Dear New People

So—hello! I’m Rowan, pronounced ROW-in, don’t let the Malagasy pronunciation fool you. Environment volunteer in the Northeast, near Sambava. There’s a new group of people setting off for Madagascar in February, and I thought I’d say hello ahead of time, hopefully before some of you start shopping. The PC bombards you with papers before you leave, most of which are unfortunately way out of date, particularly with technology issues. So here’s a quick overview of some stuff to keep in mind while planning and packing. Take advice with a grain of salt, it’s just my opinion, and other PCVs, feel free to add ideas in comments!

Schedule

So if your schedule is like ours, your group will consist of both Environment and Business Development volunteers, and there will be somewhere around 30 of you. You’ll meet in an East Coast city (probably DC, but that might change) for a day or two of orientation—completing paperwork, doing icebreakers, talking about the schedule. Then you’ll be on a plane for 2 days of fun-filled insomnia (I watched a lot of plane movies). They’ll probably put you up in a hotel in South Africa for a night to get some sleep. Then, when you arrive in country, there’ll be a little whirlwind of introductions from PC Mad staff, including (probably) some more shots and (definitely) malaria pill handouts.

Soon after you get in country, you’ll be paired with a host family, who you’ll live with for most of your first 10 weeks in country. My stage was placed with host families about the second day, but they may change that with the new stage and put you in the training center for awhile first. The first 10 weeks is training—usually, a half day of language classes and a half day of tech training 5 ½ days per week, with one day a week reserved for medical, security, and administration lectures, and Sundays off to do laundry and study.

Your first week, you’ll have an interview with your APCD—the director of your sector—to discuss your site placement, and you’ll get your site assignments soon after. Then, many people will switch to learning a dialect instead of Standard Malagasy. You’ll visit your site around week 5 and swear in as official volunteers after 10 weeks.

Exotic Diseases

This is one of the biggest things people freak out about, and one of the things volunteers care least about. If you get sick, the Peace Corps doctors will take care of you, period. If you have issues with your malaria prophylaxis, you can probably switch. If you’re missing a shot, you can get it here. You get Western-style medical care in PC.

Packing

Oh, the difficulty of packing. Don’t worry too much about the weight limit, but do make sure you can move everything yourself. And if you ARE obsessing about the weight limit, you’re trying to bring too much. Really. Unless you’re me, in which case all those books were totally necessary, thank you very much.

The most important things to remember (again, my opinion): DO bring a computer and thumb drives. DON’T BOTHER with the stupid solar chargers. DO bring stuff to do. DON’T go too crazy with medications and toiletries, you can get those in country.

Electricity

Most Business volunteers, most Education volunteers, half of Health volunteers, and about a quarter of Environment volunteers have electricity. (By the way, that does mean: Environment volunteers, don’t hold your breath.) During training, you can bank of having electricity once a week at the training center. Even if you’re placed at a site without electricity, most solar chargers are pathetic enough that unless you go majorly high end, they barely function. Not worth it. Also, you can buy a solar charger in-country called Tough Stuff that functions better than the crap you can get in the States for the same price (though it only charges cell phones, batteries, and the Tough Stuff solar lamp). A lot of volunteers can find places at their site to charge stuff, usually off generators. Bottom line: don’t get solar chargers, figure on charging stuff electrically. You DO probably want to get an adapter in the States (plug adapter, you probably don’t need a converter). You can get them here, but you probably won’t have an opportunity to go shopping until you’ve been here for quite awhile! It’s the usual African/European plug, two round prongs.

Technology

Like I said, this is one area where PC’s paperwork is really outdated. First off, that PC address they tell you to set up on Yahoo? You don’t need it, most volunteers use their regular Gmail or whatever. Internet access is still really variable here—some people have daily access to it, some people can only get to it once a month. During training, don’t hold your breath, you’ll probably have internet access like twice.

DO bring a computer and one or two thumb drives (USB keys, external minis, whatever you want to call them). Unless you are purposefully trying to fall off the grid (which IS legitimate), you probably want a computer. A lot of PCVs have netbooks like Dell Inspiron mini. If you buy new, it’s a good idea to get a big battery—mine lasts 6 hours, so charging it once a week works out pretty well. Yeah, I know PC still says they prefer you not to have one—but like I said, that’s outdated. PC expects you to do quarterly reports by computer and an extensive report and Powerpoint presentation during your first three months at site. Plus, it’s really nice to be able to upload photos and watch movies (digital movies, very few people bother with those DVD things). Thumb drives are necessary to get paperwork, upload blog posts and such at internet cafes, and (if large enough) get movies. I brought 2 and am happy I did because a LOT of Malagasy computers (and, OK, volunteer computers too) have viruses, so I use one for when I think I’m on a computer that might have a virus. The other one stays “clean” (I hope).

One of the reasons PC recommends to not bring a computer is because it makes you a target for theft and puts you above the community, and that’s totally legitimate. But most PCVs, I think it’s fair to say, DO have a different material reality than the people they live with. Forget tech stuff—I’m considered rich in my community because I have real shoes, a gas stove, and a mountain bike. That said, I keep my tech stuff out of sight so most people don’t know I have a computer or iPod. Voila, problem solved.

Radio—you can get cheap radios in country, but they don’t pick up shortwave very well. If you want to listen to the news, get a shortwave in the States. I can’t really help you with specs, but anything you get in the States will be better that what you get here.

Communications

As mentioned, internet access varies a lot and don’t expect to email during training. Once you’re at site, you can reassess. Cell phone coverage, however, is pretty decent, and you can expect to have a cell phone starting not too long after you get here—say the 2^nd week. Your U.S. phone will not work here unless it’s specifically international—you have to be able to change the SIM chip (usually located behind the battery). Besides, phones here are cheap. It’s still pretty expensive to call in and out of Mad—30 cents a minute either way, and Skype’s no cheaper. For best rates, my parents use a calling card, and volunteers in country often have an Orange SIM chip (Orange=cell phone company) just for calling out, because they have the lowest international rates. (I’ll throw it out there, though, that they always drop my calls in country, which is why I have a second one for in-country calling. SIM cards are cheap, you can have as many as you want.)

