tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9881254040892300192024-03-12T19:26:06.894-07:00Back to the Island!... and so my love affair with getting lost on mystical islands floating around the Pacific and Indian Oceans continues. <br>Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-27211719329792299262013-07-18T19:15:00.000-07:002013-07-18T19:15:18.001-07:00Zay! Teako rehe avao iMadagasikara.<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s been six months since I left the island, which probably makes this my longest blog procrastination yet - and it’s the last one you’re going to get! At least until the next passably interesting phase of my life, which doesn’t seem likely to occur anytime in the next decade or so. I feel like I have so much to say, yet where to begin? Can anyone other than RPCVs even comprehend what these past few months have been like? Is my experience even <i>like</i> anyone else’s? Probably not. Let’s just start with the vague generalizations and work our way down.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve actually been surprised by how many people have not asked me generalized questions about my Peace Corps experience. To be honest, it’s a huge relief because I’d otherwise just default to the stereotypical “It was an incredible experience,” “I learned so much,” “It gave me a new perspective on life” - bland answers that, although true, would just devalue the entire thing. The question I’m most often faced with is, “Do you miss it?” to which I reply:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Yeah, a little, but I’m happy to be back.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Or, if I know the person a little better:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Uh, no.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But, as always, I oversimplify. I do miss my life in Fort Dauphin. I miss it like you miss that night when you reunited with good friends from college and the tequila shots just kept on coming. You sang along to the Black Eyed Peas at the top of your lungs on the car ride home while hanging your head out the window to keep the nausea at bay. You spent what seemed like hours ejecting the contents of your digestive system in the hotel toilet and missed your flight home the next morning. You remember the night with nothing but the greatest memories, but you wouldn’t necessarily like to return it. You learned a lot about yourself, your limits, and the human species. Some moments are quickly forgotten, and some lessons are imprinted for life - like that gag reflex that inevitably returns when trying to sip a margarita.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Staying true to format, here are some lists to summarize the last few years of my life and where I am now.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Things I Miss about Fort Dauphin/Madagascar/Peace Corps/the Developing World:</b></span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Teaching</b> - Loved the job and my students more than I ever could have expected. Would I consider it for a career? No.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Conversations with children</b> - My neighbors’ children became some of my best friends. They were open-minded, non-judgmental, always willing to teach and learn, and astonishingly mature in certain ways likely because the amount of responsibility they take on every day surpasses that of the average American college student. Anywhere I went, if I was lost, confused, or felt uncomfortable around the adult company, there were inevitably gaggles of kids roaming around that I could hang out with. If a kid on the street was acting up, anyone had free reign to yell at or discipline the hoodlum as they saw fit. If something needed done or a message sent, you could pull a random child over and have him/her take care of it. The old "it takes a village" adage is true in Madagascar. But, you know, you can't really talk to or yell at kids you don't know here. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Conversations with random people</b> - Though I’m not the most extroverted person, I always loved being able to talk casually with market vendors, fisherman, people I passed on the street, beggars (not all of them), people sitting next to me on the bus, people who had heard of me (or another <i>vazaha</i> that they thought might be me), girls who wanted to pop a squat with me (the Malagasy equivalent of girls going to the restroom together?), etc. There were no awkward elevator silence moments, no assuming I was bothering them, no wondering if they were wearing earbuds or some micro earpiece, no presuming I was crazy for striking up a conversation when they'd never met me, and no lack of things to say (Malagasy people love to fill silences by pointing out the obvious: “It’s hot today!” “Yeah, it’s so hot.” “It was hot yesterday, too.” “Mmm hmm, hot.” “It’ll probably be hot tomorrow again.” “Probably.”).</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Walking everywhere </b>- Okay, so maybe living over 2 miles from the market and needing to traverse two steep, sandy hills to get into town might not have been the most fun during cyclone and hot season, but it was darn worth it the rest of the time. I learned all of the shortcuts and backroads around town, I stayed in relatively good shape without putting in much effort, and I met about 90% of the people I knew just by walking around and chatting (see above). If you’re a foreigner trying to “integrate” into a new community, this would be my one biggest tip: WALK. Don’t drive around in your SUV, don’t take taxis or even the bus. Walk, get lost, meet people.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>The constant influx of new, digital media </b>- Somehow, through the magic of PCV file sharing and my mini-laptop, I was able to stay more up-to-date on movies and TV shows than some of my friends stateside.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Never feeling alone </b>- For anyone who makes half an effort, being alone is not really an option in a Malagasy community. There’s always someone willing to talk to you, walk with you, teach you, show you off to his/her friends, etc.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Always feeling alone </b>- I’m not really sure why my instinct was to put this on my “Things I’ll Miss” list. Maybe because it kept me grounded and constantly reflective on my experiences. Despite constant company, there’s always a sense of not really belonging anywhere, even among the expat community. The only people I felt truly connected with, even if we only saw each other every few months, were other PCVs.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Feeling like part of a community</b> - Okay, I know my list is starting to sound like it’s just contradicting itself, but everything is true in certain contexts. I’d say it took a good year before I felt like an actual member of the Fort Dauphin community. It was that point where most of the people I passed on the street either knew me or found me unremarkable because they’d seen me walk by every day. When the novelty wore off and people started talking to me about real events and issues in our lives instead of asking me about myself and what I thought of the country. When I knew all of the gossip around town and all of the goings-on. When people started treating me like an equal, not as a shiny new toy. When I felt I could genuinely offer my help without people viewing me as a foreign piggybank. When I knew that I had a solid network of friends and neighbors who would help me at the drop of a hat, no questions asked. It’s so hard, if not impossible, to get that same feeling of community in most American towns, and it’s something I’ll always be searching for.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Living life outside</b> - This is another big one. Traditionally, Malagasy houses are used almost exclusively for sleeping and storing material possessions. All day-to-day activities (cooking, cleaning, eating, socializing, bathing, peeing/pooing...) are done outside. More modern houses, including my own, tend to have living rooms, kitchens, sometimes even bathrooms, but most people still move fluidly between “indoors” and “outdoors” and don’t enclose themselves within climate-controlled walls like we tend to do. I miss keeping all of my windows and doors wide open all day, sitting in my yard preparing food, washing clothes, playing with my tortoises, and chasing away the chickens, ducks, geese, cats, dogs, and small children that wandered into my house.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Market culture</b> - I was lucky enough to live in an area of the country where food prices are standard and don’t require bargaining (unless you’re a tourist or clueless foreigner, in which case the vendor [understandably] tends to jack up the price). Certain times of day were hectic at the main town market, but off-times or smaller neighborhood and countryside markets were fun to visit. You learn where most of the food comes from, how fresh it is, and how the price fluctuates based on factors like seasonality and climate. The vendors get to know you to the point where they can tell exactly what you need by how long it’s been since you last passed by, and it’s a great place to just hang out and catch up on town gossip. There are no plastic shopping bags; you bring your woven basket and load it up with food measured by the empty can of condensed milk. It was also kind of nice having foods available by the season. It made me appreciate lychees, mangos, mandarin oranges, and avocados <i>so</i> much more knowing that I only had a precious window of time to eat as many as possible.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Killing my own food</b> - Not that I particularly enjoyed taking the life of a small animal, I haven’t changed <i>that</i> much, but I believe slaughtering an animal for your food is something that everyone should experience in their lives. The whole process of physically killing the animal, plucking or skinning it, separating out all the innards, and cutting it apart not only increases your basic awareness of what it takes to get that piece of meat on your plate, but enhances your appreciation for food in general. Even watching a butcher take your choice cut from a cow carcass is a completely different experience than picking a nicely plastic-wrapped hunk from a grocery store.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Living on the beach </b>- Whale-watching, fish/crustacean-catching, oyster-eating, sand-napping, water-floating, kid-playing... Need I go on?</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>My students</b> - As cliché as it may be, my students were the reason I loved teaching. Sure there were a few rotten apples who were only there because of family wealth/prestige or because the slept with their school principal to pass the <i>Bac</i> (high school completion exam in French school systems); but for the most part, all of the students were like sponges for whatever I had to offer them. Even the laziest ones would come to my house to borrow books or ask me what certain song lyrics meant. And I’ll forever love being known simply as “Miss” to my CEL students (e.g. “Good morning Miss! How are you today?” or “I saw Miss at the taxi-brousse station yesterday.”).</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Malagasy dance parties</b> - Not going to lie, it took me the better part of my time in Madagascar to really get these down. American-style dance parties tend to follow a pattern of high-energy dancing and busting out your best moves for a few songs, then breaking for a while before busting out the moves again. Malagasy dance parties, on the other hand, are marathons, not sprints. There are very few breaks involved, but rather a sort of rhythmic shuffling to the beat of what tend to be very looooong songs. Energy ebbs and flows depending on the song or the fellow party-goers.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Malagasy music videos</b> - Malagasy artists try so desperately to be as sexy or swag-ified as the artists they see in Western videos. Though video quality has been slowly improving since I first visited in 2008, they usually fail miserably and hilariously.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Never throwing anything away</b> - As I’m sure I’ve explained in previous posts, Malagasy people don’t throw things away; they either can’t afford to or feel no general need to. They use, reuse, and repair anything from apparel to utensils to electronics to within and inch of its life, then use the scraps for something else. When I left Madagascar, I vowed to keep this habit strong in my American lifestyle. So that didn’t last long... but at very least I gained a greater sense of awareness of the things I waste. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Faux Cap</b> - My home away from home away from home. By far the most awe-inspiringly beautiful place I’ve ever been. The most wonderful people I’ve ever met. The location of some of my deepest cultural lessons and memorable life experiences.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Musical culture </b>- This is true for just about every non-Western country. How cool is it to live in a place where music, singing, and dancing are just part of life - not something you have to be “good at” or embarrassed about? Where it’s not uncommon to find neighborhood 3-year-olds with moves like Usher or voices like Beyonce. And where karaoke is taken VERY seriously.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Wearing flip-flops for every occasion</b> - I can’t do shoes anymore. I just can’t.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Things I Won't Miss:</b></span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>The constant barrage of moral/ethical conflicts</b> - I’ve waxed philosophic on some of these conflicts in previous posts. They mostly involve situations when you don’t want to give handouts or be seen as a rich <i>vazaha</i>, yet one of your friends/neighbors needs medicine or school tuition or food for their undernourished children. You know there will be a domino effect, and you’re never really sure who you can trust, but you feel like an elitist ass if you don’t help because you're living in a culture where everyone is willing to share what little they have with anyone else.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Hand-washing my laundry</b> - I was one of the few PCVs I knew who never hired a local woman to wash my clothes. So now I’m pretty good at hand-washing laundry. Was it worth it? Meh.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Soaking beans</b> - Beans are good, so good. And cheap. But soaking dried beans for 6 hours before you even begin to cook them? I’ll never take canned food for granted again.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Bucket-washing my hair</b> - Simple bathing wasn’t so bad, but sticking my head in the bucket then trying to rinse all the shampoo out got old after the first year.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Bribe culture</b> - The system of bribing officials/police isn’t all terrible, but ultimately I think it facilitates more grave injustices than it’s worth.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Fatalistic culture</b> - It’s understandably difficult, if not impossible, to consider the future when you’re only surviving day-to-day. Trying to comprehend a culture where you’re not raised to believe you can do anything, be anything, “rise above,” is challenging until you realize that they don’t necessarily believe they have anything <i>to </i>rise above. Life is just life, and now I understand how our constant need to strive for something more can be mentally taxing and even detrimental to our happiness. Yet I’m still stuck with that good ol' American “make your own destiny” mentality.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Lessons I’ve Learned:</b></span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>How to function in three languages while only being fluent in one</b> - So I kind of assumed a few months in Peace Corps would make me fluent in the local language. Not so. If anything, I learned how difficult it actually is to learn another language and be able to speak it socially and correctly. With Malagasy, I kind of plateaued after I got to the point where I could say just about anything I needed to say - just not the same way a native speaker would say it. With a solid framework of four years of high school instruction, my understanding of and ability to use spoken French in real-life situations (basically the two things you can’t learn in a classroom) improved dramatically, though I’m not able to speak it as fluidly as I’d like. Essentially, my Malafrenglish got me far enough that I didn’t even consider language a major barrier by the end. Considering speaking English was my primary job assignment, I’m not too disappointed in what I was able to pick up.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>How to walk/mooch rides/take questionable public transportation everywhere</b> - If you don’t have a car in most parts of America, you’re pretty much screwed. If you don’t have a car in Madagascar, well, you’re obviously in the majority; so it makes for some fun, terrifying, brutal, and looong experiences with everything from hitchhiking to zebu carts to swanky SUVs to hiding from police in the back of a giant cargo truck.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>How to travel ridiculously lightly</b> - Toothbrush, prescription meds, ID card, money. Done.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>How to handle cat calls (and other unwanted attention) like a pro</b> - Whistles, hissing, tongue clicks, dramatic intakes of breath - I've heard them all. I've been grabbed, groped, stroked, prodded, caressed, breathed on, and undressed by far too many unashamed eyes. One of the great disappointments of being a <i>vazaha</i> woman in Madagascar is not the unsolicited attention itself, but the fact that no man will ever feel or understand what it’s like to be us. The spotlight is never so bright as when we’re walking by ourselves. It takes tough skin and some serious confidence to be able to handle being put on display in such a vulnerable way each and every time you leave your house. Eventually you learn to laugh at it as you develop coping techniques and your tolerance level gets higher and higher. But some things - like that burly thug who believes his wealth makes it okay for him to grab your crotch in front of an entire bus of people as he passes you in the street with his lackeys - will inevitably cause your resolve to crumble, and you feel dirty and depressed for days.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Things that Take Adjusting:</b></span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Having so much...stuff</b> - One of my first missions when I got home was to go through all of my closets, drawers, boxes and throw away/donate all of the crap that I’ve been hoarding since childhood, thinking it all had some sort of sentimental value or would be “useful” someday. I had so few possessions that I actually cared about in Madagascar and yet my life was full and fantastic. Any given Malagasy person can fit their entire life into a single suitcase. Coming back and seeing all of the things I thought I needed in order to have a fulfilling life may have been the greatest reverse cultural shock.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Driving everywhere</b> - My initial adjustment to not only being able to, but <i>needing</i> to drive everywhere has worn off somewhat; but I still miss not relying on a car.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reality TV takeover</b> - It was out of hand when I left in 2010, now it’s just pure insanity. Does MTV even <i>pretend</i> to care about music anymore? And for the love of god, would someone <i>please</i> tell me what a honey boo boo is??</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Technology/internet takeover</b> - How is it that in only 3 years, the internet has completely taken over our lives? Not that I’m complaining, I loves me my iPhone, but I don’t feel like I was away for so long that it should’ve been as big of a shock as it was. I mean, DVDs are practically obsolete, as is the need to watch television programs when they’re actually airing...or on an actual TV. Official paperwork doesn’t seem to exist anymore; it’s all digital. Everyone and their mom (literally) is on social media, which seems to have quadrupled in quantity - I’m starting to figure out Pinterest, but what the heck is an Instagram..? My grandmother was reading books and watching movies on an iPad before I even considered <i>buying</i> one for goodness’ sake...</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>#twitter #culture #and #speaking #in #’s</b> - As a continuation of my previous point: Twitter absolutely <i>blew up</i>. What?! When I left, I still considered Twitter something for trashy celebrities and social media whores. Now it’s an essential tool for marketing, politics, PR, news and media, entertainment, educational institutions... I haven’t broken down and created a Twitter account yet, so I’m still not even entirely sure how it works. And what’s with all the ###’s? There are certain people on my Facebook newsfeed who I’m ready to unfriend simply because they #post #pictures #and #updates #with #like #50 #of #these.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Anyway, time to wrap this thing up. It seems appropriate now that I initially created this blog with the “Lost” theme of going back to the island that seemed to hold some sort of inexplicable power of attraction over me. Like the television series, I tried to extend my time on the island a little to long because of my confusion and infatuation, and I just ended up near-resenting it but was unable to pull myself away because I wanted to see how it ended. Of course, the ending turned out to be somewhat anticlimactic, and I rushed to fill the resulting void with anything that would keep me occupied until the next phase of my life began. Now that I’m finally out of that weird purgatory - heading back to school and having a sort-of direction in life - I feel that I’ve come full circle (much unlike Lost, however, because we all kind of suspected they were dead the whole time). </span></div>
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Peace Corps makes attaining a certain level of integration a top priority of service. I<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">’d say the greatest lesson I learned from the Peace Corps experience is that full “integration” into another culture is just not possible.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">You can learn the customs, history, and language, and you can be welcomed into the community and regarded as a equal, but you will never truly be one of them.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This isn’t as cynical as it sounds; it just means that we all have our own backgrounds, belief systems, values, sub-cultures, etc. that make us who we are, and others recognize that in us.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And it obviously doesn’t mean that we can’t have happy, amazing lives out of the context in which we were born.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">So my overall conclusion is this: Whether you’re traveling, relocating, or simply walking across the tracks, just be positive, open-minded, friendly, and practical. Don’t be idealistic, pitying, naive, patronizing, </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">judgmental</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">, or reckless. Every culture (that I know of at least) - heck, every person - has strengths and weaknesses, good and evil, convictions and confusions. We all think we know what’s best for ourselves and the world; and, ultimately, we’re all just as clueless about life as everyone else. It’s a new, global society, and no, we don’t all need to hold hands and love each other. But nor should we simply “tolerate” each other. I think </span></span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">awareness</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> will be the key word for this new millennium. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And that, my friends, is all I have to say about that.</span></div>
Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-90373508624595666392012-12-11T06:15:00.002-08:002012-12-11T06:15:57.116-08:00The Everyday
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Less than one month left in Fort Dauphin!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m so excited and so stressed out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sadness hasn’t really entered the mixture
yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The time constraint in trying to
get my English Center functioning is driving me a little insane, so my
community better darn well appreciate it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(And by appreciate it, I mean I expect them all to be fluent in English
by Summer 2013.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Classes are ending
pretty soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re not really a source
of stress, but they do take up time I’d rather spend mentally preparing myself
for shopping centers and supermarkets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ll miss all my students though…whether they think ozone layer depletion
is actually relevant to their lives or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My sister, Courtney, arrives the day after Christmas, so I fully intend
on doing absolutely nothing for the week she’s here (which will also be my last
week at site) except going to the beach, being a tourist, and rediscovering the
novelty in all the things I now find so familiar and dull.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My goal is to shed at least one tear of
longing for the life I’ve had over the past 2.25 in my isolated,
nothing-too-special-about-it beach town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hmm, that sounds too negative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Probably just the stress talking.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I realize that I’ve very rarely blogged about my
day-to-day life in Fort Dauphin but instead have spewed out all my more pensive
and analytic thoughts whenever I was feeling particularly angry, frustrated,
bewildered, or philosophical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So here
are some glimpses into my Posh Corps life:</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a Work Day:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wake up around 6 or 7, depending on class
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Find some breakfast – perhaps cold leftovers
from the day before, eggs, fruit, or maybe Haja will wake up early enough to
make me pancakes or balls of fried bread.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Get changed into professor-worthy clothes, get
myself ready, brush teeth, prepare stuff for class, and maybe read a little if
I’ve still got some time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Walk either 20-100ft across the compound to my
classroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prepare stuff for class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I’ve been incorporating more technology into
my classes this year like using my computer to play recorded conversations or
my ipod to play songs for listening practice.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Teach for 2 hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes they’re quiet, sometimes they’re
studious, sometimes they’re too tired and hung over to function.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I rank their level of “naughtiness” by the
number of times I have to tell them to be quiet and/or the number of times they
make fun of my voice.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Go home and have a snack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes I teach immediately after, but
usually my next class is in the afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Plan for the next day’s class, do work on my
computer, clean the kitchen, read, whatever fills the time before lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I rarely leave my house between classes
because 1. It’s hot. 2. I have to walk down and up two steep, sandy hills to
get anywhere. 3. Eating lunch in town is expensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Recently I’ve been spending all my free time
going to work on the English Center – about 12 minutes walk.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cook lunch using my gas stove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t usually go all out if I’m working in
the afternoon – maybe heat up some leftovers or fry some meat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Teach another two hours of class.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Make dinner or ask Haja to make it for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Watch a movie on my computer, read, or finish
some work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Go to bed around 9.</span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On a “Free” Day:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wake up around 7 or 8.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Throw together a breakfast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes Haja will make pancakes, crepes, or
omelets if we have the ingredients.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Gather dirty laundry, fill the buckets, and wash/hang
my clothes in the backyard.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Walk into town (20 – 45 minutes).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buy some fresh food or supplies at the
market, take care of in-town work (going to the bank, visiting offices, etc.),
talk to friends at their houses or on the road, pass by the hotel with wifi to
get some internet work done…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Return home and fire up the charcoal stove to
save gas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Easy but time consuming, this
involves cutting sticks of wood into kindling, building a small fire, piling
charcoal around it, and waiting for the charcoal to heat up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll usually make lunch from scratch,
perhaps combining vegetables and meat in a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sauce</i>
and of course cooking rice, cassava, or sometimes taro as the main dish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whenever Haja’s out of town, I usually just
eat beans, meat, and/or veggies without the staple carb.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Catch up on housework or other work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Be lazy and read a book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go to the beach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whatever I feel like doing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Eat dinner – sometimes lunch heated up,
sometimes something new.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If I don’t have work the next morning, we might
go to a bar in town to have drinks with friends.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Go to bed at 9 or whenever I get home.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Obviously this varies
day-to-day, but I’ve rarely ever felt the “Peace Corps boredom” that so many
other volunteers (especially the ones in small villages) feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They often go days or even weeks with
absolutely nothing to do except walk around and chat with people or read books
in their houses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I go a little crazy if
I’m not being productive for extended periods of time, so I’ve managed to keep
myself pretty busy over the years with schoolwork and outside projects, exploring
town, household chores, applying for grad school, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve actually found that I haven’t had nearly
enough time to do the things I’d planned to do with my free Peace Corps time
like reading the books on my list, drawing/painting things, and studying for
the MCATs (whether I actually decide to take them or not).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m actually looking forward to having
nothing [much] to do when I arrive home and perhaps even feeling bored again
before I start grad school in September.</span></div>
Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-60547761805108307412012-11-09T05:54:00.000-08:002012-11-09T05:54:59.666-08:00Help Make My Dream Come True!
