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.

An unexpected birthday present

It’s official—I spent the entire 25^th year of my life in Madagascar.  Last month I celebrated another birthday here.  I’m not going to lie, my birthdays have not been a highlight of my time in Peace Corps for a number of reasons.  The Malagasy don’t really celebrate their birthdays, so this is the second year I’ve spent with my birthday passing like any other day in Ambohimanarina.

This year my birthday fell just after a 3 week absence from my village and the day before a big party for World Environment Day, so leaving the village just wasn’t realistic.  I spent the morning cleaning up my house and yard.  Everyone else was doing the same—they even lined the streets with flowers for the holiday—so I don’t want to look like the chump with no village pride.  By the afternoon I had pretty much forgotten that it was a special day.

Every holiday means a “soma” from the women’s groups, and my adopted group takes this incredibly seriously.  Personally the dances amuse me because they remind me of something you’d perform at your middle school talent show.  But the women take it as seriously as the middle schooler would—people will be talking about your soma for days to come and why risk your reputation with a half-assed soma? So I try to take it somewhat seriously too.  On the night of my birthday we had our final practice for the soma.  My neighbor passed by, saying “I am going, my daughter.”  I took this for what it really meant—come on, you need to learn the soma too—and followed her down the road.

The party, and therefore the soma, was for World Environment Day.  So, our soma was a song celebrating Madagascar’s green environment, its various plants, and Marojejy National Park.  I have to give the women credit, they are very creative with their somas.  For this one we all carried a plant grown here in Madagascar—everything from vanilla to eucalyptus to native “tsararavina.” As we were gathering for practice, half the women were frantically searching for their plant and/or a receptacle to hold it.  So of course it was dark by the time everyone was ready to actually practice.  Someone produced a small light and I handed over my headlamp.  There was a shuffling of the plants and I ended up with cassava.  The cassava they collected was a long stem with 4 or 5 large roots hanging off the bottom—by far the largest and most ridiculous prop.  It was made doubly funny by the fact that the “vazaha” was carrying it, and the thought of a white person eating cassava is hilarious to any Malagasy person.  Here are some stereotypes that you just can’t seem to bust, and I’ve come to realize that a large part of my life here is spent as an entertainer.  Thirteen months of life in Ambohimanarina had prepared me for being the comic centerpiece of the soma.

Before long the singing and dancing was underway.  Here I was, carrying someone’s dinner and dancing with it like an honored partner.  Up ahead, Zanamine (the soy tea seller), dressed in her usual “kisaly” wrap, had my headlamp on and an entire vanilla plant balanced in a bowl on her head (a point of argument later, because everyone should be carrying their plant in their hands for uniformity).  Mama nyFredo, the lead singer, was shining her lamp down the row of plants to direct the song.  In addition to singing, Mama nyFredo takes the dancing part super seriously, and she was hopping around and shaking her booty like her life depended on it.  To add to it all, the group’s president took the opportunity to tease Mama nyFredo.  The pres, in her hot pants, was booty shaking in circles around the singer for an entire verse of the song.  Like I said, I try to take the soma seriously, but all this was too much.  I couldn’t stop laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation until long after rehearsal ended.  I’m pretty sure the women thought I had lost a few marbles, but really I’ve come to a point where I can’t hold the laughter in.  Sometimes the customs here are so foreign that I find them hilarious.

So thanks, ladies of VLF, for putting a smile on my face for my birthday.  I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard.  I don’t think any birthday party can match the truly special (and silly) experiences I’m having in Peace Corps, and until next year, when it’s back to cake, that’s enough.

It's been a while...

Sorry for the long hiatus.  First there was training, then vacation, then I came back and disappeared to the land of no modern communication for a busy couple of weeks.

I went to harvest the SRI rice.  Beating the rice off the stalks put my body out of commision for most of a week.

Madagascar National Parks had a party for World Environment Day which was very well attended, but a slightly stressful day for me so I didn't manage to get too many photos.

The Environment Day parade of women's groups, soccer teams, students.

Madagascar's Independence Day, commonly known as "vingt-six" was on June 26.  It wasn't quite as "miresaka" (noisy) as last year, for a number a of factors.  The vanilla market hasn't started yet so people have less money and we had just had the MNP environment fety.  I enjoyed myself.  There were a variety of "soma"s (song and dance numbers), including performances by kids along with the women's groups, and I spent the rest of the day being stuffed with food from every one of my friends in the village, so for me it was more "miresaka" than last year.

A brother duo dancing their "soma."

One women's groups learned drills with wooden guns.

Some girls doing their "soma," complete with homemade grass skirts.

Family dinner (lunch really) on "vingt-six."

I thought it was funny that this girl's Independence Day shirt was actually an American Independence Day shirt.

I also accidentally managed to teach someone that "Jewish" meant "religious" (why the hell was I teaching the word Jewish to a bunch of people who have never seen a Jewish person, I will never know) and almost fell into my latrine.  I wish I was joking.