It's happening. I'm here at our volunteer house in Tana, currently homeless. My life is packed in a Peace Corps vehicle in the parking lot, very stuffed. My dresser and desk are amongst the items strapped to the top, so I have my fingers crossed that it doesn't rain; it hasn't so far.
It's been an emotionally draining past few weeks, saying goodbyes, packing, and squashing rumors (you dont like it here?!?! some people asked, shocked. No, not true. Same with the rumor circulating that I was returning to the states. No, again, not true, I insisted over and over and over) My friends at site know the truth though, and that's all that matters. I didn't get to say goodbye to everyone that I wanted to, as a lot of my students leave town for the long break. I still can't help but feeling like I've let people down.
It's unreal right now; I still feel like I'm in Tana, waiting for my flight back to Morondava, back home. But no. It probably won't hit me until I'm getting into the car tomorrow, to drive 7-8 hours to the new site, what will be my home for the remainder of my service (well, I hope).
I'm nervous, scared, anxious all over again. Still sad, anger lingering as well. A little stir crazy from sitting in the hostel not doing much; Tana's too expensive and overwhelming and I'm lazy. Oh yeah, and sick. Probably amebas. Just what I need when I have a long car ride and day ahead of me.
Then a week of trying to get my new house together and get prepared for the school year, which starts next Monday. I think I'll be teaching the same grades I did at my now old site, so I'll already have the lesson plans done. I just need to get the first few weeks of school figured out though, assess my students levels and see where they are.
Again, I can't believe this is happening. So much for one country, one site, two years. Both of those haven't been true.
Big day ahead of me tomorrow, off to enjoy one last shower, finish packing, and go to sleep earlier than I usually do when I am here.
Wish me luck!!
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Vacances Be Doings
Wow, it’s been a busy vacances be (“big vacation” – the 3 months break from school) and I’ve hardly been at my site since July. Right after school ended, the volunteers who were going to train the new trainees had a meeting for a few days. After that, I was literally at my site for less than 24 hours before I had to turn around, head back to Morondava and meet Matt for his incoming flight and the onset of our vacation. Since I’ve been so busy, I handed it over to him to give the update on the vacation. Rather, though, I suppose it was more of a trip than a vacation; there were some difficult days hiking through the Tsingy and rough roads in between destinations, but we got our relaxing time in as well. And allow me to reiterate, it was AMAZING!! There are some amazing sites to behold in my neck of the woods in Western Madagascar, and we made it to all the main ones with little trouble and only minor snafoos along the way. Really, not that bad considering all else that could’ve gone wrong. And best of all, I got to share it all with Matt.
After vacation, I went back to my site for two days before having to head out again to head to a friend’s site to do work. I felt, for the first time, probably ever, terribly lonely. I never really felt that way at site, despite not having another PCV anywhere near me. During my time at site up till the vacation, I had my classes, kept myself busy with work (or doing other activities to fill the down time, like reading, riding my bike, cleaning, honing my cooking skills, watching DVDs, etc.). I had my daily routine which almost always included a trip to the market, except for Tuesdays because that was my busy day at the school with classes back to back to back. I was always around people out and about, and even at my home, with another family on the other side of the wall (making me wish, at times, that I could be more alone). I don’t know. Maybe it was being constantly around a person that I love for three weeks, and then he was gone, and I was alone again, not knowing when I’d see him again, back to the “real world.” Or I didn’t have school to keep me busy during the days I was back at site, to distract me and in which to bury myself. Or both.
But during those two days, Matt’s visit was the topic of conversation amongst everyone. “Aiza ny Ramose?” several people asked me (where is the mister?), genuinely confused. I think a lot of people thought he was coming here to live with me, haha, and were surprised when I said he went back to the states (also, again, making me sad that I had to explain over and over that, yes, he was gone, no he’s not coming to live here, he has a job, a life in America). You should get a boyfriend in Madagascar, and you can have your American boyfriend in the states too, a vegetable seller whose stall I frequent told me. No, I said, its not fomba Amerikana (American culture/manners) to have more than one boyfriend or girlfriend. But its fomba Malagasy, and you live in Madagascar, some friends in Morondava told me. Ai. One of the cultural differences I struggle with the most. Cheating, be it on a girlfriend, fiancé, wife, happens often and is acceptable.
So, once again, I left my site and headed out to the east coast to help my awesome friend Vickie (and fellow angry feminist, fellow bad dance music lover) with some of the projects she’s working on. I didn’t get to stay as long as I wanted (more on that in a minute) but in the time I was there, I helped her put together posters for a presentation on income generating activities she plans to present to her women’s groups. It was great getting to see another friend’s site in a different part of the country (the east coast is really green) and see how she works. While all of us are in the same boat in some aspects, everyone still seems to have really different individual experiences here. It was also fun getting to spend time with another volunteer at their site, cook together, frequent hotelys, and hang out at site rather than in Tana (if you haven’t yet gathered, I’m not a huge fan of Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capitol).
So after a week of helping Vickie, I went to our training center to help train the new education volunteers. We led some of their sessions and observed their practicum (practice teaching) and gave feedback, answered questions. There was so much I wished I’d known during training that I didn’t find out till much later at site, wish I had volunteers to tell me how things really worked (which we had during PST in Niger, but not really here). I’ve learned a lot through experience and figuring things out for myself, lots of trial and error, going from practically zero education experience to being responsible for the English education of 300+ students, and I wanted to share some of my experiences with them and offer advice. They’re a good group and they are swearing in soon! I’m excited for them. So I did that for three weeks, then headed back to Vickie’s site for another few days to work on more posters. I really wish I could’ve stayed longer to help her get more stuff done, but, I can’t because... (*drum roll*)
I’m moving. Again. Not countries this time, just sites in Madagascar. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been procrastinating on this entry; it’s taken me so long to write, to admit that it’s happening. Putting it in words makes it real and, as the days approach, it gets more that way. It became official while on vacation (despite my efforts to have the issue solved beforehand so I could fully enjoy my time with Matt) but tried not to think about it and focused on enjoying myself, thinking it was a ways off. At least I had Matt to talk to, to have comfort me, to reassure me, to listen to me vent. But time flies in Peace Corps (next month marks A YEAR that I left the states for Niger!) and it gets more real each day.
Security issue: once again, those words dictate my life, uproot me from my comfortable surroundings of which I’ve come to grow fond (does this sound familiar?), and once again, because of the actions of a few people, I have to move. I’ll leave it at that; there’s a time and a place, and the blog’s not it. Bottom line: I’m fine and nothing bad has happened to me. I know it’s for the best, and I was given the option to get away from a less than desirable situation that could potentially get a lot more serious, and, though I hesitated and tried to prevent it, really, there was nothing else pragmatic I could do but move. Had I put it off longer, there might not have been another site available if the situation worsened and I’d be forced to go back to the U.S.; much less appealing to me than moving sites.
Still, none of this makes it any easier. I’m leaving MY HOME. I loved my site, loved my “rustic” (as Matt hesitatingly deemed it) concrete block of a house, had friends, and was finally feeling settled and seeing improvements in my students. Our PCMO told the trainees during a session that once you don’t want to leave your site, once you spend a lot of time away from site and feel like you just want to get back, you know you’re adjusted and integrated.
That was me. I don’t know when that became me (maybe around IST), but those words resonated with me and filled me with sadness and nostalgia, thinking that soon, I’d be gone from that site; my home. Despite the hardships and the occasional bad days, it was my home, I was “tamana” (happily settled, or liking a place in Gasy), and I loved my site. After hardly spending time at my site the past few months, I’ve found myself wanting home sweet home. And even missing my students; yes, there were the maditra ones, but the really hard working, caring, motivated ones made it worth it, made the job fun, and some of them made me laugh.
And now, I have to do it all over again. Find my way around a new place, make new friends, know where things are at the market, and on what days they are most likely there, and who has what and at what prices and quality and which vendors are most likely to throw in a cadeau with my purchase (yes, I could do this at my site), teach new students at a new school, get a new counterpart, navigate another (much larger) banking town, be the unfamiliar “vazaha,” be gawked at and scrutinized by different people, etc. My new site’s practically half way across the country, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to visit again, but I would love to before I leave, and also make it back to Morondava – my happy place. I’ve cried over it several times already and will probably continue to do so, especially on the day I move out. So many emotions are coursing through me, all at the same time: anger, sadness, anxiety, helplessness, disappointment, confusion, frustration, stress, worry, feeling like I’m letting down my friends, my students, my school, my town. More “what ifs,” the “why mes?” More sadness.
I thought Peace Corps was one county, one village, two years, and now… all of those have turned out not to be true (also, as an ed volunteer, I don’t really live in a village). I knew this would be a difficult undertaking, an emotional rollercoaster in constant motion with extreme ups and downs several times everyday, with huge, unexpected challenges thrown my way, but… that basic component – I thought I’d at least have all those experiences within that one country, one village, two years. Talk about really getting the unexpected. But evacuations and safety issues do happen, and they happened to me; maybe I was naïve to think they wouldn’t, or had too much of a romantic notion of Peace Corps entrenched in my brain. Deep down I know this is what I have to do and I’ve been reassured by other volunteer friends and they’ve helped me tremendously as I’ve tried to sort out all that’s happened and lamented on and on. The move happens in a little over a week; I had to leave Vickie’s earlier than I wanted to in order to pack up my stuff and, once the new volunteers get installed near me, the Peace Corps vehicle is coming to pick up me and my stuff and take me to the new site. *Sigh*
So yeah. I’m just trying to go with it and take things a little at a time; obviously easier said than written. I’m still trying to believe that all things happen for a reason; again, I’m not sure. A huge test in patience so far is what I’m gathering, but I hope there’s more than that. I’ve heard good things about my soon to be new site, and I’m sure I’ll come to love it as I did my first site and Niger, but still… it’s hard to move. Again.
Alright, my computer is being slow, its getting late, and I need to be up at 3 a.m. to get to the airport to wait for a plane that will probably be late.
Till next time, from the new site…
After vacation, I went back to my site for two days before having to head out again to head to a friend’s site to do work. I felt, for the first time, probably ever, terribly lonely. I never really felt that way at site, despite not having another PCV anywhere near me. During my time at site up till the vacation, I had my classes, kept myself busy with work (or doing other activities to fill the down time, like reading, riding my bike, cleaning, honing my cooking skills, watching DVDs, etc.). I had my daily routine which almost always included a trip to the market, except for Tuesdays because that was my busy day at the school with classes back to back to back. I was always around people out and about, and even at my home, with another family on the other side of the wall (making me wish, at times, that I could be more alone). I don’t know. Maybe it was being constantly around a person that I love for three weeks, and then he was gone, and I was alone again, not knowing when I’d see him again, back to the “real world.” Or I didn’t have school to keep me busy during the days I was back at site, to distract me and in which to bury myself. Or both.
But during those two days, Matt’s visit was the topic of conversation amongst everyone. “Aiza ny Ramose?” several people asked me (where is the mister?), genuinely confused. I think a lot of people thought he was coming here to live with me, haha, and were surprised when I said he went back to the states (also, again, making me sad that I had to explain over and over that, yes, he was gone, no he’s not coming to live here, he has a job, a life in America). You should get a boyfriend in Madagascar, and you can have your American boyfriend in the states too, a vegetable seller whose stall I frequent told me. No, I said, its not fomba Amerikana (American culture/manners) to have more than one boyfriend or girlfriend. But its fomba Malagasy, and you live in Madagascar, some friends in Morondava told me. Ai. One of the cultural differences I struggle with the most. Cheating, be it on a girlfriend, fiancé, wife, happens often and is acceptable.
So, once again, I left my site and headed out to the east coast to help my awesome friend Vickie (and fellow angry feminist, fellow bad dance music lover) with some of the projects she’s working on. I didn’t get to stay as long as I wanted (more on that in a minute) but in the time I was there, I helped her put together posters for a presentation on income generating activities she plans to present to her women’s groups. It was great getting to see another friend’s site in a different part of the country (the east coast is really green) and see how she works. While all of us are in the same boat in some aspects, everyone still seems to have really different individual experiences here. It was also fun getting to spend time with another volunteer at their site, cook together, frequent hotelys, and hang out at site rather than in Tana (if you haven’t yet gathered, I’m not a huge fan of Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capitol).
So after a week of helping Vickie, I went to our training center to help train the new education volunteers. We led some of their sessions and observed their practicum (practice teaching) and gave feedback, answered questions. There was so much I wished I’d known during training that I didn’t find out till much later at site, wish I had volunteers to tell me how things really worked (which we had during PST in Niger, but not really here). I’ve learned a lot through experience and figuring things out for myself, lots of trial and error, going from practically zero education experience to being responsible for the English education of 300+ students, and I wanted to share some of my experiences with them and offer advice. They’re a good group and they are swearing in soon! I’m excited for them. So I did that for three weeks, then headed back to Vickie’s site for another few days to work on more posters. I really wish I could’ve stayed longer to help her get more stuff done, but, I can’t because... (*drum roll*)
I’m moving. Again. Not countries this time, just sites in Madagascar. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been procrastinating on this entry; it’s taken me so long to write, to admit that it’s happening. Putting it in words makes it real and, as the days approach, it gets more that way. It became official while on vacation (despite my efforts to have the issue solved beforehand so I could fully enjoy my time with Matt) but tried not to think about it and focused on enjoying myself, thinking it was a ways off. At least I had Matt to talk to, to have comfort me, to reassure me, to listen to me vent. But time flies in Peace Corps (next month marks A YEAR that I left the states for Niger!) and it gets more real each day.
Security issue: once again, those words dictate my life, uproot me from my comfortable surroundings of which I’ve come to grow fond (does this sound familiar?), and once again, because of the actions of a few people, I have to move. I’ll leave it at that; there’s a time and a place, and the blog’s not it. Bottom line: I’m fine and nothing bad has happened to me. I know it’s for the best, and I was given the option to get away from a less than desirable situation that could potentially get a lot more serious, and, though I hesitated and tried to prevent it, really, there was nothing else pragmatic I could do but move. Had I put it off longer, there might not have been another site available if the situation worsened and I’d be forced to go back to the U.S.; much less appealing to me than moving sites.
Still, none of this makes it any easier. I’m leaving MY HOME. I loved my site, loved my “rustic” (as Matt hesitatingly deemed it) concrete block of a house, had friends, and was finally feeling settled and seeing improvements in my students. Our PCMO told the trainees during a session that once you don’t want to leave your site, once you spend a lot of time away from site and feel like you just want to get back, you know you’re adjusted and integrated.
That was me. I don’t know when that became me (maybe around IST), but those words resonated with me and filled me with sadness and nostalgia, thinking that soon, I’d be gone from that site; my home. Despite the hardships and the occasional bad days, it was my home, I was “tamana” (happily settled, or liking a place in Gasy), and I loved my site. After hardly spending time at my site the past few months, I’ve found myself wanting home sweet home. And even missing my students; yes, there were the maditra ones, but the really hard working, caring, motivated ones made it worth it, made the job fun, and some of them made me laugh.
And now, I have to do it all over again. Find my way around a new place, make new friends, know where things are at the market, and on what days they are most likely there, and who has what and at what prices and quality and which vendors are most likely to throw in a cadeau with my purchase (yes, I could do this at my site), teach new students at a new school, get a new counterpart, navigate another (much larger) banking town, be the unfamiliar “vazaha,” be gawked at and scrutinized by different people, etc. My new site’s practically half way across the country, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to visit again, but I would love to before I leave, and also make it back to Morondava – my happy place. I’ve cried over it several times already and will probably continue to do so, especially on the day I move out. So many emotions are coursing through me, all at the same time: anger, sadness, anxiety, helplessness, disappointment, confusion, frustration, stress, worry, feeling like I’m letting down my friends, my students, my school, my town. More “what ifs,” the “why mes?” More sadness.
I thought Peace Corps was one county, one village, two years, and now… all of those have turned out not to be true (also, as an ed volunteer, I don’t really live in a village). I knew this would be a difficult undertaking, an emotional rollercoaster in constant motion with extreme ups and downs several times everyday, with huge, unexpected challenges thrown my way, but… that basic component – I thought I’d at least have all those experiences within that one country, one village, two years. Talk about really getting the unexpected. But evacuations and safety issues do happen, and they happened to me; maybe I was naïve to think they wouldn’t, or had too much of a romantic notion of Peace Corps entrenched in my brain. Deep down I know this is what I have to do and I’ve been reassured by other volunteer friends and they’ve helped me tremendously as I’ve tried to sort out all that’s happened and lamented on and on. The move happens in a little over a week; I had to leave Vickie’s earlier than I wanted to in order to pack up my stuff and, once the new volunteers get installed near me, the Peace Corps vehicle is coming to pick up me and my stuff and take me to the new site. *Sigh*
So yeah. I’m just trying to go with it and take things a little at a time; obviously easier said than written. I’m still trying to believe that all things happen for a reason; again, I’m not sure. A huge test in patience so far is what I’m gathering, but I hope there’s more than that. I’ve heard good things about my soon to be new site, and I’m sure I’ll come to love it as I did my first site and Niger, but still… it’s hard to move. Again.
Alright, my computer is being slow, its getting late, and I need to be up at 3 a.m. to get to the airport to wait for a plane that will probably be late.
Till next time, from the new site…
Friday, September 3, 2010
Vacation - from an outsider's perspective
Ok, so for an entry on the vacation, I decided to turn it over to Matt and have him talk about it, so you can get the perspective of a visitor to Madagascar. It was interesting to see how I've changed the past few months through having him here and seeing how he responded to things that don't even faze me anymore; things that i dont even think about anymore because they are so routine, like latrines, bad roads, spending hours driving distances that would take a fraction of the time in the U.S., rice for breakfast, bucket baths, raw, uncovered meat on display at the market... I have changed and it was absolutely wonderful to share part of this experience that will affect the rest of my life with him. So, more from me another time. Here's what he had to say:
I would like to start with a bit of an introduction; my name is Matt Klinkner and I hail from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I’m extremely fortunate to be Karista’s boyfriend, and it has been quite an adventure so far.
This trip was one of many firsts for me. For starters the only time I have ever flown was in a small two-passenger airplane over corn fields in the Upper Peninsula. Going 10,000 plus miles half way around the world? Why not. Go big or stay home I guess. That being said I have never been out of the country either; I’ve been to Canada a couple times, but in my book that doesn’t count as it’s practically the 51st state. Then there were things such as bucket baths and chamber pots, but I’ll touch on those later.
Chicago->London->Johannesburg->Antananarivo->Morondava
I had visions of all sorts of things that could (and probably would) go wrong, but the trips there and back were remarkably painless. When my plane touched down in Morondava, my heart was pounding with excitement when I saw Karista waiting for me when I got off the plane. It had been quite some time since I had seen her and it was wonderful to see her looking healthy and happy.
From there it was off to Chez Maggie, which is run by an American named Gary, and if you are ever in Morondava, I recommend a stay there. The food is exceptional, the sunsets are breathtaking, and the people friendly. After another day here, we boarded a taxi brousse, or bush taxi, bound for Karista’s site. Ok, this whole brousse ride is something that will not be forgotten. Close to forty people (I’m not even exaggerating) in a rickety van over one of the most derelict roads I had ever seen(up to that point)
We arrive in Mahabo, where Karista shows me off to some of her friends and some of her favorite spots. While there, I experienced many new things that would soon become routine: 1) Bucket baths – not too bad once you figure it out. 2) Chamber pots – if it were up to me I would have just gone on a bush. 3) This is one of my faves – somewhere along the way Karista learned how to cook! This enchanting young woman who would routinely burn water (love you sweetie!) was now making awesome pasta, savory lentil ragout, kick-ass veggie burritos, and one of my new faves, a fried banana donut type thing called mofo kida. 4) She has a thing for scolding small children that point and shout “Vazaha!” at us, which means foreigner or white person.
We were picked up by our guide Philemon to head to Miandrivazo. The road there was exceptional. The town was quite city like, and we went for a ride on a posy-posy (tee-hee) which is a rickshaw. We had lots more really good food at our hotel. Then off to start our trip down the Tsiribihina River. We saw lots of birds, a large chameleon, baby crocs, and some brown lemurs. We camped on a sandbar under what seemed like a billion stars, and also saw a few shooting stars. It was sooo wonderful and romantic to be there with Karista. I felt a million miles away from everything else, but so very close to her.☺ More beautiful scenery the following day through the Tsiribihina Gorge and a breathtaking waterfall along with a group of sifaka lemurs. The next day we saw a crazy big swarm of grasshoppers, along with some bats. Upon the finish of our canoe trip, we boarded a Zebu cart for a ride to the 4x4 that would take us to Belo-sur-Tsiribihina. For those of you who don’t know, a Zebu is an extremely delicious beast of burden very much like cattle found anywhere else. We spent the night in Belo-sur-Tsiribihina, then a bone jarring 4 ½ hour ride that made the brousse to Mahabo seem like a kiddie ride. We arrived at Tsingy-Bemaraha National Park, for what would be one of my favorite parts of the trip.
We spent the next three days exploring the peaks and caves of the Tsingy. The sights were amazing, and getting to experience them with Karista made it that much better. Philemon was still with us, and that guy is something else. He had facts and information about nearly everything we saw. In between trips to the Tsingy, we dined at several of the local hotels, and took advantage of the pool at one of them.
From the Tsingy we went on to Kirindy forest. There we went on a night hike and saw a couple varieties of nocturnal lemurs. The next day we were able to see some brown lemurs very close as they drank from a pond, as well as some sifakas. Back at camp, we saw a Fosa, which looks like a giant house cat and is the largest predator on the island. From there we went on to the Avenue de Baobabs and the Baobabs in Love – two intertwined baobabs that looked like they were embracing, and another spectacular sunset down the way. We went back to Chez Maggie for the evening, to rest up for our trip to Belo sur Mer the following day.