Clothes

Yes, Mad’s in the tropics and I have sweat pouring down my face as I’m writing this because it’s almost a hundred with high humidity. There’s a big temperature range, though, so don’t bring just t-shirts. During the cold season (July-August) in the highlands, it gets into the upper 30s sometimes. Yipes. On the other hand, here up north, I haven’t put on long sleeves in 4 months. I live in cargo capris, flipflops, and cotton tshirts. It’s liberal here and any clothing goes, but further south, they prefer you to cover up a little more (any people down south want to comment on that, please do). Your best bet it to bring a lot of cotton t-shirts and a little of everything else and augment your wardrobe once you get to site—there’s lots of secondhand Western clothes here, once you’re comfortable enough to brave the craziness of the frip markets.

Don’t get too crazy packing warm clothes because I mentioned the 30s thing, but do make sure you at least throw in a fleece. Since you’ll be leaving the States in February, I doubt that’ll be a problem. Everyone says to bring lots of good underwear, and I agree, it’s hard to find here. It rains a lot here, although I think that after awhile PCVs just give up staying dry and wander around in the rain (again, I’m Environment). PC says to bring nice clothes, and you should bring at least one set for things like meeting your counterpart, swearing in, and getting dragged to official ceremonies once you’re at site. A skirt/slacks and nice shirt is fine, you don’t have to go crazy. Keeping in mind that I’m female and an Environment PCV—if any SED people feel like commenting about workplace wear, be my guest. And one of the male PCVs I live near commented that he wished he brought a dozen pairs of basketball shorts and left the rest at home, so guys, there you go. Again, Environment.

Other Packing Info

Let’s see, what else?

DO bring stuff to do, you’ll have spare time to twiddle your thumbs regardless of sector—welcome to the speed of the African workplace. If you’ve ever wanted to take up the harmonica or read War and Peace, now’s your chance. (War and Peace was good, btw, we had a little book club going.) In any case, bring books to replenish our volunteer library and add to the trade network of volunteer books. If you’re placed in the Sava region, I will probably be after you at some point to trade books with me. Just to warn you.

Toiletries: you can get most things here, though shopping time the first 2 months will be limited. But rest assured, Madagascar isn’t the end of the world: you can get Palmolive soap, Pantene or Garnier shampoo, Colgate toothpaste, etc. So pack one of each from home just to get you through the first couple months and relax.

That said, two things are hard to find here: face wash and conditioner (can you get conditioner at Jumbo? Anyone know?) I haven’t needed to use conditioner much here, it’s humid, but if you’re attached to your face wash, bring a bottle and ask people to send you more.

Medical Supplies: Peace Corps gives out lots of medical supplies—you’ll get a partial kit within a few day of getting here and a full kit after about a month. This includes dental floss (hard to find here, so PC gives it to you), sunscreen (ditto), pink bismuth (aka Pepto Bismo), bandaids and gauze, antibiotic ointment, calamine lotion, lip balm with SPF, mosquito repellent (the stick kind), antihistamines, antacids, motion sickness pills, Epipens (if you have major allergies), et cetera ad infinitum. Lots of stuff. Don’t waste too much space with medical supplies.

Lots of PCVs say to bring envelopes. Not really necessary. You can get them in country, and the cheapest way to send letters is to get the prepaid ones anyway. If you do bring a few envelopes, get the ones with the peel off sticker—if you get the ones you need to lick, they will seal themselves closed in the humidity.

I’m happy I brought: A journal. A good hat—Malagasys have small heads, and it takes awhile to find one that fits here. A small combination lock for the transit house lockers (you can get locks with keys in country no problem). My own pillow—that’s obviously very optional, but it packed down pretty small, didn’t take up much weight, and is much better that the ones I can buy locally. A photo album—30 or so pictures of family, friends, and where I lived, to give people a visual of the States and to have something to talk about with people, especially the first week at site. Buy a cheap album from the drugstore to put pictures in, otherwise they will be ruined very quickly by the dirty hands of small children.

Anything else? Eh, I dunno, I’ll update if I think of something. Feel free to ask me questions (though it may take me a week or so to respond). Check Facebook to see if people from your stage have started up a group.

Have fun packing (though I know it’ll be a while yet)!

Rowan

Taxi Brousses and More Conversations

Getting anywhere is an adventure, usually in a good way. My town is only an hour from the nearest city, but getting there is still a trip. Taxi brousses (TB) break down frequently, particularly the station wagon type. The last TB I was on died for the fourth time just outside of Sambava and refused to restart or be easily fixed. Happily, some vanilla exporters I know saw me on the road and gave me a ride into town. Another time the other passengers and I had to walk about 2 kilometers before I got on another TB--the other passengers kept walking, claiming the original car would pass soon.

Waiting for the TB is also interesting, but often not in a good way. Despite the fact that everyone knows I speak at least some Malagasy, people will talk about while I'm standing next to them. Sometimes I’ll muster up the energy to respond, but mostly I just listen to see what I can pick up--the conversations are sometimes entertaining, sometimes irritating, and sometimes baffling. For example:

“I saw pictures of her, she used to be fatter.” [Malagasies don’t really get the concept of winter clothes]
“Iah, she needs to eat more rice, way too skinny.”
“She says she eats a kapoaka [1.5 cups dry, it's a lie] rice every day”
“That’s IT?!?”

“Isn’t she cold in that t-shirt?” [77 degrees…]
“She says it’s never cold here. It must be ice in America all the time.”

“Why hasn’t she changed color? She’s still white.”

“Where does the Madame live?”
“Mademoiselle, she doesn’t have a husband.”
“Why not?” [to me] “Hey foreigner, you should marry the driver’s assistant.”
Me: “Uh…no thanks.”
“What, you wouldn’t marry a black man? You would only marry white men?”
Me: [silently] Sorry, all potential husbands must at least have a middle school diploma and teeth.

