Morondava

After I took care of all the necessary paperwork and courtesy visits to close out my Peace Corps service, I left the chilly capital of Antananarivo and headed to Morondava on the west coast of Madagascar via bush taxi. It was a very long 15 hour ride, during which I was sandwiched in between four ladies who all had young toddlers on their laps, one of which kept kicking me constantly throughout the 15 hours. Needless to say I was exhausted and very relieved to get out of the bus when we finally arrived in Morondava. I was also thrilled to discover it was much warmer and sunnier here as compared to the wintery highlands where I had been shivering for the past week.

I quickly made my way to a cheap hotel on the beach and changed into my swimsuit so I could go out and enjoy the cool, Indian Ocean water and lay on the warm, soft sand. The beach in Morondava is one of the nicest I’ve seen in Madagascar: clean, wide, soft, not crowded, and sprinkled with trendy beach bars. It was nice seeing some Malagasy families and a few tourists strolling along, enjoying the sunny weather too. In the afternoon I was able to organize a trip to the Tsingy rock formations and Baobab Avenue for the next three days. Even though it’s not quite tourist season yet, I managed to find another tourist to split the cost of the trip with, as it’s very expensive to reserve a vehicle for three days to drive all the way out to the national park and back.

Early the next morning we left Morondava and drove all day through the dust and ferried over two rivers until we finally arrived at the park at dusk. We ended up staying at this really cool lodge that had a lot of different room options. There were the pricier rooms with hot showers and indoor toilets, cheaper bungalows with shared bathrooms and the cheapest option--tents all set up with mattresses, sheets and blankets. The campsite was really nice with electricity and clean bathrooms, so I opted for the cheapest option, because it was actually a really nice set-up and a good deal.

The next morning we woke up early so we’d have the whole day to spend in the park. In the morning we did the first circuit around one part of the Grand Tsingy rock formations, which was pretty incredible. The guide gave us harnesses to wear so we could clip into cable lines set up along the path over the sketchy, steep parts. The views from the top of the spiky rock formations were breathtaking. After the first circuit, we explored some of the caves in between and under the Tsingy rock formations. Unfortunately I had given one of my headlamps away to a fellow volunteer along time ago, then had lost another one, and the third one was out of batteries, which were an obscure type that made them difficult to replace. So I ended up using the flashlight on my phone, which was a little inconvenient but sufficed for the short adventure we took through the caves. The path was a little scary in some sections, because there were some steep drop-offs, and the dusty ground was slippery under my sneakers. The rock formations were really neat though, and I even tought the guide the word “spelunking.”

After we came out of the caves, we took a short break for lunch. Then we ventured into the forest and spotted a western bamboo lemur and a white-fronted brown lemur. After another short scramble over the sharp rocks to gaze over a different view of the expansive Tsingy, we came back down to the forest and spotted the white, fluffy Sifaka lemur. It was really cool that we managed to see all three of the diurnal lemurs in the western, dry, deciduous forest surrounding the Tsingy.

I was really exhausted after the day of hiking and scrambling over rocks, so I turned in for an early night in my tent in the evening. The next morning we headed back on the road, so we would make it to the Baobab Avenue in time for sunset. Though the second ferry was quite delayed because of a truck that got stuck on the steep river-bank when it was disembarking, we made it to the Baobabs just in time for the sunset. The rows and rows of Baobabs along the road were quite beautiful against the glowing, red-orange sky, and I got some great pictures. Then we continued on our way back to Morondava where I enjoyed some tropical cocktails and some good seafood before heading back to the capital the next day.

The ride back to Tana was much less cramped but much more frustrating because of the timing. There were no options for departure times, as all of the bus companies were scheduled to leave at 8am, so I mad a reservation with one of the companies and arrived at their bus at 8am. Of course, we didn’t actually end up leaving until 10am. Because it takes 15 hours and to get to Tana and the driver decided to stop at 11pm to take a 30 minute nap, we ended up arriving in the capital at 2 in the morning. As we pulled into the bus station, I started scouting out taxis so I could head back to the Peace Corps volunteer house.

The bus stopped and the lights turned off, but none of the passengers got out. We just sat there in the parking lot. I quietly asked the girl next to me why no one was getting out. She explained that as it was the middle of the night and it was dark, the taxis were really expensive, so everyone was waiting until 5am when the sun rises to take cabs home. I thought it was ridiculous to spend another needless 3 hours in the cold, uncomfortable bus and was willing to fork over the extra five bucks to go back to a warm house instead. Unfortunately, my luggage was strapped to the top of the bus, and the driver was unwilling to climb up there in the dark and undo all the ties so I could get my bag down. Furthermore, he was angry at me for not telling them at the station in Morondava that I planned to go directly home upon arriving in Tana. I couldn’t believe he expected me to have anticipated that whole complicated scheme.

The mentality of leaving mid-morning and arriving in the middle of the night made absolutely no sense to me. If we had left at dawn, we would have arrived in Tana at a reasonable time in the evening. Alternatively, if we had left Morondava in the evening, we would have arrived in Tana in the morning. But no, we had to spend two extra hours waiting around at the station in Morondava and another three extra hours waiting around in the middle of the night in Tana, making the total travel time twenty hours instead of the already long fifteen hours of actual driving time. Either way, I finally made it back and am ready to leave Madagascar tomorrow!

Parting Words for Madagascar

Here's a poem a wrote about six months back for a fellow volunteer who was getting ready to finish her service and leave Madagascar at that time. Since I'm getting ready to head out of here myself, I thought I should post it here to share with everyone. Enjoy!

Parting Words for Madagascar

Goodbye , wide magnificent land,
with steep green mountains and vibrant rice fields,
precious forest and winding rivers,
sparkling oceans and waving palm trees,
endangered, yet flowing with life and generosity.

Goodbye, radical skies,
with pounding rains and thundering winds,
soothing sunsets and haunting, red sunrises,
brilliant rainbows and brighter stars
and moons than we will ever hope to see again
in this lonely, open countryside.

Goodbye, lovely echoes
of rhythmic pounding, laughing, crying,
howling, mooing and crowing,
of wise kabaris and African proverbs,
women chatting around the cookfire,
of cheers from the village football pitch,
and luscious harmonies emanating
from churches, schools and funeral marches,
always uplifting no matter the circumstance.

Goodbye, sensuous smells
of burnt and bitter roasting coffee,
sugary vanilla and sticky jackfruit,
of thick, smokey firewood and steamy rice,
of floral, fruity, tropical blossoms
and the pineapples, leechies and mangoes
of blessed November’s bounty.

Goodbye, family, friends and living things
of all species, colors and walks of life,
playful lemurs, vibrant geckos and brilliant chameleons,
grand herds of zebu roaming the great expanse,
inspiring leaders and passionate co-workers,
incredible women and resilient children
facing unbelievable odds.
Loving, caring, welcoming with open arms,
You embrace us, nourish us and give us life.

Farewell, but not forgotten.
Always in our hearts and minds,
in all forms will live and breathe
the memories of each other.

End of Service

So I'm officially an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer)! I closed out my service this week at the PC bureau in the capital, Antananarivo, and now I'm headed out on more adventures, travelling around Madagascar for another week and then onto India before travelling home. The last few weeks have been kind of hard. I didn't have much going on at site, since the field staff I was supposed to work with were gone to meetings for several weeks. On top of having nothing to do work-wise, everything decided to break during my last week at site. My back brake and tire valve on my bike broke, all my flashlights broke or ran out of batteries, and most inconvenient of all, my phone broke. Aside from trying to fix my bike and relying candles as my only source of light at night, it was really difficult trying to coordinate how to leave site at the end of the month without having any reliable mode of communication.

Even though I didn't have much going on work-wise and was frustrated with everything falling apart on me, I still managed to keep myself a little busy with a few small activities. I carried out some household visits in the village, talking to neighbors and community members about clean water, handwashing and improved latrines, and I also built an improved cookstove with the local nutrition worker. The last few days at site were occupied mostly by packing, cleaning up my house and giving away my few possessions to the school, nutrition organization and friends and neighbors.

The last weekend before I left site, I scheduled a day trip with a guide to the local tourist destination in my area: a series of waterfalls and protected forest area. Though it was rainy and cold and the path was full of water and mud up to my ankles, knees or even waste at some points, the cascades were quite beautiful. It took us an hour in a canoe and then two more hours to walk through the mud to get there, but it was worth it to spend the day in the pristine forest and to get the chance to see the local tourist attraction near my site. It was quite an exhausting hike, and I was surprisingly sore for the next few days after that!