The adventure to Belo sur Mer started with a very wet ride down the coast under sunny skies. The town itself was nice, right on the water, with several small hotels here and there. Large boats in various stages of construction lined the shore, as well as the sea-going canoes seen up and down the coast. Our bungalow was right on the water, with the breeze blowing in and magnificent views of the sunsets. The food, much like everywhere else we had been, was excellent. We swam in the ocean and collected shells. One day we took a 2 ½ hour approx. 20k sailing canoe ride out to a small island dotted with fisherman. Blue water, bluer skies, sandy beaches, snorkeling, and the company of the most beautiful girl. Amazing. On the way back we saw several whales as they surfaced to breathe.
On the way back, we knew what to expect and did not get quite as soaked. It was low tide when we returned, and we had to slog knee deep through some of the thickest, nastiest mud I’ve ever encountered. That was quickly forgotten after showers and more excellent food back at Chez Maggie. The following day was my last full one, with lots of shopping for gifts for people back home. And another signature sunset.
Morondava->Antananarivo->Johannesburg->Frankfurt->Chicago->K-Zoo
This had been one of the most wonderful and memorable experiences of my life. I credit much of that to who I spent all my time with ☺ I cannot wait to hopefully go back around the same time next year, and would recommend the trip to anyone looking for something a bit out of the ordinary.
I would like to start with a bit of an introduction; my name is Matt Klinkner and I hail from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I’m extremely fortunate to be Karista’s boyfriend, and it has been quite an adventure so far.
This trip was one of many firsts for me. For starters the only time I have ever flown was in a small two-passenger airplane over corn fields in the Upper Peninsula. Going 10,000 plus miles half way around the world? Why not. Go big or stay home I guess. That being said I have never been out of the country either; I’ve been to Canada a couple times, but in my book that doesn’t count as it’s practically the 51st state. Then there were things such as bucket baths and chamber pots, but I’ll touch on those later.
Chicago->London->Johannesburg->Antananarivo->Morondava
I had visions of all sorts of things that could (and probably would) go wrong, but the trips there and back were remarkably painless. When my plane touched down in Morondava, my heart was pounding with excitement when I saw Karista waiting for me when I got off the plane. It had been quite some time since I had seen her and it was wonderful to see her looking healthy and happy.
From there it was off to Chez Maggie, which is run by an American named Gary, and if you are ever in Morondava, I recommend a stay there. The food is exceptional, the sunsets are breathtaking, and the people friendly. After another day here, we boarded a taxi brousse, or bush taxi, bound for Karista’s site. Ok, this whole brousse ride is something that will not be forgotten. Close to forty people (I’m not even exaggerating) in a rickety van over one of the most derelict roads I had ever seen(up to that point)
We arrive in Mahabo, where Karista shows me off to some of her friends and some of her favorite spots. While there, I experienced many new things that would soon become routine: 1) Bucket baths – not too bad once you figure it out. 2) Chamber pots – if it were up to me I would have just gone on a bush. 3) This is one of my faves – somewhere along the way Karista learned how to cook! This enchanting young woman who would routinely burn water (love you sweetie!) was now making awesome pasta, savory lentil ragout, kick-ass veggie burritos, and one of my new faves, a fried banana donut type thing called mofo kida. 4) She has a thing for scolding small children that point and shout “Vazaha!” at us, which means foreigner or white person.
We were picked up by our guide Philemon to head to Miandrivazo. The road there was exceptional. The town was quite city like, and we went for a ride on a posy-posy (tee-hee) which is a rickshaw. We had lots more really good food at our hotel. Then off to start our trip down the Tsiribihina River. We saw lots of birds, a large chameleon, baby crocs, and some brown lemurs. We camped on a sandbar under what seemed like a billion stars, and also saw a few shooting stars. It was sooo wonderful and romantic to be there with Karista. I felt a million miles away from everything else, but so very close to her.☺ More beautiful scenery the following day through the Tsiribihina Gorge and a breathtaking waterfall along with a group of sifaka lemurs. The next day we saw a crazy big swarm of grasshoppers, along with some bats. Upon the finish of our canoe trip, we boarded a Zebu cart for a ride to the 4x4 that would take us to Belo-sur-Tsiribihina. For those of you who don’t know, a Zebu is an extremely delicious beast of burden very much like cattle found anywhere else. We spent the night in Belo-sur-Tsiribihina, then a bone jarring 4 ½ hour ride that made the brousse to Mahabo seem like a kiddie ride. We arrived at Tsingy-Bemaraha National Park, for what would be one of my favorite parts of the trip.
We spent the next three days exploring the peaks and caves of the Tsingy. The sights were amazing, and getting to experience them with Karista made it that much better. Philemon was still with us, and that guy is something else. He had facts and information about nearly everything we saw. In between trips to the Tsingy, we dined at several of the local hotels, and took advantage of the pool at one of them.
From the Tsingy we went on to Kirindy forest. There we went on a night hike and saw a couple varieties of nocturnal lemurs. The next day we were able to see some brown lemurs very close as they drank from a pond, as well as some sifakas. Back at camp, we saw a Fosa, which looks like a giant house cat and is the largest predator on the island. From there we went on to the Avenue de Baobabs and the Baobabs in Love – two intertwined baobabs that looked like they were embracing, and another spectacular sunset down the way. We went back to Chez Maggie for the evening, to rest up for our trip to Belo sur Mer the following day.
The adventure to Belo sur Mer started with a very wet ride down the coast under sunny skies. The town itself was nice, right on the water, with several small hotels here and there. Large boats in various stages of construction lined the shore, as well as the sea-going canoes seen up and down the coast. Our bungalow was right on the water, with the breeze blowing in and magnificent views of the sunsets. The food, much like everywhere else we had been, was excellent. We swam in the ocean and collected shells. One day we took a 2 ½ hour approx. 20k sailing canoe ride out to a small island dotted with fisherman. Blue water, bluer skies, sandy beaches, snorkeling, and the company of the most beautiful girl. Amazing. On the way back we saw several whales as they surfaced to breathe.
On the way back, we knew what to expect and did not get quite as soaked. It was low tide when we returned, and we had to slog knee deep through some of the thickest, nastiest mud I’ve ever encountered. That was quickly forgotten after showers and more excellent food back at Chez Maggie. The following day was my last full one, with lots of shopping for gifts for people back home. And another signature sunset.
Morondava->Antananarivo->Johannesburg->Frankfurt->Chicago->K-Zoo
This had been one of the most wonderful and memorable experiences of my life. I credit much of that to who I spent all my time with ☺ I cannot wait to hopefully go back around the same time next year, and would recommend the trip to anyone looking for something a bit out of the ordinary.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Schooooooool's... out... for... summer!!! (or rather, winter, here...)
Grading. That’s basically all I did in June. I was told I needed to give two tests to each class and do the average for them and that would be their grades. I didn’t plan very well so wound up giving both tests at end of may/practically all of June. I had planned on giving the first one in May right after I returned from IST but, once again, class was canceled and I wasn’t informed, for “sports scholaire,” which, as I understand it (which is not very well) is a rough equivalent of high school sports. Only a few students were actually in it but they canceled classes for it and there was some fety in town for it, and people asked me, all surprised, why I wasn’t at the sports scholaire fety. Please – I didn’t even care about school sports when I was a student.
So I use one week for the test, one week to do corrections the following week, during which I review exam answers with the students and they try to change their answers to the correct answers or write down the answers of the questions they left blank and try to convince me that I miscalculated their grade. Fetsy fetsy children, but I am more fetsy. Because this happened a lot last trimester and 300+ students can be hard to keep track of, I developed a system for students who leave answers blank and draw a big red circle in the blank space. Or if they forget the number, write the number in red and put a big red circle next to it, write X’s through the numbers of wrong answers or blank ones (and therefore wrong) So if students come to me after class and point to things on their test, written over big red circles, I know they filled in a correct answer that I just wrote on the board in front of them, even though they left it blank during the exam. As far as other errors, I double check and yes, its easy to make a mistake while correcting over 300 exams, usually pretty quickly, I don’t change grades. If I could trust them farther than I could throw them, maybe I’d consider it, but this is so far from the case. Some students tried changing their notes during corrections (I told them I needed the exams back because I hadn’t recorded the grades yet, so if the score was 11/20, they would, for example, draw a line through the last 1 and make it 17/20). Again, since I count the X’s and noticed that some of the scores were too high to have about 6 Xs on the front page, I wound up grading this particular class’s exams twice. Instead of flunking those that made the changes, I just took 5 points off their next exam. Also, one class that was a week behind the others (the one whose class was canceled because of the sports thing) took their exam a week later than others. Since I knew they’d look at the exams of their friends who’d already taken their exams, I changed it up a bit. Buahahahah. Sure enough, one kid turned in an exam with answers from the other test. Zero. And one girl actually brought her friends’ test from another class into the exam and copied answers from it, even though the tests weren’t the same, and this girl from the other class not only had a different test, she didn’t even do that well on it. Haha, ok, why would you 1. cheat and take a friend’s exam into the class when 2. you’re already smart and got a perfect score on your last test and 3. your friend didn’t even do that well on her own test, her own test that was 4. different from the one you’re currently taking, 5. did you not notice that the questions were different? REALLY!?!?!? And then she got pissed at me because I caught her, immediately took away her test, kicked her out of class, and after class, marched to the proviseur’s office to tell her about it. This student genuinely didn’t seem to understand what she did wrong and was mad at me that I took her test and gave her a zero (which I also gave to the student from other class who gave this girl the test). WTF? That’s like someone who gets mad at cigarette companies because he got lung cancer. Take an iota of responsibility instead of just getting mad at me that you got caught. Or feigning dumb. Seriously? Come on.
But that was my 5eme class (the equivalent of 7th grade in the U.S., but they range in ages from 12-17). My 2nde class (the equivalent of high school sophs., though ranging in age from 15 to 24; yes, some are older than I am) did very well on their exams. I made the tests easy, but I’ve given easy tests in the past and the students still didn’t do well, which concerned and frustrated me. I only flunked a few people for cheating this time around, as opposed to at least a third of them during the last trimester. Some tests could’ve been cases of cheating, but it was hard to tell so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The way they are taught is so heavily based off of copying and memorizing, so much so that it could border on cheating and plagiarism. So when I got a bunch of tests with an example sentence that looked like it came from their text books (like references to London) and another bigger bunch with the same examples I gave in class, it was harder to discern cheating because that’s the way they are taught; look at the examples, copy EVERYTHING as it’s written from the board, and memorize it. And the examples were correct so, again, hard to tell if cheating took place, as opposed to getting a few tests with blatantly wrong answers, in the same exact order, same wrong conjugations, same misspellings, same wrong articles, same wrong word orders… cases in which it’s so blatantly obvious. But almost all of them improved at least a little, some drastically, from the last trimester, and from the first test of this trimester to the last one. I was shocked, and extremely heartened. Am I actually, maybe, possibly… getting somewhere with my students and having an impact here? Are they actually learning something…? Even though I have to fight through class sometimes (more so with 5eme though), did they actually care and take away something from class? ::GAAASP:: It was a great feeling that my time here is turning out to mean something, because sometimes it feels like it doesn’t. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll be working with the same students next year; some volunteers follow their classes and teach them for the full two years, others just continue teaching the same classes and get a new batch of students.
Also in June was Madagascar’s Independence Day. June 26th marked the fiftieth anniversary of independence in Madagascar, so it was a pretty big deal. Weeks preceding the fety, flags were on sale all over the market and people hung them outside their houses. A few days beforehand, again, classes were canceled and I was not informed (again) because students were practicing their marching (or défilé, as they called it) for the fety, during which they marched on the field, to music from a small marching bad (the Catholic school has one) in front of all the important people from town in the bleachers. Which is where I was seated, and I evidently missed the memo to dress up. Everyone else in the bleachers, local political people, other teachers, etc, were super dressed up; men in suits and ties and women in nice dresses and suits, with fancy handbags and jewelry to match it. I, on the other hand, showed up and couldn’t have looked more like a Peace Corps Volunteer unless I wrote it on my forehead: unshaven, sandy Chacos, faded cargo capris, ribbed tank top, sports bra exposed underneath. Haa. In my defense, the next day was laundry day and most of my clothes were dirty.
I was a little uneasy about the fety the night before; Gasy fetys usually just consist of lots and lots and lots of kabarys (speeches) and talking; they love their kabarys. But the event was over by noon and most of the time was just sitting around waiting for the thing to happen. It was great getting to see my students marching and the little kids from the pre schools were SO CUTE!! I have a bunch of pictures and took some video, again, when I get more mahay/patient with putting up photos, I’ll do it.
After independence day, students stopped showing up to class, but I was still expected to show up and teach. Their grades are due 2 weeks before the school year even finishes, so they have no motivation/reason to show up, nor do the other teachers have anything to teach and they don’t show up either. So the last day of school was kind of anti-climactic, as only a few students were actually around. I actually wasn’t around for the last official last day of school (but probably nobody else was either haha) as I’ve spend the past week either in Tana or the training center doing TOT (training of trainers) which I was required to go to, as one of the PCVs who will be helping to train the new stage that is coming soon!!!
So tomorrow I’m heading back to my site, cleaning up like whoa, as the spiders and other bugs have probably taken over, and doing lots of laundry and then heading out again because I’m taking a vacation!!!! My wonderful boyfriend, Matt, is coming to Madagascar and we’re traveling around Western M-car together: Morondava (so he can recover from his jet lag by the beach and pool), then taking him to my site and introducing him to my friends, and my town can focus on and scrutinize another white person for a while (haha). From there, canoe trip down the Tsiribihina River for a few days (pronounced SEE-REE-BEEN; while Malagasy words are intimidatingly long, you don’t pronounce half of them). It apparently means “do not dive” – “tsi-” as a prefix is a negative, because of the crocodiles that inhabit the river… No worries, PCVs aren’t allowed to swim in fresh water in M-car anyway, as we might get schistosomiasis (a nasty little parasite found in fresh water), but I wouldn’t be surprised if I already have it because of the knee deep water I had to walk through to get anywhere in the aftermath of the February cyclone. From there, we head to the Parc National de Tsingy de Bemaraha, hike around the tsingy for a few days, head back south and stop by the Kirindy Forest, which is supposed to have awesome nocturnal wildlife. From there, back to the coast, to Belo-Sur-Mer, a small, laid-back fishing village. So more of a trip than a vacation, especially for Matt who’s never been out of the states before and is going to be in for the shock of his life, haha. It will be interesting to see how I’ve changed, through another person and his reactions to things, to things that I don’t even think twice about anymore and are so natural to me. After the craziness that has been the past few months, I DEFINITELY need this and CANNOT WAIT!!! Obviously vaka details to follow in the next post!
So I use one week for the test, one week to do corrections the following week, during which I review exam answers with the students and they try to change their answers to the correct answers or write down the answers of the questions they left blank and try to convince me that I miscalculated their grade. Fetsy fetsy children, but I am more fetsy. Because this happened a lot last trimester and 300+ students can be hard to keep track of, I developed a system for students who leave answers blank and draw a big red circle in the blank space. Or if they forget the number, write the number in red and put a big red circle next to it, write X’s through the numbers of wrong answers or blank ones (and therefore wrong) So if students come to me after class and point to things on their test, written over big red circles, I know they filled in a correct answer that I just wrote on the board in front of them, even though they left it blank during the exam. As far as other errors, I double check and yes, its easy to make a mistake while correcting over 300 exams, usually pretty quickly, I don’t change grades. If I could trust them farther than I could throw them, maybe I’d consider it, but this is so far from the case. Some students tried changing their notes during corrections (I told them I needed the exams back because I hadn’t recorded the grades yet, so if the score was 11/20, they would, for example, draw a line through the last 1 and make it 17/20). Again, since I count the X’s and noticed that some of the scores were too high to have about 6 Xs on the front page, I wound up grading this particular class’s exams twice. Instead of flunking those that made the changes, I just took 5 points off their next exam. Also, one class that was a week behind the others (the one whose class was canceled because of the sports thing) took their exam a week later than others. Since I knew they’d look at the exams of their friends who’d already taken their exams, I changed it up a bit. Buahahahah. Sure enough, one kid turned in an exam with answers from the other test. Zero. And one girl actually brought her friends’ test from another class into the exam and copied answers from it, even though the tests weren’t the same, and this girl from the other class not only had a different test, she didn’t even do that well on it. Haha, ok, why would you 1. cheat and take a friend’s exam into the class when 2. you’re already smart and got a perfect score on your last test and 3. your friend didn’t even do that well on her own test, her own test that was 4. different from the one you’re currently taking, 5. did you not notice that the questions were different? REALLY!?!?!? And then she got pissed at me because I caught her, immediately took away her test, kicked her out of class, and after class, marched to the proviseur’s office to tell her about it. This student genuinely didn’t seem to understand what she did wrong and was mad at me that I took her test and gave her a zero (which I also gave to the student from other class who gave this girl the test). WTF? That’s like someone who gets mad at cigarette companies because he got lung cancer. Take an iota of responsibility instead of just getting mad at me that you got caught. Or feigning dumb. Seriously? Come on.
But that was my 5eme class (the equivalent of 7th grade in the U.S., but they range in ages from 12-17). My 2nde class (the equivalent of high school sophs., though ranging in age from 15 to 24; yes, some are older than I am) did very well on their exams. I made the tests easy, but I’ve given easy tests in the past and the students still didn’t do well, which concerned and frustrated me. I only flunked a few people for cheating this time around, as opposed to at least a third of them during the last trimester. Some tests could’ve been cases of cheating, but it was hard to tell so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The way they are taught is so heavily based off of copying and memorizing, so much so that it could border on cheating and plagiarism. So when I got a bunch of tests with an example sentence that looked like it came from their text books (like references to London) and another bigger bunch with the same examples I gave in class, it was harder to discern cheating because that’s the way they are taught; look at the examples, copy EVERYTHING as it’s written from the board, and memorize it. And the examples were correct so, again, hard to tell if cheating took place, as opposed to getting a few tests with blatantly wrong answers, in the same exact order, same wrong conjugations, same misspellings, same wrong articles, same wrong word orders… cases in which it’s so blatantly obvious. But almost all of them improved at least a little, some drastically, from the last trimester, and from the first test of this trimester to the last one. I was shocked, and extremely heartened. Am I actually, maybe, possibly… getting somewhere with my students and having an impact here? Are they actually learning something…? Even though I have to fight through class sometimes (more so with 5eme though), did they actually care and take away something from class? ::GAAASP:: It was a great feeling that my time here is turning out to mean something, because sometimes it feels like it doesn’t. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll be working with the same students next year; some volunteers follow their classes and teach them for the full two years, others just continue teaching the same classes and get a new batch of students.
Also in June was Madagascar’s Independence Day. June 26th marked the fiftieth anniversary of independence in Madagascar, so it was a pretty big deal. Weeks preceding the fety, flags were on sale all over the market and people hung them outside their houses. A few days beforehand, again, classes were canceled and I was not informed (again) because students were practicing their marching (or défilé, as they called it) for the fety, during which they marched on the field, to music from a small marching bad (the Catholic school has one) in front of all the important people from town in the bleachers. Which is where I was seated, and I evidently missed the memo to dress up. Everyone else in the bleachers, local political people, other teachers, etc, were super dressed up; men in suits and ties and women in nice dresses and suits, with fancy handbags and jewelry to match it. I, on the other hand, showed up and couldn’t have looked more like a Peace Corps Volunteer unless I wrote it on my forehead: unshaven, sandy Chacos, faded cargo capris, ribbed tank top, sports bra exposed underneath. Haa. In my defense, the next day was laundry day and most of my clothes were dirty.
I was a little uneasy about the fety the night before; Gasy fetys usually just consist of lots and lots and lots of kabarys (speeches) and talking; they love their kabarys. But the event was over by noon and most of the time was just sitting around waiting for the thing to happen. It was great getting to see my students marching and the little kids from the pre schools were SO CUTE!! I have a bunch of pictures and took some video, again, when I get more mahay/patient with putting up photos, I’ll do it.
After independence day, students stopped showing up to class, but I was still expected to show up and teach. Their grades are due 2 weeks before the school year even finishes, so they have no motivation/reason to show up, nor do the other teachers have anything to teach and they don’t show up either. So the last day of school was kind of anti-climactic, as only a few students were actually around. I actually wasn’t around for the last official last day of school (but probably nobody else was either haha) as I’ve spend the past week either in Tana or the training center doing TOT (training of trainers) which I was required to go to, as one of the PCVs who will be helping to train the new stage that is coming soon!!!
So tomorrow I’m heading back to my site, cleaning up like whoa, as the spiders and other bugs have probably taken over, and doing lots of laundry and then heading out again because I’m taking a vacation!!!! My wonderful boyfriend, Matt, is coming to Madagascar and we’re traveling around Western M-car together: Morondava (so he can recover from his jet lag by the beach and pool), then taking him to my site and introducing him to my friends, and my town can focus on and scrutinize another white person for a while (haha). From there, canoe trip down the Tsiribihina River for a few days (pronounced SEE-REE-BEEN; while Malagasy words are intimidatingly long, you don’t pronounce half of them). It apparently means “do not dive” – “tsi-” as a prefix is a negative, because of the crocodiles that inhabit the river… No worries, PCVs aren’t allowed to swim in fresh water in M-car anyway, as we might get schistosomiasis (a nasty little parasite found in fresh water), but I wouldn’t be surprised if I already have it because of the knee deep water I had to walk through to get anywhere in the aftermath of the February cyclone. From there, we head to the Parc National de Tsingy de Bemaraha, hike around the tsingy for a few days, head back south and stop by the Kirindy Forest, which is supposed to have awesome nocturnal wildlife. From there, back to the coast, to Belo-Sur-Mer, a small, laid-back fishing village. So more of a trip than a vacation, especially for Matt who’s never been out of the states before and is going to be in for the shock of his life, haha. It will be interesting to see how I’ve changed, through another person and his reactions to things, to things that I don’t even think twice about anymore and are so natural to me. After the craziness that has been the past few months, I DEFINITELY need this and CANNOT WAIT!!! Obviously vaka details to follow in the next post!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Newbies, this one's for you!
