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 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.

sorry for the delay

It’s been a long time since my last post and I’ve had some complaints about the lack of updates so I apologize for the lack of activity. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to get to an internet café where I wouldn’t physically grow old waiting to log in to gmail. I don’t seemed to be blessed with the patience required for online activities in the developing world. Anyway, here’s a rundown of what I’ve been up to in the last couple months.

Tamatave Bike Race

At the beginning of October I headed to the east coast for the annual Tamatave bike race and a week of HIV/AIDS sensitizations. It was a lot of fun. There were a bunch of other volunteers there so I got to meet some new people and catch up with friends from my stage. I also got to learn how to do things like give condom demonstrations, so that was a blast. It was a kind of weird experience at the same time though. I first got my invitation for Peace Corps around this time and I started reading a bunch of blogs of environment volunteers from the stage before me. They had all just been to Tamatave for the bike race and everyone seemed so settled into their lives in Madagascar. Finding myself at that same physical point in my service was strange since I still feel like I’m just getting started and, most of the time, still pretty clueless. Though, it was a bit of a motivator to finally get some projects going at site.

My Birthday

Shortly after my stint in Tamatave I went to Antsirabe with a couple friends for my birthday. We didn’t have any grand plans I just wanted to get out of site for the day. People in Madagascar don’t really celebrate birthdays. In fact, most people don’t seem to be to sure of their actual age here. Given that, I had a feeling that hanging around my site wouldn’t make for the most exciting birthday and there certainly wouldn’t be anyone bursting into song with a cake in tow. So Antsirabe it was. Still no song and cake but at least I was with people who think birthdays are worthy of noting. We spent the day eating cheeseburgers and checking out the vazaha grocery store. For those of you back at home, going to a grocery store may not seem like the most exciting thing to do on your birthday. In fact it’s probably one of those daily errands you would try to accomplish the day before so as to avoid the hassle on your birthday. Here, however, a trip to the grocery store is something to look forward to. We’re talking can’t sleep the night before kind of excitement. On the rare occasions when I find myself in a city that actually has a grocery store I always set aside time to visit. I could spend hours just walking up and down the aisles gazing in awe at everything. There’s so much food! You have more than one option for everything and you can buy an apple even when they aren’t in season! You can even find delicacies like ketchup and oatmeal and, my personal favorite, cereal. I always relish my breakfasts in the days following a trip to the grocery store. That trip, which probably seems the most mundane of all the things I could do on my birthday, was probably the highlight of my day. Anyway, after the excitement of the grocery store wore off we decided to splurge on dinner. We got dressed up, headed to a French restaurant, sipped cocktails and dared to order our steaks medium rare (a serious risk at non-vazaha restaurants), all for the ungodly sum of 16000 ariary a person...or about ten bucks. Like I said, it was a splurge. All in all, it was pretty good, though slightly unorthodox, birthday.

Halloween

Goal two of Peace Corps is to teach about American culture. So, as the end of October approached along with the timing for our next VAC meeting, the Fianar VACers naturally decided to throw a party to teach about the great American tradition of Halloween. It was an interesting experience to say the least. The next set of pictures I send home to be uploaded online will include documentation of the event so when you stumble across pictures of a guy dancing around in nothing but a gony sack a few months from now you’ll know why. I don’t know where Ryan got his idea from but his bag of rice costume was pretty ingenious. And Brendan’s portrayal of Dr. Bruce was uncanny. Anyway, when the pictures finally do make it onto my blog, enjoy.

