Six Wells

So as you can see by my last post, the wells are done! As I mentioned, two NGOs (ARES and MBG) matched funds for the original set of three wells, and we were able to build six wells total—two in each town, giving them near-full coverage. I unfortunately wasn’t able to see much of the building process itself (I was gone part of the time, and forbidden in any case to go out to the sites unaccompanied because of a rise in robberies along the trail). But last weekend I arranged for a volunteer guide/bodyguard through the mayor’s office and went to each of the wells to take pictures, check that the wells were being used appropriately, and make sure there were no disputes.

Living in an area where half the population has no shoes and new flipflops are considered luxurious, I didn’t think twice about wearing flipflops on the 14 kilometer hike to the farthest town. But I was still bummed when one of them broke one kilometer in and I had to walk the rest of the way barefoot. Walking on the muddy trail was fine (even fun) but walking on the gravel they use in the towns got a little painful and my feet were smarting for days afterward.

All six wells were nicely finished (complete with USA PEACE CORPS on each—not my idea but kind of cool), and all six had a reasonably high water levels (something of a miracle given the crazy drought we’ve been having this year). The towns had appointed guardians for each well to lock it at night and make sure people were using them correctly, and this ended up being an issue with one of the wells—the main guardian was keeping the well locked most of the time to “keep it clean”. This is sometimes an issue here—most of the (very few) public latrines are kept permanently locked shut, but people are still very proud of what nice structures they are. With the well, I confirmed with several neighbors that the well should be open and free to everyone from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and asked the community counsel to bring up the dispute in the next meeting—it’s better if they resolve the issue themselves. I told them I’d have someone check that it was open in a week or two.

Two of the wells are located at schools. And I was quite the spectacle when I was checking on those. The kids surrounded me and played their little game of urging each other closer and closer to The White Foreigner while I’m trying to have a conversation with an (oblivious) adult. Then I get to play my favorite game of Lunge at the Children and Momentarily Scare the Bejeezus out of Them, which quickly becomes their new favorite game but hey, at least it makes me Entertaining White Person rather than Weird White Person. I wear many hats, as you can tell.

Anyway, after some budget paperwork is finished I’ll be turning my full attention to the library, which is already up and running but still needs advertising and a librarian training, to be held next week.

Wells-Done! Will Write Soon.

In Defense of Peace Corps

PCV Katie just added a great post about her views on Peace Corps effectiveness. Take a look!

"Here in Madagascar, the second a word of Malagasy comes out of my mouth, people know that I am American and a surprising number know that I am Peace Corps. It is this demonstration of effort and nod to longevity, this crossing of the divide, that sets us apart. Peace Corps volunteers are a presence in a country: not tourists, not disconnected development workers, but something altogether different."

"For those who criticize the world-changing effectiveness or impact of Peace Corps, this may be the crux of the issue, an incompatibility of expectations and reality. Peace Corps is exceptionally good at what it does; I just don’t think that most Americans know what it is we do."

Zah Mbo Gaga

Once again, I don't know where they find these beaches, but this is a really popular song right now--"Zah Mbo Gaga", which means "I'm still surprised":

Guest Blog

My Mom's been visiting for the past month, first at my site and then traveling on the road from Tulear to Tana. I asked her to write up some of her impressions of the country:

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We talk to the geckos on the walls – named Sherman all – and have become quite fond of the little frog who resides in the outhouse. Rowan lives in an impenetrable fort of cement and steel. The neighbors call out as we pass by, the children stop to stare, then run away shrieking and giggling. Rowan has taught them a few words of English in the 18 months she’s lived here but the white woman living in their village is still a novelty.

We walk to the small market to buy precious eggs for banana crepes and mofo-gasy (a sort of crumpet made with rice flour) for breakfast. We follow a trail to the school where I assist in sorting and shelving books for the library. After meetings with school officials and the mayor starting about 9 months ago, Rowan’s dream has finally become a reality. There will be about 400 books available to the villagers before she makes the long journey back to the U.S. and finally home.

I’ve been fascinated by the housing here in the village and as we’ve traveled around this vast island. Available materials are put to use – palm fronds and bamboo strips in the north; saplings and twigs in the south; mudded red brick homes in the Highlands.

Outside the cities, the dress is western mixed with traditional topped with colorful scarves or woven hats, bare feet or flip-flops. Sunday is dress-up day – satin and lace, sparkles and bows. Everyone looks like they’re wearing wedding finery.

Small children cry a lot, dogs are staving, oxen over-whipped. Men pull cartloads of bags of rice, gutted hogs, charcoal, poached rosewood. Women elegantly balance loads on their heads – baskets of bread, bricks, wet clothes just washed in the river. Children entertain themselves with bottle caps, a stick and an old tire, trash and stones. There is an acceptance of the way of life here. This is the way it’s always been. For most of these people, the world doesn’t exist outside of Madagascar.

Well Update

The three wells funded through PCPP are basically done thanks to the fantastically hardworking construction team that the French NGO ARES hooked me up with--and by construction team, I mean two energetic guys and a continuously rotating stream of villagers who are doing a large chunk of the manual labor as part of the community contribution. But the project's not over yet, and this time it's good news: We're building three more wells, for six total! The NGO ARES came up with money for two more, and between the five wells we'll have enough material to build a sixth. My community partner, the Missouri Botanical Garden, is helping with the construction workers' salary for the sixth well. Three of the wells will be in Antanandava, the largest town; two in Anamboafo, and the original one in Moralamba. Two of the newer wells will be on school grounds. Here are some pictures of the building process:

Food

I wish I could give you some fascinating and delicious recipes, but the fact is, despite the excellent diversity of food in country, Malagasy cuisine is generally really boring. It follows these basic rules:

1) That is not enough rice. Here, take some more.

2) Use the whole cow (or other animal). Brains, eyeballs, skin, feet, it’s all used.

3) Seasoning? I think you mean salt. Or, even better, MSG, just dump in a handful.

4) Sure you don’t want more rice? You’re going to get weak and skinny and die, only having three plates per day like that.

