Traditional Healing

I’ve had some interesting conversations with people lately about traditional Malagasy healing practices coming into conflict with western biomedical treatment. So I thought I’d write about the differences in worldviews and practices and how those differences have affected the health of rural communities here. The issue of traditional medicine came up a few weeks ago, when a very sick women came to the clinic. She was suffering from some sort of stomach illness and her family had brought her to our village to seek medical treatment too late. Her condition was quite grave at this point, and there wasn’t much the nurse could do except suggest that they travel as quickly as possible to the regional hospital in Sambava with better facilities, where they might be able to do something for her. The nurse’s wife explained to me later, that this family practiced “Ody Gasy,” or traditional medicine, and only after they had tried every possible alternative treatment did they decide to come to the health clinic as a last resort. Practicing traditional medicine had delayed their seeking western medical treatment, which limited the amount of help the nurse could offer, as this woman’s condition had deteriorated so rapidly.

I often here people in the community mention traditional healing methods, such as eating, drinking or breathing in the vapors from the leaves of medicinal plants in the forest or going to traditional healers for special therapies or “massages.” I had even met a traditional healer once, who claimed to be able to cure sexually transmitted diseases and illnesses causing swelling of the legs and breasts (filariasis/elephantiasis). Every market day, there are always a few stalls of people selling dried leaves, powders and various bottles of tonics that claim to have healing properties for every kind of malady. So I was curious to find out what the possible motivations were for those who opt for the traditional methods rather than seeking treatment from the medical clinic first.

My initial thought was that money may play a role in the decision-making process. I often here people at the clinic talking about not having enough money to buy the necessary medicines for their illness at the pharmacy. Perhaps people who were worried they wouldn’t be able to afford the medical treatment seek out other alternatives instead. This idea was quickly dispelled when the nurse’s wife explained that many traditional Malagasy treatments are actually more expensive, especially if the family requests a home visit from the traditional healer. While an initial diagnostic consult at the health clinic is free, even just a visit with the traditional healer can cost several thousand Ariary (a few US dollars, but still quite a sum for those in rural areas). Many of the simple, government subsidized medications like Tylenol, cough medicine and vitamins at the pharmacy cost 10,000Ariary (5USD) or less (and some, like Malaria treatment, are free), but some of the medicinal plants needed for traditional healing can surprisingly cost 30-50,000Ariary (25USD). Additionally, vaccinations for children under 1 year are free at the clinic, but many of the people who practice traditional medicine don’t get their children vaccinated. These facts made reconsider my initial conjecture.

Another thought was that the physical distance from health centers might influence people’s decision, especially if there are traditional healers living in the more remote, rural areas. If one couldn’t make the three hour trek through the woods to get to the health clinic, it would make sense that they would at least seek out a healer living in their community or in a village nearby. This factor may influence those living in isolated regions, but it is not a factor for the community where I live. Our village has a clinic with a very competent and reliable nurse and a pharmacy stocked with basic medicines, so the community members don’t have to travel more than 15 or 20 minutes to reach good medical care. However, there are still several traditional healers and many people practicing traditional medicine right in our village and in some of the surrounding communities. Some people in the vicinity of our clinic still choose to seek out traditional methods rather than making the short trip to see the nurse.

Another possible factor could be the clinic staff. Some Malagasy are embarrassed to seek medical treatment for things like sexually transmitted diseases for fear of judgment by the doctors or midwives. In particular, many people complain about the health care providers in the referral clinic down the road. I have frequently heard from community members that they are afraid to seek treatment at the larger health center in town, as they claim that the doctor and midwives who work there are often short with the patients and chastise them for not completing their vaccines, for being illiterate, or for not having money to bring with them to the clinic to purchase their prescribed medicines. I could definitely see fear of the medical staff as a reason for Malagasies choosing to seek alternative care, especially concerning the larger clinic down the road. However, I have a feeling this boundary isn’t as big of an issue in my immediate area, as the nurse at the rural clinic where I work treats his patients very well and is viewed as a friend and well-respected community member by many of those with whom he lives and works.

This idea of embarrassment was also reinforced during a group discussion with the SIDA Club (anti-AIDS club) students at the local middle school. We were talking about treatment of STIs, so I asked them about the possible reasons they thought some Malagasies might use “Ody Gasy” to treat their STI rather than going to the clinic. Several of the male students said that they would be embarrassed to go to a clinic, especially if a female provider such as a midwife were the one providing the treatment. Additionally, some of them offered that people might be afraid of getting a shot, which might be a reason for them to avoid the clinic.

Relating to the issue of embarrassment over seeking treatment at a clinic, there are frequent occurrences here of young women using the leaves of medicinal plants as a form of abortion. There have been several cases at the clinic of teenagers still in school who have miscarried after consuming leaves of particular plants they had collected from the forest to take care of their unwanted pregnancies. As abortion is illegal in Madagascar, these young women are faced with the dilemma of telling their parents that the precious savings they have spent on expensive school fees for the year is wasted, so they seek out other means of dealing with the issue. The fact that traditional medicines are used in this instance could reinforce the idea that embarrassment plays a role in the decision-making process, especially considering that family planning methods are free and confidential for anyone who chooses to come to the clinic, regardless of their age or marital status. However, lack of forethought and lack of power and status of the women in the said relationship also come into play with this issue of unwanted pregnancies.

After my conversation with the nurse’s wife, I’ve come to think that the Malagasy’s worldview, especially with respect to their view of the particular cause of their illness, may be the biggest factor in deciding which type of treatment to seek first. While there does seem to be some flexibility in many people’s worldview here, in the sense that they are willing to practice both western and traditional medicine, many do seem to prioritize based on which practice they ascribe more validity to. Their values and belief system may have a significant influence in this prioritization. Very interestingly, the nurse’s wife noted that most people in our community who attend church (i.e. ascribe to the Christian faith) do not practice “Ody Gasy.” She explained that for the most part, only those who “tsy mivavaka,” or, do not pray, seek out the traditional healers. This pattern seems to suggest that those who value the traditional belief system over adopted western practices tend to value traditional medicine more than biomedicine, which would make sense. Additionally, it seems that if a person suspects witchcraft has played a role in the particular illness, they will seek traditional treatment accordingly.

In one particular case a few weeks earlier, a child in family living down the road had died of a fever, because they came to the clinic too late. Apparently this family had gotten into an argument with another family in the area over rights to some farmland. Soon after the argument, their child felt sick. The family believed that this illness was brought upon by the other angry family, who had essentially “cursed” them. Because the family believed the illness was due to malicious intent from someone in their community practicing witchcraft, they decided that traditional healing methods rather than western medicine would be the best treatment for the child. Only when they had tried everything to counteract the curse did they contact the nurse. At this point, the child unfortunately was already on her deathbed.

According to his wife, the nurse has frequently asked people who practice traditional medicine to avoid waiting until it is too late to go to the clinic. His suggestion to those who use “Ody Gasy” is to only try it for a short time and then also to seek treatment at his health center. It shows a respectful openness and flexibility on his part that he is does not invalidate the community members’ belief systems, but simply attempts to get them the best healthcare possible. I also wonder if it would be possible to go a step further and work with the traditional healers themselves to encourage them to promote concurrent use of benign traditional healing practices and western biomedicine.

In particular, eliminating any traditional medicines that could cause harm to the patient would be very helpful. One of the issues is that some of these plants from the Malagasy rainforest do actually have legitimate medicinal qualities, but most who use them do not know in what quantities and in what forms to take them. Consequently they end up doing more harm to themselves than good. Training traditional healers in proper use of more benign medicinal plants and discouraging the use of self-medication in addition to a timely referral process to the health clinic could be a potential middle ground for those wishing to maintain their cultural practices and belief systems.

The Dead

So this is a morbid, yet interesting, entry in honor of the recent holiday on Nov 1st/2nd, “Fete de Mort.” Though most don’t celebrate it in the U.S., I think it’s somehow related to Halloween, and those in Latin America definitely know it as “El Dia de Los Muertos.” The tradition has very similar roots in Madagascar: visiting the graves of the deceased and honoring the ancestors. I found it an interesting vignette in which to compare the Malagasy world view of death with that of Americans.

In general, I’ve found through attending funerals, talking with Malagasies about the dead and participating in a “Fete de Mort” event, that the Malagasies on average are a bit more concerned with the spirits of the deceased than most Americans tend to be. Part of it may stem from the Malagasies’ traditional African religious practices and ancestral beliefs, and some contrast may come from the diverse range of beliefs in the U.S. and our tendency as an industrialized nation with more influences from globalization to abandon the traditional beliefs and take on a more agnostic or scientific view of death the afterlife (or lack there of).

Either way, my counterpart (the nurse at my local clinic) was kind enough to invite me to attend a “Fete de Mort” celebration with his family in his hometown. We were initially supposed to go on November 1st, but there was a death in the village! As the death occurred just across the way from me, and many of my friends and co-workers knew the family well, we had to reschedule our plans for the 2nd and attend the funeral on the 1st. So on November 2nd I traveled with the nurse and his wife to Anjinjaomby, a small town between…a 4 hour car ride from our village with a transit stop in Sambava. We left early in the morning and arrived around 10am. The dirt road out to his home-town was very scenic, bordered by lush forest, rice paddies and quaint villages.

Though the town of Anjinjaomby was a commune head, there was no electricity, and only a few spigots served as the public water sources. When we arrived at my counterpart’s mother’s house, we went through all the greetings with the relatives and then sat under a leechie tree, chatting until lunchtime. After a humble meal of rice and boiled beans with green leaves, we gathered all the relatives around and headed out to local graveyard. The walk was only fifteen minutes to the cemetery at the edge of town. I was surprised at how small and sparsely populated the space was. Many of the small, cement tombs were above ground and protected by makeshift, rusted tin sheet metal roofs.

