My Life Lately, in Pictures

I’m feeling uninspired for a blog post lately, but I have been using my camera some more. Here are a few pictures of what I’ve been up to recently…

This is what relief looks like. I recently decided to bike 40 km to Andapa. Well actually it was more like bike/walk since the second half of the “ride” was essentially a never-ending uphill climb. This is the view I had when I turned a corner, could finally see Andapa, and had a quick 3 km downhill finish. (I rode a taxi-brousse home.)

Still building those cookstoves… (Note her white hat that she put on just for the photo op.)

One of my favorite local hangouts. This is the local “soza” stand (“soza” is soy tea, aka very sweet, hot, homemade soy milk) and the only place to find bread in Ambohimanarina. Also the site of my very first cookstove.

These fish cost me 50 cents. And the women came to my house, sold them to me at my doorstep, and proceeded to clean them for me without me even asking.

I just had to go to 2 funerals in 3 days. Too much sitting for my fidgety self. This is just the “ro” (the side dish with the rice) cooking for one of the funerals. I think these might be the largest pots in the world.

Funeral lunch. That thatched roof in the background is my house. This is also not even everyone that ate.

Market day. This is actually towards the end of the market when there’s not a whole lot of people around buying stuff. But it was a particularly good market day.

This is what terror looks like, because white skin is terrifying. At least to this kid. I never appreciated how truly nice diversity is until it was gone from my life.

Came home from a walk to find my neighbor weighing this group of adorable and quite loud kindergarteners in the empty house behind mine.

*Side note: Just chased down the freakiest spider I have ever seen. Usually I’m not disturbed by spiders but this one was a huge mama carrying its babies around with it. Taken care of.

Alright, I’m going to cut it off there since I think this will probably take a while to load. Love and miss you all,

Leslie

A change of scenery

The last couple weeks has been sort of a whirlwind for me here. I went to Antananarivo (Tana), the capital, for my In Service Training (IST). Then I took a vacation. I'll try to give you all the cliff notes version here...

IST:

All of us PCVs who arrived together back in March came back for a re-training. We got to reconnect, share ideas and talk about our sites, learn more in-depth technical topics, and brush up on our Malagasy language skills a little bit. It was really nice to see everyone again and to get new outlooks on possible projects. Also, we headed back to the training center in Mantasoa and were pampered by them cooking us some delicious food and doing our laundry!

Vacation:

A group of us headed up to Mahajunga after IST. Mahajunga is a beach town on the northwest coast of Madagascar. The highlights:

• Pleasant taxi-broussing. We rented our own brousse on the way up, so it was all Americans with plenty of room. One of the most comfortable rides I have taken on public transport in Madagascar.
• Sunsets! The trip was full of awesome sunsets. The first one was on our drive to Mahajunga.

The beach. Swam in the Mozambique Channel and enjoyed a much more touristy beach than the one we have up in Sambava. We drank out of coconuts, ate fresh mangoes, coconut cookies, and brochettes (meat kabobs) on the beach.
• Cirque Rouge. Really awesome rock formations near Mahajunga where we were able to watch yet another beautiful sunset.

• Ankarafantsika National Park. Visited this park and our friend Mike's site on the way back to Tana. Got to see some more of Madagascar's unique wildlife. This park is dry deciduous forest, which felt very different from the rainforest I am used to seeing! It reminded me in a lot of ways of Florida scrub. We saw a sportive lemur and the Coquerel's sifaka. Also, lots and lots of birds! I need to look them all up in my wildlife book but one of them was the paradise flycatcher.

Coquerel's sifaka

Sportive lemur (peeking out from the tree trunk)

That's the update, hope all is well with you. I'm headed back to my site soon to hopefully get cracking on some new projects. I'll keep in you in the loop. Peace, love, and lots of rice! (Also see flickr for more photos!)

If you build it, they will come.

So something really cool that's going on in my village right now is that they are building a new school building. There have been tons of town meetings lately to discuss it. This means that a lot of nights theres a couple of kids walking around the village around 5 PM, blowing a whistle and shouting in Malagasy that everyone should come down to the school yard for a meeting. I haven't been to all the meetings, but the basic gist is that we have a lot of quatrieme students in my village (I think this is CEG, the middle school equivalent). The man in charge of schools has said there is a teacher out there and if we build a school then we will have a new teacher for it. So what this means is that the community is coming together to build a school.

It's been really impressive watching how the school construction happens. People donated the construction materials and one morning a bunch of men kept passing my house with various building materials--planks of wood, raffia (the leaves they use for roofing) and bamboo. The men went up to start construction, and the women came up with donated rice and cooked lunch. It was awesome to see everyone pitching in. Here's some photos:

Men building the school (it's up by the soccer field.)

The cooking crew

More building photos.

Giant pot!

So I left my village for a few weeks--training and vacation. But I am told that once the school is there, they will request the teacher. By the time I get back school should be in session. This could mean a lot more kid visitors because the main path up the hill to the school passes my house. I'll keep you updated.