Most rural Malagasies work on their family’s rice fields, which means they plant, tend, harvest, thresh, mill, sift, and cook every bit of rice they eat, and they eat A LOT. It’s impossible to overstate how much Malagasies love their rice. In comparison, most Asian countries have a passive relationship with rice. Malagasies have the highest per-capita rice consumption in the world, at (I’ve heard) ½ a kilo per person, per day. When you ask a restaurant if they have food (you have to check these things) they will say no if they don’t have rice. There’s a “pizza” place in Sambava where volunteers asked hopefully several times if there was food today, and were rebuffed several times before they figured out they had to ask specifically if there was pizza, which isn’t food. Because it isn’t rice.

Moderately well-off rural families in my area have a giant heaping plate of rice at every meal, accompanied by a comparatively tiny amount of ro, or side dish. Often the ro is just boiled leaves that the family has harvested. For nicer meals, the ro might be boiled milk, pounded cassava leaves, a scrambled egg, or a small amount of meat or fish (including oil or tadpoles) in oily tomato or yummier coconut sauce. Dried fish often make an appearance since they’re fairly cheap—I’m not a huge fan but they have lots of nutrients, so it’s a good food. There are very few vegetables in my area. In the highlands, there is a bit more money and a lot more veggies, so meals tend to be slightly more balanced; in the south (and in my area, during the driest and poorest parts of the year) people eat cassava.

I really hate cassava. The idea of it more than the actual boring cassava root (cassava leaves are quite good). See, the root is flavorless and fibrous and has almost no nutrients and—here’s the kicker—has cyanide in it, so you have to cook it well or you risk poisoning yourself. Obviously people figured out a long time ago that this was the case and cook it adequately, but every once in awhile I read a story about kids who were accidentally paralyzed or someone who committed suicide with cassava and my dislike is renewed. Incidentally, Americans do eat cassava occasionally, in the form of tapioca pudding—did you know tapioca was made of cassava? I didn’t. Presumably it’s precooked in the factory.

I’ve already mentioned ranampango, which is boiled burnt rice water (better than it sounds, it tastes a bit like tea). The cook will intentionally leave a bit of rice at the bottom of the pot, generally fairly burnt from the fire, then will dump in a bunch of water and boil it, and drink the resulting beverage as a tea. Ranampango.

Madagascar does have some good fruit and street food. Obviously you can get bananas—many types, all year round. Papayas, mangoes, litchees, oranges, jackfruit, and other fruits turn up seasonally, and Malagasies eat whatever’s in season as a dessert or snack. Street food-wise, there’s mofo gasy (‘Malagasy bread’, a little rice flour cake that’s dry like an English muffin), fried bananas, roasted bananas, bananas dipped in batter then fried, a kind of banana bread (really, lots of bananas), samosas (beef or fish filling), a type of peanut brittle or roasted peanuts, fried or baked cassava (argh), kaka pigeon (yep, that’s the name—it’s a flavorless baked mini breadstick), and godjogodjo (spelling?), which is, let’s see, rice flour with a lot of sugar, baked? I think. One of the better non-rice dishes Malagasies make is a kind of soup called Soahaba (soh-ah-bah), which is essentially some starch (banana, cassava, corn) boiled in coconut milk with a little sugar til it’s a pretty uniform texture—not pretty to look at, but pretty tasty. PCV Felicia has a more complete recipe here.

My favorite breakfast is sabeda and brochettes—sabeda is wet rice (the water isn’t all cooked off) and brochettes are like basic kebabs, tiny little beef chunks on a skewer. Usually served with either grated green mango or grated cucumber in vinegar. Salt is the primary flavoring in most Gasy dishes, but most restaurants will have sakay, which is mashed hot pepper with a little vinegar. I’m not a fan (all heat, no flavor), but sometimes the cooks make it interesting with garlic or mango chunks in the hot sauce.

I cook for myself, and although selection is pretty limited in my town (rice, beans, tomatoes, bananas, often eggs and cucumbers) I do pretty well. Banana pancakes make a frequent appearance, and I can make a good tomato sauce for pasta. I often make kusherie (basically rice and lentils with garlic tomato sauce, subbing small beans for lentils). When I go to the city (Sambava) I buy veggies and ground beef and make a stew. A store in the Sambava started stocking oatmeal and peanut butter, which has made breakfast easier (I gave up on making my own peanut butter immediately, all natural does not make up for it being a pain in the butt). Leftover rice with mashed banana, peanut butter, and honey? Delicious.

Work and Such

One of the two types of permanent markers I used to letter the country names on the World Map Project wasn’t weathering well, so I went over them with a better marker—I had apparently used the poor marker to do the smaller countries in most of Europe and Central Asia, and in some cases the lettering was so faint I couldn’t read the names—I had already given away my list of country names in French so I had to turn to my French-English thrift store dictionary (which has been serving me well) but was startled to discover it was from 1977, when most of Eastern Europe and Central Asia was still part of the USSR and therefore not listed. Sooo…I was as accurate as I could be, but I’m pretty sure I just made up a couple of the French spellings in Eastern Europe! It might be time to get a new dictionary.

The NGO construction team I’m working with has started building the first well with a daily rotation of community members to help with the heavy lifting and see how the wells get built. I haven’t been out to the construction site yet myself (round trip, it’s a 12 mile bike ride and a 9 mile walk and I can’t go unaccompanied because the path is largely unpopulated), but I get almost-daily reports passed down the long grapevine in between towns.

My fishing co-op has grown to 16 members and is in the process of requesting a $3500 grant from the government’s Rural Development Support program—I’m guessing they’re going to get a fraction of what they’re requesting but if they can justify the budget, I told them they can request the full amount and see what happens. I’ve heard a rumor that they’re carving me a wooden fish for my birthday in November; hopefully the rumor’s true, that would be sweet!

One of the fishing co-op boys has taken to being my ‘gofer’ on multiple projects for the very practical reason that we work well together and he’s one of the few Malagasies I’ve met who take pride in getting projects done and done well—I hope he runs for mayor someday. Until then, we have a system where he visits a few times a week and I give him a rundown of where I am with projects and he does what he can to move them along from the Gasy end—if I’m the person who can walk into the mayor’s office and get them to listen to me immediately, he’s the one who knows which rice field the middle school director’s nephew is working in on a given Wednesday and can go talk to him and get reasonable answers. When I try to do that, I receive a blank stare of terror (OMG THE WHITE GIRL IS TALKING TO ME) followed by immediate and unthinking agreement with whatever I’m saying, regardless of the actual question or answer. So having an 'assistant' works pretty well. In return, I’m letting him borrow library books before the library opens, and have been tutoring him on what I remember of U.S. history, which he’s fascinated by. Last week, at his request, I wrote down the names and office dates of all the U.S. presidents. It’s fun having a history conversation with someone.

