One of the things that really made me think twice about rejoining the ranks of Peace Corps Madagascar was the memory of the culture shock I had dealt with when I first arrived at site last time. My first few weeks, months even, in Andina were really tough to get through and the thought of going through that again was really not appealing. Having lived through it once and being familiar with Madagascar, I assumed it would be an easier process this time. First, I already know how my body deals with that kind of stress so I would be able to identify culture shock for what it is rather than constantly pondering over whether or not I’m manic depressive. Plus, I wouldn’t be quite as clueless when it comes to Malagasy culture and things like shopping at the market so I wouldn’t have to constantly think about every little daily activity – previously a source of great distress, mental and physical exhaustion as well as questioning of my mental capabilities both by myself and my neighbors. On the other hand, I knew going into reinstatement that my new site would be very different from my old one and we were going to arrive at site right as the holiday season began. So while I convinced myself I could survive the inevitable adjustment period, I was also bracing myself for a painful first few weeks.
I’ve been at site for three weeks now and I must say, the adjustment process is going much smoother the second time around. First of all, I seem to have skipped over the culture shock induced state of constant hunger I suffered through last time. That’s been a relief given the lack of food options in Morarano and insanely high price of food in Foulpointe. Plus, there’s nothing more embarrassing than always feeling like you’re starving when you live in a place where most people really don’t have enough food to eat.
The language barrier is also miniscule compared to last time. I still have issues, obviously. They speak a different dialect here and I forgot a lot of Malagasy while I was back in the states. But it’s coming back to me quickly and even though the dialect often makes it difficult for me to understand what people are saying, everyone here is usually able to understand my random mix of official Malagasy and Betsileo. I think this has a lot to do with the process being easier this time for two reasons. First, I’m able to express my wants and needs. When I got to Andina I was constantly stammering through broken sentences about wanting to do something like buy an egg, all the while gesticulating wildly in the hopes of supplementing my incomprehensible gibberish (picture me hopping around imitating a chicken laying an egg), and being met with blank stares or long lectures on the correct pronunciation of “egg” (neighbor: “ah TOO dee” me: “ah TOO dee” neighbor: “no no no, ah TOOOOOOO dee”). Needless to say, I either did not get answers to my questions or would be unable to understand the answers to my questions and ended up egg-less and sad. This time I have had much more success. I can actually ask a question and then have a full on conversation about the response. In keeping with the egg example, I asked about eggs and my neighbor told people don’t sell them here. I explained that I really like eggs and that they are a good and cheap source of protein and she went off and tracked down some eggs to sell me – success! The second reason my improved language is making life easier is closely related to the first: as seen in the egg example, the people in Andina thought I was a huge moron. And while I don’t blame them for thinking this (after all, I thought I was a moron half the time too), the belief that I was a moron really stuck and it took me months to redeem myself. So far in Morarano, however, the people appear to consider me a fairly capable adult – or at least as capable as a vazaha can be.
I also think that having more to do here in Morarano is helping a lot. I feel like I’m spending a lot more time doing things that can be defined as work as opposed to sitting around all day. I do still do an awful lot of sitting around so it’s possible that I’m just more used to doing nothing. But I’m at least telling myself I’m doing something productive and this is enormously helpful.
Over all I’m kind of amazed at how quickly I’ve settled into a routine remarkably similar to my routine from Andina. I still listen to the news and Border Crossings every night on the Voice of America. I make a lot of the same meals. I’m becoming friends with a lot of the teachers. Every Sunday, I avoid the church crowd and do my laundry. I go to bed and wake up at about the same time. The kids here are even stealing from my fence just like the kids did in Andina – it’s good to know at least one thing is the same on both the plateau and the coast.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tonga Soa! We have been waiting for you for a long time!
Written on 01 December 2009
I finally made it to my site this past Saturday so my second attempt at Peace Corps service has officially begun. This came after three days traveling up and down the east coast making courtesy visits to virtually every authority figure in the area. Now anyone who is anyone knows that there are two volunteers in the Tamatave region and how to contact us and Peace Corps if there’s ever a problem. Personally, I think this was a little overkill. If the last crisis is any indication of Peace Corp’s handling of security issues I expect to be receiving hourly text messages directly from the Peace Corps office so there’s really no need to involve every gendarme in the surrounding area – they will probably have bigger problems to deal with.
