I decided to celebrate New Year's in the capital with a few other PCV's. To get to Tana this time, I had to hike out of my site starting out at 4am. I'll admit I was quite winded from the 2 hour uphill hike through rice paddies, which included treading carefully over and sometimes through small creeks. Someone from my town accompanied me to show the way and to provide some level of protection from the supposed 'mpangalatra' or thieves. I wanted to go by myself, but in the end I was happy to have someone with me as we ran into a pack of yelping dogs in the dark (I swear one of them was snarling and foaming at the mouth). My hiking buddy carried a large rock, prepared at any moment to hurl it at the dogs. There are these two dogs that visit me daily and they joined us on the entire hike. I joked to my hiking buddy that they would protect us from the pack he kept a close eye on. He didn't share in the humor - I didn't know, despite sharing a house with the doctor and living right next to the clinic, that last Friday one of 'my' dogs bit a kid-friend of mine and it required stitches. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful hike, watching the stars disappear and the sun rise. When I reached the road where the taxi-van passes, I stood waiting with a couple other barefooted travelers. I felt a little out of place chatting in English on a cell phone with my brother, who had called to wish me a happy birthday. I think he believed me when I said I was already thoroughly enjoying the day.

Despite the brevity of time I've spent at site (just over a couple of weeks), I have plenty to relate. My first day 'on the job,' an NGO was paying a visit to my town to offer affordable sexual and reproductive health services. They were happy to meet me and invited me to observe their work so that I could be more informed myself when I do 'sensitizations' (delivering health messages) in the future. So, the first woman came into a room off the maternity ward, laid down on a steel table (that had been dusted off with a rag), and moments later I was observing a tubal ligation. The doctor urged me to stand right next to her and watch. I thought I was pretty tough when it came to anatomy and physiology, blood and guts - always enjoyed dissecting the cat back in high school or watching myself get stitched up after a mishap - but halfway through the procedure, my ears started buzzing and I started to wonder if I could remain standing. When my vision became impaired, I muttered something in 'gasy and excused myself. I made it back to my house and collapsed. I caught the end of the surgery after a quick recovery. I do feel more equipped now to spread family plannning messages (e.g. how quick, easy, and cheap tubal ligations are, the equivalent of $1 when Marie Stopes comes to town).

During my second day at site, I gave my first health talk on safe motherhood to a group of women before the pre-natal consultations. I thought the excitement of the day was over, when I decided to follow the doctor to the maternity ward. I was once again invited into the adjoining room where I'd almost passed out, and this time found myself squinting so that I didn't totally watch the miscarriage taking place before me. Almost everyday I seem to be observing some medical procedure I was not prepared for - some things I'll refrain from divulging here. I've seen some births as well, which have been fascinating from a cultural perspective. In every situation, I am warmly welcomed in to watch. I guess the notion of privacy here differs. One time, the midwife and I arrived a little too late and the baby had already come out into the bare hands of the grandmother. While the midwife took over, the grandmother, overjoyed, grabbed my hands with hers (still covered in blood) and exclaiming her gratefulness, tried to slip me a 200ar note (10 cents). Just in case you dosed for a second, I watched her deliver the baby and she tried to pay me for my help. I want to also note that I'm now in the belief that giving birth is a painless process. No drugs are involved here, just a pillow-less, sheet-less steel table, and the women giving birth don't utter a sound or show any strained facial expressions. No, Scientology is not practiced here. Of course, that might not be that outrageous an idea given the conglomeration of Christian sects that already exist here due to past proselytizing Europeans and present American missionaries.

My site lies at the end of this valley. In the foreground, you can see a couple examples of their tombs.

More about my site....
I live next door to the health clinic/maternity ward and share a kind of duplex with the one doctor here. I'd say these are some of the best living conditions I've ever had. I have the biggest bed I've ever owned and two large rooms to myself. I don't have to pay any bills on the place and there's certainly no street noise. Of course, I have no furniture to fill the place, and the floor area is perhaps annoyingly large to have to clean with my coconut shell, broom, and wax mixed with petrol. There's a pulley-style/'tricep building' well conveniently located 5m from house, from which I withdraw about 3 buckets of water sufficient to supply my daily use (often supplemented by rainwater I collect as it pours off the corrugated tin roofing). My house is made of red brick and opens onto a small veranda supported by a single column. I spend a lot of time sitting there on a woven seat cushion - reading, eating, and drinking burnt rice water. If my house was narrow and tall with smaller windows, it would be a typical Merina-style house. The style of homes here initially masked the poverty for me. There are 18+ tribes represented in Madagascar. The Merina, which make up 27% of the population, dominate the central highlands. Interestingly, the Merina were the Indo-Malayan seafarers that first settled this island and brought not only the rice culture, but the architectural design of their homes. Crazy to think that an Indian Ocean away and a 2,000 year time gap, there are societies with strong cultural similarities to this one. Of course, even at my site, you can see how the culture has been infused with African and Arabic elements (such as the importance of cattle and astrological beliefs, respectively).