The library had a librarian, then lost her (but I think it’s because she decided to go back to school, so it’s OK). The parent’s association has appointed a new librarian, who I can barely understand because at 23 he’s missing half his teeth, but he seems eager, has finished middle school, and speaks French and a tiny bit of English, so that qualifies him. Once the shelves are installed (which is taking forever but WILL be next week if I have to nail them in myself, for Pete’s sake), the Sambava Alliance Francaise librarian is going to visit and give him a one-day crash course on how to run a library and I’ve requested Sambava’s English Center librarian to do the same later in the year. I still have requests in with a few organizations for more books, but I’m pretty happy with the 200 or so I’ve collected so far…the American Embassy in particular, as I mentioned, gave me some gems. I have books in English, French, and Malagasy (mostly French) on subjects such as: how to grow peppers, organic pesticides, French grammar, English idioms, kids’ astronomy, what teens should know about AIDS, high school biology, university economics, National Geographic Africa, the biography of MLK Jr, human rights in democracies, raising pigs, women in forestry projects, and so on. I also have about two dozen illustrated kids books on science and American history, like “Scary Venomous Creatures of the World” and “How Did You Invent the Airplane, Wright Brothers?” Also lots of magazines, mostly in English and mostly courtesy of other volunteers (we often end up contributing our own resources and sometimes our own money to projects, as do workers in service jobs everywhere—I’m looking at you, teachers…) I’ve discovered that Gasies are often confused by the picture content of magazines like Entertainment Weekly (especially by the ads), but they love Sunset magazines (because it focuses on food and farming).

It was pretty funny to watch the different reactions as visitors to my house looked over the magazines—most of the magazines they briefly flipped through and shook their heads in confusion (example: an ad for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups doesn’t look like food to them, it looks like a brown and orange lump). But once they got to the Sunsets, they would spend a half hour fascinated by the pictures (“See guys? THIS is American food. No, we don’t eat rice every meal, but I promise you, we do eat.”)

The last work update is that one of the English Education volunteers in my region, Felicia, visited my town to give a three day workshop to the English teachers, with me as nominal assistant. We scared a few off the first day by forcing them to speak English in the classroom, but the 5 teachers that remained for the full three days got a full verb tenses review, tips on adjectives, classroom management, and making classes interactive. Felicia also went over lesson planning with everyone, and on the last day the teachers gave 45-minute lessons to each other using the new techniques (like pairing a basic dialogue with a vocabulary list, grammar, and review exercises, and having multiple student pairs reading the dialogues aloud). We’ll see what they end up using in the classroom, but I’m thrilled with the amount of information we got across.

As I’ve mentioned before, teaching in Madagascar is very difficult—teachers have to deal with classes that average 60 or 70 students and sometimes have over 100; classrooms are often poorly constructed and often dark; in order to make maximum use of the facilities classes are held from 7 am to 6 pm, when it’s too dark to see in the non-electrified buildings; there are no textbooks. Most of classroom time is spent with the teacher silently copying material from his or her textbook onto the board, and the students silently copying what’s on the board into their notebooks. Since they don’t have electricity in their homes and even candles are expensive, many rural houses are lit only by the cookfire at night, and students work in the rice fields on their days off, so they rarely get chunks of time to study. Additionally, school costs $13/$16/$32 per year at the elementary/middle/high school levels, in an area where farmers often make under $200 per year and have 6 or 7 kids. $200 might be a high estimate for a lot of families; I’m not sure of the exact yearly income, but the going rate for a field day laborer (who works 4 days per week max) is 80 cents per day. Rice is sold for about 15 cents per kapoaka (1.5 cups). Green vanilla beans are being sold for $1.50/kilo, even though the official regional sell price is supposedly $3.50/kilo (poor farmers often don’t have the expertise, materials, or room to cure the beans themselves, so they sell the uncured green vanilla beans to wealthier farmers). These are the beans that require weeks of 5 am hand pollination to grow and are often the target of thieving. Anyway, that’s a big tangent, but basically: it’s a wonder anyone gets through school at all. And: hopefully some of the English classes are a little less boring this year, and hopefully kids can go study in the library between classes.

Once we put up the shelves.

Diego Vacay

Last week I returned from a short vacation with 2 other volunteers from my region—four fun and relaxing days following some decidedly unproductive NGO business meetings. We were up in Diego, a larger city in the far north that we reached after 10 hours on the only road out of my region, a rough 90 mile dirt track that is only passable during the dry season.

Diego attracts many more visitors than SAVA (my region, an acronym that stands for its four major cities, Sambava-Antalaha-Vohemar-Andapa). It was nice to play the tourist for a few days, and discard the ‘Community VIP and Entertainment’ status that volunteers are automatically assigned in village life.

We spent a day at Ramena Beach and another at the Grand Hotel, enjoying the nicest pool in Madagascar. We also spent a day in Amber Mountain National Park (cold and rainy but filled with wildlife) and a day at the shallow and aptly named Emerald Bay, where we went snorkeling (over some sadly and severely degraded reef), got coconut and ylang-ylang oil massages on the beach, and ate grilled barracuda and crab. Then karma came back to bite me in the form of bad sunburn and 40,000 Ariary ($20) stolen out of my wallet, but the day ended nicely, with a brief sighting of a diving humpback whale.

Now I hope you don’t get the idea that I live like this every day! Days of lounging at the beach are about as rare for me here as they are when I’m in the States. (Well, OK, almost as rare.) But amazingly, I was able to do it all within my usual stipend, since I had a bit saved up and as volunteers we were able to stay at a volunteer transit house and get resident prices for entrance to parks and such.

The Amber Mountain trek was cold and rainy, but we were able to see the smallest chameleon in the world which only lives in this one park (the pygmy chameleon, see picture—that’s my hand!), as well as some lemurs and the leaf-tailed gecko, which has the best camouflage I’ve ever seen—the guide pointed at a slender branch and said there was and animal on it, and we just stared at her blankly until she clarified what we were looking for.

