12/12/07
I haven’t been keeping up with the blog as much as I would’ve liked to as of late. I have been blogging in my head quite a bit. So I’ve made a short list of things to blog about in the past month and a half, but I’m not sure I’ll get them all up here before late January. I’ll try to touch on a few of them now. In two days, we are leaving our site for our in-service Peace Corps training where we will reunite with all our stage-mates with whom we trained for our first 11 weeks. This training will last for three days. Thereafter, it is Christmas break until January. One thing that has been keeping us busy has been the planning of this 3-week research trip that we will pursue directly after the training. We are going to visit four major national parks: Andringtra, Isalo, Zombitse and Ifaty respectively (if you have a map, you can find them). We will end up on the west coast of the country in the city of Tulear for New Year’s Eve. A few days thereafter we fly back to the capitol from where we’ll take a taxi-brousse back to site. We would like to teach English in National parks across the country during the long school vacation in July and August. There are not enough well-trained English speaking guides in country. Tourism is the greatest natural resource here and both Madagascar and the environment are badly in need of tourist dollars. We are trying to gather data that will allow us to design a curriculum that will furnish specific vocabulary and language that is most useful for guides and then design a 2 or 3 week intensive program that we can bring to the parks. English in a box- kind of like the bookmobile! There are four other amazing people on our team: Travis, Kateri, John, and Bethany who will be collecting data for similar and related purposes. We are excited to spend time with these people. But, far from strictly business- we’ll be touring the parks extensively and we’ll be getting quite a good look at Madagascar. The parks cut across a variety of Madagascar’s micro-climates and each one is strikingly unique in terms of habitats and their range of biodiversity. In Andringtra, we will explore mid to high-altitude rainforest, granite formations and Madagascar’s second highest peak (peak Boby pronounced: boo-bee- perhaps a good omen) as well as flora and fauna typical of the eastern rain forests. In Isalo, we will explore the palm-savannah and sandstone massif typical of south central Madagascar. In Zombitse, we will see the dry deciduous forest that lies between the southern and western vegetation domains. Finally, we will visit the Spiny Forest at Ifaty in full bloom and at its most magnificent. If we’re lucky, we may even snorkel and see some coral reef- like everything in life: depends on time and money. We’ll have more to say about this adventure when it is finished. Right now we are, of course, excited and just very busy.
In a nutshell, I have been particularly busy because I offered to edit the Peace Corps language text for trainees and to prepare it for the first edition. The draft that we used in training was a few hundred pages and had a lot of non-idiomatic English, confusing learning objectives, and awkward (if at times amusing) translations in it. I’ve been working on it a lot so that I will have it done in time. This is in addition to teaching, correcting LOTS of homework and doing all the other things that one needs to do to live here. Stacey has been uniquely busy designing, proctoring, and correcting final exams for her hundreds of students.
In November, we were able to spend a week away from our site and stay in a town called Moramanga (lit. cheap mangoes) where we were invited to do a week of teacher-training for the Ministry of Education. We had a wonderful time. It’s much livelier than our town. It rests along the national highway connecting the capitol to the east coast, so there are always a lot of people passing through. We taught mornings and afternoons Monday thru Saturday. Evenings we went out mingled and tried to work on our Malagasy and drinking skills. We had a hotel room with a balcony for a week equipped with running water and a warm shower- nice for a change. The greatest thing about the town was this magnificent restaurant: Le Coq d’Or or The Golden Cock. The Ministry paid us a small per diem on top of our living allowance (they haven’t actually paid us yet), so we had a little more money for food this week. In the United States, we would not have been able to afford to eat at the equivalent of the Golden Cock everyday as we did. One of the attractions was the crevettes or giant shrimp from the east coast/Indian ocean. The first day we got the crevettes with Cajun sauce. They were enormous- almost the size of a small lobster tail and the sauce was spellbinding. Another day, the shrimp a la diable arrived spicy, on fire, and cooking at the table in flaming rum- the fluid that oozed from the bodies when cracked open was divine. We also enjoyed a tangy chicken roasted with tamarind sauce. Another day, we devoured the chicken with Coca-Cola sauce- a slightly sweet, but overall savory and immensely satisfying sauce. The pastries there are amazing as well. But, the thing that made us go absolutely gaga was the damn frog legs! We saw a plate go by covered with garlic and parsley butter. I inquired and we promptly ordered them the next meal. Man, I can’t even begin to say how delicious these things are. After this discovery, we just gorged ourselves on frog legs everyday until it was time to leave Moramanga! We now plan to stop in Moramanga again this Saturday to pick up where we left off! Our plates looked a bit like a mass grave when all is said and done- with the pile of little legs and all. Oh well, at least they’re not endangered.
When we got back to site all the damn tamarind had suddenly disappeared. Seasonal only means so much in the U.S. since whatever it is you want- it’s in season somewhere and it can just jump on a plane. Here when it’s done for the season, it’s gone. I was in the habit of making tamarind juice which is delicious and was my new favorite beverage. I tried to make passion fruit juice in its place, but what looked like passion fruit from a distance were actually runt mangoes- delicious by themselves. I asked Stacey to go buy some. When we figured out what they were we should have just eaten them, but I carried on with the juice plan. The juice concoction I produced was the epitome of foulness and engendered a horrific mess! Oh well, more often than not the experiments actually pay off. Although the tamarind was conspicuously absent, the town was now suddenly overtaken by lychee. The little fruits the size of a small plum with a reddish prickly exterior. They taste like a really delicious grape, but with a seed that’s too big to ignore. Anyway, they’ve made there arrival and there getting eaten. The road is littered heavily with their remains. We found two avocadoes in the market randomly the other day. Haven’t seen any since. They must have come some someplace not too far from here though, so maybe there is more to come. They’re quite a bit sweeter here than those in the U.S. / So. America. It still made a delicious sandwich & some guacamole. We baked a chicken. Actually, first we bought the chicken, brought it home, played with it, killed it, plucked it, gutted it, etc. Then I brine soaked it overnight in an herbed brine and then baked it. Of course, the gas tank on our stove decided to run out of gas for the first time in six months half-way through the baking process. This scenario entails taking the tank to the next town to exchange it for a full one. Not an easy task on public transportation here with a big tank in tow. Fortunately, we ran into our French friend Brice who is working for an NGO here to promote sustainable agricultural practices. He dropped us in the town, we got the brousse, back and then we got the guy with the rickshaw to haul it up to the house. Well, we got the chicken back into the oven and I must say, while there is still some room for improvement, it was one of the moistest chickens I have ever had! I’m sold on the brine soaking. I’m going to work to perfect it more. I suppose a few more words about food are in order as I’m obviously on the subject. We found a pineapple in the neighboring town on the trip to fill the gas tank. This find was elevated into an exquisite dinner of sweet and sour pork a few days later. To get the meat, I had to get to the meat market at 7am when they were carrying the pigs in- it’s quite a sight actually the pig is cut right in half down the middle snout to tail as if some sort of belt saw just cut it from end to end. The guy shows up on his bicycle with the pig halves tied to his bike rack. Incidentally, People also travel with the living pig tied to the bike if they need to get it from place to place- the pig squeals like hell! I needed to buy the tenderloins from two pigs to have enough meat. The pig is mostly fat and the pigs here are not the two-ton leviathans that hit the American market or are used to make prosciutto in Tuscany. In any case, the sweet and sour pork was great. Another favorite dish as of late has been the dried fried beef with spicy string beans. We still routinely eat the tenderloin of the beef- anything else is too tough. The other day, I had a thick filet mignon with great marbling that was so juicy it was like cutting into a watermelon- unbelievable. In truth, we are tiring a little of the beef thing. I’d gladly trade some of it for any of the following: 1) Even one of the myriad cheeses that I routinely consume at the Cheeseboard in Berkeley. 2) Saul’s deli hash with poached egg, half- dill pickle, and well-toasted poppy seed bagel with cream cheese. 3) The giant camarones quesadilla from Taqueria Monte Christo stuffed with cheese, sour cream, roasted poblano chilis, giant shrimp and grilled in a spinach tortilla then covered with chipotle cream, cilantro pesto, and tomatillo salsa. 4) A grilled pastrami Reuben with extra swiss and copious amounts of Russian sauce. 5) The lamb tiki masala and butanese chili chicken from Mount Everest with garlic naan. 6) The massive flame grilled chicken breast sandwich with artichoke hearts and mushrooms and cheddar with a basket of spicy curly fries and ranch dressing from Barney’s. 7) Any wine- even Gallo (maybe with some hot coppa in that case). Oh well, the sacrifices we make for our country. To end on a sweet note, I bought a plastic bottle (a former soda bottle) full of honey the other day from a woman in the market. It had a few bee bodies preserved in the honey at the top, so I knew it was authentic. It was unbelievable! Not the honey in the little plastic bear, that’s for sure. I’m turning into a bit of a honey bear since then. Stacey’s new favorite drink is milk & honey: adding the honey to the warm raw milk right after it has been boiled and then downing a mug. Mmmmmm.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Phone Number Correction
Hey, our phone number from the U.S. should be:
011 261 3308 11226
I had the country code mixed up before. Sorry!
