Training at the PCTC and Swearing In

Hey everyone!  Sorry it has been a while.  It has been a busy, eventful several weeks.  First the recent news:

I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I completed my training and had a swearing in ceremony this past Friday. It was in the capitol city Antananarivo (Tana for short.  TAH-nah).  Very fancy, lots of important people.  There was caviar at the buffet.  Our picture was in the paper and we were on the news.  After swearing in and some administrative stuff, we went out to celebrate in Tana.  It’s a pretty scary city at night, so we played it safe.  We went out for Indian food and then had a house party at a current PCV’s rather nice apartment.  We didn’t risk it going to bars and clubs in the city; Peace Corps people only.  And we took cabs everywhere.

I will be installed at my site tomorrow.  My site is Mahatsinjony.  There isn't a common short form for this, but let's just call it Zoony.  Try looking it up on a google map or something.  It’s temperate here in the highlands, but the coast (a couple hours away) is tropical.  Imagine you’re in New England, and it’s fall/winter, BUT you can drive 3 hours and be at a beach on a 90 degree day.  That’s my situation.  It’s ok to be jealous. 

Right now I'm at the Peace Corps house in Fianarantsoa (Fianar for short.  FEE-ah-nahr), which is I think the 2nd largest city in Madagascar.  If Tana is the New York City of Madagasar, Fianar is its Boston.  Fianar is safer, smaller, friendlier, less crowded, noticeably cleaner, gorgeous in parts, and fun.  There are apparently great temperate forests and hiking areas within a few hours of Fianar too, so let’s call that Madagascar’s New Hampshire.  And my site is probably like the Medford of the Boston of Madagascar.  Zoony is less than an hour drive from Fianar, so I can always visit the Peace Corps house and have internet, a hot shower, a real kitchen, and other volunteers around.  Not a bad situation.  Plus, there’s a chance I can get electricity installed at my site sooo… Posh Corps!  I could be living pretty ritzy.  Oh yeah, my departure group (“stage”), was dubbed the “bougie” stage (short for bourgeois).  There’s some truth to it, but we’re mostly grounded and agreeable people.  We DID have a milk frother at our coffee station, though.

My first 3 months at site I won't be doing major projects.  I will spend the time learning the language, integrating into the community, and learning about their needs/how I can be most useful to them in the future.  It will take me a little while to get internet working at my site, but I think I will be able to eventually.

Now the older news:

I last checked in soon after moving back to the training center (PCTC), so my lifestyle has changed dramatically from the first month of home-stay.

Language training was about the same at PCTC, except we started doing immersion, which means we need to speak Gasy during meals and breaks, not just in class.  I can be fairly conversant with Gasy.  It might even be better than my French by now.  The trouble still is that I can mostly understand my teachers and fellow PCVs and host family (because they’re sympathetic), but I have trouble understanding anyone who speaks at a normal pace or uses vocab I haven’t learned yet.  But that will just come with time.  My grammar is decent, so I just need to keep growing my vocab.  Our language classes are in small groups (1-4 trainees with 1 teacher).  Since we found out our sites, we had been grouped by our regional dialects.  There are I think 18 dialects in Mada.

Aside from language training, we got training on personal health, safety and security, cross-cultural adjustment, and technical training for our sector (Health for me and half of us, Agriculture and Business for the other half).  Personal health is mostly scare tactics about all the diseases we’re probably going to get, learning how to recognize if a disease is serious, or how to treat things ourselves when we can.  If something serious happens, the doctors will literally hop in a helicopter and come rescue us, so no worries, I will survive!  Safety and security is also a lot of scary lectures about being robbed and raped  and trapped by natural disasters and such.  I always leave those lectures pretty shaken up.  Cross-culture is usually fairly interesting.  There are a lot of taboo things called “fady (FAH-dee)” here, and each region and even each town has its own set of fadies.  So far it hasn’t been too difficult, but mishaps happen.  You know that thing people do where they snap their fingers and then clap their hand and fist together?  That really casual thing?  Here, that gesture refers to…certain indecent things.  Whoops!  Definitely did that accidentally in front of a classroom of kids.  Tech training for Health is pretty dry a lot of the time, but occasionally we get to be hands on or prepare presentations for the community.  Incidentally, a lot of my presentations have been about diarrhea prevention, so my ability to talk about diarrhea in Gasy is superior to my ability to talk about a lot of other things.  I have a similar thing going on with English.