Hey hey soon to be PC/Mada trainees! Congrats on getting it an invite and surviving the craziness that is the application process. Maybe you’re scouring the internet doing Peace Corps research, some of it through reading Peace Corps blogs (which I did obsessively during the years I considered and applied for Peace Corps), so if you’ve happened to stumble across this blog, this post is to help you, as you may be running all over the place, buying stuff, racking your brains trying to figure out what and how to pack for the next 2 years of your life. In August, I’ll be at the training center helping with your guys’ training, so I’ll get to meet you all and offer more help re: being a PCV in Mad Land and impart some of my wisdom (tee hee). As far as helping now, I didn’t particularly come to Madagascar prepared, thinking I’d be in Niger for 2 years, so now I know what I would’ve packed, and have some things that are good to have no matter what country you’re a PCV in and I’m glad I brought them. So, here goes:
Great things I brought:
For women:
The Diva Cup – www.divacup.com - buy it NOW! Actually, maybe buy two in case one falls down a latrine hole. I LOVE it and was using it way before Peace Corps; I seriously can’t believe I ever used tampons. Best invention EVER!!! (or at least right up there with TV shows on DVD...)
Sports bras – taxi brousse rides can be, um… bouncy.
In General:
Quick Dry Towels – great when it’s humid/rainy season (Dec-April, even longer on the east coast, and it RAINS), so you can avoid mildewy towel situations
Nalgene – an extension of my arm and an object of complete fascination for everyone in my town, for what reason I’m still not sure. Its hot where I live and I talk a lot when I’m teaching (and sometimes yelling at mitabataba-ing students) so I bring it with me everywhere and even though its taken quite a beating, its still standing, probably always will be, and I love it! Get the sip guards too, so you don’t wear your water when you try to drink it.
Headlamp – I used it more in Niger than here, but it’s still a good thing to have whether or not you do have electricity and its better than a plain old flashlight because it keeps your hands free. I brought 2 in case one broke or fell into a latrine. I still use it during occasional power cuts, when I’m bucket bathing at the end of the day and its dark, or when I want to read in bed so I can turn out the lights, get comfy in bed, and don’t have to get out of the mosquito net to turn off lights when I want to sleep. It will also be of use when you are camping and doing night hikes in nat’l parks (i.e, part of my amazing vaka coming up but more on that in another post)
Cotton clothing – its easy to wash, dries quickly, and is durable; clothes can take a beating through lots of wearing and hand-washing
Solio Charger – again, used it more in Niger buts its still pretty nifty and I like it. The one I have only charges small things, phone, iPod, speakers for iPod (which broke so it doesn’t matter; another thing I recommend bringing) and there’s LOTS of hot sun in Western M-Car so it charges pretty fast here; I’m not sure about the highlands
Chacos – I LOVE them! I wear them EVERYWHERE and I have a fantastic tan line to prove it (when I figure out how/get internet that’s not painfully slow I’ll post the picture) Very comfortable, durable, and just plain amazing. There are discounts for PCVs.
LOTS of underwear – they’ll take a beating and get stretched out from so much washing, so bring a lot and seal some of them off in a bag and save them for midservice, maybe hide them somewhere in the bottom of your luggage so you won’t be tempted to use them after 2 months at site, and then you just have a ton of really stretched out undies by the time you get to midservice. Or have more sent from home.
Reading material and DVDs, or any hobby-related material – there’s a lot of down time here. The volunteer hostels have lots of books so you can get some there as well. I didn’t bring that many DVDs because in Niger, I wouldn’t have had electricity to constantly recharge my laptop. If you’re and education volunteer, you WILL have electricity. Also, I’ll be getting some neighbors near my site, so you and I can trade DVDs since I blew through mine already If you’re more tech savvy than I am, put movies/tv shows on a flash drive; I couldn’t figure out how to do that. A few people have Kindles too or other equivalents, so you can have lots of reading material without taking up space in your luggage. Again, I’m not that tech savvy and have a weird thing about not being able to comprehend what I read off screens. In college when profs put huge ass articles online I always had to print them out to read them, armed with my highlighters, so I could understand them. But that’s me, maybe you’re different.
French Press, if you love coffee – my boyfriend got me a cute, nalgene-sized French press as a going away present, so you can make coffee in the bush, no electricity or filters needed. Madagascar has decent and strong coffee (it grows on the east coast) so you can buy it here and make it in the French press. Or you can just make it with a coffee sock like Gasys do, but I think the French press is pretty nifty. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to drink too much coffee anymore, as my gastrointestinal tract often hates me.
Lots of pictures – to get all nostalgic sometimes and to show to your host fam and people at site
Anything that makes you happy, laugh, smile, reminds you of home – for obvious reasons
Whatever candy, snacks, etc. you like – squeeze it in your luggage somewhere and have more sent to you in care packages. Bring some packets of drink mixes too; it’s nice to drink something sweet once in a while instead of plain water
What I didn’t bring that you might want to:
Professional-ish clothes, if you’re an ed volunteer – thinking I’d be in Niger and covered in sand and sweat all the time (though, in Western M-car, I still am) and working as a health volunteer, I didn’t bring too many business casual-type clothing. Even though teachers at my school show up in shorts, jeans, and track suits, you should still dress somewhat neatly and professionally. You’ll be the center of attention for the next two years – enjoy!
Cute clothes – you can get away with wearing them here; PC/Mada’s not really a 2 year camping trip. Try to stick to fabrics that are easily washable though, and don’t bring anything that’s super expensive or that you’d be upset over if it got ruined.
Warm clothes – again, thinking I’d be in Niger, I only brought one pair of sweat pants and one sweat shirt. Bring MORE. The highlands, where the training center is and where you’ll be for the first 10 weeks, are FREEZING in the winter, which, in the southern hemisphere is now; again, when you’ll be training. Bring a jacket (like what you’d wear in fall or spring instead of a down winter coat, but you may want one of those depending on your cold tolerance), scarf, hat, I am NOT JOKING. Also sweat pants, sweatshirts, long sleeves, socks, and long pants. I brought leggings to wear under pants when its gets really cold and it helps. Bring a good raincoat as well; it rains a lot during the rainy season, especially when there’s a cyclone (during which the temperature will drop at least 10 degrees so, again, warm clothes). Even if your permanent site isn’t in the highlands, the coastal areas can still get chilly in the winter at night and in the morning. I bought a wool blanket at the market and sleep in sweats and am still cold sometimes. During the day, instead of constantly-dripping-sweat-can’t-breathe hot, its just hot and I still walk around in shorts even though the Gasys will walk around in down coats and dress their babies in fleece onesies with knit hats, even though its probably 80 degrees, haha.
Shorts and tank tops – not ok in Niger, though I did bring a few of each just to wear in my house, but I wear shorts all the time here, in public, and it’s ok, unless you’re in a predominantly Muslim area. If you’re a woman, you’re going to be undressed by the eyes by sketchy Gasy men about 10 times a day no matter what you wear. You’ve been warned. Also exercising, running/biking in shorts, is acceptable.
Don't Bring
Medical stuff - Peace Corps will provide you with all medical stuff, so save your packing space for other things. Upon arrival at the training center in Niger, we were given small brief case sized medical kits. If you go through something pretty quickly or are particular about something (i.e, me and Chapstick), maybe bring some of it, or just be really on top of requesting refills from PC far in advance (especially if you’re far away from the capitol, like me) so you don’t run out. If you take prescription meds, you need to bring enough to get you through training and then PC will refill it from there. I’m told contact solution can’t be found here, so if you wear contacts, bring enough to get you through training and have your parents send you more.
Ditto for toiletries – you don’t need to bring 2 years worth of soap, shampoo, toothpaste, etc. Maybe bring enough to get you through training, but you can get it here. If you’re particular about a brand, maybe bring more, or have your fam in the U.S. send it to you, but your standards WILL change. You can find American brand things in Tana and bigger towns but they can be pricey.
A ton of clothes – a week or two worth of outfits is fine, you can do laundry and buy more clothes here; frippery, or just frip (secondhand clothes from the U.S., why its called frippery I’m still not quite sure) is king in Madagascar, with piles of used clothes at markets for the equivalent of 50 cents per item. Frip can be hit or miss, usually the bigger towns will have better frip, and you may have to do some serious digging to find something good (i.e, tops from Old Navy and Express, instead of ridiculous 80s wear). New clothes are available as well but are more expensive and, again, more available in bigger towns. I’ve gotten great articles of clothing, both frip and new clothes, at my site and banking town.
Hair straightener, blow dryer, eyeliner, etc. – don’t be that person
That’s the general packing advice I have; as far as mental preparedness, you’ve done the research, you went through the mess of an application process, its normal to be nervous and anxious (or, as was the case with me, go from being extremely excited to freaking out about 5 times a day in the few days before leaving) but when you get to staging and meet your fellow stagaires (i.e, friends, family, support system for the next 27 months) you will feel more at ease, realize you’re not alone in how you feel as you get to talking and getting acquainted at your “last supper” (i.e, fabulous American meal before leaving) and during your long plane rides. When you get to M-car, you’ll start getting exciting about getting to be a volunteer, even though training can be tough at times. Bottom line: nervousness is normal but you’ll be fine, you’ve worked hard for this and when you actually get to the country you’ve been invited to serve in, you’ll be pumped and your nervousness will slowly dissipate. Can’t wait to meet you all!!!! Good luck with the final preparations!
As far as updates on me, that will (hopefully) follow sometime next week. Till then...
Great things I brought:
For women:
The Diva Cup – www.divacup.com - buy it NOW! Actually, maybe buy two in case one falls down a latrine hole. I LOVE it and was using it way before Peace Corps; I seriously can’t believe I ever used tampons. Best invention EVER!!! (or at least right up there with TV shows on DVD...)
Sports bras – taxi brousse rides can be, um… bouncy.
In General:
Quick Dry Towels – great when it’s humid/rainy season (Dec-April, even longer on the east coast, and it RAINS), so you can avoid mildewy towel situations
Nalgene – an extension of my arm and an object of complete fascination for everyone in my town, for what reason I’m still not sure. Its hot where I live and I talk a lot when I’m teaching (and sometimes yelling at mitabataba-ing students) so I bring it with me everywhere and even though its taken quite a beating, its still standing, probably always will be, and I love it! Get the sip guards too, so you don’t wear your water when you try to drink it.
Headlamp – I used it more in Niger than here, but it’s still a good thing to have whether or not you do have electricity and its better than a plain old flashlight because it keeps your hands free. I brought 2 in case one broke or fell into a latrine. I still use it during occasional power cuts, when I’m bucket bathing at the end of the day and its dark, or when I want to read in bed so I can turn out the lights, get comfy in bed, and don’t have to get out of the mosquito net to turn off lights when I want to sleep. It will also be of use when you are camping and doing night hikes in nat’l parks (i.e, part of my amazing vaka coming up but more on that in another post)
Cotton clothing – its easy to wash, dries quickly, and is durable; clothes can take a beating through lots of wearing and hand-washing
Solio Charger – again, used it more in Niger buts its still pretty nifty and I like it. The one I have only charges small things, phone, iPod, speakers for iPod (which broke so it doesn’t matter; another thing I recommend bringing) and there’s LOTS of hot sun in Western M-Car so it charges pretty fast here; I’m not sure about the highlands
Chacos – I LOVE them! I wear them EVERYWHERE and I have a fantastic tan line to prove it (when I figure out how/get internet that’s not painfully slow I’ll post the picture) Very comfortable, durable, and just plain amazing. There are discounts for PCVs.
LOTS of underwear – they’ll take a beating and get stretched out from so much washing, so bring a lot and seal some of them off in a bag and save them for midservice, maybe hide them somewhere in the bottom of your luggage so you won’t be tempted to use them after 2 months at site, and then you just have a ton of really stretched out undies by the time you get to midservice. Or have more sent from home.
Reading material and DVDs, or any hobby-related material – there’s a lot of down time here. The volunteer hostels have lots of books so you can get some there as well. I didn’t bring that many DVDs because in Niger, I wouldn’t have had electricity to constantly recharge my laptop. If you’re and education volunteer, you WILL have electricity. Also, I’ll be getting some neighbors near my site, so you and I can trade DVDs since I blew through mine already If you’re more tech savvy than I am, put movies/tv shows on a flash drive; I couldn’t figure out how to do that. A few people have Kindles too or other equivalents, so you can have lots of reading material without taking up space in your luggage. Again, I’m not that tech savvy and have a weird thing about not being able to comprehend what I read off screens. In college when profs put huge ass articles online I always had to print them out to read them, armed with my highlighters, so I could understand them. But that’s me, maybe you’re different.
French Press, if you love coffee – my boyfriend got me a cute, nalgene-sized French press as a going away present, so you can make coffee in the bush, no electricity or filters needed. Madagascar has decent and strong coffee (it grows on the east coast) so you can buy it here and make it in the French press. Or you can just make it with a coffee sock like Gasys do, but I think the French press is pretty nifty. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to drink too much coffee anymore, as my gastrointestinal tract often hates me.
Lots of pictures – to get all nostalgic sometimes and to show to your host fam and people at site
Anything that makes you happy, laugh, smile, reminds you of home – for obvious reasons
Whatever candy, snacks, etc. you like – squeeze it in your luggage somewhere and have more sent to you in care packages. Bring some packets of drink mixes too; it’s nice to drink something sweet once in a while instead of plain water
What I didn’t bring that you might want to:
Professional-ish clothes, if you’re an ed volunteer – thinking I’d be in Niger and covered in sand and sweat all the time (though, in Western M-car, I still am) and working as a health volunteer, I didn’t bring too many business casual-type clothing. Even though teachers at my school show up in shorts, jeans, and track suits, you should still dress somewhat neatly and professionally. You’ll be the center of attention for the next two years – enjoy!
Cute clothes – you can get away with wearing them here; PC/Mada’s not really a 2 year camping trip. Try to stick to fabrics that are easily washable though, and don’t bring anything that’s super expensive or that you’d be upset over if it got ruined.
Warm clothes – again, thinking I’d be in Niger, I only brought one pair of sweat pants and one sweat shirt. Bring MORE. The highlands, where the training center is and where you’ll be for the first 10 weeks, are FREEZING in the winter, which, in the southern hemisphere is now; again, when you’ll be training. Bring a jacket (like what you’d wear in fall or spring instead of a down winter coat, but you may want one of those depending on your cold tolerance), scarf, hat, I am NOT JOKING. Also sweat pants, sweatshirts, long sleeves, socks, and long pants. I brought leggings to wear under pants when its gets really cold and it helps. Bring a good raincoat as well; it rains a lot during the rainy season, especially when there’s a cyclone (during which the temperature will drop at least 10 degrees so, again, warm clothes). Even if your permanent site isn’t in the highlands, the coastal areas can still get chilly in the winter at night and in the morning. I bought a wool blanket at the market and sleep in sweats and am still cold sometimes. During the day, instead of constantly-dripping-sweat-can’t-breathe hot, its just hot and I still walk around in shorts even though the Gasys will walk around in down coats and dress their babies in fleece onesies with knit hats, even though its probably 80 degrees, haha.
Shorts and tank tops – not ok in Niger, though I did bring a few of each just to wear in my house, but I wear shorts all the time here, in public, and it’s ok, unless you’re in a predominantly Muslim area. If you’re a woman, you’re going to be undressed by the eyes by sketchy Gasy men about 10 times a day no matter what you wear. You’ve been warned. Also exercising, running/biking in shorts, is acceptable.
Don't Bring
Medical stuff - Peace Corps will provide you with all medical stuff, so save your packing space for other things. Upon arrival at the training center in Niger, we were given small brief case sized medical kits. If you go through something pretty quickly or are particular about something (i.e, me and Chapstick), maybe bring some of it, or just be really on top of requesting refills from PC far in advance (especially if you’re far away from the capitol, like me) so you don’t run out. If you take prescription meds, you need to bring enough to get you through training and then PC will refill it from there. I’m told contact solution can’t be found here, so if you wear contacts, bring enough to get you through training and have your parents send you more.
Ditto for toiletries – you don’t need to bring 2 years worth of soap, shampoo, toothpaste, etc. Maybe bring enough to get you through training, but you can get it here. If you’re particular about a brand, maybe bring more, or have your fam in the U.S. send it to you, but your standards WILL change. You can find American brand things in Tana and bigger towns but they can be pricey.
A ton of clothes – a week or two worth of outfits is fine, you can do laundry and buy more clothes here; frippery, or just frip (secondhand clothes from the U.S., why its called frippery I’m still not quite sure) is king in Madagascar, with piles of used clothes at markets for the equivalent of 50 cents per item. Frip can be hit or miss, usually the bigger towns will have better frip, and you may have to do some serious digging to find something good (i.e, tops from Old Navy and Express, instead of ridiculous 80s wear). New clothes are available as well but are more expensive and, again, more available in bigger towns. I’ve gotten great articles of clothing, both frip and new clothes, at my site and banking town.
Hair straightener, blow dryer, eyeliner, etc. – don’t be that person
That’s the general packing advice I have; as far as mental preparedness, you’ve done the research, you went through the mess of an application process, its normal to be nervous and anxious (or, as was the case with me, go from being extremely excited to freaking out about 5 times a day in the few days before leaving) but when you get to staging and meet your fellow stagaires (i.e, friends, family, support system for the next 27 months) you will feel more at ease, realize you’re not alone in how you feel as you get to talking and getting acquainted at your “last supper” (i.e, fabulous American meal before leaving) and during your long plane rides. When you get to M-car, you’ll start getting exciting about getting to be a volunteer, even though training can be tough at times. Bottom line: nervousness is normal but you’ll be fine, you’ve worked hard for this and when you actually get to the country you’ve been invited to serve in, you’ll be pumped and your nervousness will slowly dissipate. Can’t wait to meet you all!!!! Good luck with the final preparations!
As far as updates on me, that will (hopefully) follow sometime next week. Till then...
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Update Kely
“kely” means small, as opposed to my usually updates “be” (big) because I’ve been super busy these past few weeks (some of them without a computer, which has since been fixed though, so yay!) and will continue to be for the rest of the school year, so I’m keeping this one short. Right now I’m in the middle of grading about 150 tests, about 150 more to follow this coming week, and then I have to give final exams to 300ish students and have grades calculated and entered by the end of June. And I’m still doing cleaning and loads of laundry left over from during and before IST and still haven’t fully unpacked – part laziness, part being super busy.
So, IST – kind of sucked. I got Giardia again (that’s the second time in 6 months) so felt like crap the entire week and froze my ass off; the training site is a freakish place in Madagascar. It’s always colder than the rest of the plateau and it was STILL raining 5 times a day, even though the rainy season is over. Even people who are posted in the plateau say that it’s not that cold at their sites. I was super frustrated and had a few mild breakdowns because a lot of our training was bureaucratic crap thrown at us, instead of the technical training I desperately needed and had even explicitly stated I needed on the needs assessment form sent to me. We had a bunch of cross sector stuff as well, which I guess was interesting, but not relevant to what I really needed. On top of that, the training for education volunteers was cut short to a week, because they didn’t want us to miss too much school, even though we are the ones who are struggling the most with our jobs, so they could’ve at least made our one week of “training” worthwhile, but they didn’t. So now I’m back at site and still clueless as how to deal with the issues I’m having and probably won’t get another site visit from Peace Corps till 2011, not that the first one helped that much anyway. I wrote a big rant in my journal and I really don’t feel like rehashing it here; it was aggravating enough the first time around and I vented to several friends. Which was the upside of IST; very glad I got to see my friends, as until IST, I was the only person in our stage who hadn’t seen anyone else. It was really fun getting to catch up with people and compare experiences. While all of us are going through similar things (which was reassuring; its not just me), we still all lead very different lives. I showed people pictures and a few people said they wanted to visit Morondava, my banking town, which is only 45 km from me but a heinous 2-3 hour drive on a pothole tarred “road.” Nonetheless, maybe I’ll get some visitors sometime soon! My site is pretty sweet, it’s beautiful, totally different from the plateau; hot, sandy, flat, and Morondava is a great place to hang out in for a couple days each month, go to the beach, splurge at nice restaurants, and then return back to bush living (though not as bush-y as other volunteers.) Now if only my students were better behaved…
Even though the training center was packed, with us and our counterparts, I had personal space which I desperately needed, as I don’t really have it at site, because we all understand that concept and respect each others’ needs for it. It was also wonderful to have hot running water, flush toilets (great when one is sick), and decent food that I didn’t have to spend time preparing or even more time cleaning up afterwards. And I got my hair cut! It looks and feels great; it’s REALLY short, the shortest it’s been in a while. Now I understand why everyone says I look like my mom, haha. Hopefully pictures to follow soon.