011 261 3308 11226
I had the country code mixed up before. Sorry!
Sept/Oct. Entries
10/10/07
I fear I have been somewhat remiss in my blogging duties owing to various factors. We have been installed at our site for over a month now. School is well under way. We are both teaching. Life here is keeping us quite busy. On paper, we are not working a lot each week- though even in the states teachers don’t spend 40 hours in the classroom. Yet, it is simply a lot of work to live here. When we were brought to our house initially we were greeted by a fresh paint job- no doubt as a sign of welcome to the new couple who is coming to town to teach English. As it turns out bismuth pink is a fine color for the interior of a house here. Unfortunately, we found this color to be the antithesis of relaxing. We opted to repaint which was quite a task. The end result is quite satisfying. Our main room is a deep rich dark red and our bedroom a cozy and relaxing electric blue. The floor in our main area is also red owing to the fact that I am a clumsy oaf and in my haste managed to step on/in the paint bucket thereby overturning it. The floor is concrete and the walls are stucco over brick. We have a front porch and a back patio area which provide welcome options for hanging out.
So what is a lot of work? Well, for example: when I buy coffee it is un-roasted. I bring it home. I must sort through all the beans. Amongst them we find various particles that would not contribute to a good cup of coffee: rocks, rice, little hunks of wood, rat droppings, dried rice and beans that got mixed in along the way. Next, I roast the coffee on the stove in a small wok like pan that someone made from an old green BP gas station sign. It’s roasted, now it cools then I need to winnow it once more outside to get some of the burnt skin like particles out of it. Finally, I can grind it and drink it. The normal next step here is to pulverize it with mortar and pestle. I opted to circumvent this tedious and not tangibly rewarding step by purchasing a coffee grinder in Tana- making live just a little easier. Water is across the street. I retrieve it every couple of days with the help of two buckets and store it in a basin that’s here. We buy milk in the market which is quite good- especially with the coffee. It is raw milk, so I must boil it and then cool it down quickly and refrigerate it before use. Sweeping is required daily as the dust is quite assertive here. Currently, it is the dry season; the dust will soon give way to mud. The bathroom facilities here are twofold for most people. There are ‘kabones’ or outhouses here of which we have one. It is a ways out back. We keep a lock on it as the adjacent one is used by the students who manage to create an unfathomably disgusting mess therein. Secondly, people have a ‘po’ or chamber pot. I won’t detail the procedure for cleaning this, but to say it needs to be attended to. If we don’t do it in time then in order to walk it to the kabone to dispose of it we would have to walk past four classrooms full of student with our po in hand. All our water must be filtered before use as from the spigot it is a discernable yellow. We boil water for our bucket showers which are quite enjoyable. The food situation has been increasingly good to us- owing to our own foresight and recognition that cooking is important to us as well as the availability of meat vegetables and the like here. Some of the fruits/vegetables that we find in the market here are: tomatoes, celery greens, carrots, green beans, zucchini, peas, beans (red & white), chick peas, sweet potato, cassava, cauliflower, ginger, garlic, red onion, green onion, chives, bananas, oranges, mangoes, sugar cane, and key limes, potatoes, eggplant, coconut, green peppers, Damn Hot Peppers!, cabbage, pineapples, cucumbers and some other stuff too- but you get the idea. Eggs are certainly among us. In fact, the oversize duck eggs that Stacey brought home the other day made for a good breakfast scramble. She thought they looked a little different- they are an impressive white. Duck eggs are somewhat richer than chicken eggs. I initially though they were goose eggs and while I’m on the topic of geese, I have developed an affinity for geese since I encounter them daily. I think my prior aversion to geese came from the behavior of a few rogue ganders during training who liked to chase me. I know they are still prone to ornery behavior, but they generally mind their own business here. Herbs! There are herbs. I get fresh parsley, thyme, cilantro, and even basil in the market. Fish is on sale in the market: Tilapia, Black Bass, and Carp. The largest specimens are big enough to cut a fillet from. Of course, when you buy a fish here it is as it was when it came out of the lake. We had fish just last night with garlic-cilantro-key lime-butter. It was quite good! There is beef and pork in the meat market. I haven’t experimented with buying the pork here yet. A common Malagasy dish is ‘Hena Kisoa sy Tsaramaso’ which is tender pieces of pork with white beans. There is one small ‘hotely’ or restaurant that we get lunch at from time to time and we often enjoy it there- there is also delicious tamarind juice there that I hope to be making soon myself. We have bought beef in the market after a lingering reticence to do so. In the states, we don’t usually buy meat hanging outside and from stalls. Here they kill the ‘omby’ in the morning, so if you are buying it that day it is likely fresher than most supermarket beef. It is not refrigerated, but I think the air drying does something for it. My first purchase featured me in my broken Malagasy asking for ‘filet’ the tender stuff. It was available and down came the tenderloin from a hook. I got home and cut off medium size slices from the round tenderloin- it was filet mignon: tender and delicious. For a half-kilo (about a pound) it was about one dollar- keep in mind we are not on American currency here at all and the Peace Corps only gives about 25 dollars a week for our needs which is adequate. The rum here is quite good! No surprise- there’s plenty of sugar. We made ginger rum recently (just grate up a bunch of ginger and throw it in the bottle for a day, strain it and voila: rum with a nice ginger kick. I haven’t dealt with chicken yet. I think I have killed three since I have been here. It’s a lot of work and the chicken will be either roaming the backyard or the house until it’s time for the pot. We may make a turkey for Thanksgiving if some other Peace Corps volunteers want to come visit us- I’ll let them pluck and gut the damn thing and then I’ll do the roasting. Turkeys are expensive (as are geese) and both of these generate more meat of the same species than we wish to consume in a few days. Maybe I’ll talk about something other than food.
We both teach Monday through Thursday. On Wednesdays, we have our Malagasy tutor over. The session is quite casual: we nibble, sip and chat. A nice fellow also came for the first time last week to be my French tutor. As many of you know, I have studied French for some time and am hoping to push my conversational skills towards fluency in the time that I’m here, since it is actually spoken here by many. We actually live in the same building that houses the Alliance Francaise in our town. I believe these classes cater to children, so I’m sticking with the tutor. Once every couple of weeks or more we go to our banking town- that is, our bank is there so we need to go there to get money and some of the aforementioned produce such as the eggplant, and basil and also cheese- a life-giving essential is also there. In any case, there is a group of French people there doing work for NGO’s and the like who are a fun bunch to hang around with. Sometimes, we go to the large Alliance Francaise there after hours and watch rugby and hang out. I hope to do more of this as I need to improve my French. The French seem to always speak English though, so if you’re not assertive you’ll just end up speaking English. I should mention our Malagasy- or maybe the lack thereof. It is improving and we can get the things in the market that we need. Some people are much easier to understand than others. All I can say is that it is a work in progress. I do hope that it progresses more rapidly since it is a bit of a barrier to integrating in the community when you can’t carry out a conversation. PCV’s tend to avoid using French as a general means of communication owing something to our identity here and how we are perceived by the community. The French were the colonizers and, although there are a great many French people working here and doing really good things for the country, being American (for once) carries less cultural baggage and people perceive and react to us differently when they realize that we are not French, but American. I should mention that the creeping arm of the American media has not infiltrated this country as deeply. There are only two television stations here- one is governmentally operated. The other may have programming in French. There are small makeshift shacks here and there where people affluent enough to own a TV and DVD player screen various films- sometime American and probably dubbed in French. The last one I noticed was Rambo. It‘s nice to know that we are able to put our best foot forward with important Hollywood epics such as this alive and well in the third world.