My immediate area is flat, lots of corn has recently been planted, and potatoes are always growing. But walk just a couple minutes out of town, and there again are the beautiful valleys of terraced rice paddies I enjoyed so much during training. I think my infatuation with rice paddies goes back to when I visited southeast Asia. They're just so darn aesthetically pleasing - when the seedlings are young, the sky and low mountains are reflected in the water, when the rice plants have matured, the paddies add patches of vibrant green to the landscape. The transplating rice season has just finished. Now, it's the long haul, the hungry season for my area, as people wait the 6 months for the rice and other staples to harvest. When a woman invited me to take part in the transplanting of young rice seedlings, I jumped at the opportunity. I think on more than one occasion, I've described rice farming in an academic paper as 'labor-intensive.' Well, now I have the experience to back that claim. I was up to my knees and elbows in muddy water, jamming rice seedlings into the ground with my thumb, failing constantly to space them correctly, maintain rows, and keep the stalks upright. I was particularly disturbed when one of my worst nightmares came true, and a black snake slithered between my legs in the muddy water. During the eighth hour of back-breaking work, Marx and terms like 'exploited labor' started passing through my mind, but then I realized my productivity level or work output was about an 1/8 of that of the other women, who have been planting rice their whole lives. I am quite sure I was invited as a gesture of friendship - and maybe also to provide a source of amusement. These rural farmers of the highlands speak a colloquial form of official Malagasy I'm not yet accustomed to, but we did have a good laugh over how tall I am and how much one of the ladies liked my tree-trunk sized legs. I'm just telling myself it's a comparative statement so I don't feel insulted. Though my back was broken the next day and I suffered the worst sunburn of my life (I have pictures of the blisters, and later, the total loss of the first layer of skin), I joined in one other day for rice transplanting just for the comraderie. It was all worth it for the one moment when I reflected on what a rare opportunity this whole experience is - it was lunch time, and the woman who invited me had packed a typical 'gasy meal, rice and a side dish of dried fish (the length of my finger and you eat the head and bones). So there I sat between rice paddies, with her family and friends/fellow laborers, eating out of the same gigantic bowl of rice with muddy hands. A simple moment, but so great.


Rice farming provided a good way to explore some of the surrounding areas and villages, which I also accomplished by accompanying my doctor on a four hour hike to do AIDS testing at a small clinic. I was put on the spot that particular day to give a speech on HIV/AIDS to a large group of pregnant women. Many of them were teenagers with several kids. Though the national average fertility rate is around 5 kids, out here in the rural areas, it's not uncommon to have 10-11 children. The only vocabulary I knew off the top of my head for the topic was the somewhat contested ABC method (though its sensible to me if it's delivered in the right way....A = practice abstinence when young/not ready, B = be faithful, avoid multiple sex partners, and C = always use a condom.) Anyway, none of this really applied to them because they were already having sex, already married, and very unlikely to start using a condom at this point in their marriages/ pregnant with their 8th child. I talked a little bit about how the disease is transmitted and then quickly just asked for questions. Blank stares. Then...are you married? When I first met the mayor, the police, and the medicine inspector, that was also the first question posed - completely irrelevant in my mind to my work and purpose. But, I'm here for cross-cultural reasons as much as fir health so I don't mind answering the questions. Plus, fielding the cultural questions opens up the lines of communication. After a few minutes of talking about myself and the US, a woman asked me, "So is there a cure for AIDs?" When I had explained that there was expensive treatment, but no cure, I started feeling like maybe I do have something to offer here. Once the doctor started doing the rapid blood tests, the women came out asking me if their test was negative or positive, and then checking out each others' test strips as if they were comparing answers to a pop quiz.