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m coming home in January!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My time in Madagascar is so close to being
finished; I’m not sure if it hasn’t really hit me yet or if I’m just so excited
to move on with my life that I’m just going to skip the surreal
leaving-my-home-for-the-past-2-ish-years gloomy phase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been teaching my classes double time to
finish them by December.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve already
got most of my paperwork in order and have my stuff mentally arranged and
packed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only major thing left to do
is realize my dream/#1 Peace Corps goal that I’ve had since August 2010: Build
an English center in Fort Dauphin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
well on the way to becoming a reality – the major obstacle right now is money,
not to mention time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I originally promised
myself that I would never have to ask money from my family and friends for a
project, but I also never thought I’d be leaving so abruptly with my English
center so close to being completed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve
posted tidbits here and there about my efforts to create the center throughout
the years, but here’s a more comprehensive description:<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I have a dream that someday the people of Fort Dauphin
will have a place to gather to speak, listen, read, write, and learn in the
English language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Colonial ties to
France are slowly diminishing in Madagascar, and cultural and economic
influences from countries like South Africa, Britain, and especially the United
States are rising.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fort Dauphin is an
even more special case in that an unusually high proportion of people here can already
speak or have a real desire/need to learn English, largely due to the influence
from the Anglo-Australian mining company, former American Lutheran
missionaries, and international tourism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some days I literally cannot leave my house without some person,
business, or organization asking me to teach them English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve often said that Peace Corps could put 10
education volunteers in this town and it still wouldn’t be enough to meet the
demand.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There used to be an American English center here, but it
failed largely because it depended too much on foreigners to teach and run
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My goal is to create an English
center that is from the community and for the community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want it to be run by local English teachers
and enthusiasts, not by Peace Corps volunteers or outside interests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will be a place where students can read
books and literature, use interactive computer programs, hear and watch English
with AV equipment, and learn it together whether in classes or casual
interactions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also want to stress that
this is NOT my idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The community not
only inspired it, but asked for it directly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m just helping the people in Fort Dauphin implement their own dream,
which is why I believe it will be both successful and sustainable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I’ve obtained so far is a location donated
from the Regional government and a good start-up collection of books (mostly about
environmental issues and America) donated by the US Embassy in Antananarivo.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">All that said, the project has start-up costs, but I have
less than 2 months to get it up-and-running.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve been using a lot of my own money to cover minor expenses, but that’s
only going to get us so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will of
course be soliciting donations from local businesses, organizations, etc., but
that could take a while, especially since everything moves slower in
Madagascar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some things we need to pay
for immediately: Repairs to the center location (think leaky roof, missing
windows, rusty locks…), paints and brushes to decorate the walls, furniture
(chairs, tables, bookshelves), a whiteboard and markers, general office
supplies, electricity, signs and advertisements, and an opening ceremony.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So please, if you have a few extra dollars (even just $5
will buy a can of paint) or a larger sum that you were considering donating to
a worthy cause, please consider donating it to my English center project so
that the people here in the south of Madagascar can learn English, advance
their careers or their studies, learn the value of community involvement and
volunteerism, and – most importantly – love America more than France!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kidding… </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you’re interested in donating, please contact me via
email or Facebook, or you can talk to my mom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I can’t give you tax deductions, but I will paint your name or your
company’s name on the wall of the English center!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll also send you pictures and updates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, if anyone is interested in donating
books, equipment, or other materials, we’re definitely in need of a more
complete resource center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’d have to
pay for shipping, but I think there might be discounts if you send library
materials.</span></div>
Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-35243630184822297662012-11-09T05:51:00.000-08:002012-11-09T05:51:38.354-08:00Little Huts in Africa<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Several weeks ago, I met a man from Australia who was
visiting Fort Dauphin for a week doing work with a church group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was extremely friendly, cultured, and
well-traveled, but he hadn’t had much previous experience traveling in the
developing world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was asking me
questions about my experience here and I was giving my usual answers: “It can
be frustrating, but my job is good and I love the people…”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he replied, “Yeah, the people here are
wonderful – really nice and energetic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
just feel so bad for them, being born in this country.”</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Wow.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
That immediately struck a nerve with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part of me was outraged that he would say
something so severe about a people he knew nothing about, and yet, another part
of me knew exactly where he was coming from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve been lucky enough to live almost exclusively in multi-cultural
environments for most of my life, but I remember being raised to be thankful
that I wasn’t born in one of those “little huts in Africa.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
What to be thankful for has been a huge source of
internal conflict for me, especially since my Peace Corps service began.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In America, we’re trained to be thankful for
things like hot water, washing machines, cars, big houses, other luxuries…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And most of us completely take for granted
basic “necessities” like electricity, running water, refrigeration, books to
read, or a bed to sleep in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I tell
people at home about life in Madagascar, their reactions are all different, but
they inevitably conclude their thoughts with, “Doesn’t it make you thankful for
all that we have in America?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To avoid a
heavy debate or awkward transition, I usually just agree, but inside I can’t
help but feel – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">well, no, actually…it
doesn’t</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most Malagasy people are
more content with their “minimalistic” lives than I’ve ever been with my
relatively privileged life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite all
I’ve gotten used to here, I still hear that constant nagging voice in my head
that proclaims “things could be better!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I could buy a better phone, the wifi could be faster, I could have
internet in my house, I could take a hot shower, I could eat ice cream every
day, I could take a car across town instead of walking, I could make more
money, I could hire someone to wash my clothes, I could have a better job, I
could have more friends, I could travel around the country…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we wonder why stress, anxiety, and
depression are familiar vocabulary to anyone over the age of 13 in our society;
why we need endless cups of coffee or energy drinks just to make it through the
day (I recently saw an advertisement for caffeinated gum), and sleeping pills or
herbal concoctions to make it through the night.</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Even more of an internal conflict for me has been
America’s defining value: opportunity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s one thing to say that people can be better off with less material
possessions, but surely I can’t deny that we Americans should be thankful for
being born in a land with so many opportunities!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, yes and no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe everyone has basic rights to things
like food, clean water, shelter, education, and healthcare, but these aren’t
the “opportunities” I’m referring to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When Americans think about how we want to live our lives, we envision
mountain climbing and bungee jumping, moving to the big city, finding the
perfect job, living/working in another country, traveling to exotic locations, learning
new languages, making more money and “rising above,” trying new foods, road
tripping, seeing new places, and doing new things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Basically being adventurous and pushing our
limits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We essentially <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> these things to be happy and
fulfilled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We forget that this
pioneering spirit is one of the things that defines our culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We tend to feel bad for people like the
Malagasy who are generally “stuck” in the lives they were born into.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We pity the man who has to farm cassava every
day of his life just to put food on the table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Malagasy don’t see themselves in this light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While Americans like to define their
happiness by adventure, discovery, and independence, Malagasy value stability,
family, community, and predictability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d even venture to say that most Malagasy people couldn’t handle our
way of life, or would at least take many years to adjust to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose that could be why there are so few
Malagasy people living abroad, and those that do tend to return to their
homeland in the end.</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Obviously these are huge cultural generalizations and
don’t apply to everyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are plenty
of Americans who prefer the familiarity of a simple, predictable life, and
plenty of Malagasy who would love to discover the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And like I’ve mentioned in previous posts,
our culture is slowly trickling into this country via TV, movies, internet, and
personal interactions, and it’s fascinating to observe the changes in values
from cities to the countryside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
“internal conflicts” I mentioned earlier are those that I think any realistic
development worker has: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By bringing
“development” to this culture, am I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</i>
trying to improve the lives of the people or am I just imposing my own values
on them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is sharing my culture with them
good or bad or just inevitable?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How do I
work projects into the framework of their culture, or is this even possible?</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Heavy thoughts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh
well, thank god my job is straightforward and the demand for it overwhelming!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I very rarely try to influence people’s views
on the world – I just like to offer mine up for consideration – but I’m going
to make an exception today: Please don’t think like that man from
Australia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t pity Malagasy just
because they were born in a developing nation – the Malagasy have their own
lives, their own cultures, their own goals, and their own values that they
cherish and are proud of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are
plenty of reasons to pity people, but country of birth shouldn’t be one of
them. Nor should the size of their huts.</div>
<br /></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-13796375968204673022012-08-24T03:54:00.000-07:002012-08-24T04:06:58.547-07:00A Note to Outside ReadersIt's been more than two years since I first got it in my head to create a blog, and it's gotten more readers than I could've ever imagined. <br />
A small reminder though: This blog is meant for my friends and family as a somewhat-regular update on my life and thoughts. I chose not to make it private because that's too much of a hassle for a lot of people and I didn't want to discourage readership. I've clearly stated that all experiences and opinions are my own. It is not a textbook, nor is it a forum for debate, criticism, promoting religious views, etc. If you just stumbled upon this blog or don't know me personally, you're more than welcome to read it for entertainment value or whatnot, but I ask that you please keep your comments and speculations to yourselves. <br />
Thanks!Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-50922644982401703822012-08-24T03:36:00.000-07:002012-11-09T05:43:51.150-08:00Contemplation of Defecation<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I stepped in poo the other night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not dog or zebu poo – full on human poo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Haja and I were walking back from dinner in
town; I had to pee pretty badly so I popped a squat in a grassy area on the
side of the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I immediately saw the
headlights of a car approaching, so I waddled behind the nearest bush to keep
out of sight, fully aware of the risk I was taking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I finished my business, hiked up my pants,
took my first step back to the road and – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">squoosh.
</i>Oh my god.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Haja, I think I just
stepped in poo.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“You shouldn’t have gone in the bushes.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“I know, but there was a car coming.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“So?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“I didn’t want them to see – ugh, nevermind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just help me check my foot.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By the light of his phone I could see just how much poo
had made its way up the side of thin soles of my flip-flop, just barely missing
my foot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I immediately started freaking
out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was like my mind was paralyzed
with disgust, but my body was jumping up and down trying to fling the shoe as
far away from me as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m still
not sure why, exactly, this poo affected me so intensely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Goodness knows I’ve stepped in my fair share
of poo during my lifetime, human or otherwise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hell, it was my job to clean chimpanzee poo (which I assume is
biologically the closest thing to human poo) from the night pens during my
stint as a zoo volunteer, then went on to collect and search for worms in lemur
poo for the sake of science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose
it was because I never actually saw what I was stepping in, and everything is
creepier at night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Regardless, Haja came
to my rescue and tied a string around the strap of my flip-flop and dragged it
the rest of the way home, kind of like a child dragging around his toy dog.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I think the point of this story was to segue into my
thoughts on excrement in Madagascar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose that
when you live in a developing country, the world is your toilet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, really, pooing and peeing are such
natural parts of everyday life, how dare anyone try to tell you where or when
you can relieve yourself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kind of like
food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you really think about it,
how crazy is it that you have to have money to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">buy</i> food, so only people with enough money can be properly
nourished?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shouldn’t food and water and
being able to relieve yourself when the urge hits be basic rights of life?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see it all the time, well-intentioned NGOs
and do-gooders build nice latrines to keep people from peeing and pooing on
beaches and other public areas, but they’re baffled when stinky piles of poo still
litter the beach and people pee on the side of the latrines instead of inside
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s worse is that most of these
public latrines charge <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">money</i> to use
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seriously?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won’t even spend that money unless it’s an
absolute emergency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of the people
that the latrines are built for live on less than a dollar a day (and often
have 5+ kids that need to heed the call of nature as well).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re sure as hell not going to spend their
pennies on an outhouse when there’s a grassy area right next to it.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I should note that when I say “the world is your toilet”
in Madagascar, that’s a huge generalization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Society does actually have relatively structured rules for relieving
yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First and foremost, you can
never pee or poo anywhere that’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">faly</i>
(taboo).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tombs, burial grounds, sacred
trees and land, all off limits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s
a particularly high concentration of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">faly
</i>places here in the south, so if you’re in unfamiliar territory, it’s always
good to ask a local first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You should
never poo in a public area (except of course in public toilets/latrines) – save
it for the outskirts of town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This rule
doesn’t apply to kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I once saw an
adorable boy and girl playing together in the street; they walked to a pile of
trash beside the road, squatted, and took a dump together while holding
hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Urination standards are a little more lax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any un-manicured grassy patch is up for
grabs, as long as it’s not in someone’s yard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What took me a long time to learn, and then a longer time to become
comfortable with, were the customs for what to do if you are at someone’s
house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During training with my host
family, I used the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kabone</i> for #1 and
#2, so I assumed this was the norm for all households.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not until much later did I learn that, for
Malagasy people, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kabone</i> is only
for poo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So every time I was at someone's house and had to step out
for a quick pee-break, I’d ask “Can I use your <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kabone</i>?” which effectively means “I have to take a dump.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s worse is they’d always offer me scraps
of paper or cardboard, which are used as toilet paper after you poo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So of course, I’d politely refuse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can only imagine the impression I left them
with…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve since learned that in most
households, women pee in a grassy patch in the yard or in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ladosy</i> (outdoor shower structure).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Occasionally these areas are located in full
view of the neighbors or even the street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now, I’ve lost a lot of my previous bashfulness about peeing in front of
people, but in this situation my willingness to use this paticular spot depends
on how bad I have to go and whether or not I have a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lamba</i> to cover myself with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Men have no idea how easy they have it.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As for everyday life, it’s going wonderfully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went to my final Peace Corps conference in
June then did a week-long vacation in Nosy Be with Haja.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nosy Be was one of the most incredible places
I’ve been in this country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an
offshore island located in the far north, and a favorite vacation spot for
Europeans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve done almost no traveling
in the north, so I kind of assumed all of the coastal areas were more or less
the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything is better in the north.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The food is tastier and there’s more of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are deep green forests right up against
white sand beaches and turquoise water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
The seafood is cheaper and more abundant. </span>The people are friendlier and more lively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The traditional clothes are brighter with
beautiful bold patterns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The roads are better and
the towns are cleaner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you ignore the
rampant sexual tourism and sometimes unbearable hot weather, Nosy Be is the
ultimate Malagasy paradise – in my opinion at least.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It also gave me a good basis for comparison to the people
of the south.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The people down here are a
lot more rugged and abrasive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They will
sooner laugh at you than with you, though their intent isn’t to be
malicious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everywhere you go, people are
arguing or yelling at each other - but even their happy or excited voices tend
to sound like anger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The women
especially have fiery tempers and are not reluctant to express when they are
jealous, frustrated, vengeful, or just plain pissed off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t cut you many breaks with the language
either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While other people around the
country are quick to praise foreigners for mastery of only a few basic Malagasy
words, the people of the south are even quicker to become frustrated and dub
you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tsy mahay</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>or not good at the language, if you stumble over a sentence or ask
them to repeat something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even with
fellow Malagasy from other tribes, southerners will purposely speak quickly
with highly dialect-specific words as if to remind the outsider that he/she is
not one of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that said, I love
the people here and remain very loyal to the south.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And again, these are just
generalizations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve met plenty of
people down here that are some of the friendliest and most welcoming people I’ve
known.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway, after returning from Nosy Be, I felt a renewed
vigor in my service in Fort Dauphin and realized that there’s still a ton of
work I need to finish before I even think about leaving on my extended COS date
next April.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since then, I’ve been
assistant-teaching adult classes for 12 hours a week, preparing for more
teaching jobs that will begin next month, editing and re-formatting my school’s
textbooks, planning for my new community English center, and trying to find
volunteer work at a local health clinic to add some new experiences to my service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve also been dealing with some issues concerning
families in my neighborhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mother
of some of my “beach kids” called me over one day to show me something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was holding her youngest child, Soa, an
unnaturally cute little girl but bone-thin with dirt covering her body and
clothing and a tangled mess of wavy sun-streaked hair on top of her head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She pulled up Soa’s dress and showed me a
huge rash with red bumps covering her genital region and upper thighs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked her the obvious questions: “What’s
wrong with her?” “Have you been to a doctor?” “Are you giving her medicine?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She told me it was syphilis, and, as
expected, she hadn’t been to a doctor because they don’t have enough money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the cheapest doctors charge about $2 for
a consultation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is a small fortune
for this family of 6 kids whose father was recently laid off and whose only
source of income is the grilled sweet potatoes and homemade necklaces they sell
for a few cents each to beachgoers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
mom asked me to buy medicine for Soa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This has always been my biggest moral dilemma when dealing with requests
from my neighbors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s easy enough to
refuse to give money or handouts, but medicine is a completely different
matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t refuse the mother,
especially since syphilis in a child could become serious and I have a soft spot
in my heart for this particular girl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
contacted a doctor friend of mine who agreed to see Soa for free.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I took her and her mother to the clinic the
next day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The doctor was appalled at Soa’s
twig-like frame and low weight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
mother couldn’t remember what year Soa was born but knew that she was about 4
years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The doctor looked at the rash
and concluded that it wasn’t syphilis, but a bad case of infected eczema.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The treatment is easy enough – regular application
of a topical antibiotic cream – but becomes more complicated considering the
family has no access to clean water and the mother is often too lazy to
properly bathe her children every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Haja
and I have been checking on Soa daily since then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She appears to be cleaner, happier, and her
hair is finally washed and braided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
family still doesn’t have enough to eat, but that’s another problem that I just
can’t fix.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Another neighbor issue involves the family that I “adopted”
early on in my service and have often written about (the one with the mother
who just gave birth after a “12 month pregnancy”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve had my ups and downs with the parents –
there was a period of a few months where they were both drunk and fighting
everyday while the mom was pregnant and the kids were hungry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The husband was recently laid off from one of
his jobs, but still makes 30,000 Ariary per month (less than 50 cents per day)
as a guardian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s about what I, as a
volunteer, make in 3 days, and he has 6 children to feed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I absolutely love their children; they’ve
been my friends, guides, and teachers from the beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are 3 boys and 3 girls, the oldest is
about 12.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are only able to go to
school because a foreigner sends money to the school every year to help
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This year though, with the dad’s
salary cut, only the two oldest will be able to attend school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These kids are bright, motivated, and
friendly, and it kills me to think that they might spend the rest of their
lives trying to beg money off of tourists or prostituting themselves (in the
girls’ case) when they’re old enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Earlier on in my service I would’ve never even considered giving them
financial help because I didn’t want other neighbors to get jealous or see me
as a bank. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also went against my objectives
as a Peace Corps volunteer because helping one family doesn’t really contribute
to the sustainable development of the entire community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now that I’ve been here 2 years and my
departure is in sight, I don’t really care anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can give part of my living allowance if it’ll
mean these kids get a chance to rise above their family’s poverty. I won’t be
able to provide for all of the kids, though (the 5 that are old enough to go to
school anyway), nor will I be able to give the school money for years to come,
but I figure it’s better than nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-14581294333492878802012-06-06T07:10:00.001-07:002012-08-24T03:13:07.557-07:00Moving Forward but Not Quite Yet<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span> </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Everything I just said is a perfect example of how
un-Malagasy I am and probably will always be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Malagasy people’s lives don’t change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They do the same thing day after day, and usually earn just enough to
get by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they’re fine with that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re happier with their lives then most
Americans will ever be; after all, there’s security in consistency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is one of my favorite cultural divergences
to discuss with my Malagasy friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
teach them about the American Dream and the saying, “Time is money.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Incidentally, Malagasy people LOVE proverbs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Malagasy have a similar proverb along the
lines of, “Time is golden,” which I think, when compared to ours, is hilarious
in its irony.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I explain how idleness is
like a taboo in American culture and how we believe the harder you work, the