The Plague

I was helping a friend harvest orge a couple weeks ago when she started to tell me about someone who had died in a town nearby. I didn't pay that much attention because people die off pretty regularly here and the reason is never all that clear. Plus I was really getting into the harvesting since I was finally starting to get the hang of weilding my knife without fearing I would chop off my hand. So I was just kind of nodding and saying "uh huh" a lot as I tried to attempt gathering more and more orge at a time but my friend kept repeating the story over and over again and asking if I understood what she was telling me. After about the tenth repition I finally decided I should probably actually pay attention to what she was telling me and it dawned on me that the disease she was describing sounded an awful lot like the plague. I really hoped I'd misunderstood as so often happens and asked her to describe the symptoms one last time. She sighed and said "you know, you get a fever and then you get sores on your neck, armpits and groin and then you die after one day." No misunderstanding there. Definitely the plague. Someone 30k from my house had just died from the bubonic plague. The same one that decimated the European population in the 14th century. I guess that's how far behind the times we are here in Madagascar...still fearing the black death 700 years after the rest of the world has filed it away in the history books. I mind immediately shot to the rats that parade through my house every night and the flea bites that have become a permanent fixture on my legs. Did I seriously have to add the bubonic plague to the list of ailments to avoid during my time here? Apparently I do. Just when I thought my life couldn't get any more bizarre. I've since called up the PC doctors to find out if I should be concerned about this illness that I had since thought had been wiped out. Apparently I don't need to worry unless someone dies in my town but they sent me the meds just in case. And they told me to keep my house free of fleas and rats. Yeah right, I gave up on finding a solution to those pests months ago.


That's all for now. I'm currently on my way to a week of environmental education along with a belated Thanksgiving celebration. I stupidly volunteered to provide the turkey. Traveling with a live turkey is turning out to be quite the ordeal...

Efa Zatra (already used to it)

It is truly amazing to see what you can get used to. I’ve been at site for four months now and in the country for seven and now that culture shock has officially worn off (culture shock hit me like a ton of bricks in the form extreme hunger all the time. I literally ate my way through my first six months here and never once felt full. I seriously started to worry about the possibility of a tapeworm. Countless jokes have circulated through my training stage about my incessant eating and nobody believes that I actually used to have a smaller than average appetite) I’ve begun to notice numerous things that I now view as normal but would seem absurd to your average American.

For instance, I have absolutely no problem with the hour plus long wait for a taxi brousse to finally get moving. In fact, I generally find taxi brousse rides on the whole to be fairly relaxing. I pop a Dramamine, tune into my iPod, cozy up next to whoever or whatever’s crammed in next to me and sleep through the majority of the ride. On the rare occasions when I actually have space to breath I actually feel like something’s amiss. Life without electricity and running water is also surprisingly easy to get accustomed to. Those are probably two of the things that I miss the least from home and yet they seem to be the two things that people are most shocked that I live without. I don’t really have that many things that require electricity. When I do need to, for instance, charge my cell phone I just listen for the generator to be turned on to watch videos and run over and have them charge my phone at the same time. As for the water issue, I have a water fetcher come once a week to fill a huge bin with water and the bucket shower, now that it’s getting hot outside, is actually pretty refreshing. I now go through withdrawal if I go too long without rice. And by too long I mean like a day, maybe two, max. My ability to wait for hours or days on end for something has also improved drastically. I, like most Americans, used to get really aggravated if I had to wait for something for more than a few minutes without an explanation. Now, however, I have absolutely no problem sitting on a rock hard bench and waiting for a couple of hours for a meeting to get started. And I’m still waiting for someone to come fix the leak in my roof which I pointed out when I moved in but it seems strangely natural that no one has gotten around to it yet. As long as I keep reminding the mayor about it someone will fix it at some point and until then my weekly trip to the mayor’s office to complain about the leak gives me something to do. I may feel differently about this when the rainy season starts, however.