Regardless, I eventually made it through all the meetings and reached my site. Morarano is beautiful and everything about it is completely different from my old site. First of all, there are trees! I’m actually surrounded by them – a huge change from Andina, where every square inch of land was being cultivated. And 4k away from my house is Analalava Forest, a small but largely endemic patch of forest that the community (in partnership with NGOs) is working to conserve. I’m not a biologist so I don’t really know what all makes this forest special but my neighbor has pointed out a couple of the trees that are unique to here and she seemed to take a pride in the fact that they only grow here so that was cool to see.
Another big difference is resources. As in, there are none. I didn’t buy any candles in Foulpointe because I assumed that if nothing else, a local epicerie would have them. They are pretty essential, after all, when living without electricity. I was wrong. And I was getting a little worried about having to cook in the dark when someone who had heard about my issue dropped a candle off at my house. There also are no vegetables and no beans, although I’m told there’s an epicerie that sells them from time to time. My water source was described by Leif as “that swamp” and it’s where people fetch water, bath and wash clothes and dishes so you can imagine how clean the water is. Litchis and charcoal are the only sources of income and thankfully there’s a lot of moringa and fruit around because it looks like the only thing people actually plant is rice. I hate to say it, but after being told by a couple of people around town that the soil is good but nobody plants anything, I started to think there might be something to this laziness stigma attached to the people on the coast. Andina, on the other hand was producing anything you could think of and whatever you couldn’t find at the epiceries would certainly be available on the major market days.
My arrival was also drastically different this time around. When I got to Andina before there weren’t really that many people around and we had to go track down someone official to let them know I had arrived and get the keys to my house. A group of people helped me move in but they seemed to only be in it for the day’s salary I would have to pay them and it took forever to clean up the house and make it livable.
This time, the car was surrounded almost as soon as it stopped and everyone pitched in to bring my stuff down the hill to my house. The house had been built specifically for a volunteer so it was new and clean and a couple of women immediately grabbed my hand and showed me everything: both rooms, the yard, the path to my kabone and even the windows to show how well they locked. When they noticed I didn’t have any furniture someone showed up with a table and a little later someone dropped off a chair (I found out later these are on loan from the director of the elementary school. He told me I can feel free to keep them until I get my own, which is good since I’m still trying to find someone to order furniture from). Once I got settled they killed a chicken and we had lunch with the President of the Fokontany. That was followed by an official ceremony with lots of speeches and of course, plently of Bonbon Anglais – the beverage of choice for any special occasion in Madagascar. The whole time, people kept coming over to greet me and the one thing that everyone said was “We’ve been waiting for you for a long time!”
Overall, it was quite the welcoming party. Now, to be fair to Andina, the people who were mostly involved with requesting a volunteer lived pretty far from my house, so maybe if they had been around when I arrived there I would have been greeted with more enthusiasm. But still, it was nice to feel like people were excited for my arrival. Nice, and a little overwhelming. Morarano was supposed to get a volunteer from the group that should have arrived last February. So they have indeed been waiting for a long time. And now that I’m finally here everyone keeps coming up to me to ask when I’ll start my work – when I’ll start teaching about SRI, or how to plant vegetables, or work at the tree nursery or teach at the school. It’s been a little crazy. Not to mention the fact that I’m still just trying to figure out how to get from my house to my kabone without having to walk through the enormous flooded area that is supposed to be a path. Fortunately, we’re in the middle of litchi season so the majority of the town is too preoccupied trying to get all the litchis off to Tamatave to be serious about wanting to start working with me. Unfortunately, my neighbor told me litchi season is over on Monday, and she expects me to start working then.
I finally made it to my site this past Saturday so my second attempt at Peace Corps service has officially begun. This came after three days traveling up and down the east coast making courtesy visits to virtually every authority figure in the area. Now anyone who is anyone knows that there are two volunteers in the Tamatave region and how to contact us and Peace Corps if there’s ever a problem. Personally, I think this was a little overkill. If the last crisis is any indication of Peace Corp’s handling of security issues I expect to be receiving hourly text messages directly from the Peace Corps office so there’s really no need to involve every gendarme in the surrounding area – they will probably have bigger problems to deal with.
