At Site

NEW NUMBER: 261330899140

NEW ADDRESS:

Ellen Miller

c/o Josh Twisselman

CISCO Ambanja

Ambanja 203

Madagascar

Happy Halloween! I’ve now been in country for four months and at site for one. This is actually the first time I’ve had internet access since the beginning of August, and while I might have access slightly more frequently in the future, it’s a pretty long trek. It’s hard to know where to start when there’s so much about which to update so this will probably feel more like a big summary than a blog. But first a highlights list. In the past two and a half months I have:

·      Been officially sworn in as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer

·      Moved from living in the training center in the chilly plateau with 27 volunteers to my own hut in the hot northwestern corner of Madagascar

·      Killed and butchered two chickens

·      Slaughtered a cow!

·      Become proficient in Malagasy

·      Eaten too many mangos in one day -- seven -- and gotten sick. (I now try to limit myself to four or five)

·      Made my first very embarrassing Malagasy mistake by confusing the words “kapaoaty” (condom) and “kapoaka” (can) in a presentation on safe motherhood, thereby instructing the new mothers that their two-year-olds should ideally be eating 2/3s of a condom three times a day

·      Developed the ability to shower adequately with 1.5 L of water

·      Thoroughly ruined all three pieces of white clothing that I brought

·      Eaten a frog

·      Made good friends with people in my town

·      Figured out the going rate for my hand in marriage – 10 cows

·      Finally managed to cook a successful Malagasy meal after one month at site (of course with the American addition of red pepper flakes)

·      Eaten three new fruits – concon, finesse (jackfruit), and coacoa

The End of Training

The last couple weeks of training went by very quickly. The health volunteers took a trip to the East Coast to visit various NGOs and learn about different health initiatives currently going on in Madagascar while the education volunteers started teaching in a local school every day. We focused a lot more on technical training, giving presentations to the staff and community, took a lot of language classes, and prepared to be installed. We took our final language test (everybody passed!) and gave our final presentations a couple days before swearing-in and so the days leading up to the ceremony were kind of like a giant farewell party with lots of celebrating. Our swearing-in ceremony took place at the training center instead of Tana. Usually lots of people the Ministry of Health and Education come along with people from the Embassy, but the Embassy had decided to host an event the same day and so our ceremony was smaller with just our host families, some media representatives, and Peace Corps Staff. Our country director spoke along with a representative from the community and two members of our group, we presented certificates to our host families, performed a song we had prepared to thank our staff, and then took the official Peace Corps Oath!

Heading North

When all the festivities were over and the guests had gone home the atmosphere of the training center suddenly felt gently sentimental and quiet. Even most of our trainers had returned to the capital so we were left alone for our last night in Mantasoa. That last afternoon was actually one of the best we had, as everyone seemed to decide to spend the remaining time hanging out all together and taking advantage of the last couple hours as a training group, everyone’s early morning departures in the back of our minds. We spent the time going back and forth between packing and goofing off on the beach. The next morning we pushed the tables together in the dining room so we could all eat breakfast together. In some ways, leaving the training center was actually harder than leaving the States and saying goodbye was sad. We had been preparing to leave family and friends at home for months, but had grown to rely on each other in Madagascar and suddenly were being scattered across the country. Most of us will end up seeing each other twice at the most in the next two years and many of us get different service provider coverage, making it too expensive to text and call.

Megan and I were the only two in our stage placed in the Diana region and we left at about 6:45, right after breakfast, for our two-day drive up to the north with Hary, an administrator from Tana who was in charge of our installation, and Kumar, our driver (Yes, Hary and Kumar jokes were made). Neither of us had met either of them before so with being sad to leave, nervous about what to expect, and dealing with the language barrier, the first day was pretty somber. We stopped in Antananarivo to go to the supermarket where we bought things that wouldn’t be available later like spices and pre-made peanut butter, and I spent a good chunk of the drive doing crosswords and listening to music. We ended the day in Maevatanana where we had dinner and found a cheap room. The next morning, the landscape started to change as we got further north, getting greener and more tropical, and the atmosphere changed with it. We chatted with Hary and Kumar, danced to 90s playlists, stopped along the way to take pictures, and Hary and Kumar bought us freshly fried fish and beer along the side of the road. When we finally arrived in Ambanja, where we would be staying for two days to have furniture built and do shopping, we were met by two current volunteers, Josh and Katie, who took us out for the night to welcome us to the north! Everything I had heard about the north up this point was that it was beautiful, hot, laid back, and that I was lucky to be placed in a region with such awesome other volunteers. The North in general is much more coastal and relaxed-feeling than the plateau. People dress less conservatively, are more friendly, take siestas in the mid-afternoon heat, and the language is much more sing-songy. The people also look much more African here with much darker skin and African features than the more Asian-looking people in the plateau.