Krisimasy...
Christmas is widely celebrated here. After the Merina kingdom first unified the country (or conquered all the other tribes) in the 1800s, the king courted European powers, and subsequently, Christianity became widespread. The Bible was translated into Malagasy in 1835. So, I went to church on Christmas, again, for the cultural experience. After 4 hours of songs and sermons in 'gasy, I vowed that was the last time I would go to church in this country. It was the first time I had felt really awkward and out of place and didn't find it amusing...perhaps because the place was crowded with hundreds of people who could sit and stare at me (as compared to the market days where there's more movement and commotion, and less time and space to stare at the tall, 'fotsy be' or very white woman). After lunchtime, I was told there was a 'kilalao' which translates as match or game. I'd assumed it was a soccer match and was excited to watch. But, when I started walking with some acquaintances to the 'game,' we walked straight passed the field and straight back into the church! I was a bit peeved. The place was packed again and I stood in the very back with my doctor. Then, the president of the Catholic church spoke some words to the doctor and pulled me outside. She led me around the church and then through a side entrance to the very front of the congregation. She had me sit in the only chair in front of all the pews to watch the performace - it was basically the Catholic middle school kids putting on a talent show, which included a lot of 'macarena' inspired dance moves set to 'gasy music. Sat there for another 3 hrs. I think a lot of the time, kids watched me more than the show. I was already sweating a ton, but it poured even more profusely when the school director dedicated a song and dance to me over the mike.

I'm gonna try and wrap this up, by explaining that despite all the exciting episodes I still spend the bulk of my day sifting through rice (which I eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). I toss the rice into the air and catch it again several times in a meniscus-shaped woven tray specific for winnowing rice. Then, I scour the rice for rocks and remaining rice hulls. The same chickens (and very sorry looking rooster, which I might have pitied if it hadn't laid a wet feces on my newly waxed floor) flock to my porch every meal in hopes of snatching a rice hull or granule that I discard. At this time, my pot of water has begun to heat up over my small portable clay stove. I build a fire three times a day by breaking up pieces of bamboo with my malagasy-crafted knife, set them aflame with my lighter, and then carefully add charcoal. I cook outside to avoid smoke inhalation and the ensuing acute respiratory infections prevalent here. Thus far, I find all the time spent cooking oddly fulfilling. I'm sure this will change, the same way I enjoyed my mosquito net at first, which I've since ditched.


Next time: I really want to talk about this language I'm learning, I'm sure there will be some more in-depth cultural musings as well as I pick up more of the language and can ask some of my many cultural questions. Actually, I could pose the questions now, but I probably wouldn't understand the answer.

November 2008

Alright, so here is a small account of my life in the Peace corps so far. I am in the the middle of pre-service training currently in a small town an hour outside the capital Antananarivo. Madagascar is an incredibly diverse country, but right now I am living in a mostly merina area. In 'Tana', it is easy to see the diversity - people who look more Asian or more African. I live with a wonderful Malagasy family during this 10 week pre-service training. I'll head to my site in December.

I'm kinda like an alien that has landed in this country - At 5' 8" I am a head taller than everyone. I walk or stoop around around my house ducking under beams and squeezing through doorways. I am having to learn all the basics of being a human - how to go to the bathroom, how to cleanse myself, how to drink water, how to communicate (in Malagasy, that is). My body cannot thrive in this foreign land without ingesting a collection of pills and injecting various shots every week...for the HIB, HEP A, HEP B, typhoid, malaria, rabies, meningitis, yellow fever, dysentery, fleas.

So here is a typical day of pre-service training (quite structured and busy in fact, which will probably not be the case once I start at my official site).

I get up a around 5 a.m. and empty my 'po' in the kabone. Translation - when it is dark, I am not allowed to use our outside latrine because I have to be weary of the mpamosavy (witches who walk around naked with their hair in front of their faces 'Ring' style. These witches are crazy but crafty - they slather themselves in oil so that they can't be caught). There are rabid dogs around so I shouldn't be out after dark anyway. I use a bucket or 'po' to go to the bathroom which I empty in the morning into the pit latrine. I'll try to censor this a bit, or be less graphic - the pit latrine is abut 3 feet high. It is difficult enough 'aiming' in my pit latrine, let alone fitting inside it. So around 5:30 a.m. I might go for a run way above the rice fields that curve their way through the low valleys. At 6ish, my Neniko (Malagasy mom) has prepared some hot water for me so I can take a bucket shower outside. We have breakfast together, fried bread, honey, peanut butter (home made), bananas, and coffee. Then I clean the floor of my room, scrub it first with half a coconut shell and then sweep it up. I'm at school at 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. (with a 2 hour break to have lunch with Neniko. Our classes consist of language, technical and cross-cultural training. I'm already immune to many of things I found funny in the beginning. There are roosters and chicken that we constantly have to shoe out of our 'classroom.' The kids in the village often spend the bulk of their day watching us. We 'vazaha' or foreigners are apparently a constant source of amusement. Everyone knows odd details about us. This woman, who I had never seen before, stopped me in the street the other day and asked me if my foot had healed. I had a bug bite that I had scratched and it had become a bit infected. It was nothing though, and this random woman knew about it. Sometimes, a trainee will come to school and tell me that her host family told her that my stomach is doing better…basically, a family in a neighboring village knows about my bowel movements. After school, I usually hang out with some of the trainees, maybe Ill grab my soccer ball (the nicest one in the village) and play with some of the local kids, or Ill fetch water with my host family. At around 7 p.m, we dine again - rice, more rice, always rice and a vegetarian side dish.

