What Did I Do for Christmas?

Oh, you know, the usual: took a train through the rainforest, swam in the Indian Ocean, and drank rum out of coconuts on the beach. Just your typical, traditional homestyle holiday. There's so much more to say about it though, so I'll write a more detailed post later, just wanted to put a few pictures up!

Updated Photos!

New photos have been posted below to the "In-Service Training" album and the "Madagascar Wildlife" album. Most are self-explanatory, but the little, spiny, anteater/hedgehog-looking critter is called a tenrec, and can only be found in Madagascar and a few surrounding islands. This is a streaked tenrec, one of about 30 different kinds of tenrecs that are known to exist...cute!

In-Service Training, or I Have Officially Survived 3 Months at Site

Well hello again! Not much new to report from Ankazobe, but here are some of the more notable points of the last couple weeks:

- Esther and I made an oven. Yes, made an oven. It was pretty easy actually, all it took was a charcoal stove, a giant pot, a bunch of sand, and a small tomato paste can (to set the baking dish on top of). We then proceeded to make brownies in it, which turned out absolutely delightful. I meant to take pictures of our finished product (really, I did), but we became consumed by the chocolatosity and ate it before I had a chance. Next time!
- December is apparently the start of fruit season. On December 1, out market got lychees (my new obsession) and paiso (similar to a peach). A couple days later the paiso Chrismassy came, which are like really, really tiny plums and are also very yummy. These are in addition to the bananas and mangos that were already plentiful in the market. Love it!
- It's also rainy season. We've been having crazy storms pretty much every day now, and I'm thankful that my little room in the clinic seems very stable and waterproof. It's making an absolute mess of the water pumps though- my water is so dirty now that it's almost not even worth showering.
- I learned how to do a malaria test. The tests come individually wrapped with a reader, alcohol swab, solution, pipette, and...finger-pricker? What would that be called? I don't know, but it's a little piece of metal with a point at one end to stick the finger and draw blood. What I've learned is that it's not really that sharp, and you have to press quite hard to puncture the skin, and...ew, moving on. I guess if anyone comes in with a fever over 37.5 Celsius they get tested. I didn't come across any positives, but malaria is definitely out here, even in the highlands.

I know that was pretty brief, but to be honest I've been fairly busy with the usual routine and then this week with preparing to leave there was a lot of stuff to take care of, like cleaning, packing, protecting my house against invaders (human and rodent alike). It's finally our IST (in-service training), and we're all meeting up in Tana then going to Mantasoa where we did our PST. I've been looking forward to this for what seems like such a long time- it'll be so nice to see everyone again, and being at the training center in Mantasoa means 5 days of good food that I don't have to cook myself! The first three months at site are notoriously hard, so this break is coming at the perfect time. I'm not exactly sure what we'll be getting training on, but hopefully it'll be useful to the projects I'm trying to start in the new year.

IST also marks the point in my stage's service where we are allowed to start traveling for vacation and business instead of just banking. This is also good timing because with the holidays coming up, I can't imagine anything more depressing than being by yourself at site, eating burnt rice and studying for the MCAT (oh wait, that's not how everyone spent Thanksgiving?) My plans are to travel down to Fianarantsoa, which is in the south east highlands, spend a couple days there and hopefully check out the paper-making business that the region is known for. Then, some friends and I will be taking a train (the only working passenger train in Madagascar) to Manakara, which is on the south east coast. I'm super excited about this because I've never been on a train, let alone one that goes through rainforests and mountains! Once we get there, we'll be spending several days including Christmas on the beach. After all that fun, it's off to Ambalavao (Amber's site) where we'll be creating health-based lesson plans for classes at the Lycee.

It's quite weird to be thinking of spending the holidays on a tropical beach, when a white-Christmas (or a cold one, at least) is much more my usual stride. I think it's actually better this way though- if you can't have what's normal, you might as well do the complete opposite! Instead of drinking hot cocoa and scrambling to do last minute gift shopping, I'm debating which sunglasses to bring and hoping the cyclones stay far away from Manakara. My hopes are that since it won't feel like Christmas, maybe I won't miss it so much. This is what I will continue to try to convince myself of anyway.

That's it from here for now! I'm not sure if I'll be able to update again before traveling, so if not, I hope everyone's holidays are wonderful. Take care, and I'll try to do the same!

Just a city girl living a country life...

It's that time again to go back to my site. I always feel a little melancholy when I have to leave Tana, because I feel so much more at home here in a big city. Actually the time to go home was yesterday, but when Esther and I went to the taxi-brousse station, it was inexplicably empty. We arrived over an hour early, and the ticket booth was already closed, which is really weird since we've taken the brousse to Ankazobe on a Sunday before. Of course, I'll never complain about extra time in Tana! I was able to chat with a few more people from home, and even video-Skype'd with my Aunt Barb, Uncle Rick and cousins! It blows my mind that even from 10,000 miles away we could talk and see each other. Oh technology, how I love thee.