Driver's Assistant: Ah, you are beautiful!

Me: Gee thanks, I think [Wait for it...]

Driver's Assistant: Yes, a nice face!

Me: mmhnn. [Wait for it...]

Driver's Assistant: You have a husband in the America? [There it is!]

Me: Nope.

Driver's Assistant: You have a fiancee?

Me: Yup. [Lies, all lies]

Driver's Assistant: In the America?

Me: Yup. Fiancee in the States.

Driver's Assistant: Oh, but that's so far. You should have a husband here. [Do men have a perpetual hope gene I'm not aware of?]

Me: Nope, having an imaginary one 11,000 miles away sounds about right to me. [I'll just let you guess which of these responses are aloud]

Driver's Assistant: Is he Malagasy? You need a Malagasy man.

Me: Not by any stretch of the imagination. I make more money than you, anyway.

Driver's Assistant: Yes, your second fiancee should be Malagasy.

Me: So it's not bigamy if there's a Malagasy involved?

Even when I do get involved with my Malagasy, what I'm saying doesn't always translate. Malagasies have a script in their head for what white people should say, and don't always catch on when I deviate from my lines. For example:

Me [in taxi]: I'm getting out at the market. [keeps driving] Hey, I'm getting out here.

Driver: The bank is up ahead.

Me: I'm not going to the bank, I'm going to the market.

Driver: What?

Me: I'm going to the market, it's right here!

Driver: What?

Me: HERE. I am getting out HERE. NOW.

Driver: Oh, here, OK.

At the "store"

Me: Hey, give me some Tuc crackers, please?

Owner: Huh?

Me: Tuc crackers? [blank stare] Tuck? Took? Toooook? OK, I know one of those was right, work with me here...

Owner: [hands me a pack of Good Look cigarettes]

Me: Hey, uh, no, the CRACKERS? Tuc? The yellow box. Right there. Where I am pointing. Beneath the soap.

Owner: You want Coke?

Oh, intercultural communication...

Work

As I’m typing this, a 2 inch cockroach and a 4 inch gecko are fighting on the wall of my hotel room. FYI.

The world map is done! I tried to get one of the teachers to take a picture of me with it to give an idea of size, but after 5 full minutes of making tiny adjustments to how he was holding the camera and calling me over several times to confirm the picture, he still managed to take the picture at a 25 degree angle. Anyway, my head’s the same height as the U.S.—the map’s 9.5 by 4.5 feet. There are, admittedly, a few mistakes—Slovenia disappeared at some point during the painting process, Burma is longer than Thailand, there’s a new unnamed country next to Armenia, and the Caspian Sea is green and unlabeled, but I’m happy to have something concrete in town that I can point to and say, hey, I did that. There were a few issues that came up in doing the project, even aside from the constant rain—I had to label the countries in French, and had to answer political questions like—does Taiwan get its own country label? Burma or Myanmar? Is anyone going to care that the small countries of the world are missing? (My apologies to Liechtenstein and East Timor, and I went with yes and Burma on the other two questions).

Every time I mention a new project to people in my area, they assume I’ve abandoned all the others to focus on it, but no, it’s just the sane way to deal with Africa—I start projects with the unfortunate certainty that at least half won’t work out for various reasons of economy, politics, culture, and common sense. Two of the projects I’m involved currently in are working with vanilla cooperatives and taking the first steps in starting a fish farming project. I’m fairly excited about both of them, but am trying not to hold my breath.

People have been asking me to raise the price of vanilla since I got here—vanilla prices have plummeted to 5-10% of their high price a decade ago, in part because that price was inflated because of projected cyclone damage, and in part because most large purchasers are switching over to fake vanilla flavoring. Last week, a former Peace Corps volunteer who still works in Madagascar with vanilla export visited my town to evaluate local cooperatives and vanilla samples. I had been cautioning people ahead of time not to get too excited—the vanilla market is down, the cooperative already has a contract with another area, and even if they do export from my commune, it will only be the very best quality vanilla. Still, I’m sure some people got their hopes up and were disappointed that offers to buy the commune’s entire vanilla supply at double rate were not forthcoming. Still, I think the meetings were productive, and people from my area were so excited that they dressed in their Sunday best and turned up at my house starting 2 hours before the meeting to make sure they didn’t miss anything. By the time the co-op rep got there, I had about a dozen people in my kitchen, half in chairs and half on a floor mat. They had good, democratic, interesting discussions about co-ops and vanilla prices—until the mayor showed up. I hadn’t invited him because he enjoys his status more than actual work, and tends to take things over with meaningless speeches—and so it was. He spent 20 minutes interrupting everyone else’s comments to declaim empty rhetoric about how important development work was, then asked the co-op rep to install satellite internet in the commune. The town office still uses a typewriter to produce documents—no computers or electricity. Anyway, the meetings got useful again after he left, and while nothing’s solid yet, we might be able to do some cool work with the co-op in the near future.

The fish farm is another type of project entirely. I was approached by a smart 16 year old with an idea of students farming and selling fish to raise money for their school fees. I listened to the project, determined it wasn’t totally insane (like the helicopter landing pad or tourist information center projects), and told him to get back to me with a list of materials and how much they would cost. And here’s the crazy thing—he did. The next day. Along with a list of students, an adult president/consultant, potential market sellers, and a group mission statement. And then they invited me to come see the three dirt pools they had already set up, with space for a total of 7 cement pools that could house almost 5000 fish. To visit, I biked the 9k (4.5 miles) to the town, over the Hill from Hell (1/2 mile, UP), and wandered around with them through the rice fields to the already-started pools. I broke my flipflop in the process and ended up walking a kilometer barefoot in the backwoods—no complaints, since at least ½ the people in my area don’t have/use shoes at all. And they suffered though my labored explanations of cost/benefit analysis and project calendars in Malagasy, and were willing to change the project. And they spent a ½ hour pleasantly arguing over how long it would take for the project to turn a profit and recoup investment, after I told them NGOs might consider that important. I’ve been really impressed with them so far—they’re far more responsive than any other group I’ve dealt with—and hope I can help them. It might be difficult, since among other things, many NGOs nonsensically don’t pay for the transport and labor costs that make up over half the project budget, but—we shall see.