Meeting Josh and Katie, who I’d actually heard about a fair amount already from Jason, made me so excited to be up here. So far I’ve found that the people who tend to do Peace Corps are really fun to begin with and since volunteers are usually so excited to hang out with other volunteers, the instant friendships are really incredible to be a part of. Most people that I have met so far I feel like I have known for a long time and know that I have a great support system here. During training they told us that one of our most important jobs as other volunteers was supporting the other volunteers in our region through the roller coaster that is two years of service and I feel like that is definitely something my region does well. We spent the next two days shopping for everything we would need in our houses like dishes, food, sheets, buckets, and even furniture – we both had a table, a bench, and a bed built for us in less than 48 hours by a local carpenter.

After two days of shopping it was time to drop Megan off at her site, so we drove the hour and a half from Ambanja to a tiny village on the ocean. Her door opens up to a view of the beach, 50 yards from her house, and of the ocean where she gets her daily supply of fresh fish! The setting is very tropical and secluded with palm trees and thick rainforest, which feels very much like driving through Jurassic Park. When we arrived at the village we were met by everyone preparing a meal on a table set up outside Megan’s house. They had run a generator so they could play music and there were about 30 kids dancing in front of the house. After moving all the furniture into the house we sat down while all the men gave short welcome speeches and then ate coconut chicken, coconut rice, and mango while we watched the sun set. When it got dark we said goodbye to Megan and got in the car to drive back to Ambanja for the night before heading farther north.

The next morning we picked up my furniture, strapped it to the top of our 4x4 and drove an hour and a half north to Ambilobe, the closest town to my site. Josh had very generously offered to take another two days to come install me so we checked into a hotel and then started our “courtesy visits” where I met with the local police, gendarmes, and medicine inspector to introduce myself and the work I would be doing nearby. We finished shopping and took advantage of our last electricity by watching some episodes of TV on my computer before going to sleep. Finally in the morning, after seven days of traveling, we set off for the last 30 kilometers down a rough dirt road (which, during the rainy season is impassable by car) to my site for the next two years! 

We got to my village on a Thursday, market day, and headed straight to the mayor’s office, which is right in the middle of the market. I got out of the car and was shuffled into a big empty room off of the market while my mayor stuck his head out the window to everyone buying their food for the week to announce that the “vazah” was here and would be making a speech and invited everyone into the room. I have done a lot of public speaking and performing in my life, and never have I been so terrified to talk in front of a group than I was while I watched people filing into the room whispering, pointing, and laughing, until the room was filled to capacity with around 75 people. First the mayor made a really nice speech, saying that they had a new daughter in their village and that people should treat me as one, and then giving me a Malagasy name, Soaravo, which means good happy or good smile. After several other speeches from the chief of the gendarmes, my installers from Tana, Josh, and the president of my village, it was my turn to introduce myself. Shaking and barely able to remember basic Malagasy, I got up and explained who I was, what my job would be for the next two years, apologized for my language skills, and told them I was happy to be working with them. The mayor took us out to lunch at a small hotely afterwards and then we spent the next three hours finishing the building of my house while Kamar inspected it for safety, installed new locks, and checked the security of the windows and two doors. No one would let me do anything important so I found an extra hammer and built small spice racks to keep busy. As it got dark and we wrapped up the installation process, I said goodbye to Josh, Kamar, and Hary with a plan to meet Josh and the other volunteers after a week back in Ambanja. Watching the car drive away from my house knowing that I was now alone with no friends, no one who spoke English, and would be there for two years, was the hardest thing I have done in Peace Corps so far. Some volunteers literally run after the car. While I didn’t do that, I felt physically sick, unprepared, and grateful it was dark enough that the men still loitering around my house couldn’t see me cry. I went to bed immediately after they left.

My Site

While in Ambanja, Katie and Josh gave me advice that previous volunteers had given them to deal with the hard times during service: If you can do one night, you can do any other night, which kind of reminds me of things we used to say about doing sprints during practice. Waking up the next morning, I felt much better knowing that if I had done that night, I could do the rest of the nights one night at a time. Since then it has been a definite roller coaster but manageable.

