Reinvigorated

In case you didn't read the last post, I'm relaxing in Tana after a visit from Mom and Meredith.  Tomorrow I'll hop a plane back to Sambava and return to Ambohimanarina, where it's quite possible they'll be surprised to see me.  There were definitely some people that saw our luggage and thought I had packed up to go home.  Today I marked the occasion, possibly my last time in Tana for about 5 more months, by eating a hamburger and some ice cream.  Not bad.

I'll be back in my village cleaning up my house and enjoying my new American things.  I've got new(!) Time magazines to get me a little bit up to speed and a Kindle full of books, plus so many other goodies that I couldn't be more appreciative of!

I've been a bit uninspired with the blog lately, so post a comment or email me if there's something you'd really like to hear about.  For now I'll add a few photos for your enjoyment...

Photo from a bike ride near my village.  There's a small house wherre I would totally live if it was a few thousand miles closer to my family.

Vingt-six family lunch this year.  Yes, I'm huge.  They tell me all the time.

Morning rainbow!  It was a full rainbow but I couldn't capture it all.

Relaxing on the beautiful beach in St. Marie.

Relaxing.

Oh My God! There's WHALES!

Hiking queens.

Check out the cassava.  And yes, I'm so cool.

Waterfront dinner.

Pousse-pousse.

Supermarket in St. Marie.  Yes, we have a few "vazaha" style supermarkets on this island.

Beach breakfast!

Whales!

Is that a rooster or a really tall chicken?  You decide.

Family visit!

My mom and sister, Meredith, took 2 weeks out of their busy life and work schedules and endured ridiculous hours of travel to come visit me here in Madagascar!  Seeing them was indescribably awesome.  We went to Marojejy National Park, spent an afternoon in Ambohimanarina meeting all my friends and Malagasy family, saw the cities of Sambava, Tamatave, and Antananarivo, and relaxed on the beach and saw humpback whales in Ile St. Marie.

The highlights:

• Lemurs in the wild are really awesome.  In Marojejy we saw silky sifakas, white-fronted brown lemurs, and bamboo lemurs.  Pet lemurs, however, are kind of freaky, especially to Meredith.  For some reason we could not grasp, the tourists in St. Marie find them cute and endearing.

At the entrance to Marojejy

• Whales are also really awesome.  We saw humpback whales a stone's throw from our boat, which was awesome but also a little terrifying since they are huge!

• Another awesome thing: hot water.  We had some mishaps trying to control the hot water flow in our various hotels, but it was definitely a luxury to have even a few minutes of hot water.
• Sundays are useless.  I always forget this because Sunday is the day that everyone in the village is around, but in the city almost everything is closed.  Luckily this allowed us to do some laundry, use internet in our hotel and relax a little after hiking for 3 days in Marojejy.
• Food is awesome.  We ate sooo well! 

Marojejy breakfast!

• I can still use a fork.  Just barely.  Here everyone eats with just a spoon, so I found myself struggling a little in the fancy places where they gave you forks and knives and often no spoon.
• I eat a lot of rice.  I didn't quite realize this until I saw the expressions on Mom and Meredith's face when I started serving giant spoonfuls of rice onto their plates.



Cramped car ride.

• I can't take a serious photo.  I don't know what it is, but I can't help myself from making silly faces.

Nothing better than drinking a coconut!

It was super awesome to see my family and also to have a nice vacation.  I was certainly sad to see them go, but it won't be too long before I see them all in America.

Hanging out with both my American and Malagasy family!

Canoe trip in St. Marie

Family time!

Enjoying the beautiful beach

Best car ride ever.

I rode in a VW Beetle last week.

OK, so if you're in America you're probably thinking big deal?  And you're right, it was a fantastically big deal.  It might have been the best car ride I've ever had.  There were seat belts, and a digital read out of the time and outside temperature, and air conditioning vents, and air fresheners clipped to the air freshening vents.  It smelled good.

To put it in perspective, I went to another village about 30 km away for an exhumation celebration (explanation to come in another post).  I went with my Malagasy "mom" and another woman from Ambohimanarina.  We spent over an hour in the morning waiting by the road and flagging down car after car that didn't have room for us.  Finally we caught a brousse and they squeezed me into a spot where 2 people were already occupying 1 person's seat.  I spent about an hour perched awkwardly forward on the seat with the old lady next to me constantly jabbing me with her bony hip (sorry, I know I'm a giant but this is where they told me to sit) and I know one of my travel mates stood the whole ride.

So in the afternoon when all the cars were passing by full mom started to get worried that she needed to get back to her shop.  The VW drove up and mom said, "hafahafa tomobily, fa tsara!" ("It's a weird car, but it's nice!")  She asked the driver of the Beetle if he could take us; and he could fit 2 not 3.  It was quite the opposite of our morning ride.  But somehow I couldn't help but wonder why we couldn't fit all 3 of us, I mean I had an entire seat to myself.

Moving along in year 2

Last month I requested a community meeting to discuss my work for the second year.  I launched right in with the list I helped the community members compile of needs in Ambohimanarina, asking which ones I should focus on.  Great, everyone said.  First, low vanilla prices are killing us, if you could just find someone from abroad to come pay top dollar?  Second, we’d really like electricity.  (Note: I don’t know of any towns within about 20-30 km that have electricity.)  And if we have to pick a third, could you deal with our water problem by getting dams built to flood the rice fields?

Um…

To make a long story short, I realized that I can look forward to another year of trying to explain what the heck Peace Corps is and how I can work in the community.  I’m still searching for the people who want to work with me rather than just collect on the bundles of (imaginary) money my white skin says that I have.  And until I find them I’m trying to start some small things on my own with the hopes that people get curious.  So far I have a new garden and I’ve talked to the carpenter about building bee boxes so I can try beekeeping.  I planted beans in the agroforestry demo, maybe they’ll grow.  I’m trying to re-start a women’s group that sews items to sell at the Marojejy park office (this has been full of obstacles that would require a separate post to explain).  English club is on hold due to the lack of students and I’m hoping that I can use that time to work on environmental education.

Village life continues to roll along and it’s still unclear what the next 9 months have in store.  In my free time I’ll be catching up on American news thanks from the months of May to July, thanks to the Time magazines that my mom sent.  If you have any news to share from those months let me know, and sorry to anyone in Mom’s waiting room who gets stuck with a Parenting or something instead of the Time they wanted.  I’ve also FINALLY finished my embroidery project (a bedspread and pillowcases), so now my friend has upgraded me to a new sewing thing that creates a gathered pattern in the fabric (really hard to explain and I’ve lost my grasp of English, sorry).  And I can say I’m a little bit relieved that if anyone else I know gets pregnant I won’t be around to select baby names or take photos, but I’m glad I’ve still got time to hang out in Ambohimanarina and maybe get a few things done too.

Working in the new garden

Site of my new garden...nothing growing yet

Vanilla's back and smelling awesome!

Sewing success!  Yes, I embroidered that.  I'm told it could pull in a whopping $5 here.