in my area and we had no problems with protests or political events. My parents actually stayed at my house for a few days, which was quite an experience. I enjoyed playing host for the most part, as I haven’t had many visitors at my site, and it was really great for them to meet all of my Malagasy family and friends. Of course none of us really enjoyed being the constant center of attention, but that’s bound to happen when you are the only white people living in a small African town. My parents also brought really awesome gifts for my friends and for all the kids, like toothbrushes, world maps and music cds. I think the Malagasy really enjoyed their “voandalanas” from America.

After visiting my site, we went up to Vohemar for a day and met up with the education Peace Corps Volunteer there. It was great timing, because we were able to take her out to dinner for her birthday. We ended up back in Sambava on the last day and got to take a tour of the regional hospital there, which had a surprising amount of resources such as an ultrasound and an x-ray machine. We were also able to pick up some Chinese medicine patches there for my step-mom’s back, which was very sore from the long plane ride over. We stayed at a nice hotel and spent some time on the beach before heading to Tana for the rest of our trip.

After flying to Tana, Herilala, our Malagasy tour guide, met us at the airport and took us to the nicest hotel I have stayed at here in Madagascar. It was absolutely beautiful with an outdoor pool, a sauna, free internet and a patio overlooking the city, where you could dine al fresco. The next day we drove out to Andasibe national park and stayed at the Vacona lodge. We spent the next few days hiking around the Mantadia and Andasibe park areas spotting all sorts of lemurs: the Indri, Diadem, Eastern Woolly, Bamboo, Goodman’s Mouse… Then on to Nosy Be.

After arriving at the airport we took a taxi to a really nice resort on the beach. There was a pool and a pizzeria and chairs on the beach where you could relax and soak up the Malagasy sun. Sunday evening on the beach was really neat, because all of the Malagasy families like to stroll along the beach and watch the live music and dance performers or sit in outdoor cafes or play beach volleyball or soccer; it was great people watching. While we were there we also took some day trips to two smaller islands of the island of Nosy Be, Nosy Komba and Nosy Tany Kely. The boat trip was beautiful, but the islands themselves were very touristy and kind of artificial. Not my favorite part of the trip, but still enjoyable. The seafood was amazing for sure. We also met up with a Peace Corps Volunteer there who had studied at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where my parents live!

Our next destination was Berenty Reserve, out towards Ft. Dauphin, so we flew from Nosy Be to Tana and then to Ft. Dauphin. After arriving in Ft. Dauphin we had a vehicle pick us up and drive us through the desert out to the Berenty Reserve, where we could explore the spiny forest and spot some ringtail lemurs. The drive out there was depressing, because the poverty was so widespread and desperate and there was an incredible amount of deforestation. The one river winding through the landscape was dried up, brown and muddy, yet people were still using it as a water source because it was the only option they had. There were also acres and acres of native spiny forest that had been cleared away for sisal plantations where local Malagasy workers are exploited for their labor. We passed some mining communities along the way and a warehouse where donations from the World Food Program are stored when they come through the area each year.

When we got to Berenty, we were greeted by a pack of Ring-tailed lemurs. They were even climbing on the porch and the roofs of our cabins. The flora and fauna in the reserve were absolutely amazing: octopus trees, baobabs, mouse lemurs, dwarf lemurs, civets, fruit bats, white sifakas, brown lemurs, all sorts of birds and probably some other things I can’t remember. The night walks under the starry southern sky were my favorite part.

On our way back through Ft. Dauphin we spent an afternoon on a lovely beach and met up with some other Peace Corps Volunteers in the area. We ended up at a bar overlooking the sea cliffs with a gorgeous view of the sunset over the water. The next morning we were off to Isalo National Park.

Isalo was absolutely amazing, although it really made me miss rock climbing. There were beautiful rock formations dispersed across a dramatic desert landscape. Some of the faces and cliff-sides looked like they might offer some great routes, although I don’t think the public is allowed to climb in this particular national park. Isalo made for some wonderful hiking nonetheless. Apparently the Malagasy tribe in that region, the Bara, has a practice of burying their dead in caves among the cliffs. We were able to spot some places where the Bara people had scaled the rock faces in order to find the perfect spot to put the bodies of the deceased to rest. They had also piled many small rocks up in front of the opening to mark which specific caves were occupied tombs.

One of our hikes led us through some rice paddies out to a canyon, and another brought us to a natural pool out in the middle of the desert. It was like a little oasis where we could take a refreshing swim next to a small waterfall. We were tired after all the hiking, but the beautiful scenery was well worth the journey. The resort we stayed in was also very nice. I got a chance to play some clay court tennis and some pool with my parents in addition to enjoying some wonderful food among a the dramatic setting of the desert and rock formations.

Isalo was a great way to end our journey through Madagascar, although I was sad for the wonderful, relaxing vacation to end. It was unfortunate that my parents had to return to the states so soon, but I enjoyed spending the three weeks with them here in my country of service and I hope that they do decide to come back again next year, as they had promised.

good news! my well project has been fully funded. you can read about it on the following website: http://watercharity.org/node/210. theres a button to donate to the project, but it has already been funded. but if you still want to donate, the extra money will go to another peace corps volunteers water project in country. thanks so much for reading. merry christmas and happy new years. hopefully ill be in Ile St Marie for new years celebrating with some other peace corps volunteers (if i can find a way to make it over there).

Last week we had mosquito net distribution here in the SAVA region complements of USAID, the President’s Rollback Malaria initiative and the NGO Population Services International. Every house in every fokontany (village) in the commune (county) was supposed to receive enough long lasting insecticide treated bed nets to protect all members in each household. It was quite an operation to say the least.

When I came back from my regional meeting with the other volunteers down in Antalaha at the beginning of November, I was greeted by about 200 huge white bundles of mosquito nets sitting on my porch. Each bundle had about 40 bednets plus packaging, weighing about 50lbs each. I guess since I live in a huge house right next to the hospital, they figured it would be the best place to store all of said nets. At least there was a small pathway on the porch conveniently left for me to enter my house. So as soon as I got home I helped the president of the hospital roll all the hefty packages inside.

A few days later there was a training session for the workers who were to distribute the nets. Before the distribution week began, the village leaders had to go around to each house in each village and record the head of household’s name and the number of people currently living in the house. The leaders then had to assign each household a number and write said number on the outside of the house.

A big truck came by to drop of mosquito nets at several distribution centers in the commune: one at my house, one 7km north and one 9km south along the main road. Then people from villages further away had to come to the three distribution centers to carry the huge 50lb bundles by foot all the way back to secondary distribution centers (some as far as a 2hr hike away). During the distribution week, bed nets were given out to a different village in the area each day of the week according to a set schedule. The end of the week (Saturday) was a free for all, with all those who had not received a number on their house the week before scrambling for the remaining nets that were left over from the past week.

Since there were plenty of people to help with distribution in town, I went out to a smaller rural village that I frequently work at to help with bed net distribution there. I assisted mostly by giving health talks during the week on malaria prevention and with some of the paperwork. I also requested the public health NGO PSI to come with their cinemobile at the end of this week to show a film on malaria prevention.

It was interesting just observing the whole process to see what the hang-ups were and how such a public health intervention could be improved in the future. The trickiest part was accounting for the middle school and high school students who study in big towns during the week and go back to their homes in the rural villages on the weekends. Some people thought the students were supposed to be accounted for back in their villages while others believed the students should receive a net in town where they study during the week. Other people were sneaky and sent multiple family members to pick up nets at different times of the week, claiming that they had never received a number on their house when in fact they had. Others missed the whole number-on-the-house thing the week before and never received a net at the end of the week when some distribution centers ran out.

The program might have worked better if the count was done by number of beds per house rather than number of people. The ratio was three people to one net, which would work if there were two adults and a small child; however three adults sleeping in separate beds in the same house should probably receive more than just one net. Other people who have only one bed in their house received as many as three nets, because they have a lot of small children or children studying in other towns that they still counted as part of their household. The discrepancies caused a lot of frustration among community members and bed net distributors. If the village leaders had simply entered each house and counted the number of beds, which should equal number of nets distributed, their might not have been as many discrepancies. There’s no reason for someone to receive three nets when they only have one bed in their house. But at least a lot of people got insecticide treated nets, and hopefully the herd immunity effect will help protect everyone against Malaria this year. Rainy season is coming up, and there have already been several deaths this past month at the hospital due to Malaria so I hope the program proves successful.