I sometimes feel like my projects are more business-related than environment or agriculture, but they have a lot of potential. The vanilla co-op could give a slight boost to the salaries of dozens of farmers and the co-op might help with other development projects; the fish farming project would supply more reliable protein an calcium in the area, help put the kids through school, and teach them a trade. That is, if the Murphy’s law of Africa allows the projects to work. Like I said, I’m not holding my breath just yet. And in the meantime, if anyone has $10,000 lying around to get the fish farming project going, just let me know, OK? J

Giving Thanks

Well, it’s that time of year again, and while I would never be so patronizing as to tell family and friends what they should be thankful for, here are a few things that fill me with gratitude…

Things I’m grateful for in the United States:

I guess people in the U.S. are so used to the lifestyle it’s hard to appreciate, but do try! It’s pretty unique both in the world and world history—Waking up in the morning to a hot shower, electricity, (mostly) unbiased news, internet and cell service that instantly connects you to family and friends, drinkable water from the tap, fruits available year-round, a car, gas reliably available for way too cheap, the ability to reliably send a letter across the country for only 42 cents, Netflix…OK, I’ll stop. A few of the things I am most grateful for in the U.S.:

1. Public Libraries—Have you hugged a librarian today? Books are a luxury here, and having a place where EVERYONE has access to infinite information, free books and newspapers, free internet and entertainment—it’s an amazing resource. There is no place I’d rather have my tax dollars going.
2. Potable Water—so basic, and such a dangerous pain in the butt when you don’t have it. Bad water (often contaminated with human waste because people rarely use designated bathrooms here, they just wander out into the woods) is responsible for several deaths in my commune every year. (I use a PC-issued filter and bleach to clean my drinking water.)
3. Disease-Free Mosquitoes—I remember getting back from traveling in a country with malaria and getting insanely bitten up while hiking in a swamp back in the States. I felt almost euphoric because I KNEW I wouldn’t be getting malaria from the bites. Or dengue. Or yellow fever. Or…
4. Garbage Collection—there is none here. People drop it in their backyard to let animals go through it or put in a pile and set it on fire. Plastics are especially annoying. The sad thing is, of course, that garbage disposal in the U.S. isn’t necessarily better, it just gets it away from our houses and puts it in bigger piles to burn or puts it in another country’s backyard. But at least it’s not in my yard, right?
5. Good Beds—Foam mattresses suck. Bad foam mattresses suck even more. I actually miss my dorm bed in college.
6. Diversity in Culture and Consumerism—the variety of products in American supermarkets and drugstores is ridiculous, but having some choice and reliability is nice—the choice of foods with Vitamin A year-round, the reliability of flour without weevils, the knowledge that if someone is sick you can get medicine. And the cultural variety is amazing, too—one of the things I stress the most when people ask me about the States is how many cultures there are, how much cultures mix and share. Malagasy culture is (if I may oversimplify for a moment) rice, kids, and cows, and cultural differences are treated with baffled incredulity—you just had pasta for lunch? That’s not food…what do you mean, you like dogs better than cows? Having so many different cultures in the U.S. is one of our strengths, I think, and has the potential to give Americans a better perspective on things.

Things I’m grateful for here in Madagascar:

1. Government healthcare—it’s ironic, but I have better health care here in Madagascar than I did in the United States. Courtesy of Peace Corps, I have a doctor on call 24/7 (in the event that I have cell service, anyway), free medication, and the promise of out-of-country Medevac if I get something that the health infrastructure in Mad can’t handle. Plus, any needed over-the-counter medication not found in Madagascar (including sunscreen and dental floss) is mailed to me for free.
2. My education—If my education had involved rote memorization with over 60 other pupils in a leaky barn made of bamboo and leaves—well, I’d have a much different life path and I doubt it would have involved college. I’ve heard people complain (most notably, a columnist in the New York Times) that Peace Corps isn’t an effective organization because volunteers don’t have specialized training. Well honey, I’m not digging the wells by myself! The fact that I can translate between English, French, and Malagasy, can send emails and find funding, am willing to listen to, evaluate, and probably reject local project proposals, and have the audacity to do cold visits to NGOs with good project proposals—that’s the kind of thing that a lot of developing communities need, and I’m perfectly capable of doing all of that on the strength of an American undergrad education (with some PC training, as well).
3. Adventure—whatever the irritations of life here, I have lots of stories! Madagascar is an amazing and beautiful country and I’m thankful I was placed here.
4. The dream environmentally-friendly lifestyle—pollution-free star viewing, fresh local food grown by hand with no pesticides, carpooling taken to the max, no electricity or running water. Incidentally, I use less than 25 liters of water (6 gallons or so) per day for everything—drinking, cooking, showering, cleaning, washing clothes. Discounting air travel, my carbon footprint is almost zero.
5. Family and friends—having good people to rely on makes the bad times bearable and the good times awesome, even those of you who are far away!

Thankfully yours,

Rowan

Chameleons and Pineapples

I got annoyed with some of the kids bugging me while I was patching my fence so I walked toward them with this on a stick. Yes, I'm mean, but I wonder why Gasy kids are so afraid of chameleons?

I was taking pictures of the pineapples, because it's really cool to see how they grow--and hey look! Another one of my favorite critters! Btw, you can grow your own pineapples (in hot climates) by sticking the top of another one in the ground. The new baby pineapple will grow on top.