Finally we approached their family’s tomb: a small metal shack, bolted by a wooden board nailed into the front side. Before opening the tomb, one of the older brothers said a prayer. Inside were four wooden coffins—three small ones and one longer one. The family only had the key to their father’s coffin, so they removed it from the little tin house, openened it up and lifted out the bundle of blankets and woven mats and clothes piled on top so they could clean out the bottom of the coffin of dirt and dust. Then they placed the bundle and the clothes back in the box, slipping in a few bills of money into the father’s pants pockets (a present for the next person who cleans the tomb) before closing the box and placing it back inside.

Later they explained that the longer coffin was that of their aunt’s who was more recently deceased. The process goes as follows: when the person first dies, they are buried underground in a regular coffin, like many of us do in the U.S. After a few years, when the body has decayed a bit, they dig the coffin back up and put the corpse in a smaller coffin above ground. A few years later, when the corpse is just bones, they re-open the coffin, gather the bones together in a new bundle of cloth and put it in an even smaller container. Now I know why so many of the Malagasy coffins I’ve seen are so tiny!

The process of opening the tomb and rearranging the bones does not necessarily take place during “Fete de Mort.” It’s often accompanied by a big celebration, called a “famadihana,” or turning of the bones ceremony, in which many people attend and party all night long, partaking of heavy drinking, singing and dancing. It was fascinating to me that the Malagasy take such care in rearranging the physical remnants of the deceased. Many of them also believe that the spirits of the dead often rise up from the grave to visit the living. I also took the opportunity to explain to them the practices of burial and cremation in the U.S. Many were shocked at the idea of cremation, but some were familiar with it, as many of the ex-pats, Muslims and people of Chinese or Indian descent and practice cremation here in Madagascar.

Though some Malagasies do bring offerings such as “toaka” (local moonshine) and plastic flowers to the graves of the ancestors, it’s not quite the extent of those who celebrate “El Dia de Los Muertos,” bringing favorite foods, trinkets and candles and staying through night. The Malagasies for the most part seem to visit the graves for a short time during the day and use it more as an opportunity to tidy up the tomb and the surrounding area. Its also a chance for the relatives who life far a way to visit their hometown and their family members. Some of my counterpart’s family members hadn’t been back to Anjinjaomby for several years.

Other cultural practices worthy of noting: if a child dies within the first six months of it’s life (before it starts developing teeth) it is not laid to rest with the bodies in the regular graveyard, but rather buried underground in a specially designated place in the woods outside of the village. Also, people of all faiths (Christian, Muslim, traditional) may be buried in the same cemetery.

Concerning funerals, since our Fete De Mort plans were delayed due to one, they are an all-village affair. In many cases, people from neighboring communes and even further away will even come to attend the funeral. It usually takes place the day of or day after the person dies, as Malagasies don’t have access to nor practice preservation techniques such as embalming, and it is a very hot, humid climate. For this most recent one, I got a front row seat, as the family lives right across from me.

Women wear kisalis—colorful, patterned cloth sewn in a circle and worn either as a tube top dress or skirt with a matching shawl. There is no particular dress code for men…even shorts and a tattered t-shirt is fine. Everyone donates either a cup of rice or 500-1000Ariary and the family usually slaughters a cow or several if they can afford it. If the family is very poor they may just purchase some meat from a local butcher or substitute beans or lentils. All day the women prepare and cook the rice. It is the men’s job to slaughter the cow and fetch water. Others sit around chatting outside the house of the family. One may enter the house where the corpse is lying on a bed, covered by a sheet. It’s mostly women in the room, but men may enter as well. If the family is religious, they often sing hymns. At lunchtime, everyone eats the rice and beef together. If there are a lot of people, someone will announce the visitors by village to come get their food. Afterwards the women wash all the dishes while the men head off to the cemetery to bury the corpse. The women follow later on to attend the burial. Both the night before and the night after, people stay up all night with the family, chatting, drinking toaka and singing hymns.

A lot of Malagasies were asking me if funerals are similar in America. I suppose in a sense they are. Many people bring over food and the family and close friends may eat a bit and drink together after the ceremony, though tuna noodle casseroles and pies don’t really compare to sacks of rice and a live cow. We all seem to find our own ways to process the idea of dying and to cope with the fact that we will never see that close friend or family member again. One thing I like about the Malagasy funeral process is how the whole community comes together to support each other. It’s an amazing feat to cook so much rice and beef for hundreds of people, and the company and camaraderie shared during the process is priceless to the grieving family.

28 Oct 2011

So the last entry I posted was actually written back before hot season started. I no longer have to use a sleeping back at night...sometimes I even a light sheet is too much. Now I go running at 5 because its already too hot by the time I get back at 6. And its harder to be active in the afternoon, since Im pretty much dripping with sweat in my house until 4pm. Its not even the peak of hot season yet (thats in January) so I cant even imagine what its going to be like this year!

It hasnt been raining hardly at all, so everyone is struggling with wells and rivers drying up. Even in the big towns where there is running water/public taps like Vohemar and Andapa, the water keeps going out. People have been going out to the fields to clear their land, so it's almost time for rice-planting. Im wondering if some will wait, though, in case the rains still dont come for a while. Last year the rains were late as well, and many lost their initial crops that they planted in November.

I think the heat has brought fruit season early this year, though, which is perhaps a silver lining on the cloud. There are already bunches of pink leechies popping out of the mess of green forest along the roadside and mangoes are already showing up in the market. My neighbor asked me for a container so she could make me some leechy jam from the fruits of her tree near her rice field, which Im greatly looking forward to. Pineapples will be coming soon as well.

It's been difficult for me to get projects going, as I've been gone from my site a lot recently. I just got back from a wonderful week of vacation visiting my father in Rwanda, and then spent a week in Tana at Peace Corps' Close of Service Conference. Though I am planning to extend my service until May of next year, the COS conference was still really helpful and it was great to see all my fellow volunteers with whom I went through my initial training in Niger and then again in Madagascar.

During COS we talked about job hunting strategies, the readjustment process going back home, how to document our skills that we have gained over the past two years and how to say goodbye to our communities with whome we have spent two years of our lives with. We also had to say goodbye to each other, as many of us are leaving the country at different times and may not be able to meet up until possibly when we are back in America. There are four or five other fellow volunteers from my group, who are extending, so I look forward to possibly still running into them in the coming months.

It's been great to be back at my site and to reconnect with everyone. It's going to be a challenge to plan short-term projects that I can finish before january, though. Although I am extending, I will be switching to a different location in Madagascar after the holidays, so I still need to think about wrapping up and saying goodbye to my community up here in the north. Im still planning to do some small activities though, like a kitchen garden with the village mothers, a financial literacy class (how to save/how to budget/family planning) with the womens group, a scholarship project for disadvantaged youth at the local secondary school and some health education in the local schools as well. Hopefully Ill get to play some more soccer with the women too, although one of our balls is already busted!

A good day in the life of a PC Mada volunteer...

It's 4:30am. The house is still pitch dark. The crow of a lone rooster and the chill of the 60° winter morning air pull me momentarily out of sleep. I grab my light sleeping bag and throw it over me for extra warmth in my semi-conscious state.

At 5:30 the chorus of crowing roosters arouse me again and my bowels send me walking outside to the pit latrine to empty my "po" (plastic bucket Malagasies use as a chamber pot) and do my morning routine. As I walk the 50 meters back to the house, the village awakens with the echoes of rhythmic rice-pounding,the whining of drowsy babies and the quiet chattering of women starting their cookfires and fetching water.

It's still quite chilly, but I throw shorts and a tank top on and head out the door for my morning run. Most families are still waking up and cooking breakfast as the sun rises, so the path out of the village is almost empty. I pass a few early morning travellers as I jog slowly up the steep, 1km hill to the main road.

The wind brushes a delicious fragrance of tropical, blooming flowers as I crest the hill, bringing with it the faint memories of childhood trips to visit family in India. As I reach the tarmac, one of the small roadside shacks emits rich wafts of roasting, earthy coffee and sweet, drying vanilla, sending my thoughts back to Madagascar. I run three and a half kilometers down the southbound road over rolling hills,, past ricefields and patchy, tropical forest. Then I head back home, a sprinkle of cooling rain and a beautiful rainbow archway celebrating my return.

A few fellow villagers call out to me as I pass, and I invite them to join me, though I know they never will. Their lives are too full everyday with hard physical labor. They have no energy to spare for my purely whimsical, recreational exertion. I reach the path descending back into the village, my lungs and gut rejoicing, but my knees and hips dreading the relentless pounding of my weight on them as I jaunt down the hill in my four-year-old sneakers that have no shock absorption left to lessen the blow.

At last I reach my wooden hut after greeting my neighbors. I chug some water and take a refreshing, shockingly cold bucket bath in my 3-sided, roofless shower made of Traveler's Palm leaves. Then I bundle up with a light sweater and get ready for a morning of weighing babies and teaching mothers about nutrition and family planning. Around noon, I am back at my house. I make rice and cucumber salad for lunch and then read lawily into the afternoon qs the nighborhood kids come over to color and play cards on my porch. Some of them even offer to fetch my water, knowing they will receive a marble or a sticker as a small "thanks" for their help.

Around 3pm some of the neighborhood women come to my gate and beckon me to come join them on the soccer field. Though I'm somewhat dissuaded by the afternoon heat and tired from my morning run, I put on some shoes to go play, knowing it will be really fun and good opportunity for me to bond with the village women.