Then there’s the things that I haven’t gotten used to… I will never, for example, get used to being told how fat I’m getting. Telling someone she’s gained weight in Madagascar is equivalent to telling someone they’ve lost weight in the US. It is a huge compliment, mostly because if you are fat then that shows you’re able to get enough food to eat. While I am fully aware of this cultural difference, I am also an American female, and when someone tells me how huge I’m getting I can’t help wincing a little, no matter how excited they are about it. I will also never get used to having people talk about me like I’m not there. It is like a flashback to middle school and sitting at the lunch table worrying if anyone noticed that you just spilled mustard on your shirt. Only here they did notice, and not only will they tell you about it but they will also tell everyone else who happens to pass by and it will continue to be a daily topic of conversation for at least the next month. Note to any incoming PC Madagascar Volunteers: don’t do anything that you don’t want to have to discuss with everyone at your site for the rest of your service. This issue of having every aspect of your life discussed openly ties in with the issue of being stared at nonstop. It is so hard to function when there are at least ten people around scrutinizing every move you make. I realize that I’m a foreigner and I look different from everyone else, but honestly, the way that I dial a cell phone is no different from the way that everyone else in Andina dials a cell phone. Yet I still find myself having to gently nudge people’s noses away from my phone so that I can see the screen as I’m dialing. Also on this note people here do not like my freckles and they don’t hesitate to tell me about it. They think I have some sort of disease. I frequently will have some drunk man come up behind me, grab my arm and exclaim “What’s wrong with you?!” while pointing at my freckles in disgust. I’ll reply that there’s nothing wrong and that that’s just my skin. They never believe me though. The drunk will just look at me doubtfully surely thinking, “Whatever crazy white girl. Thank God I don’t have whatever that is.” I can’t say that I necessarily blame them though. They’ve probably never seen freckles before and still haven’t figured out the word for skin so I’m having a tough time explaining what they are. One final thing that I will never get used to is having people who don’t even know my name ask to get their picture taken with me. What is it that makes people want so desperately to get their picture taken with someone they don’t even know? Once a woman upon seeing my bike (Peace Corps graciously gave us all these fancy new bikes that are way nicer than anything that I would own in the States so you can only imagine how they compare to gasy bikes) immediately insisted that she get her picture taken with me and my bike.

All in all, I have gotten much more comfortable with my life on the red island. And it always excites me when I discover one more aspect of my new gasy lifestyle which I've gotten accustomed to. There are definitely things that will never seem normal to me. But, I suppose that's to be expected when moving to an obscure island nation halfway around the world.

Phew! Made it.

I’ve officially made it to our In Service Training, which means that I’ve survived my first three months at site. And let me tell you, it has been a long three months. Supposedly they are infamous as being the worst months during Peace Corps service and I think it’s safe to assume that it can only go up from here. I think the high point was probably when I came home to chicken innards strewn all over my porch. Not sure who decided to throw them at my house but I’m really hoping it was the kids since if it was adults I would be really freaked out. The incident also left me feeling rather confused since chicken organs are prized meat in Madagascar. Here are some highlights from my time at site so far:

Mr. Sketchy

I was traveling with a fellow PCV, Melanie, when we encountered what I can only describe as the creepiest man I have ever seen in my life. As we made our taxi-brousse reservations this guy started hovering around us. I wish I had a picture of this guy because he looked like such a mess that I could barely hold in my laughter. He reeked of alcohol, was dressed in rags and could not get out a single word to us but insisted on standing practically on top of us. We quickly resorted to waiting for our departure somewhere else hoping he would have wandered off by the time we had to board our brousse. Unfortunately, he ended up following us right on to the brousse which we found a little shocking since he did not look like there was any way he could afford the fare. Of course, he sat right next to Melanie, squishing her in to me even though there was plenty of room in the brousse. He still couldn’t manage to actually say anything since he was so drunk but just stared nonstop at the two of us adoringly. As he pressed up closer and closer to Melanie we finally had to hop over the seat to sit behind him and the guy who was behind us graciously moved in to sit next to the drunkard. This, however, did not stop our friend. He merely turned around and leaned over the back of the seat to continue his staring, now directly in our faces. I was starting to get afraid that he would puke into our laps if the road got too windy when he turned back around. But the awkwardness did not end there. He left his arm draped over the back of the seat and started groping the air trying to grab one of our legs. I was seconds away from losing it when the brousse stopped to get gas and the driver forced him to get out. Apparently he couldn’t afford the fare and had just come along for the ride across town from the station to the gas station.


On guard

So, I have a guard for my house. I have no idea why I have a guard as my site seems perfectly safe and I don’t know anyone else in Peace Corps who has their own personal guard. I’m assuming that the Peace Corps freaked my site out so much about security that they decided to have the guard for the middle school guard my house as well just to ensure that I don’t have any security issues that could lead to my having to move to a new site. Anyway, my guard has officially proved to be completely and utterly without worth.