The first couple weeks at site I spent mostly just trying to figure what to do from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. All of the volunteers who had come to help out with our training had said one of our goals for the first three months at site should just be to leave your house at least once every day, even if it’s just to walk to a neighbor to buy tomatoes. Officially my job right now is to conduct a Community Diagnostic Survey, meeting with lots of different people from the community to help them identify their strengths, wants, and needs, so we can start developing projects that are motivated from within the community and align with their priorities. In addition, I am working with my counterpart, the doctor, by giving health talks and doing counseling twice a week at the CSB (Centre de Sante Base – a sort of rural health clinic). Tuesday is CPN day (pre natal counseling) so I talk about safe pregnancy and motherhood including nutrition, vaccines, syphilis and HIV testing, and malaria prophylaxis to all of women who come in and then will do additional counseling about things like family planning during individual consultations. On Thursdays we have vaccine day so all the women bring their babies in and I talk about the vaccine schedule, explain why it’s important to finish all of them, and address the common misconception that if your baby is already sick they shouldn’t receive a vaccine. My last official “job” right now is to keep learning Malagasy and integrate into my community. My initial thoughts just from looking at who is coming to the CSB are that I want to work with teenage girls and women about family planning and reproductive health. Every day girls as young as 13 and 14 come into the clinic pregnant and often they test positive for syphilis. The HIV rate is still low in Madagascar but is rising rapidly and experts are saying that Madagascar is in the same position as South Africa was 10 years ago with regards to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, meaning that if they don’t start taking serious preventative measures, it will become a major problem. The problem is that the men here will not use condoms, leading to very high birth rates and lots of sexually transmitted diseases, and most people don’t believe that there is HIV here in Madagascar, saying that it’s an “African” problem. We also have a lot of malaria in my village.

My village is actually pretty big for a typical health site with about 5,000 people and we also have a CSB II, meaning we have a trained doctor instead of just a midwife. I live on the complex of the CSB right next to the doctor and nurse in a house that is made out of local materials (leaves and sticks) like most of the houses in my village but mine has two rooms, one for sleeping and one for everything else. I have a really nice ladosy and kabone right outside my house and a well very close by. For the first two weeks I used the well that my installers had told me to use that was farther away from my house but apparently had cleaner water, but carrying the water was so heavy that I have started just using the one right outside. My site is also very hot and dusty. It is set at the foot of a couple of big hills and for some reason that creates a lot of wind, which was really nice at first to cut the heat but blows so much dust into my house, food, clothing, and bed that I have to sweep three times a day and everything has turned brown. The village is about 1.5 km long and set along a dirt road that stretches across the northern tip of the country but is in really bad condition so going just about 27 km takes an hour. My village is also a gold mining town and the first thing people from Madagascar say when I tell them where I live is, “Oh, have you found gold yet?” Almost everyone’s job is to search for or process gold, which they sell to small storeowners who probably take the gold to cities.

I’ll never really have a set schedule while here but I have started to develop a routine and there are certain events that help break up the week. Usually I wake up around 5:30 and run down the road, trying to avoid as much attention as possible by going early and also trying to beat the wind that is so strong by 6:45 that I can barely run when headed back. When I get home I fetch water, sweep my house, take a bucket bath, draw more water, and eat breakfast, which is usually bananas with home made peanut butter, mangos, or eggs if I have been able to find them. Usually I look at my watch after breakfast and am surprised by how much I feel like I’ve done all before 8:00 am, which seems astonishing when I remember how hard it was to get up for work at 7:30 or exercise before a 9:00 class. On Thursdays I walk over to the big market where all the vendors have bicycled or carted vegetables, meat, and other goods in 30 k from the nearest town. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I work all morning at the CSB at the vaccine or pre-natal consultation days. I usually spend the afternoons reading and playing with the kids who like to play in my yard or walking up to the center of town to talk to friends who have small stalls along the road. I start cooking around 5:30, eat at 6:00, and then read or journal until about 7:30 when I go to bed. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I read or think about my diagnostic survey for a couple of hours and then usually head over to the house of a family who has adopted me here. The father is the chief of the gendarmes here and his wife and two children live with her mother in a house. The grandmother calls me daughter and refers to as “your little sister” when talking to the mom. The two kids call me auntie. I spend all day there talking, learning how to cook Malagasy food, and I often eat two meals a day with them. Saturdays and Sundays I’ll do laundry or try to do a small project like building a hand-washing station or starting a compost pile. My next projects are to make a garden and build a chicken coop so I will have my own supply of vegetables and eggs! Cooking has actually been really difficult because with no refrigeration and such hot weather I can’t keep any leftovers or they will rot almost overnight and vegetables from the market only last about two days and then I can only get a limited selection until the next market day. I’ve been making a lot of green beans and potatoes, eggs, and eating a lot of fruit when I cook on my own, although I have started to cook meat with cabbage and carrots on Thursdays after I find them at the market. Most people cook with charcoal here but I have a gas stove which saves a lot of time. Everywhere I go people ask me if I am good at cooking yet or if I know how to cook rice, to which I say I’m still learning! 

I am so glad I am here and feel like I have made it past the first two big humps – Pre-Service Training and the first month at site but I miss everyone from home and would love to hear from you; you can call my phone pretty reliably from skype and texting also goes through. I hope to update again soon with an entry that feels less like a laundry list. Pictures coming soon. Love from Madagascar.

P.S. Congrats to Revo on an incredible season and on Whispers for taking babies!! 

Beginnings

Mbalatsara from Madagascar! I have now been in country for almost a month and a half and am adjusting to the living on the opposite side of the world. Literally -- I think if you draw a line from Seattle going straight through the globe you end up in the ocean with the closest island being Madagascar. This is the first time I have had internet access since I’ve been here so I have a lot of updating to do!

