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!!