As Peace Corps volunteers, I hardly need to add that we spent a lot of time EATING! We especially enjoyed our meals at a Spanish Tapas restaurant, where we chatted with the French owner in Malagasy since it was the language that we communally understood the best.

And now I’m back at site. We’ve bought materials for the 3 wells and the building of the first well in Anamboafo should get started on Tuesday, though of course weather is always an issue. We also found a librarian for the community library (the school director’s daughter—nepotism of course, which doesn’t surprise me and I suppose they have a fairly limited pool of middle school graduates to choose from anyway). In any case, the library will definitely open in about three weeks, but I’m still holding the books hostage in my house until they finish building a table and I can talk to the librarian about what hours she’ll be open.

This coming week I’m also hosting a 3-day English teacher training for rural English teachers in my area. The training will be led by one of the Education volunteers in the regions, with me acting as assistant and translator (since just because they’re English teachers doesn’t mean they speak English!) The following pictures are courtesy of PCV Felicia:

Gasy Taxi Brousses

Dowsing

The money for my well building project was recently transferred, so on Tuesday I went out to the three towns where we’re building the wells to participate in community meetings and supervise well placement.

There’s no cell phone reception in my commune, which made communications difficult. The three towns where we’re building the wells are spaced out along a rural path in the south of my commune. The towns knew I was coming with the vice-mayor and my coworker at the MBG, but we were also supposed to meet up with the well builders at the trailhead at an unspecified time.

The vice-mayor, my coworker, and I took a taxi brousse to Ansampanamahazo, the town at the trailhead, and tried unsuccessfully to call the well builders to see when they were arriving. Eager to get a move on, and under the false impression that I was familiar enough with the path to be a guide, the other two struck out on the path and I waited behind with a woman I knew from the town to meet the well builders and secure a temporary storage space for the building materials. I hadn’t met the builders, so once we found a storage space, we waited along the road and yelled out at every unfamiliar male, “Hey! Are you a well builder?” Since this is Africa, this worked well, and half an hour later I was walking toward the towns with the two friendly builders and (since this is Africa) the barefoot and shirtless vice president of the first town we were going to, who just happened to be passing.

The path out to the villages is narrow, muddy, and occasionally supplied with worrisome makeshift bridges over streams. The first bridge is a failed building project, a cement structure wide enough to hold a truck, but broken in the middle. To cross it, you jump over a narrow chasm and then clamber back up from the fallen half of the bridge on a felled tree trunk. The second bridge is just a felled tree trunk. The third is a precarious zigzag of two by fours. I told them that as an environment volunteer, I would condone the felling of a tree for a functional third bridge, but I don’t think they believed me. They were, however, very impressed that I could keep up with them, and kept commenting on the “one meter stride of Americans”.

For the village visits, we briefly visited the village presidents on the way out to alert them of out presence, and did community meetings and well placement and dowsing on the way back. Due to a combination of African and French cultural influences, formal introductions are very important when you go to new towns, and are very formalized. Unfortunately, it’s not a structure I fit easily into—on one hand I’m a white educated foreigner and I handle the money; on the other hand I’m young, female, and have a shaky grasp of formal language and cultural intricacies. Who starts speaking first and who introduces who is dependent on age, status, relationships, whether you’ve visited before, and a host of other factors.

In the first village, I was on solid footing since there were only the two builders, the president, and myself. After the basic greetings, I did the formal introduction of the interlopers, the president did the formal welcome, the builders did the formal statement of their intentions, and the president did the formal empty speech about the importance of development projects, and we were on out way. The second village was a little more awkward, since the first president had accompanied us and while I had been to the village before, I hadn’t met the president. We sat in the president’s house for a little while and stared at the walls for until the first president figured out I didn’t know who the second president WAS. So he introduced me, and I finally realized that I somehow “ranked” the first president in the second village for some unclear reason, and I started introductions, and we were off and rolling again. The third village happily presented no problems, since we finally caught up to the vice-mayor and my co-worker, both of whom “rank” me and could do the introductions. Whew.

The third village was interesting to visit since, while like the other two villages it has zero wells, it’s the closest to the forest reserve I work with and has benefited from more projects. One of the first people I saw was a little boy in a kid-sized wheelchair (extremely rare) with his feet wrapped in gauze from a recent surgery to repair severe clubbing (the surgery is also rare; most people just live with whichever disabilities they’re born with). We also stopped by the new school building, which was a sharp contrast to the “homemade” buildings still standing next to it, which strongly reminded me of pigpens—low, built with makeshift materials, and falling down.

Community meetings are an exhausting necessity. In the case of smaller towns, everyone gathers in an open space in the center of town, and after the empty rhetoric speeches about development by the VIPs, we get down to business: what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, why it’s important, and how they need to help. The well building requires significant community input, just not in the form of money. The town will gather sand and gravel for the cement mix, house and feed the two supervising builders for the duration of their time in the town, and transport the building materials (including sacks of cement) by a combination of human labor and dugout canoe from the main road to the building sites. More importantly, two people from the town will be required to work on the project everyday, helping with the manual labor and more importantly learning how to actually build the well, so they can do repairs and possibly even start a new project later on.

The villagers are excited about the well but their immediate question was—“ Why only one? There are almost 1000 people in this village, why do we only get one well?” I expected this, but it’s a little hard for me to explain, so I was happy that the “other VIPs” fielded the question. It’s because there are six towns in the area without wells, and we only have funding for three, so we’re spreading it out to do the most good. It’s because we need to make sure the villagers use and take care of the first well before we invest in more—future wells will be based on who takes the best care of and makes the best use of the one they’ll have soon. It’s because while there’s 1000 people in the area, not all of them are going to switch to a clean water source out of habit and convenience, and one well is enough (just enough, but still enough) to support the 500 or so who will make the switch immediately. And, most of all, it’s because we had to make a choice—no way do we have to resources or time to build the 12 wells needed before rainy season, so the choice was to build one each in the three towns closest to the forest reserve. Once this was clear (and in particular, once my co-worker made it clear there were other towns who would happily accept the wells if the villages in question didn’t have their contributions ready in a week), they were enthusiastic again.