Either way, there were a lot of angry people crowded outside my house Saturday evening fighting over nets, with distributors working on my front porch from 8am until 7pm. So I decided to have dinner at my neighbors’ instead that night. It was actually kind of nice…we hung out, chatted, took some shots of home-made Malagasy whiskey and had some kind of fried insect that they eat here along with our rice for dinner. Being the adventurous Peace Corps volunteer that I am, I partook of the local fare, which was actually surprisingly tasty.

Unfortunately I found out later on that evening that the insect must be in the same family as yellow-jackets, which I am very allergic to. As I was getting ready for bed, I started breaking out in hives, so I popped two Benadryl and called the Peace Corps doctor. He advised me to use my handy Epi-pen if the symptoms got worse. So once my face swelled like a balloon, I couldn’t hear because my ear canals had closed up and my chest started tightening, I decided to bite the bullet and jab the unpleasantly gigantic needle into the side of my thigh. The stick was surprisingly painful, but at least I could breathe after that, and I started calming down. I was still very itchy but was finally able to fall asleep and woke up the next morning much improved. The only remnants were a very sore right thigh and still slightly swollen eyelids. I guess that’s what I get for trying to integrate into another culture. But at least it made for a good story.

On a side note, when I was helping out with bed net distribution in one of the other villages, a guy came in to pick up his net and was wearing the most unique outfit I have seen yet here. That’s saying something considering some of the ensembles the Malagasy manage to put together. They have some of the funniest used clothing here, which probably is shipped over in bulk from Salvation Army or Union Mission or something. I have seen everything from pink frilly princess gowns to college mascot t-shirts to 80s style Technicolor warm-up suits. But this guy came in wearing a bright yellow plastic construction hat, a t-shirt with a cartoon of a Rasta-man playing bongos and a black, faux leather trench coat with fake black fur along the hem and the collar of the jacket. It was a pretty amazing site.

Today was election day…the Malagasy are voting on a referendum on the constitution, which meant every one was at the polls (the local elementary school) and the rest of the town was really quiet. It also meant that there was no school today, so I could finally have my very first meeting with the healthy teen club members!

I headed to the CEG (local junior high school) expecting maybe 10 kids to show up, but there were actually around 85. We met and talked about what my goals and hopes for the organization are: to improve the health of community members in general and youth in particular, and to help the youth develop skills to set goals for themselves and to make healthy choices in life in order to achieve those goals. I also asked them to think about what their goals for the organization were. Then we shared ideas for health projects activities the organization could do in the community and started to come up with a program and schedule of how often we would meet.

Everyone seemed really interested in learning about HIV/AIDS, STD prevention and family planning, so I’m very excited about that. To end the meeting, I taught them a song in Malagasy about HIV/AIDS prevention (to the tune of Shakira’s World Cup song “Waka Waka”). We had a great time, and some of the students even walked me home and hung out with me for a while at my house. We chatted about Peace Corps and the U.S. and about life in America versus life in Madagascar. I explained to them about how young adults in the States often wait longer to get married and have kids, because they like to graduate from college first and get a job to earn money before starting a family. It’s a totally different concept to them from what they see every day here: fifteen year olds leaving school to have children out of wedlock and families with an average of five to seven kids. There are still high rates of illiteracy and elementary and middle school drop-outs. Some of the students in the group seem very smart and have a lot of potential, so I hope they get something out of the program I’m trying to start up with them.

In the afternoon I went over to one of my friend’s houses to hang out. We had the most interesting conversation about homosexual, bisexual, transgender and transvestite individuals. I think it’s so cool that I can actually talk about those things in Malagasy now. It was just really fascinating to hear about local people’s perceptions of the LGBT community here. My friend seemed totally fine with the idea of homosexuality and bisexuality, but she seemed to have a negative perception of transvestites (men dressing up as women in particular). Apparently there is a whole openly gay neighborhood in Antananarivo and quite a few men that dress up as women in Nosy Be! It was funny to see her reaction when I tried to explain about transgender individuals and sex change operations. I’m sure it seems far-fetched to people here, in a country where a majority of the population can’t afford clinic fees for the most simplest of procedures, such as properly setting a broken bone. And to think that the whole conversation started with the topic of earrings.

Parents are coming soon, and I get to go on my very first vacation since I left the States in October of last year. I’m very excited for everyone here to meet them, and I’m also looking forward to seeing more of this unique and amazingly diverse island over the coming weeks.

Things I miss most about home (U.S.):

Privacy

Efficiency when trying to get things done

Family and friends back home

Laundry machines

Clean, indoor bathrooms (both public and private)

Sinks with running water

Ice

American stoves, ovens and microwaves

Refrigerators and freezers

Lack of constant cockroach, ant and rodent infestations

Easy access to clean water

No malaria and no schistosomiasis

Good dentists

Hi-speed internet, especially at home

TV Shows: The Daily Show, Colbert Report, South Park, The Office, Lost, Anthony Bourdain, Top Chef

Movie Theaters

Going out to bars and cafes with friends

Coffee shops (lattes and iced coffee)

Pandora Radio and NPR

Having my own seat when using public transportation

Good telephone connections

Speaking English whenever I want

Hot tubs and pools

Good wine, beer, margaritas, mojitos

American food (pretzels, whole grain bread, crackers, baby spinach salads, chips and salsa, cheese, ice cream, olives, apples, broccoli, mushrooms, cereal and cold soy milk)

Things I will miss about Madagascar when I leave:

Malagasy friends

PCV friends

Lush tropical forest

Deserted beaches

Rice paddies

The variety of fresh, local tropical fruits

Biking and hiking around my site to do health outreach activities

Malagasy music

Fresh, local, pesticide-free, cheap, healthy food

Malagasy hospitality and sense of community

How easy it is to make friends here

The slow pace of life

The funny sounds people here make when speaking in Malagasy

Speaking in Malagasy in general

Frip (used clothing) markets and lambas (colorful, Malagasy cloth wraps)

Malagasy peoples’ unique sense of style

Warm weather all the time

How easy it is to live “green” (water conservation, no electricity, public transportation only, eating local and organic, lack of processed foods)

Free healthcare from Peace Corps

A non-office job

Lack of TV and Internet (I read more books and am more productive)

Fresh, homemade soymilk

Ampalibe (Jackfruit)- This is probably the funniest looking fruit in Madagasascar. It is spiky, bright green and very large, but there is no particular uniformity to its shape. When you cut it open, the smell hits you like a barn door in the face: sweet yet somewhat pungent, like it’s already rotting. Ampalibe is very, very sticky and there are many yellow pods of fruit that surround white, lima bean-shaped seeds. I think the fruit is delicious if you get a good one; sugary, juicy with a hint of banana flavor. It’s addicting, but can give you a stomach-ache if you over-indulge. The tree is tall and grand, with wide, round, dark green and orange leaves. When it fruits, it looks like it has huge tumors all over it, because of the large irregular shape of the fruit. The trees are all over the place here, lining the side of the road and adding to the dense, lushness of the forest. Always in season.

Manga (Mango)- The mango tree makes up a majority of the forest here, along with jackfruit and breadfruit trees. Their huge trunks and massive branches make for good shade and climbing. Need I say anything about the fruit? It’s wonderful; juicy sweet, fragrant, and a beautiful, orange color inside. There are several different varieties here and they are all delicious. They fruit twice a year too! You can also make good salads by grating the unripe mangoes when they are still green.

Mapaza (Papaya)- They are always in season and I even have a tree in my back yard (although there seem to be more papayas around now than there were before). There are two varieties: one that’s got smaller, elongated fruit and another with larger, tear-dropped or round-shaped fruit. The ones picked fresh off the tree from my back yard are ridiculously sweet and juicy. They are even better if you squeeze a little fresh lime on them. The flesh is soft and orange and there are black, round, tiny seeds that run down the center. The outside is green when unripe and turns yellowish when it ripens.

Mananasy (Pineapple)- a very cool looking plant. I had never seen the plant before (just the fruit) until I came to Madagascar. It’s very spicky and the fruit pops out of the top of the plant. Apparently you can plant a pineapple by cutting off the spiky green top of the fruit and sticking it in the ground. I haven’t tried it yet, though. I have three growing in my back yard, they are magenta colored and small right now, so still not ready for harvest yet. They are in season right now, though, and the pineapple here is amazingly sweet; sweeter than any pineapple I have ever had in the states. When I get a good one, it’s probably my favorite fruit here. You have to be careful about eating too much though, because it’s highly acidic and can give you sores on your tongue and heartburn. I think they are in season about twice or three times a year.

