Officially a PCV!

I am writing this post while I am at the PC training center without internet, so it’s possible there will be an update at the end. But for now I’ll try to get everyone up to speed on what’s going on with me.

Last time I posted we were on our tech trip. The point of the trip was to help us learn technical skills for our time at site. We learned about SRI, a rice planting technique developed here in Madagascar. SRI changes some of the traditional rice farming practices and increases yields like crazy but for some reason has not really caught on throughout Madagascar. We also visited a couple pepinieres (tree nurseries) which was cool because my site information says I will potentially be working with fruit trees at site.

Since tech trip it’s been back to the grind of training. We have a lot of language class with some other sessions thrown in here and there. It’s crazy to me how much I’ve learned of Malagasy but every time I go out to speak to a Malagasy person it feels like there is so much more to know. I am learning a dialect called Sakalava that is specific to the northern part of Madagascar now. It’s kind of difficult because I am re-learning things I learned in standard Malagasy and it gets confusing when I go into town here and people don’t speak Sakalava. But all our instructors assure us that Malagasy people understand one another regardless of dialect.

Friday was Earth Day and we had a big celebration with the community of Mantasoa. We went to the local school and painted a world map on the wall (part of the world map project), planted trees and picked up trash with the kids. Then we had a ceremony to thank all of our host families and to celebrate Peace Corps’ 50^th anniversary. It was a lot of fun and definitely a nice break from the monotony of training. This weekend is Easter which seems to be a pretty big holiday here. The big celebration is actually on the Monday after Easter when families go out and have picnics.

Our swearing-in ceremony is on Tuesday, May 2 and the next day I fly north for installation. All the new PCVs in my region go together and we get installed at our sites one by one. I will be arriving at my site about a week after we swear in. Honestly I don’t know what my days will be like once I get to site, but it seems like the first 3 months are for settling in and getting to know my community and finding a way to help out. Then we have our in service training (IST) where we will learn more specific technical skills and maybe a little more language.

Alright, well that covers the overview but at the risk of rambling on forever I am going to give you some more specific details on my day to day life. Life in Madagascar is generally missing the luxuries of running water and electricity. We do have showers and power at the training center but I won’t when I get to site. This means that I shower in a ladosy, essentially a small structure in which I take a bucket bath. The bathroom (kabone) is a pit toilet and you always need to carry toilet paper when you go on a trip. Laundry is done in/beside the nearest water source then hung in the sun to dry. The major method of travel here is the taxi-brousse. It’s a big van into which you squeeze as many passengers as possible then wind and bump your way to the destination. They put all the luggage on top along with different items such as sacks full of rice, bikes, I have even seen baskets of chickens on top of a taxi-brousse! Most towns have small epiceries which are stores where you can buy pretty much anything you need on a daily basis. Usually you can get food like rice, bread, beans, snack food (cookies, chips, etc.), but also toilet paper, soap, pens, marbles, and other things too. The nice epiceries are almost like mini-Walmarts. Most towns also have a market day where vendors set up and sell food. At the markets you bargain for everything. Bargaining is something that I am going to have to get used to doing while I’m here! To buy clothes you go to the friperie or “frip” and get used clothes. The stands have a bunch of clothes and you select what you like and bargain for it. It’s sort of a guessing game as to what will actually fit you but luckily things are very very cheap here.

Well, I think I’ll leave it there for today. I should have more stories to tell once I get to my site and figure out what PC service is really going to be like. Thanks to everyone for the phone calls/texts/emails/letters! I will update my address when I get to site and figure out the mail system there.

UPDATE: Made it through my final language test and training as a whole! The next few days are for shopping and other prep in Tana, swearing in, then I head up north to be installed. My site does not have good cell phone reception so I will really be falling off the grid! It’s funny to me that it is abnormal not to have cell phone service even here in Madagascar but it is. In some respects it’s pretty scary but also exciting! And I’ll be able to communicate when I go bank in Sambava about once a month.