10/27/07
I don’t have too much time for this entry, But, since I last wrote we found ourselves in one of those small movie shacks watching ‘Red Sonja’ the classic film with Arnold Schwarzeneggar in barbarian mode and Bridgit Nielson as the unconquerable warrioress. Of course, it is dubbed in French as few people understand English here- although we’re working on it. I must say, Arnold really doesn’t sound as rough, tough, or buff dubbed in French. Right now, we have a week off from teaching for the All-Saints day break and hopefully we’ll do something interesting. If so, you’ll read about it here!
I fear I have been somewhat remiss in my blogging duties owing to various factors. We have been installed at our site for over a month now. School is well under way. We are both teaching. Life here is keeping us quite busy. On paper, we are not working a lot each week- though even in the states teachers don’t spend 40 hours in the classroom. Yet, it is simply a lot of work to live here. When we were brought to our house initially we were greeted by a fresh paint job- no doubt as a sign of welcome to the new couple who is coming to town to teach English. As it turns out bismuth pink is a fine color for the interior of a house here. Unfortunately, we found this color to be the antithesis of relaxing. We opted to repaint which was quite a task. The end result is quite satisfying. Our main room is a deep rich dark red and our bedroom a cozy and relaxing electric blue. The floor in our main area is also red owing to the fact that I am a clumsy oaf and in my haste managed to step on/in the paint bucket thereby overturning it. The floor is concrete and the walls are stucco over brick. We have a front porch and a back patio area which provide welcome options for hanging out.
So what is a lot of work? Well, for example: when I buy coffee it is un-roasted. I bring it home. I must sort through all the beans. Amongst them we find various particles that would not contribute to a good cup of coffee: rocks, rice, little hunks of wood, rat droppings, dried rice and beans that got mixed in along the way. Next, I roast the coffee on the stove in a small wok like pan that someone made from an old green BP gas station sign. It’s roasted, now it cools then I need to winnow it once more outside to get some of the burnt skin like particles out of it. Finally, I can grind it and drink it. The normal next step here is to pulverize it with mortar and pestle. I opted to circumvent this tedious and not tangibly rewarding step by purchasing a coffee grinder in Tana- making live just a little easier. Water is across the street. I retrieve it every couple of days with the help of two buckets and store it in a basin that’s here. We buy milk in the market which is quite good- especially with the coffee. It is raw milk, so I must boil it and then cool it down quickly and refrigerate it before use. Sweeping is required daily as the dust is quite assertive here. Currently, it is the dry season; the dust will soon give way to mud. The bathroom facilities here are twofold for most people. There are ‘kabones’ or outhouses here of which we have one. It is a ways out back. We keep a lock on it as the adjacent one is used by the students who manage to create an unfathomably disgusting mess therein. Secondly, people have a ‘po’ or chamber pot. I won’t detail the procedure for cleaning this, but to say it needs to be attended to. If we don’t do it in time then in order to walk it to the kabone to dispose of it we would have to walk past four classrooms full of student with our po in hand. All our water must be filtered before use as from the spigot it is a discernable yellow. We boil water for our bucket showers which are quite enjoyable. The food situation has been increasingly good to us- owing to our own foresight and recognition that cooking is important to us as well as the availability of meat vegetables and the like here. Some of the fruits/vegetables that we find in the market here are: tomatoes, celery greens, carrots, green beans, zucchini, peas, beans (red & white), chick peas, sweet potato, cassava, cauliflower, ginger, garlic, red onion, green onion, chives, bananas, oranges, mangoes, sugar cane, and key limes, potatoes, eggplant, coconut, green peppers, Damn Hot Peppers!, cabbage, pineapples, cucumbers and some other stuff too- but you get the idea. Eggs are certainly among us. In fact, the oversize duck eggs that Stacey brought home the other day made for a good breakfast scramble. She thought they looked a little different- they are an impressive white. Duck eggs are somewhat richer than chicken eggs. I initially though they were goose eggs and while I’m on the topic of geese, I have developed an affinity for geese since I encounter them daily. I think my prior aversion to geese came from the behavior of a few rogue ganders during training who liked to chase me. I know they are still prone to ornery behavior, but they generally mind their own business here. Herbs! There are herbs. I get fresh parsley, thyme, cilantro, and even basil in the market. Fish is on sale in the market: Tilapia, Black Bass, and Carp. The largest specimens are big enough to cut a fillet from. Of course, when you buy a fish here it is as it was when it came out of the lake. We had fish just last night with garlic-cilantro-key lime-butter. It was quite good! There is beef and pork in the meat market. I haven’t experimented with buying the pork here yet. A common Malagasy dish is ‘Hena Kisoa sy Tsaramaso’ which is tender pieces of pork with white beans. There is one small ‘hotely’ or restaurant that we get lunch at from time to time and we often enjoy it there- there is also delicious tamarind juice there that I hope to be making soon myself. We have bought beef in the market after a lingering reticence to do so. In the states, we don’t usually buy meat hanging outside and from stalls. Here they kill the ‘omby’ in the morning, so if you are buying it that day it is likely fresher than most supermarket beef. It is not refrigerated, but I think the air drying does something for it. My first purchase featured me in my broken Malagasy asking for ‘filet’ the tender stuff. It was available and down came the tenderloin from a hook. I got home and cut off medium size slices from the round tenderloin- it was filet mignon: tender and delicious. For a half-kilo (about a pound) it was about one dollar- keep in mind we are not on American currency here at all and the Peace Corps only gives about 25 dollars a week for our needs which is adequate. The rum here is quite good! No surprise- there’s plenty of sugar. We made ginger rum recently (just grate up a bunch of ginger and throw it in the bottle for a day, strain it and voila: rum with a nice ginger kick. I haven’t dealt with chicken yet. I think I have killed three since I have been here. It’s a lot of work and the chicken will be either roaming the backyard or the house until it’s time for the pot. We may make a turkey for Thanksgiving if some other Peace Corps volunteers want to come visit us- I’ll let them pluck and gut the damn thing and then I’ll do the roasting. Turkeys are expensive (as are geese) and both of these generate more meat of the same species than we wish to consume in a few days. Maybe I’ll talk about something other than food.
We both teach Monday through Thursday. On Wednesdays, we have our Malagasy tutor over. The session is quite casual: we nibble, sip and chat. A nice fellow also came for the first time last week to be my French tutor. As many of you know, I have studied French for some time and am hoping to push my conversational skills towards fluency in the time that I’m here, since it is actually spoken here by many. We actually live in the same building that houses the Alliance Francaise in our town. I believe these classes cater to children, so I’m sticking with the tutor. Once every couple of weeks or more we go to our banking town- that is, our bank is there so we need to go there to get money and some of the aforementioned produce such as the eggplant, and basil and also cheese- a life-giving essential is also there. In any case, there is a group of French people there doing work for NGO’s and the like who are a fun bunch to hang around with. Sometimes, we go to the large Alliance Francaise there after hours and watch rugby and hang out. I hope to do more of this as I need to improve my French. The French seem to always speak English though, so if you’re not assertive you’ll just end up speaking English. I should mention our Malagasy- or maybe the lack thereof. It is improving and we can get the things in the market that we need. Some people are much easier to understand than others. All I can say is that it is a work in progress. I do hope that it progresses more rapidly since it is a bit of a barrier to integrating in the community when you can’t carry out a conversation. PCV’s tend to avoid using French as a general means of communication owing something to our identity here and how we are perceived by the community. The French were the colonizers and, although there are a great many French people working here and doing really good things for the country, being American (for once) carries less cultural baggage and people perceive and react to us differently when they realize that we are not French, but American. I should mention that the creeping arm of the American media has not infiltrated this country as deeply. There are only two television stations here- one is governmentally operated. The other may have programming in French. There are small makeshift shacks here and there where people affluent enough to own a TV and DVD player screen various films- sometime American and probably dubbed in French. The last one I noticed was Rambo. It‘s nice to know that we are able to put our best foot forward with important Hollywood epics such as this alive and well in the third world.
10/27/07
I don’t have too much time for this entry, But, since I last wrote we found ourselves in one of those small movie shacks watching ‘Red Sonja’ the classic film with Arnold Schwarzeneggar in barbarian mode and Bridgit Nielson as the unconquerable warrioress. Of course, it is dubbed in French as few people understand English here- although we’re working on it. I must say, Arnold really doesn’t sound as rough, tough, or buff dubbed in French. Right now, we have a week off from teaching for the All-Saints day break and hopefully we’ll do something interesting. If so, you’ll read about it here!