Avacado (Gavo be or Zavoka)- Avacado season (April/May) is amazing. They have a giant, darker skinned variety and a smaller, lighter green variety here. The inside is sweet, creamy and light green in color. Both varieties are delicious and make good guacamole, although there’s no cilantro here. By the time my cilantro in my garden was ready to harvest avocado season was already over.

Saoñambo (Breadfruit)- The saoñambo tree is the most spectacular tree in this region of Madagascar. It is one of the tallest in the forest here, with lush, giant, shiny green leaves that fan out and big, bright green, round balls hanging from every branch like Christmas decorations. The fruit can be eaten ripe or unripe, but needs to be cooked like any other starch. It grows wild here and is all over the place. People should use it as a staple food more than they do…they are too hooked on rice here. My favorite way to eat the fruit is when it is still firm and unripe. You can cut it up and fry it like french fries, and it almost tastes better than potatoes, because it stays a little soft and moist inside. People here make these really delicious fried bread-like balls out of them too, with salt, pepper, onions and garlic inside (really good with spicy cucumber salad.) When it’s soft and ripe, it’s surprisingly sweet. You can make a sweet porridge out of it by boiling it and mashing it up, although I’m not a huge fan.

Sakoaña (???)- Don’t think there’s an English word for this fruit. I have never seen it before coming to Madagascar. You can eat it when it is still green, but I think it tastes best when it’s ripe and orange-brownish in color. It tastes like crossed between a mango and a peach or nectarine, but you can’t eat the peel. It’s one of the juiciest fruits I have ever tasted. The pit is really funny looking, with spiky fibers sticking out of it. The only bummer is that they easily get worms or bugs in them, they are very messy to eat and the fibers get stuck in your teeth. But I guess most of the fruits and vegetables here get buggy very easily since there’s no pesticide use. It’s in season around the same time as avocadoes. The tree is huge; one of the tallest in the forest.

Konokono- (“Coeur de boeuf” in French, custard apple or cherimoya in English??) A small, round, pinkish, soft fruit shaped like a heart, which is probably why it’s called beef heart in French. The flesh inside is whitish, soft, custardy and sweet with little black seeds. It’s like eating a creamy, rich desert. Not sure if there is an English equivalent or if they have this fruit in South America or something. They were in season in October.

Voazato- (custard apple or cherimoya??) Like Konokono, but a little bigger and the skin is thicker and yellowish in color with dull spikes or eyes on the outside. The name in Malagasy literally means “100 seeds.” Suffice it to say, there are a lot of big, black seeds inside. The flesh is a little more firm and juicy than konokono, but still very custard-like and sweet. Both Konokono and voazato are best eaten with a spoon. It’s in season around late May, June, July.

Voanio (Coconut)- I love the unripe ones that have a lot of sweet water to drink and a little bit of soft flesh inside. They are really delicious, especially on a hot day. The ripe ones are also great to cook with. Vary aharo voanio (coconut rice), bonbon coco (coconut candies) and añantoto aharo voanio (pounded cassava leaves with coconut milk) are my favorites. The coconut milk is also good cooked with beans. They are hard to open though, especially if the outer husk is still attached. It’s a lot of work to grate the coconut by hand, too.

Polmosy (Grapefruit or pomello?)- Basically a large grapefruit. It has a thick, yellow rind and pinkish fruit inside. You can get juicy ones, but they are usually a little dry for a citrus. I like them, though. They’re tangy and sweet and have lots of vitamin C.

hey, planning to change my po box to sambava soon, so dont send letters to my old adress anymore. you can just use the peace corps one I have posted now, and Ill post the new adress when I get it set up. updated wish list:

all set on the playing cards, thanks!

more coloring books or small interactive toys for kids

pens

lighters

suture kits (if you can find and are feasible to send)

photos

magazine and news clippings

letters

dental floss

toothbrushes

spices

herb seeds for gardening (cilantro, basil, rosemary, oregano, citronella)

other vegetable garden seeds are great too

cds and dvds (malagasies really like music videos if you can find)

Lots of adventures this month! I’ve still been going around to different villages, doing cooking demos and baby weighing with the nutrition workers. More baby weighing than anything else, though, because it’s hard to do cooking demonstrations when the nutrition organization has no money to pay the workers. We’ve been telling the women in different communities that if they want to have us cook with them, they need to supply the rice or corn or whatever staple food is locally available. Since many of the poorer villages don’t really have any rice to spare, we’ve mostly been doing just the baby weighing and health talks. It’s still been really great getting a chance to see more villages and work with new people, though.

The new volunteers came this month as well. I have an English teacher just 90km north of me, a health volunteer a 4 hour hike from my site, a health volunteer in Antalaha and an English teacher in Andapa. Last week, I biked down to Ambavala (a market town/taxi brousse stop 20km south of me) to meet up with the environment volunteer who is 25km south of me. From there we biked along a windy, bumpy, hilly dirt road out to the coast to visit the new health volunteer. It was quite an exhausting trip (4 hours on a bicycle for me). Though the bike ride was tiring, it was really neat to go down a road I’d never been down before and to see a new town I’d never been to but often heard about.

Once we met up in Ambavala, the other environment volunteer and I biked through dense forest interspersed with small villages and rice paddies. After about an hour and a half the path flattened out and became sandy. We passed a coconut grove and a lot of vanilla fields and crossed many rickety bridges over small streams and rivers. The road was fairly dry, though I can see how it would be impassible during rainy season. The health volunteer there has a really nice set-up, but he is very isolated from any big towns. People have told him that during the rainy season, he might not be able to leave site for several months. When we got to his site, we had a very warm welcome from the mayor and other community members. We mostly just hung out and talked, as it’s always so great to converse effortlessly with other English-speakers. There was also another French aid worker from Medecins de Monde who is posted there for two months. He doesn’t know much Malagasy, but converses with community members in French and is currently working on a cyclone relief project as well as a Morenga nutrition project and other community development projects. I look forward to working with the health volunteer there, because the commune I live in borders his, and there are a few villages out his way that I’ve never worked in before.

Life back at my site has its ups and downs. The public taps broke again for several weeks, so everyone had to fetch water from the river. At first, I tried braving the treacherously steep path down to the water, but its way too hard to climb back up the steep, muddy hill with a pail of water in one hand. I’m not as skilled as the Malagasy women. Some of them can balance a bucket of water on their head while also carrying a huge bin full of dishes they washed down by the river in one arm and another small pail in the other. It’s really amazing how much balance and coordination they have. I however, gave up on trying to compete with them; I broke down and hired the lady who fetches my neighbor’s water to carry my water as well. It’s only 100 ariary a bucket (20 cents), although I feel kind of weird about it because the woman is middle-aged. At least I provided her with a little bit of income. The taps finally started working again after a couple weeks, though. I’m glad for that, since everyone bathes and washes their clothes down by the water, and no one bleaches their water that they use in the kitchen. I was worried there might be a rise in diarrheal disease if it lasted any longer.

Although I hired someone to carry my water, I still go down to the river to wash clothes. Even though the path is steep, and it’s still kind of hard to carry a big bin of clothes down to the river, I like going down there to hang out with the other women doing chores and to watch kids playing in the water. It also gives me something to do on Saturdays when everyone else is out working in their rice fields. It’s not uncommon for me to see kids fishing or a flock of ducks paddling by or children playing in a wooden canoe they commandeered from the man who makes a living taking people across the river when it’s too high to wade through in rainy season. The other day some kids were using large banana stalks to float down the river kind of like those foam noodles American kids play with in swimming pools back in the States. It was kind of a funny site!

As far as work goes, I’ve been pretty busy at the clinic and biking and hiking around to other villages to do health outreach programs. A few times I’ve biked to visit my friend who’s a nutrition worker 7km north of me. She likes to hike out to remote areas and weigh babies whose mothers don’t normally make it out to her weighing center each Tuesday. We’ve met up several times to weigh babies and give health talks to the mothers. I enjoy just hanging out and talking with her too, because she’s really sweet and helps me understand Malagasy culture better (which is also part of my job as a Peace Corps volunteer). One day she even took me out to her vanilla and rice fields. Her nephew taught me how to pollinate the vanilla flowers by hand (since Madagascar doesn’t have the natural pollinator for the vanilla plants that originally came from Mexico). It was really delicate and fascinating work. After pollinating the flowers, we hiked over to her cassava fields and she dug up a few cassava roots (one of the staple foods here) for me to take home. I don’t really like the starchy root very much, but she insisted that I take some as a “voandalana,” or, gift for the road.