My first clue was when I discovered that someone had used my kabone (outhouse). I’ll spare you the gory details as to how I could tell that someone used my kabone and just say that it wasn’t a pretty sight to come home to. After that incident I decided to take the matter of fixing my fence into my own hands since it clearly wasn’t keeping people out and all of my requests to have it fixed were ignored. As I was outside fixing my fence my guard came up to me and told me he thought it was really good that I was fixing it since people could get through it. He actually gave a physical demonstration of how people could climb over, under and through the pickets. He then told me that I really needed to start keeping my kabone locked since he had seen people use it. When I asked him what he had done about it he looked at me like I completely crazy and said nothing. Hmmm…

As if that wasn’t enough proof of his lack of guarding abilities I have since noticed that the bamboo sticks I’d used to beef up my fencing were slowly disappearing day by day. One day, as I was walking by my guard’s house I saw a few of them strewn in their yard. I was pretty sure they were mine because of the way I had cut them. Later, when I walked back through one of my guard’s kids had one in his hands and I asked him if it was from my fence. He said that it was and then handed it backed to me as I started picking up all the missing pieces of my fence. I don’t have high hopes of my guard keeping anyone from doing stuff to my house given that he can’t even keep his own kids from stealing from me.

Are you cold?

A couple weeks ago I attended my first gasy wedding. My friend Nicole was super excited I was going with her and gave me all sorts of advice about the event in the week leading up to it. Most of the advice was pretty helpful: gifts, different parts of the ceremony, when it would begin and end etc. However, one thing that she really stressed was that I wear really warm clothes because it would be freezing that day. It is winter here so it does get pretty cold during the day in my region so I decided to listen to her and I wore a thick sweater and scarf along with my skirt. As I walked over to Nicole’s house to meet her before the wedding I felt pretty good about what I had on, it was a little chilly outside but not too bad with the sweater. Apparently, though, I was not wearing nearly enough warm clothes. Everyone I met asked me if I was cold. I kept insisting that I was fine and pointing out that they were all wearing dresses too. This did not stop them. Every five seconds throughout the ceremony someone sitting near me would ask if I was cold. I replied every time that I was not. Then, what must have been minutes before the ceremony ended, Nicole turned to me and said she was taking me home so I could change clothes before the party because I was so cold. I told her that wasn’t necessary, that the ceremony was ending soon and that I wasn’t cold. Her response was to repeat that she was taking me home to change my clothes because I was so cold. Hmm. This back and forth continued for several minutes until I finally caved and told her that yes, I was really cold so let’s leave so I can change.

She walked me home and dropped me off. I changed into pants as she had suggested and then put on all my warm outer clothes in the hopes that that would keep people from commenting on my attire with regards to the weather. I took my time because I had assumed that Nicole was cold as well and used me as an excuse to be able to change into warmer clothes herself. That was not the case. I walked out and she met me wearing the exact same thing and kind of smirking at what I was wearing. As we waited for the taxi brousse to take us to the party every single person who passed me started laughing because I had changed my clothes. From then on the comments on my dress shifted from asking if I was cold to asking if I was still cold with just as much repetition. To top it off, I was sweating because I was wearing so many layers. Imagine my frustration.

This sort of thing happens to me all the time at my site. It does not matter what I say, think or want to do. My personal plans do not matter. If someone decides that I must be feeling a certain way or that I need to go do a certain thing then that is what I have to feel or do. I can resist all day long but the people here never give in. So I always end up caving out of frustration and agreeing to whatever it is that I’m supposed to be thinking or doing at the time. I can not possibly explain how aggravating this is. Maybe some day my town will let me have my own thoughts but lately my hopes that that day will ever come have been diminishing rapidly.

That’s all for now so, enjoy. I’m off for a much deserved beach vacation and am hoping to return to site with a fresh set of eyes and a restored tolerance for all of the every day annoyances.

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.

