One of my guilty pleasures at site is listening to Voice of America on my shortwave radio. Recently I have found the tables turned, I am worrying about all of you over there in the U.S.! I got back from my previous trip to Sambava and heard about an earthquake(!) on the east coast, and now Hurricane Irene is headed straight for NC! The radio hasn’t been specific about where it will make landfall (I am pre-writing this blog post so I don’t know yet) which is frustrating for someone who hails from coastal NC. On to the updates from me, I feel like it’s been a little while. I can never seem to remember what I have told you all…
Well, I have passed the 3 month mark at my site. By the time I post this I will have been in Madagascar for 6 months! My focus is supposed to start shifting towards environmental work instead of the community integration I’ve been working on during my first weeks at site. Honestly, this change is not really a noticeable one. I am still scrabbling to find things to occupy my time. We have training again at the end of September with a focus more on technical work, so that should be really helpful to get things going.
Rice season is starting, and people are still sorting their cooked/dried vanilla. I really love it when my neighbors lay out their vanilla to dry because it smells amazing! I have been working with many of the women here building fuel-efficient cookstoves. We mix up a sort of mud from red clay, rice hulls, and ash, then form it into a stove that is supposed to retain heat. It’s not the most exciting work but it is nice to do a little bit to slow deforestation. After being asked about a million and one times when I would start teaching English I decided to start an English club on Saturday afternoons. I realized just how unqualified I am and how difficult teaching English is, but I will learn along with the students and they are very eager to learn even what little I can teach them.
In daily life I would estimate that being the only white person living in about a 40 km radius makes me twice as weird, 5 times as popular, 10 times as attractive, and 20 times as interesting as ever before. Also, there are 2 things that can always increase: the amount of food in my stomach (especially if rice is involved) and the ridiculousness of the situation in which I currently find myself. I don’t think I could make up some of the crazy things that happen to me on a daily basis.
I used to pride myself on being good with names, but I have a ridiculously hard time remembering Malagasy names. It’s difficult to ask a person their name repeatedly when I see them every day, know where they live, and they all know my name already. A lot of people go by “Mama of…” or “Papa of…” so I probably know more people by association with their children than by their first name.Sometimes I have to rely on descriptions such as “the woman who lives by the Catholic church and sews,” which is effective but makes me feel even worse about not retaining names.
I am now regularly rising around 5 AM to go running with my Malagasy friend, Mama nyEry. She runs one of the shops in town and every other day she comes to my house to get me for a jog. It’s really nice to have someone to keep me on track and to keep me company, but getting up that early is always a little bit rough, regardless of how early I go to bed. There have been a couple mornings where she has been my alarm clock (Mama nyEry happens to be one of the few Malagasy people who is actually on time or early; though she says 5:30 this can mean any time from 5:15 on). On many mornings I go from laying in my bed to running in as little as 15 or 20 minutes.
I visit the market in town every Wednesday, do a lot of reading, and try to get out for at least a short walk every day. I really hate doing laundry and I am getting pretty sick of eating “ananasmafana” which seem to be the only vegetable that is reliably available here (and also convenient because people come to my door selling it). I head into Sambava every few weeks as a break from village life and to communicate with the outside world (if you ever want to talk, shoot me an email and we can work out a time). Trips to Sambava mean eating myself sick as it’s difficult to resist the pastries, ice cream, pizza, and other exciting foods that my stomach is no longer used to eating.
Well, that about covers it. I hope you are all surviving the weirdness that Mother Nature seems to be delivering over there in America. Thinking of you from Madagascar!
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