Regardless, I eventually made it through all the meetings and reached my site. Morarano is beautiful and everything about it is completely different from my old site. First of all, there are trees! I’m actually surrounded by them – a huge change from Andina, where every square inch of land was being cultivated. And 4k away from my house is Analalava Forest, a small but largely endemic patch of forest that the community (in partnership with NGOs) is working to conserve. I’m not a biologist so I don’t really know what all makes this forest special but my neighbor has pointed out a couple of the trees that are unique to here and she seemed to take a pride in the fact that they only grow here so that was cool to see.
Another big difference is resources. As in, there are none. I didn’t buy any candles in Foulpointe because I assumed that if nothing else, a local epicerie would have them. They are pretty essential, after all, when living without electricity. I was wrong. And I was getting a little worried about having to cook in the dark when someone who had heard about my issue dropped a candle off at my house. There also are no vegetables and no beans, although I’m told there’s an epicerie that sells them from time to time. My water source was described by Leif as “that swamp” and it’s where people fetch water, bath and wash clothes and dishes so you can imagine how clean the water is. Litchis and charcoal are the only sources of income and thankfully there’s a lot of moringa and fruit around because it looks like the only thing people actually plant is rice. I hate to say it, but after being told by a couple of people around town that the soil is good but nobody plants anything, I started to think there might be something to this laziness stigma attached to the people on the coast. Andina, on the other hand was producing anything you could think of and whatever you couldn’t find at the epiceries would certainly be available on the major market days.
My arrival was also drastically different this time around. When I got to Andina before there weren’t really that many people around and we had to go track down someone official to let them know I had arrived and get the keys to my house. A group of people helped me move in but they seemed to only be in it for the day’s salary I would have to pay them and it took forever to clean up the house and make it livable.
This time, the car was surrounded almost as soon as it stopped and everyone pitched in to bring my stuff down the hill to my house. The house had been built specifically for a volunteer so it was new and clean and a couple of women immediately grabbed my hand and showed me everything: both rooms, the yard, the path to my kabone and even the windows to show how well they locked. When they noticed I didn’t have any furniture someone showed up with a table and a little later someone dropped off a chair (I found out later these are on loan from the director of the elementary school. He told me I can feel free to keep them until I get my own, which is good since I’m still trying to find someone to order furniture from). Once I got settled they killed a chicken and we had lunch with the President of the Fokontany. That was followed by an official ceremony with lots of speeches and of course, plently of Bonbon Anglais – the beverage of choice for any special occasion in Madagascar. The whole time, people kept coming over to greet me and the one thing that everyone said was “We’ve been waiting for you for a long time!”
Overall, it was quite the welcoming party. Now, to be fair to Andina, the people who were mostly involved with requesting a volunteer lived pretty far from my house, so maybe if they had been around when I arrived there I would have been greeted with more enthusiasm. But still, it was nice to feel like people were excited for my arrival. Nice, and a little overwhelming. Morarano was supposed to get a volunteer from the group that should have arrived last February. So they have indeed been waiting for a long time. And now that I’m finally here everyone keeps coming up to me to ask when I’ll start my work – when I’ll start teaching about SRI, or how to plant vegetables, or work at the tree nursery or teach at the school. It’s been a little crazy. Not to mention the fact that I’m still just trying to figure out how to get from my house to my kabone without having to walk through the enormous flooded area that is supposed to be a path. Fortunately, we’re in the middle of litchi season so the majority of the town is too preoccupied trying to get all the litchis off to Tamatave to be serious about wanting to start working with me. Unfortunately, my neighbor told me litchi season is over on Monday, and she expects me to start working then.
Friday, November 13, 2009
I hear you're going back to Madagascar. And I hear you're excited about this.