Saturday, September 8, 2007
We are finally at our site!
We are in our banking town at the internet cafe. I have just posted a bunch of collected blog entries. We are now sworn in full-fledged Peace Corps volunteers. We have our own house and a phone. You can call us if you find a reasonably priced phone card. We don't pay for incoming calls. Please pay attention to the time difference. See 'current time in Antananarivo' on our blog page.
Our Number including the country code: 001 261 3308 11226
Best,
T&S
Our Number including the country code: 001 261 3308 11226
Best,
T&S
Collected entries from July & August
7/27
We just returned from Antananarivo where we took an afternoon trip to get our Yellow Fever vaccine. What you are reading here was written just following the previous posting. As we only have occasional access to the internet, we are trying to write blog entries as time allows on the computer and taking them with us to the internet café. Even so, the internet café seems to take hours- the browser’s quitting, the computer’s crashing, the connection speed is ridiculous, etc. In any case, we have some good pictures, but the few that we have managed to post represent about four hours at the internet café. We will continue to try to post each time- I’m sure that’s part of what everyone here wants- and we may have more success at different cafés. I will probably attach some dates to the entries that reflect when things were written as opposed to the dates on the blog which can only indicate when we are able to post our collective blog entries.
7/29
Is Madagascar Africa? This is a fascinating question. On the one hand, if one were to gaze at a map it would be logical to conclude that yes, it is in fact a part of Africa- much like we consider England a part of Europe. The continent of Africa itself is not monolithic. People in Egypt do not have the same mores, beliefs, and lifeways as those in Tanzania, or Ghana, yet they all irrefutably belong to the African continent. Some scientists believe that (I believe that this is more than just a hypothesis) Madagascar, once part of the mega-continent Pangaea, actually split off from India later than it did from Africa. It was also connected to South America and indeed even some of the Flora/Fauna here has more in common with its Amazonian counterparts. I will write more about the uniqueness and biodiversity here as I learn more. For now, I want to emphasize the remarkable uniqueness of Madagascar, despite its proximity to the African continent. The people here do not consider themselves African per se. And what do the people look like here? I guess one would say that they look like people that live on a huge island in the Indian Ocean: in general, dark hair with varying gradations of dark skin. They may have straight or kinkier hair like ‘Africans’ would have, depending on where you are on the island. Let’s just say that if you took a random sampling of people from here and put them in a lineup and asked Americans where they were from some would appear to be African- others Indonesian, Polynesian or even Pacific Islander. The language is most closely related to an Indonesian language on the island of Borneo. It is from here (Indonesia/Malay) that emigration occurred as these seafaring peoples traveled west hugging the southern limits of the Asian continent before heading south along the East Coast of Africa and ending up in Madagascar. This occurred only about 2000 years ago. I believe I have mentioned that the Malagasy love rice, eat it three times a day, and apparently they consume more of it per capita- per annum than anywhere else on earth. Rice is generally not a staple on the African continent. The reverence for ancestors, of which you will hear more, is also a cultural component of that which has survived from the Indonesian/Malayan background. The people here are extremely hospitable as you get out into the country. The capital is a little different- another discussion- but out in the country most everyone offers a warm ‘Manahoana!’ (hello!) to you as you pass. Many people will stop and stare with unashamed curiosity at you. They don’t see many white people here in some parts. Mothers have been known to spook their kids by telling them that the vazaha will come and get them. Vazaha is a general term for a white person. It is not necessarily derogative. It has something of the connotation of ‘foreigner’, yet this is not the primary import of the term. We have an African-American volunteer among us, but he is not referred to as ‘vazaha’ often. Children will often yell vazaha over and over again when they spot you. This may seem odd for if a child were to verbally identify and yell out a label for every individual that appeared ethnically different than himself in a place such as San Francisco, he would soon collapse from exhaustion. I can only liken it to turning down the next aisle in a grocery store and seeing a zebra. People would need to talk about it and assuredly feel compelled to identify precisely what it was despite it being obvious. Peace Corps volunteers often shake the vazaha identification because we actually learn the native language. People anywhere become much less ‘foreign’ when they can speak your native language- and especially one that people don’t routinely learn for other purposes such as English, French or Spanish. In one amusing episode, a child yelled vazaha! at a volunteer who responded with ‘aiza?’ or ‘where?’ in Malagasy. The child became perplexed and ran away.
8/19
I realize that I neglected to write about the Peace Corps Olympics which was a fun event (8/2) to fill out a day, so here goes! While we predominantly stay with our host families during training, there does exist a spectacular training facility owned by the Peace Corps which is like a presque isle, but with a lake surrounding on three sides. Trees abound there. It is like a summer camp in a magnificently beautiful idyllic outdoor setting. The training center used to enjoy more use, but Peace Corps has decided to start training with the homestays immediately upon arriving in the country. So, occasionally we all go to this facility for training and will return periodically during our service as Peace Corps volunteers for training, workshops, and the like. In any case, the day was beautiful, clear, and crisp- sunny and warm. We broke into teams. Our task: first, one member needs to run a bucket of water around the isle with a (mock) baby tied to their back. On one’s head is the traditional way of accomplishing this, but no one opted for this approach. Once the member reached the glade where the rest of the events would take place the other tasks were underway. The second task was to get some charcoal lit with only some pine needles and matches at our disposal and no paucity of wind. Lighting of the smallish charcoal stove would allow us to realize the third and fourth tasks on which we were to be judged: making peanut butter and killing and de-feathering a chicken. For the peanut butter, the peanuts must first be roasted and then pulverized in the mortar and pestle. The addition of just the right amount of salt and sugar will produce a satisfying and ‘winning’ peanut butter. The PB was to be judged by the resident chef- admittedly a subjective matter. Of four teams, ours landed in third place for our peanut product. Apparently, not improved by the secret ingredient- cocoa- or perhaps it was the inadvertent influx of salt that was not anticipated- as the butter had been pre-salted. It could have been palatable in some setting, but the salt kind of put it over. None of it was as good as what we had made with our host families. On a personal note, I am eager to assume full executive powers in overseeing the production of my own PB. As for the chicken- it needs to be killed. Feathers are plucked from the neck area around which you wish to slice the neck. Slice is an optimistic description for it as, contrary to the intuitive manner of going about this sort of thing, it is a dull knife that is always employed. This only elongates the process. We cut the head clear off. Others generally slice and wait as the blood evacuates itself from bird. Even with the head off- the body writhed and struggled. It shat and the stench was as foul as the excrement itself. What follows, is what accounts for the second need for the charcoal. The body needs to be plunged into boiling water which facilitates removal of the feathers. Our inability to get our water boiling while remaining determined not to fall behind other teams, led us to the conclusion that we should begin to pluck the bird sans-water. This didn’t work out as it messes up the skin and furthermore, the objective was to process the bird so that it could be judged as being the most neatly prepared and presented for cooking. Random hairs, feathers, and ripped flesh were what you were trying to avoid. I don’t remember how well we did in the end. We weren’t in last place. The winning squad produced a beautiful bird- it looked like it lived in LA and had been freshly waxed. Ours looked cool as we didn’t remove the feet and as it lie on it back the feet jutted majestically upwards. That pretty much does it for the games. Feathers blanketed the field as evidence of our Olympic episode. We expected the chicken for dinner, but it was not served. Someone ended up eating it and- admittedly- I was not disappointed by its omission!
8/22
Since our last entry there have been two fairly major events. First, we visited our site (8/4-8/9) where we will be working for the duration of our Peace Corps service, and secondly, we attended a fahmadian or exhumation on 8/10.