Most everyone here is Catholic or Protestant. Clearly, from my witch example, the traditional beliefs are still held. Ancestral worship is ubiquitous. Exhumations take place annually. It seems like everyday I learn a new cultural taboo or 'fady'. My family is still incredibly accommodating - they are serving vegetarian food for my sake. They want to respect my 'fomba' or customs. I told them my fomba are not so resilient, but they will not hear of it.
Continuing, at around 8 p.m., I am in bed -if I am not too tired I'll do a bit of language or technical self study with my headlamp. My bed, draped with green mosquito nets on all sides, retains its romantic value - not yet trumped by the sheer obstacle it presents in having to re-tuck and re-fasten every time I get up during the night to use my 'po'!

During the weekends at the training site, I handwash my clothes in the rice paddies qnd maybe go to church for the cultural experience followed by watching a local soccer match. I've been fishing (including gutting and cooking the fish while simultaneously shoeing away the ravenous cats that are in fact need of more nourishment than white rice can afford them), farming/picking beans, climbing trees to fetch plums, and hiking.

Whenever I travel I am blown away by the kindness and hospitality I encounter in others who are practically strangers. Here, it is no different. The Malagasy I interact with on a daily basis are concerned, patient, and good humored. I may clearly be in a kind of honeymoon phase - but I am really happy to be a part of this right now. Everyone I am involved with (the Malagasy, PC, the trainees) have good intentions without naivety. I know the tougher times are ahead (such as when I get homesick or when I have to integrate into a community completely alone) but it is at that time that I need to just refer back to what drove me to do this in the first place.

#1 Entry - November 2008

As this is my first entry, I feel obliged to give a short introductory history of the 8th Continent.

Madagascar is the 4th largest island (after Greenland, Papa New Guinea and Borneo) that was first settled 2000 years ago by a Malay-Indonesian population. It still blows my mind that the dominant theory (which I think Jared Diamond agrees with) holds that these people from Borneo (closest linguistic link) sailed directly here across the Indian Ocean. It was hundreds of years later that East African populations crossed the Mozambique Channel to settle here. Later, Arabic and Indian groups migrated here as well.

The first Europeans (Portuguese) arrived in the 1500's, but failed to colonize the island because of hostile populations on the coasts. There was a state of anarchy for a while - a safe haven perhaps only for pirates. The Malay-Indonesian 'merina' people created a centralized kingdom, and its legacy may be the relatively homogeneous language of Malagasy spoken throughout the island. Madagascar was ultimately colonized by the French (1896-1960). The British always had some influence here - there are Christian faith remnants of Welsh missionaries. I think it is interesting to note that in the late 1930's the Nazis stated in their Final Solution that Jews would be transported to Madagascar. The island would serve as a massive ghetto under the authority of Heinrich Himmler. The so-called 'Madagascar Plan' became an impractical solution for the Nazis by 1941 because of the British Royal Navy's command of the seas. Anyway, following 'independence' there was a messy era of socialism (or Kleptocratic rule by a French backed dictator). Now a market economy, Madagascar still has occasional political crises (the latest in 2002).

Today, Madagascar, is one of the poorest countries in the world (I believe ranked 143 of 177 on the UNDP human development index). I am always interested in what makes some countries rich and others poor so I am curious to find out more about why Madagascar is so poor. Certainly, there are geographic factors - relative isolation = high trade costs and the environmental degradation has had its impact as well (a ridiculously high percentage of the forests here have been cleared - It is quite evident even from the tiniest bit of the highlands I have seen so far). Other immediate factors for poverty include the lack of infrastructure and poor educational system. But, it seems to make the most sense to me to blame the political history - the colonial history, the usurption of wealth by the ruling elite, and the political coups that stagnate the economy every time it has potential to take off (e.g. 1992, 2002). The new president, Marc Ravalomanana, seems to be talking the right talk (emphasizing the importance of the environment, e.g.) so maybe the future will be bright. He has made English the country's 3rd official language after Malagasy and French - probably to keep in step with the globalized world. Later, a more micro-level look at Madagascar...ie my personal experiences.