This past week was health week, a government sponsored program to distribute vitamin A and deworming pills to all children under five as well as pregnant women twice a year. This time around we also distributed malaria prevention medication to pregnant women and measles vaccines to children under four. On Monday I went to the village 9k south of me that has a small rural clinic I frequently work at. There, I gave health talk and helped the clinic workers distribute the medications all morning. In the afternoon we went over to the one private school in the village and distributed vaccines, vitamin A and deworming medication to all the four-year olds in the kindergarten class. I was kind of on the fence about that one, because one of the workers was using a pair of scissors to threaten the stubborn kids who didn’t want to come forward for their medicines and shots. I spent the night at the doctor’s house there, because the next morning I, along with his wife and daughter and a few other workers, hiked two and a half hours from there out to a very remote village. We had to leave at 4:30 in the morning so we could get there early enough to distribute medications and vaccines and still have time to stop by two other villages on the way back to give out meds. By the time we got back to the doctor’s house it was 5:30 in the evening. I was so exhausted from having woken up at four in the morning and having hiked five hours that day. The hike through the dense forest and rice paddies was really beautiful, though, and I got a chance to see more of the commune that I hadn’t seen before. Going out to the remote villages was a eye-opening, because the poverty out there is much more visible than in town or even in the neighboring villages that I’ve been to. Almost all the houses were dilapidated shacks made of sticks and leaves and most of the children under 10 showed signs of kwashiorkor (protein deficiency). It’s unfortunate that the vitamin A and deworming distribution was only for children under 5, because the children over 5 were still, very clearly malnourished. Many had bloated bellies, ribs sticking out of their chests, skinny arms and reddish hair. Its amazing to me that even in an area as lush as here, where things grow so easily due to the frequent rains and heavily forested areas, that people still have a hard time finding the resources to farm and forage for adequate amounts of nutritious foods. I’m hoping that I can return to those villages again to do some gardening and nutrition projects if the communities are interested.

The next day I biked back to town and worked at the hospital, because we finally got HIV tests in to administer to all the pregnant women. Since I knew the midwife wasn’t going to do pre-counseling even though she’s had the training before, I made sure to talk to all the pregnant women beforehand about the HIV test, about the illness itself and about prevention measures. HIV/AIDS doesn’t seem to be as stigmatized here as it is in many other African countries, but the more concerning issue is that awareness levels are very low. Many simply do not know what the illness is or how it is transmitted, and those who have heard of HIV, think that it doesn’t exist in this part of Madagascar. Although the country-wide prevalence is still very low, it could easily spread very quickly, because nobody uses condoms, there’s a high rate of STDs and many are unaware of the illness and its consequences. Afterwards, the doctor gave a health talk as well. He stressed using family planning as he announced that on average, 60-70 births occur at the hospital per month. I knew there were a lot of pregnant women around, but I didn’t realize the number was that high! That’s not even including the many women who give birth at home or in the 4 other small, rural clinics in the remote areas of the commune.

In the afternoon I helped out with family planning. A lot of women showed up, but most of them were regulars who have been using the Depo shot for several years now. Every time I give a health talk to the women about the different family planning methods, I always stress condom use and talk about STDs and HIV/AIDS. Nobody takes the free condoms and too many of them are really young or have husbands that sleep around. It’s so frustrating when everyone here says that men won’t use condoms, but if I can just get one young person to take some home, it will have made my day.

Other than that, all three of my grant applications for funding health projects got rejected, since there’s not much government funding to go around here in Madagascar…so I resubmitted my well project under Peace Corps Partnership. If it gets approved, I’ll post the link to the Peace Corps website where interested donors can contribute online. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

And along with other unfortunate news, I found out that I had Giardia for the past two weeks. At first I wasn’t sure what was going on because the symptoms were so mild in the beginning. After it didn’t go away for over a week but got worse, and after talking to other volunteers and to the Peace Corps doctors, I found out that I probably had Giardia. So I went around to five pharmacies until I found the last stock of Flagyl (Giardia medication) left in the whole town and bought them out of it. After a day of taking the medication, I no longer had to run to the bathroom five times every morning. So I’m guessing that was the cause of my mysterious GI problem. Yay for fun tropical illnesses! Hopefully my next entry will be a little more uplifting.

It's been so strange to be away from site for such a long time! A little over two weeks ago, I hopped on an Air Madagascar plane along with the midwife from my health clinic in Antsirabe Nord to head down to the capital, Antananarivo (a.k.a. Tana) for in-service training. After arriving in town, I stayed at the Peace Corps hostile and then headed up to the Peace Corps training site 2hrs outside of the city.

The training site is a beautiful place next to a lake up in the mountains in the center of the island, but it is quite chilly and rainy there. It was so wonderful to meet up with the other volunteers in my stage, since we hadn't seen each other in so long. The first week was filled with training sessions on how to apply for funding for projects, how to work with our counterparts and our community, how to do community analysis and needs assessment, some hands-on bio-intensive gardening as well as some HIV/AIDS prevention education strategies. We also did a bit more language training, which was very helpful since I'm still not proficient in my dialect of Malagasy. At the end of the first week, the counterparts that we brought from our sites went home and just the volunteers stayed on for a second week of training. We did a little more sector specific training (health for health volunteers, business for business volunteers, etc.) and some strategizing for what we plan to do when we return back to site. We also managed to find a little time to hang out and have fun too :)

I was very excited to hear that there is a new stage of health and education volunteers coming soon, and some of us might get to come back to help train them during the months of August and September. I'm hoping I get to be one of the trainers, because I really appreciated the help and advice I received from volunteers in the field when I was a Peace Corps trainee. Another advantage of being a trainer is that Peace Corps would fly me down to Tana, and then I could also take part in an upcoming Bike Tour against AIDS that some volunteers are planning in the Ambato region. Otherwise, it would be too far and too expensive for me to travel from my site to where the bike tour will be held in July.

The past few days I've been hanging out in the capital until my flight leaves to go back to site. It's expensive here in Tana, but it is quite an interesting city. Sometimes it seems very crowded and overwhelming, but I'm starting to enjoy it more, now that I've been able to see more of the city. The public bus system has been quite an adventure to explore. There are hundreds of different bus numbers that go all over town, and it only costs 300 ariary (15 cents) to get on one. I've gone all around the city on it. The markets are so fun to look at, because there is so much variety here: tomatoes, carrots, persimmons, tangerines, pineapples, papayas, avocados, apples, bok choy, cabbage, lettuce, sweet potatoes, peanuts, many different kinds of rice, tons of used clothing (fripery), electronics, toys, handicrafts. It's like sensory overload after four months of rural life! The big city doesn't come without it's downsides though. There are lots of pickpocketers, pollution, children begging on the streets, seas of dilapitated houses and buildings all connected to each other in a jumbled mess... Part of me is definitely anxious to get back to site to start working with rural communities again. That's about it for now. A manaraka indray!

The past week has been really busy, but really fun also. It was “herinandran’ny fahasalamana” (health week) here in Madagascar, which basically means mass distribution of Vitamin A and deworming pills for pregnant women and children under 5. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday I went with one of the midwives at the hospital and a few other helpers to surrounding smaller villages to distribute the medicine. Before we gave out the pills, I did a little health education on various topics (prevention of diarrheal disease, nutrition and vaccinations) for all the women and children waiting to get the medicine. It was really fun to meet all the new people and to help give the medicine to the children (Malagasy kids are so cute!). On Wednesday and Friday, I still helped with prenatal consultations and family planning at the clinic, but now we finally have the HIV and syphilis tests again. Before we were supposed to be testing all the pregnant women so that they wouldn’t pass any diseases on to their babies, but there was a problem with the supply chain (probably related to the current unstable government situation). Because of health week, we now have the tests again and medication for those who test positive for syphilis, which I’m really happy about.

On Saturday I went with a friend to a village 17km out in the countryside. It was an exhausting 3 ½ hr hike, but really fun because the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. The forest/jungle here is really beautiful and really fun to go hiking in. Once we arrived, we rested, had lunch with his family, and then walked around the village. It’s a really cute place surrounded by mountains and forest and a windy creek. There’s also a small clinic with one doctor and a small primary school. I got to talk with the doctor at the clinic and the teachers at the school, so hopefully I can come back again soon and do some health education projects with the folks there. Everyone was so nice, and as usual I came back with a bunch of gifts (oranges, avocados, bananas and beans). Can’t wait to explore more of the surrounding rural areas when I get the chance. There are still so many villages I haven’t seen yet and so many new people to meet.

Oh, and thank you to everyone who sent me cards or packages or called. I had a great birthday thanks to you all!