So, first the site. We are genuinely excited about our site. If one true thing can be said about the placements it is that every site has its strengths and weaknesses. In our case, the particular mixture has the potential to work out quite well for us. The weather there is slightly warmer than the town in which we have been doing all our training and this is fortunate as overall it has been a bit too chilly for comfort- bear in mind it’s winter here. There is a small group of other PCV’s in our immediate area from the education, as well as the health and environment sectors. It should make for a good little community. We are, however, the only white people in our town. Most people don’t speak English (yet). The campuses of the schools where we will teach are up the mountain a bit which makes for a nice atmosphere and a spectacular view from the lycée. Stacey will teach at the CEG where she will have the quatrieme class which is like middle school kids in the States. I (Tony) will teach at the lycée which is like high school. We received a warm welcome from all of our colleagues and counterparts. We met, for the most part, all the important people in the city- the Mayor wasn’t available, but we met the chief of the district, the gendarme, police, superintendent, principle etc. We both thought the town had a somewhat African feel to it- much as we would envision West Africa- Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin- being; not jungle, but majestic open areas and punctuated by fruitful Papaya and Banana trees. We got to see our house, which is actually part of the school. We have two rooms. The bedroom is about four feet above the main living space and accessible via a small staircase. We have plenty of windows which will be good both for the natural light and to help keep the place cool in the hot season. What was identified as the kitchen was just an empty space. If you know us you know that the kitchen is probably the most important part of the house. We think they are building us a sink- if not we’ll have it done. There is no running water, but typically a sink/wash basin drains to the outside. In our case, it’ll probably drain via the same route as our ladosy or shower space. Here we take bucket showers which are realized by boiling a big pot of water and adjusting it in a big bucket with cold water to achieve the desired temperature. There is a largish cup from which the water is poured over oneself that is called a ‘zinger’. I have to admit that when you get the hang of it- it’s not so bad: as long as you prepare enough water for yourself. We have electricity 18 hours a day- it cuts out at 11pm and comes back on at 5am. This is good enough to allow us to have a small refrigerator which we’ll run cold enough to keep everything cool enough to survive the six hours. Before we get installed at our site we go on a bit of a shopping spree with our settling-in-allowance that the Peace Corps gives us for essentials- we’re not supposed to live in opulence even if we use our own money. In fact, the fridge we’ll pay for ourselves. Part of integrating with the community is to live more or less at the local level, but- even then- some people in the community have more than others- like anywhere. Some of the needed things are already at the house from the last volunteer, but there remains a good deal of shopping to be done. The proviseur (principal) is building us a big brick fence around the place, so we should have enough room on the front porch to sit with a table and chairs. Moreover, the last PCV built a back patio area which is covered and feels like a nice place to hang out without disturbance. There is a chameleon that lives in this area in a small Mango tree. It was kind of a special moment when we spotted this chameleon- very welcoming in a way and we took it as a good omen; the PCV from the neighboring town confirmed that it actually lives in that tree, so we can expect to see it regularly. The town is nice and there are plenty of fruits, vegetables, meat and fish from the lake available at the market. There is not much going on at night though. Our banking town is only a couple of hours away by taxi-brousse and, although we have yet to go there- we have word from others- including a volunteer from our stage who is being placed there- that it is quite a sizeable city and that there are fun things to do on the weekends. Internet is also available, so we will probably access the internet at least once every couple of weeks. The Peace Corps is also giving us both bicycles which is pretty exciting as the area is ripe for excursions to neighboring towns and even just exploring off-road. I mentioned that we are near Lac Aloatra (in fact, we are not supposed to say exactly where we are on our blog for security purposes), but we can’t actually see the lake from where we are at- save for on the highest mountain in the town from where it can be spotted in the distance. It is at the top of the lake that the ‘gentle bamboo lemur’ lives- above the water and among the reeds- it is the only place in the world that this animal is found and it is endangered. Well, we have about two weeks until we will be at site. We are wrapping up our language training. There are some technical presentations remaining and next week we will swear in and take our oaths as Peace Corps Volunteers with the PC country director and the American ambassador. This is not just a technicality. We are actually quite limited in our independence and ability to make our own decisions at this point. After swearing in, although we are expected to perform our job responsibly, the Peace Corps mostly leaves us alone. We also have less than a week left in the home-stay here with our host family. They have been very nice to us. Yet, I can’t overemphasize how much it is time for us to have our lives back. We will have spent about 10 weeks living in this family’s home. We are used to living in OUR home and upon reflection I think that both Stacey and I have probably not logged 10 cumulative weeks total with our parents over the last number of years; a much more comfortable and familiar setting- and boy do I miss the cooking!
We mentioned that the second largely blogworthy event was that we attended a fahmadian or exhumation. Many of the Malagasy are Christian, yet they have retained elements of some of their more traditional practices. The deceased are viewed to an extent as a conduit to the deity- to god. Rather costly tombs are constructed out of marble and this is by the same people who reside in brick houses with either corrugated tin/or thatched roofs. Many people fit in the tomb. When people die they are wrapped in a white silken cloth known as the lamba mena and they are placed in the tomb. After every so often, the deceased will contact a family member and inform them that they are cold in their lambas. This will signal the need for the fahmadian. This is a major event and comes at great cost to the family. Eight cows are slaughtered for the requisite feast. The meat is prepared in copious amounts of menaka or oil- a good fahmadian feast will not skimp on the oil. I conjecture that the slow cooking in hot oil helps to make the meat tender which is otherwise on the tougher side- as I have discussed previously. And of course, the meat is accompanied by an abundance of rice. I should mention that there were as many as a couple hundred people at the feast who were served in stages. A small amount is paid by attendees to offset the cost of the meal. After everyone has had their fill- read ‘stuffed’- then it is time to proceed to the tomb. The dirt covering the tomb is removed and then two large flat weighty stones are removed to reveal the entrance to the tomb. The closest family members descend into the tomb. Therein lay many members of the family. Every body will be removed and rewrapped in a fresh lamba mena. The mena is wrapped in a specific way and tied off at points along the length of the remains. The body itself is not unwrapped from the original mena so guests do not actually gaze at the remains. Once the bodies are rewrapped the closest relatives dance while holding the bodies over their heads- thrusting them rhythmically up and down as the band provides musical accompaniment. The event is celebratory- more a reaffirmation than a dirge. At our particular fahmadian, an infant was exhumed from alongside the tomb and handed to his mother. If an infant dies before six months of age, the tomb is not opened. I believe that the infant was placed in the tomb proper at the end. In any case, after dancing the bodies are reintroduced into the tomb and the tomb is purified and sealed again. The next time it is opened will be a sad occasion as it will be on account of a death.
The family who was having the fahmadian had hosted a Peace Corps volunteer who left prematurely. Nonetheless, in recognition and appreciation of the Peace Corps volunteers training in the city and in the interest of familiarizing us with their traditions, they invited all 23 of us to attend. The feast portion took many hours. Thereafter, we proceeded to the tomb where we stayed for quite some time. At some point, all of the volunteers had apparently felt that they had invested enough time in the event and left. This left four of us- Stacey, myself, Travis, and Kateri- at the tomb. What happened next is a quintessential Peace Corps experience. In fact, it was much more than this. We were invited to help rewrap the bodies, dance with them and reintroduce them to the tomb- an honor usually reserved for only the most intimate members of the family. Few, if ever any, Peace Corps volunteers or foreigners, have been invited to do this and indeed it was pointed out to us by our Malagasy language trainers that there are many Malagasy that have never had the opportunity to participate in the ceremony. It’s hard to articulate the feeling—the exact dynamic—just what it meant to be involved. We could not in good faith decline and the task was approached with great reverence and respect for the gravity of the occasion. I don’t know what relation the bodies that we were wrapping had to the man who encouraged our participation- was I putting a lamba on his mother? His father? Whom? When we set these people back to rest in the tomb we could only wonder what this person- who themselves must have honored highly this tradition- would have felt about our participation. I do know that there is a great warmth and respect for the Peace Corps volunteers and that we have come to volunteer in Madagascar. As we were leaving, one of the close family members turned to us and she said, ‘God Bless You!’ in English. We were grateful to be a part of the ceremony and honored that people were so accepting and supportive of what we have come here to do.
8/27
I haven’t exactly kept up with all the dating of these entries. At any rate, by the time you read this we will have been officially sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers and will be en route for installation at our site. We all passed our language exams, said goodbye to our host families and are now at the training facility decompressing from an often arduous ten weeks of training. Tonight the moon is full and brilliant. Tomorrow morning we will drive to the capitol city of Tana where we will recite the Peace Corps oath at the American embassy and will then head to the ambassador’s house for a few hours of mingling. Tomorrow night is a free night in Tana. For many of us, it will be the last time that we will see each other for a matter of months. As you can imagine, we’ve developed a number of relationships with the people with whom we have shared the last ten weeks of training, day in and day out, that started back in June in Washington D.C. On Wednesday, we will be shopping for the things we need for site and soon after we will be on our way there. One bit of good news is that we should have a cell phone by the weekend. If we have it before I post this then you will see that I have posted the number. We don’t pay for incoming calls, so if you want to call and you can find a cheap calling card etc. please don’t hesitate. Please do keep in mind the time difference here. I think you subtract ten hours. Look at the little ‘current time in Tana’ clock at the top of this blog to be sure. We will work hard to get a handful of pictures up within the first couple of weeks at site when we visit our banking town.