For those who just want the bare essentials: I’m alive, I’m safe, I haven’t been sick yet, I still do not have a pet lemur, and I’m so happy to be here. (Oh, and the dumbbell debate turned out to be moot, as I didn’t have enough space to pack them. I have been using water bottles.) Details included below…

The Journey Here

On July 11^th I took a train from New York where I had been visiting friends for the week to Philadelphia to meet my stage, which consists of 27 people from around the states, including 14 Health Volunteers and 13 Education Volunteers. I spent the morning walking around the historic district and searching for coffee with a couple of new friends until our rooms were ready for check-in. At noon, we met back in a conference room downstairs to begin staging, which consisted of seven hours of paperwork, ice-breakers, logistic sessions, and many reminders of the mission and goals of the Peace Corps in order to quadruple-check if we were still serious about accepting our invitations. After the official business was over, it was time for the event we had been talking about all day (and let’s be honest, thinking about for much longer): “The Last Supper.” Because our bus was set to leave at two am the next morning the plan was to shower, go to dinner, and stay out at the bars instead of going to bed and having to wake up early.

Armed with a generous amount of Peace Corps cash (thanks, U.S. government!) we headed out to dinner. The vote was overwhelmingly for hamburgers, which would not have been my first choice, but after ending up with a delicious lamb-burger and a beer, I was completely satisfied. The night unfolded as you might imagine it would if you were to picture 27 people in their mid-twenties headed out for their last meal and drinks in the states for two and a half years… a lot of fun.

When 2:00 finally rolled around we all met in the lobby thoroughly exhausted and ready to leave. As they were not sending any Peace Corps staff with us, I looked around before boarding the bus thinking momentarily that they must be crazy to put us on a bus in Philadelphia with nothing but a flight ticket receipt and expect all of us show up two days later in Africa, but being too tired to think about it further, I laughed to myself and fell asleep for the two hour bus ride back to New York. And the waiting began. Turns out JFK doesn’t even open until 5:00 am, so when we arrived at 4:15 (for our 11:55 flight), we sat on the curb for 45 minutes until we could move inside, where we found out we weren’t allowed to check-in until 8:00 and coffee shops didn’t open until 6:00. I’m sure someone in our stage has a picture they will post in the near future of how we spent the next three hours – approximately 2,000 pounds of baggage with their 27 owners sleeping on top of them sprawled across the JFK lobby. When the stores finally opened, we took shifts running to grab fruit and coffee and watching the bags until around 10:00 when someone figured out that all of the baggage scales at the empty, adjacent ticket counter were operating. If you have ever tried to pack for two years in one 50 pound and one 30 pound bag, you will know it can, in some cases, cause stress. Cut to everyone unpacking and repacking their bags, dragging them over to the scales, trying to remember how to convert kg to lbs, experiencing the first [lack of] technology shock when no one could use the calculator on their iPhone because most people weren’t taking their phones, and many bribes sounding something like “If you take these two pounds from me I will buy you your first roll of toilet paper”.” Eventually almost everyone managed to reach a satisfactory baggage weight, and we dragged our stuff over (again in shifts) to check-in. Getting through security was relatively easy and we made it to our gate with another two hours to spare. This time was spent passing around the two remaining cell phones and listening to everyone make their final goodbye calls. At 11:15 there was a collective realization that there would only be plane food for the next 24 hours, so we made our way over to the closest (and only) food vendor in the terminal: Panda Express. Panda Express actually doesn’t open until 11:30, so we sat and watched them cook the first couple of dishes, waiting for the cashier to show up for work. The American National Junior Rugby team, also on our flight to Johannnesburg, got wind of our plans for Chinese, so we attracted quite the crowd around the very confused Panda Express chef. He finished cooking the first three dishes just in time for us to board, and thankfully he let us order them before he finished cooking the rest of the menu. I walked away confused at whether I was really hungry for Chinese food at brunch time and how I felt that my last meal in the U.S. was really airport Hunan Beef and noodles. It still tasted pretty good.

There isn’t much to write about the next day and a half because, thankfully, I slept almost the entire way there. We touched down in Johannesburg and had to run through the airport to make our connecting flight to Madagascar. On July 13^th at around 2:00 pm, we landed in Antananarivo with all 27 of us in tow.

Several current volunteers (PCV’s) and the Country Director (CD) met us at the airport where we got through security fairly quickly and boarded two large white vans to head to the Peace Corps Training Center (PCTC). I sat next to the driver, who gave me my a Malagasy language lesson over the four hour drive to the Center. My first words were “trondro tsara” (good fish). It was dark when we arrived at the PCTC and we were all starving and exhausted. The Language and Cross Culture Facilitators (LCF’s) fed us dinner (rice, fish, and beans), sang us a welcome song, and sent us to bed.