It definitely wasn't as hard emotionally to leave this site like it was leaving my last site up in the northeast. Since I was only in this new community for a few months and many of the friends I did manage to make were gone for long stretches of time to St. Marie, Soanierana Ivongo or Tamatave, I didn't really establish any strong connections with anyone. One of the young ladies in the village, who was a devoted member of the adult English class, was very sad to see me go. She got all teary-eyed and made sure that we exchanged pictures, phone numbers and addresses before I left. It was really sweet and I was sad to have to say goodbye to her. Even though it wasn't as difficult saying goodbye to most other people in the community, there were still definitely some friends, neighbors and co-workers whom I will miss. I do wish I had had more time to enjoy the gorgeous, deserted beaches along the coast just north of my village. The weather was just too cold and rainy to take advantage while I was there.

At the end of the month, I made the long journey with my heavy, metal Peace Corps trunk full of tech books, my bicycle (Carlton) and three bags of stuff (clothes, voandalanas, books) back to the capital. Luckily there was a big truck that passed through my site around mid-morning on the day I was headed to my banking town, so they threw all my stuff in the large, covered cargo bed in the back and hopped in the front cab. The driver and his two helpers were actually really friendly. They were familiar with Peace Corps, and we had a nice chat during the long journey down the sand road.

As always we had to wait for several hours at the first ferry crossing and then several more hours at the second ferry crossing before getting to the paved road. The distance from my site to Soanierana Ivongo, where the paved road starts is actually only about 30km, but because of all the sand and the long waits at the ferry crossings, it can take up to 5 hours to get there.

Finally we reached the paved road in the afternoon and were able to continue on to the small banking town of Fenerive Est. I was absolutely thrilled to say goodbye to the terrible, sandy roads and painfully slow ferries. It was freezing cold and rainy outside, and it still took us a few hours, because a chunk of the road had been washed away by the intense flooding that occurred during the month of April. The road had been temporarily, make-shift repaired with bound wooden planks. It was a little precarious, making the crossing on the rickety bridge over the crevasse that separated the two sections of road, but our huge truck somehow managed to make it to the other side safely and I arrived at my destination with all my stuff in the late afternoon-early evening.

The next day took care of some business in my banking town and made reservations for a bush taxi to travel to Tamatave and then Tana the next day. I ended up having to wake up at 4am so I could get to Tamatave in time to catch another vehicle to the capital. I amazingly managed to make all my connections without losing any of my stuff and got to the capital in the evening. The next week was filled with tons of paperwork, but I somehow got through it all and successfully closed out my service. It's hard to believe I am no longer a Peace Corps volunteer. On to more adventures, I guess!

Smells of Madagascar

There are so many different odors here in Madagascar, some pleasant and some quite pungent. Since smell is one of our strongest senses of memory, I thought it would be significant to describe some of the most memorable smells I've encountered during my time in Madagascar. In order from fragrant to smelly:

papaya : From far away you can't really smell it, but cut open a fresh papaya and the deliciously sweet, juicy, green, slightly floral and very ripe fragrance wafts through the room and lingers on your breath and fingers as you eat it. The smell is so addicting, it makes it difficult to stop eating the delectable fruit.

pineapple : I love the smell of fresh pinapples during peak season. Usually at least one or two are sitting in my house during the months of February and March. It's citrusy, fragrant, sweet and distinctly pinapple when you hold up the fruit to your nose. Some Malagasies have told me that they when there is a death during pinapple season, they sometimes put a pinapple in the casket with the corpse to mask the unpleasant odors of the decaying body.

oranges : When it's orange season here, you can smell the fruit stands from several meters away...especially when someone is peeling an orange. It's a citrusy, lemony fresh smell. I do like them when they're sweet, but it's sometimes hard to tell from the outside because they are all picked when they are green.

jackfruit : Probably one of the strongest-smelling fruits around. I still remember my first month at site when a neighborhood kid came by to give me a wedge of it. I had it sitting on the counter for an hour and it had already stunk up the whole house. It's a very sweet smell,but also very ripe...almost like rotting bananas, which is why a lot of people don't like it. I'm not a huge fan of the odor, but the taste of the fruit is so sweet that I still enjoy eating it.

vanilla : During vanilla season on the northeast coast of Madagascar (June through September) the sweet fragrance smacks you in the face as you walk into a village where people have just set out their ripe, cooked vanilla on mats out in the sun to dry. It's a slightly floral, very sugary and distinctly vanilla scent.

coconut oil : Everytime I smell coconut oil, I now associate it with hair-braiding. The women on the coast have textured hair from their African roots, so they often use oil when they weave their hair into small, intricate braided patterns that cover their heads. It's a pleasantly sweet, thick, nutty, tropical smell, which is really what I enjoy about hair-braiding time in the hot afternoons in Madagascar.

Morenga : Morenga is the miracle tree, originating from India. It's leaves and seeds are edible and provide an extraordinary array of vitamins and minerals. Fortunately it grows like a weed on the east coast, and when Malagasies can't find anything else to cook as their side dish, they will often pick the leaves of this tree to make a stew or sauce rich with vitamins to eat with their rice. Whenever I cook with morenga, the smell of the fresh leaves fills up the house. It's a very green, slightly floral, healthy fragrance. I sometimes like grabbing a branch or taking a fistful of leaves in my hand to smell. Just from the scent, one can tell that the leaves are healthful and full of vitamins.

cooking rice : Malagasies cook rice two or three times a day here, so come meal time, you can smell the sweet, hearty fragrance of the cooking rice wafting through the air. Especially if it's in your kitchen and you've just taken off the lid of the rice pot. I myself only eat rice once or twice a day or every other day, varying my diet with pasta and bread-like foods. I still enjoy the smell of steamy rice, though. It definitely makes me hungry when I smell rice cooking, which makes me feel like I'm really starting to become a true Malagasy!

boiled corn : Over the past month or two, corn has really been in season. Aside from fried cassava, boiled corn is one of the Malagasy's favorite snacks, although I'm confused as to why. Most of the corn here is starchy, tough, feed corn. Once in a while there's a vendor who will have what looks like American sweet corn. I'm sometimes tempted to try it, but always worried I'll end up stuck with a whole cob full of disappointing, dry, hard kernels. Either way, the smell is quite nice--slightly nutty and sweet, fresh and nourishing. It's pleasant when the steam wafts in during a stuffy bush taxi ride, where vendors along the road come up during a pit stop with steaming plastic buckets full of the freshly boiled corn still in the husk to sell to hungry passengers.

roasting coffee : Malagasies on the northeast coast farm coffee, both as a cash crop and for domestic consumption. Sometimes I can smell the burnt, nutty scent from nearby neighbors roasting coffee in a pan over the open cookfire. Normally I love the smell of coffee, but the Malagasies roast their beans so dark, that the smell here is a little to bitter and strong for me.

woodsmoke : Everyone cooks with firewood or charcoal in Madagascar, so you can smell smoke during meal times or if people are burning trash or someone is clearing a nearby field for farming. The smoke also lingers on the clothes and in the hair of the women and young children, who tend to spend most of their time around cookfires.

rain : Sometimes you can smell it coming--the cool change in air temperature registering in the nostrils and lungs along with a dense wetness from the humidity, fresh and clean. When it first starts falling, there's an earthiness to the scent of the rain as the first drops kick up days of accumulated dirt and dust. I love the thick, damp smell it brings as well as the refreshing coolness and the sense of renewal and new growth afterwards.

fresh wild flowers : Sometimes if I go hiking through the forest to another village to do a health project or go biking or jogging down the mian road, I'm treated to the fragrance of tropical wildflowers growing along the path. The northeast being one of the few remaining heavily forested areas in Madagascar, there are a wide variety of flowers and plants that are gorgeous to look at and intoxicating to smell. It's like a faint, natural, floral perfume floating through the air. I especially notice the fragrance when the wind changes or I happen to jog past a particularly thick patch. My favorite wildflowers that I frequently see are bright, indigo, oval-shaped, orchid-like flowers that grow all along the roadside. Another is an elegant, white, unfolding, cone-shaped flower with wide, shiny green leaves.

cloves : I finished up my time in Madagascar in the clove-producing region of the country. As a kid, I never liked the spice. It was always too strong for me. But now I love the smell. It is so spicy, fragrant and slightly sweet. It reminds me of chai. Even though it's not clove season, I looked around and finally found a small sache full to buy and take home with me as a little souvenir from the east coast of Madagascar.