After we finish playing and I take another bucket shower, I head to the elementary school to see if any of the motivated adults in the village have come to learn English at our weekly classtime. I teach them body parts and the "Hokey Pokey," which we all thoroughly enjoy, laughing at each other as shake our left arm or right leg or butt and dance in circles. At dusk we wrap up the session, as it is too dark to see in the unlit classroom.

I take a walk through the village to buy some produce for dinner (usually tomatoes and some kind of green leaf). Then I cook before it gets too dark. I read and write letters by the light of my solar-powered lamp to pass the time and eat a quiet dinner listening to the BBC Africa News program on my shortwave radio. After I clean up and get ready for bed, I listen to the sounds of people outside chatting as they take their evening walk through the village. The faint chatter of my neighbors' Malagasy radio or a good book I happen to be reading finally lull me to sleep at around 8.

Vacation in Diego

Just came back from a wonderful week in Diego, a large port town near the northern tip of Madagascar. Since I didn’t take hardly any vacation last year I’ve been traveling quite frequently now to use up my 48 days before the two years are up. It’s worked out well, since my counterpart has been gone from site a lot recently for regional and national health trainings and meetings. I wouldn’t have gotten much done without his help anyway.

It was two Mondays ago now that I and two other volunteers from my area met up in Vohemar and made the long, stuffy trek in a bush taxi up north to Diego. Theoretically, our destination isn’t that far from my site on the northeast coast—maybe 300 to 350km. However the road and the vehicles are in such poor condition that it took us 15 hours of car travel to get there. The 200km between Vohemar on the east coast crossing over to Ambilobe near the west coast is a rocky, hilly dirt road with many potholes and deep tire tracks left from semis. That section of the road is the longest and most frustrating. It’s also incredibly dusty during the dry season, as a lot of dirt is kicked up from the frequently passing vehicles and blown across the road from the strong, seasonal winds. After the ten hour journey to Ambilobe, we all stepped out of the 15 passenger van looking bedraggled and burnt orange in color from the thick coat of dust. In Ambilobe we hopped in the covered bed of a rickety pick-up truck, known as a “quatre-quatre,” which took us all the way to Diego. This stretch of road is “paved,” but probably hasn’t been repaired in over twenty years, so it’s more dirt road than tarmac in some spots and filled with potholes. Hey, it only took us five more hours, though! Needless to say, we were exhausted once arriving in Diego, and in desperate need of some relaxation and fun, which is pleasantly easy to find there.

Throughout the week, we had wonderful fellow volunteers show us around or suggest the best spots to spend our vacation. We went to some delicious restaurants where we were treated to great seafood and surprisingly decent (or maybe not terrible?) wine. One of our daytrips included a sailboat ride out to Emerald Bay, aptly named for its brilliant turquoise water, where we relaxed on the soft, sandy beach, ate freshly grilled barracuda and crab and got terribly sunburnt. Another day we hiked around Amber Mountain national park, which was very wet and cold but a great opportunity for us to see some wildlife, including the pygmy chameleon (the tiniest chameleon in the world), two species of lemur and a giant earthworm more than a meter long among other things. We also spent a day lounging at Ramena beach and another day drinking bloody marys and mimosas poolside at a fancy hotel with a swim-up bar. Hard life as a Peace Corps volunteer, huh? It’s times like these when it really hits me how lucky I am to be living on a tropical island for two years!

Diego almost felt like a different world compared to where I spend the majority of my time in this country. While there is absolutely still poverty in and around the Diego area, it’s not as ever-present and obvious and perhaps not quite as desperate as it seems in rural areas like my site. In the big city there is so much infrastructure—running water, paved roads, every kind of fruit, vegetable, fish and meat in the market, every kind of restaurant, well-built schools including a university, electricity 24/7, running water, wireless internet at cafes and in the regional PC transit house.

From Diego heading back south toward Vohemar along the dusty road winding through rural villages, I find myself transported back to the “real” world, with pothole-plauged roads, huge families with raggedy clothes living in one-room, dilapidated shacks, mothers digging holes in the dried up riverbeds in search of water, market stalls with nothing to offer but brown bananas and miniature tomatoes, communities scraping together a living panning for gold or digging for precious stones in the harsh, dry deforested terrain. This country is beautiful in so many unique ways, but it can be painful to see right before ones eyes the blatant, widespread destruction caused by the developed world’s exploitation of Madagascar’s environment and its impoverished people.

Even though the ride back from Diego was long, uncomfortable and incredibly frustrating, as our vehicles kept breaking down in the middle of nowhere, it was a helpful transition for me back into my life and work in my small village near Sambava. I came back refreshed and happy to see my friends and coworkers. I do have to admit, though, that I secretly wished Sambava or Vohemar had some of the nice things that Diego had to offer (even just one good seafood restaurant or beachside bar would be great.) Perhaps I’ll make another long journey up there before the rainy season starts in January.

P.S. haven't posted pics from Diego yet, but if you're interested in looking at my other pictures, Ive set up links to them on picassa. Just go to my past blogs in the archive and click on the title, and it should send you to the picassa album website if there are any pictures from that post. thanks for everyone's support, and keep reading!

23 August 2011

Been back at site for a few weeks now. Things are pretty slow, since my counterpart has had to attend to a lot of meetings and other obligations in other towns. It’s been great to be back, though. Everyone in the village has been excited to see me, especially the members of the women’s soccer team. I was able to get jerseys and two small soccer balls from the NGO “Friends of Madagascar” while I was in Antananarivo for training, so they’ve been motivated to start practicing more frequently now. Even though none of us get to play very often and we’re not very good, we still have a lot of fun.

I’ve found that while language, education level and cultural differences sometimes prove difficult barriers to transcend in order to connect with people, playing soccer is an easy and fun way to enjoy each other’s company and camaraderie without having to worry too much about how to communicate with one another. When I play with them, I feel a sense of solidarity—among the women, among amateur athletes, and among the community members of my village. We recently sent a letter over to another neighboring village, requesting their women’s team to come over and play ours. Everyone says their women’s team is really good—they play like men—so we’re excited to test our skills against them and to break out our new uniforms.

Training the new group of volunteers in Tana went really well. I was there for two weeks and got a chance to meet some really excited and motivated new health and education volunteers fresh from the States (there’s about thirty of them in all). I was impressed with how positive they were and how much energy they had, even faced with the incredibly overwhelming challenges of adjusting to a new culture and learning a new language during their first weeks in-country. I was able to help by sitting in on their technical and cross-culture training sessions and offering a realistic perspective for what their experience and what their potential challenges might be, working out in the field for two years. I was happy to hear that we’re getting one health volunteer in our region who can replace the two of us leaving in December.

Since my two major projects (the solar panel at the clinic and the two wells ) are pretty much finished, I’m going to try to use up my last remaining vacation days before my two years are up in December. I’m hoping to head up to Diego, meet my dad in Rwanda for a week, and at some point hike Marojejy, the beautiful mountain and national park in my region. On another note, in honor of one of my Peace Corps friend’s recent texts to me, I’ll answer her question asking,

“You know you’re a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar when…”:
(many of these probably aren’t country-specific)

*you’re stuffed in a fifteen passenger van with forty other people
*you have eaten a full plate of rice four times in one day
*you have eaten rice with rice water as a side dish for a meal
*the neighborhood kids bring over a dwarf lemur tied up on a string
*you get asked to take someone’s three year old child back to America with you
*you get four marriage proposals in one day
*a woman asks you if you can find her a white man from America that she can marry
*there’s a rat stuck inside the balance at your village clinic
*there’s a renegade chicken circling your house and clucking incessantly for two weeks trying to get in
*the most common gifts you get from people are cucumbers, breadfruit and rice
*the most common visitors at your house are six-year-old kids
*your regular bedtime is 8pm
*you are told by someone that you are fluent in Malagasy and terrible at speaking Malagasy both in one day
*everytime you come back from somewhere, even if it’s only for two days, you get told you’ve gotten fat
*the majority of your daily conversations with people consist of the following: “Hi..how are you…what’s new…okay see ya later” (In Malagasy—“Mbalatsara,” “Mbalatsare” “Ino vaovao?” “Mangina fo, ino maresaka?” “Mangingina fo!” “ye”)
*a mother randomly hands you her 5 month old baby to hold while she goes to take care of something
*you are climbing up a muddy, slippery hill with your Tevas strapped to your feet and get passed by a barefoot, forty-year-old woman in a sarong with a baby strapped to her back, a basin full of wet laundry in one arm and a bucket full of water balanced on her head
*you frequently get asked if people in America eat rice, cook rice or farm rice
*the whole village talks about the fact that you bought bananas in the market today
*there’s a hog living next door, a cow behind your house and flocks of chickens and ducks wandering through your yard
*you have eaten bananas with rice in more different forms than you can count
*your favorite hot drink becomes water boiled in a pot lined with burnt, crusty rice
*every kid within a 10km radius of your town knows your name and shouts it repeatedly when you pass by
*from inside your house, you can hear your next-door neighbors talking about you from inside their house
*people come to your house selling anything from bananas to pineapple to cucumbers
*you have so much free time on your hands that you know how to find someone selling a coconut, crack it open, grate it, and make coconut milk from it in order to cook coconut rice (vary miaro vanio.)
*you can cook all your meals without a cutting board, pot handles, timer, recipe or measuring cups and with only one dull kitchen knife, one pot and one pan
*the only shoes you ever wear are plastic flip flops, even if you know you’ll be walking in the forest for several hours (and even if you have other shoes you could wear)

Wild and Crazy Adventures in Masoala

One of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers came up from his site up in the highlands of Madagascar to visit me on the coast a few weeks ago, and we went on quite the adventure through the SAVA region down into “Parc National Masoala,” ending up in Maroansetra. It all started with a text message I sent to Tom. I had been wanting to hike through Masoala for the longest time, as it’s so close to where I live, it’s the largest expanse of protected rain forest in Madagascar and it’s a good chance to catch a glimpse of the elusive and strange-looking Aye-Aye lemur in its natural habitat.