The next two days we spent learning basic “survival” language, sitting through orientation sessions, and generally acclimating to our new environment. That Saturday afternoon we packed into 4x4’s and drove the short (but terrible) “road” to Lohomby to meet our home stay families. As we pulled up to a fork, all of the families were waiting in a crowd to welcome us. We grabbed our stuff and awkwardly walked out essentially only knowing how to say “My name is ________,” “Nice to meet you,” and “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Homestay

Lohomby is very small village outside the commune of Mantasoa in the highlands of Madagascar. It is currently winter here (June, July, and August) so though it is starting to warm up, the weather has been cold. The temperature probably isn’t that low (maybe 40’s-50’s) but with no heating, few warm clothes, and most of the day spent outside, it feels much colder. The landscape is hilly, green, and filled with rice paddies and other small agricultural plots. The houses are a mix between local materials (wood slat or clay walls with a thatched roof) and bigger, concrete structures, which is what I lived in. My house was actually fairly big compared to many of the others, with two floors, an eating room with a dining table, a tiny food-prep room, a closet for the chickens, and three bedrooms. There is no running water or electricity there and no inside bathroom. Outside the house there is a little thatched structure with a brick wall in the middle creating two separate dirt spaces, one for the kabone (squat toilet) and one for the ladosy (“shower” space). Most families cook on wood fires indoors but I was lucky to have a small cook space outside so I wasn’t constantly inhaling smoke (this is one of the main causes of the pervasive and, for infants, deadly Upper Respiratory Infections that I will be addressing). We also ate our meals at the table, though most of the volunteers stayed with families that ate more traditionally on large floor mats called “lambanana.” Because my mom is a farmer, we had plenty of chickens running around the house and all of our leftovers were boiled and given to the two pigs tied outside the door. Our house was clustered on a hill with two other houses that were also hosting PCT’s, so Eric and Mariana and I were very close neighbors.

My family consisted of a 61-year-old woman named Ramanana, my “neny” (mom), and her 15-year-old niece named Faniry, my “rahavavy” (sister). Never having hosted a PCT before, they were anxious to take care of me well and nervous to make mistakes, but I could not have asked for a better host family. Most of the first two days were spent with my mom addressing me in rapid Malagasy, me looking nervous and nodding, my sister trying to repeat it slowly, and me still not understanding. I knew things were going to be okay when after dinner on the first night, I was washing dishes with Faniry and, after finishing the plates and spoons, I lifted the big silver bowl out of the sink and dumped the water. Evidently, the big silver bowl was the “sink,” and all the dirty dish water rushed through the huge hole under the bowl and flooded the kitchen floor. We hadn’t even learned the word “sorry” yet. Faniry and Ramanana gasped but then burst out in laughter. Ice broken.

Over the next four weeks I learned, with much help from my sister, a lot about daily life in Madagascar. A typical day looked something like this (numbers denote an explanation below):

5:00 am - Rooster crows, I wake up.

5:15 am - Get out of bed, brush teeth, empty po, and fetch water (1,2)

5:30 am - Go running (3)

6:15 am - Get dressed, help cook breakfast, shower (4)

6:45 am - Breakfast (5)

7:00 am - Wash dishes (6)

7:20 am - Read, study, journal, etc.

8:00 - 12:00 - Language class (7)

12:30 pm - Lunch

12:30 pm - Wash dishes

2:00 - 5:00 - Technical or Cross-cultural Session (8)

5:30 - Help cook dinner

6:30 - Dinner

6:45 - Wash dishes 

7:00 - Read, study, journal, etc.

7:30 – Sleep

(1)  In most rural areas of Madagascar, people have a very real fear of witches. These witches come out as soon as the sun sets and therefore no one is allowed out of the house after dark. This poses a problem if you have to use the kabone any time starting after dinner until you wake up in the morning. The solution is the “po,” a bucket kept next to the bed used for brushing teeth and going to the bathroom during the night.

(2)  I fetched my water from a well outside my house. To use it for cooking or bathing, we treated it with sur’eau (essentially bleach). To use it for drinking, I filtered it through a personal water filter provided by the Peace Corps, and then used sur’eau. Again, I was lucky to have a well closeby. Many volunteers stayed with families who fetched their water from wells very far away or had to walk to the nearest stream.

(3)  While running in the morning, I didn’t encounter very many problems, as most people were still inside. However, the couple of times I decided to run after class/before dinner or during the weekends, I ended up creating a big spectacle. In India, the neighbors would set up their chairs on their porches and sip tea while they watched me run. Here, not only did the men stare and catcall (also true in India), but the children run behind me as I pass their houses, collecting more children as we go until I have a gaggle of 10-15 children running behind me, shouting and laughing for almost the whole run. About halfway through, I discovered a new running route that went down a forest (logging?) trail instead of through the village in order to avoid this problem.

