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!