"mokari": Early morning in the village or anytime in bigger towns or on the bush taxi--especially after stopping at a large town along the road--the heavy odor of fried snacks (called "mokari" in northern Madagascar) and cooking oil saturate the air surrounding the vendors and eaters. Alomost all street foods are fried here--bananas, plaintains, breadfruit, cassava, balls of dough made from flour or cassava, taro root and sweet potatoes. Oil is relatively expensive compared to other food items, and the vendors only sell each fried snack for 100 ariary (5 cents) a pop, so who knows how many times they reuse that oil to deep fry everything. Given that the frying oil isn't the freshest or the cleanest, the scent of fried snacks often has a rancid quality...not very appetizing, especially when you're crammed in a stuffy bush taxi and everyone around you is munching on the stuff with greasy fingers. The worst are the cassava-based snacks. They have this somewhat sour, off, indescriable odor, which always makes me wonder why it's one of the Malagasy's main staple foods outside of rice.

kids : I don't want to seem mean or judgmental, but the kids here for the most part do not smell very good. It's understandable, since they play in the dirt all day or work in the fields and sweat so much from the heat and humidity. They also bathe in the river, most of the time without soap, and they have one or maybe two pairs of clothes, which are usually stained, ripped and faded. So the dirt and sweat lingers on their skin and hair as well as the woodsmoke. Many don't have toothbrushes or toothpaste and they tend to snack on that fried cassava or whatever fruit is in season regardless of whether or not it's actually ripe. So their breath doesn't help with the odor. The woodsmoke stubbornly lingers in their hair and on their clothes, as the kids--especially girls--are usually assigned to help with kitchen duties. If they're really young, they also smell of urine, since there's no such thing as diapers or a toilet (especially for peeing). If they are older, they might still smell of urine, because they often take care of their younger siblings who may have an accident on their lap at any given moment.

cow manure : My neighbors at my last site had a cow that they tied up next door during the night. The westerly breeze in the mornings often brought with it the lovely scent of fresh cow poop. I don't know how else to describe it other than it smells like shit. It is shit. There are a few people in the village that herd cows, so they leave huge steaming piles of manure all along the walking paths conveniently for pedestrians to step in (there's also a lot of dog shit too, which is much more disgusting.) So unfortunately the cow manure is a fairly common stench throughout the village.

sweat/b.o. : The last and perhaps strongest smell I've come across here is that of body odor. I think it is an African thing, because I've experienced it in Niger and in Tanzania too, but it is surely a strong odor here in Madagascar. I'll even admit that my body has started to produce a similar smell when I sweat a lot, even though I still use deodorant, bathe with fragrant soap and change and launder my clothes regularly. It's especially strong on me after I come back from a run or bike ride. It's especially strong on them when I'm crowded with Malagasies on the bush taxi or when I'm helping out at the village clinic. It is so strong in fact, that the smell of b.o. has permanently saturated the walls of the clinic (and it's not just because it's a small building made of wood.) The big concrete hospital at my very first site had the same permanent, salty stench. I remember the very first time I walked into that hospital on the day I was installed by Peace Corps. The salty, stuffy, stale odor hit me like a barn door in the face. Unfortunately it's not one of those smells you get used to after sitting in the same spot for a while. As one person leaves and another enters, the odor renews itself.

I think part of the reason the odor is so strong here is that everyone does hard, physical labor out in the fields and it's a hot and humid climate. Deoderant is nonexistent and nice-smelling soaps are a bit of a luxury. All the shops sell fragrant soaps, but they are a little more expensive than the everyday, locally made lye soap. As far as laundry goes, some people do actually use the powdered soap, but most use the common bar soap and they don't really soak their clothes. They just suds them up, bang them on a rock or log and then rinse them in the river. I don't think the whole process actually ever gets rid of the stench, though they are pretty good at getting out stains and rubbing and whacking the clothes so hard that they stretch out and wear paper thin and get holes in them. Most people can only afford one or two changes of clothes too, so it's understandable that their clothes quickly start smelling again or never really get rid of the body odor that has seeped in.

As far as the odor itself though, it is different from the body odor in America (which also is unpleasant, but in a different way). I don't know whether it's the diet or just the intensity or something in the air or the soap, but the smell of my sweat here is definitely different than it used to be back in America. Whatever the case, that is one unpleasant smell I am looking forward to leaving behind. I will however miss all the other wonderful and exotic tropical fragrances I experienced during my time here.

Coffee Rituals

I was thinking back to that rough, cold and wet morning I spent in the village of Antsiraka at the tip of the eastern peninsula on my way to Ile St. Marie last month. During the morning hours that our boat crew waited out the wind and rain, I sat huddled in the kitchen of one of the Malagasy families in the village watching coffee be prepared and consumed. The whole process got me thinking about how we consume coffee in America. The cultural comparison of the two rituals is quite a juxtaposition of polar opposites. Here's what I observed that groggy morning in the village of Antsiraka:

Since I didn't fall asleep for even five minutes during that cold, uncomfortable night in the village, I witnessed dawn breaking as its faint light filtered through the bamboo walls of the hut. Around 6AM I heard the grandmother calling from the shack next door that served as the kitchen, asking her husband who was in our hut where the coffee was. "It should be in a plastic sache in the kitchen," he answered drearily in Malagasy from his bed. I was fed up with laying on the cold floor, so I decided to join the grandmother in the kitchen in hopes of stealing some warmth from the cookfire that she was starting up.

As I entered the kitchen, the grandmother was stoking the wood fire. Though the smoke made my eyes water and throat burn, I gladly entered the small shack and sat on a woven grass mat on the floor to near the cooking area to observe the coffee-making process and to warm my hands by the fire. Eventually the grandmother found the small plastic bag of green, unroasted coffee beans that she had probably bought from a farmer in the village who had harvested them from a nearby field earlier that year.

The grandmother proceeded to place an up-turned pot lid on top of the iron, triangular frame over the fire and dropped the beans in the metal pot lid to roast. She periodically stirred the beans around in the lid for 5 or 10 minutes until they acquired a jet-black hue-- the super-dark French Roast that the Malagasies never stray from when preparing their coffee.

After the beans were done, she gave them to her son to pound outside in the large wooden mortar and pestle. From inside the warm kitchen, I listened to the rhythmmic thumping of coffee pounding as the grandma scooped some river water from a plastic bucket and set it to boil in a pot over the fire. Then she rinsed out the coffee sock, consiting of a mesh stocking attached to a plastic handle.

After the coffee had been hand-pounded to a coarse powder, the young man handed the jar full of coffee grounds to his mother. She put a few scoops from the jar into the coffee sock and poured the boiling water through the sock and into the pot below several times over. Meanwhile, she had sent her husband to bike five minutes into the village to buy local, raw cane sugar from one of the small shops.

After the sugar arrived in another plastic sache, she added several heaping spoonfuls to the freshly brewed coffee and doled out small "tasse de cafes" of sugary black substance to as many as ten different people. Neighbors came by throughout the morning to bring news from the village and take a few sips of coffee offered to them in the tiny, tin cups. Most of the talk was of the birth that had occurred next door during the night. With the help of the local midwife, there was a newborn babe amongst us. Others discussed the weather and the condition of the sea and debated whether or not we'd be able to cross the 7km channel to get to St. Marie that day.

Overall I was just astounded by the whole process that the old woman went through to make coffee just so she could offer a few hot sips to each surrounding neighbor. And of course there was no luxury of adding milk to the black coffee. Some people in the village do herd cows, but for the type of cow and their nutritional status, they hardly produce milk regularly. As there is no refridgeration in the village, there would be no way to store any milk that was produced for more than a day. If there happened to be fresh milk, it would also probably be too expensive for the average Malagasy family to afford. Even the tinned, sweetened condensed milk that's available in some shops is still cost prohibitive for most and difficult to keep the ants out of once the tin is opened.

So we drank our sugary shots of black coffee by the warmth of the kitchen's cookfire and chatted about everything from life in America to the island of St. Marie to development work to Malagasy culture, or, "fomba." The whole communal and labor intensive process is so different from the way we have our cofee in America.

Some Americans grab their java on their way to the office, in giant plastic or paper cups from coffee shops with their choice of different kinds of flavorings and and milks added. Others perpare the percolator with grocery store pre-ground coffee and disposable paper filters the night before so that all they have to do in the morning is plug the machine into the wall and wait twenty minutes in order to enjoy two or three giant ceramic mugfulls of coffee all to themselves with pasteurized milk from the fridge and granulated white sugar from the cupboard. They may drink their coffee while reading the paper or surfing the web on their laptops from their kitchen tables. Both the American and Malagasy coffee rituals have their drawbacks and advantages, but I will surely miss the Malagasy "fomba" of preparing and drinking coffee when I am back in America.