We just returned from Antananarivo where we took an afternoon trip to get our Yellow Fever vaccine. What you are reading here was written just following the previous posting. As we only have occasional access to the internet, we are trying to write blog entries as time allows on the computer and taking them with us to the internet café. Even so, the internet café seems to take hours- the browser’s quitting, the computer’s crashing, the connection speed is ridiculous, etc. In any case, we have some good pictures, but the few that we have managed to post represent about four hours at the internet café. We will continue to try to post each time- I’m sure that’s part of what everyone here wants- and we may have more success at different cafés. I will probably attach some dates to the entries that reflect when things were written as opposed to the dates on the blog which can only indicate when we are able to post our collective blog entries.
7/29
Is Madagascar Africa? This is a fascinating question. On the one hand, if one were to gaze at a map it would be logical to conclude that yes, it is in fact a part of Africa- much like we consider England a part of Europe. The continent of Africa itself is not monolithic. People in Egypt do not have the same mores, beliefs, and lifeways as those in Tanzania, or Ghana, yet they all irrefutably belong to the African continent. Some scientists believe that (I believe that this is more than just a hypothesis) Madagascar, once part of the mega-continent Pangaea, actually split off from India later than it did from Africa. It was also connected to South America and indeed even some of the Flora/Fauna here has more in common with its Amazonian counterparts. I will write more about the uniqueness and biodiversity here as I learn more. For now, I want to emphasize the remarkable uniqueness of Madagascar, despite its proximity to the African continent. The people here do not consider themselves African per se. And what do the people look like here? I guess one would say that they look like people that live on a huge island in the Indian Ocean: in general, dark hair with varying gradations of dark skin. They may have straight or kinkier hair like ‘Africans’ would have, depending on where you are on the island. Let’s just say that if you took a random sampling of people from here and put them in a lineup and asked Americans where they were from some would appear to be African- others Indonesian, Polynesian or even Pacific Islander. The language is most closely related to an Indonesian language on the island of Borneo. It is from here (Indonesia/Malay) that emigration occurred as these seafaring peoples traveled west hugging the southern limits of the Asian continent before heading south along the East Coast of Africa and ending up in Madagascar. This occurred only about 2000 years ago. I believe I have mentioned that the Malagasy love rice, eat it three times a day, and apparently they consume more of it per capita- per annum than anywhere else on earth. Rice is generally not a staple on the African continent. The reverence for ancestors, of which you will hear more, is also a cultural component of that which has survived from the Indonesian/Malayan background. The people here are extremely hospitable as you get out into the country. The capital is a little different- another discussion- but out in the country most everyone offers a warm ‘Manahoana!’ (hello!) to you as you pass. Many people will stop and stare with unashamed curiosity at you. They don’t see many white people here in some parts. Mothers have been known to spook their kids by telling them that the vazaha will come and get them. Vazaha is a general term for a white person. It is not necessarily derogative. It has something of the connotation of ‘foreigner’, yet this is not the primary import of the term. We have an African-American volunteer among us, but he is not referred to as ‘vazaha’ often. Children will often yell vazaha over and over again when they spot you. This may seem odd for if a child were to verbally identify and yell out a label for every individual that appeared ethnically different than himself in a place such as San Francisco, he would soon collapse from exhaustion. I can only liken it to turning down the next aisle in a grocery store and seeing a zebra. People would need to talk about it and assuredly feel compelled to identify precisely what it was despite it being obvious. Peace Corps volunteers often shake the vazaha identification because we actually learn the native language. People anywhere become much less ‘foreign’ when they can speak your native language- and especially one that people don’t routinely learn for other purposes such as English, French or Spanish. In one amusing episode, a child yelled vazaha! at a volunteer who responded with ‘aiza?’ or ‘where?’ in Malagasy. The child became perplexed and ran away.
8/19
I realize that I neglected to write about the Peace Corps Olympics which was a fun event (8/2) to fill out a day, so here goes! While we predominantly stay with our host families during training, there does exist a spectacular training facility owned by the Peace Corps which is like a presque isle, but with a lake surrounding on three sides. Trees abound there. It is like a summer camp in a magnificently beautiful idyllic outdoor setting. The training center used to enjoy more use, but Peace Corps has decided to start training with the homestays immediately upon arriving in the country. So, occasionally we all go to this facility for training and will return periodically during our service as Peace Corps volunteers for training, workshops, and the like. In any case, the day was beautiful, clear, and crisp- sunny and warm. We broke into teams. Our task: first, one member needs to run a bucket of water around the isle with a (mock) baby tied to their back. On one’s head is the traditional way of accomplishing this, but no one opted for this approach. Once the member reached the glade where the rest of the events would take place the other tasks were underway. The second task was to get some charcoal lit with only some pine needles and matches at our disposal and no paucity of wind. Lighting of the smallish charcoal stove would allow us to realize the third and fourth tasks on which we were to be judged: making peanut butter and killing and de-feathering a chicken. For the peanut butter, the peanuts must first be roasted and then pulverized in the mortar and pestle. The addition of just the right amount of salt and sugar will produce a satisfying and ‘winning’ peanut butter. The PB was to be judged by the resident chef- admittedly a subjective matter. Of four teams, ours landed in third place for our peanut product. Apparently, not improved by the secret ingredient- cocoa- or perhaps it was the inadvertent influx of salt that was not anticipated- as the butter had been pre-salted. It could have been palatable in some setting, but the salt kind of put it over. None of it was as good as what we had made with our host families. On a personal note, I am eager to assume full executive powers in overseeing the production of my own PB. As for the chicken- it needs to be killed. Feathers are plucked from the neck area around which you wish to slice the neck. Slice is an optimistic description for it as, contrary to the intuitive manner of going about this sort of thing, it is a dull knife that is always employed. This only elongates the process. We cut the head clear off. Others generally slice and wait as the blood evacuates itself from bird. Even with the head off- the body writhed and struggled. It shat and the stench was as foul as the excrement itself. What follows, is what accounts for the second need for the charcoal. The body needs to be plunged into boiling water which facilitates removal of the feathers. Our inability to get our water boiling while remaining determined not to fall behind other teams, led us to the conclusion that we should begin to pluck the bird sans-water. This didn’t work out as it messes up the skin and furthermore, the objective was to process the bird so that it could be judged as being the most neatly prepared and presented for cooking. Random hairs, feathers, and ripped flesh were what you were trying to avoid. I don’t remember how well we did in the end. We weren’t in last place. The winning squad produced a beautiful bird- it looked like it lived in LA and had been freshly waxed. Ours looked cool as we didn’t remove the feet and as it lie on it back the feet jutted majestically upwards. That pretty much does it for the games. Feathers blanketed the field as evidence of our Olympic episode. We expected the chicken for dinner, but it was not served. Someone ended up eating it and- admittedly- I was not disappointed by its omission!
8/22
Since our last entry there have been two fairly major events. First, we visited our site (8/4-8/9) where we will be working for the duration of our Peace Corps service, and secondly, we attended a fahmadian or exhumation on 8/10.