In Which I Ramble

After getting some questions in an email I received from a friend, I realized that there are a lot of specifics about life and work here that I haven’t mentioned or have just alluded to. So here you go, some not-so-juicy details of life and the education system here in Madland:

The town I live in has about 1000 people (half of them children) and is about an hour north of Sambava, a city of 30,000. The city of Sambava (the largest in the region, the Malagasy equivalent of a state) has good internet, several banks, and a post office, but only a few decent restaurants and no peanut butter or oatmeal (I stock up when I go to the capital—these things are important). I’m fortunate to be on a good road—Malagasy roads are notoriously awful. In good dry weather it takes three 24-hr days to get to the capital from where I live, which is probably the same as the distance from Seattle to Portland in the U.S.. Happily, unlike most Malagasies, I have the option of flying.

My town is stretched out along the main road—go too far off the road and you’ll fall into a poorly irrigated rice paddy. Hills and small mountains in the distance. There are lots of fruit trees—papaya, mango, banana, avocado, litchee (Looks like something Dr. Seuss would draw, tastes like a grape), makoba (kinda like a mushy apple), pisa (gross—like an orange pinecone that tastes like laundry detergent), and ampaly be (jackfruit—a giant reptilian husk that contains nodules of sticky fruit that smell like Jolly Ranchers). After a summer (winter here) of nothing but tomatoes and bananas, the start of ‘fruit season’ has really opened up my food options—mango salsa with homemade tortilla chips, mashed papayas and sugar in crepes, makoba on my oatmeal. Yum. Still no vegetables, though—they don’t grow naturally, so people would have to cultivate them, and most people don’t see the point of working for their food like that when they can get their fruit for free, just by going out into the forest and picking it.

The town I live in, Anjangoveratra, lies in a commune (American equivalent—county) of the same name. There’s no electricity or running water anywhere in my commune, though several businesses have generators that they can fire up. I get my water from a well about 100 meters away and generally embarrass myself with how long it takes my bucket to fill up. Poor well etiquette, to make someone else wait for that. It hasn’t been too bad living without electricity, as long as I can charge up about once a week when I go into the city. No running water is more of a pain, though, especially with doing laundry by hand. I’m not a fan. There are 25 towns and a 7200ha reserve in the commune, and I am the only PC volunteer and one of the few ‘outside’ presences here, so you can imagine the number of potential projects I hear about!

A good portion of my job is serving as project ‘editor’—people will come to me out of the blue and ask for project funding and I have to decide whether to pursue it or (more usually) listen politely and gently decline. New project ideas are presented to me multiple times per week—the head of the vanilla cooperative wants a solar-powered rice mill. The physics teacher wants a hydroelectric dam. The mayor wants a Red Cross station. People make requests for tractors, hurricane shelters, cows, money to expand their pineapple operations, electricity through any means possible, better cell phone reception, a camera, a library, wells here here and here, signs for the well encouraging people to bleach their water, irrigation canals, an agricultural research center, dams for the rice fields, cash, a road, three new Catholic churches, a boat, another school building, more teachers, another English Club, soccer balls and sports team uniforms…well you get the idea! So I listen as patiently as I can to the ideas, then make suggestions of how to follow up. If it’s an unlikely project (Red Cross Center) I’ll suggest they ask anNGO (the Red Cross), with the knowledge that they probably won’t. If it’s an OK suggestion (expanding pineapple operations at a farm), I’ll try to lob the ball back in their court (get back to me with a list of what you would need and about how much it would cost—that guy never did get back to me, unfortunately).

A lot of the suggestions I get are centered around teaching English. Despite my frequent protestations to the contrary, a lot of people still think I’m here to teach English, because really, why else would an American be living with them out in the middle of nowhere? People here are obsessed with learning English. Almost every day people ask me to give them private lessons and I have to decline. I have the English Club at the school, help one of the English teachers with lesson planning, and have offered to start up a separate English Club for professionals, but beyond that, there’s just too much need for me to help on an individual basis. I woke up Sunday morning and opened my window to three girls waiting for me to get up so they could demand an English lesson, and I felt terrible about it but had to send them away and tell them to come to the English Club on Wednesdays—6.30 on a Sunday morning is an especially inappropriate time for unscheduled English lessons, I think…

The obsession with English puzzles me. Madagascar was a French colony and the few tourists who show up in the nearby cities generally speak French. Virtually no one in Madagascar speaks English, including the English teachers. But EVERYONE wants to learn English. Random teens will approach me on the street to practice greetings. (More annoying than it sounds—“Introduce yourself. Where you go? You have husband?”) People will happily announce that they speak English on the strength of a half dozen memorized phrases (“Ah em verra will, tanks, an’ you? What news? No news.”) I was really puzzled at first why more of the English teachers in the area didn’t seem interested in talking with me—I work closely with one English teacher but most schools assign a teacher to English whether they know the language or not and they rarely approach me. I eventually realized that they were embarrassed by their (lack of) English ability—many can barely put a sentence together.

The way English is taught, even aside from teachers’ expertise, goes a long way in explaining the language level. Usually when I go to a new town, people ask me to stop in at the schools to introduce myself and teach the kids a few new phrases, so I’ve seen a lot of the classes in the commune. Despite the fact that a number of new schools have been built in the area (mostly by the Japanese government and the French NGO Aide et Action), there’s still not enough space in the classes or enough teachers to keep classes going. Some kids will be sent home for part of the day because there aren’t enough classrooms. Classes average 50 or 60 students, and I’ve been in two classrooms that had around 110 six-year-olds for ONE teacher. The newer building have decent desks, but in the older ones many kids just sit on the floor. There are few books—mostly, students learn by copying book excerpts from the board.