Age is Relative

Since I just celebrated my birthday last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about age lately…especially the implications of turning 25. I’m no longer going to be in my early 20s and I’ll soon be in my late 20s. And before I realize it, I’ll be in my 30s! I’m sure to my middle-aged readers, that still seems really young, but when I’ve spent a majority of my life thinking of myself as a teenager and then a young adult, it’s a significant milestone entering my mid-20s.

The other reason I’ve been thinking a lot about age is because of the recent adult English class I held in my new community. I had been trying for several weeks to set a date with the interested community members, but we had trouble finding a time when all of us could meet, and then things like unexpected meetings and funerals kept coming up and causing us to postpone our lesson. So finally this past week I held my first conversation class. I had about ten students. Many of them were really sharp and already knew quite a bit of English. A few had a hard time, but they all did really well in general. All the students were teens or young adults. A few were teachers, a few were middle school students a few were middle or high school dropouts who wanted to get back into learning. It was great to establish rapport with the young adults in the village. We started out with introductions and greetings. At the end of the lesson, one student wanted to practice asking, “How old are you?” and so consequently I found out everyone’s age in the class. Much to my surprise, I was the zoky be, or, oldest one amongst them! Their ages ranged mostly from 20 to 23. It really surprised me to find out that all of my students were so young, because looking at some of them I would have thought they were at least my age, if not a few years older.

In general, Malagasies always seem so much older and more mature than their actual age (with the exception of some of the annoying guys who think it’s their job to verbally harass women all day). In an impoverished setting like rural Madagascar with such a rough lifestyle, a lot is expected of kids at a very young age. As soon as they know how to walk, children are expected to fend for themselves, and as early as 6 or 7, they start contributing to the household. Whether it’s hauling water from half a kilometer away, washing the family clothes and dishes at the river, working in the fields, taking care of younger siblings, cooking lunch over the open cook-fire…they do it all. Many of those little kids are more competent than I am at such household tasks. I cheat and use a gas stove, so I don’t know the first thing about starting a charcoal or wood fire. The kids in my last village used to wash my clothes because they were used to doing everyone’s laundry and could do a much better job than I (I’m so lazy and unskilled at scrubbing laundry by hand that I just soak it in the powdered detergent, swish it around and rinse it a few times.) The mundane chores we give our kids in America, like setting the table, taking out trash, feeding the dog and putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher in no way compare to the physical labor and hardships that some of the Malagasy children are expected to bear at such young age.

Malagasies have to grow up fast, especially when you consider that the typical Malagasy family consists of five or six children, the parents are often away working in the fields and half of the kids don’t attend school because the family can’t afford the fees for all of them to study. If the kids do study, it’s usually for only half a day anyway. Hence the kids are unsupervised starting at an impossibly young age and have to figure out how to survive on their own with no amenities like electricity and running water to make their lives easier. So perhaps because of the fact that Malagasies have to grow up quickly, they often seem so much older than they appear.

I think back to my childhood and how I used to consider it a difficult time, especially compared to a lot of my peers—certainly not for economic but rather for emotional reasons. My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I as only in second grade and she was very sick for much of the time that I was growing up. I remember at her funeral when I was fourteen, my cousin said to me through teary eyes and a comforting hug that I’d have to grow up fast. Looking back on the trails and suffering of that period of my life now, I’m starting to think it still doesn’t compare to how quickly the Malagasy children have to grow up.

True, there was an immense amount of emotional pain and stress in our household when my mother was severely ill from the chemotherapy treatments, and a lot was expected of me, like helping to take care of her and to pitch in with the cooking and laundry. However I had loving support from my father, relatives and older siblings through it all and I never had to worry about basic needs like where my next meal would come from or where to find clean water for the house when all the wells dried up. I lived the entire first twenty years of my life with such luxuries of the developed world as indoor toilets, running water, 24/7 electricity, uninterrupted, quality education, ample quantities of healthy and tasty food, loving and caring family, quality healthcare, reliable means of public and private transportation and safety and security. Many Malagasy children simply do without a majority of these basic amenities which we Americans take for granted everyday.

The other aspect of Malagasy life that often makes especially the women seem older than they actually are is the early age at which they start bearing children. Since Malagasy culture values fertility highly, the average family even in this day and age still aims for four or five children. If the women actually space out their births by two years, having this many children requires them to start early. In addition, many women in the rural areas end up dropping out of school at the primary or secondary level because their family can’t afford the school fees or the secondary school is in a larger town that is too far away from their home village for them to continue on after finishing primary school. Since these women no longer have their education to focus on, they start thinking about starting a family, even though they may only be in their teens.

Birth control is available for free at government clinics thanks to the Malagasy ministry of health and outside aid from developed countries, but these clinics are still often too far for women to walk all the way there every month from their village to pick up the medication. For those who can access the clinic, their husbands or boyfriends still often reject the idea of using birth control, so their partners either have to use it secretly or not use it at all. And then many of the clinics face problems with frequent stock-outs, so the women periodically have to return home from the clinic without having received their shot or pills because the regional health centers weren’t able to replenish the supply of birth control in the rural areas.

With all of these barriers to birth control, Malagasy women start having children as young as 14 or 15 and continue having them into their 30s and 40s. The stress that pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and child rearing puts on these women’s bodies makes some of them appear as if they are 40 when they are in fact only 20, simply because they may have already had three kids.

On the reverse side, Malagasies often think that I look much younger than I am. I do have a young face, but I think it has more to do with it than that. When they hear that I am not married nor have any kids, they immediately respond that I’m still a child. Since I haven’t yet taken on the responsibilities of head of the household, I must seem somewhat young and immature compared to the average Malagasy mother taking care of 5 kids and a husband. I also tend to present myself in a way that makes me seem younger, because of language and culture barriers. Even though my Malagasy has steadily improved over the two and a half years that I have lived here, I still end up communicating at a more basic level or talking around vocabulary that I don’t know, which probably makes me sound like the way most kids or adolescents would talk. Since I’m still sometimes unfamiliar with cultural norms or expectations and because I’m generally shy anyway, I also tend to hesitate or act unsure in a lot of social situations, making me seem younger and less experienced.

So returning back to the situation at the english class in my village, I think it was as much a surprise to my English club pupils as it was to me that I was the oldest one in the classroom that day!

rain, rain, rain!

I have had one crazy adventure after another these past couple months in Manompana! The weather has made things especially interesting. I’m not sure whether it’s just this part of the island or just an unusual spell or the affect of global warming but I’ve never seen so much rain and flooding in my life. One night earlier this month it started raining in the late evening. At my usual 8 o clock bedtime it was still raining, and not just a sprinkle but a full-on downpour. I woke up several times during the night to the sound of rain still pounding down outside. And at 6 in the morning the downpour still had not ceased nor even let up a bit. I opened my front door that morning to find that the entire village was underwater. There was a lake right in front of my house reaching all the way up to the fence near my front door. There was also a river flowing down the foot path from the school a few 100m away down past my house and into what was now a lake in the center of the village. Everyone was wading through calf-deep water in order to go about their daily chores or buy things from the shops.

A few days after the flooding I had to bike from my village 10km north to Manompana to meet up with my NGO staff and help them with their work. I was a bit apprehensive, as I wasn’t sure how much destruction the flooding had done to the roads. I had heard from some of my friends in the village that none of the ferries from Soanierana going north to Mananara were running because all the flooding had made the river currents too strong for the ferries to be able to cross. One ferry up north towards Mananara had apparently been swept away in the torrential water flow. There had been no vehicles traveling north or south on Route National 5 the past several days. As I biked the three kilometers north to the ferry crossing at Fandrarazana, I found that the sand was actually nicely compact from the rain and the lack of large trucks passing and messing up the road. There were a few spots where I had to bike through water that was almost up to my knees, though, which was an interesting experience. At the river crossing I took a canoe with my bike laying over the top of it, since the ferry wasn’t running. Normally the river basin has only a weak current but that day it was quite strong as all the extra water from the tributaries was still emptying out into the ocean. The canoeman had to paddle especially hard to counter the brisk flow of water. After the river crossing the road was still nice and compact although there were washed out ruts, a few bumpy sections and some large puddles to bike/wade through. As I approached Manompana, I was shocked to see that the little concrete meter-long bridge over the marsh entering into town had sunk down into the water and there was now a canal a few meters long that I had to cross in order to complete my journey. Since the canoe was free I opted to cross that way, though it felt kind of silly to ride in a boat for all of three meters.

