I’ve had a bit of time lately to reflect on my life as a Peace Corps volunteer, and let me tell you it’s weird. I know you’ll never truly understand until you come live it yourself, but I’m going to try to share some of it with you.
I don’t know what language to speak. People speak to me in French. I respond in Malagasy. People speak to me in English. I try to respond in English and they don’t get it, so I revert to Malagasy. People speak to me in Malagasy and I don’t know how to respond in Malagasy. I respond with a confused expression.
Every time I come to town I find out that someone back in America has gotten engaged. Or married. Or had a baby. Or moved to a new house. A couple of months ago. I guess I can look forward to meeting your new husband/wife when I get home. But then again you might have gotten a divorce by that time.
I am suspicious of any and all men. You said hello to me? Creepy. You smiled? Creepy. Please don’t speak to me in French, ever. (I apologize to all of you nice men out there and promise to make an effort to drop these stereotypes when I leave Madagascar.)
Food. Never has it been so precious to me, and I am thinking it never will be again. Those leftover spices an old volunteer had in the back of her kitchen cabinet for 2 years are the best gift I’ve received in my whole life. In my banking town? Just a good excuse to overstuff myself with pizza or ice cream or pastries or samosas or all of the above. Maybe this is why they call me fat.
Yes, I’m fat. It doesn’t matter if I’ve had a stomach bug and barely eaten all week, or how many days this week I’ve gotten out of bed to go running at the crack of dawn, I’ll always be “maventy.”
Rice is an integral part of my life. And I have a love-hate relationship with it. When it’s good, it’s really good. But sometimes I just don’t think I can get one more spoonful down the hatchet. Don’t even get me started on funeral rice which is usually not quite cooked and has been sitting in the sun getting hard and cold while they gather hundreds of people to eat it. When I’m not eating rice, I might be planting it, or weeding, or harvesting, talking about, or cooking it.
Notes are my most reliable form of communication with the world outside of about a 10 km radius from my house. Every once in a while a child shows up at my door with a note from another PCV, and it’s like getting a call from a long lost friend, only 10 times as exciting. So I write a response, sit by the road for up to an hour until a car passes. My letter is marked with the other PCV’s name, city/area of that city they live or work in, and Peace Corps. Success rates lately have been pretty high with pretty speedy delivery. In other words, over half the notes make it within a day or two.
Because of the slow nature of communication, social interactions are completely transformed. If you want to visit a family member, you simply show up at their house and they will find some extra rice for you to eat at lunch. If your family’s not at home, you simply ask around the village to find out where they went today. When you leave town, you simply return when business is done—whether that is today, tomorrow, or next month.
Personal hygiene is the most popular topic of conversation when with other PCVs. Out to a nice dinner? Totally okay to talk about how you’ve reduced your hair-washing schedule to less than once a week. Or maybe we should discuss which type of toilet paper is the best, or whose feet are dirtier.
Personal space… what’s that? I’m pretty sure I take up legitimately less space than ever before. No, I haven’t shrunk or lost extreme amounts of weight, I just know how to contort my body so it takes up the tiniest amount of room possible. I owe this new skill to too many rides in a taxi-brousse stuffed with too many people. Being squished against other bodies is just part of life.
I was already pretty okay with pests and bugs, but now it takes a lot to phase me. Dying rat in the kitchen? No problem, I’ll just finish him off and then make my breakfast. My latrine=cockroach house. My shower=snail and spider haven.
Life as a PCV is anything but routine. It seems like things are always in a state of flux. Even if you feel really “tamana” (settled in) at site, next week your best friend might move away or they’ve built a new house next door. PCVs come to Madagascar every March and July, so there’s always volunteers coming and going. All we can do is work our best to enjoy the good parts, survive the bad ones, learn and grow through the experiences, and keep the memories close to our hearts.
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