Even the teachers have trouble with the books, since their own language ability is often pretty low. The teacher I do work with frequently, who can get by pretty well in English, came over to visit me after school one day last week and asked me to help him puzzle out the rest of the lesson plans for the week, since he didn’t know what they were asking him to do. The first lesson plan, it turned out, asked him to teach the future tense through an activity with horoscopes, which he had never heard of. That was interesting to try to explain in Malagasy—with my profound apologies to people who take horoscopes seriously, my explanation went something like: “So this is like a game that foreigners play to see if ancient Greek religion can predict what is happening in their lives? And each month has a mascot…What is a Saggitarius? Uh, good question…do you know what a bow and arrow is?” After we laboriously got that lesson plan translated, he asked for help with the next lesson—also teaching the future tense, this time using the CHINESE ZODIAC. And even, better, it asked students to figure out the order of the Zodiac by decoding a logic puzzle, a concept that most teachers here have never encountered and which none have the answer key to. Happily, I like logic puzzles and was able to solve it for the teacher pretty quickly…anything else? Yeah, the next lesson plan was confusing to him as well…it was a four page mockup of a teen magazine, complete with a Dear Abby-type corner and a joke section. I have to give it to the textbook writers, they’re creative, but the material isn’t really appropriate for African classrooms, where even the teachers don’t know what is being asked of them (many of the elementary-school teachers only graduated from the Malagasy equivalent of a middle school). My favorite example from the fake teen magazine was from the joke section. Try to read this like you’re an African middle school graduate who doesn’t really speak English:

Q: How do Eskimos get dressed in the morning?

A: Very quickly.

Really? So I got to explain this one too—my apologies to the Inuit for grossly misrepresenting their culture—“Um the Eskimos are a tribe that live in the north of North America and they live in houses made of ice so it’s very cold and they have to hurry when they get dressed in the morning?”

Anyway. Enough bashing of the education system, people are doing their best with what they have. The real problem is the sheer number of kids—each family has an average of 5 or 6, and even if the parents can manage to pay for school fees on a subsistence agriculture work salary, the schools are busting at the seams with the load of TOO. MANY. CHILDREN. This is a difficult subject to approach with many people. On one hand, Gasy culture is pretty open so that there’s no problem talking with people about things like birth control (minus the presence of the Catholic Church, which in my politically incorrect opinion can go take a flying leap as far as its stance on condom use in STD/STI-ridden Africa is concerned). But Gasies love their children, and it’s not really like I can go up to families and say, “Hey look. Your kids are in rags and poorly nourished. They’re probably going to drop out of school by the American equivalent of 5^th grade. They aren’t going to have jobs when they grow up. They aren’t even going to have your barely-adequate salary because you’ll have to spilt your family rice paddy between your four sons. How about you consider getting a vasectomy?” Nope, that approach can’t work, and it’s one of the things that makes development work so incredibly frustrating. For every kid you can educate about the environment or English or the proper handwashing technique, there are another dozen who won’t get the info. Which is why development policies, again just in my humble politically incorrect opinion, should take another look at their foreign aid and stop wasting money on stupid things like building bus shelters (one of the NGOs here actually spent a lot of money on this project, despite the fact that there are no buses and even if there were, people here are perfectly capable of building their own shelters, thanks much). Instead, what if they were to reconsider what might actually be an effective approach to improving the lives of people in developing countries and by extension in our globalized world, improving our own futures in terms of environment, health, education, etc etc? What if the U.S. were to reconsider its current policy of limiting funds for family planning overseas? This has never made sense to me, since obviously if a wealthy country that has 2 children per family and a 80% or so churchgoing rate refuses to give family planning aid to poor countries with 6 children per family on the grounds of morality, there’s a ‘lil bit of hypocrisy going on.

OK! So I’m going to get off my soapbox now and go back to chipping away at the giant iceberg of sustainable development! Madly yours, Rowan.

Roommates, Guests, and Loiterers

“But Rowan, I thought you lived alone!” Oh yes, much to the befuddlement of my town, who very kindly tried to make me have some kids sleep at my house my first week or so at site, in case I got lonely. But living alone doesn’t take into account the many kinds of animal life in and around my house, some of it welcome, and some of it definitely not.

Geckos--my favorite roommates. They chortle to each other at night and eat the ants, though unfortunately not enough of them.

Ants--I hate ants. Yesterday morning I went to grab some Vache Qui Rit from my shelves--it’s a processed soft cheese that doesn’t need refrigeration. It comes in sealed aluminum packets, and the ants had not only gotten into the plastic bag I kept the packets in, but had eaten a hole into the metal wrapping and had carried away half the cheese. Overnight. Before you get any ideas about my cleanliness, I should mention that I keep everything in plastic and wipe the tables down with bleach water. They still invade.

Cockroaches--I’m happy to say that there are fewer of these than when I first moved in, and the ones I find are smaller--I guess I killed or evicted the parents? I don’t know what it is about cockroaches that humans hate so much--how fast they move? Their evil little antennae?--but they are nasty.

Mosquitoes--I’ve been planting citronelle and tomatoes around my house, as the scent is supposed to discourage mosquitoes. The citronelle also make a yummy tea when you boil it.

Spiders--The daddy-longlegs type I gently evict with a broom, but the big nasty ones I smash. Last week I spent about 10 minutes chasing a granddaddy around with my hiking boot, and was eventually successful in Operation: Arachnid Death. Now you know how I spend my time.

Scorpions--Small and nocturnal, so happily our paths don’t cross much.

Centipedes--There’s only been one so far, which stung me on the foot while I was walking across my kitchen floor. Not to be confused with millipedes, which are much larger and which I REALLY don’t want crawling across my floor. Happily, none so far.

The Mouse--I had a small and incredibly stupid mouse move in for about a week awhile ago, then abruptly move out. While it was living with me, it managed to eat nothing and ran into walls whenever it saw me.

The Rat--is now dead, I think. I hope. It's given me a lot of sewing practice, though, as it gnawed small holes in about 6 pieces of clothing.

Dogs--I’ve already mentioned Malagasies’ attitude toward dogs. I think my compost pile may be the neighborhood dogs’ main source of nutrition. Like dogs everywhere, they enjoy barking at noises, chasing chickens, and getting into fights at four in the morning.