The work in Manompana went well and the sun came out to make it a beautiful day, so the intrepid journey ended up being worth it. Together with the NGO field staff we went around to random households in town to talk with families about the advantages of using improved latrines and strategies for building their own. I helped by bringing along a poster I had made of a simple latrine using locally available materials that effectively prevents against the spread of diarrheal disease. I also prompted the field staff to come with me to inspect the latrines that the families were already using if they happened to have one. Though it’s not so pleasant venturing into the dirty, smelly places that people use to relieve themselves, we gained useful information about the conditions of sanitation facilities that people were already using and were able to give recommendations to the families we visited on how they could improve their existing latrines to cut down on the spread of intestinal illnesses. Most of the latrines we observed were very basic made of materials that ranged from old tires to metal barrels to rotted wood with shacks built of bamboo and palm leaves on top.

A clean, healthful latrine can be made of such local materials, but it needs to have a lid for the pit, a ventilation pipe to release the smelly air, and door that closes. The pit itself should not be dug too closely to the water table below and should have some kind of lining to reinforce it. We found that many people in Manompana already had latrines, but very few had improved latrines that effectively prevented against the spread of disease. One of the major challenges is the type of soil in our area—all sand with a shallow water table less than a meter under the ground. The only real solution for this type of soil is an above-ground latrine, which means that people can’t simply dig their own pit and stick a shack on top of it. They have to at least find a metal barrel or a mason who can construct some type of cement, super-terrain “pit.” Even the simplest models of such latrines are still cost-prohibitive for poorer Malagasy families.

Another barrier in a larger community like Manompana is the lack of space to build a latrine. Most families we visited had only a very small piece of property where they had their main house and maybe a small shack for a kitchen; hence they didn’t really have a good place to build a latrine close to their house. We suggested communal latrines with surrounding neighbors to address the problems of expense and lack of space, but sharing can also be challenging in terms of cleanliness and shared responsibilities for maintenance. Although I probably grossed the NGO staff out by making them go with me to look at people’s latrines, it was all in all a very interesting day.

On my way out of Manompana at the end of the day the canoe wasn’t there, so I had to wade through the mucky mess on the other side of the bridge. The small detour made me sufficiently dirty and provided quite the entertainment for all the kids and other spectators crowded around the broken bridge. Otherwise I made it uneventfully and safely back, only wetter, muddier and sandier for the wear.

A little over a week later, it decided to rain absurdly again. I was all set to go on a canoe ride over to Ile St. Marie for my birthday, the small island off the east coast from where I’ve been living and working for the past few months. I had already postponed my trip by a few days on account of a meeting with NGO staff and local community leaders concerning rules and regulations on the usage of our newly installed pump-wells bringing potable water to rural villages throughout the Manompana commune. It was quite an interesting meeting, where we decided on how much to fine people for things like latrines and trash pits built within thirty meters of the new water points, washing or herding animals near the pumps and even swearing or fighting at the pumps. I was glad I stayed and helped with the decision-making process, but I was ready to get to St. Marie already to celebrate my birthday with overpriced cocktails at a nice resort on the beach.

Unfortunately it decided to rain absurdly again for three days straight, so I wasn’t able to leave my village, but rather sat in my house shivering and wrapped up in a sweatshirt and blanket until the wind and rain decided to let up. Finally a few days after my birthday I was able to leave for St. Marie with a motor-powered, Malagasy-style wooden canoe leaving from my village filled with lots of wooden planks (I’m hoping legally logged) bound for sale on the small island. I biked 3km north to the ferry crossing at Fandrarazana to meet the canoe and we threw my bags and Carlton (I’ve named my bike since we’ve been on so many adventures together now) on top of all the wood. Then I sat on top and we headed off. It was a bit scary passing over the point where the waves brake at the sandbar barrier where the basin of the Fandrarazana river and the ocean meet. We went over a pretty steep wave and I got a nice salty splash in the face. From there on out to the tip where the mainland makes a steep point was smooth sailing for several hours. The narrow strip of land that juts out to almost meet the island of St. Marie protected us from the strong winds blowing in from the southwest. The wind died down and the sun even fully came out making it the warmest I had felt in three days.

Once we arrived at the tip however, we saw that the open channel separating us from St. Marie was too choppy for us to cross. We decided to park in the small village of Antsiraka at the very eastern tip of Madagascar. After a lunch of rice and freshly-caught fish we waited around, hoping for the weather to improve. Unfortunately the Indian Ocean was still too choppy for us to cross over to St. Marie, so we had to stay the night in Antsiraka.

It was probably the roughest night I have ever spent during my two years in Peace Corps combined with all of the camping experiences I have had in my life, which is really saying something. We slept in a bamboo shack close to the beach that belonged to a friend of the canoe captain. The owner of the shack slept in his bed while two of us slept on the ground with nothing but a woven grass mat as cushioning. I was wedged in a small space between a bicycle leaning precariously against the wall of the shack and our captain, also sleeping on the ground. There wasn’t a place to wash or change so I slept in the clothes I wore on the boat that morning, muddy and sandy scraped up feet and a salty face covered in dried layers of sunscreen. I didn’t even have a blanket or sheet and it was freezing cold with the strong ocean wind blasting through the thin bamboo walls. Since Malagasies are afraid of the dark, the owner of the shack made sure his oil lamp burned all throughout the night. At one point, as I shifted to relieve the pressure from my sore, boney hips, the bicycle fell on top of me. Needless to say, I didn’t get even five minutes of sleep throughout the entire, longest night of my life.

I listened to the rain pattering and wind blasting all throughout the night and stepped out of the shack in the dim morning light to find that we probably still weren’t going to be able to leave for a while. I legitimately almost had a meltdown as I walked through the cold drizzle to the river where I washed my face and legs. The morning slowly took a turn for the better, though. I spent several hours in the kitchen of the family with whom we stayed, chatting, drinking coffee and sitting by the warmth of the cook-fire. Even though it was the most basic of living conditions, I was grateful that the Malagasies lived up to their reputation for good hospitality, offering us hot food, company and a place to stay for the night without asking anything in return…only that we come back another day to visit them again.

By mid-morning the weather miraculously cleared up and the water quieted down enough for us to finish the last seven kilometers of our journey to St. Marie. It was still rough going in our tiny boat filled with lumber. I was gripping the side of the boat with white knuckles, but I never legitimately thought that we would capsize. I was more worried that some of my stuff would fly overboard or get soaking wet (although I did waterproof everything inside with plastic). I certainly got a lot of salty splashes in the face, but we amazingly made it over the whitecaps and swells in our tiny little motorboat without any problems. Only as we were trying to dock into our arrival spot did we run into trouble. We ended up getting stuck on top of a rock under the water. The boat tilted 45˚ and my bags and Carlton spilled out into the water. Luckily we were only waste-deep, but it was quite a shock and made for an awkward departure out of the water-filled boat.

Though it was a wet and shaky landing, the day got much better from there. Carlton and I walked not even a kilometer north to this beautiful set of bungalows with a lovely outdoor patio and a quiet private beach for swimming. As it is low tourist season right now, there was only one other couple staying at the hotel and I got a very reasonable and Peace Corps budget affordable price for the room. The staff was lovely too, and I enjoyed chatting with them in Malagasy and learning more about the island of St. Marie. The sun stayed out for the rest of the afternoon so I was even able to go for a swim and sit out on the lounge chairs without having to bundle up in three layers of clothing, much in contrast to the cold and windy wetness that I had experienced at the point in Antsiraka that morning and the day before.

The next day was unfortunately cold and rainy again. I was low on cash however, so Carlton and I braved the terrible weather and got very very wet biking the 13km south to the largest town of Ambodifotatra where there is the only bank on the island. Even though I was chilly and soaked, the vistas where the road hugged the steep cliffside looking down and out to the coast were absolutely beautiful and the stormy weather made for some dramatic skies. After a bit of shopping and banking I biked a few more km south to another very lovely hotel with a long, private jetty running out into the deserted blue water and a charming restaurant and seating area by the waterfront. There were quite a few more guests since it was closer to the main town of Ambodifotatra, but it was actually kind of nice having the livelier atmosphere. Unfortunately it stayed very cold and rainy and all of my clothes remained soaking wet.

We finally got a full day of sun the next day. I was also able to meet up with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who was teaching English at the local high school on the island. We had a nice time chatting over lunch and enjoying the sunny weather. In the afternoon I headed further south to explore more of the island. I hope to make it to the little island off of the southern tip of St.Marie, not only because it’s supposed to be beautiful, but also so that I can say I’ve been on an island off of an island off of an island. Hope to head back in a few days, but its all really dependent on when the weather will let me go.