So after IST I hung out in Tana for a few days, taking care of some things, and then I was back on a plane to site. Not a huge fan of Tana; very crowded, polluted, expensive, and lately not the safest place to be. One guy definitely tried to jack my purse (which I was holding onto with a death grip, but kept my money stuffed in my bra anyway) and another was either just copping a feel of my thigh or reaching for my pocket. I wound up flying to Tana instead of taking what would’ve been about 16-18 hours in a taxi brousse over the course of 2 or 3 days, because 1. taxi brousses going east apparently don’t leave from my town; I would’ve had to backtrack west on an awful road to Morondava and pick up the taxi brousse there and 2. Even if I had the patience to waste time backtracking 2 hours only to spend another 2 coming in the same direction, apparently the taxi brousses only leave at night and make the journey eastward in the middle of the night, arriving in other towns in the morning/afternoon of the next day, and PCVs aren’t allowed to travel at night. Even if we were allowed to, though, I really wouldn’t want to; they are not comfortable, there’s no way I’d be able to sleep, and the roads in the highlands wind sharply through thousand-foot high mountains. Taxi brousses are POS cars and if the doors won’t even open on some of them, I doubt the headlights work well; I’ll pass on plummeting down a mountain into a rice paddy a thousand feet below me, thank you. Looks like my record of most time spent in a bush taxi – 15 hours in Senegal, from Dakar to Kedougou – will have to remain for now. Flying was so easy; on the way to IST, the plane was actually ON TIME! We got to Tana TEN MINUTES ahead of schedule. I was floored; nothing in this country ever happens promptly. Going back though, there was a two hour delay, slightly irritating as I got up at 3 a.m. to be at the airport on time, but still… not that bad. There were two flights leaving at the same time from the same gate, which was kind of hectic and stressful, and I almost wound up going to Diego Suarez (the northernmost major city in M-car). And at both airports, they gave us vouchers for free pain au chocolat and coffee/tea and served some more on the flights. Very nice.
And now I’m back at site, getting back into the swing of things. I was kind of anxious about coming back, wondering if I’d be depressed after having contact with others and then going back to being by myself, not knowing when I’d see everyone else again, also slightly nervous about having left my house for so long. People start to realize when the only white person within a 45 km radius isn’t around and people saw me lugging a huge bag with me when I left site, indicating I’d be gone for a while. Nothing bad has happened since coming here, and nothing of that sort happened while I was gone either, which is the plus of having a trustworthy family literally 3 feet away and someone usually around all the time. As predicted, though, the bugs totally took over the house; mostly the spiders. All pieces of furniture had massive cobwebs between them, the bottles and cooking things on my tables…EVERYWHERE. My entire latrine was one big cobweb, connecting all walls, which I didn’t realize until I walked into it… ew. At least my problems are only bugs; I’m glad I haven’t had any rat problems… yet. I heard stories of that sort from fellow volunteers while catching up at IST. I think that would really wig me out. But when I see a palm sized spider or cockroach while bathing, it’s a little shocking at first (the former more so than the latter), but then I go about my business. At least the spider webs catch the smaller bugs. Anywho, everyone was excited to see me again, especially the kids near my house (they can occasionally be cute) which made me happy and eased the anxiety about coming back. People do care that I’m here, which is a great feeling.
Back to grading tests, about 100 more to go. Till next time…
So, IST – kind of sucked. I got Giardia again (that’s the second time in 6 months) so felt like crap the entire week and froze my ass off; the training site is a freakish place in Madagascar. It’s always colder than the rest of the plateau and it was STILL raining 5 times a day, even though the rainy season is over. Even people who are posted in the plateau say that it’s not that cold at their sites. I was super frustrated and had a few mild breakdowns because a lot of our training was bureaucratic crap thrown at us, instead of the technical training I desperately needed and had even explicitly stated I needed on the needs assessment form sent to me. We had a bunch of cross sector stuff as well, which I guess was interesting, but not relevant to what I really needed. On top of that, the training for education volunteers was cut short to a week, because they didn’t want us to miss too much school, even though we are the ones who are struggling the most with our jobs, so they could’ve at least made our one week of “training” worthwhile, but they didn’t. So now I’m back at site and still clueless as how to deal with the issues I’m having and probably won’t get another site visit from Peace Corps till 2011, not that the first one helped that much anyway. I wrote a big rant in my journal and I really don’t feel like rehashing it here; it was aggravating enough the first time around and I vented to several friends. Which was the upside of IST; very glad I got to see my friends, as until IST, I was the only person in our stage who hadn’t seen anyone else. It was really fun getting to catch up with people and compare experiences. While all of us are going through similar things (which was reassuring; its not just me), we still all lead very different lives. I showed people pictures and a few people said they wanted to visit Morondava, my banking town, which is only 45 km from me but a heinous 2-3 hour drive on a pothole tarred “road.” Nonetheless, maybe I’ll get some visitors sometime soon! My site is pretty sweet, it’s beautiful, totally different from the plateau; hot, sandy, flat, and Morondava is a great place to hang out in for a couple days each month, go to the beach, splurge at nice restaurants, and then return back to bush living (though not as bush-y as other volunteers.) Now if only my students were better behaved…
Even though the training center was packed, with us and our counterparts, I had personal space which I desperately needed, as I don’t really have it at site, because we all understand that concept and respect each others’ needs for it. It was also wonderful to have hot running water, flush toilets (great when one is sick), and decent food that I didn’t have to spend time preparing or even more time cleaning up afterwards. And I got my hair cut! It looks and feels great; it’s REALLY short, the shortest it’s been in a while. Now I understand why everyone says I look like my mom, haha. Hopefully pictures to follow soon.
So after IST I hung out in Tana for a few days, taking care of some things, and then I was back on a plane to site. Not a huge fan of Tana; very crowded, polluted, expensive, and lately not the safest place to be. One guy definitely tried to jack my purse (which I was holding onto with a death grip, but kept my money stuffed in my bra anyway) and another was either just copping a feel of my thigh or reaching for my pocket. I wound up flying to Tana instead of taking what would’ve been about 16-18 hours in a taxi brousse over the course of 2 or 3 days, because 1. taxi brousses going east apparently don’t leave from my town; I would’ve had to backtrack west on an awful road to Morondava and pick up the taxi brousse there and 2. Even if I had the patience to waste time backtracking 2 hours only to spend another 2 coming in the same direction, apparently the taxi brousses only leave at night and make the journey eastward in the middle of the night, arriving in other towns in the morning/afternoon of the next day, and PCVs aren’t allowed to travel at night. Even if we were allowed to, though, I really wouldn’t want to; they are not comfortable, there’s no way I’d be able to sleep, and the roads in the highlands wind sharply through thousand-foot high mountains. Taxi brousses are POS cars and if the doors won’t even open on some of them, I doubt the headlights work well; I’ll pass on plummeting down a mountain into a rice paddy a thousand feet below me, thank you. Looks like my record of most time spent in a bush taxi – 15 hours in Senegal, from Dakar to Kedougou – will have to remain for now. Flying was so easy; on the way to IST, the plane was actually ON TIME! We got to Tana TEN MINUTES ahead of schedule. I was floored; nothing in this country ever happens promptly. Going back though, there was a two hour delay, slightly irritating as I got up at 3 a.m. to be at the airport on time, but still… not that bad. There were two flights leaving at the same time from the same gate, which was kind of hectic and stressful, and I almost wound up going to Diego Suarez (the northernmost major city in M-car). And at both airports, they gave us vouchers for free pain au chocolat and coffee/tea and served some more on the flights. Very nice.
And now I’m back at site, getting back into the swing of things. I was kind of anxious about coming back, wondering if I’d be depressed after having contact with others and then going back to being by myself, not knowing when I’d see everyone else again, also slightly nervous about having left my house for so long. People start to realize when the only white person within a 45 km radius isn’t around and people saw me lugging a huge bag with me when I left site, indicating I’d be gone for a while. Nothing bad has happened since coming here, and nothing of that sort happened while I was gone either, which is the plus of having a trustworthy family literally 3 feet away and someone usually around all the time. As predicted, though, the bugs totally took over the house; mostly the spiders. All pieces of furniture had massive cobwebs between them, the bottles and cooking things on my tables…EVERYWHERE. My entire latrine was one big cobweb, connecting all walls, which I didn’t realize until I walked into it… ew. At least my problems are only bugs; I’m glad I haven’t had any rat problems… yet. I heard stories of that sort from fellow volunteers while catching up at IST. I think that would really wig me out. But when I see a palm sized spider or cockroach while bathing, it’s a little shocking at first (the former more so than the latter), but then I go about my business. At least the spider webs catch the smaller bugs. Anywho, everyone was excited to see me again, especially the kids near my house (they can occasionally be cute) which made me happy and eased the anxiety about coming back. People do care that I’m here, which is a great feeling.
Back to grading tests, about 100 more to go. Till next time…
Friday, May 7, 2010
monthly update/too tired and not creative enough to come up with a title for this one
First of all, congrats to the volunteers that just swore in earlier this week! Yay! Hopefully I’ll get to meet some of you soon! As far as I know, I’m still the most isolated vol in country, but with the next stage that comes in July, I’ll have a few “neighbors,” (i.e. in my banking town 45 km from me, a health post about 100 km from me, and another one about 20 km away). Recently, I’ve started really wishing I had contact with other volunteers, people to vent to (especially) but also to cook with, shoot the breeze with, split expensive things in baking towns with, try to outdo with crazy stories, watch DVDs, etc. AND congrats to my little bro who graduated from MSU yesterday! yay!
It was about a month ago, but in April, during my mini vaca in my banking town during spring break (but not an official one, as we can’t take vacations yet), I had one of my most memorable, fun days in Madagascar so far. My banking town is near the avenue des baobabs, one of the most photographed sites in M-car and, if I’m not mistaken, featured in the Planet Earth series. It’s a section of a street (if you can call it that…) lined with HUGE, thousand plus year old baobab trees. I really wanted to see it, so I took my bike with me to my banking town on top of a taxi brousse and one day, woke up super early (before 6) to start biking out there. Lonely planet said it was only 15 km from Morondava, and, well, they lied. It was 14 km alone just to get from Morondava to a different street that the baobabs are actually on, and from there, another 12 k or so, not really sure. And they were TERRIBLE roads; the road just outside of Morondava is AWFUL, basically a stretch of potholes with some semblance of pathways in between them. And then the road with the baobabs on it was mostly pure sand; I had to jump off my bike a few times and walk it. I had a few flashbacks to Niger, only instead of being surrounded by millet fields I was surrounded by rice paddies. I was a little freaked out at first, worried I’d get lost in the bush, and this area was SUPER bush; I only saw a handful of little thatch huts along the way to the baobabs, and when I first started down this road, didn’t even see any baobabs; just vary fields and banana trees, leading me to wonder if it was actually the road and how far the baobabs were. More biking/falling off my bike/walking it through heavy sand/repeat cycle, and I started to see some baobabs. Ok, I’m on the right track, I thought. More difficult biking, having kids yell “vazaha” at me along the way, one freaking out and running away when he asked me for money in French and I snapped back at him in Malagasy “why don’t you give me money?” Anywho, FINALLY I made it! I eventually approached a sign saying the allé des baobabs was 100 meters away, and they had parking for cars (no real road, but a heavily weeded parking lot – ohhh Madagascar!). As I approached it, it didn’t seem like anything special, just a few baobabs, like the ones I had seen off in the distance during the bike ride down this road. But as I got closer and walked down the stretch of road, several baobabs towering over me, large shadows behind them, I was in awe; it was so cool! I took a few photos, sipped my water as I looked at them, and then headed back down the pure sand road from hell and eventually the pot-hole tarred one as well. I really wasn’t that tired, and once I got off the sand road to make my way back to Morondava, I had an energy burst and the sand road made this one, partially paved, seem like a breeze, so I pedaled faster, wind in my face, feeling free, feeling a sense of accomplishment (I’m not exactly the most in shape person). The whole trip, there and back, stopping for a while to take some pictures, took 4 hours and I was back by 10 a.m., workout high in effect and my legs feeling like jello, but it was fun! I went to my hotel room, washed the sweat, dirt, sand, etc. off me, grabbed my suit, and headed to the pool where I fell asleep in an inner tube under a hot, sunny, cloudless sky, getting a nice tan in the process. The end. So much fun!
And then back to post for the rest of spring break, which was kind of boring but much needed. I made a “bored list” and told myself I’d do things on that list when I got severely bored, mostly consisting of errands, things around the house, etc. that I haven’t had a the time for, but I didn’t really do that many of them, feeling lazy and instead opted for watching DVDs, reading, attempting to nap. I did take the time though, to get creative with cooking and try new things, and really I amazed myself – I made some pretty awesome things. Six months ago I could barely use the microwave and boil water (I burned it). I still remember my Senegalese host sister expressing outrage that I couldn’t cook when the women in my family tried getting me to help them. “Une fille qui ne sait pas cuisiner!” she spat. “How will you ever find a husband?!?!” (Ah right, my mission in life). Gender roles aren’t as strict here and people laugh it off with me when I tell them I’m not the best cook, or when I’m spotted at a hotely, confessing I’m too tired to cook that day. “Do you eat rice? Can you make rice? Ok, good!” they say, haha. When school’s in session, I don’t have as much time and energy to cook meals that are more time consuming, and cooking (as well as everything) takes more time here. Soaking vegetables in water with bleach beforehand, chopping everything on a small cutting board on a cluttered table, doing dishes afterwards, scrubbing them with soap in a big bucket, more scrubbing and rinsing in my other big bucket with bleach water after, cleaning my “kitchen” after all of that with covering-up-a-crime-scene scrutiny, scrubbing each surface food touched, scrubbing something that touched something that touched the food, so as to avoid an ant invasion. But with no classes to fill my days and not feeling as wiped out with a throbbing head from poorly behaved kids, I had time to try new things. I made a stir fry that, not lying, could rival most Chinese places I’ve been to. I made potato and leek risotto, but without the cheese (available in my banking town I think, but I don’t have a fridge), so while it was good, I’m sure the cheese would’ve made it real risotto. And I made veggie burritos – diced boiled potatoes, tomatoes, leeks, green pepper, some garlic, onions, and hot pepper thrown together and sautéed – inside of homemade tortillas, which aren’t that hard to make, just kind of messy. They were AWESOME! Plus a few really good recipes with lentils, my life saving food here. They are a little on the expensive side but take much less time to cook than other beans, don’t have to be soaked overnight, taste better, and I need to get protein somehow (beans, eggs, lentils, peanuts). I don’t cook much meat; I’m kind of paranoid I’d do it wrong and wind up with a tapeworm or something.
In about a week we have IST, which I was super excited for, but they’ve shortened it for ed volunteers to one week, while everyone else gets 2. That was really disheartening to me because I was really excited for it ever since I first moved to post, but now it just seems rushed, I’m wondering if its even going to be worth if they hurriedly cram things in and throw info at us, and things that are rushed stress me out and I don’t need more stress. This was supposed to be de-stressing time, catching up with my friends, getting a break from my loud neighbors and poorly behaved students, enjoying hot, running water, sleeping in a comfy bed, eating good food that I didn’t have to spend time cooking, not having to meticulously clean up afterwards. I’m still looking forward to those things, but weeks here FLY and I feel like its not enough; I feel like I do need more, solid training and want to know about things that weren’t covered during PST, and I REALLY want to see my friends; I think I’m the only person in my stage that hasn’t seen anyone else yet; no one is near me and no one shares my banking town. While I love my site and love feeling really bad ass for being the most isolated vol in country, I really could use someone to talk to in English and vent to about stuff, someone who’s going through the same things. While I was itching to get away from the group and am not super close with everyone, I do have some pretty amazing friends.
I definitely need a break as well – a break from maditra students, loud neighbors, constantly being scrutinized, stared at, talked about; to vent to my friends and discover they are probably going through the same things. I seriously can’t believe I have less personal space at my site than I did at my host family’s, which was 8 people in a small house (ok, it was a big house, but nobody ever did anything on the first floor, and so everyone just hung out upstairs) At my host family’s I had more quiet time and they were really good about giving me personal time to plan lessons, recover from the awful cold I developed while there, just chill by myself – read, write in my journal, nap, etc. Also they were quiet, even though 2 of the kids had electronic keyboard toy thingys. Here at site, I have way less personal space than I did there. I share my house with another family, I live in one room they have 2 rooms, with a front and back porch connecting them; their portion of the front porch is fenced in. Neighboring women hang out with the woman next door on the steps which are right next to my house, sit right next to my door, or right in front of MY half of the house on a mat and yak away for HOURS everyday. Seriously? What changed in the past 24 hours that you need to sit around and talk about for another 6 hours, that you didn’t cover in yesterday’s 6 hour chat fest, and at about 100 decibels higher than need be? Nothing – you do the same damn things everyday: you breastfed your kid, washed your husband’s and other kids’ clothes, pounded coffee beans, sifted rice, and picked ravitoto leaves. It’s like country club women, yakking by the poolside everyday for hours, moaning “I need a mental health day!” (what, the decision of what to order at starbucks, the biggest one you made all week, was too taxing?) Who knew women of the developing world had something in common with the country club women of Oakland County? I don’t even care that the neighbors can probably see me naked when I’m bucket bathing; the door doesn’t shut all the way and there are big slats in the door and one of the walls – its just the noise issue. The women, their kids playing, screaming, eventually one of them crying, thinking its funny trying to bug me when I’m just doing my own thing, blasting the radio, men getting schwasted on the weekends and being loud forthwith… When I get back from teaching, I just want to kick back, relax, nap, whatever, but its rare that I actually can. There’s a break in between morning and afternoon classes, but that’s the highpoint of the women’s chat fest. The whole “the dark is bad” thing doesn’t really exist here like it did in our training village and like the training staff told us it did. We were told Malagasies don’t like going out at night and have superstitions about the dark, etc. but that doesn’t really exist here. People here are still up when its dark out, whereas my host family went to bed right after dinner, about 7:30 or 8, waking up at 4:30 or 5. Here, people are up way past 9 and still get up at the ass crack of dawn, 5 or so, hence waking me up when I really only need to be up super early 1 day a week for class. I usually go to bed around 9 or 9:30 but people are up way later than that, especially on the weekends. Earplugs and benadryl help… kind of.
Personal space figuratively also doesn’t really exist, as everyone knows my business, where I’ve been, what I’m doing, etc. When I was sick and had to cancel a class, EVERYONE knew and kept asking if I was ok two weeks later. Kids who aren’t even my students know what I taught in class, and what examples I used. Everyone knows I went to the Catholic Church twice and everyone thinks I’m catholic, even though I tell them I’m not. When I called Peace Corps about issues I was having, both work and living situation, totally random people knew about it which weirded me out and made me uncomfortable because its my personal business and they were touchy issues I really didn’t want everyone, including totally random people, knowing about. Crowds still gather to watch me talk to a friend or mpivarotra, people go out of their way to peer into the raffia tote bag I take to the market to put my stuff in to see what I bought, adults and kids alike. How do you say “mind your own business” in Malagasy? I need to find that out at IST. Also every time I cut my finger, people ask about it, all alarmed, and once a bunch of students were standing outside the teachers office where I was chilling before my class, shamelessly staring at me, and one of them was pointing to his own finger, making a cutting motion. Christ, again… mind your own damn business.
Also a week ago or so, I took my bike to the mechanic because there was something wrong with the valve and a totally random woman who was also walking on the street followed me into his yard. She then grabbed my ass and then started tugging at my shorts, which had ridden up somewhat (I found a really cheap pair of shorts in Morondava that are super short, and its acceptable to wear that here: everyone wears shorts and ive seen younger women in SUPER short, tight skirts) Ok, if youre going to pull my shorts down, then PULL THE SHORTS DOWN. Ok, well, not really, still not ok… again, mind your own business and maybe verbally say something instead of grabbing my ass. You can pull shorts down and avoid the very deep, hard, far too long ass grab that goes with it; that was kind of unnecessary. It really caught me off guard and I felt violated. Geez, at least buy me dinner first.
Escaping to my banking town once a month is nice – I get to eat good food (like lobster that was, not kidding, the length of my torso and weighed 2 kgs), chill by the pool or beach, use the internet (like now) shop at a bigger market with more stuff, buy vazaha food not available in the bush (like olive oil, balsamic vinegar, American candy, etc) and am able to sleep more peacefully, even in cheap hotels.
Ok well that’s enough for now, till next month, when ill have more updates and maybe even a packing suggestions/other tips post for the newbies who are coming in July.