That's how I was greeted one morning last weekend when I stumbled, still half asleep, into my friend's living room. As I pondered how best to respond and wiped the sleep out of my eyes,the girl's serious look of concern for my mental health came into focus. That's when I realized it was high time that I explained myself before one of the following two rumors started circulating amongst my friends and family: (1) Peace Corps bound and gagged Katie and forced her to return to Madagascar or, (2) Katie's masochism has officially gotten out of control and the intervention is scheduled for...
So here I am attempting to shed light onto my decision to return to Madagascar. Let me start off by saying that I understand why many of you may be confused. After all, over the last few months my feelings towards Peace Corps and development have vacillated between the following extremes: (1) I hate Peace Corps; (2) I love Peace Corps; (3) politicians suck and are making development impossible, so why bother with anything remotely related to Peace Corps? (4) I loved the PCV work... but there are crazy people running Peace Corps so I should probably get out while I still can; (5) really?? did that just happen? Clearly, it's been quite the rollercoaster. Either that or I've become schizophrenic. But I had no trouble getting my medical clearance so I'm assuming that means I don't have to worry about the possibility of being clinically insane.
Anyway, on to my perfectly logical reasons for returning. First, it has really been bothering me that I was unable to finish service. Particularly because I felt like I had dealt with a lot to get to where I was and ended up having to leave just as I was making headway at my site. So reason number one has to do with my search for closure. My second reason is that I thought it was important for people to return to Peace Corps Madagascar and help reopen the program. Despite the numerous stumbling blocks, I still for some reason believe that there's a lot of potential for development work over there and the people in Madagascar need assistance now more than ever. Yet another draw for me was the opportunity to try again in Madagascar with a clean slate. I had been having a great deal of trouble at my old site due to a variety of different site specific issues and I knew Peace Corps wasn't reopening sites anywhere near my old one. Therefore, it was really tempting to get the chance to start over, learn from my previous mistakes and see if I could have a little more success the second time around.
So there you have it, my top three reasons for agreeing to go back to Madagascar with Peace Corps. Hopefully it's all making a little more sense now. Our group actually flies out tomorrow so I'll be back in Madagascar this coming Monday. And I should make it out to my new site sometime in the next couple of weeks meaning that I'll find out soon if my motivations for returning were naive or rational. In the mean time, just know that yes, I am going back to Madagascar and yes, I am excited about it.
So here I am attempting to shed light onto my decision to return to Madagascar. Let me start off by saying that I understand why many of you may be confused. After all, over the last few months my feelings towards Peace Corps and development have vacillated between the following extremes: (1) I hate Peace Corps; (2) I love Peace Corps; (3) politicians suck and are making development impossible, so why bother with anything remotely related to Peace Corps? (4) I loved the PCV work... but there are crazy people running Peace Corps so I should probably get out while I still can; (5) really?? did that just happen? Clearly, it's been quite the rollercoaster. Either that or I've become schizophrenic. But I had no trouble getting my medical clearance so I'm assuming that means I don't have to worry about the possibility of being clinically insane.
Anyway, on to my perfectly logical reasons for returning. First, it has really been bothering me that I was unable to finish service. Particularly because I felt like I had dealt with a lot to get to where I was and ended up having to leave just as I was making headway at my site. So reason number one has to do with my search for closure. My second reason is that I thought it was important for people to return to Peace Corps Madagascar and help reopen the program. Despite the numerous stumbling blocks, I still for some reason believe that there's a lot of potential for development work over there and the people in Madagascar need assistance now more than ever. Yet another draw for me was the opportunity to try again in Madagascar with a clean slate. I had been having a great deal of trouble at my old site due to a variety of different site specific issues and I knew Peace Corps wasn't reopening sites anywhere near my old one. Therefore, it was really tempting to get the chance to start over, learn from my previous mistakes and see if I could have a little more success the second time around.
So there you have it, my top three reasons for agreeing to go back to Madagascar with Peace Corps. Hopefully it's all making a little more sense now. Our group actually flies out tomorrow so I'll be back in Madagascar this coming Monday. And I should make it out to my new site sometime in the next couple of weeks meaning that I'll find out soon if my motivations for returning were naive or rational. In the mean time, just know that yes, I am going back to Madagascar and yes, I am excited about it.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Goodbye Madagascar
I'm sure most of you have heard by now that Peace Corps evacuated from Madagascar. I've been waiting to post on this since I was pretty emotional and not really looking forward to answering all the questions on what I'm doing next. It's been a little over two weeks now since I first got the news and I still don't know what I'm doing with my life besides putting off making real decisions for as long as possible.
