Some Questions About My Life at Site

Recently I received a letter from one of my aunts with a list of questions about my life at site. They seemed like questions that would be of general of interest to all of you so I’ve decided to post my answers.

1. Have you made the trip in from your site to your banking town yet? How long does it take? How do you get there? And what can you do while you’re there?

The banking town is literally just the town where your bank is located. PCVs are allotted three days every month to go to their banking town and take out money. Why three days you may ask? Because for many volunteers it takes that long just to get there and back again. My banking town is Ambositra. I am very lucky in that my site is only 17k from my banking town, the road is fairly good and there are taxi-brousses going back and forth between the two towns every day and several times a day. It’s about a 30-45 minute drive to Ambositra. The length of time for the trip is determined by whether the driver has enough gas or is trying to save gas by periodically turning the car off and coasting as much as possible. Many people walk or bike the trip, which I’ve recently considered doing in order to come and go as I please rather than wait for the brousse to fill up and leave (our taxi-brousses are old station wagons which they cram at least 13-14 people into).

What do I do while I’m there? Well, other than go to the bank, I usually bring a few things to charge. I always eat at least one thing that I can’t get at site (ice cream, baked goods, French fries, something with cheese etc). Most of the time I end up doing some shopping for food or household items that I can’t find at site (butter, ketchup, olive oil, toilet paper, kitchen stuff…there’s even supposedly a place where you can buy real cheese but I have yet to see this legendary place actually open). Also, I always take advantage of the nice bathrooms at my hotel and take a hot shower. This is one of the things I look forward to most when planning to go to Ambositra. I am very unlucky in that Ambositra does not have internet access so checking my email or updating my blog is not something I can do when I go to my banking town.

2. Are you going crazy yet?

No. At least I don’t think so. Although it would be hard for me to tell since the people at my site would think anything I did was completely nuts. Some of you may be laughing but this is actually a reasonable question. Going crazy is apparently a legitimate problem for PCVs. People get MedEvac-ed for going crazy more frequently than I’m comfortable with. So frequently in fact, that we have a special name for it – WackEvac-ed. Also, I recently found out that PCVs are granted three free psych visits upon returning to the US. So I’ll keep you all updated on my level of sanity.

3. What is you “hut” like?

My “hut” is two rooms of a three room house. It’s a one-story cement house (when I say cement I mean cement everything, walls, floors, everything but the wood doors. It’s winter now so most days it feels like I’m living in a cement refrigerator) with a tin roof. I have a porch with a fenced in front and back yard. It’s a way bigger house than I ever imagined I’d be living in during my service and I really like it aside from the large rodent population living in my ceiling and the window in my kitchen which is large and low enough for the kids to perch themselves on it and stare at me nonstop.

4. How do you furnish your house?

My actual furniture (bed, chairs, table, shelves etc) was ordered and made at site. Everything else was purchased in my banking town on my way to being installed, including my mattress, gas stove, pots and pans and other kitchen supplies and LOTS of plastic buckets of various shapes and sizes. People here are obsessed with plastic. The other day one of my neighbors was over while I was cooking and I was using a metal mixing bowl. She told me I shouldn’t use it and shouldn’t have bought it and that I should go out and buy a plastic one.

5. How do you get food to eat?

As far as sites go for environment volunteers, mine is surprisingly well stocked. We have a market three days a week where I can buy just about any fruit or vegetable, beans, rice and other various items. The main street of my town is lined with about a dozen epiceries. These stores are the Malagasy equivalent to convenience stores and sell everything from flour to needles and thread to candlesticks. I can’t figure out how they all stay in business because they all sell exactly the same things at exactly the same prices.

I also have the option of buying live chickens, ducks, turkeys and rabbits to kill and eat. I haven’t gone down that road yet and I’m not sure I ever will. Meat here is a bit of an issue for me. I haven’t been able to bring myself to buy it. The stuff that isn’t still alive has been hanging outside for who knows how long. I’ve actually seen people using fly swatters but swatting directly at the meat. Last week I was given a serving of meat which I tasted, choked down and was then too terrified to ask exactly what part of the cow it was. My friend Nicole served me cow tongue in honor of Madagascar’s Independence Day. At first I thought it was kind of cool to be this close to my food source. Now I’m over it. I can’t wait to go back to the US and be able to buy meat and not immediately be able to tell exactly what animal it is. Nicole’s family was floored when I told them we buy all our meat already dead. Meat dishes here are almost always served up with uncomfortable reminders that they were once living things. There’s usually at least one organ along with the dish. Birds usually still have some of their quills. Mammals often still have some fur. And fish are served whole with the eyes staring up at you from the plate.