I read an article somewhere that categorized aid workers as either cowboys or statisticians. Cowboys (and girls) see a single person or a small cause that needs help and throw themselves in to help, full commitment. Statisticians look at what will make the most sense and do the most good for the most people, and work on that. There’s value in both approaches, and people get motivated by both. Choosing the well sites? That’s statistics. The boy who received surgery and a wheelchair? Cowboy aid work. My desire, when I see a child with a cleft palate, to get the kid to a hospital and pay for the surgery myself if I have to? Cowgirl. They both make sense, but sometimes they feel mutually exclusive.

Anyway, back to actual work. After wrapping up the community meetings we chose the sites for the wells, and the builders were hugely amused when I wanted to help dowse for water—they have two L-shaped metal wands that they hold loosely by the short length and observe the movement and direction of the long end. I’m not sure how scientific it is, but it’s definitely fun.

After the villages gather together the materials they need, they’ll send a note to my co-worker, who will tell me, who will tell the builders to buy the materials, which will be picked up at the trailhead when we send out an announcement on the radio for “the villagers of Anamboafo, Marolamba, and Antanandava to come to the road on Thursday and pick up their well supplies”. No cell service, you know.

You Know You're A PCV in Madland When... (Part 2)

You Know You're A Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar When..

People don’t believe you when you say that English and American are the same language and yes, you can understand Brits when they speak.

Your neighbors still don’t think you speak Malagasy despite the fact that you hold conversations with them in Gasy every day.

You don’t hear about important global events until a week after they happen.

An 8 hour hike though mud and up a mountain streambed is considered no big deal, but both you and the Gasies avoid walking to the other side of town because it’s “too far”.

Your knowledge of body scanners, 3-D movies, preteens with smartphones, a continuing recession, and Justin Bieber is purely theoretical and you don’t really think they exist.

You point someone out as “the fat one with light skin and a scar” and no one gets offended.

Someone calls you white and you still get offended.

Dining by candlelight with insects singing outside your house gets old pretty quickly, so you pull out your lantern and iPod.

You really wish you could ride a moped (PC regulations say no.)

You base your meals on what will save you from having to wash the dishes (maybe that’s just me).

You have taken up at least one really weird hobby.

You have to clarify with taxi brousse drivers that it’s NOT OK to have people sitting on your lap to save space.

The car you’re riding in has to go to 3 empty gas stations before finally finding gas sold in old Coke bottles by a 7-year-old at a small corner store.

You avoid wearing a watch because everyone will ask what time it is just to have an excuse to stare at it.

People at home think it’s strange that of all the things they sent you in a care package, you’re most excited about the parmesean cheese. “The book is supposed to be really good…” “Yes, but you sent me CHEESE!”

You throw out your trash and a little kid immediately runs over to dig through it and find a “game”—usually a bottle.

A guy walks by in a medieval-style walking stockade and you don’t even notice.

You can tell the difference between Goose, Duck, Gasy Chicken, and Foreign Chicken eggs, and have strong opinions about them, but you don’t really care if they’ve been sitting in the sun at the vendor’s stall for 2 days.

You consider English to be your secret language with other PCVs.

You know the level of cell phone reception for all three national carriers along every bit of the 150k road you live on.

You know hell has frozen over because your mother has a computer that’s nicer than yours.

Your TV and movie tastes are dictated by what shows other volunteers get from home.

Due to lack of Facebook time, you have difficulty keeping track which of your friends got married, had a baby, etc.

You have to pay for a $400 plane ticket in cash because the airline office doesn’t accept cards. You have to pay in a stack of what you refer to as “Monopoly money”—the largest bill in local currency is the equivalent of $5.

You Know You're A PCV in Madland When...

(Many of these suggested by other volunteers...)

You Know You're A Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar When..

You find it difficult to eat without a spoon.

Half your meals are cooked in one pot and all of them are eaten on one plate.

It is impossible to conceive of a restaurant in this country without rice.

You stare at white people you don’t know, but are afraid to talk to them because you don’t know what language to use.

The sight of a white male over the age of 60 causes a gag reflex because of the high numbers of French sex tourists.

You’re used to locals assuming all other volunteers are directly related to you.

You have no idea how your neighbors are related to each other. (Oh, cousin Windisca's mother's adopted son's girlfriend, right!)

You spend most of your spare time talking about food. You talk about food before, during, and after dinner, regardless of whether or not you’re full. You make shopping lists of what food you’re going to buy in the U.S. two years before you return.

English hard.

Care packages are a source of delight (when they come) and anguish (when the post office loses them or opens them to steal the contents).

Crystal Light is the primary currency in a raging Peace Corps Volunteer Black Market.

Most of your clothes have holes in them from rats and mice.

You feel guilty wearing anything but flipflops in town. Sometimes, the flipflops are overkill.

Given a lack of landmarks, giving directions to other volunteers deteriorates into : “The restaurant is north of the Air Madagascar office, across the street from the epicerie with the mean lady and next to the epicerie where Jean’s counterpart bought credit that one time…no, you’re thinking of the place that always has those little waxy chocolates, I mean the one that always runs out of Skol.”

A kid asks you if it’s fady (taboo) for you to eat a lemur.

You prefer kabones to WCs and pos to kabones. (Translation: You prefer latrines to Western style toilets (they rarely work) and the covered bucket that serves as your chamberpot to your latrine.)

Worms, diarrhea, and vomit are acceptable dinner table conversation.

Everyone has a t least one embarrassing poop story that they’re not embarrassed to share.

It’s encouraged to be fat.

You’re short in America but still taller than everyone you work with.

You're tired of the boring ol' lemurs and think chameleons are way cooler.

You like chameleons because you can use them to scare kids out of your yard.

You have learned how to herd cows.

You avoid learning swear words in the local language because you know how often you'd end up using them on the drunks.

You are well informed about the level of witch activity in your town.

Being outside after dark feels wrong…shouldn’t you be more worried about vampires and rabid dogs?