Cows--People in the neighborhood had stopped posting their cows in my yard for awhile--they’re not supposed to--but I returned home the other day to a bull in my yard. I don’t mind much--they’re pretty quiet--but they get tangled up in the bushes sometimes and I have to drag them out by their nose ropes to stop them from bellowing.

Chickens--I am God’s gift to chickens. Not only do I have a fabulous compost pile, but I unintentionally spill a generous amount when I throw rice (to get rid

of the hulls), AND I don’t throw sticks at them to keep them away from said rice. They stalk across my grass like velociraptors, reflexes honed by years of flying sticks, and make me paranoid because I think the grass is being rustled by kids trying to sneak up to my window. I do occasionally surprise one of them when I toss dishwater out my window, mostly by accident--I’ve been entertained several times by shrieking wet flying bundles of feathers scooting away. Roosters here say cocorico, rather than cock-a-doodle-doo.

Ducks--It is, I have decided, absolutely impossible to look at a duck and be glum. Try it sometime. Really, one of the most ridiculous animals. According to Gasies, they say “draka draka”--rather than quack quack.

Pigs--My neighbors now have two enormous pigs that spend their days rooting in the grass ten feet from my door.

Too good for my yard:
Geese--the Gasies rather creatively call them “big ducks”--gana be.
Turkeys--there’s a flock (herd?) of them at the other end of town. The Gasy name for them is kolokoloko (say that out loud for full onomatopoeic effect--Os are pronounced ooh in Malagasy).

Back in the Great Rainy North

Back in the Great Rainy North (people may not complain about Seattle weather in my presence ever again). I’m getting into the swing of egging on community projects again, but was decidedly grumpy my first few days back because, among other things: my gas tank ran out the night I got back so I had to return to the city immediately to get more; I evacuated 19 spiders from my house; a rat moved into my house in my absence, and since I had prudently left no food out, had some fun munching on my soap; some of the neighbors, apparently having decided that I had moved out, went back to posting their cows in their yard, knocking holes in my fence to do so; the cows knocked more holes in my fence; the neighbors got a new pig who got loose my first day back and went galloping though my yard and—wait for it—through my fence, creating another hole, in order to investigate my compost pile; and it rained off and on for 6 days after I got back.

Lovely.

I grumbled to myself for a few days and silently fumed at people for demanding gifts (if you’re rich enough to go to the capital, you’re rich enough to bring presents back for everyone you have ever met, I guess). Then I reluctantly got up the energy to mend the fence, hire my first helper to mow my overgrown yard (with a machete and 6 children), and—do I want to admit this? OK—invent a new game I like to call Rat Bowling.

I usually retreat under my mosquito net at about 7pm to read with my solar light, listen to podcasts, and (when I have battery) watch movies on my recently-arrived netbook. The rat starts getting active about 8, and once it gets cheekily noisy, I retaliate from the safe perch of a chair in the doorway by sliding or rolling objects across my kitchen floor to slam up against whatever it’s hiding behind. Noise in the shelves? There goes the inflatable beach ball (Thanks for the gift, Kas!) Rustling behind the buckets? Bam! Goes my laundry detergent. You think my work basket will provide coverage? This lofted bottle of ibuprofen says no.

I guess I hoped this would be a humane way of evicting the annoying not-so-little animal, but it’s also entertaining. Alas, no sign of it vacating, so I’ll be looking for a rat trap this afternoon. Some animals I do not live in harmony with—cockroaches and rats are among them.

Anyway, other than that, things in my town are pretty much the same. One of the neighbors has yet to fix the roof of his (outdoor) kitchen, which caved in two months ago. About half a dozen babies were born in my almost-monthlong absence—yes, just in my little 1000+ person town. Most will be loved well, clothed and nourished poorly, get an elementary-level education, and lose a few teeth by their mid-20s.

At some point in the last few months it must have gotten around that I was a minor expert in foreign currency, because 3 or 4 people have stopped by to have me look at money from abroad—a lot of the clothing here is shipped second-hand from developed countries, and people find random items from abroad in the pockets pretty frequently. In the last few months I’ve been asked to look at and explain paper money from Korea and China and an old-style lira coin from Italy. Two days ago a toothless old man wandered into my kitchen, plopped down in a chair, and pulled out some19th-century French coins, one of which was from 1854 and had the picture of Bonaparte III on it. I’m a bit of a coin collector myself, so I was tempted to make an offer for it, but I have no idea what a fair price would be and anyway, he said he had inherited them from his grandfather. Judging by his age, I think the coins were brand-spanking new when his granddad got them.

I have no idea why he was showing them to me—perhaps he thought they would make me feel at home. People still think I’m French even after I tell them I’m American. Despite peoples’ fascination with “the foreigner”, they neglect the basics to an astonishing degree. I’ve done the introduction of where I’m from to my English club several times, and even THEY think I’m French. You’d think my crappy French would tip them off. I keep having people stop by to ask for private French tutoring and I respond—that’d be great! I really need it.

A few more episodes from my weird life. My neighbor was whistling the country/bluegrass song “(When You Say) Nothing At All” this morning while he was chopping brush with everyone’s favorite accessory, a machete. The people here love their country music. I worked in the MBG office for a while yesterday and one of my colleagues was alternately listening to Dolly Parton and Norah Jones on his computer. Every once in awhile their singing would be interrupted by a screaming chicken as he chased it out of the room and back into the yard. When I was getting water this morning, the neighbors showed me what they were harvesting for lunch—handfuls of hundreds of squirming inch-long beetles, good fried I guess. (Hey, children who are actually getting protein!) And yesterday afternoon a dude in a polar fleece fez marched into my kitchen, plopped his duck down on the floor, and proceeded to toss dried corn nibs for the duck to catch mid-air. Maybe he wants me to set up a business deal with Barnum and Bailey’s? The teen girl who was drawing at my kitchen table rolled her eyes after he left and muttered, “Crazy guy.”

So there you go, the reports have resumed from Dodge. Until next time, stay crazy.—R

Hainteny

Since I'm in the highlands right now, where they have a bit more of this "literature stuff"...

