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…