More to come…

Checking Text Messages

News: My well project is FUNDED! Thanks again to the lovely folks at Water Charity: http://watercharity.org/node/2​55

******************

I don’t have cell phone service near my house so pretty much every day I walk 1.5 kilometers (about a mile) along the paved road through town, up the dirt path past the hospital, and up a hill to a rock outcropping where I can get 0-2 fluctuating bars of service. On an average day it goes something like this:

I close up the green metal windows to my house with an unsubtle slam and screech—there’s no way to close them quietly and my neighbors always know when I’m on the move. After padlocking the green metal door I briefly survey my yard—a week ago it was completely overgrown because my machete had broken. I went to buy a new machete from the coworker of a nearby volunteer since there were none in my town. But they were horrified to hear that I planned to cut my lawn myself and the other volunteer’s coworker drove over to my town with four of his plantation workers and proceeded to machete my grass, weed my overgrown garden nursery, ruthlessly prune the bushes that fence my yard, and dig up a broad swath of bare dirt in front of my porch so I could have a “real yard”. I don’t really understand this last practice—it turns to mud every time it rains—but it’s no use dissuading them and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I walk off my porch and am promptly spotted by the easily excitable neighbor children, who start screaming “Roy-ANNE!! Roy-ANNE!!” MBOLATSARA!!!!!” (Hi.) I return the greeting once but they cheerfully keep up the chorus til I’m out of sight—there is, after all, not too much else going on, so I’m the entertainment.

It’s the cold season now, and drops to about 65 at night, but it’s still hot enough during the day that I regret not checking my messages earlier. It’s also the windy season, and the kids along the road are taking advantage of the breeze with surprisingly sturdy tiny kites made of discarded plastic bags and twigs. Some of these miracles of home construction get 40 feet in the air.

All along the road there is vanilla and rice drying in the sun. In the shade, women are oiling and braiding each others’ hair. One woman crouches on a straw mat and whacks what looks to be a pile of hay with a stick—she’s trying to get the last of the rice off the stalks. I occasionally greet some of the adults, who continue to stare at me despite the fact I’ve been living here for almost a year and a half. The screaming chorus of Roy-ANNE continues from the kids, sometimes from several rice paddies away. I greet the kids who properly greet me. Some still yell Bye BYE when I pass despite the fact that I’ve been correcting them to say Hello for a year. Bye Bye is more memorable and fun for them to say, though.

A drunk reels over to me as I pass the taxi brousse stop, wasted at 9 am from a local moonshine that occasionally puts people in the hospital. He insists on shaking my hand and doesn’t want to let go so I twist out of his grip and continue on to snorts of laughter from the men sitting at the taxi brousse stop. Thanks for the help, guys. Nearby, the local crazy lady (there really is one in every village) is picking at her shaved scalp and murmuring a sad little song about how she wants to go to the city. I say hello and she mutters hello back, staring over my shoulder. She continuously tries to stow away on taxi brousses, so one of the ‘jobs’ of the men at the stop is to hold her back while passengers get on and off. The drivers sometimes tip them for keeping her from breaking off their mirrors as she does sometimes—it’s their main source of income.

One of the shopkeepers yells hello and asks if she can braid my hair again and I say soon (probably on a day when I’m leaving town, so I can take them out without hurting her feelings—I can’t see how anyone sleeps with that many lumps on their head). The vice-mayor is sitting at a mini-café nearby and says the bookshelves for the library are almost ready. When can we see them? Soon. Has a librarian been chosen yet? Almost. When can I meet with the librarian? Oh, not long now. I nod and move on—it would have been rude of him to say no to any question that I asked, but I interpret his responses as such. But I’m holding the books hostage in my house until the librarian and I can organize things a bit, so there’s not a problem with the project languishing.

On the way to the cell service area, I check in on some houses to see if I can discuss projects with people—an English teachers’ workshop, a table for the library, a STI/AIDS presentation for a women’s group meeting. But everyone’s out—and since they don’t have phones, the only way to reach them is to keep passing by their houses.

One of the vanilla cooperative presidents runs up to me to say hi and I ask if there’s news on the harvest. He says no but he’ll send me a letter if there is. How shall I contact him? He lives in the forest and has no cell phone, so he scribbles down his address, something like: RAKOMATAMBANA Jean Pierre, President du Cooperative FiToNaTA, Morafeno. “Just give it to someone and ask them to get it to me, it will get there.”

I pass the hospital and wave to the friendly toothless guard, who has the only bicycle pump in town that can inflate my bike tires and is always willing to do so. One final climb and I’m on top of a rock outcropping where I can turn on my cell phone and survey the green valley and the mountains beyond as I wait for the text messages to register. Maybe I’ll buy some bananas on the way back home.

Travel Writing

I'm starting every blog post like this until it gets funded: I'm still looking for donations for my well project! It you were thinking of sending me a care package and haven't gotten around to it, consider donating instead. If you need a tax deduction, think about donating. If you know someone who likes to support development projects, tell them. If your church or other organization has a newsletter, ask them to put in a blurb. I know we can get these fundraised!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=684-108

The real blog post:

I read a number of books about Madagascar before coming here, and very rarely did they describe experiences I would come to have in country. In part that’s because most of them were research-focused; in part that’s because only the very best travel books are well enough written to describe other peoples’ experiences.

One of the books I read was Dervla Murphy’s ‘Muddling Through in Madagascar’. At the time, I thought the author was wearing rose-colored glasses; now I think she was being purposefully naïve. PCV Audrey just read the same book and she sums it up more eloquently than I can:

________________________________________

I started reading Dervla Murphy's Muddling Through in Madagascar, a dusty hardbound copy that had been lost behind a stack of other books at the Meva in Diego. It was written in 1986, so I was willing to put up with a certain amount of: “...one explores the capital's laughter-filled streets where children play exuberantly and greet the vazaha warmly, good manners curbing their curiosity.” Yea, right. But then I got to this next one, closed the book and have moved on to better things: “The adolescent girls moved with marvelous grace but too many wore European-style clothing, garish and ill-cut. How much lovelier they would look wearing traditional skirts and shawls!” If I ever write a sentence like that, y'all have permission to forcibly separate me from my computer. This is one book that probably should have remained lost.

Travel books written by myopics wearing rose-colored glasses. But I think a lot of us commit a similar sin. We decide we want to go on vacation. We look through magazines and travel books and read up on all the neat things to see and do in a particular place. We fall in love with the pictures of the beautiful rocks, of the interesting buildings, of the colorful people. Before we set foot on the plane or drive away in the car, we already have a picture in our heads of what the place will be like. When we arrive, we see what we expect to see, or we don't, and, upon our return, when we're asked if we had a good time, our answer will depend on the degree to which the place matched that picture we brought with us in our heads.