Some exciting things have happened since the last time I posted. One of my good friends here is part of a local NGO in town that wants to build a bunch of public latrines in town and in the surrounding rural areas. They also want to do a health education program in conjunction with the latrine construction to encourage use of the latrines (and good hygiene in general) once built. I already know several of the folks in the NGO fairly well, and they are really excited to have me involved with the project. I helped put them in touch with a French NGO in Ampanefena, just 15k north of us, that specializes in building latrines. The same NGO in Ampanefena also wants to build a water system here in Antsirabe Nord that will bring potable water to public taps in town and at the clinic. They’ve already implemented the water system (and have already built several public latrines) in Ampanefena. They already have funding, have already talked with our mayor, and want to break ground in August! Hopefully we can all work together to improve the water and sanitation situation here in Antsirabe Nord, because it really is problematic. Many people just use the woods as the bathroom and there’s also tons of trash by the river side, so when it rains, the river gets really dirty. People still bathe, wash clothes, wash dishes and fetch water from the river…especially when the public taps that we do have in town break (which happens frequently).

Other than getting involved with these two projects, I’ve been trying to learn more about daily life of people in and around Antsirable Nord by asking people about their daily and yearly schedules. It’s really interesting, because people’s lives here are often centered around when they plant and harvest crops (mainly rice and vanilla). It’s so different from in the U.S. where hardly anyone farms anymore because of the industrialized agriculture system and widespread importation of crops. In the U.S. what we eat and when we work isn’t as dependent on the growing seasons as it is here. Even those who live in town often have fields which they travel to on the weekends to farm, and almost everyone has family members who live and farm out in the countryside. Most people wake up around 6am. After they eat breakfast, the women go to the river to do the washing and the men go to the fields. Many women also go the fields to work during the day too if they’re not taking care of the children at home. They come back and eat lunch around noon. In the afternoon they pound rice with giant mortar and pestles in order to get the husks off. Most people here eat dinner around 7pm and go to bed soon after that (if they are out in the countryside and don’t have electricity). I found out that there are several different types of rice people plant: one that grows in 3 months, one in 4 months and one in 5 months. Most people plant rice in October through December and sometimes January. Then they harvest in February through June depending on the type of rice and when they planted. Then they prepare the fields for planting again in May through September. People also plant corn all year around. A lot of people also farm coffee, coconut, bananas, cassava, vanilla, oranges, avocado, peanuts, beans and cucumbers. Many also farm chickens, ducks, pigs and cows if they have the money. There are even a few goats around, which is rare for Madagascar.

What I think is really interesting is that there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of division of labor, with the exception of the domestic tasks, like cooking, cleaning, washing and taking care of the kids, which is primarily the women’s job. However both men and women work out in the fields (and kids if they’re old enough and not in school), both men and women pound the rice, and both men and women sell things in the marketplace (although women tend to be the ones selling food items, and men seem to sell more of the hardware and other household items). I often see husbands and wives working together as one unit as they go out into the fields, run small restaurants or shops in town or sell things in the market.

Aside from that, I’ve had to travel down to Antalaha several times to visit the dentist because I apparently clench my teeth at night, and it’s causing problems with my gums. It’s a cute little town with a nice beach, though, so at least that part’s nice. There will also be two new environment volunteers coming to my region in May, which I’m excited about, since the only other volunteer who was up north here with me before quit Peace Corps and went home a few weeks ago because of some personal issues. I’ve been the only other American volunteer for miles around, which is kind of cool in its own way, but I miss the other volunteer and I’m excited to collaborate and do some cross-sector work with the two new ones who will be nearby.

Health week is coming up on April 26th, which is also my b-day (yay)! As hospital workers, we’ll be promoting and distributing vitamin A, deworming pills, vaccines and to women and children all around the area (and health information in general to as many people as we can, I hope). Then in mid-May I travel to the capital, Antananarivo, for two weeks of training with Peace Corps. I’m looking forward to seeing all my fellow volunteers. I can’t wait to catch up with everyone and see how they’ve been doing the past three months…a bit of separation anxiety since we were in such close quarters for several months before that.

I’ve been at site for a little over two months now…can hardly believe it’s already been that long! I’m still helping with prenatal consultations and family planning twice a week, only I’ve started giving health talks on safe motherhood and reproductive health to all the women beforehand now that my Malagasy is a little better. I also help with baby weighing on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I’m still teaching at the local secondary school as well. I recently had a nice chat with one of the teachers from the primary school and it looks like I might be able to help out with health education there as well. I also found out that a project might be starting up in our town soon to build several latrines for public use (with government money no less), which I’m really excited about. Even though we have electricity and public taps around town, many people still don’t have latrines and use the woods instead. Then when it rains, the river is really dirty. Many people still wash dishes and bathe in the river, so one can easily imagine the hygiene and sanitation problems the situation causes. Hopefully I’ll be able to assist with the project and help it come to fruition.

I’ve also slowly been exploring more of the countryside on the outskirts of town where everyone farms rice. I’ve traveled with the SEECALINE (nutrition/baby weighing) lady to two nearby villages to weigh children under five and do some cooking demos on nutritious weaning foods. I’ve also walked with some friends to a village 2hrs away to visit with their relatives. The families who live out in the fields are always so friendly and seem genuinely excited to have visitors. Every time I’ve come back from the fields I’m laden with gifts: oranges, avocadoes, cucumbers, rice, coconuts…even a live chicken the last time (which one of my friends promptly sold for me to a passerby on the way back home, as I’m vegetarian and don’t know the first thing about raising chickens)! I can’t get over how nice everyone is here, sometimes.

The other day I rode my bicycle to explore some of the smaller towns just south of me. There are some more schools and a smaller clinic in one of the towns I passed, so I definitely want to go back soon to see if there’s any health programs I might be able to help with. Not only that, but I’ve been getting a little tired and overwhelmed with playing nanny for all the rambunctious neighborhood kids and so have consequently been making an effort to get out of the house more, although I still do enjoy them visiting from time to time. All joking aside though, I am always stunned by how beautiful this country is every time I go exploring around the area. The forests, rivers and mountains are breathtaking, and I still find it so surreal that Madagascar is actually going to be my home for the next two years.

So I’ve been at my site for about a month and a half now. There are still many times when I can’t understand what’s going on in a conversation or I’m not able to express exactly what I want to, but I’m finding that I’m slowly getting a better handle on the language. I’ve had a couple dreams in Malagasy and I sometimes think in Malagasy now. It’s even hard to talk in English on the phone with people at times now, because I’m so used to having to think in simple sentence structures that I’m able to express in Malagasy…it’s the strangest feeling when you have trouble with your own native language. My writing has gone downhill as a consequence as well, so you’ll have to excuse the quality of my blog posts from now on if they’re poorly written.

Things have still been going really well so far. I still love the kids here in my town. Many of them come to visit me everyday. We often hang out on my porch, talk, look at picture books or play cards. They teach me Malagasy and I help the older ones learn English. They absolutely love to play cards. It’s such a novelty since no one here has them (I haven’t seen them for sale in any stores here either). I’ve taught them how to play spoons and go fish, and they’ve taught me how to play a few Malagasy card games as well (“Couvet” and “Ayamps”). I even learned a game they play with stones that’s somewhat similar to jacks. It’s really difficult, though even though it looks so easy when I watch them play. Sometimes I’ll go over to my friend/neighbor Sandra’s house because her family has a TV with a VCR and DVD player. When the electricity comes on at 2pm they’ll put in a disc of Malagasy music videos or really cheesy American movies from the 70s or 80s dubbed over in French (they even had a disc with 6 quite graphic movies all about cannibals in the Amazon). In my spare time I also tend to my garden, read or go for walks around town. I also like to go the soccer pitch to watch matches among the schools here or the local men’s league. The older ones are really good. I can’t wait until the World Cup starts. I’m sure everyone will be tuning in, as they’re crazy about soccer here (or “bolly” as they call it).