One week, we gave presentations in Malagasy to the community about mother and child health/nutrition/vaccinations etc.  Most of us were reading off of note cards so it wasn’t very engaging, but after we finished the presentations we helped the doctor distribute vitamin drops and de-worming pills to babies and little kids.  That part was really cool; it felt like we were actually accomplishing something.  The day after that was World Malaria Day.  It was a huge event in our town.  Hundreds of kids met us at the training center and paraded with us into town to the school yard.  There were speeches and stuff about Malaria for a while, then the volunteers split into groups to demonstrate activities with malaria nets.  My group was altering mosquito nets so you can hang them from a single point (making a circle) instead of from 4 points.  My Gasy was good enough that I didn’t need note cards, and could really interact with the kids.  TONS of fun.  My group did a great job of getting the kids involved.  I’d, like, huddle them under the net and we’d pretend to be mosquitoes trying to get in.  Kids here are really shy about being singled out, but we got a bunch of them to volunteer and help me make the presentation, and then do it themselves.  Edu-tainment!

So, the PCTC is an enclosed compound with fences and guards and such, so we CAN be out at night now.  It’s only Peace Corps people here.  It was weird not being able to go out at night during homestay, but it’s understandable why we shouldn’t.  I mean, there isn’t public electricity; there aren’t street lights.  And there are plenty of drunk guys milling about…all the time, but especially at night.  There’s this stuff called taoka gasy, which is basically moonshine.  It’s like 60-80% alcohol, and 100 AR (about 5 cents) for a shot of it.  Also, it might make you blind.  But some locals drink it and stay drunk all day (not entirely unlike some people in America).  Anyway, I don’t particularly want to bump into those guys on an unlit street.

But the PCTC is a different story.

So this is the scene here.  We have 36 20-somethings at a summer camp together, living in dorms.  We spend most of our days in seminars and lessons and working on projects.  Whenever we aren’t in a session, everyone is looking to either blow off steam or get away from each other, because we spend all of our time together.  The people here are really diverse and interesting, and interested in sharing activities.  People play sports together (volleyball, Frisbee, soccer, basketball).  Some volunteers put together yoga or zumba most days.  One PCV, Cody, taught a Capoeria class (Brazillian dance-fighting), which I enjoyed quite a bit.  Also, there are canoes.  Our language teachers are Malagasy, and they’ve taught us some dances and songs.  They’re pretty young and hip, and come to our parties.  I was surprised to find that so many Malagasy people play guitar, and not many play percussion, it seems so far.  Not really what you picture when you think of Africa, but Madagascar is a special place.  I’m friends with the teacher, Eddie, who is a FANTASTIC guitarist.  I organized a talent show one Friday and an open mic the Friday before that.  At both, Eddie played a lot of guitar and the other teachers would sing Gasy and American songs.  So the open mic was only supposed to be about a half hour, but it ended up being close to 2 hours long.  The audience was way into everything, and people kept getting up to share their instruments or singing or poetry.  It all happened really organically and was a really beautiful experience for me.  And it was especially cool because it was a cross-cultural experience too.  The teachers didn’t seem familiar with an open mic format, where everyone can go up and be in the spotlight for a time and share whatever they want.  And then they gave us our first experience of Malagasy music being performed, and it was all great.  Once the show ended, the dance party began.  We got DOWN.  Booze flowed, music blared, and we danced our asses off.  Gasy dancing is a workout.  Talent show was pretty much the same, except people put more preparation into things.  There were more group performances and skits and such.  Again, people loved it and joined in spur-of-the-moment with other performances.  Our teacher Nicole sang while Eddie and I played a guitar duet of Hotel California.  I sang “Call Me Maybe” in Malagasy and brought the house down.  I topped it off by kicking myself in the head, to the delight of all.  They demanded 2 encores of that one.  And of course, drunken dance party afterward.  Later that weekend, we did indeed build a blanket fort, and it was glorious.  People got behind the idea and made it happen rather quickly.  We set up a projector inside it and, best part, we watched “Hook.”  So good.  I was just, frigging, buzzing with happiness over the whole thing.  I went out and bought snack food for everyone for the occasion.  We kept it up for a few days before they made us take it down.

The last full week before swearing in was a bit intense because aside from our usual trainings, we had our final language evaluations and a 30-minute presentation to the community in Malagasy.  On the same day.  And then another presentation 3 days later.  My stress level was pretty high through all that, but it was actually pretty manageable. I think I stress about assignments and performances more than is necessary.  But we made up for it in style.  In the intervening weekend, we threw a lavish brunch of bacon, omelets, banana pancakes with nutella, grilled cheese with avocado, fresh baked bagels, fresh made yogurt, and fresh squeezed juice.  Bougie stage fo’ life.

            OK, this got pretty long.  A couple things before signing off.  I can’t comment on politics here in Madagascar, but you guys should look into the election that’s happening here soon. Also, there are massive swarms of locusts that are taking a toll down here.  We drove through a swarm on the way to Fianar, and today there was another swooping through the city.  Things could get interesting.  Not unsafe for me or anything, but interesting.

            Off to bed, then to my site in the morning.  Here goes nothing!