Because it’s so heavily forested and on a peninsula on Madagascar’s eastern coastal peninsula, Masoala also gets the most annual rainfall of any other part of the country. I’d heard that the hike was quite long and challenging and involved camping in the woods for a week, so I knew Tom was my best bet for a hiking partner, as he’s the only Peace Corps friend I know in country who was truly interested, capable, reliable and crazy enough to be up for the challenge. Since I knew I only have six months left at my site, and Tom’s school year working as an English teacher had just finished up, I thought I’d shoot him a message to see if he was still interested. Little did I know that this would be the seed that blossomed into the wettest, muddiest and most grueling physical challenge I have ever subjected myself to (and that’s saying something, considering I’ve hiked up Kilimanjaro and done quite a bit of outdoor climbing and hiking in Kentucky, Tennessee and Oregon).

To my surprise, Tom responded back and actually bought a plane ticket to Sambava for early July, so I quickly got in contact with a guide through Antalaha’s national park office, ANGAP. We set up a hike starting from Cap Est, the Eastern most point in Madagascar, through the forest to Maroansetra for a total of seven days and six nights. Tom arrived right after our SAVA regional Peace Corp volunteer weekend meeting in Sambava (which was a lot of fun now that we have 11 volunteers in the region), and we headed up to my old site, Antsirabe Nord, since I had an AIDS awareness festival planned there for that evening.

Unfortunately the AIDS festival was kind of a bust, as most of the local CEG (junior high) students who were supposed to be involved with the project had already gone home to their villages for the summer and there was a big soccer match 10km up the road that afternoon that I had been unaware of. Even though we walked around the whole town advertising free HIV testing at the clinic, no really came to get tested. PSI’s cinemobile came in the evening, though, and most people were back in town by then, so we had a great turnout for their outdoor film projection about STIs and HIV/AIDS. PSI does a great job of rallying up the crowd with music and announcements over their loud sound system, and all of their health education films are produced by local actors and film makers in Tana in the local Malagasy language. The crowd seemed to really enjoy the film and hopefully absorbed some good information through watching the movie and reading the pamphlets on HIV/AIDS and STIs that we had distributed earlier that afternoon.

That night we stayed at my friends’ Nana and Qaddafin’s house in town, since I live in a different village now, and no longer have a house in Antsirabe Nord. They were great hosts, and they had a lot of fun talking with Tom, as his Malagasy dialect from the highlands is so different from our way of speaking on the coast. We had a wonderful dinner and went to bed early since we had plans to hike the mountain, “Andrangohitra,” just outside of town the next morning. We had made sure to get special permission from the mayor to climb the mountain the day beforehand, so after a light breakfast of coffee and Malagasy rice flour bread, we set off with Nana’s brother as our guide.

It was quite a steep hour and a half hike up the mountain, with lots of scrambling over rocks and fighting against clawing thorns, branches and fallen trees. The pace of the hike made it especially hard, as all the guys were really strong and in shape and were practically running up the mountain, forcing me to huff and puff to keep up with them. I didn’t slow down or ask for many breaks though, because Nana’s brother kept giving me a hard time for being the weak little white girl, and I didn’t want to satisfy his preconceived notions.

After conquering “Veloma Baba,” a steep, rocky section that would be scary and painful if one were to slip and tumble down it (hence the name “Goodbye Daddy” in Malagasy), we reached the new Telma cell phone tower, standing quite tall in all its grandeur and quietly running off of current from eight or ten large solar panels. We gazed out over the valleys and surrounding mountains, and were able to spot the main road winding south towards Samabava, the river heading east towards Antanambao Doud and the coast and the towns of Tsarahitra and Ampanefena stretching north along the road towards Vohemar. It was really neat to get a glimpse of the Indian Ocean from there and to have a bird’s-eye view of the town where I had spent a year of my life.

After a short break, we headed up to the actual peak of the mountain, probably another 20 or 30 meters up. Unfortunately the last few meters up to the viewpoint were one steep, smooth boulder with no footholds and one dried out branch of bamboo considerately propped up against the rock to offer handholds for scaling up to the top. There was a steep crevasse dropping 20 meters down from the base of the boulder, so my slight fear of heights overcame me, and I surrendered any hope of going further as visions of me slipping off the rock and tumbling into the abyss played over and over in my head.

Tom, Qaddafin and Nana’s brother took off their shoes and scrambled to the top to enjoy the view as I waited down below. I asked Tom to get some good pictures with his camera for me. I was a little nervous for the return journey down the steep slope of the mountain, but it actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We made it successfully back down “Veloma Baba” and down to the base of the mountain, past the rice paddies and back into town. As we dropped off Nana’s brother, their mom invited us in for a chat. We got a chance to see a large basket of green vanilla beans she had recently harvested out in her fields, and she promised to send me home with some of the final product when it was time for me to leave in December. Then she gave me a parting gift of a huge 1.5L Eau-Vive bottle of sakay (really spicy little peppers preserved in salt and vinegar), which is perhaps one of the best “voandalanas” I have ever received—typical wonderful Malagasy hospitality. After a short rest and a delicious lunch at Nana’s with some of the “sakay” from her mother, we went for a walk down to the river that winds around Anstirabe Nord. We hung out for a bit and took some pictures, and then it was time for us to head back to my new village so I could pack up for our trip through Masoala.

When we got to my village, everyone was at the “bazary,” watching as the doctor installed the TV for the community’s evening viewing of the Malagasy national news. It’s really great that the solar panel was successfully funded, purchased and installed, because the community can now use it to run the community TV and satellite for the national news every evening and to power the lights at the clinic in case there are any medical emergencies or women coming to give birth at night. The next morning, after some last minute packing and quick good-byes to the neighbors and my counterpart, we headed off to Antalaha.

The bush taxi rides down to Sambava and Antalaha were surprisingly quick and efficient that day, so we were able to arrive in Antalaha in time to have a late lunch. Then we went to visit a fellow volunteer living in Antalaha. After a walk on the beach and a long chat, we had a great home-made Italian meal complements of our host. Even the pasta was home-made (yes, he has a pasta machine); quite a character with his strong Italian roots and heavy Boston accent, and our fellow volunteer was such a wonderful host.

The next morning we arrived at the ANGAP office a little after 7am to meet our guide. Of course the office wasn’t open yet, but the guide was at least waiting for us as he had promised over the phone. He promptly left us sitting outside with his teenage daughter as he went to fetch his tent and his boss to open up the office. After about twenty minutes, the ANGAP folks magically appeared, and we stepped into a dingy, empty room except for a few posters of lemurs plastered on the walls and some moldy chairs and a table sitting in the center. The guide quickly went over with us our “programme” for the next week we would be spending together hiking through Masoala. Tom and I were a bit nervous, as the schedule sounded a little more intense than our initial impression. The guide assured us that we would be able to complete the guide in seven days, even if we weren’t hiring any porters to help us carry our stuff.

After paying our 1000 Ariary entrance fee for the park and a small advance to our guide for provisions, we headed off to the market to purchase food for our trek. We would be planning to eat in small villages along the way for the most part, but there were one or two nights that we’d be camping in the forest and would have to prepare our own food. If it were up to Tom or me, we probably would have just relied on peanuts, bread and cliff bars, but Malagasies have to have their rice every day. We did actually buy a lot of bread, and then some lentils, peanuts, ginger, garlic, salt, oil and spoons. We planned to buy rice and fish further down the road near Cap Est. We also brought some peanut butter, honey and a few other snacks with us, and the guide brought along his “vilany” (rice cooking pot). Then we headed to the taxi brousse station for Cap Est.

Unfortunately not too many people travel to Cap Est, since the road is bad and the vehicles are even worse. If you don’t catch the “premier line” that leaves at 6am, you’re in for a long wait until the next vehicle fills up. When we got to the vehicle stand, we loaded our stuff on the next car heading out and gave my phone number to the driver so we could walk around for the next few hours until it was time to leave. After taking a stroll along the beach and watching a huge production of people setting vanilla out to dry in the sun on the field outside the local CEG, we headed back to the taxi stand, but it still wasn’t ready to go. We decided to walk on down the road heading towards Cap Est and have the car pick us up along the way. After a couple kilometers we came to a gendarme checkpoint, so we decided to sit and wait for the car there. The gendarmes were actually quite nice, and they had fun practicing a little English with us. One of them was originally from Maroansetra, so we were able to ask him a little bit about our final destination as well.

It was already past noon by the time the car picked us up, and we were finally on our way to Cap Est. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the road wasn’t actually as bad as everyone kept saying it was. It wasn’t paved, but it was relatively flat and dry since the rainy season had ended about a month ago. There were some rocks and a few hills, but the main problem was the condition of the vehicle. I have been in some pretty janked up cars during my time here in Madagascar, but this was one of the worst. Everything on the dashboard had been completely stripped out, including the radio, speedometer, odometer, fuel gauge and ignition key. The driver had to hotwire the car every time he wanted to start it. The gas tank had been reconfigured so that the tube ran from under the hood to the leg space of the passenger seat, where it fed into a large, plastic, yellow jerry can that had once been used to store cooking oil. The lid of the “gas tank” wasn’t properly sealed, so each time we went over a bump or a rock, poor Tom got splashed on the legs with gasoline. At least there was a second full can next to it, so we had plenty of fuel for the trip. The driver seemed less than concerned about the spillage inside the cab, as he casually lit his third cigarette of the trip.