We see what we want to see. We find interesting what we've been told to find interesting. A man drives us around in a bus, points at things with a stick and tells us to be amazed. And we come home feeling just the slightest bit empty. What's missing? A genuine sense of discovery. The thrill of finding something new and unexpected. The satisfaction of surviving a trip through uncharted territory. It's the difference between reading in a textbook about Washington's crossing of the Potomac, and getting in a boat in the dead of winter and rowing yourself across.

So here's an exercise for y'all: Open up a book of maps. Flip to a random page. Close your eyes and point. Drive there, or fly there, or take the train or the bus there, but – this is the important part – don't do any research before you go. Stay for a couple days. Wander around. See what there is to see, without the benefit of someone else's rose-colored glasses. You might very well find “laughter-filled streets,” but then again you might find something much, much more interesting.

OK, so what do I have to add to this? Absolutely nothing profound. But I do realize that most of you won’t be able to visit Madagascar and have to depend on armchair travel, so I will share that I recently read a pretty decent travel book about Madagascar and frequently found myself laughing and nodding because I had many similar experiences. So here are a few funny or true excerpts from Mark Eveleigh’s ‘Maverick in Madagascar’:

“I was soon to come to the conclusion that a Malagasy bureaucrat is judged primarily by the amount of rubber stamps that he has hanging from the little tree in the center of his desk. This was a twelve-stamp délégué”

“If there is anyway to avoid it, a polite Malagasy will never answer ‘no’ to a question.” [This extends to directions—a polite Malagasy will give you fake directions rather than admit they don’t know where your destination is. So I always ask about five people and ignore anyone who hesitates before giving directions.]

“Under the eaves of the concrete government office three glassy-eyed youths were chewing their way through a large basket of leaves. This was qat, a narcotic plant, something like betel nut in that it is a mild tranquillizer with no great effect other that the stimulation of vast quantities of bitter-tasting saliva.”

“On a sloping paddock to my right, three men were chasing 25 zebu round in circles. As they chased the cattle, a hundred scrabbling hooves chopped up the earth so that the center of the field was already muddy brown in contrast to its verdant corners. This was ploughing in its most basic form.” [This is how they plough rice fields in my area.]

“In some parts of Madagascar, even today, there remains a suspicion that vazaha are mpakafo—zombies who come to the island to steal the healthy internal organs of the Malgasy.” [In my area, parents will tell small children that the white foreigners will steal and eat them if they don’t behave—I’ve had children run screaming at the sight of me.]

“Wherever you go in the Third World, veteran travelers almost seem to queue up to tell you: ‘You should have seen this thirty years ago—there was nothing!’ In Madagascar, you often feel that you’ve traveled back in time, against the natural current of progress. In the eastern rainforests I saw a majestic colonial railway station falling into ruin, where now no line even exists. On the west coast I saw the remains of a once important port, now hopelessly silted up and isolated five months out of the year by impassable dirt tracks.”

“Rich Western travelers (and almost all of us can be considered rich) cruise the undeveloped world in search of the ‘picturesque’: and in most cases poverty and hunger lie in its shadow. The inhabitants of these little huts, woven from branches and covered in mud, would gladly have traded instantly for a concrete box with a television aerial.” [This is why I’m so grateful for my concrete house: it’s by no means comfy, but unlike my neighbors’ bamboo houses it is sturdy, roomy, and secure.]

“I was to see deforestation and burning on a small rural scale throughout all my travels in Madagascar, and even in the most uninhabited areas the denuded landscape bore the deep scars of ancient erosion. Yet I was never fully able to comprehend the awful truth of what it means when seventy-five percent of the world’s fourth-largest island is officially classified as ‘severely degraded’ and an estimated twenty-five percent is deliberately burnt off every year for rice or to provide a ‘green bite’ for cattle.”

“[The nun] had done this [taxi brousse] trip before and knew every trick in the book for maximizing her comfort. Every time an unexpected bump caught me unawares and launched me into the air she shamelessly shifted her buttocks over to grab an extra few centimeters of the seat. If I leaned out of the window to look at something she would instantly jam her body up against my back to gain yet another precious centimeter. Then she would steadfastly refuse to relinquish her ill-gotten gains when I tried to pull my head back into the car. If, perhaps an hour later, she inadvertently slid back on one of the steep right-hand cambers I would recover my precious position and she would dig her bony elbows into my ribs, shoot me and angry glare, and sigh loudly at my lack of respect.”

Wells Again

The official conclusion page for my well improvement project with Appropriate Projects, with pictures:

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/766

I'm still fundraising for my well building project if you know someone who might be interested in donating:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=684-108

Tana

These are pictures from Tana (short for Antananarivo), the capital of Madagascar. A lot of Tana is sprawling, polluted, and crawling with pickpockets, but certain areas have a nice old-world charm. The big boxy building in the first and last pictures is the Rova (Queen's Palace), most famous for housing the crazy Queen Ranavalona, who was an old school badass who enjoyed poisoning people and throwing the occasional missionary off a cliff. The shack roofs are from housing just behind the Rova; the statue is from the Rova compound and might be King Radama; and the panoramic picture is taken from one of Tana's many hillsides looking down on downtown Lake Anosy. If you look closely as the hillside in the last picture you can see Tana's Hollywood-style hill sign.

Articles

Two articles for those of you who aren't Facebook friends with me and haven't seen them yet.

First, a short article about my service by yours truly in one of my hometown newspapers:

http://www.sanjuanislander.com/columns/braybrook/current.shtml

Second (and more depressing) an article on the Forbes blog describing Madagascar as having the world's worst economy:

http://blogs.forbes.com/danielfisher/2011/07/05/the-worlds-worst-economies/

Gasy Friends

From the top: eating with another volunteer's host family; being given children since most people my age have three already; my neighbor grating a coconut; traditional Sakalava dress with family matriarch and patriarch

Three Things

One, My well improvement project has just wrapped up! These pictures are a before and after of one of the wells we worked on--we resurfaced the well base to stop water from leaking through and dug a canal around the well to prevent it from being flooded in the rains. This is one of five wells we worked on. If you're interested in donating to a similar project or know someone who is, see the link in my last post--I'm trying to build three wells near my forest reserve.