It was about a month ago, but in April, during my mini vaca in my banking town during spring break (but not an official one, as we can’t take vacations yet), I had one of my most memorable, fun days in Madagascar so far. My banking town is near the avenue des baobabs, one of the most photographed sites in M-car and, if I’m not mistaken, featured in the Planet Earth series. It’s a section of a street (if you can call it that…) lined with HUGE, thousand plus year old baobab trees. I really wanted to see it, so I took my bike with me to my banking town on top of a taxi brousse and one day, woke up super early (before 6) to start biking out there. Lonely planet said it was only 15 km from Morondava, and, well, they lied. It was 14 km alone just to get from Morondava to a different street that the baobabs are actually on, and from there, another 12 k or so, not really sure. And they were TERRIBLE roads; the road just outside of Morondava is AWFUL, basically a stretch of potholes with some semblance of pathways in between them. And then the road with the baobabs on it was mostly pure sand; I had to jump off my bike a few times and walk it. I had a few flashbacks to Niger, only instead of being surrounded by millet fields I was surrounded by rice paddies. I was a little freaked out at first, worried I’d get lost in the bush, and this area was SUPER bush; I only saw a handful of little thatch huts along the way to the baobabs, and when I first started down this road, didn’t even see any baobabs; just vary fields and banana trees, leading me to wonder if it was actually the road and how far the baobabs were. More biking/falling off my bike/walking it through heavy sand/repeat cycle, and I started to see some baobabs. Ok, I’m on the right track, I thought. More difficult biking, having kids yell “vazaha” at me along the way, one freaking out and running away when he asked me for money in French and I snapped back at him in Malagasy “why don’t you give me money?” Anywho, FINALLY I made it! I eventually approached a sign saying the allé des baobabs was 100 meters away, and they had parking for cars (no real road, but a heavily weeded parking lot – ohhh Madagascar!). As I approached it, it didn’t seem like anything special, just a few baobabs, like the ones I had seen off in the distance during the bike ride down this road. But as I got closer and walked down the stretch of road, several baobabs towering over me, large shadows behind them, I was in awe; it was so cool! I took a few photos, sipped my water as I looked at them, and then headed back down the pure sand road from hell and eventually the pot-hole tarred one as well. I really wasn’t that tired, and once I got off the sand road to make my way back to Morondava, I had an energy burst and the sand road made this one, partially paved, seem like a breeze, so I pedaled faster, wind in my face, feeling free, feeling a sense of accomplishment (I’m not exactly the most in shape person). The whole trip, there and back, stopping for a while to take some pictures, took 4 hours and I was back by 10 a.m., workout high in effect and my legs feeling like jello, but it was fun! I went to my hotel room, washed the sweat, dirt, sand, etc. off me, grabbed my suit, and headed to the pool where I fell asleep in an inner tube under a hot, sunny, cloudless sky, getting a nice tan in the process. The end. So much fun!
And then back to post for the rest of spring break, which was kind of boring but much needed. I made a “bored list” and told myself I’d do things on that list when I got severely bored, mostly consisting of errands, things around the house, etc. that I haven’t had a the time for, but I didn’t really do that many of them, feeling lazy and instead opted for watching DVDs, reading, attempting to nap. I did take the time though, to get creative with cooking and try new things, and really I amazed myself – I made some pretty awesome things. Six months ago I could barely use the microwave and boil water (I burned it). I still remember my Senegalese host sister expressing outrage that I couldn’t cook when the women in my family tried getting me to help them. “Une fille qui ne sait pas cuisiner!” she spat. “How will you ever find a husband?!?!” (Ah right, my mission in life). Gender roles aren’t as strict here and people laugh it off with me when I tell them I’m not the best cook, or when I’m spotted at a hotely, confessing I’m too tired to cook that day. “Do you eat rice? Can you make rice? Ok, good!” they say, haha. When school’s in session, I don’t have as much time and energy to cook meals that are more time consuming, and cooking (as well as everything) takes more time here. Soaking vegetables in water with bleach beforehand, chopping everything on a small cutting board on a cluttered table, doing dishes afterwards, scrubbing them with soap in a big bucket, more scrubbing and rinsing in my other big bucket with bleach water after, cleaning my “kitchen” after all of that with covering-up-a-crime-scene scrutiny, scrubbing each surface food touched, scrubbing something that touched something that touched the food, so as to avoid an ant invasion. But with no classes to fill my days and not feeling as wiped out with a throbbing head from poorly behaved kids, I had time to try new things. I made a stir fry that, not lying, could rival most Chinese places I’ve been to. I made potato and leek risotto, but without the cheese (available in my banking town I think, but I don’t have a fridge), so while it was good, I’m sure the cheese would’ve made it real risotto. And I made veggie burritos – diced boiled potatoes, tomatoes, leeks, green pepper, some garlic, onions, and hot pepper thrown together and sautéed – inside of homemade tortillas, which aren’t that hard to make, just kind of messy. They were AWESOME! Plus a few really good recipes with lentils, my life saving food here. They are a little on the expensive side but take much less time to cook than other beans, don’t have to be soaked overnight, taste better, and I need to get protein somehow (beans, eggs, lentils, peanuts). I don’t cook much meat; I’m kind of paranoid I’d do it wrong and wind up with a tapeworm or something.
In about a week we have IST, which I was super excited for, but they’ve shortened it for ed volunteers to one week, while everyone else gets 2. That was really disheartening to me because I was really excited for it ever since I first moved to post, but now it just seems rushed, I’m wondering if its even going to be worth if they hurriedly cram things in and throw info at us, and things that are rushed stress me out and I don’t need more stress. This was supposed to be de-stressing time, catching up with my friends, getting a break from my loud neighbors and poorly behaved students, enjoying hot, running water, sleeping in a comfy bed, eating good food that I didn’t have to spend time cooking, not having to meticulously clean up afterwards. I’m still looking forward to those things, but weeks here FLY and I feel like its not enough; I feel like I do need more, solid training and want to know about things that weren’t covered during PST, and I REALLY want to see my friends; I think I’m the only person in my stage that hasn’t seen anyone else yet; no one is near me and no one shares my banking town. While I love my site and love feeling really bad ass for being the most isolated vol in country, I really could use someone to talk to in English and vent to about stuff, someone who’s going through the same things. While I was itching to get away from the group and am not super close with everyone, I do have some pretty amazing friends.
I definitely need a break as well – a break from maditra students, loud neighbors, constantly being scrutinized, stared at, talked about; to vent to my friends and discover they are probably going through the same things. I seriously can’t believe I have less personal space at my site than I did at my host family’s, which was 8 people in a small house (ok, it was a big house, but nobody ever did anything on the first floor, and so everyone just hung out upstairs) At my host family’s I had more quiet time and they were really good about giving me personal time to plan lessons, recover from the awful cold I developed while there, just chill by myself – read, write in my journal, nap, etc. Also they were quiet, even though 2 of the kids had electronic keyboard toy thingys. Here at site, I have way less personal space than I did there. I share my house with another family, I live in one room they have 2 rooms, with a front and back porch connecting them; their portion of the front porch is fenced in. Neighboring women hang out with the woman next door on the steps which are right next to my house, sit right next to my door, or right in front of MY half of the house on a mat and yak away for HOURS everyday. Seriously? What changed in the past 24 hours that you need to sit around and talk about for another 6 hours, that you didn’t cover in yesterday’s 6 hour chat fest, and at about 100 decibels higher than need be? Nothing – you do the same damn things everyday: you breastfed your kid, washed your husband’s and other kids’ clothes, pounded coffee beans, sifted rice, and picked ravitoto leaves. It’s like country club women, yakking by the poolside everyday for hours, moaning “I need a mental health day!” (what, the decision of what to order at starbucks, the biggest one you made all week, was too taxing?) Who knew women of the developing world had something in common with the country club women of Oakland County? I don’t even care that the neighbors can probably see me naked when I’m bucket bathing; the door doesn’t shut all the way and there are big slats in the door and one of the walls – its just the noise issue. The women, their kids playing, screaming, eventually one of them crying, thinking its funny trying to bug me when I’m just doing my own thing, blasting the radio, men getting schwasted on the weekends and being loud forthwith… When I get back from teaching, I just want to kick back, relax, nap, whatever, but its rare that I actually can. There’s a break in between morning and afternoon classes, but that’s the highpoint of the women’s chat fest. The whole “the dark is bad” thing doesn’t really exist here like it did in our training village and like the training staff told us it did. We were told Malagasies don’t like going out at night and have superstitions about the dark, etc. but that doesn’t really exist here. People here are still up when its dark out, whereas my host family went to bed right after dinner, about 7:30 or 8, waking up at 4:30 or 5. Here, people are up way past 9 and still get up at the ass crack of dawn, 5 or so, hence waking me up when I really only need to be up super early 1 day a week for class. I usually go to bed around 9 or 9:30 but people are up way later than that, especially on the weekends. Earplugs and benadryl help… kind of.
Personal space figuratively also doesn’t really exist, as everyone knows my business, where I’ve been, what I’m doing, etc. When I was sick and had to cancel a class, EVERYONE knew and kept asking if I was ok two weeks later. Kids who aren’t even my students know what I taught in class, and what examples I used. Everyone knows I went to the Catholic Church twice and everyone thinks I’m catholic, even though I tell them I’m not. When I called Peace Corps about issues I was having, both work and living situation, totally random people knew about it which weirded me out and made me uncomfortable because its my personal business and they were touchy issues I really didn’t want everyone, including totally random people, knowing about. Crowds still gather to watch me talk to a friend or mpivarotra, people go out of their way to peer into the raffia tote bag I take to the market to put my stuff in to see what I bought, adults and kids alike. How do you say “mind your own business” in Malagasy? I need to find that out at IST. Also every time I cut my finger, people ask about it, all alarmed, and once a bunch of students were standing outside the teachers office where I was chilling before my class, shamelessly staring at me, and one of them was pointing to his own finger, making a cutting motion. Christ, again… mind your own damn business.
Also a week ago or so, I took my bike to the mechanic because there was something wrong with the valve and a totally random woman who was also walking on the street followed me into his yard. She then grabbed my ass and then started tugging at my shorts, which had ridden up somewhat (I found a really cheap pair of shorts in Morondava that are super short, and its acceptable to wear that here: everyone wears shorts and ive seen younger women in SUPER short, tight skirts) Ok, if youre going to pull my shorts down, then PULL THE SHORTS DOWN. Ok, well, not really, still not ok… again, mind your own business and maybe verbally say something instead of grabbing my ass. You can pull shorts down and avoid the very deep, hard, far too long ass grab that goes with it; that was kind of unnecessary. It really caught me off guard and I felt violated. Geez, at least buy me dinner first.
Escaping to my banking town once a month is nice – I get to eat good food (like lobster that was, not kidding, the length of my torso and weighed 2 kgs), chill by the pool or beach, use the internet (like now) shop at a bigger market with more stuff, buy vazaha food not available in the bush (like olive oil, balsamic vinegar, American candy, etc) and am able to sleep more peacefully, even in cheap hotels.
Ok well that’s enough for now, till next month, when ill have more updates and maybe even a packing suggestions/other tips post for the newbies who are coming in July.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Honeymoon = Over
As I’ve stated before, and is a commonly accepted Peace Corps fact, the first three months at post are the hardest. After the first month I didn’t think I’d have any trouble getting through the first three; things went relatively smoothly, my Gasy improved, I made some friends, did my best to teach my classes, 5eme and 2nde (the equivalent of 7th and 10th grade in the U.S., respectively, even though the age ranges in the classes don’t necessarily fall into those age groups), and developed somewhat of a routine. I was mostly happy.
But now that’s vita (finished). Don’t get me wrong, I’m still usually happy; I’m not sure what the turning point was, but somewhere towards the end of my 2nd month, things started seeming less new, exciting, and fun. I’ve fallen back into my old habit of when I’m in a bad mood, cranky, or something happens that makes me cranky, other things that normally wouldn’t bother me REALLY start to bother me and eat at me. And then I get irritated at myself for feeling so angry over something so small. And then I feel angry that I feel angry over something that’s small (that makes sense, right?) It’s a vicious cycle, and it happened a lot in my life in the U.S., not so much in Niger, as my only low point in Niger was being told that we had to leave (the initial struggles with Zarma and the Giardia bit were manageable). Things by themselves may have been manageable, like dealing with developing country bureaucracy at the post office – it’s a long story and I’ll tell it to you over cocoa some time if you’re that interested, the stress of trying to get my med refills sent here instead of my banking town and freaking out b.c they took so long to get here even though they were sent express; I was down to one weeks worth of malaria meds and completely out of ibuprofen, which I need a lot: I spent 14 hours a week teaching 60 poorly behaved students at a time, have neighbors that are never quiet, village dogs that bark up a storm at various points in the night (I’ve seriously considered, and still am, buying about 50 bark collars on amazon.com and having them sent to me and putting one on every dog I see; that’s how bad it is), the noise from the neighbors starts at 5 a.m., they get up, start blasting the radio, talking to each other as though they are all deaf, and chopping firewood. Yeah.
Administering tests to about 200 students and trying to enforce rules and keep them quiet during the test (without success) brought on enormous amounts of stress, and the stress brought back my tmj pain (fantastic – thanks kids!) and I was out of ibuprofen. Grading wasn’t that bad; it took me less time than I thought it would. I made the 5eme test really simple and still, most were clueless, and I gave questions on the 2nde exam that required an iota of critical thinking, thinking outside the box and giving examples different from the ones I gave in class, and well, that didn’t happen. They aren’t really taught critical thinking; all they are taught from the time they start school is to copy exactly what is written on the board. Exercises I’ve given in class where they need to think critically go right over most of their heads, and when I tell them if they don’t understand they can ask questions, they don’t. So, to me, that means they understand, but as I walk around the room, checking on work, nobody is writing anything (except for copying word for word the questions; the ingrained behavior, and then not answering them, thinking they are done because all they are taught to do is copy.) “Why aren’t you doing the exercise?” I ask. Maybe one or two kids in the class will get it, and I say, great, now why aren’t your friends doing it? “They don’t understand,” the student said. Ok, then why aren’t you asking me questions if you don’t understand? I am more than happy to help but I can’t help you if you don’t ask me questions! So, ask questions, what don’t you understand? Silence. I’ve heard that in some cultures, asking a question to a teacher (or any authority figure) implies that that person didn’t do their job right, and that would be disrespectful. So I’ve started asking more specific questions to check if they understand and watering down the material even more.
I digress. So then I get asked questions about what words mean, like when I gave reading comprehension exercises (as if that’s going to help them answer the questions; it doesn’t. Look for the word you don’t understand in the question in the text, look around it, and poof! There’s your answer. That’s how I dealt with reading comprehension when I was studying French, but again, they don’t think critically like that) Once a 2nde student asked me what “he” and “we” meant when I put a sentence on the board – like I said before, even if they are in the class, they aren’t necessarily at that level. It’s possible they didn’t have English classes in previous years; English is required after 6eme, but if there’s no one to teach it, then they don’t have the class that year.
Anywho, the test: I kicked out a few people for talking during the test or looking at their friends’ papers, and wound up giving half of one of my classes zeros for cheating; a very rampant practice here. I warned them beforehand cheating would result in a zero, and while I was grading, encountered several exams with identical blatantly wrong answers. No joke; same wrong conjugations, same missing or wrong articles, same incorrect word orders, same misspellings, same incorrect punctuation. Obviously from an American standpoint I was irritated that so many people cheated (and surprised at how many, I knew it happened but it happened A LOT) but also insulted that they think I’m stupid enough not to notice, and then again when we went over the test in class and students changed their wrong answers and tried to convince me after class that I made a mistake and their grade was wrong. Seriously? How dumb do you think I am? When I first started teaching, my counterpart told me the students liked me, but now I’m not so sure; I pissed off a few of people giving so many zeros; some stormed out of class and looked like they were going to cry. Others protested: “but madame, this part is ok, I didn’t cheat on this part” and a student told me I needed to separate people during the tests and sit them one to a bench (there are about 20 benches in the rooms for classes of more than 50 so they sit 2 or 3 to a desk). Um… there’s no space for that, unless 70% of the class sits on the floor, and there’s not even space for that (and they’d balk if I even suggested it). I have a better idea: don’t look at the test of the person sitting next to you and keep an eye on your own damn test!
I have 6 classes, 3 each of 5eme and 2nde, and one 2nde class and one 5eme class are awesome! They are mostly well behaved and quiet during class, more serious, attentive, motivated, and very mahay. I leave those classes in a good mood, feeling like I’m good at my job and I just might have an impact here. The others are pretty much the opposite. At the end of the trimester, the teachers had a meeting to discuss the classes, and even other teachers echoed the problems I’ve had with them (they are unmotivated and mitabataba [Gasy for “to be disruptive]), so it’s not just me. It’s also super irritating being watched through the windows; other students who aren’t in class watch me through the windows and sometimes talk to their friends who are in class while I’m trying to teach, or just to see what the vazaha is doing. Ok, yes, there is a vazaha teaching at your school; its not new and exciting anymore, get over it. Neither is me speaking Gasy; still, when I tell them what an English word is in Malagasy, it creates a small commotion in class, giggles and murmurs of “mahay teny gasy” (she knows how to speak gasy) arise. Not as much as it once did, but it still happens; it happens a lot at the market, too, the mpivarotras shouting it to each other, “mahay teny gasy!” Yes, I do speak Malagasy, well enough to know that you’re talking about me. I’ve been here two months, its not new and exciting anymore, get over it. Ok, I guess 2 months is still a pretty short time period, but i sometimes feels like I’ve been here forever. But, at the same time, the weeks fly by. Plus, there’s been a volunteer at my site since 2000 – that’s ten years! And that is a long time; there are vazaha teachers around; get over it. Crowds form around me to watch me buy tomatoes at the market, or when I stop to talk to one of my friends or a random mpivarotra, crowds form to watch me. Everyone from little kids to much older people; the kids, I understand, but the people who are my grandparents’ age also silently, unabashedly staring at me…it’s a little much and awkward. The kids in surrounding houses have taken to watching me through my doors (which I usually keep open during the day so I don’t suffocate and spontaneously combust in my own house), peering at me as I cook, clean, read, or watch DVDs, which is my de-stressing time, so then it REALLY bothers me.
I’ve started putting my foot down on the loud kids around my house. If they’re being loud, crying, etc., I’ll go out there and tell them to be quiet, stop, or go home. Once, a kid (maybe 5 or 6) was bawling his eyes out in my yard, keeling over, rolling around in the sand, so I went outside and tried to get him to stop. He wouldn’t even stand up, so I asked another kid playing nearby where his house was and then I literally dragged him by his armpits back to his house about 30 feet away (with him screaming his head off and refusing to walk himself) and dropped him in the yard of his house with the adults watching and laughing. “Maditra!” they exclaimed (poorly behaved). Yes, he is, and he’s your kid, so do something about it. In Senegal and Niger, disciplining other peoples’ kids was totally ok; I haven’t noticed it here nearly as much, or any kind of harsh discipline being used against kids – mostly they just get yelled at (though some people said they saw their host siblings get hit). Again – integration. I live here too and need some quiet time once in a while. There’s a Malagasy proverb that I REALLY need to learn in Malagasy that says “other people’s children cause your nostrils to flare.” Structurally, it would be “make flare your nostrils the children of other people” – that’s how the language works, but I’m not sure of all the words. And they do make my nostrils flare, my head throb, and my tmj pain come back. Teaching wears me out enough as is; my living space shouldn’t cause me stress either.
But it has been; worse than the kids has been the family I share the house with playing the same five songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again every day. No joke; I used to hear the same 5 songs about 10 times a day, but lately I only hear a few of them once in a while but there’s one song that gets played foana (all the time). I once heard it three times within an hour of waking up and counted 10 times in one day. And its just this one song, they don’t get sick of it and its like the song is new each time they hear it! All the kids (and adults) sing along excitedly each time they hear it (even if its not playing, they’re singing it, or any of the other same songs that they listen to). The song’s on a DVD along with a grainy music video, and other neighbors who I guess don’t have a TV come by frequently to watch and be loud and they gape in fascination; like they haven’t heard the song before and its new and exciting! It sounds silly, but its seriously starting to bug the crap out of me and I wonder, “is it going to be like this for 2 years? Are they going to play that song at least five times a day EVERYDAY for the next 22 months that I’m here?” If so, I may need to be wack evac’ed. I was looking forward to the break and getting to relax; I even made a list of things to do when bored (though none of them are that huge/time consuming) but now I’m wondering if it will be enjoyable if I have to put up with noise all the time and face a different kind of stress from school. I’m now REALLY looking forward to IST, so I can see my friends, share crazy stories, and vent. I don’t really call people; usually we just have text convos because calling is way more expensive.
And Easter was the other day; without fail, holidays abroad make me homesick because celebrating them abroad just isn’t the same, and its those times that make me realize how far away I am from home, my family, and friends; I feel most lonely at those points. I love my church back home at Easter; its so beautiful, I love the hymns, and I love eating lots of good food afterward. I went to a Catholic church here with one of my friends, at her urging; I’d gone once before but kept refusing invitations to go again because 1. I’m not Catholic. Then you should go to the Protestant Church, people tell me. Which brings me to: 2. While my Malagasy has improved, I don’t understand religious lingo and don’t understand 99% of what’s happening so I’m bored, and 3. Church services here are 3 hours long; I can get a lot done on Sunday mornings in 3 hours – my laundry, shaving my legs (if the mood so strikes me), starting my lesson planning for the week, sweeping and scrubbing the floors. Yes, I’m Christian and like going to church back home but its not the same here and its just depresses me that I don’t have my own church to go to, and what’s the point of going if I don’t understand anything that’s going on and I can get a lot done in that time period. Maybe if it was an hour, fine, but its not. Nobody that lives near me ever goes to church on Sundays; its not as big of a deal here as it was in our training villages it seems like.
It was only two hours but we spent an hour sitting outside doing nothing (good thing I brought my book; a PCV I met in Senegal told me to always bring a book with you in Peace Corps because you may be waiting for a while for, well, everything – good advice). My friend told me to meet her at 8; I met her at 8:15, knowing that nothing ever starts on time here, and then we sat in the courtyard of the church. Half hour later I asked her what time the service was starting she said 9. “So what are we doing here so early?” I asked. “You told me 8.” She laughed and said, “I don’t know.” Ugh. While I am getting more patient, I still don’t like waiting; I don’t like it when other people are in control of wasting my time. Again, I’m glad I brought the book. I always take it to the bank or post office to, as there’s always a huge line (or semblance of one), people cutting, one person actually working and two others shuffling papers, who look irritated if you ask them to help you and appalled that you would even dare to ask. Books make the waiting much more bearable, its one of the reasons I’ve done so much reading here – about 10 books since I left the U.S. back in October!