We were no more than 10 or 20km outside of Antalaha when our vehicle inevitable broke down. By this time it was evident that our guide had a restless streak or really enjoyed walking, because he hopped out of the back and asked us if we’d hike ahead with him until the car was fixed and could pick us up further down the road. I figured we’d be doing a lot of walking the next few days anyway, and there really was no point in sitting and watching the driver and his buddies fuss with God knows what under the hood, so the three of us headed on down the road. I was surprised at how long the stretches of quiet, uninhabited land were. There was already quite a lot of coastal forest and swampy areas with only a few small villages spaced out along the way. We came across a beautiful, deserted beach at low tide that stretched on for miles with a few beached canoes scattered along the shore. After about twenty minutes we heard the car sputtering along and headed back to the road to hop in.

The car broke down several more times for stretches of thirty minutes to an hour, making what should have been a two hour journey a very frustrating and long four and a half hour trip. We finally reached a gendarme stop by the ferry we were supposed to catch across the river and into Cap Est a little before dusk. They were primarily stationed at that point in order to catch rosewood smugglers coming out of the forest and up the river, transporting their precious cargo up towards Antalaha. They also periodically checked the paperwork of drivers who transported passengers and cargo back and forth from Cap Est to Antalaha. Unfortunately, the last ferry had already left for the day, so we had to unload at the river, cross in a very unstable canoe and walk the five remaining kilometers to our destination for the evening. We ended up staying in what seemed like the outskirts of Cap Est, where a small enclave was set up for guides who work the Cap Est to Maroansetra route. After a dinner of sautéed octopus and rice, we turned in for the night.

The next morning we headed out to the small protected forest surrounding Cap Est to see some carnivorous plants. About half way into the circuit through the park, I started noticing that a small cloud of mosquitoes was swarming from behind and in front of me. They started biting relentlessly at my ankles, so I quickly rolled down my pants and we started to hightail it out of there. At one point the guide stopped us to insist that we take a picture of the famous carnivorous plant of Cap Est. He was very adamant that I get a photo of the plant, so I quickly pulled out my camera and snapped a picture of it while the guide swatted at my ankles with a leafy branch. Then we walked out of the park as quickly as we could as my ankles started to itch and swell up. At one point, I think I smacked three mosquitoes that landed simultaneously on my leg. I probably would have elected to skip the walk if I had known that we would be going into a mosquito forest just to take a picture of one plant.

By this time we were both pretty frustrated with our guide and were ready to get out of Cap Est and head out on the path towards Maroansetra. We had already committed to a short snorkeling excursion however, so we packed up our things, changed into swimsuits and had a quick breakfast of rice and fish before heading out to the beach. Optimistically I hoped that the saltwater would dry out the mosquito bites and squelch the itching. While the beach and the deserted island we canoed out to were quite pretty, the snorkeling was less than impressive. Most of the coral was either dead or infested with stinging sea urchins, and the saltwater was actually making my mosquito bites sting, so we swam around for a total of about ten minutes and then headed back to shore so we could hike the 5km back to the river crossing in time to catch a “lakana” (canoe) downstream to our starting point of the hike through Masoala.

After the guide picked up some fresh fish from the local fishermen at the beach, we headed out. We reached the river around noon and had a quick lunch at a Malagasy “hotely” before hopping on a “lakana” manned by a very buff, young Malagasy boatman. Aside from gazing at the surrounding forest, charming small villages along the way and other “lakanas” drifting by with loads of rice harvests and passengers, it was pleasant just to watch and admire the strength of the young boatman as he thrust the “lakana” pole with both arms through the water down to the riverbed in a slow, repetitive, fluid motion.

About half way through our boat journey, the skies darkened, and large threatening storm clouds poured cold rain down on us for the remainder of the trip. With raincoats and banana leaves as our only defense against the elements, our belongings got quite soaked, and remained that way for the rest of the week, producing a lovely, moldy stench. A little before dusk, the rain finally petered off just in time for our disembarkation. Since we hadn’t caught our canoe until after lunchtime, we didn’t make it to our intended destination for the evening, although the guide had assured us that we would have no trouble catching a canoe, even if we hung around Cap Est for the morning. So our boatman dropped us off at a village about 10km further up the path than intended, as it was already getting close to dusk, and he still had to make his return trip back to Cap Est.

Our campsite for the evening was on a soccer field at the fringes of a little village called “Sahafary,” as a group of kids crowded around to see what the two “vazaha” and their small, elderly Malagasy guide with a strange-looking circular pack strapped to his back would do next. After unloading our things, we started putting the tents up. The guide’s was a green, pop-out tent that takes two minutes to set up, because it’s made with one flexible, foldable, circular wire frame. It was kind of convenient, but very funny-looking, especially when folded up into its circular shape and stuffed into its circular green sack…probably came out of some fad from the ‘80s in the States and then was donated to Goodwill and eventually shipped over to Africa. The shape of the tent folded up was kind of like a satellite dish, and, when strapped onto our guide’s back along with the shape and the green color, was reminiscent of a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” costume.

After setting up tents, the guide went off to look for firewood and to fetch water. We chatted with the kids for a while, who got a kick out of the fact that we knew how to speak Malagasy. I asked if any of them had ever seen a “fosa” in the woods before, and one or two of them actually claimed that they did, though one can never be sure how truthful little kids are about those kinds of things. Eventually their mothers called all the kids home for dinner and we could finally relax around the fire and enjoy the rice and fresh fish (re-freshened off the side of the “lakana” on or way down the river) our guide had cooked over the fire. We ate off of banana leaves so we wouldn’t have to worry about dishes, and then had a nice pineapple that someone in the village had sold us for 500 Ariary.

We were grateful that the rain had stopped in time for us to set up camp and have a dry dinner, but it unfortunately started up again at 3am and drizzled on into the morning. We were dismayed to find that a wet tent was a great source of anxiety for our guide, and for the next several days he continued to grumble on about how his tent would never dry out since it kept raining every night. That morning, he delayed our start until 7:30am even though we were behind schedule, just so he could let his tent dry out for a while.

We got off to a wet, slippery, muddy start that would turn into a common theme over the next few days. The sun actually came out and stayed out from mid-morning on, but the path was quite muddy from the recent rains and the bordering rice paddies and streams. Though we had not yet entered the park, the surrounding mountains, forests, rice fields, quaint villages, rivers and streams make the path quite scenic.

I was enjoying the gorgeous surroundings, but poor Tom, who was carrying a pack twice the size of mine and who unwisely decided to wear old running shoes with no traction, was not doing so well on the steep, muddy slopes. Only an hour into the hike, he had already slipped and fallen a dozen times, so the guide suggested he try wearing his plastic, Malagasy “jelly” sandals. Though his sandals had seen better days (they were almost a year old and the heels were cracking off in the back) they still provided more traction than his sneakers. The guide started off with hiking boots, but soon went barefoot, as we crossed many small streams and oversized puddles and were mucking through several feet of mud at times. I was nervous about my “Tevas” giving me blisters, but they weren’t bothering me so far and were serving their purpose of providing me some traction and allowing me to wade through the water while protecting the bottoms of my feet.

Around mid-morning we reached the village where we were supposed to have slept the past night if our canoe had been able to take us the whole way before dark. It was quite a large village with a market and a very friendly woman who had been to secondary school in Antalaha and could speak really good French and a surprising amount of English. She apparently knew some German and Italian as well. She was so excited to have the chance to talk with us in English, so we chatted with her while our guide snacked on some fried cassava. Then we stocked up on rice and headed back out on the trail.

About an hour later we stopped to lunch on some peanut butter and honey sandwiches on the beach by the river. I noticed that our guide’s snack of choice was butter sandwiches, as I watched in disbelief as he loaded four, large heaping spoonfuls of margarine onto a small chunk of bread. After sterilizing some water from the river with my handy UV pen, we set off on the trail again. Our guide forewarned us that we had quite a long way to go and lots of rocks, sand and river crossing over and over again for the next several hours.

At a few hours in, the river crossings still hadn’t gotten too bad, but the sand and sharp rocks getting trapped between my wet sandal straps and the back of my heels was aggravating my feet. Sections of the trail hugged steep, rocky hillsides that steeply dropped off into the raging rapids below. The skin irritation and frequent fear of slipping off the trail into the swift-moving river was mentally draining, and by now, the weight of the pack and climbing up and down the rocky trail was physically exhausting.

By mid afternoon, we had entered “Parc National Masoala,” and the grandeur of the thickly forested mountains and hillsides gave me a mental boost. Although it was hard to tear my eyes from the challenging terrain in front of my feet, I periodically made an effort to pick my head up and gaze around at the pristine beauty of the natural, wild environment that encompassed us. As it was early in the tourist season (or guide informed us that we were the first ones on the trail this year) and most of what we were hiking through was protected forest area, we frequently had the woods all to ourselves. Only about every couple hours or so, we would come across a few Malagasies traveling from one village to another that bordered the park.

By late afternoon we still hadn’t reached our destination, so our guide called out to a boy washing clothes on the other side of the river to ask how much longer we had to the next village. “Mbola lavitrE!” (still far!) he exclaimed in Malagasy, and my heart sank as I thought of my now irritated heels and sore shoulders. After about another hour, we came to a clearing with a patch of forest to the side. “Lemur” our guide casually announces as he pointed to a tree on the right. We looked over in that direction and sure enough there was a black lemur perched on a branch staring back at us. We watched each other for a few seconds and then moved on as we still had some ground to cover before dark.