The week leading up to our evacuation was pretty bizarre. It started off with me leaving Andina and heading to Tana for a week long training preparing for the incoming environment volunteers. The day I left things started heating up in my banking town. In fact, I think I just missed getting trapped in Ambositra due to road blocks put up by the strikers to keep out the military (this may sound a lot more dramatic than it actually was, I'm pretty sure the road blocks were just dumpsters). Our training continued as planned for a few days but the whole time we kept hearing reports about strikes happening all over the country. Ambositra eventually became violent and was temporarily made a red zone for volunteers, which was crazy to hear since it's such a tiny town, and a town I would have had to go through to travel anywhere outside my site due to the lack of roads in Madagascar.
Just after I finished putting together all my lesson plans and materials for training we got word that trainees wouldn't be coming after all. The military had taken sides in the conflict and was refusing to control strikes and looting so I'm sure Peace Corps made the right decision but I feel for all those incoming trainees...apparently they'd made it all the way to Philly for staging before being told they wouldn't be going to Madagascar after all.
A couple days of moping around Mantasoa later, we were told that we would be evacuating - via text message read aloud in the middle of dinner. A rather unceremonious way to find out you're goin to be ending your Peace Corps service if you ask me, but what can you do? I was on the next flight out to Johannesburg with two other volunteers and everyone else trickled in in the following days. Ironically, Johannesburg is a red zone for Peace Corps volunteers, meaning that we were evacuated from a country where most of us were able to live in complete safety at site to a city where we weren't allowed to leave the hotel because it was so dangerous. I have my doubts as to how dangerous Johannesburg really is but I didn't want to push my luck.
After a week long Close of Service conference where I first waited to hear my options (being the first one there meant I had to spend several days biting my nails while I waited for everyone else to show up to hear the talk on our options). Then I spent hours debating my options: direct transfer to another country? re-enroll in a few months? hold out for Madagascar and re-instate when the program re-opens? get a job? It was an incredibly stressful and emotional week and I am so glad it's over.
I finally ended up deciding to travel in Africa for awhile with friends and then go home and debate my future further when I'm feeling slightly less emotional. By the way, Becca, it looks like I'm going to make it to your graduation after all so I'll see you soon! I spent a few days on a safari in Kruger Park for one last hurrah with a few people before we went our separate ways. The animal sightings were amazing and we saw four of the Big Five. Right now I'm in Cape Town where we're taking in the sites and planning the rest of our trip. Yesterday I went wine tasting - it was so nice to drink wine that didn't taste like vinegar! This is an awesome city and I'm amazed at how much it feels like I'm back in the states already. Good news there is that I can get some of my weird readjustment to life in a developed area out now while I'm with other PCVs so maybe I'll be kind of normal by the time I go home.
I still have moments where I think about the last couple of months and can't believe what's happened. The worst part is that I wasn't able to say goodbye to anyone at my site since it's so difficult to get calls through to Andina. They thought I was just going to be gone for a week and now I've been forced to abandon them when they need help the most. Madagascar was so calm and peaceful and it was my home for a year...it seems crazy that it's now in so much turmoil. Hopefully things will get better soon because the people there will really struggle the longer this goes on. In the mean time, I'll keep you updated on my travels and if anyone has any ideas for what to do once I get back I'd greatly appreciate the input.
The week leading up to our evacuation was pretty bizarre. It started off with me leaving Andina and heading to Tana for a week long training preparing for the incoming environment volunteers. The day I left things started heating up in my banking town. In fact, I think I just missed getting trapped in Ambositra due to road blocks put up by the strikers to keep out the military (this may sound a lot more dramatic than it actually was, I'm pretty sure the road blocks were just dumpsters). Our training continued as planned for a few days but the whole time we kept hearing reports about strikes happening all over the country. Ambositra eventually became violent and was temporarily made a red zone for volunteers, which was crazy to hear since it's such a tiny town, and a town I would have had to go through to travel anywhere outside my site due to the lack of roads in Madagascar.