more rewards – monetary or otherwise – you will receive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you really think about it, it’s
absolutely incredible how many aspects of our culture are shaped by the
American Dream, which is ingrained in our minds from early childhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s interesting, though depressing, to
observe how Malagasy society is affected by colliding cultures; how the Western
ideal of “you can do anything, be anyone, go anywhere” is influencing younger
generations, yet they don’t understand why they don’t have the same
opportunities as Americans and Europeans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<br />
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</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On the lighter side…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The days in Fort Dauphin are short now, and it’s getting chilly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My neighbors’ cat has a 3-month old kitten
that has learned how to cry for food every time she sees me, even if she’s not
particularly hungry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of their
chickens also bops in and out of my house with her babies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their adult feathers are starting to come in,
so they’re not cute anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My classes
at CEL finish this week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neighborhood
dogs walk in and out of our wooden, open-air classrooms when I teach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This always makes me kind of happy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My friend down by the beach just had a
beautiful baby boy after a 12-month pregnancy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Puzzle that one out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t
have enough time to pick through the pile of clothes stuffed in my closet for a
decent gift, so I just gave her 5,000Ar in an envelope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’ll stay in her 1-room house with the baby
for a month or so to fatten herself up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s shameful for her family if she emerges skinny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kokolampo</i>
(a spirit – sometimes good, sometimes evil) living in my body for about 2 weeks
last month.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It left, but I think it came
back a couple days ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m re-watching
seasons 1 and 2 of Glee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the fourth
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If anyone has season 3, or season
2 of Game of Thrones, or anything Family Guy, (preferably in digital form) my
address is to your right.</span></div>
Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-27253082202770674622012-05-15T05:46:00.000-07:002012-05-15T05:46:57.527-07:00March Mada-ness: The Sequel (Part II)<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The MCC: Culmination of Stress, Commencement of Crazy</span><br />
<br /><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned my planning for the
American Mobile Cultural Center (MCC) in previous blog posts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Short background: I started bugging the US
Embassy via email for support, or at least advice, in creating an English center
in Fort Dauphin sometime last spring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They kindly informed me that they wouldn’t be able to build any American
Corners or English for the Environment Centers here in the near future, but
they were supportive in that they invited me to chat with them at the Embassy
when I passed through Tana and gave me boxes full of English-language books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally,
sometime after I’d gotten back from the states last summer, they told me about
their new MCC idea, a sort of multimedia center promoting awareness of the environment,
American culture, and the English language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It would travel around the country, staying a month at each location.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They suggested I try to bring this to the FD
as sort of a warm-up to the actual English center that still exists only in my
mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This turned out to be a bigger task than I expected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luckily, I’d already made all the right
connections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked Rio Tinto, the
mining company whose employees I’d taught over the summer, to be my partner and
financial supporter in the endeavor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
enthusiastically agreed and generously donated the main room of their community
center to house the MCC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only major
problem was transporting the MCC to Fort Dauphin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since roads to the deep south of the island
can be impassible during the rainy season (January – March), and that’s when it
was scheduled to arrive, all parties agreed that shipment to the Ehoala Port in
Fort Dauphin would be the best solution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The embassy has almost no budget for transportation of the MCC, so the
bulk of my work from October – January was working with the Port director to
get free shipping, figuring out how the cargo shipping industry works (much
more complicated than I was expecting, by the way), and acting as a general
coordinator of the whole thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
were so many unforeseen issues, and there’s no way I could’ve gotten anything
accomplished without almost daily internet access.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I may complain sometimes about being located
in a city and therefore not being a “real” Peace Corps volunteer, but I can’t
take for granted the advantages I have for actually being able to carry out
medium to large-scale projects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Long story short(er), it all worked out in the end – just
two months later than expected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Representatives
from the embassy came down to help set it up and for the opening ceremony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The center itself was incredibly modern, very
strange to see in this country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tall
metal columns displayed banners with pictures of Ranomafana (which is their
focus this year) and even a picture of my PC stage at our swearing in ceremony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Attached to two of the columns were four LCD
screens displaying slideshows of pictures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There were four laptops, a big-screen HD television, projector, DVD
player, a bunch of DVDs, computer games/programs, and tons of books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the help of Rio Tinto, I arranged an
opening ceremony for many of the VIPs in town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was unbelievably professional by Peace Corps standards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then again, everything in Madagascar has to
be overly official.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were
several speakers, a tour of the MCC, and a “cocktail” (buffet of various finger
foods and sodas) to follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The center stayed in Fort Dauphin for a month.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were open 6 days a week, including
weekends, from morning until evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The DVDs were a big hit, especially the ones with English subtitles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The computer games were popular with the
younger crowd, and the more serious learners used the laptops for English
listening practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The books were the
main attraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There three bookshelves
with books about the environment, American history and culture, democracy,
youth activism, and the English language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We also had supplemental activities like guest speakers, group
discussions, games, and contests.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the most part, the MCC was extremely successful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I’d say that at a certain point it
was actually too successful, attracting 100+ visitors (mostly students) at a
time, which was a disturbance to the people working in the building’s
offices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a perfectionist such as
myself, it’s difficult for me to look back upon the month of March and not
brood about all of the problems we encountered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus began March Mada-ness...again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What is it about this month...?</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just to give a brief overview of the issues faced: too
many school kids (not the studious kind), too few professionals, too many
people asking for direct translations of long lists of the most
random/irrelevant vocabulary imaginable, misinterpretation of the purpose of
the MCC, disappointment about the lack of English classes, disappointment and
outright hostility about the center not being permanent, and a high rate of
book theft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of these reasons, but in
particular the book/CD theft, sent me into another downward mental spiral that
has yet to completely abate.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What travelers, new PCVs, people at home – pretty much
anyone who hasn’t lived in a developing country – don’t always realize is that
there is no “poor, starving, innocent African” (emphasis on the
“innocent”…obviously there’s a lot of poor, starving people) population that we
idealize for movies and humanitarian aid donation commercials.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is just a generalized image, kind of
like the “all white people are rich” stereotype here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality, everyone’s got evil in them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, that poor man on crutches with
the polio-twisted leg is still a pervert, and I feel no guilt passing him by
when he tries to strike up a conversation about where I live and when he can
visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve mentioned in previous posts
how the little kids on the beach by my house are trained to give big
googly-eyes, hold their stomachs, and beg for money whenever they see a white
tourist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure some of them are
significantly mal-nourished, but you know what will probably happen to the
money you give them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ll deliver it
to their parents who’ll put it in the moonshine fund, and the kids will scamper
off and play until the next tourist passes by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I had a family down by the beach that I liked to help out here and
there, even lent money to when they desperately needed it (because the dad had
spent all of their money getting drunk).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I thought I did it subtly, but it ended up causing so much drama among
the other families (jealousy, arguments, whispering behind each other’s backs,
attempts to falsely befriend me, rumors that people would attempt to steal
things from me) that I now refuse to give anything to anyone on that beach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Same goes for tourists, most of whom would be
astonished to know that their gifts of food, toys, or money actually cause more
drama and jealousy than happiness and appreciation.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway my point is, people are just as evil here as they
are back home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have the capacity to
loathe individuals just as much as I can love them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s never bothered me that much and
definitely never dampened my motivation to work or live here as a PCV.…at least
not until the MCC klepto-fiasco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
technology and quality of materials available at the MCC are far beyond
anything the people here in the south of the island will ever have access to,
yet the Embassy made the center open to the public and free of charge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Embassy and I worked our asses of to
bring it down here, and what do the people do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Complain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Complain that we don’t
sell the books, complain that I won’t let them [illegally] burn the DVDs,
complain that there aren’t enough ________, complain that the center isn’t
permanent, complain that one month isn’t enough time to learn English (NOT the
purpose of the MCC, by the way)…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Essentially visitors decided that, even though the MCC must travel
around the whole of Madagascar, they themselves are entitled to keep the
incredibly expensive, high-quality materials because it’s not fair to share
them with the rest of the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus
began the stealing.</span></div>
<br /><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This sent me over the edge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It felt like we’d given the people a gift and
in turn received a slap in the face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not
to mention it was unbelievably embarrassing for me, the representative of the town, after having talked Fort
Dauphin up to embassy officials for nearly a year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought about all the cultural issues I’ve
faced in the past year and a half and began to question everything I’m doing
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why try to help people who have no
interest in helping themselves?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t
they understand how this damages their already lackluster national
reputation?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can I get anything
accomplished in a culture that thinks Robin Hood-ing is acceptable?</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At this point, I’m still pretty bummed about the whole
situation, but I have to keep reminding myself that the MCC did accomplish a
lot of good things and the books were probably stolen by a select group of
misfits rather than the vast majority of visitors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think the main reason it killed my spirit
was because the MCC project was just a warm-up for my actual goal of creating a
permanent English-learning center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
whatever, membership fees and a few security cameras should solve most issues.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Things I Still Love about the Culture</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I sometimes wonder if my blog posts are
overly-negative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kind of like how, when
PCVs get together, we tend to discuss all of our problems and frustrations and
things we miss about home rather than our successes and joyful gooey
feelings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The positive stuff just isn’t
as fun to talk about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s still
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, I’ve compiled a list
of things I still find wonderful or fascinating about Madagascar.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sharing culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As selfish as people seem when they ask me to give them things like
money, clothes, jewelry, and candy, I’ve found that those same people are just
as willing to share what little they have with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One time I broke my flip-flop in town and had
to walk home barefoot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several girls who
normally won’t let me pass without asking me for money declared: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Jess, you’re not wearing
flip-flops.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“I know.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Why??”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“They broke when I was walking.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Oh…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you want to use mine?”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Malagasy family that lives
next to me is another example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
don’t think twice about lending me household tools, oil or salt, a bucket,
their cat, a DVD, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In return, I lend
them sugar and coffee and don’t complain when their chickens and ducks walk
through my house and occasionally poo on my floor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(A side note: Lending money,
however, doesn’t work in this country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve never successfully lent it out and gotten any returned.)</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">What to do with a thieving kid:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whoop his arse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was once walking out of the marketplace
where a kid had just attempted to steal a bottle of cooking oil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The old man selling the oil grabbed the kid,
threw him on the ground, and started whacking him for a good 30-40 seconds
while I and the rest of the people on the street watched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the time the old man was finished, the kid
was bawling and ran home while we just watched, shaking our heads at the nerve
of the little hoodlum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one screamed
or jumped in to “save” the kid or called child protective services.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you know what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I bet he’ll never steal again.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Kickass old people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They walk tens of miles barefoot everyday
through all weather conditions carrying enormously heavy loads on their
shoulders or heads just to support themselves and their families.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Americans start complaining about every ache
and pain as soon as we hit middle-age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If one thing can be said about the Malagasy – they are made to
endure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On taxi-brousses, for example,
everyone from old ladies to small children (seriously) sits tranquilly on often
painful seats where you’re literally crammed in like cattle for hours or
days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this same situation, I’ve been
known to squirm and adjust my positioning because I long ago lost feeling in my
legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll admit I’ve even shed a few
tears because I’ve never had to endure such intense discomfort for such long
periods of time.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Death in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I admire the way people here deal with death,
though I could never hope to emulate it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When someone dies, it’s just as sad and painful to close friends and family,
but in this culture, it’s not life-stopping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It doesn’t cause psychological problems or tear families apart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a time to mourn, but it’s short and
people get back to their regular lives immediately after, simply because they
have to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can’t buy take-out or
frozen dinners here just because you’re too sad to cook or take care of the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you don’t go to work, your family won’t
have enough money for food, school, rent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">According to one local
tradition, when someone dies, a certain species of tree is cut into a coffin
and sealed with a glue-like substance after placing the body inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People from surrounding villages come and sit
in the yard around the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The women
cry, the men don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They drink coffee
and help the family of the deceased.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They sit through the night and sing, chat, dance, but don’t sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Goats, sheep, or zebu are killed for the
mourners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They do this every night for a
week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assuming all long-distance family
has arrived by then, mourners bring gifts of money, cloth, or livestock to the
family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The body is buried on an
auspicious day, as determined by an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ombiasa</i>
(witch doctor).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A zebu is killed for the
guests.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Death of people you don’t know
is regarded a bit less reverently than in the states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Haja and I were walking down the street once
and he sniffed the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Misy olo maty,”
he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a dead person around
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We then walked on as I tried to
pretend that I wasn’t disturbed by the fact that the odors of death constantly
linger around town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Haja’s aunt and
cousin came to visit my house once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
passed by the beach just as fisherman were pulling out a body they had caught
in their net.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unaware, I greeted them
when they arrived at my house and we sat in the yard and chatted for a half-hour or so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They then casually mentioned what they’d seen
on the way and asked me if I wanted to go “look at the dead guy” with them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part of me was excited, since I’ve never seen
a body that wasn’t embalmed and nicely prepared for public viewing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A much bigger part of me, though, was
freaking out, hands sweating, heart racing, terrified of how I might
react.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the way, they joked about how
fish like to eat the eyes and tongues of bodies in the ocean (keep in mind that
his aunt lost her brother to the sea).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Luckily, the body had already been removed by the time we walked down
the hill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the third body (that
I know of) pulled onto the beach by my house since I’ve lived here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still wonder if and when I’ll see one wash
up on shore.</span></div>Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-29346899219893479792012-04-24T07:15:00.000-07:002012-04-24T07:15:06.648-07:00March Mada-ness: The Sequel (Part I)Every time I write a new blog entry, I tell myself that, after this, I’m going to write shorter ones at more frequent intervals. Obviously, that hasn’t happened yet. So instead of bullet-pointing this one as is my usual go-to style when I’ve got a series of unrelated events to comment on, I’ll just divide it into mini-blogs. Keep a lookout for more Parts coming out soon.
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<br />
Holidays
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<br />
In case anyone was worried, I was eventually let out of my medical prison in good time for the holiday season. Haja (pronounced “Hadza”), my wonderful boyfriend who had been patiently supporting me over the phone every night as I cried about the evil doctors and how they kept tormenting me with the “We’ll wait and see how it is after a few more days…” line over and over, was waiting for me at the airport with a cab driver friend to take me home. I had missed the end of the school term, so there was nothing to do except chill out and settle in. There was a series of sweet concerts that led up to Christmas, starting with Lola (a guy...and Malagasy pop star) who also happened to be on my flight. This would be a good time to comment that Malagasy people don’t freak out when they see famous people, hence why I didn’t realize I was sharing a terminal with a national celebrity until Haja told me upon my arrival. In my experience, people here just point and say, “Hey look, there’s ________.” If the person’s <i>really</i> famous, they might say it with a big smile on their face. The next week there was a concert of multiple “lesser” but still famous artists, and then the grand finale – Tence Mena on Christmas Eve. She’s essentially the Beyonce of Madagascar. Several people have kindly explained to me that Rihanna actually steals her clothing, music, and dancing styles from Tence Mena. Makes sense.
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We bought two chickens, one for Christmas Eve, one for Christmas Day, and a whole lot o’ pig meat. (For those of you who are used to buying nicely packaged pork chops and heavenly hams from the supermarket, you might be surprised to know that buying pig meat straight from the butcher’s is actually a disgusting experience. About half of the weight (if you’re lucky) is fat. Pure, jiggly, squishy, hairy pig fat.) Christmas morning we went to church, which was especially exciting because all the kids and teens had put together a Christmas performance. They all did various forms of hip-hop, African, and pop-ish dances to music that had absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. And there was no living nativity scene. Lame. That evening, Haja, Paul, Eric (a health volunteer about 25km away), and I met up at my neighbor Barry’s house and shared food, beer, and good times with his family. It was an absolutely fantastic away-from-home Christmas because there was no gift-buying, house-decorating, or anything else to stress us out and make us think of what we were missing.
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<br />
New Year’s was mellow, too. Haja and I went all out and bought a duck, some soda, and liquor. I asked him if he wanted to go out or at least spend the evening with his family. He explained that he didn’t want to hang with his relatives (the ones we go to church with) because they don’t drink, and going out to bars/clubs on New Year’s Eve is for prostitutes, drunks, and other bad people. So we hung out at my house with a neighbor friend until about 11:50pm, when they both passed out. I watched the year change on my cell phone and kissed Haja on the cheek as he lay drooling on the bed. Possibly the first time in my life I’ve outlasted other people on NYE. New Year’s Day, the real party time for Malagasy, we killed and cooked the duck, invited our guardian neighbor over for some rum, and gifted him with a huge rope of <i>paraky</i> – Malagasy tobacco that I happened to find myself with – and chilled around the neighborhood all day.
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<br />
Carags in Madagascar
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<br />
While I was drinking rum-and-cokes and waiting for the clock to change in Madagascar, my parents and brother, Jon, were drinking champagne somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean after the pilot announced the changing of the years. They arrived in Paris New Year’s Day then flew to Tana, where they spent the night at a hotel near the airport and were shuttled back the next day to catch a flight to Fort Dauphin. Haja and I picked them up at the airport and drove them back to a nice hotel by my house, overlooking the beach and the town. They got settled and gave me a huge suitcase of Christmas gifts from friends and family and other awesome America stuff. For the next two days, I showed them this crazy beach town that’s become my home. On the third day we went for a day-trip to Berenty so they could see tortoises, crocodiles, bats, birds, spiny forest plants, and lots of lemurs up close. We met up with Paul for dinner in Ambovombe and spent the night at a hotel, then continued on to Faux Cap the next morning. I’ve done the drive down to the southern tip of the country several times, but the ecosystem changes along the way never cease to fascinate me. I was so excited to show people the transitions between dry coastal peninsula to greener valleys beneath mountainous forest to transition forest where you can start to see tall, finger-like, otherworldly looking plants with spines to unending rows of sisal plantations to agricultural desert protected by impassible walls of cactus plants to more open desert-like spiny forest to the gradual disappearance of tall trees and plants to the more barren, sandy dunes of the deep southern coast. You caught that, right? Luckily, the full drive takes about 6-7 hours in a 4x4, so I have time to explain everything on the way. I find it especially interesting to watch the transition of people from the coastal foresty-dwellers around Fort Dauphin to the more hardy desert-dwellers carrying spears, wearing sarongs draped around their shoulders, and herding gigantic herds of zebu. My family seemed only mildly interested, even after I exclaimed that this was as close to “real Africa” as they could get in Madagascar.
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<br />
We arrived in Faux Cap mid-morning and settled into bungalows at Haja’s family’s hotel. They then began a ceremony in which one of their best goats was presented to my parents by handing it off to my brother via one of Haja’s brothers. I could see a sitcom episode being made of this stuff. Pictures were taken, drinks were served, and speeches were made. The cultural significance of this? My family essentially traded me for a goat. (Don’t worry, it wasn’t a marriage ceremony. If it were, I would've had my parents demand <i>at least</i> a medium-sized zebu.) I tried to prepare my family ahead of time about what to expect, and although they were probably confused and maybe a little scared, they didn’t show it. I had explained to them that Haja’s family is very <i>vazaha</i> culture-friendly and wouldn’t actually expect this to be a binding cultural ritual. It was more to give my family some authentic Malagasy experience and to show them that they consider me one of their family.
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<br />
We took a small break from the drinking to watch the goat get slaughtered. Although I don’t particularly like watching large animals die, I’ve gotten used to it over the past year and a half. Unfortunately, I forgot how much it took for me to get to this point (remember when I freaked out over my host family killing the chicken in Mantasoa?) and didn’t consider that my family might be a little traumatized by the experience. In Malagasy tradition, Jon was supposed to be the one to kill the goat. He politely refused. So we watched. When goats are killed, the throat is slit but the vocal chords often aren’t severed, so the goat continues to bleat during the process and you can hear the blood gurgling in its throat. My father was fine, he’s seen it all before in the Philippines. I was surprised the Jon and my mom were able to make it through the whole thing, though they later admitted that they were a little upset by it. Once the goat was dead, though, the whole thing got a lot more fun. Watching them skin it, cut it up, take the organs out, etc. I think is interesting for most Westerners because we often imagine ourselves lost in the wilderness attempting to catch wild game with crude traps or hunting methods. Rarely, though, do we run through what we will actually do with the carcass once we’ve got it. Watching an animal be dismembered for its meat and innards makes you realize that the process is slightly more complicated than just sticking it on a spit and roasting it over a fire.
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<br />
After all the excitement we had a lunch of fresh grilled lobsters and jumped back on the road for a two-hour drive to Cap Sainte Marie, the southernmost point of the island. We went to the reserve, which has crazy cliffs, a lighthouse, radiated tortoises everywhere you look, and an awesome view of Antarctica. We returned to the hotel in time for dinner, which consisted of rice, our goat cooked in at least 4 different ways, and a few other dishes. Then began the party. Several of Haja’s 13 siblings traveled home so they could party with us. Most of the local village showed up just to watch the festivities. There was traditional Tandroy (the regional tribe) dancing in traditional-ish garb (a loincloth-like covering for the men) as well as a good deal of contemporary Malagasy boogie down music.
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The next day we returned to Fort Dauphin, where we spent the next couple days. We then flew to Diego (at the very northern tip of the island) for 2 nights. On a side note, before we left Fort Dauphin, Jon and I took a walk over to Israel’s house, where we found out he was leaving Peace Corps due to some issues back home. Three months have gone by since then, and it still feels a little strange without him. Israel – if you ever find yourself reading this blog, know that people here (Malagasy and vazaha) still miss you and you definitely left your mark on this town.
