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.

Lemurs

Lemurs are such a stereotype of this country, especially since that movie. But let's be honest, there's a good reason for that! I went to Lemur's Park near Antananarivo with some friends recently--it's basically a humane zoo that has a few dozen (very cute) lemurs, many confiscated from the illegal lemur pet industry (who wouldn't survive in the wild). You can get very close to the lemurs without stressing them out, since they're so used to humans--the upshot being that even my low end camera can get some good shots!

Project!

One (or rather, five) of my well improvement projects are online! Hopefully more to come, since I'm aiming to build three as well as improve these five.

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/626

Daraina

I went to another volunteer's site last week to check out an ecotourism project that she was doing, and had a hilariously interesting time while I was there (hilarious if you're used to Madagascar, I suppose). The only transportation to the town was in the back of a pickup, and we ended up walking several times because the road was so bad that even the high-clearance 4x4 was bottoming out with the extra weight (and with or without the people weight, it spent a good part of the trip fishtailing in mud). The kicker is, the town I was visiting is located on the ONLY ROAD OUT OF MY REGION. The road is so bad that is sometimes takes 20 hours to cover 150 kilometers (about 100 miles). And that's why my site is a fly site. The next day, we went out to the reserve the volunteer works with, and came back to a truck with a flat tire and no battery. And the jack was broken. Solution? Have six people sit on a branch resting on an overturned rice mortar and lift the truck up while a guy changes the tire (and fiddles around under the truck, and hope that the branch doesn't snap). Then create a new circuit for the battery by pulling nails out of a nearby park bench and pounding them into the car battery. That same day, someone in the nearby town brought the researchers at the NGO a young dwarf lemur that someone had picked up in the forest. It was wary of its surrounding for a few minutes, then started to jump in the laps of everyone sitting around the table, walk over our computers, bite our thumbs, eat bananas, and eventually jumped down one of the researcher's pants. He yelped and ran out of the room to drop his pants in peace. More evidence that lemurs had a different evolutionary path than a lot of the world's animals--no ingrained fear of humans. The lemur's fate is uncertain because it would be very difficult to identify his family group, without which he won't survive in the wild. Anyway, here are some pictures!

Anjangoveratra Index

Most of these are guesses rather that actual statistics:

There are, depending on the census you consult, 20,000 to 30,000 people in my commune.

The average family has six children; a number of families have up to fifteen children.

49% to 58% of the commune population is children under 18, again depending on which source you consult.

Over 80% of people will or did drop out of school before 6^th grade. Many (most) heads of family only have an elementary school education.

Only about 4% of children continue to high school. About 80% of those are male.

Female students drop out of school because of pregnancy as young as 13.

Classes have a range of ages in every classroom because of kids being held back or missing years if they cen't pay school fees; there are often 7 year olds sitting next to 15 year olds, 14 year olds sitting next to 22 year olds, all in the same classroom.

Elementary school classes often have over 100 students per teacher.

High school classes often only have about 50-60 students per teacher.

Because there aren’t enough classrooms for all the students, classrooms are in use from 6 am to 6 pm. Students are booted off school grounds to wander for at least part of each day.

High school teachers are paid about $50 per month. Middle school teachers are paid about $30 per month. Elementary school, even less.

There is no high school in my commune. High school students must live in a nearby city.

Elementary school teachers usually have graduated from middle school. Middle school teachers have usually graduated from high school.

There are, to the best of my knowledge, only three people in the commune who went to college—me, my counterpart at the MBG, and the doctor.

There is one doctor for the 20-30,000 people in the commune.

Over 60% of adults are missing teeth. That’s a very low estimate.

The most common diseases in my area are malaria, diarrhea, and upper respiratory infections (from cooking over an open fire).

The syphilis rate in Madagascar is about 40%.

The HIV rate is about 1%, mostly transmitted from French sex tourists. The HIV/AIDS rate is set to spike in a few years if condom usage rates don’t change.

90-99% of the people in the commune are rice farmers. Some also have day jobs as teachers or community police.

Cacao

This week I went to a potential new Peace Corps site to evaluate it for future volunteers. The people who are interested in getting a volunteer farm cacao (aka chocolate before it gets delicious) and I took some pictures of the plantation. Here you go, and also, be sure to check out the video in the last post!

Me, the plantation manager, and the plantation owner. The tree on the left is a young cacao tree.

One of the workers splits a cacao shell with a machete to show me the difference between the two varieties they farm. One is for white chocolate and 'beauty products', the other is for real chocolate. No, white chocolate is not real chocolate, don't even suggest that to me.

Cacao!!

Madagascar, A Journey Diary (2009)

Youtube has deleted the video because of copyright, but Google Madagascar, A Journey Diary or the French, Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage, and you should be able to watch it.

The Overdue Egypt Post: Part One

Yes, folks, I’m finally getting around to it! Please note that Part Two is already posted BELOW this, so you can read right through, and pics are three posts back.

This is a few of the highlights, followed by a breakdown by days. Let me know if you want me to expand on anything.