(4)  Bucket baths are something I am still getting used to. At home, I viewed showering as an inconvenient necessity unless after a particularly bitter winter practice, in which case the point was temperature control. Without running water, the process becomes even more inconvenient, and in Madagascar I’m not playing Ultimate or running in snow. After three days of being at homestay, Faniry took me by the arm, grabbed a bucket of water and literally dragged me to the ladosy. As if talking to a child, she said “Mandro i Eric, mandro i Mariana, MANDRO i ELLEN!” She made sure I started to undress before she propped a stick against the door to hold it closed and left me alone to bathe. Anyway, the protocol is fairly self-explanatory. Draw enough water from the well or stream to fill a bucket, use a tsinga (small plastic pitcher) to pour enough water over your head to get wet, lather up with shampoo, soap, etc., pour the rest of the water to rinse, and get rid of any excess suds with the towel. (I learned from trial and error that there is not enough water in the bucket to apply and rinse soap/shampoo/conditioner separately so it’s best to do it all at once). My mom was actually nice enough to boil water for me in the morning so that I could mix it in with the well water and have a hot “shower,” which made it much more pleasant on the chilly mornings.

(5)  Food! Rice is the staple food in the Malagasy diet. All meals consist of a heaping plate of rice (or two) with a couple spoonfulls of “loaka” (side dish). The side dish could be anything from cubes of beef, to potatoes, carrots, greens, or beans. The most difficult meals were the dinners where the candle was not bright enough to illuminate exactly what was in the loaka, and I found myself very hesitant to bite into the few piece of “meat” on my plate, which often ended up being chunks of fat without any actual meat or parts of the animal I never thought I would eat. The most interesting meals were the ones my family so nicely tried to make in imitation of “American” meals, following a couple of recipes the Peace Corps provided them. The cooking execution was actually okay, but the combination of foods got lost in translation. Two standouts were plain pasta with a ton of salt and an omelet on top, and plain pasta as the side dish for our rice. One of my favorite things to eat ended up being “totovoanjo” (peanut butter), which we made ourselves (a very labor intensive process starting with roasting the peanuts, removing the shells, sifting them, grinding them in a huge mortal and pestle, and finishing by adding salt and mixing to taste). Another treat – a fruit called pibasy that grows in trees all over Lohomby. It’s looks like a cross between an apricot and a grape and is the perfect mix between tart and sweet. We pick them every time we are walking around and I probably eat around 50 each day.

(6)  Of all the chores I did at homestay including chopping wood, fetching water, sweeping the house, feeding chickens and pigs, and preparing meals, washing dishes became “mine” and after every meal, Faniry and I would stand in the kitchen together talking and washing dishes. These were actually some of my favorite times, as it was a chance to chat with my first Malagasy friend. Faniry was eager to help me learn and would often quiz me about what she had heard us learning that morning, correcting my sentence structure and providing me with new vocab. Early on, this game consisted mostly of her pointing at objects or miming and asking “what’s this?” but as my Malagasy improved, we got to have full conversations about her friends, her life, and my life back home. A couple of days in, I accidentally left the soap in the bowl when I tossed out the dirty water after washing dishes. In the morning, Faniry was grinning while she watched me search for the soap until I asked her where it was and she started laughing and said, “the dog ate the soap.” When I realized what I had done I cracked up, and when my neighbors asked me what was new later in the day, I told them what had happened. Apparently what was funnier than the dog eating the soap was that a) I thought it was so funny, b) that I, the vazaha (foreigner), could describe what happened in Malagasy, and c) that I had been stupid enough to throw the soap out with the water. From then on, many villagers’ favorite thing to say to me was “the dog ate the soap” and then start laughing. This faux-pas, along with news that I didn’t like to drink sugar in my coffee* (the subject around many family’s dinner tables during week one), and my daily runs, provided the basis for my reputation.

*The Malagasy people drink coffee with their sugar instead of the other way around.

(7)   Every morning one of the Language and Cross Cultural Facilitators (LCF’s) would come over for four hours of language instruction along with Mariana and Eric. Being able to learn Malagasy was one of the things I was most anxious about before coming and it has ended up being so much fun. Immersion is absolutely the best way to learn a language. In some ways, Malagasy is an easy language to learn because it doesn’t use gender for any names, doesn’t conjugate verbs according to subjects, and doesn’t differentiate between plural and singular. On the other hand, the words are all very long, using various repetitions of only a couple sounds, making everything sound very similar and causing each word to be about 4 syllables too long. Nonetheless, I have made good progress and I am loving being able to speak Malagasy. The only setback so far was after passing our first LPI a level above where we are supposed to be right now, I switched to learning a dialect called Sakalava, which is basically like starting back at the beginning except few people around me actually speak Sakalava so it’s harder to practice.