Back to church; the service didn’t do the Kirk justice; nothing could. It was mostly singing, with an electronic synthesizer as accompaniment, the music sounding almost hoedown-ish and twangy, and I understood nothing that was going on. Even Malagasies were sleeping in the benches, which made me feel not as bad about not really paying attention and daydreaming in my own little world.
On another note, while the first three months being the hardest is a Peace Corps axiom that I’ve now found to be true, there is another generally accepted Peace Corps fact that I’ve disproven: Its usually said that men in the Peace Corps lose weight while women gain. Ha – I’ve lost even more weight here than in Niger; I’m on the last hole of my belt and pretty soon am going to have to start making new holes. My skirts are all much looser too, practically falling off my hips. By the time I’d left Niger, I had lost 13 lbs; I don’t have a scale here but its DEFINITELY way more than that now. I haven’t been super sick lately, but once in a while my digestive system decides it hates me. I do a lot of walking everyday which also may be part of it; I live 1 k away from my school, so I walk at least 2 k a day to get back and forth, but its usually more as I have classes in the morning and afternoon; there’s a 3 hour break in the afternoon where everything closes down and no one does anything because its too hot. Plus, the market and central town are another half km/ 1 km away (respectively) from the school, and I usually make trips to the market almost everyday. I don’t like keeping too much food in my house because of the bugs. So I walk at least a couple miles everyday, and if I have time, take bike rides. Also, my appetite has significantly decreased – I think it’s the heat. I was always hungry during training, but now I’m really not that hungry. I wind up halving the recipes in the cookbook and still don’t even wind up eating it all (I put it in a Tupperware and eat it for dinner after reheating it really well to kill any germs). I look through my photo albums regularly and have pictures on my walls; I look VERY different; much thinner and tanner. And I’m not eating all the crap I used to in the states; chips, Ben and Jerry’s, whatever I could get my hands on to snack on while I watched TV; I could never watch TV without snacking; the two go hand in hand. Now for snacks (if I do eat them) I have a piece of fruit, maybe some street food (there’s LOTS of good street food here) or if I drink some water, that’s good enough and I feel full. As it was in Niger, my Nalgene is still an extension of my arm. Students and other people in town are fascinated by it for some reason; its really strange. Maybe just because its something that the white person has, its western, and therefore it must be better than Malagasy water and is cool because the white person has it. I’m always getting asked for my water; students shout out “rano! Rano madame!” when they see me, asking me for some of my water. Get your own water, I tell them, (though I guess its better than getting asked for money; fortunately that doesn’t happen here, but it happened a couple times in Morondava), or I say nothing, electing not to dignify obnoxious behavior with a response. Plus, I don’t know where their grubby little hands have been (well, actually, having lived here a few months, I have a pretty good idea, which makes me even more inclined to say no to them drinking my water) I NEVER see people here drinking water, even though its hot all the time, but students are always having to pee in the middle of class and asking to go to the W.C and I always see people peeing all over the place, since the bathrooms are locked and students are supposed to ask for the keys. I don’t get it; its just a water bottle but they’re fascinated by it.
Obviously there’s so much more I can write about but that’s about it for now; using the internet here kind of frustrates me, and more frustrations are not what I need. Even though the emotional roller coaster continues, with a drastic drop this past month, this is still where I want to be and can’t imagine doing anything else; I’ve wanted to do the Peace Corps for years now, fought hard to get it, and vowed to make it through any obstacles thrown at me. I didn’t think one of those obstacles would be being moved from Niger to Madagascar and having my sector changed to something I was hardly qualified for, but I am trying. You never know how hard something is going to be until you’re actually facing it. Besides, with what I’m hearing about what’s going on in America right now, I’m really glad I’m here. Death threats against the congressmen who voted for the health care bill? Seriously? Stuff like that mortifies me and makes me embarrassed. Its one of the reasons I wanted to be in the Peace Corps – to show others around the world that there are some good aspects of America.
Continuing to try to keep my chin up and stay focused on the positives… and looking forward to getting a break at IST and seeing my friends – one more month! yay!
But now that’s vita (finished). Don’t get me wrong, I’m still usually happy; I’m not sure what the turning point was, but somewhere towards the end of my 2nd month, things started seeming less new, exciting, and fun. I’ve fallen back into my old habit of when I’m in a bad mood, cranky, or something happens that makes me cranky, other things that normally wouldn’t bother me REALLY start to bother me and eat at me. And then I get irritated at myself for feeling so angry over something so small. And then I feel angry that I feel angry over something that’s small (that makes sense, right?) It’s a vicious cycle, and it happened a lot in my life in the U.S., not so much in Niger, as my only low point in Niger was being told that we had to leave (the initial struggles with Zarma and the Giardia bit were manageable). Things by themselves may have been manageable, like dealing with developing country bureaucracy at the post office – it’s a long story and I’ll tell it to you over cocoa some time if you’re that interested, the stress of trying to get my med refills sent here instead of my banking town and freaking out b.c they took so long to get here even though they were sent express; I was down to one weeks worth of malaria meds and completely out of ibuprofen, which I need a lot: I spent 14 hours a week teaching 60 poorly behaved students at a time, have neighbors that are never quiet, village dogs that bark up a storm at various points in the night (I’ve seriously considered, and still am, buying about 50 bark collars on amazon.com and having them sent to me and putting one on every dog I see; that’s how bad it is), the noise from the neighbors starts at 5 a.m., they get up, start blasting the radio, talking to each other as though they are all deaf, and chopping firewood. Yeah.
Administering tests to about 200 students and trying to enforce rules and keep them quiet during the test (without success) brought on enormous amounts of stress, and the stress brought back my tmj pain (fantastic – thanks kids!) and I was out of ibuprofen. Grading wasn’t that bad; it took me less time than I thought it would. I made the 5eme test really simple and still, most were clueless, and I gave questions on the 2nde exam that required an iota of critical thinking, thinking outside the box and giving examples different from the ones I gave in class, and well, that didn’t happen. They aren’t really taught critical thinking; all they are taught from the time they start school is to copy exactly what is written on the board. Exercises I’ve given in class where they need to think critically go right over most of their heads, and when I tell them if they don’t understand they can ask questions, they don’t. So, to me, that means they understand, but as I walk around the room, checking on work, nobody is writing anything (except for copying word for word the questions; the ingrained behavior, and then not answering them, thinking they are done because all they are taught to do is copy.) “Why aren’t you doing the exercise?” I ask. Maybe one or two kids in the class will get it, and I say, great, now why aren’t your friends doing it? “They don’t understand,” the student said. Ok, then why aren’t you asking me questions if you don’t understand? I am more than happy to help but I can’t help you if you don’t ask me questions! So, ask questions, what don’t you understand? Silence. I’ve heard that in some cultures, asking a question to a teacher (or any authority figure) implies that that person didn’t do their job right, and that would be disrespectful. So I’ve started asking more specific questions to check if they understand and watering down the material even more.
I digress. So then I get asked questions about what words mean, like when I gave reading comprehension exercises (as if that’s going to help them answer the questions; it doesn’t. Look for the word you don’t understand in the question in the text, look around it, and poof! There’s your answer. That’s how I dealt with reading comprehension when I was studying French, but again, they don’t think critically like that) Once a 2nde student asked me what “he” and “we” meant when I put a sentence on the board – like I said before, even if they are in the class, they aren’t necessarily at that level. It’s possible they didn’t have English classes in previous years; English is required after 6eme, but if there’s no one to teach it, then they don’t have the class that year.
Anywho, the test: I kicked out a few people for talking during the test or looking at their friends’ papers, and wound up giving half of one of my classes zeros for cheating; a very rampant practice here. I warned them beforehand cheating would result in a zero, and while I was grading, encountered several exams with identical blatantly wrong answers. No joke; same wrong conjugations, same missing or wrong articles, same incorrect word orders, same misspellings, same incorrect punctuation. Obviously from an American standpoint I was irritated that so many people cheated (and surprised at how many, I knew it happened but it happened A LOT) but also insulted that they think I’m stupid enough not to notice, and then again when we went over the test in class and students changed their wrong answers and tried to convince me after class that I made a mistake and their grade was wrong. Seriously? How dumb do you think I am? When I first started teaching, my counterpart told me the students liked me, but now I’m not so sure; I pissed off a few of people giving so many zeros; some stormed out of class and looked like they were going to cry. Others protested: “but madame, this part is ok, I didn’t cheat on this part” and a student told me I needed to separate people during the tests and sit them one to a bench (there are about 20 benches in the rooms for classes of more than 50 so they sit 2 or 3 to a desk). Um… there’s no space for that, unless 70% of the class sits on the floor, and there’s not even space for that (and they’d balk if I even suggested it). I have a better idea: don’t look at the test of the person sitting next to you and keep an eye on your own damn test!
I have 6 classes, 3 each of 5eme and 2nde, and one 2nde class and one 5eme class are awesome! They are mostly well behaved and quiet during class, more serious, attentive, motivated, and very mahay. I leave those classes in a good mood, feeling like I’m good at my job and I just might have an impact here. The others are pretty much the opposite. At the end of the trimester, the teachers had a meeting to discuss the classes, and even other teachers echoed the problems I’ve had with them (they are unmotivated and mitabataba [Gasy for “to be disruptive]), so it’s not just me. It’s also super irritating being watched through the windows; other students who aren’t in class watch me through the windows and sometimes talk to their friends who are in class while I’m trying to teach, or just to see what the vazaha is doing. Ok, yes, there is a vazaha teaching at your school; its not new and exciting anymore, get over it. Neither is me speaking Gasy; still, when I tell them what an English word is in Malagasy, it creates a small commotion in class, giggles and murmurs of “mahay teny gasy” (she knows how to speak gasy) arise. Not as much as it once did, but it still happens; it happens a lot at the market, too, the mpivarotras shouting it to each other, “mahay teny gasy!” Yes, I do speak Malagasy, well enough to know that you’re talking about me. I’ve been here two months, its not new and exciting anymore, get over it. Ok, I guess 2 months is still a pretty short time period, but i sometimes feels like I’ve been here forever. But, at the same time, the weeks fly by. Plus, there’s been a volunteer at my site since 2000 – that’s ten years! And that is a long time; there are vazaha teachers around; get over it. Crowds form around me to watch me buy tomatoes at the market, or when I stop to talk to one of my friends or a random mpivarotra, crowds form to watch me. Everyone from little kids to much older people; the kids, I understand, but the people who are my grandparents’ age also silently, unabashedly staring at me…it’s a little much and awkward. The kids in surrounding houses have taken to watching me through my doors (which I usually keep open during the day so I don’t suffocate and spontaneously combust in my own house), peering at me as I cook, clean, read, or watch DVDs, which is my de-stressing time, so then it REALLY bothers me.
I’ve started putting my foot down on the loud kids around my house. If they’re being loud, crying, etc., I’ll go out there and tell them to be quiet, stop, or go home. Once, a kid (maybe 5 or 6) was bawling his eyes out in my yard, keeling over, rolling around in the sand, so I went outside and tried to get him to stop. He wouldn’t even stand up, so I asked another kid playing nearby where his house was and then I literally dragged him by his armpits back to his house about 30 feet away (with him screaming his head off and refusing to walk himself) and dropped him in the yard of his house with the adults watching and laughing. “Maditra!” they exclaimed (poorly behaved). Yes, he is, and he’s your kid, so do something about it. In Senegal and Niger, disciplining other peoples’ kids was totally ok; I haven’t noticed it here nearly as much, or any kind of harsh discipline being used against kids – mostly they just get yelled at (though some people said they saw their host siblings get hit). Again – integration. I live here too and need some quiet time once in a while. There’s a Malagasy proverb that I REALLY need to learn in Malagasy that says “other people’s children cause your nostrils to flare.” Structurally, it would be “make flare your nostrils the children of other people” – that’s how the language works, but I’m not sure of all the words. And they do make my nostrils flare, my head throb, and my tmj pain come back. Teaching wears me out enough as is; my living space shouldn’t cause me stress either.
But it has been; worse than the kids has been the family I share the house with playing the same five songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again every day. No joke; I used to hear the same 5 songs about 10 times a day, but lately I only hear a few of them once in a while but there’s one song that gets played foana (all the time). I once heard it three times within an hour of waking up and counted 10 times in one day. And its just this one song, they don’t get sick of it and its like the song is new each time they hear it! All the kids (and adults) sing along excitedly each time they hear it (even if its not playing, they’re singing it, or any of the other same songs that they listen to). The song’s on a DVD along with a grainy music video, and other neighbors who I guess don’t have a TV come by frequently to watch and be loud and they gape in fascination; like they haven’t heard the song before and its new and exciting! It sounds silly, but its seriously starting to bug the crap out of me and I wonder, “is it going to be like this for 2 years? Are they going to play that song at least five times a day EVERYDAY for the next 22 months that I’m here?” If so, I may need to be wack evac’ed. I was looking forward to the break and getting to relax; I even made a list of things to do when bored (though none of them are that huge/time consuming) but now I’m wondering if it will be enjoyable if I have to put up with noise all the time and face a different kind of stress from school. I’m now REALLY looking forward to IST, so I can see my friends, share crazy stories, and vent. I don’t really call people; usually we just have text convos because calling is way more expensive.
And Easter was the other day; without fail, holidays abroad make me homesick because celebrating them abroad just isn’t the same, and its those times that make me realize how far away I am from home, my family, and friends; I feel most lonely at those points. I love my church back home at Easter; its so beautiful, I love the hymns, and I love eating lots of good food afterward. I went to a Catholic church here with one of my friends, at her urging; I’d gone once before but kept refusing invitations to go again because 1. I’m not Catholic. Then you should go to the Protestant Church, people tell me. Which brings me to: 2. While my Malagasy has improved, I don’t understand religious lingo and don’t understand 99% of what’s happening so I’m bored, and 3. Church services here are 3 hours long; I can get a lot done on Sunday mornings in 3 hours – my laundry, shaving my legs (if the mood so strikes me), starting my lesson planning for the week, sweeping and scrubbing the floors. Yes, I’m Christian and like going to church back home but its not the same here and its just depresses me that I don’t have my own church to go to, and what’s the point of going if I don’t understand anything that’s going on and I can get a lot done in that time period. Maybe if it was an hour, fine, but its not. Nobody that lives near me ever goes to church on Sundays; its not as big of a deal here as it was in our training villages it seems like.
It was only two hours but we spent an hour sitting outside doing nothing (good thing I brought my book; a PCV I met in Senegal told me to always bring a book with you in Peace Corps because you may be waiting for a while for, well, everything – good advice). My friend told me to meet her at 8; I met her at 8:15, knowing that nothing ever starts on time here, and then we sat in the courtyard of the church. Half hour later I asked her what time the service was starting she said 9. “So what are we doing here so early?” I asked. “You told me 8.” She laughed and said, “I don’t know.” Ugh. While I am getting more patient, I still don’t like waiting; I don’t like it when other people are in control of wasting my time. Again, I’m glad I brought the book. I always take it to the bank or post office to, as there’s always a huge line (or semblance of one), people cutting, one person actually working and two others shuffling papers, who look irritated if you ask them to help you and appalled that you would even dare to ask. Books make the waiting much more bearable, its one of the reasons I’ve done so much reading here – about 10 books since I left the U.S. back in October!
Back to church; the service didn’t do the Kirk justice; nothing could. It was mostly singing, with an electronic synthesizer as accompaniment, the music sounding almost hoedown-ish and twangy, and I understood nothing that was going on. Even Malagasies were sleeping in the benches, which made me feel not as bad about not really paying attention and daydreaming in my own little world.
On another note, while the first three months being the hardest is a Peace Corps axiom that I’ve now found to be true, there is another generally accepted Peace Corps fact that I’ve disproven: Its usually said that men in the Peace Corps lose weight while women gain. Ha – I’ve lost even more weight here than in Niger; I’m on the last hole of my belt and pretty soon am going to have to start making new holes. My skirts are all much looser too, practically falling off my hips. By the time I’d left Niger, I had lost 13 lbs; I don’t have a scale here but its DEFINITELY way more than that now. I haven’t been super sick lately, but once in a while my digestive system decides it hates me. I do a lot of walking everyday which also may be part of it; I live 1 k away from my school, so I walk at least 2 k a day to get back and forth, but its usually more as I have classes in the morning and afternoon; there’s a 3 hour break in the afternoon where everything closes down and no one does anything because its too hot. Plus, the market and central town are another half km/ 1 km away (respectively) from the school, and I usually make trips to the market almost everyday. I don’t like keeping too much food in my house because of the bugs. So I walk at least a couple miles everyday, and if I have time, take bike rides. Also, my appetite has significantly decreased – I think it’s the heat. I was always hungry during training, but now I’m really not that hungry. I wind up halving the recipes in the cookbook and still don’t even wind up eating it all (I put it in a Tupperware and eat it for dinner after reheating it really well to kill any germs). I look through my photo albums regularly and have pictures on my walls; I look VERY different; much thinner and tanner. And I’m not eating all the crap I used to in the states; chips, Ben and Jerry’s, whatever I could get my hands on to snack on while I watched TV; I could never watch TV without snacking; the two go hand in hand. Now for snacks (if I do eat them) I have a piece of fruit, maybe some street food (there’s LOTS of good street food here) or if I drink some water, that’s good enough and I feel full. As it was in Niger, my Nalgene is still an extension of my arm. Students and other people in town are fascinated by it for some reason; its really strange. Maybe just because its something that the white person has, its western, and therefore it must be better than Malagasy water and is cool because the white person has it. I’m always getting asked for my water; students shout out “rano! Rano madame!” when they see me, asking me for some of my water. Get your own water, I tell them, (though I guess its better than getting asked for money; fortunately that doesn’t happen here, but it happened a couple times in Morondava), or I say nothing, electing not to dignify obnoxious behavior with a response. Plus, I don’t know where their grubby little hands have been (well, actually, having lived here a few months, I have a pretty good idea, which makes me even more inclined to say no to them drinking my water) I NEVER see people here drinking water, even though its hot all the time, but students are always having to pee in the middle of class and asking to go to the W.C and I always see people peeing all over the place, since the bathrooms are locked and students are supposed to ask for the keys. I don’t get it; its just a water bottle but they’re fascinated by it.
Obviously there’s so much more I can write about but that’s about it for now; using the internet here kind of frustrates me, and more frustrations are not what I need. Even though the emotional roller coaster continues, with a drastic drop this past month, this is still where I want to be and can’t imagine doing anything else; I’ve wanted to do the Peace Corps for years now, fought hard to get it, and vowed to make it through any obstacles thrown at me. I didn’t think one of those obstacles would be being moved from Niger to Madagascar and having my sector changed to something I was hardly qualified for, but I am trying. You never know how hard something is going to be until you’re actually facing it. Besides, with what I’m hearing about what’s going on in America right now, I’m really glad I’m here. Death threats against the congressmen who voted for the health care bill? Seriously? Stuff like that mortifies me and makes me embarrassed. Its one of the reasons I wanted to be in the Peace Corps – to show others around the world that there are some good aspects of America.
Continuing to try to keep my chin up and stay focused on the positives… and looking forward to getting a break at IST and seeing my friends – one more month! yay!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
happy first month at post too meeee!!!