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<br />
In Diego, we did a lot of relaxing and walking around town. I’m not sure how much my family actually enjoyed it, but it was really cool for me to see a completely different part of the country. When we returned to Tana, they took a flight back home, and I returned to Fort Dauphin. Looking back, it was so amazing to have my family there to see a small fraction of this weird life I’ve found myself in. I think about all the ways I could’ve made it better, all the things I forgot to show them or never explained. A lot of it had to do with the limited time they were here, but I was ecstatic that they (especially my mom) would actually consider a [really expensive] flight to a developing country on the other side of the word just to see me for 11 days.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-45234778697254903712011-12-10T05:30:00.000-08:002011-12-10T06:36:30.269-08:00Portraits of the SouthPhotos I took around the south of Madagascar. See my Facebook album for the full collection.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnYX2rEyciCXNBJ3CweU_QPU-xNuEwpvvJ-d9gtx4zGf1eXd90ZLe_RRZ-RbhkjspQRAOBoGZ4szDmB7riq2pfEFNB-irHad14OKHQcld9nCssfFqWGckCERuet-gN3dq5HBti88OOxd42/s1600/IMG_4841.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnYX2rEyciCXNBJ3CweU_QPU-xNuEwpvvJ-d9gtx4zGf1eXd90ZLe_RRZ-RbhkjspQRAOBoGZ4szDmB7riq2pfEFNB-irHad14OKHQcld9nCssfFqWGckCERuet-gN3dq5HBti88OOxd42/s400/IMG_4841.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684504392569707314" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixEhjXk9q_Uma-bX5v5ahA-dCSj-lZDlxH1r_E0JVIMOsqcrbIRCgd7X9Xzwj5zcm36XNqYudam-nAmdYbbXwqdd-9NFYcXoevqLjuSHasPF7PZJWMTHgBVBke7A4XZkVt9C59_U-PL1jB/s1600/IMG_4849.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 246px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixEhjXk9q_Uma-bX5v5ahA-dCSj-lZDlxH1r_E0JVIMOsqcrbIRCgd7X9Xzwj5zcm36XNqYudam-nAmdYbbXwqdd-9NFYcXoevqLjuSHasPF7PZJWMTHgBVBke7A4XZkVt9C59_U-PL1jB/s400/IMG_4849.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684504388872568962" /></a>(Yes, that's an enormous joint.)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgLPnXNTyAifNT_iMM8LC5H9DjMtmKBhQGWqbHl4dFS7jaSNAR9_CtqXzkQ9-OdaKy194ufs6ZZuhCavFcOd_WCOhs9p2XUt9Va0Z5C5ZECBwCH3mUxmYB317ALEM366-ONo1PTul2IfPj/s1600/IMG_4861.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgLPnXNTyAifNT_iMM8LC5H9DjMtmKBhQGWqbHl4dFS7jaSNAR9_CtqXzkQ9-OdaKy194ufs6ZZuhCavFcOd_WCOhs9p2XUt9Va0Z5C5ZECBwCH3mUxmYB317ALEM366-ONo1PTul2IfPj/s400/IMG_4861.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684503725785656546" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQc_DidDH5mlD2KgPuk4w115eLuUmS262tdXG-fr1gtToOEeHhSu9MKd3S4kdunn-nmoldbnyAc_zjsau4ohDfpZqxIFMczMD7hJYBXHd0ATj9A0bsugwlLV7SKGJ9HgjeIupW3lUPpWRy/s1600/IMG_4865.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 237px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQc_DidDH5mlD2KgPuk4w115eLuUmS262tdXG-fr1gtToOEeHhSu9MKd3S4kdunn-nmoldbnyAc_zjsau4ohDfpZqxIFMczMD7hJYBXHd0ATj9A0bsugwlLV7SKGJ9HgjeIupW3lUPpWRy/s400/IMG_4865.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684503714149295170" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLBbDuPScJ5w4ApJ4fkQgMOLqTTLJMaafn-NvNuLx2gX2eaK2MYr1te85T8Mk-1YBvRUUyKFkiU4JjeQvxnlI1HI-Ip5eRpdOhuJu919PpIxQ743uCSPnAD2S6IHV-6_6ugXhVR1mu8Gd/s1600/IMG_4878.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLBbDuPScJ5w4ApJ4fkQgMOLqTTLJMaafn-NvNuLx2gX2eaK2MYr1te85T8Mk-1YBvRUUyKFkiU4JjeQvxnlI1HI-Ip5eRpdOhuJu919PpIxQ743uCSPnAD2S6IHV-6_6ugXhVR1mu8Gd/s400/IMG_4878.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684503710058744098" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEXJk3e4rFO2qn-GMywOBixnF0dLZPsaRynxbhQjK074Nunk0Tfwdxzyx-P6xQ8sWVJVj-ZDs9eF-_00qnySUmTJPU0NDqBQZ-Lgj8VlFMHjkRCsNbnudXNo4GtoiQ7Yqx_VoH6LATwtDz/s1600/IMG_4894.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEXJk3e4rFO2qn-GMywOBixnF0dLZPsaRynxbhQjK074Nunk0Tfwdxzyx-P6xQ8sWVJVj-ZDs9eF-_00qnySUmTJPU0NDqBQZ-Lgj8VlFMHjkRCsNbnudXNo4GtoiQ7Yqx_VoH6LATwtDz/s400/IMG_4894.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684501884357869890" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIJ7MTUUtvmxpq5Ig9fxkst3dc-KKO5KfWeQBoF_1ZWFEUGcChzvWR_fRmDhXqkmZe0C4TcypdHI_tXTmgJj9yN6h-AbNkkrl62bxF8BzfJF3L5N6REc6RbX3ItXdehNJRxoEhYezJK48f/s1600/IMG_4911.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 263px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIJ7MTUUtvmxpq5Ig9fxkst3dc-KKO5KfWeQBoF_1ZWFEUGcChzvWR_fRmDhXqkmZe0C4TcypdHI_tXTmgJj9yN6h-AbNkkrl62bxF8BzfJF3L5N6REc6RbX3ItXdehNJRxoEhYezJK48f/s400/IMG_4911.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684501877580341186" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1xWjqf9Nh38DLdOviSktxmGN3-bs2ENNUDhQ4wn7xQiKxqtBdo1MZPx5TWss-TJOOjjYkcgDPc2gdBfjIjuW2JIca1FPNOhCUSabjKgwDYA9E844bu2wmumuG3o90sX08F49myd2J7avx/s1600/IMG_4914.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 258px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1xWjqf9Nh38DLdOviSktxmGN3-bs2ENNUDhQ4wn7xQiKxqtBdo1MZPx5TWss-TJOOjjYkcgDPc2gdBfjIjuW2JIca1FPNOhCUSabjKgwDYA9E844bu2wmumuG3o90sX08F49myd2J7avx/s400/IMG_4914.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684501875828786338" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhubAjUSiwnWZW3qzXB3jnIBjsSm3G6qnK_uVYOcI864Fa_1P3CPvFr4xy8LVFPxGUq3NLc7QO0VEz-IkTWS2NiIlBNS566bFKYWQk0oX9zq1GLlI7c7QFnVAOGtM37ynkjI0jvZ9Jjrjgt/s1600/IMG_4915.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhubAjUSiwnWZW3qzXB3jnIBjsSm3G6qnK_uVYOcI864Fa_1P3CPvFr4xy8LVFPxGUq3NLc7QO0VEz-IkTWS2NiIlBNS566bFKYWQk0oX9zq1GLlI7c7QFnVAOGtM37ynkjI0jvZ9Jjrjgt/s400/IMG_4915.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684500715930087858" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfGhLbDOeBfFyYsUAtIRmpg__LaBX4inTnQMzclsghSJaFDULFR8Uhy6407Ungf2xmpVX71kkyt-tBbyCFrKqkWhjiooxs03iVJt84-WGRyc0vF8UFVLy1x0WUk96-aUGeZkYX-osm04EG/s1600/IMG_4934.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 254px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfGhLbDOeBfFyYsUAtIRmpg__LaBX4inTnQMzclsghSJaFDULFR8Uhy6407Ungf2xmpVX71kkyt-tBbyCFrKqkWhjiooxs03iVJt84-WGRyc0vF8UFVLy1x0WUk96-aUGeZkYX-osm04EG/s400/IMG_4934.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684500711251118754" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8oragYmKlUqSepVTi27iN0KhE5FXCkf2kHOTlWg_ta_U9hIYz2ilV58ZWvEopy1HHYIlVeP7gmnXPc2svSKNHFObeRE_W3um-34y3ezuMD03KzGjrFNw66GyiexIvLvcdddXB5odqTOxj/s1600/IMG_4938.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 255px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8oragYmKlUqSepVTi27iN0KhE5FXCkf2kHOTlWg_ta_U9hIYz2ilV58ZWvEopy1HHYIlVeP7gmnXPc2svSKNHFObeRE_W3um-34y3ezuMD03KzGjrFNw66GyiexIvLvcdddXB5odqTOxj/s400/IMG_4938.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684500707725102866" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGNqcwTtY1cSyLfREZC6-aUHECa9a7rlfi1O7cNkpK92Lq5mJI7nZGh5XRKwVKB5YbWbJWKCbKTWppsvL1EjNjYEFD0bdGXli4wUedq3CZRTU5ztX-aa4aPXgC8ohOxIP6OVC-rcfVFlO/s1600/IMG_4838.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGNqcwTtY1cSyLfREZC6-aUHECa9a7rlfi1O7cNkpK92Lq5mJI7nZGh5XRKwVKB5YbWbJWKCbKTWppsvL1EjNjYEFD0bdGXli4wUedq3CZRTU5ztX-aa4aPXgC8ohOxIP6OVC-rcfVFlO/s400/IMG_4838.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684499486866507602" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiSF6jIM6PQxDy7K9iSTowaSZfaA3x7bSxaj3AN9mHrR2dqgiGTNqwCbZ0a3NyKsJGkg9JNvuVNy09HoqEBhD-Nh9Dnd98M6JpybHmMZZzwsZvjzBCLz-gJs4AuXYOhCpamOUQ_-T5azrr/s1600/DSCN7286.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 280px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiSF6jIM6PQxDy7K9iSTowaSZfaA3x7bSxaj3AN9mHrR2dqgiGTNqwCbZ0a3NyKsJGkg9JNvuVNy09HoqEBhD-Nh9Dnd98M6JpybHmMZZzwsZvjzBCLz-gJs4AuXYOhCpamOUQ_-T5azrr/s400/DSCN7286.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684499481164181490" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSU88gwe0rTiYNGeBF3Qqh6XRWA-WRvj24p-OwNZT1jjQS_gfUISUBnnCnZxtu92p5Xp2dfFI-b9dbKTnPtKed6iWallU9tIsY2Igc8AF9M-PPtZCqHXCs9MfdiEaoPYGJefL90iKFd6g/s1600/IMG_5021.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 280px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSU88gwe0rTiYNGeBF3Qqh6XRWA-WRvj24p-OwNZT1jjQS_gfUISUBnnCnZxtu92p5Xp2dfFI-b9dbKTnPtKed6iWallU9tIsY2Igc8AF9M-PPtZCqHXCs9MfdiEaoPYGJefL90iKFd6g/s400/IMG_5021.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684497899264510690" /></a>Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-61872364216286451972011-12-10T04:23:00.000-08:002011-12-10T04:29:24.469-08:00Bust a Move If You Love JesusI’m currently being held captive against my will in the Malagasy capital by the Peace Corps medical team. I have ebola or SARS or something. They won’t release me until the results of medical examinations are in and further experimentation has been conducted (probably Thursday). Good news though – there’s 24-hour free wifi in my cell. <br /><br />Lots of fun has been had in the past three months. Went on a couple crazy trips around the south of Madagascar (see pictures on Facebook – will try to post some here). Spent 2 days and 15 minutes on a camion from hell in which people are regarded as cattle and squished into rows of 9 people (designed for 6 people). Began teaching 2 of my fabulous university classes again and gained a new, equally fabulous class. Saw some famous Malagasy pop stars perform in Fort Dauphin. Got stalked by an old Pakistani man. Had 2 kickbutt Thanksgivings. Killed my first turkey. Went to a string of parties ranging from fantastic to painfully quirky.<br /><br />Also. Much to my mother’s elation, I’ve been attending church almost every Sunday for over a month. No, no, no, my first birth remains the only, but it’s a fun community activity and good bonding time with my “in-laws,” who take care of me and feed me several times a week. I’m no closer to Christianity than I’ve ever been, but I actually enjoy the services. And let me tell you, these are no sleepy “Is it communion yet??” Catholic masses. Not that I’ve had much experience with other denominations, but this church is what I imagine Pentecostals on crack would be. The 2.5 hour service begins with a 1 hour warm-up of earsplitting rock music complete with full drum set, keyboard, electric and bass guitars, gigantic speakers, microphone-wielding choir, and who-can-belt-the-hardest-for-Jesus diva-offs. As if this in itself isn’t entertaining enough, groups of kids (some of which can’t be more than 5 years old) separate into boy and girl dance groups on the stage and perform choreographed routines to all the songs as well as spoken worship times in which a large black woman (and not always the same one) half-sings half-screams the good Lord’s praises to the soothing sounds of electronic keyboard. I call my side of the church’s dance group the “Altar Boyz II Men.”<br /><br />But wait, the fun doesn’t end there. God wouldn’t approve of the congregation just sitting around and watching the worship, we all must take an active part in the festivities. Everyone from toddlers to tottering old ladies gets up and grooves to the music. At my first service, I couldn’t help but notice an especially enthusiastic man waving a humongous flag and spinning in circles down the aisles. He later turned out to be the preacher. For the main event, the preacher gets on stage, cries out the glory of the son of God, leads some prayers, and oversees some group-prayers. The group prayers are superfun because everyone has license to give praise in whatever way they deem fit. Some do the quieter bow-of-the-head whispered prayer. Others raise their hands to the sky and speak/weep in tongues. Still others become possessed by the Holy Spirit and scream, wail, pant, jump, roll on the floor… The best part of the service is, sadly, the part I haven’t even witnessed yet. Sunday afternoons are the healings. I teach a class at that time, but the in-laws always give me the 411 later that week. People from all over the region, whether they’re of this denomination or not, bring their sick and injured to the preacher to be healed. I’ve heard tales of a blind man regaining sight, a mute exclaiming “Jesosy!” [Jesus], and a woman being cured of diabetes – in addition to all the more “lackluster” miracles. And this has all been since October. At this point, these healings are the equivalent of the local cultural beliefs in ghosts, witchcraft, and the living dead – I’m not sure if I believe all of the stories, but I desperately want to. I’m just waiting to see everything for myself.<br /><br />One kooky cultural observation I don’t think I’ve discussed yet: Malagasy kids can kick American kids’ butts. Literally. These small people are built strong and built to last. From the time they’re born, they’re strapped to their mothers’ backs with a sarong, heads a-bouncin’ and a-bobbin’ all over the place. Yet no necks are snapped. Once they can crawl, they’re basically turned loose on the world to play in the dirt, put things in their mouths, and take naps on the ground. Toddlers are given small, round candies to eat and learn to climb trees and play with sharp objects. Small children, who we still think of as helpless and innocent are given adult responsibilities. They are sent to the store to pick up oil or cigarettes. They collect large buckets of water on their heads that are heavy even for me. They carry their small siblings on their backs around town. They are taught how to collect things like shells, jewelry, and shellfish and sell them to tourists. When this fails, they are taught how to beg money from white and/or rich people. They are integral parts of the household, helping with cooking, cleaning, message-delivering, chicken-catching, cattle-wrangling, and family trades. When they’re not working, they roam around town, play with handmade toys in the streets, and swim in the ocean – all without adult supervision. And the extent to which children physically resemble their parents here is startling. Like creepy miniature clones.<br /><br />Anyway, life in my second year in Madagascar is going fantastically. It really does take a year to fully become part of a community – I can’t even imagine what it would be like if I stayed here 3 or more years. It’s almost laughable now how I used to think I knew my community after a couple months, after 6 months, after 10 months… There’s still so much I’m learning, but I finally feel like an accepted member of the town, not just an outsider that people are used to seeing every day. I’m confident in my teaching abilities, and I know my place as a PCV and where I can be the most effective. I have a strong network of friends in diverse circles, and all I think about while being caged here in the capital is going home to Fort Dauphin.<br /><br />A strange thing has also happened in this second year: I’ve experienced this funky cultural perspective switch. When comparing Malagasy and American cultural differences, my subconscious immediately tells me that the Malagasy tradition is normal, while the American one is strange. For example, I see a Malagasy woman whack her 3 year old child with a stick for getting distracted by a piece of trash on the street and slowing her down. Then I see a white woman trying to placate her squirming and screaming toddler in a stroller with food and toys. Where’s the damn stick?? I walk 2.5 miles to the market and am still put to shame by old ladies carrying 20 lb baskets on their heads 4 times that distance just to sell their goods around town. Then I think about how I’ve driven my car around the block just to get from the supermarket to the bank. Is it <em>really</em> that much of a sacrifice to get off your butt every once-in-a-while and actually interact with people on the street? Here, I buy a live bird or a cut of beef straight off the cow if I want to eat meat. Then I remember how we pay more for pre-killed, pre-cut, pre-cleaned, pre-packaged, pre-frozen meat off an animal that died who knows when/where. How crazy is it to find entire refrigerated isles of plastic-wrapped meat thousands of miles from the gigantic slaughterhouse it came from? I avoid Malagasy street dogs like the plague because, well, their legions of fleas may actually carry the plague. Then I see a vazaha tourist cuddling up to one of the filthy beasts and cooing something about animal cruelty. In America, wouldn’t that be the equivalent of hugging a large rat that just crawled out of a dumpster? I’ve learned to reuse <em>everything</em> and get phones, electronics, shoes, etc. repaired to within an inch of their lives before even considering throwing them away. Then I think about how we buy brand new everythings just because we’re tired of our “old” ones. Why toss a perfectly good metal plate if you can just throw a piece of duct tape over that pesky hole? It’s not so much that I’m “against” our American lifestyle or am going to drastically reform my previous way of living when I get home, I’m just amazed at how our perception of what’s normal and logical can be so easily molded by the people and culture we’re surrounded by.<br /><br />Alright, back to my House marathon. Once I bust out of this cage and get back to the FD, I’ll be spending the holidays around town and frantically prepping for the arrival of my parents and brother on January 2. Finally <em>someone</em> is coming to visit me – I’ve still got 9 months here homies!Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-43388627825042394942011-09-14T23:49:00.000-07:002011-09-15T00:04:46.779-07:00Who says you can't go home?“Nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not.” –Bill Bryson<br /><br />My great return to the land of freedom, Stephen Colbert, and non-seasonal produce aisles was far too short and not nearly as overwhelming as I expected. I was only home for about 3 days before hopping a giant boat to Mangoritaville, but I had enough curious revelations to fill another insanely long blog post. In an effort to keep your mind from drifting off to Mangoritaville as well (not that I’d blame you), I’ve condensed my thoughts into this letter:<br /><br />*****<br /><br />Dear America,<br /><br />It was fantastic seeing you again; if only we’d had more time to catch up. Sounds like you’ve had quite the summer. Thanks so much for the warm welcome; it was such a surprise to see you heat waving at me when I arrived at the airport in DC. I heard through the grapevine that you were recently quaking with anxiety from the hurricane of work that’s blown your way at the office – you know how you always exaggerate problems in your head! But I digress. I’m still a little confused by some things you said during our time together, and I just want to get some of my concerns out in the open:<br /><br />• I’m still not sure I understand the obsession with bottled water. It seems even crazier to me after living in a place where I filter and bleach all my drinking water because bottled water is too expensive to buy regularly. May I remind you of how easy you have it with your free, non-amoeba infested water straight from the tap?<br />• I can’t stop thinking about that last Harry Potter movie and how it officially marks the end of an era. I know there’s nothing you can do…I guess I’m just wondering if you feel the same way?<br />• I couldn’t help but notice the over-abundance of processed, low-fat snacks in your grocery stores. Okay, so I’m not so concerned with the “processed” part, but I’ve yet to find a low-fat snack that’s as delicious as its calorific counterpart. It’s nearly impossible to find America-quality junk food in Madagascar – I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve spent hours of my life here fantasizing about Oreos, Cheetos, and Hershey’s chocolate. I beg you to eat healthy, wholesome foods 95% of the time, then go to <em>town</em> on a bag of full-calorie Doritos for me.<br />• No more Coffee Toffee Twisted Frostees..? Really?<br />• Can you help me explain my post-vacation obsession with Taylor Swift? Then again, it could be worse in a country that’s so power ballad and cheesy 90s pop-saturated, hearing a Justin Bieber song on the radio brings a tear of homesickness to the eye.<br />• You should seriously consider cutting down on the variety of foods available in your stores and restaurants. I know, I never thought there was such a thing as too much variety. But I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of foodstuffs available and spent so much effort deciding combinations of best possible taste + lack of availability in Madagascar that I didn’t even come close to gaining my goal weight of 10lbs. <br /><br />I hope I don’t seem ungrateful for your hospitality. In fact, I have a greater appreciation for those quirky Americanisms that the rest of the world seems to find so off-putting. Walmart saved my life when I had a million unrelated things to buy and only a few hours to find them. And I can’t thank you enough for your infatuation with ice. Iced coffees, Slurpees, piña coladas, even just a soda with ice cubes – how does the rest of the world live without this basic human right? Finally, I will never, NEVER again take for granted that which we call “sandwich.” Deli meat, cheese, veggies – all piled high on condiment-soaked sliced bread. Sweet land of liberty. <br /><br />Anyway, I just want to thank you for everything you’ve given me over the years. I’ve never been prouder to be an American. Take care and stay out of trouble. I’ll see you in a year!<br /><br />Love always,<br /><br />Jess<br /><br />*****<br /><br />So now I’m back in the Windy City of Madagascar. The cruise was incredible, particularly because I was with my entire family plus some in-laws and family friends. I didn’t go half as buffet-crazy as I’d hoped, though I did drink my weight in frozen tropical cocktails. The negative side effect of this euphoria was a subsequent affliction with crippling homesickness for a couple weeks after my return. Basically, I locked myself in my house for the first week and slept 12+ hour/day (thank you jetlag), sobbed “I hate Peace Corps!” into my pillow a couple hundred times, and lived solely on grilled sweet potatoes (welcome back gifts from my neighbors). A dark time, indeed, but not dark enough to have actually made me consider ditching my Beach Corps life. Side note: They finally fixed the pipes in and around my house. Jess has running water, biotch! (Not that it changes my lifestyle much, but hot darn it sure makes flushing the toilet easier.)<br /><br />I’m back into the swing of things now, still teaching a bunch of classes and loving it. I recently finished editing and formatting an English teacher training manual for one of the NGOs in town, which was an absolute blast. No sarcasm, seriously. I’ve learned that editing is what I do best, and I enjoy doing it. <br />COU-nerd-GH <br /><br />So for one of my advanced classes, I decided to do a session on American culture and diversity – what it means to be “politically correct” and using appropriate terminology when talking about race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, etc. Like many people around the world, the Malagasy have a tendency to place non-Malagasy in generalized categories when discussing ethnicity. I had just finished a whole schpeal about the difference between nationality and race and how there is a huge variety of ethnicities in America (i.e. why you can’t assume someone is from a certain country based on physical characteristics), when one of my students enthusiastically declares, “Okay, but I think you are Chinese.” <br /> “No, I’m American.” <br /> “Yes, but you are Chinese.”<br /> “I’m not Chinese.”<br /> “But you look Chinese!”<br />Fail. <br /> <br />Sexual orientation was another interesting topic. The students I teach have access to Western media, so they are all aware of the concept of homosexuality, but their ideas are very vague (picture the looks on their faces when I tried to explain the term “transgender”) and most don’t agree with it or simply deny its existence. I explained how sensitive an issue this is in America and advised that it is better to avoid the topic altogether rather than risk an exchange that could be offensive to both parties. Like the lesson on race, most of the class understood and took to heart what I’d said, but there’s always that one student…<br /> Me: “Can someone give me a sentence using the vocabulary we learned today?”<br /> Student: “Yes. Gays, bisexuals, and transgenders are mentally disabled!”<br /> Class: *embarrassed laughter*<br /> Me: *cracking up* “Okay, that sentence is grammatically correct.”<br />If I were a more sensitive person, that student would’ve left class with my flip-flop print on his ass. Thank goodness for Peace Corps cross-cultural training. <br /><br />On the topic of cultural exchanges… Those of you who know me well know that I love to make generalizations about groups of people (usually jokingly) that have no bearing whatsoever on my opinion of them as individuals. Here’s another one for you: I cannot STAND expats. Phew, feels good to get that one off my chest. More accurately, I should say I don’t like expat drama. Why? They’re like alphas without a pack. Expats get themselves so invested in certain aspects, issues, institutions, etc. in this country that they become convinced that only they know what’s right. It almost becomes an “if you’re not with me, you’re against me” situation. I cannot count the number times I’ve sat amongst a group of expats bitching and bickering about the conflicts in their lives and laughed to myself about how pointless (and impossible to keep straight) it all is. Some of it is long-term animosity (the Brits don’t like the French, the French don’t like the South Africans…) and some of it is ideological differences (missionaries v. holding groups v. NGOs v. entrepreneurs), but it’s all part of an convoluted web that can never be untangled. Peace Corps volunteers have an interesting perspective because we’re not working for ourselves or for a particular affiliation. We don’t bring development; our goal is to transfer skills to the Malagasy people so they can facilitate their own development. Maybe that’s why it’s so amusing to watch all of these white people argue over which one of them knows what’s best for Madagascar. But then I guess therein lies the irony: We all want the same thing – whatever is best for Madagascar.