Hey, our phone number from the U.S. should be:
011 261 3308 11226
I had the country code mixed up before. Sorry!
Monday, October 29, 2007
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