My third home in Madagascar

After many unexpected delays, I was finally headed off to the east coast of Madagascar again. Only this time around, a little farther south of where I had been for the past two years. It was already a month past my expected departure date to start my new, short-term assignment with Peace Corps, so I was eager to get out in the field. Don’t get me wrong…a break from the developing world with 24-hour electricity, running water, a much wider selection of food and entertainment options and regular interaction with native-English speakers was refreshing. But after a few weeks of the easy life, I was ready to get back to a more simple existence in the muddy, wild and lively “ambanivolo” or, countryside, of Madagascar. Moreover, I was certainly eager to start working again.

On a rainy day in mid-February, a Catholic Relief Services 4x4 stopped by the Peace Corps transit house in our capital of Antananarivo to pick me up and drive me out to my site. Since the CRS vehicle was also carrying a few other staff and all of their equipment, they didn’t have room for all of my belongings that I intended to bring with me to my new house. Instead, my Peace Corps safety and security officer had left with a vehicle and most of my stuff a few days earlier. They were heading out to the volunteers’ sites on the east coast that had been hit by the recent cyclone. After the reconstruction at the other volunteers’ sites was finished, the Peace Corps car would head up to my site…hopefully soon after I moved in, so that I wouldn’t be waiting around too long for all of my cherished belongings (including a gas stove, lots of books, and some clothes.)

As we passed through Brickaville on our way to Tamatave, the provincial capital for the east coast region, we were able to witness some of the destruction brought on by the recent category three cyclone that had ripped through Madagascar. There were roofs blown off, uprooted trees, an abundance of fallen branches, metal billboard signs bent over sideways, fallen power lines and trash scattered about (although the trash may have very well been there before.) It was depressing to see a country, already struggling with extreme poverty, shaky governance and dwindling resources, further crippled by such a merciless natural disaster. Now people who had hardly anything beforehand were forced to somehow rebuild their lives again.

After a short day of driving we arrived in Tamatave, where I spent my last night in nice accommodations with running water and electricity before heading up the coast. Although it was overcast and drizzly the next morning, the ride up the mid-east coast was absolutely gorgeous. For the first half of the drive, we were surrounded by lush, green forest and farmland dotted with quaint Malagasy villages and a few rustic, touristy, bungalow beach “resorts.” At last, in the mid-morning we reached Soanierana Ivongo, the head of the district where I would be working for the next few months. After popping in to say hello to the local gendarmerie and police and notify them that their Peace Corps volunteer had arrived, we drove up to the river-crossing to take a ferry over to the other side of the road.

Soanierana Ivongo is the point on the east coast at which Route National 5 ceases to be a paved road and becomes more of a joke of a national road. That is, it’s pretty much all sand, ruts and potholes from here-on up the coast until one arrives in Mananara, where there are giant boulders thrown into the mix for the travelers added driving pleasure. The road apparently deteriorates even more towards Maroansetra, where it ceases to exist completely, as the protected Masoala national forest complex begins (no vehicles are allowed past this point, but only bikes, pedestrians or canoes).

Saonierana Ivongo is also well known as the town where most tourists take a boat to get to Ile St. Marie, the little island off the east coast of the main island of Madagascar. We however were merely headed further up the coast. I was actually surprised at the quality of the ferry that took us and several other vehicles from one side of the river to the other. It was a legitimate ferry made out of metal with a motor and a flat space for probably five or six vehicles, granted we crawled along at a very slow pace. There were also small wooden canoes alongside us on the river, taking pedestrians and bikers across at a much faster pace. The brackish lagoon we floated through that was bordered by tropical forest on one side and a deserted isthmus-beach on the other was simply beautiful. Once we reached the other side though, we had to wait for ten minutes before we could get on the road again, as two giant “camions,” or cargo trucks, tried to maneuver and scrape past each other on the narrow road leading up to the ferry.

As we finally made our way on the now sand road, my jaw dropped…for two reasons mainly. One: it was spectacularly beautiful. We were right along the coastline with deserted beaches and coastal, tropical forest and hardly another soul around. And two: at points the road was literally the beach. Just as I had thought on my trip a few weeks earlier to Maritandrano in the Black Hole of Madagascar, I kept thinking, how on earth does this qualify as a national road??? How the heck does a beach qualify as part of RN5? And supposedly this road was in much worse shape 5-10 years ago. And the road apparently gets worse further north towards Mananara?!!

My thoughts were interrupted at that moment as our 4x4 inevitably got stuck in the sand. Somehow our top-quality, off-road NGO vehicle had managed to bury itself in the deep ruts and piles of the beach along RN5. As we stepped out of the car to assess the situation, I looked in disbelief at the fact that we were maybe all of five meters from the crashing ocean waves. Unfortunately we did not have a shovel with us, so we commenced to dig the car out of the sand with our hands. I felt like a 10-year-old kid again, as if I were building castles or burying my friends’ bodies under layers of sand. Finally we managed to hand-dig ourselves out of the sandy mess and drive off again just in time, as storm clouds moved in and he rain started pattering down more forcefully.

Fairly soon we reached our second ferry-crossing. As it was lunchtime, we got out to wait at the little shack by the riverside so we could grab a bite to eat as the vehicles slowly loaded onto the metal slab, one by one. Since we were right next to a river and an ocean, we had our choice of fried fish or fish with sauce, and of course a huge mound of rice, this being Madagascar. As we finished our meal, we loaded onto the ferry. One of our fellow co-workers took his meal with him—plate fork and all—as he wasn’t finished yet. The owner of the restaurant shack wasn’t too worried…he would get his utensils back once the ferry made its return trip from the other side of the river.

At last we reached the strip of land where my new village was supposed to be…though we had no idea where within the next 20km it lay. Every time we passed a cluster of shacks, we would ask where Tanambao Ambodimanga was, and we would get the same response: “Aloha aloha areeeee!” which is pretty much as descriptive as, “oh just ahead up the road over there.” Finally we reached my village, only to find that my house, after waiting over a month, still was nowhere near being finished. It was pretty much in shambles, since the last volunteers who had lived there were way back in 2007, and no one had inhabited the house since. Note: there had not even been a drop of rain here from the cyclone, as it had passed much further south of this area, so no excuses! At least there was a teeny little bungalow guest house for me to stay in temporarily at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s local NGO office off at the edge of the village.

For the next few days, one of the MBG staff showed me around the area and introduced me to the community. Everyone seemed really friendly and nice, though I was frustrated at their lack of motivation to start improving the house that was part of their agreement to rebuild in exchange for the free labor of a Peace Corps volunteer. The message had apparently gotten lost somehow in the mix. Meanwhile, the MBG environmental educator took me around to the local schools and introduced me to the teachers and students. I expressed my enthusiasm to stop in periodically and talk to their students about clean water, hand-washing and hygiene, although I was dismayed (but not surprised) that they initially had expected my main purpose in the community was to teach everyone English.

One of the communities we went to, Fandrarazana, was just a few Km up the road at the next ferry crossing. A quiet community right on the coast and surrounded by tropical forest, it was breathtakingly gorgeous. Before the environmental educator started his session with the kids at the local primary school on reforestation, he took me over to the beach to show me the coastline and to see if we could pick up some fish freshly caught off of the boats coming in from their morning trips. He also pointed out the shady, long stretch of land that was Ile St. Marie just across the water, which was surprisingly easy to see as it was a mere 7km away. Apparently one can take a canoe from several different launching points nearby. Some of them were Malagasy-style sailboats that, when the wind is strong, can get you to the island in as little as 30minutes to one or two hours.

We managed to pick up two small piles of 5 fish each for 1000Ar, or 50 cents, per pile and then headed back to the school so I could sit in on the environmental educator’s session with the kids. The educator was really great with the kids, and even taught them a song about protecting the environment. I had a feeling I would enjoy my next few months here. The next day, my Peace Corps safety and security officer showed up and was unhappy to see the state of my current housing situation. None of the community leaders were in the village, so he took me up to the larger town of Manompana to meet with the head of my village and figure out what was going on. The 10km drive up to Manompana was again absolutely gorgeous. After crossing the third ferry at Fandrarazana, the road weaved in and out along the coast and back into the tropical forest and small villages, along bridges over small creeks and rivers and into the quiet coastal town of Manompana. We stayed in a collection of hotel bungalows along the beach. The area was absolutely beautiful, though the roofs of the bungalows leaked from the rains that passed during the night.