I've mentioned how much Malagasies love speeches (kabaries). They also like everything related to speeches, including proverbs and hainteny, which is a type of poetry with a lot of metaphor thrown in. So for your enjoyment (note: ambolo=chameleon):

Tanalahy ambonin-kazo ny vintana
miova volo matoa misy zaza misioka
sy satrim-parihy hitera-potaka
ao ihany raha manakobana
maro ny hazo fa ny fary no mamy
maro ny valala fa ny ambolo no tsara soratra
maro ny olona fa hianao no andrian’ny saiko

Destiny is a chameleon at the top of a tree:
a child simply whistles and it changes color-
The lake did not want to create mud,
but if the water is stirred, it appears.
There are many trees, but it is the sugar cane that is sweet.
There are many grasshoppers, but it is the ambolo that has beautiful colors.
There are many people, but it is in you that my spirit reposes.

Izaho vary ary hianao rano
an-tsaha tsy mifandao
an-tanána tsy misaraka
fa isak’izay mihaona
fitia vaovao ihany

I am the rice and you are the water:
they do not forsake each other in the country,
they do not part in the town;
but each time they meet,
there is truly new love.

If you want to read more, there's a website that has a list of hainteny here (just ignore the Czech translations), or there's a book by Leonard Fox called Hainteny.

Vacation: River, Tsingy, Baobabs

So as you may have guessed from the pictures in the last post, I've been exploring the island a bit more! After the Peace Corps training, I used up my accumulated vacation days by going on an awesome little excursion with some of the other volunteers.

Lava

The first stop was Ansirabe, the pousse-pousse capital of the country (the Malagasy version of rickshaws). A group of up chipped in for a taxi to take us out to Lake Tritriva, a pretty little turquoise volcanic lake situated above the barley fields. Yes, barley, not rice for once! Ansirabe is the HQ from Three Horses Beer, the national (basically only) beer in Madagascar. We hiked around the lake crater and watched a local man and his sons gather wild honey.

Water

A small group of us then took a too-early-morning trip to the town of Miandrivazo, where we joined up with some French and Dutch people for a 3-day ride down the Tsiribihina river in dugout canoes. The river was broad and shallow from the dry season and we had to get out to push it over sandbars a number of times. Out guide kept telling us that the Batman would guide us during the day. What? The Batman will take you! It took us a while to realize he meant the boatman. The sun was a bit harsh but the trip was peaceful, floating downriver and taking a turn with the oar now and then. We ate and camped on big sandbars and slept under the stars--though the first night I had to tuck my kisaly (wrap skirt) around my head to ward off mosquitoes.

Cows

After almost 150k of river, we hauled out at a small town where, as with everywhere else, the kids were too used to tourists. "Give me your watch." No. "Give me a pen." No. "Candy?" Sigh. There was also a constant demand for used water bottles, which I can support a bit more since it's legitimate recycling--I even saw a kid make a two-string guitar out of a discarded water bottle. After escaping the hoards of children, we loaded onto zebu (humped cow) carts for a 2 hour ride to our hotel, a hilarious little trip that involved running the cows and their rickety little wagons down dusty roads and fording the streams Oregon Trail-style.

4x4

After a very necessary shower and a good night's sleep, we squeezed into a 4x4 and drove to a campsite outside Tsingy National Park, a fairly long ride that involved nasty roads (4x4=absolutely necessary) and two river crossings by ferry. The ferries were interesting--bi- or tri-hull catamaran with a wooden plank platform. More river camping! As a side note, I continue to curse the French for introducing their concept of a breakfast to their colonies. 6 inches of dry bread with weak coffee or tea is NOT a meal, merci beaucoup.

Rocks

We spent a full day wandering around the Tsingy, which is a bit like Bryce Canyon in the States--erosion has caused slot canyons, stone pillars, and wavy fins of rock. We hiked around for 6 hours or so, squeezing between and climbing over the rocks to explore some of the caves and grottos that apparently used to be occupied by the mysterious Vazimba people, who according to Malagasy oral tradition were the first inhabitants of Madagascar. Many of the ascents and descents over the rocks were so steep that we wore harness and clipped onto cables anchored in the rock while we climbed over on ladders. There was also a great suspension bridge over one of the drops--think Indiana Jones with safety cables. The park was amazingly well kept up, despite (because of?) the fact that due to its remote location and the drop in tourism because of the political issues here, they only got 5000 visitors last year.

Lemurs

One thing Bryce definitely does not have! We saw a bunch of sifakas--lanky white little dudes who jump through the trees--a nocturnal hapalemur, and a family of brown lemurs.

Long Road South

We got back in the 4x4s to head south to Morondava--rough roads, two ferries, and LOTS of baobabs! There are a bunch of myths about the baobab, the most common being that the gods were angry at the trees' arrogance, so they yanked them up and stuck them back in the ground upside down, their roots in the air, which accounts for the baobabs' weird appearance. At sunset we were at the Avenue de Baobab, a line of massive trees, some of them 1000 years old. We left the rest of the group at Morondava, a dusty little city on the ocean, and after a brief swim in the Mozambique Channel, we headed back to Tana (Antananarivo, the capital) on 2 days of taxi brousses.

I'm flying back to site tomorrow and have some hopeful leads on working with fair trade vanilla. Peace (Corps) Out!

Pics: The Wild Wild West

Writeup in next post!

Random Area Pictures

Millipede in the forest

Not as cool as a chameleon.

If you were ever wondering what vanilla looks like on the plant.

Middle school students singing at the Independence Day celebration.

One of the towns down the road, Farafan- ganhely

Going by Marojejy Park

My banking town, Sambava, complete with cow

Sambava

Tree nursery at another volunteer's site

Finally, Uploading Cooperates!

Waiting for people to finish counting trees in the forest--L to R, gendarme, counterpart, guide.

Our parade on the way out of the forest (over the rice fields and through the woods, back to our town we go...)

Part of the path on the way up.

I hate this bridge.