I’ve also been teaching at the CEG (junior high school) in my town every Wednesday. So far I’ve taught about diarrheal diseases, Oral Rehydration Solution, nutritious foods and family planning complete with a condom demo. I also throw in English vocab here and there since the teachers really want me to help their students learn English. This past Wednesday made me really happy, because after my lesson on family planning a boy came by my house to ask me about STIs and contraception. He was confused about the cause of STIs and thought that some contraceptive methods could make you sick. Many people here in Madagascar think that different methods of contraception (like the pill or the Depo shot) can make them sick. Hopefully I can help communicate the message that contraceptive methods don’t make people sick and are a much better option than leaving school at 15 because of early pregnancy or than giving birth to 7 or 8 children. I’ve also taught about hand-washing and vaccines to the mothers who come to get their babies vaccinated on Tuesdays. I think I’m to the point in the language now where I can teach about safe motherhood to the pregnant women who come for prenatal consultations and to the girls who come for family planning about different options for contraception. I like teaching and interacting with the students at the schools more than working at the hospital though, because the doctor already does a lot of health education at the clinic, and there are two midwives a nurse and two other assistants who help staff the clinic as well. When I’m more familiar with the area and more comfortable with the language, I’m hoping to bike around to the surrounding villages where people don’t come to the clinic as often because they have to walk a long distance. Hopefully I can encourage them to use family planning, to vaccinate their children at the hospital on Tuesdays and to come for prenatal consultations if they are pregnant. Today was really sad because a group of folks from a village 15km away brought in a woman who was 7 months pregnant and hemorrhaging. Unfortunately she was already dead by the time she arrived at the clinic and there was nothing that the midwife could do. Perhaps if more women come into the clinic frequently for prenatal consultations, some of these unfortunate complications can be avoided. However, limited resources and poor infrastructure also often pose challenges that are out of our hands here in the rural areas. It’s frustrating when it seems that the structural changes are the ones that would make the biggest difference but are also the changes that I as a mere volunteer visiting from another country have no chance of impacting in the next two years. On that cheery note, I’ll leave you all until I have another opportunity to use the internet. A menaraka (until next time!).

Since some people have asked,

here are suggestions of things to send if you’re feeling generous:

Letters! Please write! I don’t get to check email very often!

Pictures of family/friends

World news (newspaper/magazines)

NY times crossword puzzles (not Thurs-Sat though b/c they’re too hard)

Children’s books/picture books

Colored pencils/crayons

M&Ms (any variety)

Ear plugs

A new headlamp (mine broke)

Playing cards (mine are already dirty and worn from use!)

Anything you think a person with a lot of spare time on their hands would find fun or amusing to do for several hours straight

Mailing Address:

Maya Rao

BP 19

Ampanefena

Vohemar (209)

Madagascar

Phone: 011-261-0327325038

Greetings from Madagascar! this will be short since the internet is slow in my banking town, but Ive been here at my site for a monthand its still going really well. I feel like im improving zith the language and have even taught a group of kids at the local high school about diarrheal diseases, dehydration prevention and how to prepare ORS. I help out at the clinic with baby weighing, pregnant mother consultations and family planning every week. enjoying all the tropical fruits and still working on my garden. I meet new people everyday. miss everyone back home. stay in touch!

I’ve been at my site for two weeks now and everything is going really well so far. The installation process took a little longer than I thought it would, but otherwise the transition has been fairly smooth. Jess (the other volunteer living up north 30km away) and I flew from Antananarivo to Sambava early in the morning the day after swearing in as volunteers. A Malagasy Peace Corps staff person accompanied us to help us arrive safely to our sites and purchase necessities for our houses. Soon after arriving in Sambava we did some furniture shopping and then drove up north to check out my and Jess’s sites. It is really warm and humid up north compared to Mantasoa. As I looked out the window on the drive up, I was surprised at how the coast is reminiscent of Africa much more so than the center of the island. The villages we passed along the way seemed much poorer, as most of the houses along the side of the road are small shacks made from sheets of metal or wood with thatched roofs. The people here look distinctly African as well compared to the mélange of East and Southeast Asian, Black and Hispanic-looking people I’ve seen further inland. There are palm trees, rice paddies, pineapples and beaches to go along with the coastal theme as well. Approaching Antsirabe North, the paved highway turns slightly inland and the road gently rises and falls over low-lying mountains. A river weaves in and out with many small bridges crossing over it along the way. We entered into what seems like the middle of a jungle. Is I looked out the window, I kept thinking to myself, “This is where I’m going to live for the next two years.” The feeling was so surreal. When we pulled into Antsirabe Nord I was amazed at how big it was. The cobblestone road winding into the town is lined on either side with shops and many small shacks, occasionally interspersed with large, concrete houses (some even with multiple stories, satellite dishes and electricity).

At last we pulled into the courtyard of the CSB (health center) where I’ll be working for the next to years. After meeting my doctor (who I was surprised to find out can speak English fairly well) and filling out some paperwork for Peace Corps we inspected my house. I live right next to the health center in a giant concrete building. There are two large rooms and one large meeting room for the nutrition education program held at the CSB once a week. I was taken aback to find the house already furnished with almost everything I needed: two tables, two chairs, a couch, pots and pans in the kitchen room and a huge bed, a couch, a table and chair and a bookcase (along with tons of books) in the bedroom. Out in the small fenced in area in the back, there’s two papaya trees and some pineapple bushes growing. My set up is so nice I almost don’t feel like a real Peace Corps volunteer roughing it out in the bush, like I would have been in Niger. There’s even electricity from 2pm to 12pm everyday. No running water, though (I either collect it from the roof when it rains or climb down a steep, treacherous path to the river several times a day when it doesn’t rain). After driving another hour to Jess’s site only to find out that we couldn’t get into her house because the mayor, who has the keys, was out of town, we drove another half hour up to Vohemar and spent the night at a small hotel on the beach. The next few days we met all the gendarmes, police and mayors, set up our banking and post office boxes and did all the necessary shopping for furniture, gas stoves and the like. I spent the first afternoon at my post cleaning the house. Right away a bunch of neighborhood kids came over and introduced themselves and helped me to fetch water and clean. Even though I had hoped for a new post and instead ended up with one that had had four previous volunteers, there were definitely some advantages to the community already being accustomed to having a PCV around. I didn’t have to buy much for my house, I have instant friends, and people are always willing to help me out with the language and day-to-day activities.

The next day was Sunday, so I mostly spent the day cleaning up the house and walking around getting to know the community. On Monday morning I biked 15km to the nearest large town to set up my post office box. I was exhausted by the time I got back at noon because it was so hot that morning and the hills were treacherous (not to mention I’m really out of shape). It was a beautiful bikeride, though, and all along the way people on the side of the road were calling out to me in French (since they assume here in Madagascar that all white people speak French). I had fun yelling back Malagasy greetings to them. On Tuesday I got to meet everyone that works at the CSB and help out with baby weighing with SEECALINE (the nutrition health promotion program here in Madagascar). Jeanette, the lady who runs SEECALINE here is really nice. She showed me pictures of her with the last few volunteers and offered to help me with anything that I needed. On Wednesday I got to observe prenatal consultations in the morning and family planning in the afternoon. Both programs were heavily attended by young women. Many of the pregnant women who came in the morning were on their forth or fifth child, and there were some 15 and 16 year-olds on their first time. Most of the girls who showed up for family planning in the afternoon were really young as well (15-17yrs). A majority of them went for the 3mo. shot of Depo-Provera and a few chose the pill. Once in a while someone comes in for Norplant. No one ever asks for condoms or spermicide. I’m glad so many people are using birth control, but I’m also worried, especially for the young ones, because they could still be contracting STDs which are very prevalent in Madagascar (except for AIDS which is still supposedly less than 1%).

Other than observing at the clinic, I’ve just been walking around trying to get to know the community or hanging out at my house. Often times people (mostly kids) will stop by to visit me. They love teaching me Malagasy, and the ones learning English at school like to practice their English with me too. The past couple days have been really fun, because there’s been an annual celebration of the Malagasy schools. That basically means no school for three days and soccer matches all day long. There was also a huge parade of students and teachers singing and marching through town on the first morning of the celebration as well. I enjoyed attending the soccer matches and chatting with the students and other spectators. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there are girl’s teams too. Most of the kids who play can’t afford shoes, so they play barefoot. A few lucky ones do have soccer cleats, though, so I can’t imagine what it would feel like if one of them stepped on a bare foot!

Even though I had hoped for a smaller village, I still love Antsirabe Nord, and I get to know more and more people everyday. It’s gotten to the point that when I step out of my house and go for a walk or a jog through town, I can’t go but a couple feet before someone is calling out my name. I feel slightly bad that I can’t remember all their names (there’s just so many people here), but I keep reminding myself that I’ll remember in time and that I’ll get the language in time, and that I’ll be able to contribute in a more meaningful way at the CSB in time. I have done a hand-washing/hygiene demonstration in front of a group of women at the CSB and have passed on a few health messages here and there. I’ve also started a garden in my backyard with the help of some of the neighborhood kids. For the most part though, I just enjoy every conversation I’m able to have with someone in Malagasy, try to meet new people everyday and observe as much as I can about the culture here in the north of Madagascar.