We were able to have a productive meeting with the head of the village to flesh out the program with the community for constructing the house. Then we had a lovely dinner of calamari with rice. The next morning I talked with the mayor of Manompana to look into the possibility of having a second house in the town of Manompana, where there was a previous Peace Corps volunteer, since most of my work would be in Manompana anyway and since the house in Tanambao Ambodimanga still wasn’t finished either. He promised to organize the community to fix up the house in town as well, so I would have somewhere to stay when I came in for meetings and programs in Manompana. Then we headed back to Tanambao. I said goodbye to the Peace Corps staff and felt good about the fact that the community had started working on the house and was already almost finished with the shower and latrine area. The walls of the main house still needed to be improved before I could move in, but I would stay in the guest house at MBG while the community was working on it.

After another week I finally was able to move into my house, though it still needed a few improvements. Work started picking up as well. I headed to Manompana one day for a festival led by my partnering NGO to celebrate national latrine day. There was a parade, some speeches on hygiene and sanitation by local authorities and the NGO reps, a trivia session on hygiene with the local students, canoe and swimming races and dances, songs and poems performed by women’s groups and youth from the surrounding community. The festivities were all quite amusing: the canoe race involved one boat purposefully crashing into another to botch their chances of winning, the swimming race ended with the contestants running through the water which ended up being too shallow and the songs performed by the women’s groups included lyrics about pooping in the woods.

I also attended a village savings and loans meeting in the nearby community of Fandrarazana, led by one of the NGO workers. It was neat to see how well-organized the group of fifteen community members were. They had been meeting every week for several months and had saved up a significant amount of money. Some were able to successfully borrow and pay back chunks of money to invest in business opportunities and a few were even planning to use their savings to build improved, household latrines once they had gathered enough funds.

On March 7th and 8th I celebrated International Women’s Day with my community in Tanambao Ambodimanga. The morning of the 7th involved planting saplings from a local pepenier established by Missouri Botanical Gardens in one of the designated reforestation areas just south of the village. Though it was a scorching hot day with little cloud cover and no shade (as it was a deforested area), it was great to be working alongside the women and girls in the community to protect the local environment and promote sustainability. On the 8th, everyone donned their best outfits and we all lined up at the village flag pole to sing the Malagasy national anthem. Then we headed to the tranom-pokonolono, or town hall, to listen to the kabaris—the speeches given by all the local authorities. Our tiny little rural village was even graced by the presence and wise words of the Chef de District of Soanierana Ivongo…the American equivalent of a state governor. As this was a Malagasy “fety” the community also slaughtered two cows, which I did not partake in, sticking to my vegetarianism. In the afternoon, we were entertained by songs and dances performed by the local primary school students and a dance troupe from the nearby town of Manompana. In the evening there was a baliny, or dance party in the town hall. I didn’t attend, as I was planning to get up early the next morning to head to Fenerive Est, but I could certainly hear the music blasting from the hall nearby all night and into the wee hours of the morning.

Aside from all that, its just been raining raining raining because of all the cyclones and tropical storms that keep hitting Madagascar. The weather gives an added challenge to my work, as transportation is near impossible when everything is flooded and the roads or ferry crossings are frequently cut.

A long and muddy adventure

When I left my original site in January to start working with a water/sanitation/hygiene NGO on the east cost, I wasn’t planning on having to wait around for my new site to be ready. After coming to Tana and having a meeting with Peace Corps and my partnering NGO, we found out that the house and latrine still needed repairs. That meant I had a few weeks to kill. At least I was able to get some business things taken care of during the first week in town. The next week I was invited to go on an adventure with several of their staff out to the district of Mandritsara in the central-northern region of Madagascar.

This region that we were headed to is known to many here as “The Black Hole,” because it is so difficult to get to and completely in the middle of nowhere. The purpose of the mission was to train some of the NGO field staff in mobilizing the communities to build latrines, use and properly store clean water and improve household hygiene. I was to observe the training in order to get a better sense of the kind of information and resources that the staff had access to and what was expected of them for their work out in the communities. This experience would help me figure out where I would fit in with the work that the NGO’s field staff are doing for a similar project on the east coast where I will be posted.

Although it doesn’t seem geographically far from the capital, there is no direct route to drive to the Black Hole. You have to go all the way out towards the west coast, then up a little north and then back east again. The first part of the journey heading out west was all well-paved with deforested, empty hillsides making the ride fairly boring. Once we got closer to the west coast towards Port Berge, the water level had risen considerably over some of the roads due to the recent rains. The area was almost like a bog or wetlands with low-lying roads, so they often have problems with flooding. The frequent flooding was also evident given the fact that many sections of this particular road had meter-stick poles by the side so one could gauge the water level and determine whether it is crossable or not. The road heading back east towards Mandritsara—although supposedly a paved national road—was mostly eroded with giant mud pits and boulders added in for a little extra fun.

One of the worst parts of the journey lay between Antsohihy, the transit town where the road splits north towards Diego and east towards the Black Hole, and Befandriana, a large town halfway to Mandritsara. Malagasies have a clever way of naming their towns. Befandriana literally means “many beds” and Mandritsara means “good sleep.” I guess it makes sense that an area with a lot of beds would be a good place to sleep. The only aspect I noticed about the area however was how much mud and boulders there were all over the road. It took us a day and a half of driving to get to Mandritsara and, just as I thought the journey was almost to an end, the road became ten times worse.

Our final destination was called Maritandrano, a small town about 30km beyond Mandritsara. It didn’t sound that far, but the fact that any semblance of a paved road disappeared made the distance seem to stretch on forever. There were some points were the bordering rice paddies merged into the road, so it was just one big mud-plain. Then there were steep sections with washed out ruts and boulders the size of small cars as well as several deep ditches and potholes. As we approached the town of Maritandrano we were greeted by a large cement bridge/dam covered by water, which the car had to “wade” through before finally reaching our destination.

After a couple of days of listening to behavior-change strategy talks and getting to know the field staff in Maritandrano, we had to head out on the “road” again. Even though it hadn’t rained much over the past few days, the road was still a muddy mess. It took us all afternoon as we slowly ambled over the boulders and mud pits until we finally made it safely back to Mandritsara. The next morning we headed to Antsohihy after a nice rest in the town of “good sleep.” We made good time as the road wasn’t as bad as the one from Maritandrano the day before, but the giant mud-pit outside of Befandriana was still a slight obstacle. There were four “camions,” or large trucks, in addition to a few passenger-vans stuck in parts of the road where the mud was several feet deep. Luckily our hearty 4x4 vehicle operated by our very skilled driver was able to weave around all the stalled vehicles and mud, and we made it safely back to the paved road and into Antsohihy in time for lunch. After a few more road stops to buy mangos and pineapples we finally arrived back in Tana.

The road trip to the Black Hole was unlike any other car ride I have ever been on. It was quite the adventure, but I was glad to head to my new site to start working again. I was all packed and ready to go the next day when the Peace Corps medical office called to let me know that I was being medically evacuated to South Africa. It was quite a shock that I was being sent all the way to Pretoria to the regional medical office for Peace Corps in Africa just for a skin biopsy. I was frustrated that the move to my new site was postponed yet again, but grateful that Peace Corps is concerned enough about their volunteers and make every effort to ensure that they get the best medical care possible.

So the next week I was off on a plane to Johannesburg. As we flew over the city, I was surprised to see aerial patterns of suburban, cookie-cutter developments with brilliant blue swimming pools in each rectangular yard. A volunteer driver holding a sign with my “Peace Corps” written on it picked me up in the airport. I almost got in the wrong side of the car, because I forgot that former British colonies typically drive on the left side of the road and have the steering wheel on the right. It was surreal to be riding along on a paved six-lane highway to Pretoria. All the development and infrastructure made the car ride quite surreal. It was almost like being in America again, which was jarring since I haven't been back to the States since I left in the fall of '09.

Peace Corps puts all the injured/sick volunteers in a guest house (basically like a fancy bed and breakfast) in the suburbs of Pretoria, close to their main office. Though I was bummed that I had to postpone my move for another week and a bit nervous about the biopsy, it was really interesting to meet the other volunteers who were staying in the guest house and nice to take advantage of all the amenities of the developed world. There were several PC response volunteers going through orientation and getting ready to start their work in South Africa in addition to the other medically evacuated volunteers who came from countries including Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia.

After my biopsy, I had a few days to kill waiting for my results, so I went to the nearby mall and did some shopping and saw a few movies on the big screen. It was also nice just staying at the guest house, drinking water straight from the tap, sitting out by the beautiful garden, pool and patio area and enjoying the included breakfast every morning with cereal, yoghurt, fruit salad and French toast and omelets made to order. I also made sure to pick up some South African wine, cheese, grapes, hummus and real bread (as opposed to the stale French baguettes that we get in Madagascar) from the grocery store.