I survived my first month at post!! the first 3 months are the hardest,im told,but so far its been (mostly) positive experiences. Even more daunting, i survived as themost isolated volunteer in country!!! i essentially have all of central west and southwest madagascar to myself(and this is a big country) Its exhilarating; it doesnt really scare me and i thnk its cool. it probablywont be that way for long; the newbies arrived a few days ago, another stage will come in july,and at least a few of them will be placed near me. after 3 months around the sqame people constantly, im enjoying my isolation(from other americans, not people though. i have significantly less personal space here than i did at my host familys). Though it would be kind of nice if someone sharedmy banking town so we could go halfsies on food at hotel rooms. going to my banking town, where i am now,stresses me out because not only is it a pain in the ass to get to (45 km on a shit road, or rather a stretch of potholes with a few pathways between them, so it takes 2 hours to get to, crammed in a bush taxi, tack on some time for picking up/ dropping off people and general dicking around that takes place on bush taxis) waiting at the bank is INCREDIBLY stressful; i once waited 2 hours for the line to move about 5 people; 3 men behind the counter, only one of them actually doing anything and helping people. and morondava can be expensive; there are cheap hotels and food, but even on my budget it can be a lot.Money situation stressed me out this past month and im working on trying to figure out how to spend things. hopefully it will get better though; i did drop a lot on furniture this past month, not covered by my living allowance. When i moved in all i had was a bed frame (though a double so yay!!), a table, a desk with one broken leg and missing drawers, and one of the uncomfortable bench/desk combos from the school. I had the desk fixed, got a chair, another table, and a dresser so i could use the peace corps issue trunk to store my food, as bugs have been another problem ive had lately. I REALLY still could use some things, like a big pot to make an "oven" and new clothes, since mine are becoming warn, i dont have a lot of teachery professional clothes, thinking id be in niger, and e"verything covers my shoulders and knees, again, thinking id be in niger, but all anyone every wears here is tank tops and shorts, or nothing, haha. im jealous of my neighbors, who only put on tops when they go to the market. its too hot for clothes here
it feels hotter than niger out here with the humidity; I LOVE IT!!!! finally after freezing my ass off in the plateau for almost 2 months. i will take sweating through my clothes all thetime over being cold any day!!it only sucks when i am sick; i was visited by 2 bouts of mystery illness this past month. Being sick and sweltering in my house, drenched in sweat more so than usual and in my sicky germ sheets is absolutely miserable and makes me wonder, What the hell am i doing here? and the noise and lack of personal space bothers me most at these times as well. I live in a duplex, which i think was intended to be 1 house, have one largeish room that is my house and a family of 5 lives in the other 2 rooms, with just a couple feet of porch space between us. we share a yard, porch, and a water spigot. Theyre really cool but kind of loud; constantly playing their radio and tv, sometimes at the same time, singing along, yelling at each other when theres no emergency,chopping firewood at 5 am and 10 pm, the radio still sometimes on well after midnight. i go to bed by 9 usually and am up by 6, no later than 7, even though i only have 1 class a week that early. its IMPOSSIBLE to sleep any later than that. They have a kid whos really cute but cries often, as do other babies in houses surroundinbg my house, a sound that makes my blood boil, my skin crawl, andmy head throb. There is apparently a gasy proverb "other peoples children cause your nostrils to flare" haha, if only i knew the translation(need to ask one of the lcfs at IST...)
various village dogs bark up a storm at several points throughout the night as well and its SUPER hot in my house when i have the windows and doors closed, which i do at night obvi. combine all this together, and its not easy to sleep and i havent kept my american habit of napping in the middle of the day because its too hot and too loud. its gettign slightly cooler at night now, since we are going into fall (seasons reversed in southern hemisphere) so its much more tolerable. i pray for rain here, provided it doesnt come with a cyclone (that happened my 5th day here and ranks in my top 5 worst days ever; i cant remember ever being so frustrated either) and its not coming through my roof over my bed (also happened but is now fixed) rain cools things off significantly, temporarily clears out the humidity and i get free water sticking my buckets outside, and its a lot cleaner than what comes out of the spigot; its also cold and my spigot water is usually lukewarm, so it feels amazing to take a cold bucket bath at the end of the day and wash the day and its sweat, dirty, chalk dust, and market smells off me
i found out via text from cedric that there was a coup in Niger on feb 19. i was in a meeting with another english teacher when i found out, and told him that i had just been there, that i was supposed to be there for 2 years but had to leave for other reasons. "oh yes, that was on the news at 1 oclock" he said, nonchalantly. I guess im not that floored, given the situation, but it was strange because it hit so close to home. i was JUST there, thought it would be my home for 2 years and developed an attachment to it. The coup wouldve happened regardless of the other stuff going on that forced me to leave. Im not sure whether or not theyll close to peace corps in niger, if its worth it for them to stay open with all the other stuff thats going on. its sad because its such a great peace corps country, but selfishly, Niger closing to PC may be the closure that i so desperately need; to make feelings that still arise finally go away. I still play the "what if?" game and wonder if things that frustrate me here would be different in Niger, or if id be a more effective volunteer there, seeing as 90 percent of my students are nowhere near they level they should be.... i sometimes wonder how much of an impact im really going to have. Dont get me wrong; i love my site, am having a great time, am happy but still, the"what ifs" pop into my mind occasionally
one things i KNOW would be different in niger is the men situation. i miss niger, where men wouldnt even look me in the eye; totally different story here, and im already getting fed up with it. Sketchy men have showed up to my house asking me to teach them english,others have invited themselves inwhen im half dressed, and one even showed up while i was sick and loooked awful; i told him "marary aho" (im sick in malagasy) and he still came in, sat down and talked to me. the whole "leave the sick person alone and give them space and time to rest" concept doesbnt really exist here, also as indicated by the family i share the duplex with, who are still loud even when they know im sick.
what else....the guy i bought my matress from was staring at my chest for a lot longer than im generally comfortable with and guys have stopped their cars and motorcycles in the middle of the road to talk to me. a few days ago, iwent to the market with my friend and a guy was hanging out where i buy my vegetables. he was asking my friend questions about me and generally hitting on me via her. "whos she?" "does she have a boyfriend?" "how old is she" Christ. " i speak malagasy and i know what youre saying and you can talk to me" i snapped at him. ugh, seriouly? i then gave him the stink eye while i waited for the seller to give me my change, prompting giggles from onlookers.
Later that same day, i was walking home after another market trip, and from a distance, coming in my direction, i spotted another sketchball. even from a distance, i could tell he had a leering look on his face. sure enough when we passed each other, he stuck out his hand and tried to touch my arm (which has happened before in other cases) I immediately pulled away, spun around and gave him the malagasy equivalent of the middle finger. His friend he was with burst out laughing. Ta da!Im integrating but still havent lost my old self, which we are encouraged to do: find a balance between adapting and retaining your own identity; perfect example. JFK is smiling in his grave, im sure
so my first month was characterized by constant and drastic ups and downs; an emotional roller coaster if you will. i dont think thats ever going to change but maybe ill get more used to things and somethings wont bother me as much anymore. Itry to stay focused on the positi_ve things and when bad stuff happens just remind myself how quickly my emotions change,its just a moment and it will pass. and always rememer that anything im doing, even the most mundane things, are way cooler than anything anyone i know is doing in the states. no offense yall
even the smallest things bring me enormous amounts of happiness and confidence. like my students understanding something im teaching, taking walks and bikerides and taking in the scenery, enjoying a cold coke once in a while, pulling off pretty decent meals,talking to people and having them tell me im efa mahay at malagasy. my language has drastically improved in the past few weeks alone. When ive gone to the market, random people in nearby houses have called out "mandroso!" (come in) to me, justto talk, so ive gotten to practice a lot more and have made friends. yay!i converse with my neighbors a lot too; they are cool and have been really helpful, but kind of loud
Theres much more i want to talk about but the internet is eating up mytime and money (which i dont have a lot of) and considering theres a beach 5 meters from me and 3 hours of time to kill before stores open agan, well, i have better things to do than sit in an internet cafe. well see what next month brings! i cant believe how fast time has flown; a year ago i was giving myself the beginnings of an ulcer over my SIP, 2 years ago i was on vacation in the gambia, getting ready leave senegal, knowing id be back in africa soon enough. i still remember those moments clearly.IST will be here before i know it! im looking forward to catching up with my friends, taking actual showers,visiting my host family, and eating good food that i dont hafve to spnd time preparing; not looking forward to thje cold though,it will be worse than it was before because it will be fall
ok, amanaraka, as we say here
it feels hotter than niger out here with the humidity; I LOVE IT!!!! finally after freezing my ass off in the plateau for almost 2 months. i will take sweating through my clothes all thetime over being cold any day!!it only sucks when i am sick; i was visited by 2 bouts of mystery illness this past month. Being sick and sweltering in my house, drenched in sweat more so than usual and in my sicky germ sheets is absolutely miserable and makes me wonder, What the hell am i doing here? and the noise and lack of personal space bothers me most at these times as well. I live in a duplex, which i think was intended to be 1 house, have one largeish room that is my house and a family of 5 lives in the other 2 rooms, with just a couple feet of porch space between us. we share a yard, porch, and a water spigot. Theyre really cool but kind of loud; constantly playing their radio and tv, sometimes at the same time, singing along, yelling at each other when theres no emergency,chopping firewood at 5 am and 10 pm, the radio still sometimes on well after midnight. i go to bed by 9 usually and am up by 6, no later than 7, even though i only have 1 class a week that early. its IMPOSSIBLE to sleep any later than that. They have a kid whos really cute but cries often, as do other babies in houses surroundinbg my house, a sound that makes my blood boil, my skin crawl, andmy head throb. There is apparently a gasy proverb "other peoples children cause your nostrils to flare" haha, if only i knew the translation(need to ask one of the lcfs at IST...)
various village dogs bark up a storm at several points throughout the night as well and its SUPER hot in my house when i have the windows and doors closed, which i do at night obvi. combine all this together, and its not easy to sleep and i havent kept my american habit of napping in the middle of the day because its too hot and too loud. its gettign slightly cooler at night now, since we are going into fall (seasons reversed in southern hemisphere) so its much more tolerable. i pray for rain here, provided it doesnt come with a cyclone (that happened my 5th day here and ranks in my top 5 worst days ever; i cant remember ever being so frustrated either) and its not coming through my roof over my bed (also happened but is now fixed) rain cools things off significantly, temporarily clears out the humidity and i get free water sticking my buckets outside, and its a lot cleaner than what comes out of the spigot; its also cold and my spigot water is usually lukewarm, so it feels amazing to take a cold bucket bath at the end of the day and wash the day and its sweat, dirty, chalk dust, and market smells off me
i found out via text from cedric that there was a coup in Niger on feb 19. i was in a meeting with another english teacher when i found out, and told him that i had just been there, that i was supposed to be there for 2 years but had to leave for other reasons. "oh yes, that was on the news at 1 oclock" he said, nonchalantly. I guess im not that floored, given the situation, but it was strange because it hit so close to home. i was JUST there, thought it would be my home for 2 years and developed an attachment to it. The coup wouldve happened regardless of the other stuff going on that forced me to leave. Im not sure whether or not theyll close to peace corps in niger, if its worth it for them to stay open with all the other stuff thats going on. its sad because its such a great peace corps country, but selfishly, Niger closing to PC may be the closure that i so desperately need; to make feelings that still arise finally go away. I still play the "what if?" game and wonder if things that frustrate me here would be different in Niger, or if id be a more effective volunteer there, seeing as 90 percent of my students are nowhere near they level they should be.... i sometimes wonder how much of an impact im really going to have. Dont get me wrong; i love my site, am having a great time, am happy but still, the"what ifs" pop into my mind occasionally
one things i KNOW would be different in niger is the men situation. i miss niger, where men wouldnt even look me in the eye; totally different story here, and im already getting fed up with it. Sketchy men have showed up to my house asking me to teach them english,others have invited themselves inwhen im half dressed, and one even showed up while i was sick and loooked awful; i told him "marary aho" (im sick in malagasy) and he still came in, sat down and talked to me. the whole "leave the sick person alone and give them space and time to rest" concept doesbnt really exist here, also as indicated by the family i share the duplex with, who are still loud even when they know im sick.
what else....the guy i bought my matress from was staring at my chest for a lot longer than im generally comfortable with and guys have stopped their cars and motorcycles in the middle of the road to talk to me. a few days ago, iwent to the market with my friend and a guy was hanging out where i buy my vegetables. he was asking my friend questions about me and generally hitting on me via her. "whos she?" "does she have a boyfriend?" "how old is she" Christ. " i speak malagasy and i know what youre saying and you can talk to me" i snapped at him. ugh, seriouly? i then gave him the stink eye while i waited for the seller to give me my change, prompting giggles from onlookers.
Later that same day, i was walking home after another market trip, and from a distance, coming in my direction, i spotted another sketchball. even from a distance, i could tell he had a leering look on his face. sure enough when we passed each other, he stuck out his hand and tried to touch my arm (which has happened before in other cases) I immediately pulled away, spun around and gave him the malagasy equivalent of the middle finger. His friend he was with burst out laughing. Ta da!Im integrating but still havent lost my old self, which we are encouraged to do: find a balance between adapting and retaining your own identity; perfect example. JFK is smiling in his grave, im sure
so my first month was characterized by constant and drastic ups and downs; an emotional roller coaster if you will. i dont think thats ever going to change but maybe ill get more used to things and somethings wont bother me as much anymore. Itry to stay focused on the positi_ve things and when bad stuff happens just remind myself how quickly my emotions change,its just a moment and it will pass. and always rememer that anything im doing, even the most mundane things, are way cooler than anything anyone i know is doing in the states. no offense yall
even the smallest things bring me enormous amounts of happiness and confidence. like my students understanding something im teaching, taking walks and bikerides and taking in the scenery, enjoying a cold coke once in a while, pulling off pretty decent meals,talking to people and having them tell me im efa mahay at malagasy. my language has drastically improved in the past few weeks alone. When ive gone to the market, random people in nearby houses have called out "mandroso!" (come in) to me, justto talk, so ive gotten to practice a lot more and have made friends. yay!i converse with my neighbors a lot too; they are cool and have been really helpful, but kind of loud
Theres much more i want to talk about but the internet is eating up mytime and money (which i dont have a lot of) and considering theres a beach 5 meters from me and 3 hours of time to kill before stores open agan, well, i have better things to do than sit in an internet cafe. well see what next month brings! i cant believe how fast time has flown; a year ago i was giving myself the beginnings of an ulcer over my SIP, 2 years ago i was on vacation in the gambia, getting ready leave senegal, knowing id be back in africa soon enough. i still remember those moments clearly.IST will be here before i know it! im looking forward to catching up with my friends, taking actual showers,visiting my host family, and eating good food that i dont hafve to spnd time preparing; not looking forward to thje cold though,it will be worse than it was before because it will be fall
ok, amanaraka, as we say here
Friday, February 5, 2010
I'm SO not in Kansas anymore
I wrote this during training, a breakdown of my life as a trainee and starting all over again in a totally different country, and some things have changed: obviously im not in training anymore; i am the most isolated peace corps volunteer in madagascar, 660 km southwest of Tana and 500 km from the nearest volunteer! Also, madagascar has slowly started to grow on me, so the negativity that follows has somewhat dissipated.
Anywho, heres what i wrote:
My prediction has come true: Madagascar has been more of an adjustment than going to Niger was. I’m still not all the way there, and I really think its going to take some time for me to accept what has happened to me and that I’m not going back to Niger. I’m still sort of in denial that this is happening to me and still disappointed and bitter that I had to leave Niger. A lot of my expectations have also been accurate: this is nothing like the Africa I know, hence why I feel like I’ve made an even huger leap than going to Niger. With Niger, I had a general idea of what to expect since I did a ton of research and I had experience in living in West Africa. I couldn’t really research Madagascar from Niger because we had no internet; only a few pages in someone’s Lonely Planet: Africa book. Nor did I pack for Madagascar (which is COLD – and its technically summer now) or to be a teacher, where I’m supposed to dress fairly nice. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but when I’m in a bad mood or stuff starts going wrong, little things bother me a lot more than they usually would, and that happens a lot here. I’m not as motivated as I was in Niger, probably because this is round two, and I liked Niger a lot more.
So here’s the break down of my life for the past 6 weeks.
Week 1
I was absolutely miserable my first day here and for the first time, had thoughts of ETing. I came to Madagascar sick, with a cold and having suffered an awful bout of what I’m guessing was food poisoning in our day long stay in Paris; definitely my least favorite trip to Paris (my 3rd one). My bags, as predicted, did not arrive in Madagascar with me (apparently its really hard to put a frickin bag on a plane). I was SUPER homesick for Niger and REALLY disappointed. Madagascar’s NOT Africa and I really wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer IN AFRICA. My experiences in Africa have been incredible; people who have next to nothing but were incredibly hospitable towards me, and somewhere (especially Niger) where the need for volunteers is so great, as people struggle to meet even the most basic needs. Wonderful people, bad governments, as a book I’m reading put it. People in Madagascar are friendly, but a lot more reserved, closed off, quiet, and shy. Since I’m an education volunteer, I’ll be going to a decent sized town and will have electricity, which is NOT what I was expecting, nor really wanting, out of my Peace Corps experience. However, I’m slowly getting there and will make the most of the next two years, even if its not what I was hoping for; I put up with a lot of bureaucratic b.s. to get here, and its going to take a lot to send me home packing.
I’ve never been to either, but M-car is what I’d envision the Philippines or Hawaii to look like (it is, after all, called the Hawaii of Africa). Parts remind me of the Caribbean; little houses dotting the lush green hills. It’s very green and quite mountainous where our training site was, on a giant man-made lake. I almost felt like I was at summer camp or something (which is how I felt during consolidation in Niger since we were all together all the time, but definitely more so now, because we have actual buildings and dorm rooms instead of huts, canoes we can take out on the lake, etc.) Take away some of the vegetation and the hills, and it could be a lake in Northern Michigan; there’s grass (definitely didn’t see any of that in Niger) and it was surrounded by pine trees. I read somewhere that over 90% of Madagascar’s flora and fauna are found nowhere else in the world, so maybe they’re special kinds of pine trees, but they are still pine trees nonetheless.
I know this makes me sound like a huge brat, since there’s probably 2 feet of snow on the ground in Michigan, but its SO COLD here! Its summer here (southern hemisphere, seasons are reversed) but summer is rainy season so it rains like 5 times a day and NOTHING dries quickly either. In Niger, my wet laundry would be dry by 10 a.m.; here, it could take days and still have a slight dampness to it (even things I haven’t washed have it; it’s the humidity, which does not necessarily mean hot, I’m quickly discovering). We are also in the mountains, at least 1000 meters above sea level, so its significantly cooler on top of all that. In Niger, 85 degrees made me shiver, and here, it rarely gets up that high, and even though I’m from Michigan, I still hate cold, and still consider cold to be less than 75 degrees, at least for me. And I packed thinking I’d be in the hottest country in the world for 2 years, so I’m not really prepared either.
One thing that I do absolutely love about Madagascar though is that people here are REALLY short! Even I, at 4’11, have a good few inches on a lot of the women here (and some of the men too! HAHAHA). FINALLY I don’t have to crane my neck to look at people and talk to them. It sounds silly, but for me, this is a big deal. Never have I been average height before (maybe in Malta?); even 11 year olds in America are taller than me.
Week 2
About 2 weeks after arriving in M-car, we found out our permanent sites because they needed to switch our classes around to teach us the appropriate dialects. I didn’t learn a dialect and continued with Standard Malagasy even though my site has a dialect. I’M THE MOST ISOLATED VOLUNTEER IN MADAGASCAR!!! WOOO!!! I’m 660 k southwest of Tana; it took 2 days to drive to. For as big of a country that Madagascar is (slightly bigger than California and Oregon combined), there are very few roads, and even though some of them are decent, they are very windy through the mountains and you can’t go that fast. There are people who are farther away from Tana than I, but they will be nearish each other; for me, the nearest volunteer is about 500 k away. When new stages come in March and July, some of them may wind up near me. However, I don’t mind and I’m actually looking forward to it. I’m in a coastal region where it’s supposedly “mahafana be” (very hot in Malagasy), my banking town is on the ocean, 45 km away, and the town is about 6,000 people, which I think is on the small side as far as sites go for education vols. It’s not going to be like in Niger, where I would’ve been in a village with 500 people; I was switched to education and ed. volunteers get placed in large villages/small towns. I’m also going to have electricity (apparently we’re required to, so we can do grading, lesson plans, and other teacher-esque things) which is REALLY not what I was expecting from my Peace Corps experience. I was definitely looking forward to roughing it, no electricity, no running water, small village, etc. So yeah, again, lots of adjusting. The excitement is in there somewhere, it comes and goes, but I’m really still missing Niger and am getting kind of jaded from training, and having to start it all over again. We stayed at the training center for 3 weeks, because PC/M was given such short notice to find host families, so it was like consolidation all over again. Consolidation in Niger started the day after my birthday: it’s the gift that keeps on giving!
Week 3
Christmas was nothing super special here; they cooked us a huge meal and I was kind of sick anyway; not sure what it was, but some things here really were a gastrointestinal adventure, and for a couple weeks or so, I had a general feeling of blah-ness and randomly provoked nausea. The day after Christmas, though, we all went to Parc National d’Andasibe, the only national park on the island that has the indri, the largest species of lemur. They are SUPER cute and look like teddy bears! They are supposedly a meter and a half tall, but they don’t look that big way up in the trees, hunched over and curled around branches. Their calls also sound like police sirens; its REALLY cool! We also saw another species of lemur, a sifaka, I think, that was jumping all over the place with a baby on its back and even paused up in a tree right in front of us (about 10 feet above us) so I got some awesome pictures! I also spent December 30 moping around and probably making everyone else around me miserable because that was the day we were supposed to swear in in Niger. Like I said, I’m still not over it, and its going to be a while, if it ever happens. I know some feel the same way I do, but a lot of people seem to be totally over Niger, and I sometimes hate that others are happy while I’m still not over it, like I should feel that way but I don’t, and then I feel upset that I’m not happy; kind of a negative cycle. However, I can’t help how I feel, and I’ve been getting a little better each day.
Week 4
So we FINALLY moved in with our host families on January 4, and my family is AMAZING! We’re only in families for like 2 and a half weeks and I REALLY wish I could have more time with them, or maybe like 1 week at the training center and the rest of the time with families. The house is pretty big, in comparison to other Malagasy houses. There are 2 floors, but there’s not really anything on the bottom floor, just storage space and a room they use to “shower” in. It was REALLY nice having an indoor room to shower in, and my host mother heated up water for me to bathe with. Plus, we had a well in our yard; some people’s wells were a long walk away. If those conditions hadn’t been present, I probably would’ve never showered because it’s FREEZING here! Everything takes place upstairs; the kitchen, living room/dining room/a bed someone sleeps on, a few rooms with curtains separating them where everyone in my family sleeps, and then my room. They have a huge yard too where a bunch of chickens roam about with flowers, a really deep well, and a kabone (Malagasy for latrine). There are also 2 pigs and dogs (I’ll take “things you’ll never find in a Muslim country” for 400, Alex) and the dogs recently had puppies! They were super cute, but I still keep my distance from the dogs here. While it’s not likely they have rabies, they probably have fleas and since it rains a lot, they smell like wet dog; I’ve forgotten how awful that smell is. My family was really eager to have me and very welcoming and patient with me. They immediately whipped out pictures to show me, showed me how to do things around the house, and involved me in activities. They were also impressed that I could pull water and do my laundry by hand! They kept telling me I was "mahay be" because the last volunteer they had needed to watch first before doing those things (she didn’t live in 3 African countries, I said.)