<br /><br />All that said, I LOVE the expats in Fort Dauphin as individuals. They’ve all enthusiastically welcomed me into their respective communities and done so much to help me. They provide me with interesting conversations and new perspectives, and they are almost always willing to share what’s theirs. They’ve become some of my best friends here. Thank you expats! (And try to chillax – it’s just life.)Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-58725064951626910542011-07-26T02:33:00.000-07:002011-07-26T13:35:46.321-07:00Don't Play with Fire[works]The first anniversary of my love-hate relationship with Peace Corps Madagascar was last Friday, July 22. I could be cliché and say that time has flown, but no. Hellz to the no. This year has been long, complex, and darn fantastic. Life finally feels “normal” in the sense that I’m staying busy, being inspired, setting goals, and compiling a list of tangible accomplishments. Fort Dauphin feels like home, though not enough to make me want to stay past my close of service (COS) date. One of my current goals/challenges is to apply to grad school this fall and hopefully get accepted so that I can begin as soon as I get back to the states next year. Anyone want to write me a letter of recommendation? Hehe. <br /><br />Work has been hectic over the past two months (well, as hectic as Peace Corps work can get…I still feel like I’m on an extended vacation). I finally feel like I’m growing – not just mentally, but professionally. I spent most of May organizing what I called my “World Environment Day English Competition.” It was a city-wide competition for high school-level English students in which they could write a short story, poem, or song in English relating to the theme of “grassroots conservation.” I ended up with 20-some total entries (way more than I expected, and many were group entries). Over the weekend of June 5 (World Environment Day), all of the contestants had the chance to read/perform their entries for the public outside the town hall; I'll try to post some of my videos. The top 3 winners received baskets of school supplies and English-Malagasy dictionaries donated by QMM (the local mining company). Visits to local conservation areas, including Andohahela National Park, were awarded to the top contestants as well. <br /><br />This competition was my baby. I was like a proud mama watching the fruits of my labor get up on that stage to share their English-speaking, environment-loving talents with the world. Laugh not! I know this kind of work is standard for many people, but this was my first real experience with project development. What began as a little seed of an idea planted in the soil of boredom sprouted out into the real world of meetings and deadlines and blossomed into a full-blown accomplishment. The fact that I did everything – pitching the idea to the regional environmental department, meeting with QMM representatives to solicit prize donations, begging the English teachers at the town high schools to encourage their students to participate, attending several meetings in which I had little to no idea what was going on but nonetheless feeling shamelessly proud to have been invited as a regional environmental representative, reading and rereading the entries 20+ times because I was too darn proud of all of the contestants to chose winners – made me realize that I actually am capable of turning my ideas into reality if I just put in the effort. (Note: I realize this is essentially the job description of a Peace Corps Volunteer, but just let me have my moment anyway.) <br /><br />I ended my classes in early June – a month early – because English is the only class my students have year-round. I could tell that 4 hours of English-learnin’ per week over the course of three trimesters was starting to dampen their already less-than-tremendous enthusiasm. June 26 was Madagascar’s 51st birthday and justification for a weekend-long celebration. A fairground was set up near the city center, though it was composed of more bars and gambling stations than child-friendly amusements. A huge stage was built in front of the town hall, where concerts were held each night. Saturday was fireworks/Black Nadia (a famous pop singer) night, and I’ve never seen so many people squished into what I previously thought was a spacious area. By some insane stroke of luck, I ran into a friend of mine who invited me to sit with his friends at a table in a prime concert/fireworks-watching spot. Little did I realize, as I was enjoying my beer and brochettes (meat on a stick), the danger that wonderful table would put me in. <br /><br />It was a dark night, so I didn’t notice much of what was happening around me. With no warning, WOOSH! A blast of light shot up into the night sky and exploded into fiery splendor…from only 25 feet away from us. A couple more blasts and I was still a little shaken from the surprise, but so far so good. Then the military guys set off this funky dancing firework that sent sparks whirling and twirling in random directions through the air and low to the ground. One of the sparks decided to fly straight for my face (mind you, there was nothing – people or otherwise – between me and the launching point). Everyone at the table did a flinch-and-duck, but it must have burned out right before it reached us because I was only pelted with small black things that looked like charcoal. After that, we were all on edge but tried our best to enjoy the rest of the show. The next few funky dancing fireworks in the mix shot rogue sparks at new targets. One hit the serving table where they were making our food, one hit a lady in the crowd (I’m pretty sure she was okay), and one traveled down the hill toward the port and struck a wooden house…which then to burst into flames. Why they didn’t just shoot the fireworks from the safety of the port, I’ll never understand. Not exactly the most enjoyable fireworks display of my life, but definitely the most exciting. I later heard that a few people were killed during shows in other parts of the country. Way to go, Madagascar. <br /><br />After Independence Day, I began a round of new English teaching gigs. While Israel and his counterparts cover many of the start-from-scratch beginners in town, I seem to have found my calling in the environmental and professional circles. In addition to my private teaching of various professionals, I now teach a class at the regional environmental office, a community course for professionals, and, my personal favorite, two classes (beginner and intermediate/advanced) at QMM. I love this one because I only have to walk 2 miles to their community center, then a bus picks me up and takes me to their [air conditioned, cubicle-lined] office building 7 miles north. Because I’m a volunteer, I get to eat a free lunch in their amazing cafeteria then teach employees from the biodiversity and community relations departments over their lunch break. We have class in a temperature-controlled conference room with cushion-y seats and a whiteboard, and I can use their copy machine to make handouts for my students. The people who work there are the bomb friggin diggity – as students, as workers, as human beings... Sweet deal. Anywho, this round of new classes has done wonders for my teaching abilities. I learned all the basics from my classes at CEL, but eventually I got comfortable, we developed a routine, and I stopped being as creative toward the end of the year. These new students, with a mix of levels, personalities, and goals, are forcing me to think of new methods, activities, topics, you name it. Maybe by next year I’ll feel confident enough to actually refer to myself as a “teacher.” <br /><br />Alright, I’m going to cut this post short[er]. I’m currently lounging in the Peace Corps transit house in Tana, waiting for my flight to South Africa – then back to U S and A, where a 10-day family reunion cruise extravaganza awaits me. Woot! Hopefully I’ll get some videos/pics posted when I have access to America-fast interwebbing. Check back soon. Note: I arrived Sunday and am posting this from the muggy heat of the Mid-Atlantic. <br /><br /><A href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA3OjOpTYHNBB_mqC4BZKeB87Uz_I5XG3fWWI-AjJ_EEBA0g_67u4SXVFQfXuwatrCUw0WABGMXgz94m7uwpQ9inWc5Z5c7_MdNMzVWTsK6U45bkwyOUX_oI6pVN_tbiezQG7hz_chHQBj/s1600/DSCN7473.JPG"><IMG style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id=BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633595482154910450 border=0 alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA3OjOpTYHNBB_mqC4BZKeB87Uz_I5XG3fWWI-AjJ_EEBA0g_67u4SXVFQfXuwatrCUw0WABGMXgz94m7uwpQ9inWc5Z5c7_MdNMzVWTsK6U45bkwyOUX_oI6pVN_tbiezQG7hz_chHQBj/s320/DSCN7473.JPG"></A> One of the contestants reading her poem at the town hall. <br /><br /><A href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh140sK_rnb2XQhLWIUgdlXhQ8F_sgTSUh8-SnUozfZBa0A25GXvAVg9Z6yqFHgrA2RGu1Sr-UYC2Oc4e_NWHTnR2quCQmKqscFVN6L4nqJPh5oNACxVpB-kbWDJJ6ZuKcunvbwV5ff2X32/s1600/DSCN7480.JPG"><IMG style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id=BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633595479970638594 border=0 alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh140sK_rnb2XQhLWIUgdlXhQ8F_sgTSUh8-SnUozfZBa0A25GXvAVg9Z6yqFHgrA2RGu1Sr-UYC2Oc4e_NWHTnR2quCQmKqscFVN6L4nqJPh5oNACxVpB-kbWDJJ6ZuKcunvbwV5ff2X32/s320/DSCN7480.JPG"></A> Me with students from 2 of the participating schools.<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK3EcRaWxnY<br />Check out the song the second place contestant wrote for the competition. I sense an international hit.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-37287523623917276092011-05-15T04:30:00.000-07:002011-05-15T04:39:07.435-07:00March Mada-ness, April AmeliorationAs you may have gathered from the last couple posts, December-February was pretty darn busy in terms of moving around and keeping things interesting. When my schedule finally settled into a relatively uneventful routine again in March, I went a little crazy. <br /><br />March was a month of too much pondering time and the resulting inner turmoil – about my job, my role as a Peace Corps volunteer, my life in Fort Dauphin, my life in general. Basically, it was like an extended mental breakdown. Apparently, this is completely normal for volunteers at this stage of their service (as I later confirmed after having several “bitch it out” sessions with fellow volunteers), but definitely not something I expected of myself, which perhaps contributed to my mental instability. The whole thing was essentially an accumulation of irritations with the culture, feeling useless, feeling like everyone was using me for money and/or status and that I had no friends I could actually trust, cravings for America, yada yada yada. I think I summed it up best in a message to Sarah, my American partner-in-crime when I was working in Ranomafana: “Nothing specifically brought on my cultural frustration. I just occasionally get those ‘I can't take it anymore’ days and they kind of stick to the ‘I'm not accomplishing anything with my life’ feelings and roll through a pile of ‘I miss fast food, running water, and refrigeration,’ and before you know it, a snowball of Peace Corps depression has formed and is plummeting down Mount ‘Someone needs to incite revolution so that we can be evacuated.’”<br /><br />Anywho, I could go into all kinds of detail about that horrible month, but no point now. I am once again loving life, though I doubt the cravings, feelings of restlessness, and periodic cultural frustrations will ever dissipate. Such is Peace Corps.<br /><br />I’ve managed to leave Fort Dauphin on a few short excursions in the past month or so: Went to a tree-planting ceremony in a village to the north with my students, sat in on some classes at a small primary school in the countryside, visited the nearby American Lutheran hospital and told the doctors I’d come back to teach them English, traveled to Ambovombe with Israel and Steph (the volunteer in St. Luce, a town north of Fort Dauphin) for a weekend birthday extravaganza for Paul. Even here at my site itself, I continue to find new places and things to do. Fort Dauphin definitely isn’t a small town, but the frequency with which I say, “I didn’t know this part of town even <em>existed</em>!” never fails to amaze me. <br /><br />My work and social lives have both been busier as of late. In addition to my classes at CEL and the French students I practice with, I give private lessons to QMM (the mining company) and some regional government employees; I’m thinking about setting up some professional courses during summer break. The director of the school has me edit grant proposals, blurbs for the website, etc., and I’m working with the regional department of the environment on various environmental sensitization projects and contests in the local schools. I was actually invited to a regional government meeting for local environmental representatives, and I was more-or-less able to follow the general topics of conversation. Then the woman running the meeting asked me to pitch my ideas to the room…in Malagasy (of course). Absolutely terrifying, but I managed to convey what I needed to convey. There’s also an environmental festival coming up in June, and I really want to do something to celebrate Peace Corps’ 50th anniversary and the contribution of volunteers in the southern region, but I haven’t busted far enough out of the bubble of laziness to actually plan something yet. <br /><br />I still love my job at CEL, even more so now than when I first began. Not because of the teaching itself – my actual skills aren’t that much better nor do I particularly like teaching anymore than I ever did – but I’m getting really attached to my students, and I can tell that they both like and trust me a lot more now. It also helps that I’ve finally swallowed my chill pill. I no longer have to be serious and strict for fear of an uprising, I’ve accepted that it’s completely culturally appropriate for students to be 10-15 minutes late to class, and I no longer take it personally if 75% of the students don’t show up one day because they’re running late on a deadline for another class’s assignment. It’s absolutely incredible how different all three of my classes are. One class has all the personality – they’re immensely entertaining to teach, but are a complete mixed bag as far as English skills and motivation are concerned. One class is pretty darn boring and, frankly, uninspiring to teach, but they’re very studious and, for the most part, motivated. The last class is absolutely brilliant – what I can only assume is any teacher’s dream class. They participate in discussions, ask a crap ton of questions, are great with critical thinking and formulation of opinions (skills that aren’t often exercised in the Malagasy educational system), and can spend an entire class period debating about an environmental topic. Despite the differences, all of my students are incredibly mature. Most of them are pretty close to my age, and I’ve gone out drinking and clubbing with a good portion of them, but they are never disrespectful or inappropriate with me in or out of class. <br /><br />Life outside work has been a ton of fun lately. Spring break was a hoot. Israel was in Tana most of the time because of an illness, but Paul came into town to cover Israel’s community classes, so we got to kick it <em>vazaha</em> (white people) style. Both of us hate cooking, so we ate out a lot; we went to the beach, explored new areas of town, watched a surf competition, and drank a lot of beer. Outside of spring break, I’ve been going out and just chilling with my Malagasy friends a lot more, which may be why I’ve been enormously more sane than when I was traveling in packs of Americans with the study abroad students. Not that I don’t love hanging out with the <em>vazaha</em> community here, but I find it to me much more mentally calming the more time I apportion to my Malagasy homies.<br /><br />Our main goal as Peace Corps volunteers is to “integrate” into our communities, so we tend to complain a lot about being treated differently because of our skin color, nationality, affiliations, whatever. I recently come to realize, though, that it’s just not possible for a foreigner to completely integrate into a community. We should really embrace our unique position in society right now because there’s nothing we can do to change it, and, truth is, 99% of us will NEVER be this popular again for the rest of our lives. Seriously, people in my community stare at me wherever I go, even if they’ve seen me walk down that street 100 times. Random people walk with me on the street and strike up conversations just to be seen with me or to find out who I am. Groups of women shooting the breeze outside their houses call me over to hear me speak Malagasy and ask if I’d be interested in marrying their sons. People call out my name and wave to me everywhere I go just to show other people that they know me. People I barely know invite me to their houses, give me gifts, or tell me that I’m part of the family. In no way am I implying that everyone’s motivations are completely innocent or genuine; my point is that I’m sort of regarded as an approachable celebrity. Never again will I attain this level of positive fame in a town of 60,000 people. Never again will it be so easy for me to make friends.<br /><br />Never again will I have this feeling of power. My status as a PCV, American, <em>vazaha</em>, call it what you will, also comes with a certain amount of power that I’m not accustomed to. For example, I could walk right into the mayor’s or the regional director’s office and ask to speak to them about a project I’m developing. Nobody would question it, nobody would tell me no. For better or worse, most people in this country believe that foreigners have the power to get things done (money = power seems to be a universal concept). It’s a complicated issue, but all I can do is embrace it and use my powers for good because, again, there’s absolutely nothing I can do to change it.<br /><br />So cultural commentary aside, everyday life is going well. December through April was incredibly hot and rainy, though usually not muggy, which is a huge advantage to this town’s location. The weather’s starting to cool down and dry out now; a few days this past week have actually been downright cold. When it’s sunny and I’m not too busy, I chill out on the beach by my house with the family I’ve decided to adopt. My mother, father, and six little brothers and sisters live in a one-room house (about the size of the average American bathroom) on the path from my house down to the beach. I think the dad grows a couple crops on their little plot of land, and the mom takes care of the housework and sometimes makes necklaces out of shells and seeds to sell to tourists. Most of the kids are in primary school, but they sell necklaces, shells, and other knickknacks to tourists on the weekends. I sometimes go swimming with them or take them on walks around town. I also like to buy them roasted peanuts from another friend on the beach because they have a horrible protein deficiency. It kills me sometimes that I can’t give them money (that kind of reputation spreads faster than syphilis in this town, and I’ve worked really hard to get to the point where everyone I know accepts the fact that I’m here to stay and I’m not giving free handouts). Once, the mom got a huge cut on her foot. I’m pretty sure she got cellulitis from it because her foot later puffed up like a balloon, and she couldn’t walk. Luckily, the mom happened to meet German friend of mine, who gave away a lot of her money for health and educational purposes, so my friend helped her with the money she needed for the antibiotic shots.<br /><br />For the most part – and maybe this has a lot to do with the fact that I live in a modern-ish town as opposed to a small village – I can’t say that living in a developing nation has been a “life-changing” experience. However, one random noteworthy mental transformation I’ve undergone: I’m no longer painfully sensitized to the killing of animals. That’s right. This one-time vegan who used to cry out in empathetic agony when someone squashed a bug in front of me, is now a cold-blooded killer of all things creeping and crawling, shuffling and sauntering. <br />No. That’s a lie. BUT I have no issue with killing the endless flood of ants that washes into my kitchen every time a scrap of food is left on the counter. I’ve gone on middle-of-the-night cockroach squashing sprees because I’ve reached my breaking point when I feel them crawl by my face while I’m sleeping. I’ve chased mice into the waiting jaws of the cat that hangs out in my house. I’ve learned how to catch, prepare, and fry grasshoppers as a snack or source of protein (they just taste like chips…though I’ve heard that they taste more “buggy” if you roast them instead). I’ve prepared live crabs and lobsters straight from the reefs around my house. I’ve watched the slaughter of chickens, sheep, goats, and zebu with rapt fascination (it’s a lot less traumatic than you’d think), followed by the dismemberment and preparation, and then consumed the meat. I know it sounds hippie-cliché, but you gain a lot more respect for and understanding of your food when you actually see where it comes from – that goes for plants or animals.<br /><br />So that’s life right now. We just got two new Small Enterprise Development (SED) PCVs in the southern region, so perhaps there will be some wild-n-crazy adventures with them in the future. Still loving life and not in the least bit homesick – <em>nonetheless</em>, I could not be more pumped for my trip stateside in July/August. I’ve already got a gigantic list of things I want to do, foods I want to eat, and stuff I want to bring back with me. If anybody wants anything from Madagascar, let me know so I can start searching it out for you!Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-34070199633657032822011-04-18T02:35:00.000-07:002011-04-18T03:45:50.937-07:00Some Visuals to Accompany the Last Post<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6QzN0oDxY5NsBejSJtRhpsExTWy-EqoX36VqPCF_2KJkcXkrdDEE5Hn-5uHfxUc5baWgH3EIiNsPcTrxia4pq81IbVVREgTMxNL-aWZA1X_hyphenhyphenOQ6lyKZhqgEPFZ1ypMY8U2nZo0We7NHK/s1600/DSCN7226.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6QzN0oDxY5NsBejSJtRhpsExTWy-EqoX36VqPCF_2KJkcXkrdDEE5Hn-5uHfxUc5baWgH3EIiNsPcTrxia4pq81IbVVREgTMxNL-aWZA1X_hyphenhyphenOQ6lyKZhqgEPFZ1ypMY8U2nZo0We7NHK/s320/DSCN7226.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596861951064135490" /></a>Learning an Antanosy song for the wedding.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgtpODy1v8rJKJI1jup8TG2Vh1lOh63vH6Fhzqs2SeJC98Nw8xC9BRFqQsekTDdt34MUQM31uBO6zmPTCVgK3QaAQ6Qk44-WBtJiMbpAlJgpJPE2OWdw8mz-vF9nqmjA1bHfMFRUqZxO-c/s1600/DSCN7261.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgtpODy1v8rJKJI1jup8TG2Vh1lOh63vH6Fhzqs2SeJC98Nw8xC9BRFqQsekTDdt34MUQM31uBO6zmPTCVgK3QaAQ6Qk44-WBtJiMbpAlJgpJPE2OWdw8mz-vF9nqmjA1bHfMFRUqZxO-c/s320/DSCN7261.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596861958895788882" /></a>The happy couple painting each other's faces with blood.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRzoZaoxxadG_j_VZ5SfGUrNBqjUqmWk6-przF1XIawinfjOqwPVuiWWmfNhiIePvHz2F80HCeU7TOJmut4R_ZILs5w2ds0Jo0vQGTlPdqxpqMXxiwRG7SQ9C3RlYIvj0-ieJRVqw-v_xi/s1600/DSCN7323.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRzoZaoxxadG_j_VZ5SfGUrNBqjUqmWk6-przF1XIawinfjOqwPVuiWWmfNhiIePvHz2F80HCeU7TOJmut4R_ZILs5w2ds0Jo0vQGTlPdqxpqMXxiwRG7SQ9C3RlYIvj0-ieJRVqw-v_xi/s320/DSCN7323.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596861966003038594" /></a>Ground in Berenty.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXOiQ6QzAUE7F155FSWFm1bCeKpWLNtRZl0lZQ-eUGhGcH6WsiCyADE9j8BhNG2Z9aKOtmIaiRo_pCx2_kt_rV1WJTWMlArKASz2kmaZd3hJHiYj_pYe24vZCeGcyPtIR3QZwRsPw78Dm/s1600/DSCN7363.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXOiQ6QzAUE7F155FSWFm1bCeKpWLNtRZl0lZQ-eUGhGcH6WsiCyADE9j8BhNG2Z9aKOtmIaiRo_pCx2_kt_rV1WJTWMlArKASz2kmaZd3hJHiYj_pYe24vZCeGcyPtIR3QZwRsPw78Dm/s320/DSCN7363.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596861964975907842" /></a>River in Berenty.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmuKlvWzk44KjVKGs1TS94NAerMDqhqx3zHwIQlMcHJ7lLyPN6d32SujThSR5XdVb_ELBK6rVwM4xnmzBDs-NJH2_Dx81_xaWaCUn1zCziHXWD1jrrQWO73T9XxmTx8FQFqD-5m_iiZY6j/s1600/DSCN7367a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 198px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmuKlvWzk44KjVKGs1TS94NAerMDqhqx3zHwIQlMcHJ7lLyPN6d32SujThSR5XdVb_ELBK6rVwM4xnmzBDs-NJH2_Dx81_xaWaCUn1zCziHXWD1jrrQWO73T9XxmTx8FQFqD-5m_iiZY6j/s320/DSCN7367a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596861966085688242" /></a>Trambo!