Just after I finished putting together all my lesson plans and materials for training we got word that trainees wouldn't be coming after all. The military had taken sides in the conflict and was refusing to control strikes and looting so I'm sure Peace Corps made the right decision but I feel for all those incoming trainees...apparently they'd made it all the way to Philly for staging before being told they wouldn't be going to Madagascar after all.
A couple days of moping around Mantasoa later, we were told that we would be evacuating - via text message read aloud in the middle of dinner. A rather unceremonious way to find out you're goin to be ending your Peace Corps service if you ask me, but what can you do? I was on the next flight out to Johannesburg with two other volunteers and everyone else trickled in in the following days. Ironically, Johannesburg is a red zone for Peace Corps volunteers, meaning that we were evacuated from a country where most of us were able to live in complete safety at site to a city where we weren't allowed to leave the hotel because it was so dangerous. I have my doubts as to how dangerous Johannesburg really is but I didn't want to push my luck.
After a week long Close of Service conference where I first waited to hear my options (being the first one there meant I had to spend several days biting my nails while I waited for everyone else to show up to hear the talk on our options). Then I spent hours debating my options: direct transfer to another country? re-enroll in a few months? hold out for Madagascar and re-instate when the program re-opens? get a job? It was an incredibly stressful and emotional week and I am so glad it's over.
I finally ended up deciding to travel in Africa for awhile with friends and then go home and debate my future further when I'm feeling slightly less emotional. By the way, Becca, it looks like I'm going to make it to your graduation after all so I'll see you soon! I spent a few days on a safari in Kruger Park for one last hurrah with a few people before we went our separate ways. The animal sightings were amazing and we saw four of the Big Five. Right now I'm in Cape Town where we're taking in the sites and planning the rest of our trip. Yesterday I went wine tasting - it was so nice to drink wine that didn't taste like vinegar! This is an awesome city and I'm amazed at how much it feels like I'm back in the states already. Good news there is that I can get some of my weird readjustment to life in a developed area out now while I'm with other PCVs so maybe I'll be kind of normal by the time I go home.
I still have moments where I think about the last couple of months and can't believe what's happened. The worst part is that I wasn't able to say goodbye to anyone at my site since it's so difficult to get calls through to Andina. They thought I was just going to be gone for a week and now I've been forced to abandon them when they need help the most. Madagascar was so calm and peaceful and it was my home for a year...it seems crazy that it's now in so much turmoil. Hopefully things will get better soon because the people there will really struggle the longer this goes on. In the mean time, I'll keep you updated on my travels and if anyone has any ideas for what to do once I get back I'd greatly appreciate the input.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Waiting Game
I had intended my next post to be all about carting a live turkey all the way to Chase’s site in Anosibe An’Ala for Thanksgiving and my trip to Tulear and Ifaty for Christmas and New Year’s. I also had every intention of being out of site for most of February with various trainings in Mahajanga, Tana and Mantasoa. Those were my plans. However, my experience thus far as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar has been that even the best laid plans have a tendency to go up in smoke. Something always goes wrong. Either people forget to show up, there’s a death and people can’t show up, one of the key materials somehow doesn’t make it, the person you’re meeting goes out of town, it rains (you would not believe the number of people who say they will only meet me if it doesn’t rain. It’s the rainy season!)…there’s an endless list of things that can and will fall through. Predictably, my current plans have followed suit. The culprit this time: political unrest…an unexpected and slightly more serious twist on the normal events that throw a hitch in the plans of a Peace Corps volunteer. Needless to say, the tale of my latest beach vacation seems a little trivial when every major city in Madagascar has had riots and looting. Additionally, all travel plans have been canceled due to the initiation of our emergency action plan (so I guess I’ll have to wait to go see that 700 year old baobob in Mahajanga some other time, preferably when the capital isn’t still smoldering).