(8)  After lunch we would walk about 2k to the local EPP (primary school), which was empty because it is now vacation. These sessions would alternate between cross-cultural training where we would talk about Malagasy customs and living in small communities in Madagascar, and technical training where we would go over the different health issues we are supposed to be addressing here and how they are currently being dealt with. Once a week we would also be picked up in the morning and driven to the training center where we spent all day in Safety and Security and Personal Health sessions. Though we were always happy to be at the center, the topics of these trainings ranged from all the ways you can in a taxi brousse, to the different locks you must buy for your house in order to avoid being robbed, to the myriad parasites and worms we will get, to prophylaxis techniques for diseases that don’t even exist in the states anymore… at least we were able to charge our ipods at the same time.

The weekends provided us with some free time. Saturday afternoons were usually dedicated to laundry and studying. Laundry provided me with one of the first of many déjà vu moments since coming to Madagascar when I asked my sister to teach me the best way to do laundry in a bucket. It wasn’t until I poured the soap in and started to knead that the smell of the detergent and the gritty feeling on my skin reminded me that in fact I did know how to do bucket laundry as I had done it all year in India. On Sunday mornings everyone attended church after breakfast. The three-hour services were hard to understand and by hour two, the benches built for much shorter people started digging into our knees and backs. The biggest surprise came during the last thirty minutes when the deacon brought out a basket of food and kicked off what is apparently a weekly auction for fruit and vegetables – highest bidder wins. After church, we walked home and cooked lunch, and then the health volunteers would meet in front of my house to walk about 3-4k into the commune of Mantaosa where the education volunteers were staying. The village children would come along and meet the kids from Mantasoa at the field in front of the Lycee where we alternated teaching them American games and learning their Malagasy games. Soccer was a favorite.

After four weeks at homestay, I was both sad to leave my family and also ready to go back to the training center. Both my mom and my sister cried that morning and my sister gave me her favorite necklace and bracelet. I had taken a picture of me with Faniry and Ramanana a couple of weeks earlier and given it to Richard, the Peace Corps driver, to take to Tana and develop for me. I put the photo in a frame I made from firewood and gave it to them as a going away gift. The one thing I was happy to leave behind was the wildly aggressive bed bugs that have been eating me alive despite several attempts to DDT them to death and wash my sheets.

The PCTC

We arrived back at the PCTC last Thursday. If homestay is a dose of reality in Madagascar, the PCTC is Malagasy summer camp. The center is in a large gated compound on a lake (wonderful but not swimmable because of schistosomiasis). There are canoes, a sand volleyball court, a basketball court, a beautiful stone dining room, dormitories, classrooms, picnic tables, an infirmary, flush toilets, and electricity. Meals are served three times a day, morning snack is provided, and they set up a bar every evening. Once a week they even wash our sheets and towels for us! After language and technical trainings each day, we play volleyball, watch movies, set up speakers and dance, or play games (I have been teaching everyone my favorite WP and HVC games including mafia, salad bowl, and “wah,”). So that we maintain our language proficiency, we are not allowed to speak English between the hours of 7:00 am – 7:30 pm. We are actually handed out red cards and fined if we are heard speaking anything but Malagasy.

Though the PCTC is a bubble of luxury, I often remind myself to enjoy it while I can as there are only four weeks left until swearing in, after which I will be driven to the far north and dropped off in my hut in a small village without amenities or friends. In preparation for this, I organized a “technology swap” last Sunday where we all brought our computers and kindles out and spent the morning swapping movies, tv shows, music, and books. I now have all the books I should ever have read (or read better) on my kindle and am ready to dive [back] into the classics.

Madagascar

Mantasoa is in the highlands of Madagascar outside of Antananarivo, which provides a very different atmosphere than the coastal regions. Since this is the only place I have been so far, I can only speak about what it’s like on the plateau and relay what I have learned in cross-cultural sessions. First off, the Malagasy people are extremely friendly, though somewhat conservative in the highlands and very shy. Everyone says hi to everyone in the village whether they know you or not. There is also a “yes” culture here where it’s sometimes hard to get a straight answer because no one wants to answer “not” to a question even if, in reality, the answer is no. Though not in terms of technology and infrastructure, Madagascar feels fairly western in some aspects of culture like dress and attitude. Both men and women wear western clothing (there is a traditional women’s dress for certain ceremonies), Christianity is by far the predominant religion, and the attitude toward marriage and sexuality seems to be fairly liberal (although homosexuality is illegal here). In this regard, living in Madagascar has been a big change from my experience in India where Hinduism was predominant, all women and most men wore traditional dress, and there were many taboo subjects. 85% of the population here is rural/agricultural (a huge number), which actually means that though there are very clearly defined gender roles, sexism doesn’t seem to be quite so violent or pronounced as it can often become – with more “development” often comes more developed systems of oppression. 