Week 5
Training is intense and long as is, but it got A LOT more difficult when we started practicum, or sample teaching, at the schools in town. My first time, with premiere students (the equivalent of high school juniors) was a disaster (though people ensured me I did better than I thought I did). It was a really complicated and totally random lesson, and students aren’t always necessarily at the level they are actually in in. All students are thrown in a class together; weak English students may be in a class with better ones. Lots of kids often get held back, start late, or drop out for a while and then join again later, so the age range in the class varies. When I saw the roster for my 2nde class (the equivalent of high school sophs.) I saw age ranges from 20 to 15. Plus, I’m sure they weren’t used to my accent and probably not sure how to act in front of the new vazaha teacher. I’d ask for participation and got blank stares and heard crickets. Occasional giggles and whispers. I was visibly flustered and not only doubting whether or not I could do this for 2 years, but for the rest of my life, since it was what I was leaning towards career-wise (though Esther pointed out that I’d be teaching history to people who speak my language. Touché.)
My second lesson, taught to seconde students, though, went MUCH better and I regained my confidence. The lesson was simpler… well, sort of. I’ve had to really water down a lot of what’s in the curriculum because, like I said, just because they are 2nde doesn’t mean they are at the 2nde level. The topic was the generation gap, but some of the stuff that I needed to teach included vocab for expressing an opinion (I think… According to me…, etc.) so I did that for most of the class. I gave put up sentences and asked if they were fact or opinion, and actually elicited responses from the students and they were able to give their own examples of facts and opinions. It doesn’t sound like much, but I was happy to FINALLY get a response and feel like something I said had stuck with them. I explained what the generation gap was but it probably went right over their heads; I don’t think it exists really in Madagascar, since people get married and have kids when they are 16 anyway, and since it’s so family and community oriented, several generations wind up living together anyway. However, it’s in the curriculum so we’re supposed to teach it, and some of the stuff in there is ridiculous. Oh the remnants of colonial education!
The first week we did practicum (sample teaching) was one of the most jam-packed, stressful weeks I could remember, ranking right up there with some finals weeks at K and the week my SIP was due. School in town started at 7 a.m. and we had to be there to observe each other teach, and my house was about a 30 minute walk to the school, add more time for the shitty, slippery, muddy roads. During this time, a cyclone on the east coast prompted some awful weather in our neck of the woods; about a 10 degree drop in temperature and CONSTANT rain, rather than just the on and off downpours. I got very little sleep because I spent about twice as long planning my lessons as I did teaching them, plus the stress and cold weather, and I was sick. Really bad cold, couldn’t breathe, probably kept my family up at night coughing. Ugh.
There are so many ups and downs here; it can get exhausting. One morning, in the middle of the practicum craziness and at the height of my cold, I woke up and wanted nothing more than to back home, on the couch mocking a bad reality show with some chips and Ben and Jerry’s. But then even the smallest things bring me right back and remind me why I am here. My host family always prays before dinner, but that night, after dinner, my host mother said they were going to sing a prayer out of what I guess is their version of a hymnal and they said a prayer afterwards for me to get better, and then sent me off to bed. It nearly brought tears to my eyes; I was truly touched.
Week 6
I taught a 6eme class (the equivalent of sixth grade) and they were SUPER cute! At first I was reluctant to teach middle schoolers, and in the states, if I do wind up teaching, I refuse to do middle school; they are brattier and I’d be forced to teach the rosier, dumbed-down version of history. But here, they are a lot more eager and willing to participate than the high school students who are too cool for school. Plus, the lessons are A LOT simpler; I taught them vocabulary about the home. My premier class later that day, though, were being really obnoxious. Talking and whispering, mocking my cough… ugh. If it were my own class, I’d kick people out, but I was just a sub, and even in the U.S., kids don’t take subs seriously and know they can get away with dicking around. In general, Malagasy students are really well behaved, not jumping out of their seats and snapping their fingers yelling “madame madame!” to get called on (like in Senegal), and at first we didn’t have problems with them. Plus, they weren’t really sure how to behave in front of us, and their teacher was sitting in the back row observing us as well. The second week of practicum, though, their teacher wasn’t there and I think they got used to us; they were being, well, less well-behaved. I kept telling them to be quiet (nicely at first, not so nicely later on). If it were my own class, I’d kick people out, which I definitely plan on doing when I get my own class. Apparently I can be scary, according to my fellow ed. volunteers who were observing me. Tee hee.
So FINALLY after what seemed like the training that would never end, we swore in as volunteers at the ambassador’s house in Tana and had a reception afterwards with really good food. We spent the night in Tana before swear in and I totally pigged out and splurged at nice restaurants. Shopping really stressed me out because i wasnt sure what i needed and we went to jumbo score, which is africa's answer to k mart. it was really stressful, but i had fun getting installed. I wasnt really looking forward to a 2 day drive, but i got to watch the landscapes from the back of a nice peace corps vehicle (WAY better than bush taxis) and watched as the landscapes changed from green mountains and hills with terraced crops and rice paddies to flatter land, red sand, palm trees and the HUGE baobabs! The climate changed too; no more of the cold highlands for me - it may even be hotter than Niger out here with the humidity. I LOVE it though and will take sweating through my clothes all the time (which is what happens) over being cold ANY day. I also ate AMAZING food along the way; fish meuniere and south african white wine in Antsirabe, coconut shrimp in Morondava and stayed in nice hotels. I had cool people installing me too, and they were fun to talk to and put me more at ease.
The first few days at site were fine; it felt strange to be alone and to have so much free time (well, for now; i start teaching monday). Even the smallest things brought me enormous amounts of confidence; being able to have even a small convo with someone in malagasy, or cook good food for myself, which truly amazes me, since Ive never wanted anything to do with domesticity and its contraining stays; as a feminist statement. but now, i can see how cooking and getting creative with few ingredients and little money can be an outlet. Ive managed to do some of the recipes in our cookbook and I havent set my house on fire yet; win!
Though on day 5 at site, a cyclone formed in the Moz. Channel and apparently passed through my village, prompting me to discover i have several leaks in my roof, one of which was right over my bed. I had thoughts of: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what the hell you're doing in this country" as 260 km/hour winds and sheets of rain pummeled my poor house for a day, brown water dripping onto my bed, and the big bird sized bugs that follow the rains invaded my house the next day, one of the negatives of having electricity.
But again, little things bring me right back, and i realized that later, ill laugh about this and it will make a great story. I got calls from peace corps staff to make sure i was ok, called friends to rant about the awful day i had that day, and received texts from my host family to make sure i was ok. "Aza matahotra fa Andriamanitra tsara" my host mother texted me; do not be afriad, for god is good.
More later, the internet is eating my money and i need to buy groceries. Im starting teaching on monday, 5eme and 2nde, the equivalent of 7th and 10th grades; respectively.
sorry if im incoherent; my english is deteriorating rapidly and i feel rushed so i dont spend too much money on the internet.
Anywho, heres what i wrote:
My prediction has come true: Madagascar has been more of an adjustment than going to Niger was. I’m still not all the way there, and I really think its going to take some time for me to accept what has happened to me and that I’m not going back to Niger. I’m still sort of in denial that this is happening to me and still disappointed and bitter that I had to leave Niger. A lot of my expectations have also been accurate: this is nothing like the Africa I know, hence why I feel like I’ve made an even huger leap than going to Niger. With Niger, I had a general idea of what to expect since I did a ton of research and I had experience in living in West Africa. I couldn’t really research Madagascar from Niger because we had no internet; only a few pages in someone’s Lonely Planet: Africa book. Nor did I pack for Madagascar (which is COLD – and its technically summer now) or to be a teacher, where I’m supposed to dress fairly nice. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but when I’m in a bad mood or stuff starts going wrong, little things bother me a lot more than they usually would, and that happens a lot here. I’m not as motivated as I was in Niger, probably because this is round two, and I liked Niger a lot more.
So here’s the break down of my life for the past 6 weeks.
Week 1
I was absolutely miserable my first day here and for the first time, had thoughts of ETing. I came to Madagascar sick, with a cold and having suffered an awful bout of what I’m guessing was food poisoning in our day long stay in Paris; definitely my least favorite trip to Paris (my 3rd one). My bags, as predicted, did not arrive in Madagascar with me (apparently its really hard to put a frickin bag on a plane). I was SUPER homesick for Niger and REALLY disappointed. Madagascar’s NOT Africa and I really wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer IN AFRICA. My experiences in Africa have been incredible; people who have next to nothing but were incredibly hospitable towards me, and somewhere (especially Niger) where the need for volunteers is so great, as people struggle to meet even the most basic needs. Wonderful people, bad governments, as a book I’m reading put it. People in Madagascar are friendly, but a lot more reserved, closed off, quiet, and shy. Since I’m an education volunteer, I’ll be going to a decent sized town and will have electricity, which is NOT what I was expecting, nor really wanting, out of my Peace Corps experience. However, I’m slowly getting there and will make the most of the next two years, even if its not what I was hoping for; I put up with a lot of bureaucratic b.s. to get here, and its going to take a lot to send me home packing.
I’ve never been to either, but M-car is what I’d envision the Philippines or Hawaii to look like (it is, after all, called the Hawaii of Africa). Parts remind me of the Caribbean; little houses dotting the lush green hills. It’s very green and quite mountainous where our training site was, on a giant man-made lake. I almost felt like I was at summer camp or something (which is how I felt during consolidation in Niger since we were all together all the time, but definitely more so now, because we have actual buildings and dorm rooms instead of huts, canoes we can take out on the lake, etc.) Take away some of the vegetation and the hills, and it could be a lake in Northern Michigan; there’s grass (definitely didn’t see any of that in Niger) and it was surrounded by pine trees. I read somewhere that over 90% of Madagascar’s flora and fauna are found nowhere else in the world, so maybe they’re special kinds of pine trees, but they are still pine trees nonetheless.
I know this makes me sound like a huge brat, since there’s probably 2 feet of snow on the ground in Michigan, but its SO COLD here! Its summer here (southern hemisphere, seasons are reversed) but summer is rainy season so it rains like 5 times a day and NOTHING dries quickly either. In Niger, my wet laundry would be dry by 10 a.m.; here, it could take days and still have a slight dampness to it (even things I haven’t washed have it; it’s the humidity, which does not necessarily mean hot, I’m quickly discovering). We are also in the mountains, at least 1000 meters above sea level, so its significantly cooler on top of all that. In Niger, 85 degrees made me shiver, and here, it rarely gets up that high, and even though I’m from Michigan, I still hate cold, and still consider cold to be less than 75 degrees, at least for me. And I packed thinking I’d be in the hottest country in the world for 2 years, so I’m not really prepared either.
One thing that I do absolutely love about Madagascar though is that people here are REALLY short! Even I, at 4’11, have a good few inches on a lot of the women here (and some of the men too! HAHAHA). FINALLY I don’t have to crane my neck to look at people and talk to them. It sounds silly, but for me, this is a big deal. Never have I been average height before (maybe in Malta?); even 11 year olds in America are taller than me.
Week 2
About 2 weeks after arriving in M-car, we found out our permanent sites because they needed to switch our classes around to teach us the appropriate dialects. I didn’t learn a dialect and continued with Standard Malagasy even though my site has a dialect. I’M THE MOST ISOLATED VOLUNTEER IN MADAGASCAR!!! WOOO!!! I’m 660 k southwest of Tana; it took 2 days to drive to. For as big of a country that Madagascar is (slightly bigger than California and Oregon combined), there are very few roads, and even though some of them are decent, they are very windy through the mountains and you can’t go that fast. There are people who are farther away from Tana than I, but they will be nearish each other; for me, the nearest volunteer is about 500 k away. When new stages come in March and July, some of them may wind up near me. However, I don’t mind and I’m actually looking forward to it. I’m in a coastal region where it’s supposedly “mahafana be” (very hot in Malagasy), my banking town is on the ocean, 45 km away, and the town is about 6,000 people, which I think is on the small side as far as sites go for education vols. It’s not going to be like in Niger, where I would’ve been in a village with 500 people; I was switched to education and ed. volunteers get placed in large villages/small towns. I’m also going to have electricity (apparently we’re required to, so we can do grading, lesson plans, and other teacher-esque things) which is REALLY not what I was expecting from my Peace Corps experience. I was definitely looking forward to roughing it, no electricity, no running water, small village, etc. So yeah, again, lots of adjusting. The excitement is in there somewhere, it comes and goes, but I’m really still missing Niger and am getting kind of jaded from training, and having to start it all over again. We stayed at the training center for 3 weeks, because PC/M was given such short notice to find host families, so it was like consolidation all over again. Consolidation in Niger started the day after my birthday: it’s the gift that keeps on giving!
Week 3
Christmas was nothing super special here; they cooked us a huge meal and I was kind of sick anyway; not sure what it was, but some things here really were a gastrointestinal adventure, and for a couple weeks or so, I had a general feeling of blah-ness and randomly provoked nausea. The day after Christmas, though, we all went to Parc National d’Andasibe, the only national park on the island that has the indri, the largest species of lemur. They are SUPER cute and look like teddy bears! They are supposedly a meter and a half tall, but they don’t look that big way up in the trees, hunched over and curled around branches. Their calls also sound like police sirens; its REALLY cool! We also saw another species of lemur, a sifaka, I think, that was jumping all over the place with a baby on its back and even paused up in a tree right in front of us (about 10 feet above us) so I got some awesome pictures! I also spent December 30 moping around and probably making everyone else around me miserable because that was the day we were supposed to swear in in Niger. Like I said, I’m still not over it, and its going to be a while, if it ever happens. I know some feel the same way I do, but a lot of people seem to be totally over Niger, and I sometimes hate that others are happy while I’m still not over it, like I should feel that way but I don’t, and then I feel upset that I’m not happy; kind of a negative cycle. However, I can’t help how I feel, and I’ve been getting a little better each day.
Week 4
So we FINALLY moved in with our host families on January 4, and my family is AMAZING! We’re only in families for like 2 and a half weeks and I REALLY wish I could have more time with them, or maybe like 1 week at the training center and the rest of the time with families. The house is pretty big, in comparison to other Malagasy houses. There are 2 floors, but there’s not really anything on the bottom floor, just storage space and a room they use to “shower” in. It was REALLY nice having an indoor room to shower in, and my host mother heated up water for me to bathe with. Plus, we had a well in our yard; some people’s wells were a long walk away. If those conditions hadn’t been present, I probably would’ve never showered because it’s FREEZING here! Everything takes place upstairs; the kitchen, living room/dining room/a bed someone sleeps on, a few rooms with curtains separating them where everyone in my family sleeps, and then my room. They have a huge yard too where a bunch of chickens roam about with flowers, a really deep well, and a kabone (Malagasy for latrine). There are also 2 pigs and dogs (I’ll take “things you’ll never find in a Muslim country” for 400, Alex) and the dogs recently had puppies! They were super cute, but I still keep my distance from the dogs here. While it’s not likely they have rabies, they probably have fleas and since it rains a lot, they smell like wet dog; I’ve forgotten how awful that smell is. My family was really eager to have me and very welcoming and patient with me. They immediately whipped out pictures to show me, showed me how to do things around the house, and involved me in activities. They were also impressed that I could pull water and do my laundry by hand! They kept telling me I was "mahay be" because the last volunteer they had needed to watch first before doing those things (she didn’t live in 3 African countries, I said.)
Week 5
Training is intense and long as is, but it got A LOT more difficult when we started practicum, or sample teaching, at the schools in town. My first time, with premiere students (the equivalent of high school juniors) was a disaster (though people ensured me I did better than I thought I did). It was a really complicated and totally random lesson, and students aren’t always necessarily at the level they are actually in in. All students are thrown in a class together; weak English students may be in a class with better ones. Lots of kids often get held back, start late, or drop out for a while and then join again later, so the age range in the class varies. When I saw the roster for my 2nde class (the equivalent of high school sophs.) I saw age ranges from 20 to 15. Plus, I’m sure they weren’t used to my accent and probably not sure how to act in front of the new vazaha teacher. I’d ask for participation and got blank stares and heard crickets. Occasional giggles and whispers. I was visibly flustered and not only doubting whether or not I could do this for 2 years, but for the rest of my life, since it was what I was leaning towards career-wise (though Esther pointed out that I’d be teaching history to people who speak my language. Touché.)
My second lesson, taught to seconde students, though, went MUCH better and I regained my confidence. The lesson was simpler… well, sort of. I’ve had to really water down a lot of what’s in the curriculum because, like I said, just because they are 2nde doesn’t mean they are at the 2nde level. The topic was the generation gap, but some of the stuff that I needed to teach included vocab for expressing an opinion (I think… According to me…, etc.) so I did that for most of the class. I gave put up sentences and asked if they were fact or opinion, and actually elicited responses from the students and they were able to give their own examples of facts and opinions. It doesn’t sound like much, but I was happy to FINALLY get a response and feel like something I said had stuck with them. I explained what the generation gap was but it probably went right over their heads; I don’t think it exists really in Madagascar, since people get married and have kids when they are 16 anyway, and since it’s so family and community oriented, several generations wind up living together anyway. However, it’s in the curriculum so we’re supposed to teach it, and some of the stuff in there is ridiculous. Oh the remnants of colonial education!
The first week we did practicum (sample teaching) was one of the most jam-packed, stressful weeks I could remember, ranking right up there with some finals weeks at K and the week my SIP was due. School in town started at 7 a.m. and we had to be there to observe each other teach, and my house was about a 30 minute walk to the school, add more time for the shitty, slippery, muddy roads. During this time, a cyclone on the east coast prompted some awful weather in our neck of the woods; about a 10 degree drop in temperature and CONSTANT rain, rather than just the on and off downpours. I got very little sleep because I spent about twice as long planning my lessons as I did teaching them, plus the stress and cold weather, and I was sick. Really bad cold, couldn’t breathe, probably kept my family up at night coughing. Ugh.
There are so many ups and downs here; it can get exhausting. One morning, in the middle of the practicum craziness and at the height of my cold, I woke up and wanted nothing more than to back home, on the couch mocking a bad reality show with some chips and Ben and Jerry’s. But then even the smallest things bring me right back and remind me why I am here. My host family always prays before dinner, but that night, after dinner, my host mother said they were going to sing a prayer out of what I guess is their version of a hymnal and they said a prayer afterwards for me to get better, and then sent me off to bed. It nearly brought tears to my eyes; I was truly touched.
Week 6
I taught a 6eme class (the equivalent of sixth grade) and they were SUPER cute! At first I was reluctant to teach middle schoolers, and in the states, if I do wind up teaching, I refuse to do middle school; they are brattier and I’d be forced to teach the rosier, dumbed-down version of history. But here, they are a lot more eager and willing to participate than the high school students who are too cool for school. Plus, the lessons are A LOT simpler; I taught them vocabulary about the home. My premier class later that day, though, were being really obnoxious. Talking and whispering, mocking my cough… ugh. If it were my own class, I’d kick people out, but I was just a sub, and even in the U.S., kids don’t take subs seriously and know they can get away with dicking around. In general, Malagasy students are really well behaved, not jumping out of their seats and snapping their fingers yelling “madame madame!” to get called on (like in Senegal), and at first we didn’t have problems with them. Plus, they weren’t really sure how to behave in front of us, and their teacher was sitting in the back row observing us as well. The second week of practicum, though, their teacher wasn’t there and I think they got used to us; they were being, well, less well-behaved. I kept telling them to be quiet (nicely at first, not so nicely later on). If it were my own class, I’d kick people out, which I definitely plan on doing when I get my own class. Apparently I can be scary, according to my fellow ed. volunteers who were observing me. Tee hee.
So FINALLY after what seemed like the training that would never end, we swore in as volunteers at the ambassador’s house in Tana and had a reception afterwards with really good food. We spent the night in Tana before swear in and I totally pigged out and splurged at nice restaurants. Shopping really stressed me out because i wasnt sure what i needed and we went to jumbo score, which is africa's answer to k mart. it was really stressful, but i had fun getting installed. I wasnt really looking forward to a 2 day drive, but i got to watch the landscapes from the back of a nice peace corps vehicle (WAY better than bush taxis) and watched as the landscapes changed from green mountains and hills with terraced crops and rice paddies to flatter land, red sand, palm trees and the HUGE baobabs! The climate changed too; no more of the cold highlands for me - it may even be hotter than Niger out here with the humidity. I LOVE it though and will take sweating through my clothes all the time (which is what happens) over being cold ANY day. I also ate AMAZING food along the way; fish meuniere and south african white wine in Antsirabe, coconut shrimp in Morondava and stayed in nice hotels. I had cool people installing me too, and they were fun to talk to and put me more at ease.
The first few days at site were fine; it felt strange to be alone and to have so much free time (well, for now; i start teaching monday). Even the smallest things brought me enormous amounts of confidence; being able to have even a small convo with someone in malagasy, or cook good food for myself, which truly amazes me, since Ive never wanted anything to do with domesticity and its contraining stays; as a feminist statement. but now, i can see how cooking and getting creative with few ingredients and little money can be an outlet. Ive managed to do some of the recipes in our cookbook and I havent set my house on fire yet; win!
Though on day 5 at site, a cyclone formed in the Moz. Channel and apparently passed through my village, prompting me to discover i have several leaks in my roof, one of which was right over my bed. I had thoughts of: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what the hell you're doing in this country" as 260 km/hour winds and sheets of rain pummeled my poor house for a day, brown water dripping onto my bed, and the big bird sized bugs that follow the rains invaded my house the next day, one of the negatives of having electricity.
But again, little things bring me right back, and i realized that later, ill laugh about this and it will make a great story. I got calls from peace corps staff to make sure i was ok, called friends to rant about the awful day i had that day, and received texts from my host family to make sure i was ok. "Aza matahotra fa Andriamanitra tsara" my host mother texted me; do not be afriad, for god is good.
More later, the internet is eating my money and i need to buy groceries. Im starting teaching on monday, 5eme and 2nde, the equivalent of 7th and 10th grades; respectively.
sorry if im incoherent; my english is deteriorating rapidly and i feel rushed so i dont spend too much money on the internet.
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