In the mean time, all of the volunteers were forced to spend a few weeks waiting…and waiting and waiting…for Peace Corps to make a decision on what to do with us. Do we get on the next flight out of here or do we go back to site? Or, a third option that seemed to have popped up for a while: finish out the rest of our service here at the PC training site while waiting for that elusive “tomorrow” when we’re sure to get a definitive decision. Given the circumstances, there was surprisingly little drama during the time spent in Mantasoa and most people were pretty productive. Personally though, I found being surrounded by as many as 70 people without the option of really going anywhere to be pretty stressful, not to mention the fact that we had no idea if we would be in South Africa, the United States or Madagascar in the coming weeks. The rumor mill got pretty out of control as well. I guess that’s pretty inevitable when you put that many stressed out people, all with different sources of information, together.
After a number of false starts, we did finally make our way back to site. I’ve been having a hard time getting back into the swing of things, however. I just have a hard time believing that this whole thing is going to work itself out without incident. I mean, how many political crises have ended peacefully? That’s definitely the exception to the rule. So despite going back to Andina and now returning to Tana to prepare for the new trainees’ arrival (Peace Corps did decide to bring them in a month late. Let’s hope they don’t get too freaked out by the current situation. I can’t imagine going through adjusting to life as a PCV in Madagascar with the added chaos of civil unrest going on at the same time), I still find myself waiting on edge for whatever may happen to finally tip the scale and send us packing.
Despite all of this craziness, I want to reassure all of you that I have been perfectly safe throughout the whole ordeal. In fact, it’s entirely possible that if I had remained at site this whole time without updates from Peace Corps that I never would have realized what was going on in the rest of the country. And finally, as much as I’d like to be able to give actual details about this attempted coup (or whatever they’re calling it now), I’ve long since lost the ability to decipher fact from fiction, so you should probably check out some actual news related sites. And there’s always facebook…you may laugh at that suggestion but there was supposed to be a page devoted to the crisis in Madagascar that was pretty reliable.
Well, I’m off to go prep for the new environment trainees. Hopefully all will go as planned. But in the off chance that it doesn’t, my bags are all packed and I may be seeing you back in the states sooner than expected.
In the mean time, all of the volunteers were forced to spend a few weeks waiting…and waiting and waiting…for Peace Corps to make a decision on what to do with us. Do we get on the next flight out of here or do we go back to site? Or, a third option that seemed to have popped up for a while: finish out the rest of our service here at the PC training site while waiting for that elusive “tomorrow” when we’re sure to get a definitive decision. Given the circumstances, there was surprisingly little drama during the time spent in Mantasoa and most people were pretty productive. Personally though, I found being surrounded by as many as 70 people without the option of really going anywhere to be pretty stressful, not to mention the fact that we had no idea if we would be in South Africa, the United States or Madagascar in the coming weeks. The rumor mill got pretty out of control as well. I guess that’s pretty inevitable when you put that many stressed out people, all with different sources of information, together.
After a number of false starts, we did finally make our way back to site. I’ve been having a hard time getting back into the swing of things, however. I just have a hard time believing that this whole thing is going to work itself out without incident. I mean, how many political crises have ended peacefully? That’s definitely the exception to the rule. So despite going back to Andina and now returning to Tana to prepare for the new trainees’ arrival (Peace Corps did decide to bring them in a month late. Let’s hope they don’t get too freaked out by the current situation. I can’t imagine going through adjusting to life as a PCV in Madagascar with the added chaos of civil unrest going on at the same time), I still find myself waiting on edge for whatever may happen to finally tip the scale and send us packing.
Despite all of this craziness, I want to reassure all of you that I have been perfectly safe throughout the whole ordeal. In fact, it’s entirely possible that if I had remained at site this whole time without updates from Peace Corps that I never would have realized what was going on in the rest of the country. And finally, as much as I’d like to be able to give actual details about this attempted coup (or whatever they’re calling it now), I’ve long since lost the ability to decipher fact from fiction, so you should probably check out some actual news related sites. And there’s always facebook…you may laugh at that suggestion but there was supposed to be a page devoted to the crisis in Madagascar that was pretty reliable.
Well, I’m off to go prep for the new environment trainees. Hopefully all will go as planned. But in the off chance that it doesn’t, my bags are all packed and I may be seeing you back in the states sooner than expected.
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