New contact info:

Phone: 011-261-0327325038

Address: BP 19

Ampanefena

Vohemar

Madagascar

I am writing this entry from the training site in Mantasoa in Madagascar in the hopes that I will have internet access sometime soon and can upload documents and pictures from my flash drive to my blog. So much has happened since we first arrived in Madagascar six weeks ago. Soon after we landed in country and drove to the Peace Corps training site, we started learning Malagasy and having technical and cross-culture sessions. Christmas and New Years at the training site was actually pretty fun. The kitchen staff was absolutely amazing and cooked a bounty of wonderful American food for us. We had a Secret Santa gift exchange as well as several dance parties. We also had the amazing opportunity to visit a national park called Andasibe, where we saw lemurs and other really amazing wildlife. We were so fortunate to have two of the senior training staff from Niger (Tondi and Souley) accompany us to Madagascar and spend the first few weeks of training with us here to help us adjust and to assist the Malagasy Peace Corps staff. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to them soon after New Years. We gave them a very sweet and sentimental sendoff, but it was still very sad to see them go, as they were very dedicated and inspiring individuals and such amazing leaders in their community back in Niger.

After about three weeks at the training site, we were finally able to move in with host families in the neighboring villages. I was so excited to learn more about the Malagasy way of life and to converse in the language in an immersion setting. I couldn’t have asked for a better home-stay. The village of Lohomby was gorgeous, as it was surrounded with rice fields, rolling mountains, green forests and rivers, and dotted with cute, brick, two-story houses and winding dirt roads. My family was a young couple in their twenties with an adorable four-year-old daughter. They were farmers and also kept rabbits, ducks, geese and chickens in a shed on the first floor of their house. There were fruit trees surrounding their small plot and pineapples growing in the back. The food was amazing, as we usually had fresh vegetables and tropical fruit at almost every meal. I learned how to fetch water, cook over an open fire, wash dishes and sweep the house. I also went on some amazingly scenic hikes. Although it was somewhat frustrating that I was trying to learn a dialect from the north in a village where no one really spoke or understood it, Sakalava is similar enough to standard Malagasy that I could still communicate with my host family about half of the time. During our technical sessions we visited a health center (CSB) in Mantasoa, taught about HIV and STIs in the schools, built two cookstoves (fatana mitsitsy) in our village and observed a baby-weighing and health education session with young mothers at the SEECALINE nutrition center in our village.

The end of training has been so incredibly hectic and stressful. In the past week we have said goodbye to our host families at our community based training sites, given presentations in Malagasy (or Sakalava in my case), been assessed on our language proficiency, packed up our lives into trunks and bags and had several parties (fetys) to celebrate the fact that the 36 of us are finally done with training after spending three months together. I have so many mixed emotions at the moment. I am absolutely thrilled and relived that I have successfully finished my Peace Corps training and can now go to my site and start working as a real volunteer. However I am also intimidated that I will be living by myself in a new environment where I will have to establish trust and gain the respect of neighbors, coworkers and community leaders in a language and culture that is still somewhat unfamiliar to me. I also have to fly to my site and then proceed to buy everything I will need for my house before I can actually move in. Along with the excitement, intimidation and anxiousness, I am also sad to say goodbye to my home-stay family, the wonderful training staff and all of the friends I have made during the past three months us trainees have spent together. We have gone through staging in Philadelphia to home-stays in Niger to consolidation at the training site in Niger to 24 hours in Paris to three weeks at the training site in Mantasoa to home-stays in Madagascar. At last we are all going to part our separate ways after swearing in as volunteers in the capital on Tuesday. I’ll be heading up to the northern part of Madagascar near Sambava. Next time you here from me I’ll be at my site!

Today I got the chance to spend the day exploring Paris. On our way to Madagascar, our training group had a 30hr layover in Paris, so many of us took advantage by heading out into the city to enjoy the day. I went to the Eiffel Tower, walked along the river, and enjoyed some small luxuries before heading back to the hotel and getting ready to fly to our next destination. I can hardly believe that I'll be landing in Antananarivo tomorrow evening to start a new Peace Corps training program. I was so sad to leave Niger, but I'm looking forward to learning Malagasi and getting to know yet another new and different culture. Wish me luck! And please be patient with the blog update and email responses, as I have no idea when I will have internet access next. Until then, enjoy these pics from my day in Paris, and have a wonderful holiday!

Christmas lights along the Champs Elysee

La Tour Eiffel

A typical French scene

La Seine

This past weekend we celebrated Tabaski in Hamdallaye and said goodbye to our host families. I wasn’t very excited about the holiday since most of the activities center around slaughtering goats and sheep and preparing, sharing and eating the meat. As a vegetarian, not the best holiday to partake in. It was interesting to see the prayer service in the morning, though. Basically all of Hamdallaye and some people from the smaller neighboring villages gathered out in a field. There were several horses with decorative saddles as well as a camel. Everyone was dressed in their nicest outfits, many of them made specially for Tabaski. In the afternoon, people slaughtered and roasted goats and sheep over large fires. They also cleaned and fried the innards of the animals and shared the food with neighbors. Luckily I managed to avoid any actual slaughtering and I didn’t feel obliged to eat any of the meat either. I’m actually glad I didn’t eat any of it, because a bunch of people got sick the day after Tabaski.

It’s been a really slow past few days up at the training site. We’ve been doing French class to stay occupied, but I just feel so anxious waiting to get to Madagascar, especially since we’re not leaving until Sunday evening. This afternoon was really fun, however. We organized an American-style Olympics for the language trainers so we could share with them some of the traditional games we play in the U.S. Among the events were an obstacle course, pin the tail on the donkey and musical chairs. The Nigeriens were so funny. I was surprised at how competitive and into it they got. I will really miss all of the training staff here. Tomorrow we get to go into Niamey, which should be interesting and a change of pace. I’m excited to see the bureau and hopefully some of the city as well. Then it's off to Madagascar on Sunday.

New mailing address:

Maya Rao

Corps de la Paix

BP 12091

Poste Zoom Ankorondrano

101 Antananarivo

Madagascar

Some pictures of events over the past few weeks:

Nigerien Fashion Show at the training site!

Host family pictures

Scenes of Niger

The past week has been rough. There were some recent attempted kidnappings of foreigners near the Niger-Mali border. Because of the security concerns, we were first put on consolidation for a little over a week, which meant that we were not able to stay with our host families. A few days before Thanksgiving the consolidation was lifted but Peace Corps decided to send our training group to Madagascar since there had been another attempted kidnapping over the weekend. Even though I’m really sad to leave Niger I can understand that it would probably be more manageable to monitor a smaller number of volunteers in country given the heightened security and travel restrictions. It’s too bad that we’ll have to start a whole new training program and probably won’t get to swear in as volunteers until late January or February. Not only that, but we have to learn a whole new language, and just when I was starting to get the hang of Hausa. I am very happy that I will still be working in the health sector, and I’m looking forward to island life for the next two years. I’m anxious to leave and start my new training program, but I am also sad to leave Niger. I feel bad for our language trainers and for the Nigerien villages that were expecting volunteers in January. In order to pass the time and stay productive at the training site we are learning French now instead of Zarma and Hausa. Today we had off because of Thanksgiving, so we hung out and worked on preparing for the meal. The dinner went really well. All the language trainers joined us, and as we shared our meal together we went around and said what we were thankful for. Many people expressed their gratitude for the training staff here and the opportunity to have learned about and experienced the people, the language and beautiful culture of Niger. This weekend we get to go back to our homestays to visit our families and experience Tabaski, one of the biggest Muslim holidays here in Niger.