After a normal result from the biopsy, my stitches were removed and I was cleared to return to Madagascar. It was sad to say goodbye to my new Peace Corps friends that I made while in Pretoria and to clean water and bathrooms and real roads, but it also felt good to know I was healthy and ready to get out to my new site on the eastern coast of Madagascar. The trip was actually good timing, because I missed the category three cyclone while I was in South Africa waiting for my biopsy results. The cyclone thankfully didn’t do much damage to the area where my new site will be, but most of the volunteers on the east coast were evacuated to the capital to wait out the storm and then had to head back to their sites afterwards with the safety and security officer to assess the damage to their houses. I hope the rebuilding process goes well for the other volunteers and I’m excited to see what new adventures await me as I finally travel out to my new site.

Malagasy fetys and saying goodbye

My last month at site has been quite a roller coaster. While I’m not yet leaving the country, I have had to say goodbye to the community with whom I’ve lived and worked for the past two years. I will admit, there are some things I’ll be glad to say goodbye to and many new adventures I’m excited to move on to. However I’ve made so many close connections—both professional and personal—with Malagasies and Peace Corps volunteers in my region, which has made the moving process difficult.

Even though I chose not to end my two years before the holiday season so I could be with family back home, like most other volunteers in my “stage” (training group), I still had a wonderful Christmas here in Madagascar. A few of us in our region of the northeast corner decided to get together at a volunteer’s house in one of the larger towns and celebrate with close approximations to American traditions and a little Malagasy twist. Instead of mulled wine or cider we had tropical sangria with leechies, pineapples and mangoes. Instead of turkey and mashed potatoes we had a big tropical seafood feast at a fancy hotel on the waterfront. Instead of Christmas special marathons on T.V we watched a few Christmas movies that someone had on their laptop. Instead of large extravagant gift-giving, we had a “Secret Santa” exchange. Instead of tons of baked goods we had chocolate fondue with dark chocolate from Madagascar, coconut rum and fresh fruit to dip in it. We even had a tiny little artificial Christmas tree that we decorated with tinsel and plastic sparkly balls all imported from China. And we played twister. It was quite a memorable event, and I’m so grateful for all the awesome fellow Peace Corps volunteers I got to share it with.

I chose to spend New Years, or “Bonne Anne” in my village, as it was my last big “hurrah” before leaving my site, and as New Years is a huge holiday for Malagasies. During the few nights leading up to New Years, we had “Podium,” the Malagasy equivalent of a talent show. My counterpart had me practice dance routines with his wife and children and our neighbors, which we then performed on stage in front of the community. It was a blast, and I also enjoyed watching all the other acts. One of the teenage boys requested me to dance a few reggae songs with him and his buddy, too, which the audience enjoyed thoroughly.

New Years Eve brought the first big rains that we had seen in many months, which was certainly something to celebrate. After the epic semi-final soccer match between two neighborhoods in our town, which ended in a draw and then a dramatic shoot-off, the rains finally came. Everyone ran out into the main path through town and paraded around chanting and singing, welcoming the life-giving precipitation. Many had planted their rice a month before, assuming that the rains would have already come to water their crops, but it has been unusually dry this season so there were quite a few initial plantings lost to the drought.

On New Years Day, my counterpart invited me to his house to eat with his family. We shared a few beers, had a nice chat about American versus Malagasy traditions for celebrating New Years and then had a delicious feast with his family, which surprisingly didn’t consist of mounds and mounds of rice. The day after New Years is also still a “fety” for Malagasies, unlike Americans who either go back to work or use it as an extra day to recover from hangovers. My counterpart and I headed to Antsirabe Nord (my old site) to have a farewell lunch with the women’s group president, the nurse from Antsirabe Nord and their spouses. It was a joyful affair with good food and good drink and a wonderful chance for me to say goodbye to my friends and co-workers from my old site.

The following weekend was also filled with fetys, though of a much more emotional kind. On Saturday all of us Peace Corps volunteers in the area headed to Sambava to say goodbye to the two of us who were leaving the region. It was especially hard to say goodbye to our friend Caroline, as she is leaving the country for good, whereas I’ll still be around for a few more months. Again, there was lots of good Malagasy and American food, ample amount of drink and wonderful parting words shared between all of us volunteers who have shared some great triumphs and some rough times together. There were lots of laughs and lots of tears, and I will miss all of my fellow American co-workers and friends dearly. No one else can truly understand the unique experience we have shared in this beautiful yet sometimes harsh country.

While Caroline headed to the tarmac to take off for Tana on Sunday, I headed back to my site for a goodbye fety with my community. I had already set aside all of my belongings I was going to sell off in an auction as a fundraiser for my solar panel project. As soon as I got back and changed, the women’s group came to my door in a singing and dancing procession to gather all of my stuff and take me to the “bazary be” (central meeting place) for the ceremony and auction to follow.

As we made our way to the ceremony, tears started streaming down my face. I think it had finally hit me that I was leaving all of these wonderful, caring people for good, and was not sure if I’d ever have the means to return in the future (or if so, only after a very long time). It was so touching that all the women in the community had gathered together and donned their women’s group uniforms to celebrate and see me off. After raising the flag and singing the national anthem we took our places at the “bazary” and my counterpart started off the program.

In succession, the president of the village, the women’s group president, the president of the clinic, my counterpart (the nurse and head of the clinic), I and then the doctor from Antsirabe Nord all spoke. When the president of the women’s group gave her speech, she started crying, which in turn made me start crying again. Luckily I was able to compose myself before I gave my speech, and, even though after two years my Malagasy still isn’t quite up to par for orating, the community seemed to enjoy listening to me (or at least they laughed and clapped at all the right parts). There were lots of thank-yous and promises to keep in touch, and I left the community with parting words of encouragement that even if they don’t get another volunteer to replace me, they will still be able to do good work and continue on the path of development. There is such a strong sense of community and good leadership in their village.

After the speeches, the auction of all of my belongings that I couldn’t take with me on the airplane ensued. I was a little nervous, as I didn’t have a lot of stuff to offer, and there were many friends, co-workers and community members who wanted a chance and getting a “souvenir” from me. Thankfully, the women’s group and community leaders did a good job of running the auction fairly and keeping everyone under control. Some of the items (like bookshelves and chairs) went fairly expensive, but others were cheap, which gave more people the chance at buying items. Overall, we ended up raising a lot of money for the solar panel fund, which will go towards replacing the battery after a few years or making any other necessary repairs that come up after the one year warranty. Part of the money also went towards helping the pharmacy purchase extra medicines for poor patients who come to the clinic and can’t afford the necessary treatments.

The day after my big going-away fety in the village was mostly quiet, as it was a Monday and everyone was out in the fields working. I was busy packing up my life, but managed to take a break to have lunch with my counterpart and then sat on a neighbor’s porch to catch a little bit of a breeze. All of a sudden, I heard clapping and singing coming from the other end of town. Three folks who were still in town that day were walking hand in hand down the main path. As they got closer, I realized the song they were singing in beautiful yet raucous harmony was about me! They had made up a goodbye song for me and came over to where I was sitting on the porch to sing and dance. Pretty soon the few people that were hanging around the village came over to watch and join in the song and dance party. It was quite a touching moment.

That evening, the nurse and I brought over my belongings that I planned to donate to the clinic, which included a small table for the birthing room, shelves for the office, a hammer and a new broom. As he turned on the lights powered by the new solar panel, put all the papers that were piled all over the table and floor in the office onto the shelves and placed the table for newborn babies in the delivery room, I realized how much better the clinic looked. It’s amazing how a few small additions to the clinic could facilitate a significant improvement in the nurse’s ability to carry out his work.

On Tuesday, I headed to Sambava to get ready for my flight to the capital on Wednesday. That morning, the nurse helped me pack up, and we did the final accounting for the money from the auction to be donated to the clinic and solar panel fund. Some of my friends saw me off at the road and one of them even rode with me in the bush taxi to Sambava. It was a nice way to say goodbye, as I treated myself to a stay at a quiet bungalow on the beach and had a chance to see some fellow volunteers again before I flew out on Wednesday.

My next adventure will take me to the east coast near a town called Manompana (near the small port where the boats go over to Ile St. Marie). I’ll be working with a Malagasy NGO, training their field staff in community mobilization, behavior change methods and community analysis relating to clean water, sanitation and hygiene projects. I’ll update again when I move out there and work actually starts up.