6. What’s the deal with your indoor shower?

Indoor “showers” in rural Madagascar are really just tiny rooms about the size of a walk-in closet with a hole in one corner for water to drain out. That’s it. I still heat up water and take a bucket shower. Hence my excitement at the opportunity for real showers in my banking town.

7. Do you ever see any of the other PCVs?

Because my site is relatively accessible, I get to see other PCVs fairly often. I usually run into at least one when I go to my banking town. Last month I was able to go to Fianar with a bunch of other PCVs for a big meeting and then tag along with my APCD for a bunch of visits to other sites. Two weeks ago the environment volunteer that lives closest to me showed up at my door to take me to see her site and visit some other PCVs on the way. And now I’m back in Fianar celebrating the Fourth of July and a fellow volunteer’s birthday (and of course doing “business” too since that was how I got permission to make this trip in the first place).

8. Have you made any friends with the locals?

Since I replaced a volunteer all her friends automatically made themselves my friends too. At first I thought this was kind of weird seeing as we’re not the same person. But I quickly got over that and was just happy to have people around who know how to speak Malagasy to someone who just started learning the language. They’ve been incredibly helpful too. Aside from taking it upon themselves to teach me the language (they get a lot of humor out of this), they also show me around town, take me to meet people, help me find stuff I need, act as my interpreter and help me deal with issues like, say, for example when a drunk guy follows me home and politely asks if it would be alright if he slept with me. Honestly I don’t know what I’d do without them.

9. How do you spend your days?

Right now my days are pretty uneventful. I usually wake up at around t6:30 and lay in bed mentally preparing myself for my day until at least 7. The earlier I get up and open my windows the earlier I have to deal with people staring at me through them. My house is on the path that leads to the only middle school in my commune so if I get up before school starts I have to deal with every single middle school aged child in Andina walking by my house. This entails lots of staring and laughing – a few are brave enough to say hello. Students here go home for lunch so they walk by my house four times a day so if I can eliminate the morning walk by not waking up I’m down to three waves of the staring. All in all there’s really very little incentive to get out of bed. Then I get up, eat breakfast and listen to the news on either BBC or VOA (I don’t know what I’d do without my short wave radio – I listen to it all the time). After that I do the dishes and clean my house. I’m pretty anal about cleaning my house because I don’t want the family of rats living in my ceiling to discover my kitchen and fleas are a huge problem here on the plateau.

At around 10 I usually leave my house and choose between one of a few daily activities. I can help someone with their farming. From time to time there’s a meeting I have to attend. Sometimes I walk around our “downtown” and talk to different people. If it’s a market day I’ll go to market but this has to be done early in the morning or the men are all so drunk that it’s more of a hassle than it’s worth. Sometimes I make the 5k trek to my counterpart’s house. This is always nice because it takes up pretty much the whole day. If I’m feeling adventurous I’ll go for a walk to places I haven’t visited yet. About one a week I’ll pay a visit to the mayor’s office and remind them that they still haven’t fixed my fence or the leak in my ceiling. Lots of times I just go to my friend Nicole’s house and spend time with her family. They like to teach me about Malagasy culture and how to cook different Malagasy dishes and ask me all sorts of questions about the US. They also take me to meet different people in Andina and teach me how to farm different things.

If I’m at someone’s house when it gets to be lunch time I’ll eat lunch with them. At first I felt guilty about this because I have plenty of money to buy my own food while the people here a pretty poor – we’re talking paying for stuff with rice poor. But I’ve since realized that when people are cooking they’ll pretty much feed anyone who is nearby so I guess it’s just part of the culture. Plus the people here are such good farmers that they have way more food than they could ever eat on their own so I don’t think feeding me is really all that much of a strain. Anyway, if I go home for lunch then it’s pretty much a repeat of my morning routine and I leave my house again, choosing a different activity for the afternoon. Everyone bars themselves inside their homes when it starts getting dark so I go home, eat dinner, read a book and go to bed. I have an exciting life here in Madagascar.

That’s it for the questions. Feel free to send me more. I’m happy to answer them. The third goal of Peace Corps is after all to teach Americans about your country of service.