Economically and politically, Madagascar is struggling. The Forbes report published right before we arrived that Madagascar’s economy now ranked #1 for worst economy in the world. As the biggest rice consumers per capita, Madagascar produces a lot of rice, but is now having to import rice internationally just to feed its own population. USAID provides much of the funding for NGO projects but I think that all direct U.S. funding has been cut off because we do not officially recognize the government, which has been “transitional” since 2009. They have been promising to hold elections ever since installation, but have yet to make progress in that direction. People I have talked to here tell me that most likely the serving president will be elected because no one will vote, so politically the country won’t change much except for being recognized internationally and re-granted funds. Clearly Madagascar is poor, but the poverty here feels different than poverty in India or the U.S. and I think it’s because it’s not seen in such juxtaposition with incredible wealth. Here, everyone is poor, almost everyone lives in a rural area, and even in the cities, the apparent wealth is not as ostentatious. The problems that this type of poverty creates also adds to the feeling that the poverty here is understated, ubiquitous, and inescapable as opposed to more aggressive, obvious poverty that only affects parts of the population. For example, qualitative malnutrition is a major cause of deaths in children under 5 years old, meaning that they are eating enough food, just not the right kinds (they are eating coffee and rice).

In some ways, the geography feels very similar to parts of rural Southeast Asia. The local materials and structures in Lohomby and Mantasoa could easily be in a Vietnamese or Cambodian village. One of the biggest differences I have noticed is how sparsely populated it feels. The country is overwhelmingly green with rolling hills in a way that reminds me of Kerala, India. Because it’s not so densely populated, even though people still dispose of all their trash by dumping it outside on the ground, it’s much cleaner even in the cities. For the same reason, combined with the fact that there are fewer manufacturing plants, the air also feels cleaner. The most confusing sight here is the flora – Madagascar has the oddest collection of plants. There are palm, bamboo, eucalyptus, and mango trees next to many things I don’t recognize next to…pine trees. Yes, that smell of pine trees mixed with dry heat that instantly puts me in my grandparent’s backyard, at a soccer tournament in Eastern Washington, or hiking in the Cascades by my cabin is all over my village. I still don’t quite know how pineapples and pine can share root space, but it throws me off on a daily basis.

There you have my five weeks of Madagascar. We have four weeks of training left and then I will move to my permanent site, which is a commune in the North called Betsiaka, between Ambilobe and Diego. I am so excited about my placement. The North is hot, has a rainy season, is near the remaining rain forest in Madagascar, has tons of tropical fruit, and is near Nosy Be, a beautiful vacation destination. Jason, my friend from home, is also very close by so we will be able to see each other at least once a month when we bank. I miss you all very much and would love to hear from you. I will be able to read emails and facebook about once a month, letters are always appreciated, and if you call my phone number on your skype account, it’s really cheap (and I would love to chat on the phone if I have service). I’ve also updated the “package requests” list on the sidebar if you are thinking of sending a package J. Love to everyone.

The countdown

Hi! The last time I wrote in a blog was March 2007, about a month before I came home from India. (http://emarieindia.blogspot.com/). 4 years and a college degree later, I am starting over, this time to write about my adventures as a Peace Corps Health Volunteer in Madagascar...

This process began for me almost a year ago. Here's a timeline to catch you up!

July 19, 2010: Create online application

September 15, 2010: Meet with the Peace Corps advisor at school for the first time (of many) to talk about the application process and have my first peace corps freak out session.

September 23, 2010: Recommendation letters submitted (thank you, Jason and Marjorie!)

October 1, 2010: Turned in my application!! (After leaving for Indiana for a tournament, realizing the time difference would cause me to miss the midnight deadline, and making my car pull over to a random hotel and convince the front desk to let me connect to the internet... thanks WUWU!)

October 13, 2010: Submitted my fingerprints and a million surveys about diet, significant other status, religion, etc.

November 9, 2010: Had first interview with my regional recruiting officer from Chicago.

November 17, 2010: Nominated for health work in Sub-saharan Africa!

November 19, 2010: Received medical, dental, and legal paperwork.

January 7, 2011: Doctor and dentist appointments to fill out very confusing paperwork and have 8 vials of blood drawn...

February 5, 2011: Received Medical clearance!

March 25, 2011: Informed that due to budget cuts, the invitation timeline for health placements would be pushed back.

April 7, 2011: Asked for an updated resume and transcript

May 2, 2011: Had a final placement interview.

May 5, 2011: Received invitation to serve in Madagascar!!!!!

May 12, 2011: Accepted invitation.

May 20, 2011: Submitted aspiration statement and country-specific resume.

May 22, 2011: Submitted visa and passport application materials.

June 17, 2011: Receive Staging information, informed I need to obtain Yellow Fever vaccine by next Friday

June 21, 2011: Receive Yellow Fever vaccination, Book tickets to Philadelphia

July 6, 2011: Arrive in New York to say goodbye to East Coast friends

July 11, 2011: Arrive in Philadelphia for staging

July 12, 2011: (2 am) check out of hotel to leave for Johannesburg, South Africa

July 13, 2011: Leave Johannesburg for Antananarivo, Madagascar