<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA11n8NhFvsofl-2cgfPBx_TZE9ubY0a90yL-VK64h_15UjkvanA1cEyOupERhLTRfO8GKjBADaofhPZUy6lQ8GXYmyeY0xUIoX0Im0iarMFdJQhX-WAN4GrWmqYxioEHr5hNMj7zkyh5O/s1600/DSCN7379.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA11n8NhFvsofl-2cgfPBx_TZE9ubY0a90yL-VK64h_15UjkvanA1cEyOupERhLTRfO8GKjBADaofhPZUy6lQ8GXYmyeY0xUIoX0Im0iarMFdJQhX-WAN4GrWmqYxioEHr5hNMj7zkyh5O/s320/DSCN7379.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596869202925342786" /></a>Coastline in Faux Cap. Not unusual to find pieces of the recently-extinct elephant bird's eggs on the shore.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVY3IirPqHanyRUeWEw5FrX9iJROdfbR-HJh2URsIEAmDM5AczU6NsKK7XVFySPpvAIkLc3Nm_-e49WE0Gn1KtB0YPuVNTj7GmwN8AKKrdvwhg2RbSeRkhlZgQjCJ0yygsiiZzNeL_VNYF/s1600/P3040734.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVY3IirPqHanyRUeWEw5FrX9iJROdfbR-HJh2URsIEAmDM5AczU6NsKK7XVFySPpvAIkLc3Nm_-e49WE0Gn1KtB0YPuVNTj7GmwN8AKKrdvwhg2RbSeRkhlZgQjCJ0yygsiiZzNeL_VNYF/s320/P3040734.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596869192753125010" /></a>SIT student representing America and my student representing Androy.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTYv7VtzBaf0q8jAoeOmvz_pFicyaeWUVVklt3nQNBbAW3EWCREBoyGiNUxcuzIXI2GWVW20ChRhoGQRVWTlD-MGwas8D9C7cZbecXMk8wfe94oKd3q-4NELIqPn9CPtYugnthrmOa_IFg/s1600/P3040750.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTYv7VtzBaf0q8jAoeOmvz_pFicyaeWUVVklt3nQNBbAW3EWCREBoyGiNUxcuzIXI2GWVW20ChRhoGQRVWTlD-MGwas8D9C7cZbecXMk8wfe94oKd3q-4NELIqPn9CPtYugnthrmOa_IFg/s320/P3040750.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596869188446348466" /></a>One of my students bringing it Antanosy style.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOwJ0HPVdQ0knsEIrJPVmmPH-C2eTxwZM5PNXEPZdqNumlrfysvae-klNEHkrQwFzaNm7-NHPxmYAWca44tF_UFFsF72qA7x70Tp6lz0tvRH6WSsyIQkzRu0RnJ9inYCsvUgJTKNkahbsc/s1600/DSCN7402.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOwJ0HPVdQ0knsEIrJPVmmPH-C2eTxwZM5PNXEPZdqNumlrfysvae-klNEHkrQwFzaNm7-NHPxmYAWca44tF_UFFsF72qA7x70Tp6lz0tvRH6WSsyIQkzRu0RnJ9inYCsvUgJTKNkahbsc/s320/DSCN7402.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596869184942214130" /></a>The road back to Fort Dauphin through the Androy region.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-16692199154323243152011-04-14T04:35:00.000-07:002011-04-14T05:04:12.153-07:00Tantara Lava Be...I’ve been putting off writing a blog entry for so long because I thought I had nothing to say. Now that I finally have the urge to write one, I feel like so much has happened that I don’t know where to start. As bullet points are one of my favorite life tools, I’ll format this entry as a list of (roughly) chronological events. Get comfortable, it’s going to be a long post.<br /><br />• January 21: My 23rd Birthday. In the Malagasy countryside, most girls have long since married and popped out their first, second, maybe third <em>zaza kely</em> by my age. Luckily, I live in a large town where, when I tell people I’m not married yet, they give a hearty “eeeeehhh” of approval and declare, “mbo zaza hanao.” You’re still a child. Although it no longer excites me to be getting older, I let my friends throw a small party for me and bake me a cake.<br /><br />• January 23: The Long-Expected Move. I’ve FINALLY been placed in a permanent house! Fortunately and unfortunately, it’s not the “official” Peace Corps house that I described earlier. Unfortunately because that house had running water, a small classroom for private teaching, and two lanais, one with an unobstructed view of the Indian Ocean. Fortunately because that house was also dilapidated, haunted, and has since been partially caved-in thanks to a recent cyclone. I absolutely love my new house. It’s smaller and more compact than my temporary house, so it’s easier to keep clean, but it’s still got tons of space (again, basically a mansion by Peace Corps standards). They renovated it for me, so it’s got a new ceiling and windows, fresh paint, pretty curtains, a bar that opens the kitchen up into the living room, and hardwood furniture. It’s got a cute bathroom with stone tile floors, a toilet, sink, and shower (although I still don't have running water). I’ve got a good sized bedroom, kitchen nook, living room/office, and a special little “reading room” where I keep my couch and inherited books. This house isn’t nearly as isolated as the last one, which I love. I can actually open the windows now, allowing a cool ocean breeze to circulate. The director of the school lives on one side of me, and I’m about 20 feet away from one of my classrooms. On the other side of me is a big Malagasy guardian family, so there’s always a bunch of people right outside my door; I never really feel lonely or cut off. They often spend hours sitting in the yard, staring into my house and watching what I do. If I need privacy, it’s easy enough to close the doors/windows or hibernate in my reading room. The view from one side of my house is the center of the compound, so I can see pretty much everything that goes on. The other side of my house still faces the ocean, but there are significantly more trees blocking it, so it’s no longer good for whale-watching. I’d say that’s the only downside to my new digs. <br /><br />• January 24 - Longer than expected: American Invasion. Five health PCV friends from my training group journeyed from the Fianarantsoa/Southeastern region to Fort Dauphin. They spoke to my site-mate Israel’s and my classes about various health topics facing the young people of Madagascar: birth control, family planning, proper condom use, HIV/AIDS and other STIs, etc. I was unbelievably happy to have them for so many reasons. First, I loved that I got to show off where I live and what I do, and they stayed with me so they got to help me break in my new house. I also loved showing off other PCVs to the people here. There are so many foreigners in this town that Peace Corps often gets lost in the sea of NGOs, international companies, and foreign interests. Introducing my students/colleagues/friends to PCVs who also know the culture, can speak local dialects, and have no money really enhances Peace Corps’ image and helps set us apart from other expats. <br /> Another reason I’m glad they came is because my students are in desperate need of some sex ed. They’re definitely not shy or squeamish with these topics, but they are often misinformed about or just ignorant of critical pieces of information. For example, many are convinced that a woman can’t get pregnant if they use the pull-out method or if it’s the couple’s first time having sex. Condom use is VERY rare here, mostly because the men are so resistant (for the same lame reasons American men are), except here they don’t feel compelled to wear one out of fear/habit/pressure from their partner. I once had a student throw me the argument that the bible tells us not to use contraceptives – to which I replied, “Fair enough, but the bible also says not to have sex before you’re married.” He’d obviously never heard that one before because his mouth dropped and his eyes grew to the size of saucers. HIV/AIDS actually has a very low presence in Madagascar right now, but it’s potential to spread like wildfire is terrifying. The culture of infidelity and lack of condom use combined with increased mobility of the people and general ignorance about STIs is an undeniable recipe for disaster. Luckily, I could tell that my students actually took the health PCVs’ presentations seriously. Some of my girls even requested private counseling.<br /> Anyway, the PCVs were only supposed to stay for a week, but ended up in Fort Dauphin for nearly two because of rainy season travel complications. Long story short, they attempted to leave at least 3 times but failed because of washed out roads. They did, however, manage to clock some beach time, take surfing lessons, and attend:<br /><br />• January 28: Malagasy Union of Israel and China. Israel’s girlfriend, China, came to visit for a month in January/February. While she was here, they got married in a traditional (though not state-recognized) Antanosy-style ceremony. Two of Israel’s good friends’ families “adopted” each of them for the purposes of the ceremony. The women of China’s family dressed her and did her make-up and hair in traditional style. They then covered their bodies and faces with lambas (the Malagasy sarong-like wrap) and individually presented themselves to the families, pretending to be the bride. Their faces were then uncovered and they were sent back into the house until the real bride was finally revealed. Israel then slaughtered a zebu that he’d bought for the wedding to kick of the festivities. While some of the men dismembered the zebu, the ceremony was performed. Representatives of the families spoke and Israel and China painted each other’s faces with the zebu’s blood. The guests then presented the new couple with gifts of money. Traditional dancing and drinking of soda, beer, and <em>toaka gasy</em> (Malagasy moonshine) ensued while the women prepared rice and the zebu’s meat. When the food was ready, we were given spoons and feasted off of communal plates of rice and meat. Finally, Israel’s family formed a procession in which they took China and her belongings to their house while singing something along the lines of, “We’ve got China and we’re not giving her back.”<br /><br />• February 4-6: Once-in-a-Lifetime Berenty Trip. Every Friday I practice English with the students at the French distance-learning school where my good friend teaches. One Friday, one of my students invited me on a spur-of-the moment weekend trip with her family to the private Berenty reserve, which is owned by her aunt. Some of you may have read the book “Lords and Lemurs,” by Alison Jolly, which is about the history of Berenty, or remember the reality show about ring-tailed lemur families (there was also a similar show about meerkats), which was filmed in Berenty. So I call it a “once-in-a-lifetime” trip because Berenty is only open to researchers and high-rolling tourists. It was amazing – nothing at all like Ranomafana, where you could spend hours hiking up and down mountains only to catch a short glimpse of a lemur far up in the canopy. We got there after dark, but within the first hour after waking up the next morning, I saw three species of lemur right outside my bungalow. We also saw tons of reptiles (turtles, crocodiles, lizards), birds, and insects. It was egret hatching time, so the canopies were absolutely crammed with noisy egret parents, nests, and babies (some of which survived a long plummet to the ground only to be eaten or die days later because of broken wing or leg). There’s also an Androy cultural museum and sisal factory, but sadly both were closed that weekend. By far my favorite part was going on a night-hike with one of the resident naturalists and seeing a lepilemur (one of the 2 species I never saw in Ranomafana) and some mouse lemurs. I didn’t realize how much I missed those little balls of fun until I saw their big eyes bouncing around the spiny forest…<br /><br />• Sometime in February: Bite of the Malagasy Vampire. In this region of the country, there is no shortage of stories about paranormal phenomena – ghosts, resurrections, possession by spirits, witches that jump on men’s backs and ride them like horses… I have yet to experience anything supernatural, but I did have an encounter with the devil of all Malagasy creatures, and it was very real. One night I was cooking rice in my kitchen, and I reached for my gardening glove (aka my potholder) so I could take the lid off the pot. I suddenly felt a sharp bite on the back of my thumb, something like 10 wasps stinging me simultaneously and in the same spot. I screamed and threw the glove against the wall then looked at my finger, which was bleeding from two points at least a full centimeter apart (which is a huge inter-fang distance considering whatever bit me was able to conceal itself beneath a gardening glove). I figured the attacker had fled the scene after being thrown against the wall; nonetheless, I grabbed the longest utensil I could find and reached out to have a look-see under the glove. And there it was: the most stunningly hideous creature I’d ever seen. Tens of claw-like electric blue legs sticking out of a shiny, ridged, orange and blue body. It was the size of a small snake, beautiful in its evil, and it scared the hell out of me. In Berenty, my student had pointed out a small species centipede that she claimed was deadly, so I immediately assumed that this abominable creature must be even more so. Perhaps I’ve read “Twilight” one too many times, but my first reaction was to suck the poison out of my increasingly sore hand. When I realized that that probably wasn’t working, I was nearly in tears and immediately called the Peace Corps doctor on his cell, apologized profusely for disturbing him at night, and, in a shaky and panic-stricken voice, told him what happened. When I mentioned what I’d heard about killer centipedes, he calmly responded in a voice that was surprisingly non-patronizing, “Yeah, Jessica, I’m pretty sure that’s not true.” He then told me to clean it well, take some anti-inflammatories, and prepare for hours of intense pain. <br /> I did what he said, trapped the invader in a cup, and ran it over to my Malagasy guardian neighbor for inspection. He also assured me that my hand would hurt like hell, but I wasn’t going to die. He then smashed the devil bug with a rock. An hour later, however, the soreness had spread up my entire arm and was, in all seriousness, the worst pain I’ve felt in my life (much like what I imagine one feels after being bitten by a vampire as his/her body is being transformed). Now, throbbing pain I can take, but my arm also started turning red and breaking out in hives, and I became short of breath. Thus, I called the doctor again, once more apologized profusely, and told him about my new symptoms. He kept me calm and told me it was probably nothing too serious, but he wanted me to take some steroids that night. Luckily, my house is surrounded by expats with cars, so I chose to disturb my wonderful American neighbor, Jim, who is the head of the SIT study abroad program here, and have him drive me to the pharmacy on the other side of town. Long story short[er], I popped some prednisone, endured crippling pain in my right arm for another 24 hours, and survived to tell about my encounter with the <em>trambo</em>, what I later learned was a species of giant centipede and can only assume translates to “many-legged vampire.”<br /><br />• Various times during February/March: Study Abroad Fun. Not only did Jim save my life the night of the <em>trambo</em> bite, but because of him, I’ve seen and experienced more of the south of Madagascar than normally possible for the average PCV in such a short span of time. Every semester, the first-year students at CEL accompany the American SIT study abroad students on various field trips as sort of a cultural exchange. I got to come along to give English lessons to my students while the Americans learned Malagasy and also to act as a kind of liaison between the two cultures. The first trip was a day-visit to Mandena, the local ilmenite mining site run by a French-Canadian company. They set aside an area of forest to be conserved and have a long-term plan to restore the land that they destroy for the mining, which many believe is - pardon my French - complete bullshit. The company has brought a lot of infrastructure and jobs to Fort Dauphin, but it’s extremely controversial for various reasons. <br /> The second place we were supposed to go was Andohahela National Park for a 3-day botanical field study of transition forest, but the road to the park was flooded, so we ended up camping at a site outside of the park. At night we did some cultural exchange of dancing and singing, but for the most part the two groups of students stayed separated. Both groups felt comfortable with and trusted me, so I had a unique perspective of the differing cultural perceptions. For the most part, the Americans thought the Malagasy were really interesting and nice, just a little shy. The Malagasy, on the other hand, thought the Americans were being arrogant and purposely antisocial. It took a lot of effort on my part to explain to my students that the Americans were in a strange country surrounded by a new culture and people, and it was up to the Malagasy students to be more inviting and sociable to make them feel comfortable.<br /> The last trip was a week-long village stay in Faux Cap, one of the southernmost points of the country. The ride there was riddled with issues from buses getting stuck in sandy roads to angry villagers with spears demanding money for passage through their land. We left at 7am, and Jim told me, “We should be there by 5 or 6pm; one time we didn’t get there until 8, but I doubt that will happen again.” We arrived at 1am the next morning. <br /> The students got to camp in various villages and do home-stays while I was placed in a hotel with the other “grown-ups.” Although it was fantastic to have my own bungalow right next to a breathtaking beach, I would’ve taken the cultural experience over semi-luxury any day. The students learned to fish, dig for sweet potatoes, take care of livestock, cook, dance, attend a funeral, and basically live Antandroy-style. I was able to visit them every day and accompany the professors on a mini-trip the nearby town of Tsiombe, and I ended up absolutely falling in love with Androy (the southernmost region of the country – Fort Dauphin is the capital of the Anosy region, just east of Androy). The region has arguably retained the most African influences in comparison to the rest of the island; they are extremely hardy desert-dwellers, polygamy is common in many villages, a man’s wealth is measured in the amount of cattle he owns, and it is neither shameful nor unusual for an adolescent male to be killed while attempting to steal a zebu as a right of passage into manhood. I love Fort Dauphin, but I’m incredibly jealous of the PCVs who are placed in Androy. Anyway, the week was concluded with a big party in which the students presented their families with gifts of sheep, and all the villages preformed traditional songs and dancing. By the end of that week, the American-Malagasy barrier had finally been broken, and we all went out clubbing in Fort Dauphin before the SIT students left on their cross-country trip.<br /><br />That’s all I’ve got as far as major events in the past few months. By the time you’ve finished reading this mini-novel, I’ll probably have spit another one out about how life in general is progressing. Stay tuned…Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-56845639548294415802011-01-22T22:13:00.000-08:002011-01-22T22:31:16.702-08:00Cultural Sensitivity and Other Things I Fail AtAlthough in total I’ve spent over a year of my life in this country, the sporadic barrage of new cultural experiences and life lessons just keeps startling the crap out of me. Phases of monotony tend to lull me into a false sense of integration when suddenly – WOOSH – some hawk-like reminder that I am indeed an outsider comes swooping in to destroy my illusions.<br /><br />Here are a few examples of some of the cultural idiosyncrasies that have blindsided me:<br />• Nose picking – Commonly done in public. A nervous habit for students when I call on them in class.<br />• Nail clipping – Also commonly done in public. And in front of guests. And in other people’s living rooms. And at my kitchen table…while I am eating.<br />• Cell phone answering – During class, during meetings, during church services… The concept of “letting it go to voicemail” is blasphemous here.<br />• Plan flaking – The whole nothing-starts-on-time culture is reasonable, but making me rearrange my schedule for plans days ahead of time, then casually cancelling at the last minute or just not showing up? Or the opposite problem:<br />• Improvised hosting – Randomly arriving at my door and expecting me to stop what I’m doing to feed and entertain. Really?<br />• Insisting that I’m Chinese – I realize that many Americans are culturally-aware to a fault, but it never ceases to astonish me that, despite the racial diversity among the Malagasy people and the popularity of superstars from Beyonce to Jennifer Lopez, people here can’t grasp the fact that not all Americans are white. When I tell someone I’m from the United States, they invariably reply, “But you look Chinese!” as they pull back the corners of their eyes.<br /><br />These observations are more or less inconsequential, and most days I just laugh at them if I even notice them at all. One aspect of Malagasy life that I haven’t gotten used to is the asking culture. People here are not shy at all about asking others (especially foreigners) to give them things. One minute kids will be laughing and playing with me on the beach, and the next they’re putting on their I’m-a-starving-African-child tourist act and crying, “Jess, I’m sooooo hungry!” *stomach grab* “Give me money.” Or a woman will walk and chat with me like she’s my best friend, then throw in a “Oh your earrings are so beautiful! Give them to me.” Bitch please. Technically, I guess it’s less of an asking culture and more of a demanding culture. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why they do it, and I know very well that they mean no offense (and half the time probably don’t actually expect you to fork anything over), but asking for (or demanding) gifts, money, anything is just so against everything American culture teaches us is socially acceptable. This is the one cultural difference that I know I’ll never mentally adjust to. And maybe the nail-clipping during meals.<br /><br />My everyday life comes with various struggles and successes. My biggest and most constant struggle is the language. My abilities have without a doubt declined since training. I absolutely refuse to use Malagasy in the classroom because most of my students are at a high enough level that they can handle the total immersion technique. Outside the classroom, the demand to learn English is so high in Fort Dauphin that everyone jumps at the chance to practice with a native speaker. When I do actually speak Malagasy, it rarely goes beyond the same 10 conversations that I’ve had hundreds of times. One triumph: With the Malagasy I do know, I’ve gained the ability to switch between 3 dialects as well as French, which is probably more than most PCVs can say.<br /><br />A completely unrelated triumph: I’ve taught myself to burn trash. Certainly not the most difficult skill to acquire, but my fear of setting the entire neighborhood on fire kept me from attempting it during the first three months at site. Gone are the days in which I sneakily toss my garbage bag in the communal trash pit (public sanitation systems/trash collection don’t exist here) and hope someone else takes care of it. <br /><br />Another random triumph: I’ve learned rock-and-roll dancing and am slowly picking up other styles of ballroom. That’s right, Fort Dauphin has a small underground dance scene. Who would’ve guessed I’d learn Western-style dance in Africa…<br /><br />Living on this island has made me realize what sissies Americans are about certain things. Having “nothing” in the house to eat, for example, or being stuck in traffic in the shelter of a climate-controlled car. Physical appearance is another thing. We as Americans constantly complain that the media puts so much pressure on us to be physically perfect. Screw the media. Try living in a society where friends, family, and random people on the street are ruthlessly blunt about the way you look. Take acne, for instance. It’s generally accepted by Americans that most people get the occasional zit or break-out. Apparently, these facial imperfections are rare to nonexistent here in Madagascar, as whenever I have one, everyone I speak with feels compelled to inquire, “What’s that thing on your face? It looks bad!” Of course, they only mean the zit itself looks bad, not my entire face, but that hasn’t stopped me from muttering curses about their not-so-perfect features under my breath.<br /><br />Now, let’s consider one’s weight. Lack of cooking skills, air conditioning, and motorized transportation have kept me relatively small at site. However, lazy vacation time significantly altered my daily routine. Upon arriving back in Fort Dauphin, one of my good friends wasted no time in joyously exclaiming, “Wow, you got FAT in Tana!” Granted, I had put on a few holiday pounds, and, granted, being called “fat” is considered a compliment in this country, but the American in me nearly clawed his eyes out. Nonetheless, the experience has taught me much more about the human psyche (or maybe just my own). In America, when we see images of “perfect” models and actors, no one is telling us directly that we need to look like them; the conflict is internal – we’re really telling ourselves. Thus, weight-loss (or whatever your goal may be) is directed more by self-motivation, which, in general, is extremely difficult to conjure up. When comments are directed at us personally, however, one must either develop really thick skin or… Well, let me just say, there is no greater impetus for change than when one’s “flaws” are candidly and verbally expressed by those close to them. I was back to my normal weight in a week. My advice to those who whine about the cruelty of the American media’s pressure to be thin: Just suck it up. (No pun intended.)Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-5864896740227080312011-01-14T22:56:00.000-08:002011-01-14T23:18:28.121-08:00Home for the HolidaysThe last couple months have been crazy. There’s been so much going on, and it’s starting to scare me how quickly time is passing. The holiday season came with a lot of ups and downs, and, to be honest, I’m extremely happy that it’s over with. <br /><br />Thanksgiving was a hoot. We celebrated it the Friday after so it wouldn’t interfere with classes. Israel (my site-mate) and his friend who was studying abroad here showed up at my house with a giant bag of food and a live turkey. Now, I may no longer be the pleather-wearing, tofurkey-eating, PETA-loving activist many of you so fondly remember me as; nonetheless, I had a slight emotional breakdown as I gazed into the eyes of my dinner and promptly made the guys go far down the hill to kill him. We spent the rest of the afternoon cooking American-style (or as close as Malagasy market availability allowed) Thanksgiving food. Israel’s friend and I went on a beer-run to the nearest bar – quite the ordeal traversing several hills in the midday heat with enough booze for the entire party. Of course, passing a large group of my students on the road while lugging an entire backpack and crate full of beer bottles didn’t make the trek any less uncomfortable. The real party got started soon after that. We had about 17 people: A handful of PCVs, a bunch of our Malagasy friends, my American neighbor, his Malagasy wife and 2 kids, and one Brit. Among the many things served were cornbread, stuffing, and potatoes, Malagasy street food as appetizers, and zebu shish-kebabs afterwards. Definitely my most odd and eclectic Thanksgiving, though the American traditions of gratitude, gluttony, and drunken bickering served as reminders of what the holiday is truly about.<br /><br />Israel, Paul, and I flew out of Fort Dauphin around December 12 for a week of training back in Mantasoa. After the initial excitement of seeing everyone again wore off, I had no further desire to be there and would much rather had stayed at site. That seemed to be the general consensus of my training group, as IST (the training) was pretty darn boring and largely pointless. The week did contain some highlights, however, such as a house-warming rum party thrown by the security officer at the US Embassy and a tour/pool party at the embassy itself, which is absolutely GIGANTIC and comes complete with a poolside bar stocked with Malagasy soda, beer, and….GUINNESS.<br /><br />I took a taxi-brousse down to Fianarantsoa a couple days after training, spent a couple days there, then headed back to Ranomafana with Ryan, a PCV friend who lives near Fianar. It felt more like a homecoming than anything. As the taxi-brousse from Tana pulled into the Fianar station, I was immediately recognized by a group of friends who work there. Even around the city (which is the second biggest in the country, I believe) random people who I didn’t even remember asked me if I was that girl from Centre Valbio. Ranomafana was incredible. Ryan and I got a tour of the park; although we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, it was so nice to be back in my old stomping grounds. That afternoon was Valbio’s staff Christmas party. I can’t even begin to describe how fantastic it felt to see all my old friends in one place at one time. By the time my short trip was finished, it felt like I’d never left – except this time I was actually able to speak Malagasy to everyone as opposed to broken Malafrenglish. As much as I love Fort Dauphin, Ranomafana is still very much my home in Madagascar.<br /><br />Christmas Eve, Ryan and I went to another volunteer’s site near Fianar. We had a huge Christmas (Eve) dinner and brunch the next morning with a big group of nearby PCVs. Christmas day, I headed back to Fianar and left for Tana the next morning, then flew back to Fort Dauphin on the 28th. It’s incredible how I originally went to Tana wishing I could stay at site, then left Tana three weeks later not ready to return. I had a rough few days of adjustment being back here, but ultimately I’m glad to be back. I have, however, already made tentative plans to move back “home” to Ranomafana during the Grandes Vacances (summer break) and work there until school starts again.<br /><br />I have much more to write about life here and my interpretation of it, but that post is coming soon, keep checking back. Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday!Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-11506396118505355472010-11-08T23:44:00.000-08:002010-12-25T07:50:46.806-08:00That’s Professor Jess to YouI’ve been living at site for a month and a half now and could not be happier. It’s no secret that monotony is my kryptonite (as most of you can tell from the lack of consistency in my life). It is the one thing in this world that has the power to destroy my spirit. I’m psyched to say that my spirit is in no danger here in the FD. Life at my site is so dynamic and the cultures so diverse. Yet for such a large town, I already feel an incredible sense of community. The mpivarotras on my beach who once swarmed me in attempts to sell homemade necklaces or braid my hair now know me by name and stop me only to chat. I practice reading English with my neighbor children, walk them around town, and teach them to swim. Everywhere I go, I never fail to run into local store owners, teachers, tour guides, expats, students, hotel workers, taxi drivers, and other people I know (or assume I must have met at some point, considering they are calling my name and waving wildly). Yet in a town of 60,000, there will always be new people to meet and new things to discover. The variety among the Fort Dauphin inhabitants is amazing. There are so many expats working for NGOs, schools, companies, etc. On any given day, I may interact with people from South Africa, everywhere in Europe, the US, the Caribbean, Pakistan, India, China, Mauritius, Australia, and all parts of Madagascar. My compound alone is home to people from France, Italy, Finland, South Africa, Canada, the US, and Martinique. The only downside to this diversity is that I don’t get the full “Malagasy” experience that my fellow volunteers living in smaller, non-touristy towns have. Whatever, cultural immersion is overrated. I get the opportunity to switch between speaking English, French, Standard Malagasy, and Antanosy on a daily basis – which I think is pretty darn fantastic.<br /><br />Regarding my actual job, I LOVE teaching! So far. I’ve only been doing it a few weeks. And so much of what I love is completely unique to my assignment. While other education volunteers are dusting chalk off their hands and bellowing grammar exercise directions to classes of 60-100 teenage brats, I’m deciding on which color whiteboard marker to use while discussing environmental issues with classes of 11-20 university students. Officially, I teach three levels of Environmental English, but the textbooks are so short and open to interpretation that I pretty much get free reign with the course. I’ve decided to add a heavy grammar component to the classes, since most of them will be using English for business or professional purposes after they graduate. That’s my formal reasoning…but really I’m just a huge grammar nerd; I love teaching it. A former student and I also started an English club for the school, and I can tell that will be tons of fun. It gives the really motivated students a chance to practice beyond the classroom material and basically dictate what they want to learn without me having to individually tutor all of them. <br /><br />My living situation is still fabulous. As of now, no progress has been made on the renovation of my official house, so I’m still in the just-as-wonderful temporary house. Not knowing when I’ll have to move has made settling in a little pointless, but I’ve at least decorated my walls with hilariously graphic Malagasy health posters advocating condom use, monotony, family planning, and STD testing.<br /><br />An interesting dichotomy exists on the compound where I live. In addition to the university classrooms, one finds large, western-style expat houses complete with electricity, plumbing, refrigeration, large kitchen appliances, housekeepers, and 4WD vehicles in the front yard. Interspersed between these homes are the one-room shacks that house entire Malagasy guardian families and whose only Western amenity is a single light bulb. Despite the proximity, the lifestyles of these expats and Malagasy couldn’t be more different – and I’m squished somewhere in between. I reside in a sizeable house, though it is largely unfurnished, undecorated, and downright dilapidated by Western standards. My only kitchen appliance is a two-burner countertop gas stove, and all of my utensils and cookware are secondhand and rusted. My plumbing doesn’t work, so every morning I bring buckets of water from the communal hose back to my house. Unlike my expat neighbors, I do my own cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and I have no means of transportation other than my own two feet. It literally took me weeks to figure out where to dump my trash because whenever I asked someone, they would tell me, “Just pay the guardian to take it out for you.” Yeah…no. Maintaining the same standard of living as the average Malagasy is one aspect of Peace Corps philosophy that I’ll always admire. We were taught by our host families how to function rural Malagasy-style in everyday life, and are forced by our modest living allowances to maintain that standard. Not that I don’t enjoy the benefits of having rich vazaha (white) neighbors. Ironically, during my Peace Corps interview, I specifically told my recruiter that I wanted the “real” Peace Corps experience (i.e. living in a tiny hut in an isolated village with no electricity, running water, or means of communication). Now I find myself invited to everything from pancake breakfasts (complete with Vermont maple syrup) to 3-course wine and pasta Italian lunches. My good friend and next-door neighbor has offered to let me use her fridge, oven, hot shower, and internet whenever I want. Normally I hate using Peace Corps lingo, but there really is no better way to describe my life here than what has been collectively termed the “Posh Corps” by PCVs worldwide. All in all, not the experience I was expecting. I’ve got to tell you, it takes a certain kind of person to rough it among the natives out in the African wilderness for two years.<br />…guess I’ll never know if I’m that person.<br /><br />Seriously though, I’m just beginning my service, but there are aspects of this experience that have already begun to change my way of thinking. For instance, having to collect my own water in Mantasoa and here at site has made me realize just how much water we don’t need in our everyday lives. I wash a sink full of dishes in about 1 liter of water and rinse them in the same amount. Compare that to the amount of water used by a dishwasher or even by rinsing dishes under a faucet. I bathe myself with ¼ a bucket of water, slightly more if I’m washing my hair. I use about the same amount for washing clothes. By far the activity that requires the most water (a bucket or more everyday) is flushing my non-functioning toilet. Needless to say, I’ve dropped the habit of flushing every time I take a wiz. (A note on toilets: They are the devil. Not only do they require an obscene amount of water for a single flush, but they have the potential to clog or break – at which point you’re screwed. Give me a drop latrine any day. I’m serious.) <br /><br />As for nourishment, I’ve FINALLY learned how to sustain myself by cooking real, unprocessed foods – i.e. NOT popping frozen dinners in the oven, calling out for pizza or cheese steaks, microwaving water for ramen noodles, or heating up my mom’s leftovers. *collective gasp* I know. Granted, my palate isn’t exactly rich with variety yet, but I’ve figured out how to make everything from chili to pancakes to falafel completely from scratch. I know some of you are shaking your heads and chuckling patronizingly right now, but this is a major accomplishment for me and I refuse to be brought down. On top of that, I’ve managed to stay completely healthy and (as far as I know) parasite-free since living on my own. However, fleas continue to be a major source of annoyance and scarring on my body. I have yet to understand why there exists flea medication for dogs and cats, but not humans. Somebody PLEASE send me some Frontline!<br /><br />I plan to head back to Mantasoa in December for a few additional days of training, then spend the holidays with my old homies in Ranomafana and Rebekah in Ifanadiana. Hope everyone is doing well on your sides of the world! Please keep me updated – you’d be surprised at how much I’ve come to enjoy hearing about the everyday drama and gossip in other people’s lives. It’s a good reminder of how life actually continues in places beyond this island…Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-57491953001395980752010-09-26T06:26:00.000-07:002010-09-26T06:39:09.548-07:00Life as a HouseIt’s official – I’m a friggin Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) as of last Tuesday, September 21, 2010! We moved to our sites the day after swearing in, so I believe I’m now allowed to say that I’ll be serving as an Education PCV in Fort Dauphin (Tôlagnaro), Madagascar for the next two years. WOOT! The last entry I wrote was a month ago, and it is absolutely incredible how quickly this past month flew by in comparison to the first. I’m not sure if it had to do with finally getting used to the new environment and lifestyle, the reality of what I’m actually here to do setting in, the fact that the education trainees have barely had time to breathe since returning from site visit, or possibly because I was finally able to get over the shock of being thrown back into a study abroad-like atmosphere and really begin to enjoy the final few weeks of training. <br /><br />After we returned from site visit to Mantasoa, our schedule was just a whirlwind of stress and insanity. I had an issue with my host family before leaving for site, but the homestay coordinator (an absolutely incredible and kickass female, might I add) spoke to them while I was away and attempted to resolve the situation. Everything was fine when I got back, but I just never felt as comfortable with them afterwards. I did love my little brother and sister, but I definitely won’t miss their relentless coughing in my face and on everything I own.<br /><br />Because Israel, Paul, and I got back to Mantasoa four days after everyone else, we were thrown into the education practicum with little preparation. Several of the current education PCVs serving around the country came to Mantasoa to train us. We were able to watch one class taught by them as a model for what we were supposed to be doing. The first two classes I taught were to the Terminale level (the American equivalent of high school seniors), which was really useful since they were the closest to the level of students I’ll actually be teaching. I missed the next class I was supposed to teach because I was really sick for a few days, but the next few classes I taught were to the 5eme, 4eme, and 3eme levels (equivalent to our 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, respectively). I got some excellent feedback from the trainers. They said it was hard to tell that this was my first time teaching, which was unbelievably encouraging to me. I had to work a lot on my blackboard management and a few presentation techniques, but overall I did well, survived practicum, and learned a ton. Lesson planning was a new experience for me. I think that’s where most of my stress came from since I would spend hours every night preparing for my classes. For the sake of my own sanity, I REALLY hope that lesson planning is a skill I’ll get better (and by better, I mean faster) at. I’ve heard from a few of the more experienced teachers that they hardly ever write lesson plans for their actual classes, but, as of now, I can’t imagine having a class without one. Although it was nowhere near as petrifying as I imagined, the whole classroom teaching thing hasn’t really clicked with me yet. I’m hoping I’ll enjoy it and ease into it more when I have my own classes and have a better idea of what exactly I’ll be teaching. I think my biggest fear is that I will start my assignment, realize that I hate teaching, and spend the next two years stressed out and miserable all the time.<br /><br />Other than teaching/observing practicum most mornings, the second half of training consisted of a lot of technical sessions (learning about classroom management, teaching strategies, writing/grading tests, etc.) and significantly less language instruction. I was extremely devastated about the latter, as studying Malagasy has become one of my favorite pastimes. We had our first language interview right before site visit, and I scored at the Intermediate Mid level, which was two levels higher than what we were supposed to be at that point in time. The survival words and phrases I picked up in Ranomafana gave me little advantage after the first couple weeks of instruction because of the intensity of Peace Corps language training. We had our final language interview by certified testers last week. I scored at the Advanced Low level, which was still two levels higher than what education trainees are required to be at before they are allowed to swear in as official PCVs, but I can’t help but think that my actual level might even be higher. My language trainer came up to me after we found out the results of our tests and said, “I’m so proud of you, but I listened to the recording of your interview – I know you can do better than that.” HA, love him. Regardless, we have to have another official language interview at the end of our service. If I reach a certain level at that point (Advanced High I think?) then I’ll have certification that I’m bilingual. It seems easy enough to get to that level over the course of two years, but I’m worried about the lack of structured grammatical training I’ll have at site. Oh well, that’s the least of my concerns right now.<br /><br />It’s absolutely crazy how my feelings toward training and the upcoming installation at site changed over the course of two months. During the first month, I couldn’t wait to get away from everyone and start my assignment. However, during the last week of training when I was right on the edge ready to take the plunge, I was absolutely terrified. Although I still hated living with a group of 40+ Americans, I’m really going to miss some of my fellow trainees and trainers who I’ve gotten close to. I know that eventually I’ll start making connections at my site and come to think of it as home, but the inevitable loneliness of the first few weeks (or months) will be the most difficult challenge. As a side note (although I doubt anyone will actually send me mail), I have local address at site, so don’t send anything to the old Antananarivo address. I thought it would be relatively easy to get mail at the PC Headquarters address I’ve had posted, but I learned that because I’m a fly-site, I probably won’t receive any of mail sent to that address until the next time I’m in Tana (which won’t be until December).<br /><br />The swearing in ceremony was brief, but I loved the official-ness of it. There’s currently no American ambassador to Madagascar, so whoever his next-in-command is was the one who swore us in. There were a few speeches given in English and Malagasy; then all trainees were asked to stand, raise our right hands, and say the US government oath (the same one Obama took). Good times. Apparently the whole thing was aired on national television; one of my friends in Tana texted me later and told me he watched it. Afterward, I was pulled aside by a journalist and photographer for an interview, but I have no idea if anything came of that. <br /><br />I’ve now been at site since Wednesday. We came back with a Peace Corps staff member for “installation,” which basically means doing courtesy visits to various officials, making sure our houses are up to safety standards, and assuring no major problems remain. When I got here, I learned that there is now someone living in that temporary house I told you about in the last entry, so I had a brief moment of panic before finding out that I now had a choice of two possible temporary houses (my official house still needs to undergo renovation). Both houses were just as gigantic by Malagasy standards as the first one, except these were both located on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Needless to say, no second thought was given to my old house. One choice had no running water and the other had a missing window. I chose the one with no water because it is slightly more compact (can’t think of a better word) and easier to close off the various rooms that I won’t be using regularly for safety reasons. This is possibly the most incredible house I will ever live in. On the outside it looks like a dilapidated old beach shack. Inside, there’s a huge kitchen, 3 bedrooms, a bathroom with sink, shower, toilet, and TILE floor, and a massive living room with huge windows that overlooks the ocean. We actually saw a friggin whale just kicking it in the waves from the living room window as we were surveying the house. I'm surrounded by gorgeous pine trees, and there's a constant gentle breeze, above which you can here the crashing of waves. A bed, armoire, table, and chairs were provided to me by the school. I inherited TONS of books, a couch, and a bunch of rusted kitchen supplies from previous volunteers. No idea what I did in a past life to deserve this, but I'll let you all know as soon as I figure it out. <br /><br />I’ll likely be spending the majority of my time this next week shopping for basic living supplies and attempting to de-rust my utensils. The trade-off for an amazing view and proximity to the beach is that I’m really far away from the nearest stores or markets, and the road to my house isn’t safe to walk alone on after dark. Since I have no means of refrigerating food, I’ll probably be living primarily on beans and rice or other dried foods that I can stock up on. <br /><br />It looks like I’ll have somewhat regular internet access here (maybe a couple times a week), so I’ll try to keep you updated on my new life and job. If anyone knows of any good resources for teaching environmental or business English, please share! <br /><br />PS - I desperately hope at least one person got the reference, but whenever I'm in my house I can't help but think of the Life as a House quote, "If you were a house, Sam, this is where you would want to be built. On a rock, facing the sea. Listening. Listening."Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-76092289534350107302010-08-22T06:49:00.000-07:002010-08-22T06:58:23.531-07:00We're not in Hawaii anymore, Toto. ...wait a minute...Envision the cold, rainy, mountainous training village of Mantasoa that I described in my last entry. Feel the mud seeping through your last pair of clean pants as the highland wind chills your face and hands. Search the sky for a break in the clouds that may produce beams of that heavenly miracle you once knew as sunshine.<br /><br />Now, picture the exact opposite of that. <br /><br />Indeed boys and girls, that is my site. After I swear in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) a month from now, I will be living and working in a tropical paradise for the next two years. Okay, so it won't actually be a huge diversion from the general environment I've inhabited for the majority of the past 5 years, but maybe it just seems so drastic a change in comparison to Mantasoa.<br /><br />Regardless, I've been on a site visit for the past week, and I've got to say that I couldn't be more in love with my future home. I flew down here with fellow trainees Israel (who will be teaching at the local high school) and Paul (who will be teaching in a town about 6 hrs west of here) and with one of our trainers who is from this area. The first thing I thought as we exited the plane was, "Oh my God, I'm back in Hawaii." The town is located on a small penninsula and blocked in by mountains, so it actually has that secluded atmosphere that gives it a very small island-esque feel. The beaches are absolutely gorgeous, the streets are filled with sand instead of mud, and the climate stays warm with relatively low humidity year-round, with rainy and dry seasons. The people, culture, and town itself, however, remind me much more of a Caribbean island. The people are much more African-looking than the Merina of Mantasoa (my host mom could be at home anywhere from the Philippines, to Peru, to Tahiti) or even the Tanala/Betsileo in Ranomafana. Women wear brightly colored lambas and skirts with t-shirts or tank tops. I've seen many women sport brightly colored face paints that I've heard are used to protect their skin from the sun. Guys wear shorts with t-shirts or otherwise sleeveless shirts. Everyone wears slippers. Rasta style is extremely common, though I don't know if this is just the "look" (I’m sure it is for most people) or if there are actual Rastafari here. Everywhere you look you can find someone with dreads, beaded hemp jewelry, or a Bob Marley lamba. Surfing is also big here (I'll admit, I didn't even know surf culture exited in Madagascar until I arrived last week).