My Three Favorite Experiences in Egypt

1. Hot Air Balloon Ride—Mom and I went on a hot air balloon ride over the West Bank of Luxor for Christmas, which was fabulous. We got to fly over all of the cool monuments that we didn’t have the time or inclination to visit, and despite the smog, the views were great. Also, no people screaming at you to ride their camel at 2000 feet.
2. Desert/Oases—We went out into the Western Desert twice—to Siwa Oasis near the Libyan border, which was cold but delightfully laid back and surrounded by beautiful sites, and to Bahariyya Oasis and the White Desert, which was… cold but delightfully laid back and surrounded by beautiful sites.
3. Food—Oh. My. God. This might be partially because I was coming from Madagascar, where the cuisine has the creativity and variety of, ahem, plain white rice, but the food in Egypt was fabulous. We had kusherie practically every day—a delightful comfort food mix of pasta, rice, lentils, garbanzo beans, dried onions, tomato sauce, and garlic sauce IN ONE BOWL. There were stands of fresh fruit juice on every block, mint tea at every turn, yummy desserts (including om aly, which is pastry shell, milk, and almonds under a crème brulee-ish crust). Even the random side dishes, like fried cauliflower in thyme sauce and beet salad, were delicious. Oh, and did I mention that this is all street food, and costs less than a dollar? Sigh…

Safety and Hassle

Despite the political climate of the past month, and despite the religious bombing in Alexandria while we were there, I felt safe in Egypt—honestly, I felt safer walking around the streets of downtown Cairo at night than I do walking around the streets of my little Malagasy village at night. There were basically no drunks, which cuts out 90% of the annoying or aggressive people right there. With the notable exception of Luxor, people were exceptionally polite and helpful, and on the two or three occasions we were approached by unsavory characters, people were quick to intervene on our behalf. When a crazy guy on the streets started following us, a nearby gentleman immediately put himself in between us and him and escorted us out of harm’s way, then walked off without waiting for thanks.

Now, I guess, for the hassle. I didn’t find Egyptian men nearly as unpleasant and aggressive as people told me they would be, though I’m sure this was helped by the fact that I was traveling with another woman (either my mother or another female traveler) most of the time. Plus, my tolerance of harassment has been skewed by living in Madagascar, where I’m stared at and followed constantly, so only being stared at 10% of the time was a pleasant change. That said, baksheesh is annoying and people in Luxor were outright hostile. The baksheesh thing goes back along ways, culturally. Give him a pound to unhelpfully guide you around or a pound to leave you alone, either way, the dude’s getting a pound (one Egyptian pound = about 15 or 20 cents, btw). Luxor is a step above annoying—a constant stream of people yelling at you to ride their carriage or camel, getting vocally hostile when you don’t, and trying to rip you off—not kind of rip you off, majorly so. It’s understandable given Luxor’s constant stream of tourists and recent monument issues (the government has moved people out of their houses and torn up historic buildings in order to uncover ancient monuments). Understandable, but not excusable.

In Egypt

Day One: I got into Cairo the day before my mother at the bracing hour of 5 am, so after staring tiredly off into space for awhile and then checking my email (practically every hostel we stayed in had free WiFi! It was AMAZING!!), I decided to brave the city streets. I suppose a lot of people find people find Cairo insufferably dirty and somewhat undeveloped, but again, I was coming from Madagascar and found Cairo amazing. Tall buildings—not much trash in the (downtown) streets—nicely paved multilane streets and overpasses everywhere—I felt like such a yokel. Even most of the Gasy capital is two-lanes, two-stories.

I eventually found my way to the Egyptian museum, that overcrowded and poorly labeled treasure-trove that contains with all things, provided they are old, carved, stone, and Egyptian. I reluctantly braved the absurd security measures and entrance price (the security measures seemed especially absurd a few weeks ago, when I read that rioters broke in and damaged some mummies). Then I took a deep breath and plunged into the crowds of (sorry) fat, rude, uncaring, and one udder short of a moo tourists. My god, however do people think they can enjoy a trip when their being whisked around by an uptight tour guide, who charges them five times what they should pay and makes everyone else’s lives miserable by attempting poke their little FOLLOW ME flags in the eye of every independent and thoughtful tourist?

Anyway. The Egyptian Museum was quite delightful, once I adjusted myself to the crowds and (evil) guides. My Lonely Planet proved useful in tracking down the “big” pieces, and the rest of the time I just wandered from room to room (there were about 50 rooms, plus hall exhibits).There were alligator mummies and King Tut’s headdress, and stone statues of gods, pharaohs, and ancient VIPs in every size you can imagine. You can Google Images this if you’re interested, there were no cameras allowed inside.

In the afternoon I had my first bowl of kusherie (instantly hooked), braved the insane traffic (no pedestrian crossings for the most part, you just run out in front of cars and hope for the best), and met up with a lovely Vietnamese-French woman who treated me to dinner after I tried to help her locate her lost baggage by translating in my shoddy French.