At the tail end of dusk we arrived at a small village where we would camp for the night. I was exhausted from fording rivers, scrambling over boulders and wading through mud. A few of the rivers had been quite difficult to cross, with depths reaching up to our hips and swift rapids. The guide had to hold my hand and cross with me for several of them, so I wouldn’t slip and fall in with my pack. Add to that all the mosquito bites on my lower legs from pulling up my pants to cross the rivers, and it was one exhausting day.

We quickly set up the tents in the light drizzle and then I changed and laid down in my bag while the guide fussed with the plans for cooking rice. If it was up to Tom and me, we would have just eaten some bread or cliff bars and gone to bed. But Malagasies MUST have rice or they won’t make it through the day. About an hour later the guide fetched us from our tents and we dined on some very salty fish over boiled rice for dinner. Then we went back to our tents and slept until daybreak.

The next morning we had tried to get an earlier start, although with the guide wanting to dry out his tent again and having to heat up left over rice and fish for breakfast, we didn’t end up leaving until after 7. Every village or group of Malagasies we passed that morning had the pleasure of hearing a sales pitch from our guide for pink, liquid medicine in small plastic packets. He was marketing it as a topical cure-all for back pain, tooth pain, leg pain, neck pain, menstrual cramps, etc. We weren’t quite sure what the actual substance was, but Tom suspected it was probably some kind of numbing agent or analgesic. At first I was surprised at how many of these impoverished villagers were willing to fork over the considerable investment of 1000 Ariary for a small packet of medicine from some stranger passing through their community. No one at my site back up north every buys the medicine that traveling peddlers try to sell them, but then I realized that’s probably because my community has an amazing, hard working nurse staffing the clinic that’s located right in our village.

Tom and I asked the guide where the nearest medical facility was from this point in our hike, and he answered that either the clinic in Antalaha or Maroansetra were people’s best bet for care in case of a medical emergency. We had just traveled by foot, boat and car for a full two days to get to this point from Antalaha, and Maroansetra was still even further off at the other end, so I realized that these people were probably desperate for any type of medicine they could get their hands on, even if it was something to delay or lessen the pain for the two day journey until they were able to reach the nearest health care provider.

I then thought of all the mothers and pregnant women who were probably living out in these villages and asked if there were any knowledgeable midwives in the area. One of the locals we were temporarily walking with responded, much to my relief, that there were quite a few experienced and knowledgeable midwives in the area. I just hope a few of them had some kind of training at some point on proper hygiene and recognizing signs of emergencies or complications during childbirth. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later slipping over the wet rocks along the riverbank that the extreme remoteness of our present location and complete lack of cell-phone reception made me anxiously wonder what would happen if I myself fell and broke a wrist or ankle or something worse along this hike. I made a mental note to myself to be extremely careful.

Shortly thereafter, we were walking across the top of some smooth boulders, when I slipped on the edge of a puddle and went down hard, landing on my left arm and hip. I was nervous to move or sit up, worried to discover that I had broken something. The guide and Tom apprehensively waited in silence as they helped me sit up. Very luckily, I wasn’t in any pain, and we walked a few meters before taking a short break so I could sit and collect myself.

We hiked for several more hours, crossing more streams and sandy riverbanks until we stumbled across a quiet spot next to the river, shaded by a tall, beautiful tree. After more peanut butter sandwiches, a few pictures and a short rest, we trekked on, crossing stream after stream and entering into deeper forest. At one point in our river crossings, we met a young Malagasy couple heading back the opposite direction after what seemed like a picnic they had taken at the river. Then we came upon an older, toothless man carrying a few supplies on a stick over his shoulder and donning a thin, stretched out purple sweater, ripped up shorts and a faded baseball cap. He was heading out alone along the train in the same direction as us, but obviously at a much quicker pace.

Since we were planning to camp in the middle of the forest that night and the next village in that direction wasn’t for another full day’s hike, our guide asked the man where he was headed. He was planning to camp in the forest on his way to the next town we were headed to as well, so after checking out his ID card to make sure he wasn’t a shady character, the guide invited him to camp with us and share our company and fire for the evening. The lone traveler agreed and so we hiked on, climbing up what would be the steepest path I have every hiked on.

Before I even realized it, the path separated from the river and wound up and around into the forested mountainside above. We took high step after high step with our heavy packs, grabbing onto tree branches and roots for support. There were many steep, slippery and muddy sections I had to claw my way up. At one point I almost broke down with frustration, pure exhaustion and fear of slipping down over the sheer mountainside into the thorny valley below. Meanwhile, our surprisingly agile guide skipped up the trail with his satellite dish-shaped tent strapped to his back, and Tom—probably the most in-shape Peace Corps volunteer in country—powered up the steep slopes, pausing impatiently from time to time behind me as I panted and shakily struggled to haul myself and my pack up this ridiculous excuse for a trail. We stopped for a breather only once, as we came to a viewpoint looking out from the forest onto the opposite cliff-side, where a giant waterfall spilled over the top and down into the valley below.

“You stop to take picture. Nice place for picture. Here! Here!” the guide demanded. I was just grateful for the rest, as Tom pulled out his camera to capture the beauty of the scenic viewpoint. Only as we were about to leave did I notice that there was a wriggling, black leech biting the back of my pointer finger. I quickly flicked it off and then looked down to realize there was one sucking on my toe as well. I squirmed as I pulled it off and the blood pooled out. It must have been feasting on my toe for a while, because I had to squeeze it out of there and the blood didn’t stop running for quite a long time.

As we moved on, the trail seemed to get impossibly steeper and steeper until I freaked out a little bit, clinging to the mountainside. I had to take a minute to calm myself down and overcome my fear of slipping and tumbling all the way back down the trail into the valley below. I tried my best not to look down behind me as I pulled myself up the slope and attempted to comfort myself with the idea that Tom might be able to catch me or at least slow my fall if I did by chance happen to slip off the trail. Finally we reached the top and were able to catch our breaths and look out across the valley. It was at this point that I seriously wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.

We snapped some pictures and then hiked ten more minutes along the mountaintop over to our campsite by the water that fed into the grand waterfall below, which we had looked out on from halfway up the mountain earlier that afternoon. After setting up camp and washing off a bit in the river—probably not the smartest idea given the aforementioned leeches, but our first opportunity of the trip, which made it too irresistible—I bundled up in all the layers I had in preparation for a very cold night, and waited for our guide to cook the rice and lentils over the campfire. After a short, pre-dinner nap in my sleeping bag back in my solo tent, I joined the boys by the fire. Once the food was ready, we ate off a flipped over pot lid that served as a communal plate, as there were no banana leaves surrounding the campsite. Although it definitely wasn’t enough food, it was nice to have a warm meal before turning in for the evening.

That night was so cold that the guys had offered to share the big tent with our fellow traveler, as he was just sleeping out in the open. I got the single tent with all my layers, thick socks and a hot water bottle full of “ranompango” (burnt rice water), so I was thankfully warm enough. The guide was complaining the next morning that his tent had been drafty and cold during the night. Additionally, he claimed that he had a fever, though I’m not sure if he was just confusing a natural bodily reaction to the cold weather of shivering with that of fever chills. Nevertheless, he looked pretty pathetic shaking and whimpering as he stoked the breakfast fire, so I offered him some ibuprofen and an extra Mefloquine tablet I had, just in case it was Malaria or an actual fever. The offering was as much to quiet him down and placate him as anything else. Most Malagasy I have come across fortunately (or sometimes unfortunately if they keep asking you for medication) have a good amount of faith in western biomedicine.

After a few quick spoonfuls of burnt rice and cold lentils for breakfast, we headed off down the mountain. For the first half of the morning, I was confused as to our location on the peak, because we seemed to be going uphill more so than down. We crossed mud pond after mud pond, which were infested with leeches as we were still in the dense section of the forest. I was wearing a pair of Tom’s socks under my Tevas, as the sores on my feet from my sandal straps had gotten pretty bad. Although it wasn’t the most comfortable (nor fashionable) thing to be wearing wet, muddy, squishy socks, it protected my blisters and even helped a little with the leeches, though a few still tried to bite through the socks and one even ended up on my stomach somehow.

After a late morning snack of leftover rice and peanut butter (since we wouldn’t get to our lunch town until 2) we hiked on. After about another hour we finally reached the path dropping down towards our afternoon destination. For the moment, it was a relief to be out of the leech-infested mud puddles, to be going downhill, and to have beautiful vistas of the river and town below. We could even see the road winding back north up towards Antalaha. We soon unfortunately discovered that the maintenance of the trail was practically non-existent and the drizzly morning and past few days of rainfall had made the steep path down, one slippery, messy, red mudslide.

Because the mud was caked on the bottom of my shoes and probably because I was very exhausted at the point, I must have slipped and fallen over a dozen times. Luckily the landings were soft though, as there were no more rocks, but rather a lot of mud and grass. I was so tired and frustrated at the slippery path and my feet were hurting so badly that I had a small meltdown midway in our descent down the mountain. At around 2pm we finally reached the village of Ampokafo, where the path coming directly from Antalaha to Maroansetra intersects with the longer, circuitous path cutting through the forest from Cap Est, which we had taken. After stopping at a nearby stream to wash off all the mud caked on our shoes and pants, we headed to a “hotely” to have lunch.