<br /><br />I could go on and on about the city, but I'm sure there'll be more time for that in the future. The actual whereabouts of my house seriously could not be more perfect. Without going into too much detail about the specific location, I'm right on the coast near the school where I'll be teaching. I've actually got two houses right now - my official house is undergoing major renovation and may not be ready until much later in the school year. Both houses are basically mansions by Peace Corps standards (and by most Americans' standards as well) and are located on top of a Wuthering Heights-reminiscent cliff. My official house has 7 rooms, a wrap-around lanai with STUNNING views of the ocean (you can whale-watch off my front porch!). I assume there’s no need to describe my overwhelming shock, as I told most of you that I’d probably be living in a tiny 1 or 2 room house with no running water or electricity. There's an amazing local beach that's great for swimming just down a small path. The location is offset from the town center and touristy areas, which is awesome because it maintains that small-village feel with all the benefits of a small city are in close proximity. <br /><br /> My site and assignment are considered by many to be the crème de la crème of PC Madagascar, but there are pros and cons to being placed in such a large, touristy town. I definitely won't get the same cultural (or what many would call "traditional Peace Corps") experience that volunteers in smaller communities will have. I'll be able to establish somewhat of a presence in the community, but not nearly to the extent I expected. I suppose relative anonymity has its benefits though. Everything I need is right here, so I won't need to travel away from site to buy supplies, bank, etc. Cost of living is much higher, but the location is darn worth it. And I'll have regular internet access! I can pay to use my school's modem, chill out at an internet cafe, or - my personal favorite so far - walk to the swanky hotel down the road, buy a pastry, drink, or cup of coffee, and take advantage of the wireless in their cushy lobby. <br /><br />I've only been here a week, but I already feel like I'm making a name for myself in this city, which is fantastically encouraging. I've already made several friends and established some contacts. I have a basic idea of how to get around, and I can tell people are starting to recognize me. As incredible as site visit has been, though, I've still got a month left of training in Mantasoa. The education volunteers start practicum when we get back, meaning we'll be practice-teaching actual classes. This is absolutely terrifying to me (the idea of teaching in front of other, more experienced, volunteers and trainers more so than the idea of teaching the actual students), but these are the skills I absolutely need to learn to be successful here. Sink or swim...that's become my motto over the past month. Holy crap, I honestly cannot believe it's only been a month since we arrived in Madaland.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-8861986205778900972010-08-06T03:03:00.000-07:002010-08-06T03:11:10.759-07:00Sunny African Warmness? My vody!Salama from Madaland! I should preface this entry by saying that the past two weeks back in Madagascar have literally felt like two months. We've managed to cram more activity/knowledge/experience into a fortnight that I could have ever imagined humanly possible, and the days seem to go by so slowly. I have so many mixed feelings on everything that's happened so far, but just to assure you all, I have absolutely no regrets. From the time I left my parents' house July 19, not once have I questioned my decision to do this with the next two (or more) years of my life.<br /><br />I did confess to some of you before I left that a part of me wished I'd been placed in a different country so I could experience living in a different part of Africa. I can honestly say that all of those thoughts evaporated the moment I looked out of the plane window as we flew over the island. At that point, I remembered exactly how much I missed this country, and it felt more like I was coming home than leaving it.<br /><br />I don't want to make this entry into a novel, so I'll try to stick to the highlights. Call or email me if you want more details on anything. I met with my group of 42 Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) - 21 education and 21 health - at a hotel in DC on the 19th. For a group this huge, we're surprisingly homogenous. The vast majority of us are in our early 20s (the oldest is 28) and are relatively recent college grads. Most of the others actually graduated sometime this past year, which makes me feel strangely old... We had one afternoon of orientation in DC then left for South Africa the next day. We spent the night in an airport hotel and arrived in Mada the next afternoon (July 22). The group was immediately shuttled to the PC transit house in Tana, where we crammed in a few more orientation sessions, spent the night, then left for our training village of Mantasoa, which is about 2 hours east of the capital. There we immediately moved in with our host families, where we will be living for the next 2 months. The next day we were taken to the training center (about a 10 min walk from my house), which can only be described as the summer camp of dreams. It's located right on the shores of gorgeous Lake Mantasoa. There are dorm-style cabins, a medical building, a lecture hall, a huge dining/lounging hall, basketball and volleyball courts, and plenty more fantastic-ness that I have yet to discover. Tragically, we're only there one day a week for medical and administrative sessions. The Mantasoa area itself takes me back to my time in New Zealand WAY more than my time in other parts of Mada. We're located up in the hills, surrounded by pine trees, and the weather can change in the blink of an eye (though it never ceases to be cold and damp).<br /><br />So here's a typical day in the life: I wake up around 5:45 am and make my bed (not by choice, mind you, my host mom makes me do it). I stumble down a near-vertical ladderlike staircase to the kitchen, followed by my 2 year old sister, Tsiky, who (though she can barely walk) never fails to remind me of the graceful creature that I'm not. I help my Neny (mom) make breakfast in our fireplace. It's truly incredible how many kinds of food one can make with a few pots and some firewood. I then go back to my room to retrieve my po (nighttime pee bucket) and water bucket to take outside. I slide down a muddy hill to our kabone (drop latrine), where I empty my po. I use the clean bucket to draw water from our compound's well and use it to rinse my po, brush my teeth, and take a bucket shower outside. After this, I head back to my room, sweep it, polish the floor with a coconut, then sweep up all the coconut dust. I actually don’t mind doing this because (aside from the fact that pushing a coconut around the floor with your foot is darn amusing) fleas are a big problem here, and dust somehow manages to collect throughout the day despite the fact that it’s constantly raining.<br /><br />I then get dressed and walk to language class at the local primary school, were I learn the dialect of the region I've been assigned to with another trainee who will be placed in the same city. At 12, I walk home and have lunch with the family, which consists of my 24 year old neny, 27 year old dada, 5 year old brother Angelo, and Tsiky. At 2, I return to the primary school where we have technical training sessions with the other education trainees. At 5, I return home to study and help my neny cook dinner. Rice is generally the main dish for all 3 meals, with some sort of loaka (side dish). This can be salad, zebu, pork, chicken, fish, veggies, and/or beans. After dinner I practice my Malagasy with my family (who speak absolutely no English or French), or we watch a movie or Malagasy TV in my family's room. They usually go to bed around 9, but I don't fall asleep until 11 or 12-ish, possibly because my malaria medication has been known to cause insomnia. That's pretty much the routine Monday-Saturday. We get Sundays off and are encouraged to spend that time with our families.<br /><br />Here are some highlights from the past two weeks:<br />Going to church with my family this past Sunday (and yes, it was EXACTLY like every other Catholic mass I've attended in the various corners of the world; however, the church was more festively decorated and the singing significantly more harmonious and in key).<br />Our host dads teaching Rebekah (my neighbor) and I how to kill a chicken. I watched in horror as Rebekah sawed away at the chicken's throat with a blunt steak knife for about 10 seconds, barely breaking the skin. They then switched knives and finally put the poor thing out of its misery. <br />Rebekah and I washing our clothes with our moms on the shores of the lake in the freezing rain, while our dads and siblings paddled around in their canoe. <br />My dad teaching me how to roll bananas in dough and fry them in oil for breakfast.<br />Frying pieces of baguette for breakfast the next day.<br />Discovering that the long wooden box outside my window was actually a beehive. I later watched as they cut out pieces using no protective equipment, and my family feasted on honey straight off the comb.<br />Going to a nearby market with the intention of buying a live chicken as a Peace Corps assignment and being told by all the vendors that chickens weren’t sold on Tuesdays... then proceeding to buy 2 kilos of zebu liver as a substitute.<br />Teaching my host mom to make peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwiches.<br />Of course by FAR the best part of my PC experience thus far was finding out my site and assignment for the next two years. For security reasons I don't think I can post the name of the city where I'll be living yet, but I can tell you it's a GORGEOUS coastal town in the dirrrty souf of the island. Ask my mom or check my Facebook for the exact location. Apparently, my accommodations will be quite a bit more swank-ified than the average PC volunteer’s. I supposedly have my choice of two relatively sizable houses with ocean views, electricity, running water (crazy!), and a friggin flush toilet (even crazier!). As if that wasn't incredible enough, my teaching assignment could not be more ideal. Traditionally, PC Mada education volunteers teach English curriculum to middle and high school students with class sizes of up to 100 kids. Many of you will remember how I openly expressed my fears of this set-up, as I have almost no formal classroom teaching experience and definitely no experience teaching anyone under the age of 18. Well, in another unbelievable twist of fate, I am the only education volunteer in my group to be assigned a university-level teaching position at an ecological/environmental studies school. This means smaller class sizes, no kids, and more of an environmental focus to my lessons. My head is still spinning with excitement. I couldn't be more elated if I'd planned this out myself! <br /><br />The anticipation to actually get out on my own and start doing what I came here to do is what keeps me going through the more difficult days. I can’t remember the last time I actually felt warm and dry. This is the coldest region of Madagascar and, if it’s not raining, there always seem to be ominously low-hanging clouds in the sky. I’ve got flea and mosquito bites all over my body already and I’ve had a cold for the past few days. I couldn’t ask for a better host family, so it’s obviously frustrating not being able to have real conversations with them or express myself clearly. For the most part, the other trainees are fun to be around, but training so far has really felt more like a study abroad program. In many ways, we’re being treated like children who need their hand held and butts wiped every step of the way, and it’s incredibly frustrating feeling like I’m back in college again. I’ve been assured by many, though, that everyone feels like that during training, and the real work and independence doesn’t actually begin until we’re on our own at site. Only a month and a half...<br /><br />There's so much more I could write about anything and everything, but I just don't have that much time. A few important notes, though: I have a new phone number since my SIM card was de-activated sometime this past year. It is now 034-6056064. Just dial 011-261-34-6066054 if you're calling/texting from the States. Even though I'll probably have regular internet access once I move to my site in late-September, please send me letters (or care packages if you're feeling ambitious... tissue packets and Lush shampoo bars, and Garnier sleek & shine leave-in conditioner would be GREATLY appreciated). I miss you all, but rest assured, I’m having an amazing time and there's absolutely nothing I'd rather be doing with my life right now.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-27372074265879806802010-07-08T10:46:00.000-07:002010-07-08T10:49:55.851-07:00Reality Wacks Jess in the Face ...or Was That a Bludger?Less than two weeks to go! The reality of what I’m doing finally hit me a few weeks ago when I started saying goodbye to family members that I knew I wouldn’t see again for two years. So now I’m in a sort of dynamic super-excited-to-super-sad mental state, but at least I have yet to feel nervous. I’ve been gradually assembling a mental list of all the things I’m going to miss while I’m in Mada (actually, 99% of that list is food items). However, all of those inconsequential extravagances were wiped clean four days ago in a Seattle IMAX theater epiphany. You see, it’s not about regular Wikipedia access or Coffee Toffee Twisted Frostees or Philly cheesesteaks. What is the one thing I’m leaving behind that is killing me the most? Harry Potter. After over a decade of putting my name on waiting lists, reading and re-reading, developing theories and predictions, and waiting in lines for midnight showings, I can’t believe that I’m going to miss the last two film releases of the book series that has defined my generation. Yes, I know that someone will send me pirated copies as soon as they are released, but it just won’t be the same as watching the final Harry v. Voldemort drama culminate on a big screen surrounded by theater-goers bursting with the same pee-your-pants excitement that you yourself have been containing all of these years. *sigh*<br /><br /> …And now for a few reasons why I’m crazy excited to go! Madagascar is an amazingly unique island, and I only wish that the world knew more about it. Many have described it as an “enigma,” and I really can’t think of a better term. It is one of the world’s top biodiversity hotspots and has rates of endemism unmatched by the rest of the world. Over 80% of its flora and fauna are found only in Madagascar. Most notably, reptiles have an endemism rate of over 90%, amphibians of 99%, and non-human primates (lemurs) of 100%. Madagascar was recently home to some crazy species like gorilla-sized lemurs and the giant elephant bird (the heaviest bird in existence), but like most large animals in island ecosystems, they went extinct. The tragic part is that they only went extinct in the past few centuries due to human encroachment. Despite Madagascar’s significance at the global biodiversity level, very little of this country is protected, and 95% of the original forest has been lost since humans first arrived. Deforestation has exposed the underlying red soils of the island (hence its nickname, “The Red Island”), which run into the ocean. Observers from airplanes and space shuttles say that the island looks like it’s bleeding to death. Many of you know my theories about just how long I think Madagascar’s incredible ecosystems will survive, but I’ll save those for another post. <br /><br /> So here’s what I find most incredible and enigmatic about Madagascar. Although I loves me some ecology and conservation biology, I’m still a cultural anthropologist at heart, and the Malagasy people and culture are endlessly fascinating to me. The first people came to the island about 2000 years ago. I’ll save you all of the conflicting ideas about just how and from where they came, but just know that different people came at different times, and the Malagasy race is basically a mix of Indonesian and African ancestry. I like to describe the Malagasy as ranging from Filipino-looking (mostly concentrated around the capital) to more Eastern African-looking (toward the coasts). The most fascinating thing is that, despite the obvious differences in ethnic background and geographical distribution, Malagasy culture is more or less ubiquitous throughout the island. For instance, you can see elements of Madagascar’s Southeastern Asian heritage – rice paddies, outrigger canoes, ancestor worship, rectangular houses – as well as its African heritage – zebu-raising and cattle culture, musical influences – everywhere you go. Malagasy culture is also flavored with cultural elements of the Arabs, Indians, and Europeans, who arrived more recently. The Malagasy language is also super enthralling, but, again, I’ll save that for another post. <br /> Here’s the mailing address I’ll be available at:<br /><br />“my name”, PCV<br />Bureau du Corps de la Paix<br />B.P. 12091<br />Poste Zoom Ankorondrano<br />Antananarivo 101<br />Madagascar<br /><br />This address will always be available to receive my mail, though I may get another local address once I get placed at my site. I’ll post my cell phone # later. When sent packages in the past, they only took about 3-4 weeks to arrive. I assume letters take about the same time. I’d consider this unusually fast though; generally they take about 1-2 months, but it can be as long as 6 months. And obviously there’s always the possibility of loss or theft. It’s generally easier and faster to send things in padded envelopes than boxes. Please write me letters and/or postcards! I’m sure I’ll have periodic email access, but you know how I love to keep it oldschool. Of course, the fastest and most efficient way to get things to me is by bringing them yourself…when you come and visit me! That’s right, I expect YOU to come visit me. Tragically, I highly doubt I’ll be able to make it back to the States during my term of service. Even for Harry Potter.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-58786936516767350562010-04-29T18:53:00.000-07:002010-04-29T19:02:32.752-07:00Confuzzled?This is my first actual attempt at a blog. I’ve tried to keep journals periodically throughout my life, but they never seem to last more than a month or so, if even that. Some of you may remember my incredible idea to keep a running vlog of my last stay in Madagascar…I believe that vlog is now listed in Webster’s under the definition of “fail.” That is, if it’s even possible to fail at something one never even starts… But I figure this one might just work out. I’ll be in the country for 27 months straight this time, so even if I get lazy for a few months, at some point I’ve got to be inspired (or bored) enough to write an entry. <br /><br />A few notes about this blog though: Those of you who know me (yes, I’ll be using that phrase a lot) know that I’m horrible at updating people via email, letters, facebook, etc., and when I do, I rarely write juicy details about my personal life or the minutiae of everyday activities. Instead, I tend to wax philosophic or write offbeat cultural commentaries. I doubt this blog will be any different, but it’s all new territory to me, so we’ll see. Also, it goes without saying that you probably won’t agree with everything I write. I don’t know the details about commenting on posts and all that jazz yet (assuming anyone actually wants to read this thing), but this is most definitely NOT meant to be a forum for debate. If you don’t like what I write, please keep it to yourself or just stop reading. I absolutely despise all forms of conflict, debate, politics, and the like. I respect everyone’s opinions, so please do the same for me. Oh yes, and this would probably be a good time to state that my views and opinions do not reflect those of the Peace Corps or US government.<br /><br />Groovy, now that I’ve got all that crap out of the way, time to start the craziness! <br />I’ve been bombarded with questions about Mada, the Peace Corps, my life in general, etc. recently, so I thought I’d take this time to clear up some of the common confusion and misunderstandings:<br /><br />• Madagascar is that big island off the coast of Southeastern Africa (about the size of Texas). The adjective form is “Malagasy,” NOT “Madagascan” or “Madagasy,” (e.g. the Malagasy people, Malagasy food, Malagasy school system…).<br /><br />• Lemurs are NOT monkeys, nor are they rodents, although I’ll admit that I don’t do much to remedy this mistake by describing them as “the lovechildren of monkeys and squirrels.” They are primates, though. If it helps you to think of an evolutionary “hierarchy,” it would go: humans, apes, monkeys, then lemurs. They are, however, just as funky and musically inclined as the movie suggests.<br /><br />• Notice the “s” in the spelling of Peace Corps.<br /><br />• The Peace Corps is a well established and highly internationally-respected government agency. I’ve heard way too many people say, “I thought anyone could join the Peace Corps!” Becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) is an arduous and extremely competitive process – I’m still not there yet. The very minimum requirements for most assignments are a four-year degree and significant work or volunteer experience in a specialized field. In order to even be considered “competitive,” you must have extensive volunteer/community involvement experience, a high GPA, demonstrated leadership abilities, and, in many cases, a certain amount of foreign language proficiency. <br /><br />• This is because volunteers are sent to host communities to completely integrate themselves in order to develop and implement sustainable projects. They must become fluent in the local language and live the same lifestyle as the average community member. I’m definitely not saying any of this to be self-righteous, I just really want to emphasize that the Peace Corps is not one of those “white man bringing aid” missionary organizations that sends volunteers to help out with already well-established projects. Its focus is on sending skilled men and women to requesting host countries to integrate themselves into a single community and develop sustainable projects as an actual member of that community. This is why the minimum term of service is 2 years.<br /><br />Woot! Mkay, I can’t think of anything else right now, but please please please let me know if you have any questions or want to know more about any part of the crazy process. And PLEASE don’t think I’m trying to get all preachy on your okole by pointing out all of these misconceptions – I didn’t know half of this stuff before I experienced it first-hand. I just enjoy teaching people…which is good because that’s what I’ll be doing for 27 months!<br /> <br />I’d like to end this entry with a little side note to my college homies: No, I am NOT a hippie, nor will I ever be. And yes, I am actually working for the US government. Hehe.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-988125404089230019.post-88218675578369545812010-04-27T14:07:00.000-07:002010-04-29T19:45:42.979-07:00Madagasikara! ...Again!Those of you who have followed the general course of my life over the past 7 years or so know that I have spent a disproportionate amount of time on islands (disproportionate to the average person at least), particularly islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Those of you who know me well are also familiar with my lifelong desire to live in Sub-Saharan Africa. My draw to both of these areas culminated when I was able to spend two field seasons working as a field assistant to the brilliant almost-Dr. Sarah Zohdy (who better be reading this blog because she’s probably the only person who’s going to understand some of the references I make) in Ranomafana, Madagascar, studying wild brown mouse lemurs. I absolutely fell in love with this island and have felt an overpowering desire to return ever since I left…which really wasn’t all that long ago…but that’s not the point. For those of you who are Lost fans, I will use yet another Jack quote to describe my feelings of longing and despair after leaving in December, “Every Friday night I fly from LA to Tokyo or Singapore or Sydney, and then I get off, and I have a drink, and then I fly home. Because I want it to crash…Every little bump we hit or turbulence – I actually close my eyes and I pray that I can get back.” <br /><br />Obviously this quote should not be taken literally because there are few things in this world that I hate more than flying. Anywho, through an incredible amount of work on my part and a CRAPload of luck, I’ve somehow managed to land myself a Peace Corps invitation to serve as a TEFL teacher in Madagascar from July 19, 2010 – Sept. 11, 2012. And that is the [extremely abridged] background to my story.<br /><br />Tonga Soa, Bienvenue, and Welcome to my Peace Corps blog!Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07288027751332476142noreply@blogger.com0