Two, my library project will be starting soon at the middle school. The parents' organizations is building shelves and collecting 1000 cups of rice from all school parents; which they will sell off to pay off for the librarians' first year salary. If you're interested in helping, we need French-English dictionaries, kids books in English, and any books in French. You can send books to my address at the right side of the screen (and if you happen to include some stuff from my wish list, I wouldn't complain! :)

Third, we have a new PC group coming in soon! Hey new people! I wrote a blog post to the last stage a few months ago that you're welcome to go check out. The training schedule has changed a fair amount, though--the last stage has a tech trip instead of site visits, spent a month with host families, and didn't get their site placements until a bit later. I've gotta warn you, though--many areas of Mad are hot and tropical, but the area where you'll be training is going to be cold and rainy, so be prepared. Also, volunteers highly recommend having a computer, plus an external (loaded with movies) and a thumb drive or two. Welcome to the modern Peace Corps.

OK, I promise my next post will be more cultural and interesting! Until then!

Well Fundraising Project Online

The funding page for my well project just came online with Peace Corps Parnership! The project will fund the building of wells in three rural towns that do not currently have wells, improving water quality and reducing waterborne diseases. Since these towns abut the forest complex I work with, building wells will also reduce forest incursions and act as a thank you to the communities for participating in the formation of a biologically valuable research reserve.

If you've been thinking of possibly contributing to one of the development projects I'm working on, this is "the big one", so take a look! And if anyone has any questions about the project, feel free to comment or email me.

Peace Corps Partnership Well Building Project

Work Updates

Pictures and cultural stuff are always more interesting for blog updates, but here’s what’s new with the projects I’m doing at site:

Vanilla—This was an incredibly promising project at first. Vanilla is by far the largest cash crop in my area, and since the prices have dropped to about 5% of their (admittedly ridiculously inflated) high a decade ago, people have been struggling to make ends meet. In a tropical area like the one I work in, subsistence agriculture is entirely possible, but doesn’t make enough money to send kids to school or provide families with adequate healthcare and nutrition. So finding better prices for the three vanilla cooperatives in my area has been a high priority on everyone’s list of Projects for the Vazaha To Do. (Vazaha, in case I haven’t made it clear, is a mildly offensive term for white and presumably French people.)

And the thing is, I had a great deal set up and it almost went through! A larger cooperative was interested in buying vanilla at fair trade prices and possibly helping us set up a library to boot. The co-op had already visited, the samples had been sent to a buyer, the date for the buy visit was set…and five days before the meeting, I got news that the local co-op sold off almost all their vanilla stock. They claimed they were “worried” about wholesale prices dropping, but suspiciously, they sold off right before a large festival that featured lots of booze. Great. I was very annoyed with them to say the least, and they got some lectures before I agreed to work with them again next year.

Well Improvement—This is what that link a few posts ago was about. A lot of the wells in the area are functioning but are a decade old and showing wear that neither the government nor community have the organization or money to fix. So some health workers and I identified five wells in my area that can be substantially improved with minimal input (cement patches to fix platform cracks that are allowing dirty water into the well, a canal to divert rainwater and keep the well from flooding, new pulleys to make it easier for kids to haul water from a deep water table). I received funding through an organization called Appropriate Projects and the builder is working on the wells right now and should be finished next week!

Well Building—There are a lot of towns without good water sources in my area, so it was hard to choose which would get wells (which are not the cheapest things to build). With the blessing of my community counterpart (work partner) I ended up choosing three towns that are very close to the reserve I work with, since well water would reduce forest incursions and also be a thank you to the community for working on cooperation with the reserve. There have been several deaths in the area that were attributed to bad water—since there are few latrines or showers in the area, even the stream water people are using is pretty gross.

I started searching for builders for this project last fall, and only found a reliable builder this spring. Another volunteer introduced me to a nun in a nearby city who organizes teams to build wells in the countryside. She’s a rarity—an educated, hardworking, and well-traveled Malagasy who has a great handle on community issues and does a fantastic job lending a helping hand to those in need. Unfortunately, her organization doesn’t have any money, so I applied to Peace Corps Partnership Programs, which will put my well projects online, hopefully to be funded by a water charity organization. Of course, it takes quite awhile for Peace Corps administration to get the application online, so I’ll probably be twiddling my thumbs for awhile yet, waiting on them.

Fishing Cooperatives—I mentioned these guys awhile ago—there’s a group of students who approached me about building a massive and state-of-the-art pond system, and since that would have been way expensive and they wouldn’t have been able to care for it themselves, we whittled the project down to something more basic. So far, by themselves or with my oversight, they’ve built four fishponds, had a training about pond improvement and fish care, and did the paperwork to become an officially recognized association. Once the paperwork goes though (the agricultural center gave me the wrong paperwork originally, so it’s taken awhile) we should be able to get some funding for new fingerling fish. Once they can sell the fish and make a profit, the profit will go to pay the school fees of the kids who work on the project, but that’s still a year off.

I recently found a new group of people who have supposedly already done the paperwork to become an official association and are just…not doing anything. They still have their pond, though, so in the future I might work on getting their group up and running again.

Beekeeping—There’s a small family-run operation that does sustainable honey harvesting and wants to take on apprentices, and I’ve been helping them try to grow their business—basic budgeting, marketing, and sales improvement, and talking to them about how to use their profits to build more hives. They’ve only managed to build four new hives so far, but they’re optimistic about their business’ potential to expand.

Environmental Education—This started when an education volunteer invited me and a health volunteer up to her high school for a week to co-teach classes on STDs and deforestation. (You wouldn’t think those subjects would normally go together, but we managed quite well.) Since then I’ve been invited to several other community gatherings to give speeches and encourage conversation about environmental issues, in front of a total of about 400 people. At the moment, I’m producing a brochure for the regional agricultural center on environmental problems and solutions.

Etc—First, my English Club is still going strong. I have about 20 regular students now, of whom only three or four actually study and improve their language (the others just show up and hope they’ll learn the language by osmosis). Second, I have about 60 books and magazine ready to start a small library once the middle school director organizes a time and space for students to access them. Third, I’ve been doing some exchange visits with other volunteers, working with them on their projects—computer training for female teachers on Women’s Day at once site, gardening for nutrition at another site, plus the afore-mentioned high school work.