Creepiest Cultural Exchange Ever

A week or two ago I attended my first Malagasy wake. Well, not exactly my first. My first was during training but it was with all the other trainees and there were so many of us that we just cycled in and out and I was probably only in the house for a total of about 5 minutes. So that experience hardly counts.

Anyway, the husband of a woman I’d farmed with a couple of times had died. My friend, Nicole, told me the news the day it happened and said that in two days we would go together to visit the family. I was relieved to hear that because I still wasn’t 4exactly sure what was culturally appropriate for the Betsileo people when it came to deaths.

At around seven the next morning, one of the daughters of the family showed up at my window and calmly told me that her dad had died the day before and asked if I would come with her to her house. Now, 7am is pretty early for me. I usually don’t even get out of bed before 7 because the earlier I get out of bed the earlier I have to figure out what to do with myself for the day. But for some reason I was up that morning but I still hadn’t eaten or gotten dressed so I really couldn’t just follow her out the door right then and there. So, not knowing how to explain I’d already made plans to visit the next day and fearing it would be offensive to refuse the invitation, I told her I would come later. “What time?” she asked me. I replied that I didn’t know but would come later in the morning. “But at what time?” she asked again. I was pretty taken aback by her insistence on me giving her a time since Malagasy people have zero concept of time and I’m usually the one asking for times of activities and then assuming that the planned event will happen somewhere within three hours of whatever time I’m given. So I again told her I wasn’t sure but I would come over as soon as I finished my morning chores. I guess she found this answer acceptable because she said ok and left.

Fortunately, I decided to get dressed right after she left because 15 minutes later she was back at my window with a bundle of flowers so huge she could barely see over them. “Ok, let’s go!” she said. “But I already told you I was coming later” I replied, slightly confused. “I know, so let’s go!” Seeing there was no way I was getting out of this one, I locked up my house and followed her wondering the whole time what I would have to do once I got there and whether or not I should appear sad since she certainly didn’t and I had never met the guy – I didn’t even know his name. On the way over, she asked me if I was afraid of dead people. I told her I wasn’t and she said that was good. This made me a little nervous.

When we got to the house, there were more people than usual but everyone seemed to be going about their daily routine. The daughter immediately left me upon entering to go clean up the house. The mother happily greeted me and led me into the next room where I found myself faced with her dead husband lying on a bed covered by a white sheet and another white veil. She led me up to the bed and lifted the veil so I could get a closer look at him, thankfully. His face was wrapped up in some kind of white gauze almost like a mummy.

After she felt I’d had a good enough look, she led me to a seat that was directly in front of the bed. She then proceeded to ignore my existence and go about the room straightening things up and talking to other people. I had never met anyone else in the room before and couldn’t understand much of what they were saying so I couldn’t participate in any of their conversations and everyone seemed to be perfectly content ignoring me. My chair was one of the woven little “stools” that are about six inches high which are so popular here so I was pretty uncomfortable and literally had nothing else in my view except this dead body.

After 10 or 15 minutes of sitting in silence not knowing what to do with myself and desperately wishing there was some sort of picture on the wall behind the bed to look at, the mother came up to me again and matter-of-factly told me that he had woken up at four in the morning, thrown up a few times and then at seven in the morning had died. I could have done without the details. She then left the room, I can only assume to do work around the house like everyone else. So, there I sat, with no one to talk to and nothing to do except continue staring at the body of a man who I knew nothing about except that he had woken up, puked and died the day before.

About an hour later when I was thoroughly creeped out to the point that I really couldn’t take it anymore, I started to think I would have to just get up and leave. Other people had been cycling in and out of the house all morning so it seemed that I should be able to as well. Plus it had become clear that I wasn’t actually expected to do anything and I was afraid that if I didn’t get up to leave, they would have me sit there all day. So, gathering up my courage, I got up, walked out of the room, found the daughter and told her I was very sorry but that I had already made plans to see my counterpart that morning and I had to go (a complete lie). She said that was alright and walked me home. That was it. No one was sad or upset. No one seemed to really be doing anything other than their normal routine or sitting in the room and chatting about everyday things. And to this day I still have no idea why they wanted me there so badly when no one seemed to take any notice of me once I was seated.