So, first the site. We are genuinely excited about our site. If one true thing can be said about the placements it is that every site has its strengths and weaknesses. In our case, the particular mixture has the potential to work out quite well for us. The weather there is slightly warmer than the town in which we have been doing all our training and this is fortunate as overall it has been a bit too chilly for comfort- bear in mind it’s winter here. There is a small group of other PCV’s in our immediate area from the education, as well as the health and environment sectors. It should make for a good little community. We are, however, the only white people in our town. Most people don’t speak English (yet). The campuses of the schools where we will teach are up the mountain a bit which makes for a nice atmosphere and a spectacular view from the lycée. Stacey will teach at the CEG where she will have the quatrieme class which is like middle school kids in the States. I (Tony) will teach at the lycée which is like high school. We received a warm welcome from all of our colleagues and counterparts. We met, for the most part, all the important people in the city- the Mayor wasn’t available, but we met the chief of the district, the gendarme, police, superintendent, principle etc. We both thought the town had a somewhat African feel to it- much as we would envision West Africa- Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin- being; not jungle, but majestic open areas and punctuated by fruitful Papaya and Banana trees. We got to see our house, which is actually part of the school. We have two rooms. The bedroom is about four feet above the main living space and accessible via a small staircase. We have plenty of windows which will be good both for the natural light and to help keep the place cool in the hot season. What was identified as the kitchen was just an empty space. If you know us you know that the kitchen is probably the most important part of the house. We think they are building us a sink- if not we’ll have it done. There is no running water, but typically a sink/wash basin drains to the outside. In our case, it’ll probably drain via the same route as our ladosy or shower space. Here we take bucket showers which are realized by boiling a big pot of water and adjusting it in a big bucket with cold water to achieve the desired temperature. There is a largish cup from which the water is poured over oneself that is called a ‘zinger’. I have to admit that when you get the hang of it- it’s not so bad: as long as you prepare enough water for yourself. We have electricity 18 hours a day- it cuts out at 11pm and comes back on at 5am. This is good enough to allow us to have a small refrigerator which we’ll run cold enough to keep everything cool enough to survive the six hours. Before we get installed at our site we go on a bit of a shopping spree with our settling-in-allowance that the Peace Corps gives us for essentials- we’re not supposed to live in opulence even if we use our own money. In fact, the fridge we’ll pay for ourselves. Part of integrating with the community is to live more or less at the local level, but- even then- some people in the community have more than others- like anywhere. Some of the needed things are already at the house from the last volunteer, but there remains a good deal of shopping to be done. The proviseur (principal) is building us a big brick fence around the place, so we should have enough room on the front porch to sit with a table and chairs. Moreover, the last PCV built a back patio area which is covered and feels like a nice place to hang out without disturbance. There is a chameleon that lives in this area in a small Mango tree. It was kind of a special moment when we spotted this chameleon- very welcoming in a way and we took it as a good omen; the PCV from the neighboring town confirmed that it actually lives in that tree, so we can expect to see it regularly. The town is nice and there are plenty of fruits, vegetables, meat and fish from the lake available at the market. There is not much going on at night though. Our banking town is only a couple of hours away by taxi-brousse and, although we have yet to go there- we have word from others- including a volunteer from our stage who is being placed there- that it is quite a sizeable city and that there are fun things to do on the weekends. Internet is also available, so we will probably access the internet at least once every couple of weeks. The Peace Corps is also giving us both bicycles which is pretty exciting as the area is ripe for excursions to neighboring towns and even just exploring off-road. I mentioned that we are near Lac Aloatra (in fact, we are not supposed to say exactly where we are on our blog for security purposes), but we can’t actually see the lake from where we are at- save for on the highest mountain in the town from where it can be spotted in the distance. It is at the top of the lake that the ‘gentle bamboo lemur’ lives- above the water and among the reeds- it is the only place in the world that this animal is found and it is endangered. Well, we have about two weeks until we will be at site. We are wrapping up our language training. There are some technical presentations remaining and next week we will swear in and take our oaths as Peace Corps Volunteers with the PC country director and the American ambassador. This is not just a technicality. We are actually quite limited in our independence and ability to make our own decisions at this point. After swearing in, although we are expected to perform our job responsibly, the Peace Corps mostly leaves us alone. We also have less than a week left in the home-stay here with our host family. They have been very nice to us. Yet, I can’t overemphasize how much it is time for us to have our lives back. We will have spent about 10 weeks living in this family’s home. We are used to living in OUR home and upon reflection I think that both Stacey and I have probably not logged 10 cumulative weeks total with our parents over the last number of years; a much more comfortable and familiar setting- and boy do I miss the cooking!
We mentioned that the second largely blogworthy event was that we attended a fahmadian or exhumation. Many of the Malagasy are Christian, yet they have retained elements of some of their more traditional practices. The deceased are viewed to an extent as a conduit to the deity- to god. Rather costly tombs are constructed out of marble and this is by the same people who reside in brick houses with either corrugated tin/or thatched roofs. Many people fit in the tomb. When people die they are wrapped in a white silken cloth known as the lamba mena and they are placed in the tomb. After every so often, the deceased will contact a family member and inform them that they are cold in their lambas. This will signal the need for the fahmadian. This is a major event and comes at great cost to the family. Eight cows are slaughtered for the requisite feast. The meat is prepared in copious amounts of menaka or oil- a good fahmadian feast will not skimp on the oil. I conjecture that the slow cooking in hot oil helps to make the meat tender which is otherwise on the tougher side- as I have discussed previously. And of course, the meat is accompanied by an abundance of rice. I should mention that there were as many as a couple hundred people at the feast who were served in stages. A small amount is paid by attendees to offset the cost of the meal. After everyone has had their fill- read ‘stuffed’- then it is time to proceed to the tomb. The dirt covering the tomb is removed and then two large flat weighty stones are removed to reveal the entrance to the tomb. The closest family members descend into the tomb. Therein lay many members of the family. Every body will be removed and rewrapped in a fresh lamba mena. The mena is wrapped in a specific way and tied off at points along the length of the remains. The body itself is not unwrapped from the original mena so guests do not actually gaze at the remains. Once the bodies are rewrapped the closest relatives dance while holding the bodies over their heads- thrusting them rhythmically up and down as the band provides musical accompaniment. The event is celebratory- more a reaffirmation than a dirge. At our particular fahmadian, an infant was exhumed from alongside the tomb and handed to his mother. If an infant dies before six months of age, the tomb is not opened. I believe that the infant was placed in the tomb proper at the end. In any case, after dancing the bodies are reintroduced into the tomb and the tomb is purified and sealed again. The next time it is opened will be a sad occasion as it will be on account of a death.
The family who was having the fahmadian had hosted a Peace Corps volunteer who left prematurely. Nonetheless, in recognition and appreciation of the Peace Corps volunteers training in the city and in the interest of familiarizing us with their traditions, they invited all 23 of us to attend. The feast portion took many hours. Thereafter, we proceeded to the tomb where we stayed for quite some time. At some point, all of the volunteers had apparently felt that they had invested enough time in the event and left. This left four of us- Stacey, myself, Travis, and Kateri- at the tomb. What happened next is a quintessential Peace Corps experience. In fact, it was much more than this. We were invited to help rewrap the bodies, dance with them and reintroduce them to the tomb- an honor usually reserved for only the most intimate members of the family. Few, if ever any, Peace Corps volunteers or foreigners, have been invited to do this and indeed it was pointed out to us by our Malagasy language trainers that there are many Malagasy that have never had the opportunity to participate in the ceremony. It’s hard to articulate the feeling—the exact dynamic—just what it meant to be involved. We could not in good faith decline and the task was approached with great reverence and respect for the gravity of the occasion. I don’t know what relation the bodies that we were wrapping had to the man who encouraged our participation- was I putting a lamba on his mother? His father? Whom? When we set these people back to rest in the tomb we could only wonder what this person- who themselves must have honored highly this tradition- would have felt about our participation. I do know that there is a great warmth and respect for the Peace Corps volunteers and that we have come to volunteer in Madagascar. As we were leaving, one of the close family members turned to us and she said, ‘God Bless You!’ in English. We were grateful to be a part of the ceremony and honored that people were so accepting and supportive of what we have come here to do.