Today was my second day on demystification. Demyst is a four day trip that all the trainees make to stay with a current volunteer in order to see what life and work is really going to be like for the next two years at post. I and another trainee were assigned to a health volunteer in the Dosso region, which is Zarma-speaking. Unfortunately I don’t get to practice any of my Hausa, but it’s still a great experience so far. Yesterday was a very long day. We left Hamdy on the “magic bus” (the Peace Corps 20 passenger bus) at 8am and drove for several hours, dropping off people at their various destinations along the way. The countryside was interesting to see…a bit more green than I was expecting. Our trip was delayed for a half hour when the van got stuck in the sand at one of the sites, but after trying a few different strategies and garnering the help of the entire village, we were back on our way. We arrived at our post at around 1pm and sat and talked for a while. Then we had “bush pizza” for lunch, and talked more about what life for our PCV has been like for the past year. We walked around here village in the evening and were introduced to all her friends, neighbors and the chief. Her village is small, less than 500 people, but there’s a lot of activity. There’s a grinding mill, a water pump, people weaving mats, women pounding millet, a tailor sewing outside, people farming and mothers cooking. It’s so true that you literally have to stop and greet everyone as you make your rounds through the entire village. Everyone seemed so warm and welcoming, but it was also sad and eye-opening to see all the malnutrition everywhere. I would estimate that about 2 out of every 3 kids we saw had characteristic signs of Kwashiorkor—the distended bellies, stick-thin legs, ribs showing through the skin and thin, reddish hair. The PCV was telling us about how mothers will just wait until their child becomes severely ill before they take them into the clinics. Sometimes it’s hard because they may not have money at that time to pay for the hospital visit. Unfortunately the clinics and health centers don’t sound like the most inviting places for these mothers either. Apparently the healthcare workers can often be condescending towards villagers who come in because they feel that they are more educated and come from a more privileged background. Sometimes the parents are scared of the doctors and won’t communicate with them because they are afraid. She also mentioned that sometimes the villagers won’t find the visits to the clinic helpful because all the nurses will do is give the children two shots and tell them to come back several more times that week, which would not be feasible for most, given limited time and monetary constraints. The whole situation just sounds really sad and almost hopeless because the problems are so systemic. The good thing is that there are things the PCVs can do to address the gaps in the healthcare system. Our demister talked about how she teaches mothers who come to the hospital how to make their own nutritious porridges and therapeutic foods for their malnourished children, so that if the hospital is low on supply or if the women are not able to stay for very long, they can still go home with the knowledge of how to care for their babies. Overall, the demystification experience was really wonderful. After observing the daily activities of a health volunteer, I’m even more motivated to complete training. I’m also so excited to be at post where I can make my own schedule, have my own place and cook for myself. I can see myself enjoying the next two years, even though there may be some tough adjustments and challenges to face along the way.

Yesterday was Halloween in the village. We had language class in the morning. It has started cooling down since cold season is approaching, so the afternoons are much more bearable and the evenings are lovely. My roommate has been gone for a couple days because of an ear infection, so it’s just been me at the homestay. In the afternoon I reviewed Hausa vocab and did my laundry by hand. At 5pm all the volunteers met at the pond in Hamdallaye for a Halloween party. It was so much fun! People brought candy and snacks and we had music, card games and an egg toss. Someone even brought plastic colored fangs from home for everyone to wear. After dinner we met up again to watch Hocus Pocus on one of the volunteer’s laptops until her battery died. All in all a great Halloween…much better than I expected it would be.

This morning there was a baby naming ceremony at one of the volunteer’s home stays because their family had a newborn baby a week ago. I was surprised at how short the affair was, considering the whole village and people from out of town came to attend. It started around 7 in the morning. People congregated, they slaughtered a goat, the family passed out dried dates for everyone to eat, and then they distributed dishes of goat meat stewed in sauce with bread for everyone to share. The whole thing was over by 9am!

It is so incredibly hot here! At first I was excited about going to the hottest country on earth because I feel like I’m always cold, and I thought I was pretty good at dealing with hot weather. I think I severely underestimated how hot 100+ can feel. The evenings and mornings are definitely bearable as it cools down considerable at night here, but the afternoons are absolutely brutal. I have Hausa class outside in my concession every afternoon with a language trainer and two other volunteers, and although we are sitting in the shade and I try to gulp down as much warm water from my Nalgene as I can, I still get headaches and nausea and my skin feels like it’s burning. I’ve even developed a little bit of heat rash on my hands. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when hot season rolls around in April. Other than suffering from the heat, I’m so grateful that haven’t gotten sick here yet. We learned how to filter and chlorinate our drinking water the other day, so I guess I’ve been doing a good job so far.

Today was a market day in Hamdallaye. It was very crowded and there were so many interesting things to see. There were many animals--goats, donkeys, cows and camels—as well as vendors selling spices, dried fish and staple foods. There were clothing stands and tailors as well, and many of us bought fabric for skirts (pagnas). It was difficult to choose among the large variety of colors and designs in the hot, crowded market, but I’m happy with my choices, a navy blue one with a gazelle pattern and a turquoise and blue geometric star patterned one.

Today we moved in with our host families after a day of language and culture debriefing at the training site. I was placed in a Hausa family in Hamdallaye with another fellow trainee. We are both vegetarian and the host family was notified that we don’t eat meat, so it’s not as much of an issue as I thought it would be. As we walked out of the training site to our home-stays down the hill, we got our first look at the village of Hamdy. Some of the houses were very nice, but others were somewhat dilapidated, and it was also sad to see all the trash scattered along the side of the road and next to the houses. Even in a village that has a large market every Tuesday and that steadily reaps economic benefits from Peace Corps training activities, one can still see the mark of Niger’s rampant poverty here. Vegetables are not readily available here, so it’s rice and sauce or rice and beans for pretty much every meal. Some of the children walk around with signs of kwashiorkor. Most families do not have electricity and no one has running water, although I was surprised that some do have TVs here. It is a strange and disorienting feeling to walk over to the neighbor’s house where some fellow trainees are staying to watch a Brazilian soap opera dubbed over in French while sitting outside on a mat under the stars with goats bleating in the background.

My host family has been really great so far. We live with an older woman and three of her grandchildren (she has 20 grandchildren in total!). My Nigerien name is Sharifa, after the 10 year old girl in our family. She is really fun to talk to, and has been teaching me the numbers and body parts in Hausa. The other granddaughter and grandson are both in their late teens and also speak French, so they are really helpful to have around when I have no idea what is going on. I can’t wait until I learn more Hausa so I can interact more easily with everyone!

Today we arrived at our training site in Hamdallaye after a long two days of traveling in buses and airports. I can hardly believe after many long months of agonizing over my application, awaiting a response from Peace Corps and preparing for departure that I am finally in Niger and about to start training as a volunteer. After arriving in the airport in Niamey, we collected our bags and exited the airport to be greeted by a loud, cheering welcome from a group of current PCVs who were waiting outside with hot bottles of drinking water (nothing stays cool here in Niger). As we rode in the Peace Corps vans from Niamey to Hamdallaye two of the volunteers who have been here for a while talked to us about their experiences so far and answered some of our burning questions about the country in which we are about live for two years. On the way, I saw a camel carrying a large load of hay, a crowded market and many mud huts with thatched roofs. When we got to Hamdallaye we had a brief introduction to the site and received our malaria meds. Then we unpacked, ate dinner, took showers, talked and went to sleep outside under the stars, with just the mosquito nets to cover us and the soothing sound of breezes and soft rains that come and go. I’m so exhausted, yet extremely excited to see what’s in store for tomorrow.

Yesterday evening I flew into Philly to begin staging, which is basically a short orientation and preparation for arrival at post. Today I got a chance to meet the forty other volunteers in the agriculture and health programs going over to Niger with me to begin service. We also officially made our transition from being Peace Corps invitees to Peace Corps trainees. In addition to completing some last minute paperwork, we went over some anxieties and aspirations of becoming volunteers in Niger, talked about some important Peace Corps policies and received some general information about how to arrive at post on Thursday. I really enjoyed getting to know the other volunteers today. They all seem like such wonderful people, and I look forward to training and working with them over the next three months and two years. It was such a strange sensation to pack up my life into two small bags and leave my family and friends here in America knowing that I won't be returning for another two years. However, I'm so excited to begin the next phase of my life and to see what it's like to live in another country in a completely different region of the wolrd. While I do have some anxieties about how I will be viewed and accepted in my new community, how I will adjust and whether or not I possess the right skills and knowledge to be a successful volunteer, I also feel ready to start my first job as a college grad and to experience a new and different approach to life. I look forward to learning a new language, surrounding myself with a different culture, meeting new friends and gaining invaluable public health experience. I'm sure I will miss everyone I have grown close to here in the U.S. but I have no doubt that I will meet warm, kindred spirits in Niger and, I have the sense that, after a while, I will feel at home in my new country of residence. I'm still not quite sure how often I will have internet access, since I have heard that most of the rural villages don't even have electricity, but as promised to all my friends and family, I will do my best to update this blog as often as I can. I can hardly believe I'm leaving the country tomorrow. It's so amazing to think that I'll be arriving in west Africa in about 48 hours. Right now, the forecast in Niamey for Thursday is rainy and hot. Just my kind of weather :) I'm sure you all probably think I'm crazy, but I'm really looking forward to the climate. For you french speakers, je suis tres heureuse a commencer mes aventures avec le corps de la paix. Au revoir!

I finally received my invitation for service! I'm scheduled to leave in mid-October for a Community Health Education program in Niger, west Africa. I'm so relieved to finally be accepted to the program and to know where and when I'm going. yay!