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

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.