8/27
I haven’t exactly kept up with all the dating of these entries. At any rate, by the time you read this we will have been officially sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers and will be en route for installation at our site. We all passed our language exams, said goodbye to our host families and are now at the training facility decompressing from an often arduous ten weeks of training. Tonight the moon is full and brilliant. Tomorrow morning we will drive to the capitol city of Tana where we will recite the Peace Corps oath at the American embassy and will then head to the ambassador’s house for a few hours of mingling. Tomorrow night is a free night in Tana. For many of us, it will be the last time that we will see each other for a matter of months. As you can imagine, we’ve developed a number of relationships with the people with whom we have shared the last ten weeks of training, day in and day out, that started back in June in Washington D.C. On Wednesday, we will be shopping for the things we need for site and soon after we will be on our way there. One bit of good news is that we should have a cell phone by the weekend. If we have it before I post this then you will see that I have posted the number. We don’t pay for incoming calls, so if you want to call and you can find a cheap calling card etc. please don’t hesitate. Please do keep in mind the time difference here. I think you subtract ten hours. Look at the little ‘current time in Tana’ clock at the top of this blog to be sure. We will work hard to get a handful of pictures up within the first couple of weeks at site when we visit our banking town.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Almost Through Training
At this point, we are about half way through our pre-service training. It has been quite challenging so far. Trying to learn the language and acclimate to a new culture is work enough, but there is much more training in addition including tech sessions on teaching, staying healthy etc. This is an incredible place and we are working with some incredible people here whom we hope to keep eternally as friends! We have had our site announcements and in two weeks we will visit the place where we will be stationed for the next two years. We will be in a town near
People do believe in witches here and apparently (so we’re told) a couple were arrested recently. It is difficult to learn much about what the witches do or believe in, but the topic does seem to come up enough. Many of the inhabitants here are Christian. Their practices incorporate older and more traditional beliefs, however. In this area, bodies are kept in family tombs and are removed periodically and carried around. The dead communicate to a family member that they are cold in the tombs and it is in this way that the family will know that it is time for an exhumation. There is a great ceremony and eventually the body is returned to the tomb with new (warmer) wrappings and returned to rest until the next cycle. Another volunteer was invited to a circumcision the other day. Apparently, this is a big deal for the boy and according to tradition in this part the circumcised piece is put into a banana and eaten by the grandfather. In the south, it is not eaten, but fired out of a cannon.
By our standards, it is interesting what is ‘modern’ here and what is not. There are many houses and in many ways a room is a room. There are no flushing toilets or running water. Water is brought to the houses each day by the water carrier. People use charcoal primarily to fire their stoves, but primarily for this reason and not to keep warm. Some people use gas stoves- including the house we are in, but it is not entirely the norm in country. Water is boiled to take a ‘shower’ which consists of a bucket and cup. There is a ‘kabone’ for each house which is essentially an outhouse except there is no seat and one squats rather than sits. Nonetheless, many houses do have electricity and our family watches television- two channels only, but its media! Cell phones are also common and it is interesting when one of the children’s’ phones goes off in the schoolhouse during class - where there is no electricity. It’s just easier to have a tower transmitting a signal here than to have each house hardwired which actually is more infrastructurally demanding if you think about it. There are many vehicles- Mercedes, Renault, and Peugeot definitely do some business here. I don’t know what emission standards they are adhering to as even minutes after a car has passed on the road one is still suffering from the exhaust fumes. In the U.S we would consider the way people drive here to be a little out of control; which is true of the
7/22
We did our laundry this morning. Not at the Laundromat, but at the wash station that is in our neighborhood. The wash station is sourced by a beautiful spring that is a ways up the mountainside and covered with Lilly pads. For many, laundry is done in a river, lake or stream. It is hard work to do laundry by hand with a brush and a bar of soap. My forearms are still tired from trying to wring every possible drop of water out of the clothes before hanging them on the clothesline. The time it takes laundry to dry here is contingent upon the weather. Last time, it took just two days because the weather was really hot. The time before when it was rainy and chilly- five days. There is a good local beer here that we get to enjoy on occasion. It is called THB or Three Horses Beer and it is a pilsner. Why the English name? Apparently, to encourage marketing abroad. I am not actually sure if there are even three horses in the country. We haven’t seen any. There is one exceptionally attractive goat in the village, but nothing has been named after him that we know of. Tonight, we are cooking an “American” dinner for our family at their request. We’ll just have to see how successful this effort will be. We are attempting Meatballs, Pasta with a creamy cheese sauce with roasted peppers and a hint of tomato and also a cauliflower dish, with a salty-sweet Asian type sauce with ginger and garlic (this one is a bit of a gamble). [7/26 S: The meal was a success, especially the cauliflower. Tony’s culinary techniques were closely observed by mom, dad, daughter, cousin, and three neighbors!] We haven’t gotten sick yet, though some people have. We have had about 90 million shots and we should be protected against all kinds of stuff. We’re both feeling pretty healthy. I’m (Tony) a few pounds lighter, but I’d trade it in a minute for some pesto pizza or pasta with gorgonzola cream. Stacey too!- I’ve been instructed to add. The language here- Malagasy- is quite fascinating and fun to be learning. There appears to be an intimidating number of syllables in any given word when you see it spelled. Fortunately, they are not all pronounced. The word order is a bit different than English [S: think Yoda] and is basically –verb, object, subject- so, “
Tony & Stacey Frallicciardi
Peace Corps
BP: 12091-Post ZOOM Akorondrano
Tana 101-Madagascar
After August 10th it will be better to send it to our permanent site address. Site visits are coming up in about a week, so we will be seeing our new home soon. We will try to post the address as soon as we know what it is. Thanks in advance for any mail you may send, we appreciate the love and any news from home.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Alive and well in Madagascar!
Well, here we are! Things have been great so far. We are working hard to learn Malagasy - the local language. We are also busy with technical training. The people here are really friendly and our host family is very considerate and outgoing. Madagascar is a truly wonderous and beautiful place. We are in the highlands and it is Winter here, so it is raining a lot. There are chickens, cows, ducks and geese everywhere! 80% of the Plants and animals here are endemic to the island. As you look around it is hard to pick out exactly what is different, but suffice to say it just is a very different and distant place and we are fortunate to be here! Our time is limited here at the internet cafe in the capitol city of Tana. If anyone wants to send us anything you may send it to the address that is already on our blog. You should send it in a padded envelope and apparently it has a better chance of reaching us unmolested if you write 'Jesus Saves' across the back of it.
Things that we're missing:
Bit of Honey Candy
Smokehouse almonds in a ziplock bag
Antibacterial gel/wipes
Miscellaneous suprise things
Correspondance in general!
We'll have a cell phone number here eventually and we don't pay for incoming in country. We'll post the # as soon as we have it. We are going to attempt to post some pictures- check to see if we were successful!
Things that we're missing:
Bit of Honey Candy
Smokehouse almonds in a ziplock bag
Antibacterial gel/wipes
Miscellaneous suprise things
Correspondance in general!
We'll have a cell phone number here eventually and we don't pay for incoming in country. We'll post the # as soon as we have it. We are going to attempt to post some pictures- check to see if we were successful!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Don’t Stop. . .
And so ends the final episode of the Sopranos which we were fortunate enough to see on our last weekend in the United States Washington , DC Johannesburg , South Africa and on Sunday night we will be living with a Malagasy host family in Madagascar
It’s been nearly a month since we have left the Bay Area. Much of this time was spent experiencing the pinnacles and nadirs of family life coupled with the joys and exhaustion of traveling. We have been in
Friday, May 18, 2007
Tony's Peace Corps E-mail
If you don't already have an existing e-mail address for me, I can be contacted at the following address while serving in the Peace Corps. My existing e-mail addresses will still work as well.
pcvanthonyfmg@yahoo.com
pcvanthonyfmg@yahoo.com
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Our Physical Address in Madagascar
Here is the address where we can receive correspondence etc. while in Madagascar. Letters typically take 4 weeks to get to country and an additional two to get to us. We'd love to hear from you specifically!
Stacey/Anthony Frallicciardi, PCT Peace Corps
BUREAU DU CORPS DE LA PAIX
B.P. 12091
POSTE ZOOM ANKORONDRANO
ANTANANARIVO
MADAGASCAR
Stacey/Anthony Frallicciardi, PCT Peace Corps
BUREAU DU CORPS DE LA PAIX
B.P. 12091
POSTE ZOOM ANKORONDRANO
ANTANANARIVO
MADAGASCAR
Before we proceed. . .
We must post this appropriate disclaimer:
The contents of this website are entirely ours personally and do not reflect any position of the United States government or the Peace Corps.
The contents of this website are entirely ours personally and do not reflect any position of the United States government or the Peace Corps.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Here goes!!
We are privileged to have an amazing opportunity to embark upon an incredible journey to Madagascar where we will serve for two years as Peace Corps volunteers. On Thursday June 14, 2007 we will arrive in Antananarivo to begin training. We may not have internet access for this 3-month period. Thereafter, it is unknown to us the extent to which we will have internet access on a regular basis. As opportunity affords we look forward to posting updates, pictures, and stories from our experience in country.
Best- Tony & Stacey
Best- Tony & Stacey
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