I had my third serving of rice for the day, and I actually finished the whole plate (which is saying something for the huge quantities of rice they pile on those plates) along with some boiled greens, “sakay” and peanut butter. That was my first time ever finishing a full Malagasy plate of rice, and I kind of forced myself to do it since I was sure I hadn’t been taking in enough calories for the ridiculous amount of calories we were probably expending hiking over 8 hours each day on a challenging trail with heavy packs on our backs.

Our guide went to eat lunch at a church party in the center of town and probably tried to sell some of his pink medicine to the attendees while he was there. After he returned, we headed down the trail to the village where we would spend the night. I was reluctant to stand up on my feet again, but the guide promised we’d arrive at our destination by 4pm and the trail was supposed to be easy from here on out. We’d only have a few more rivers to cross and one more short, steep section.

The trail was thankfully much easier and still quite beautiful, as we looked out over the river down below, studded with big, round boulders and bordered by small sections of protected forest and small, Malagasy dwellings and rice paddies. There were still tall mountains on either side of the path, but our trail stayed mostly flat as it meandered along the lower part of the valley. Since we were no longer inside the national park, the deforestation along the hillsides was much more prevalent and depressing to see. All of the forest on the lower half of the mountains and most of it on the steeper mid-sections had been cleared by the surrounding villages for firewood, farming, building houses and possibly the rosewood trade. Only the very steepest sections of the top halves of the peaks were left sparsely blanketed with trees. It was disheartening to think that, with the continuously growing population and hence growing need for food, fuel and money, the mountaintops not protected by park boundaries would probably be completely bare in a matter of a couple years.

Around 4:30 in the afternoon we finally reached the village where we would spend the night. Though the trail through the park had been spectacularly beautiful and memorable, it was a relief to now feel 99% sure that I would make it out of this expedition alive. Back in the forest, I hadn’t been so sure—often worrying that I might slip and kill myself or tumble down the mountain or be eaten alive by mosquitoes and leeches. We would now be passing villages all along with trail, which promised to be much flatter and well cleared. Only a few fording of rivers left!

Before dinner we chatted with some of the young men hanging out next to the house of the family in whose yard we were camping. They all looked to be in their early teens, yet only one or two of them were still in school. We asked where the nearest CEG (junior high school) was, and they responded in Ampokafo, which was a two hour hike back where we came from. The nearest lycee (high school) was in Antalaha or Maroansetra. Antalaha was now a good few days hike from where we were now, and Maroansetra was still another one and a half days in the other direction. So it was understandable that only a few of them would continue past primary school and even fewer past middle school and on into high school, especially if they didn’t have any relatives to house them in Antalaha or Maroansetra.

The kids who weren’t in school worked in the rice fields and vanilla and coffee businesses. They also openly admitted that they looked for money cutting down and/or transporting Rosewood. According to the locals, one large tree could fetch them around 80,000 Ariary (about 40USD) or more, quite a good chunk of money for someone so low down on the chain of production. It was widely known among the locals that there are a lot of “patrons” in Antalaha looking to purchase rosewood for exportation, and we heard many stories of people floating logs of rosewood down the river as a way of transporting them from the forests of Masoala up towards Antalaha.

After my fourth plate of rice for the day (a personal record!), along with some lentils and the squash like vegetable we had found in the forest, we chatted with the guide about horoscopes (his favorite topic) and then hit the sack. The next morning, we had a rainy and late start. I struggled to hike down the slippery, steep hill with my sore feet to reach the W.C. while the guide went to search for firewood. This village was unusually devoid of early risers, so it was another hour before the guide was able to get the cookfire going for a breakfast of boiled cassava and leftover lentils and rice. I skipped the cassava, as it is my least favorite food in Madagascar and ate the rice that the guys couldn’t finish since they were so full of from the tasteless, starchy cassava.

It was only at 8:30 that we finally packed up and left town. The guide assured us that, since the road was easy from here on out, we would have no trouble reaching our destination for the day. The path wandered in and out of the small remaining sections of the park for the rest of the morning. Since the path was easy and the guide kept telling us that we had plenty of time, I stopped frequently to catch up on picture taking that I hadn’t done much of during the first half of the trip, since I was always trying to catch up with my two, strong, male hiking partners.

Unfortunately we still had quite a bit of river crossings left, some of which were quite deep and fast-moving. The additional maneuvering on slippery rocks was becoming increasingly painful for my blister-covered feet. I felt better about the guide having to help me across the rapids, though, when I saw a young Malagasy woman struggling to cross one of the rivers while two young men held her hands and carried her belongings across for her. The path was still quite muddy as we passed more rice fields and patches of heavily forested, poorly maintained trail.

At around 11:30 we passed a small village with “hotelies.” The guide offered us the option of stopping to have lunch or to keep going to another village two hours down the road, where he claimed there were better “hotely” options. I wasn’t hungry yet but quite exhausted and in a lot of pain from my sandals. So we went on, but took a short break a little ways down the road so I could rest my feet. The trail wound on and on through forested and deforested area and sections of rice fields. I started to get extremely frustrated at how much longer this was taking than expected and at how muddy and slippery the path remained.

We finally reached our destination for lunch around 3:30. Since we were way behind schedule, according to the guide, to reach Nahavana by evening, the town where we were supposed to catch the boat to Maroansetra the next morning, he made us gulp down our rice in ten minutes and get right back on the road. I was less than happy about the prospect of another three hours of walking, but he wanted to make sure we had a chance of catching the one canoe that left first thing in the morning from Nahavana. Otherwise, we’d have to walk an extra 10km to catch a boat down the river to Maroansetra.

Although the path was dry and flattened out, making it much easier than any of the previous hiking we had done, we walked on and on and didn’t make it to our evening destination until a good hour after dusk. One of the young porters from Sambava that we had happened to meet along the trail who was a friend of our guides actually caught up with us in the town a few km outside of Nahavana and offered us a place to pitch our tents next to his compound on the edge of the village. He was a very nice guy, and we chatted about Sambava and his work with the vanilla trade along the route from Antalaha to Maroansetra. Our camping spot was great as well, as there was live fencing all around the yard and it was right next to the beach, so we could hear the waves crashing and the wind blowing through the palms as we set up our tents.

The guide and our new friend decided to go out for some drinks and dinner, but Tom and I were so exhausted that we just had a few snacks and went to sleep. Unfortunately, we found out as we were coming into Nahavana that there were no canoes leaving from that point in the morning to head to Maroansetra, because the seas had been rough the past couple days and part of the route went along the ocean. It wasn’t safe enough, so we would have to hike the extra 10km the next day anyway to get to the village with river access and canoes running all day back and forth between Maroansetra. I was greatly disappointed that we would have to walk again for another few hours the next day, as my body was so beat up from the past couple of days from hiking through the forest and carrying the heavy pack.

Unfortunately the next morning was quite cold and rainy, and so we had a couple hours of wet hiking to look forward to after a quick breakfast in Nahavana. I was so ready to be done with walking that I powered through the next few hours while Tom and the guide stopped to take a break in the middle. I figured they would catch up with me anyway, since they were usually so much faster than me, but I ended up on my own for the remainder of the hike as the trail wound up into a small forested, protected park area and then back down along the coast to the beach and out to the village on the banks of the river that headed towards Maroansetra. There were many more people on this section of the trail, including Malagasy day travelers and quite a few white tourists (mostly French), who I speculated probably went on the easier trail coming directly from Antalaha or were on day trips leaving out of Maroansetra.

After grabbing a “lakana” for a little more expensive than we had expected—they were taking advantage of low supply of boats and high demand of travelers that day—we were sitting in a soggy, wooden canoe on our way through the drizzle to Maroansetra at last! As the river channel meandered past flooded rice paddies and other canoes transporting cargo and passengers in the rain, I reflected on how challenging life must be for farmers in the Maroansetra area. The walking paths seemed either very wet or non-existent, so most transport relied on the hand-made wooden canoes. Once we arrived at the port, we walked thirty more minutes through the rain to the center of town and found a cheap-ish hotel where we could finally put down our stuff and get out of the wet weather.

Though we didn’t have hot water, it was still amazing to be able to wash off all the mud and sweat from the past week and to hang up all our clothes to “dry out” in the damp air of Maroansetra. After a quick lunch, we met up with the guide to pay him his fee for the trip. I gave him a little extra, because I don’t think I would have been able to make it across all the rivers without his help. He then showed us to the ANGAP office, where we turned in our guide evaluations and then parted ways. Since Tom had to make it back down to Tana as soon as possible, he went in search of “taxi brousses” heading down to Tamatave and made a reservation for the earliest one, leaving Thursday morning from Maroansetra. The ride sounded like quite the adventure, as the road from Maroansetra down to Mananara is notoriously bad. The trip down to Tamatave was projected to take two or more days, even though the geographic distance between Maroansetra and Tamatave really isn’t that far. The road is just that bad. I was looking to the short and easy flight I had booked direct from Maroansetra back to Sambava.

With our time left in Maroansetra, we did a little souvenir shopping and met up with the Peace Corps environment volunteer in the area doing work with an NGO on income-generating activities relating to a local silkworm project as well as reforestation and improved rice farming techniques. We also stumbled across a fancy resort down by the beach whose owner happened to be a French lady who had spent thirty years in California and loved Peace Corps volunteers. She invited us back to her resort that evening for drinks and dinner, so she could hear all about our adventures in Masoala.

It was something else to end our long, treacherous journey through the muddy forest with an evening of wine and a fancy three-course dinner in a swanky hotel with several older French ladies and their friends, who included an American scientist doing research on the "Fosa" in the forests around Maroansetra. Everyone we met that evening was wonderfully nice to talk to and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Maroansetra, but I was ready to go back to the warmer and drier climate up at my site near Sambava and to relax in my house and not have to walk around for several days.