Day Two: I met another female traveler over hostel breakfast and since my Mom wasn’t supposed to come in until later that night, we decided to take the (fantastic, clean, and efficient) Cairo Metro to Coptic Cairo. We hit up the museum first, which has everything (really, EVERYTHING) you could ever want to know about Coptic religious art. Very nicely presented but paled in contrast to the Egyptian Museum and by that point I REALLY wanted to get outside. The building it’s in was fantastic though—intricately carved wooden reliefs on every surface and, worth a special mention, a fully enclosed litter the size of a small car used to carry upper-class female pilgrims to the Holy Land without them having to walk or be seen. I can’t decided what would be worse—to have to carry the thing or to be stuck in the sweltering little box for weeks on end.

Several of the churches in the area were unfortunately under construction, but I did enjoy seeing the Hanging Church, which has beautiful mosaics and, in several places, cutouts in the floor where you can look down a 40 foot drop. The church was built straddling an old Roman water tower—that’s how it got its name.

On the way back to the hotel to meet up with my Mom, we stopped at Egypt’s oldest mosque and a Thai restaurant. Coptic, Muslim, Thai, gotta love the cultural mix.

Day Three: With The Mother Unit finally accounted for despite the best efforts of the London snowstorms, we headed to Muslim Quarter for a day of bartering at the market (Ted, you taught me well) and eating (Egyptian pancakes—not always as good as they sound). Some of the market guys were annoying (Hey lady, looking is free), but wandering around the alleys filled with leather and spices and silver and fabrics was…delightful. I feel like I’ve used that word before, but there you go.

Day Four: This is the day you’ve been waiting for, THE PYRAMIDS, dum dum DUM. (That was dramatic music, by the way). We split a cab for the day with two other tourists and headed to The Big Boys Who Were Definitely Overcompensating, only to see—well, not much actually. The Pyramids, as happens oh so rarely, were fogged in. Seriously!?! We could just make out the sphinx through the mist, since we were kept farther away than usual because of construction. And we could see maybe a quarter of the way up the pyramids. The one thing we could see very clearly were the camel drivers, who popped up every ten feet HEYLADYYOUWANTCAMELGUESSHOWMUCHHISNAMEMICHAELJACKSONHELOVEYOU.…so we headed out to out next destination, Saqqara.

OK, quick and incomplete pyramids history here. Basically this dude Zoser decided about 5000 years ago to make a monument and tomb everyone would remember him for, so he piled layer of rocks on top of one another to make a 6-layer step Pyramid, also known as Saqqara. Think of the Mayan Pyramids, it’s kind of that shape. Then the next guy had the brilliant idea of smoothing out the sides to make it a “real pyramid”, only he got too ambitious and halfway up, they realized it would collapse if they kept going at the original angle, so they had to reduce the rise over run and that resulted in the aptly-named Bent Pyramid. Then the next dude actually got it right and was able to make the world’s first “real pyramid”, the Red Pyramid. After that, things got kind of crazy for awhile with every pharaoh wanting to outdo his predecessor in the Pyramid Arms Race, which resulted in what we know as The Pyramids, aka Wonder of the World near the Sphinx (whose head’s really too small for the rest of his body, btw). And then eventually someone realized that hey, that’s a really stupid way to spend money, maybe we should work a little harder at vanquishing our enemies.

If anyone reading this is an Egyptologist or just really well read, I apologize for the preceding paragraph, I don’t have my guidebook or Google so it’s just what I remember off the top of my head. But it does give you a little context to the next few sites, since we went to Saqqara, which was, wait for it, under construction. Couldn’t see half of the site and the rest was covered in scaffolding. So we sighed and went to the Red Pyramid and HEY! This one’s actually pretty cool! Third time’s the charm, right? The Bent Pyramid was visible in its militarized and forbidden zone off in the distance, and the Red Pyramid was just chilling out in the sunshine, bold as day and clear as brass (wait…), and NOT SURROUNDED BY CAMELS AND TOUR GROUPS! Sweeeeeet. We even got to go inside, via an intense and steep ramp that lead us into the hot, sweaty, and incredibly smelly bowels of the pyramid. We glanced around appreciatively at the empty tomb and sloped ceilings, and then got out as fast as we could, sweating profusely and tearing up at the intense ammonia smell of what we hope was bat pee. Yes, friends, the Red Pyramid was awesome, and made up for the fact that our next stop at Memphis was pretty boring.

But wait! Day’s not over yet! We suddenly realized that we still hadn’t really seen the Pyramids, we had a multi-entry day ticket, and that the site was still open for an hour. So after some arguing with our driver, we went back to the Pyramids for sunset and managed to actually see them and photograph them. Very cool, despite the crowds and camel dudes. And then, having lost our taxi because of the “late” hour, we took the metro back into the city (probably got back faster that way, anyway). That night, we took the train down to Luxor—“first class” seats, which were completely uncomfortable and also hard to book. We took the more expensive sleeper train back north, and it was worth every touristy penny (though we did meet a very cool Dutch couple on the way down to Luxor).