27 Juin 2011

Yesterday, 26 Juin, was Madagascar's Independence Day, which is a huge annual celebration here. They give much more importance to it than we do our own July 4th. Especially since rice harvesting season has just finished and vanilla season is beginning, people are starting to have money again, so they begin planning several days or sometimes even weeks in advance for the big event of "vignt six." As I mentioned in the last entry, the doctor's family and I had outfits made for our dance performance at the talent show called "podium" leading up to 26. We've also been having dance rehearsals at my Malagasy counterpart's (the doctor's) house, where we have been practicing our choreographed moves complements of Oriana, the doctor's youngest daughter, to several popular Malagasy music videos. I had agreed to perfoming a set of 4 dances with the doctor's family and neighbors and then two dances with the local women's group, which included songs from such popular Malagasy artists as WaWa and Jerry Marcos.

Overall the performances went really well, and I had a lot of fun. Our outfits turned out great--bright orange haltertops with ruffly black skirts. I might actually wear the tank top out again on other occassons. The "podium" for 26 spanned over three nights. The first night we didn't go, because we were still practicing our dance moves. On the second night I performed the two dances with the womens group and two of our four dances with my counterpart's family and friends. I think the community got a kick out of seeing me up there dancing. We got a lot of cheers and took in a decent amount of money from the crowd. Malagasies have a great tradition here for "podium" of giving money to the performers up on stage. If you are part of the audience and really enjoy the performance, you can walk up on stage and give the performers a small amount of money, typically 200-500 ariary (the equivalent of 25 cents). Sometimes people from the audience will even dance with the performers up on stage for a little bit before giving their money.

Our women's group took in about 10,000 Ariary and our other group, which the doctor's wife decided to name "Group Maya" took in around 5,000. Much more important than the surprising amount of cash we earned was how much fun it was to be up there dancing together with the women in my community and participating in the Malagasy cultural event. It also seemed to mean a lot to the doctor and his wife that I partcipated, because they said they would really miss me on New Years since my 2 years will already be up and I wont be there to participate in that "podium" with them.

Besides participating in the performance, I also enjoyed watching the show and the whole celebration in general. My counterpart did a great job as one of the emcees for the show, since he's an awesome community leader and everyone in the village loves him. Some of the performances were impressive. One very petite young man brought a bicycle wheel rim up with him on stage and did dance moves and tricks where he contorted and squeezed his whole body through the wheel rim at an incredibly fast pace. Another kid came up on stage with a large wooden pounder (pestle?) that they use for pounding rice and was picking it up by it's edge with his teeth! Another crippled guy in the community, who's legs are deformed to the point that he has difficulty walking, came up on stage and did an amazing dance performance using his knees, upper legs and arms, twisting up his body and doing moves almost like break dancing. I thought it was really awesome that he was able to turn something that most people would think of as a challenging handicap into a gift and a talent, and that the whole community was so supportive of him and truly appreciated his contribution to the "podium" celebration. One of my favorites was a traditional Malagasy "orchestre" made up of two hand-carved, wooden guitars, some hand-made cowhide drums and an incredibly talented vocalist. There music was very coastal African in nature, and it was really neat to see the hand-made guitars up close, as I had a great seat up on stage behind the performers.

On another, perhaps more exciting note, the solar panel installation is finished!! On wednesday the doctor, village treasurer for the solar panel and I went to Sambava and delivered the money to the local solar panel provider for our 100W, Italian made solar panel that will power the lights at our village clinic and the community satellite dish for daily one hour viewings of the Malagasy national news from Antanananrivo. The installers came up the next day and worked over the course of two days so that the panel, lights and electrical cords would be in place for us in time to celebrate the illumination of the hospital and the operation of the satellite dish for the 26 celebration. As is typical of the Malagasy culture, there were several community meetings and many speeches over the few days leading up to 26, most of which consisted of them thanking me for facilitating the "fampandrosoana," or developlent, that I helped bring to the village. So I'm relaying that onto those readers/family/friends who supported the project. The community itself did an amazing job of gathering their 25% of the funds and supporting me throughout the process. I have to say, it was wonderfully satisfying to have the installers leave on Thursday evening and then turn on a light switch at the clinic to see the doctor's office and the hospital porch illuminated. That evening someone came to the clinic to give birth, so the panel is already being put to good use. There are even community members that didn't give to the 25% community contribution and still wish to contribute, so the treasurer is going to continue collecting funds and set them aside for when a repair is needed or the battery has to be replaced, which will inevitable happen in 2 or 3 years. Thanks again to all those who helped out!

4 Juin 2011

So I have come to the conclusion that my community is really awesome. After about one year in Peace Corps, I had started to really feel at home in my host country, Madagascar. Now I’m finding that after one and a half years in (once you only have six months left), I almost don’t want to leave! It’s kind of sad realizing I don’t have much time left here, and I still have so much to do. Having finally become fluent in the language and having made so many friends will make it even harder for me to leave, as well.

My well project still isn’t finished, because we ran across several obstacles building the second well including a very deep water table and soil erosion when digging the second hole. The community had to re-dig the second well twice and ended up having to use much more cement than expected. I’m hoping we will be finished with this second well soon! Everyone is working really hard to get it done, so I have faith that the project will still be a success regardless of the frustrating obstacles and delays.

My solar panel project for the rural clinic in my village was funded very quickly, so now we are just waiting on the community to gather their 25% of the funds before we can purchase the solar panel in Sambava. The doctor supplied the head of each neighborhood in our village with a receipt book, so that we could keep a clear record of who has donated to the project. People in the community have been really great about contributing their share, and it won’t be too long before we will be able to make the purchase. Some neighborhoods are already out of receipts, and the community is having a meeting today to see how close we are to reaching the total. The mayor of the commune also announced that he would pledge half of the 25% community contribution out of his own pocket if the village members were able to contribute the other half. I was really impressed with the mayor’s generosity, especially given the general global perception that there are many problems with corruption within African governments!

My Healthy Teens Club has been going really well. We have been having great discussions about HIV/AIDS and Teen Reproductive health at our meetings lately, and are hoping to hold an AIDS prevention festival in late June or July with testing and an outdoor movie projection about HIV/AIDS. It gets tiring biking the 10km from my village into town to meet with them every week, though, as there are many steep hills in my area. I am in really great shape now for sure!

I have also been enjoying working with the local nutrition workers. The one in my village who is also the doctor’s wife has been great about counseling the mothers of young children on nutrition, weighing babies every week and holding cooking demonstrations. I have assisted her with the health education and weighing both in our village at the clinic on vaccine days and in a neighboring village we walk to once a month to meet with the mothers. Yesterday I also biked 10km into town to meet one of the other nutrition workers in my commune; we hiked for an hour into the woods to weigh babies and hold a cooking demonstration with mothers in another rural area. It was an exhausting day, especially since it has been raining non-stop for the past few days and the path was absurdly muddy and slippery. The hike through the forest was still absolutely beautiful, and the work was rewarding.

Many of the babies we weighed that day had lost weight from the time the nutrition worker weighed them last month, which we were surprised at as it is harvest time. Theoretically the mothers and children should be getting enough food now that there is so much new rice around. After talking with the mothers, we discovered that many of the children had had diarrhea during the last month, which makes sense as it has been very rainy lately. There has been a huge spike in malaria cases as well, even though we just had insecticide treated bed net distribution not too long ago. I have a health talk on diarrhea prevention, stressing hand-washing with soap, boiling water for consumption, exclusive breastfeeding for children under 6 months and rehydration for those children suffering from diarrhea. We also individually counseled mothers on nutrition and feeding strategies, especially for those children who had lost weight or were already underweight for their age. Overall it was a successful and rewarding, yet very tiring day.

I’ve also been staying busy with goal 2 of Peace Corps, learning about the culture of one’s host country. Rice harvesting season still isn’t over, so everyone has been working extremely hard, picking, drying and pounding rice (vanilla season is coming up soon). The other week, one of the women in the village gave me a rather large quantity of rice that she had picked from her field. It was really sweet of her, and it was a great opportunity for me to learn how to dry the rice in the sun and to pound the rice by hand in order to get the husks off. Thankfully I had neighbors and kids that helped me with the whole process, as I have never farmed rice before and am clueless about how the whole process works.

After setting the rice out in the sun on a mat one morning, it was dry enough to pound. Then I and a bunch of the young neighborhood girls who often come to visit pounded the rice. It was really fun learning from them, and I also took pictures, which they absolutely loved. They were very amused by both the picture-taking and my lack of proficiency in the rice pounding and winnowing. Rice pounding is hard work, but it didn’t take as long as I thought it would to pound all of my rice. It was very satisfying when I was finally able to cook my first batch of white rice that I had dried and pounded myself! I also gave a cup each to the girls who had helped me and promised them that I would bring them back developed pictures that I took once I go to Antananarivo in August.

26 June, the big celebration of Madagascar’s Independence is coming up, too. Everyone is preparing for the huge party that lasts almost a week long. The doctor’s wife has already requested me to perform with her, her daughter and some of our neighbor lady friends in a song and dance competition called “Podium.” We will be rehearsing several dances to some current, popular Malagasy songs and then performing them over the course of a few evenings in front of the whole village, along with other contestants. We are even getting matching outfits made for the occasion. I had to meet them in Sambava to buy the cloth and get fitted at the tailor. I think it’ll be a lot of fun, even if I do make a fool of myself dancing in front of everybody!