As usual, I picked up a few goodies while I was here in the form of the two newest This American Life podcasts (Ira Glass, you make me swoon), a couple Glee episodes, packets of soup mix, and grapefruit juice. When you have little, it's the little things you really come to appreciate. Being able to actually talk with friends and family is so much more meaningful when they aren't always a quick phone call away, just as tomato soup seems to taste better when it's not readily available. Every day here is a challenge to perspective, which, though frustrating and difficult, is overall one of the most beneficial parts of doing something like Peace Corps.

Well, I best be off to gather up my things and try again to catch a brousse home, but I'll be back in just 12 days! As always, take care and I'll do my best to as well.

Bonjour, vazahas! Since I'm blogging, it's safe to assume that I'm in Tana again (or will be by the time this is posted). The health program directors want us to fill out an online survey about what we want to learn during our In-Service Training in December, and since Tana is the only place within a six hour radius from my site that has internet, I simply had to come in for the weekend! I'll admit, it's a bit of a precarious time to be in Tana. Perhaps you've seen Madagascar in the news recently- there's been a bit of a “to-do” for the past week and half due to the vote on a constitutional referendum. I won't go too much into it, partly because we don't even know that much about it, and partly because I don't know who reads this blog, but I'll just briefly summarize what was published in the news. Essentially, a small group of the military went rogue and staged a coup, which turned out to be mostly a bluff. Even so, the government moved in on them with force, brief gunfire was exchanged, and supposedly it's resolved now. There were no casualties reported, but it was certainly a reminder that this country lacks political stability. I'll be honest, it can be unnerving to live in a country that has been abandoned by the U.S. Ambassador and that is run by a government most other countries don't recognize, especially when we get texts mentioning explosions and car-burnings, but outside of the capitol, life proceeds as normal.
In any case, I'm glad that we're allowed to travel again and I could spend a bit of time away from Ankazobe. I do feel that I'm finally becoming a bit more tamana (well-settled) at my site though, which I realized after I went to Maevatanana for a day. From the moment I got out of the taxi-brousse there, all I wanted was to be back in my small, quiet, cool(er) town. It really made me appreciate my site more, which I'm grateful for, though I really have no desire to ever go back. Just a reminder, Maevatanana is the hottest place in Madagascar, and also my banking town. We get 3 short-term leave days a month (also called banking days), which are supposed to be our days to get out of our sites, see friends, and basically just take a break from the stresses of being a volunteer, but I'd almost rather relinquish them than go back there! It does have frozen yogurt though, so don't hold me to that. Anyway, it helped me see my town in a new light, one that is appreciative of the cleanliness and relative quiet.
Things are pretty much the same at my site. I'm still working on learning Malagasy, and I think (I hope) that I'm improving every day. It depends on the day though- some days I can have great conversations with everyone I meet, and on others, I feel like I can't understand a thing. I guess if I took the average of all those days though, I'm still better than when I first got to site, so that's something. I try to just work at the CSB on Wednesday through Friday, because Mondays and Tuesdays are really slow and there's nothing to do. Also, Monday is market day and I try to do most of my shopping then (more on this later). So Wednesdays and Fridays I still help with the prenatal consultations, which is where I tell the group of preggos that they shouldn't be smoking or boozing, then take their weight and blood pressure. Thursdays are vaccine days, and I mostly just weigh babies and then give polio vaccines. It's very routine, which can be a good thing because I always know what to expect, but on the other hand I don't know how much good it's actually doing. I like vaccine day because I feel like that's a very tangible way to improve the future health of a community, but it's already very well established in my town and I'm not sure how much my being there benefits them. Anyway, my plan is to continue with this routine, keep working on my language skills, and then in January, start my own secondary projects.
I'm actually pretty excited about my secondary projects, because we have more freedom in deciding what we want to do. In a surprising twist, I think I'm actually going to focus on working with the youth here. I say surprising because I've previously had no interest in really being around kids, but I think it will be much more effective to work with them than to try to change the way adults do things here. People are very set in their ways for no other reason that that's the way they've always been done.
*This is a bit of an aside, but I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my friend/education PCV/co-commiserator Amber Sheets. We were talking about what we miss about America (as we so often do), and I said that what I missed most isn't the fact that you can take a seat while you use the restroom (although I may have put it in other terms). Somewhere in history someone got tired of pooping in a hole and must have thought to himself, “There's got to be a better way!” and it's this spirit of innovation that I miss most about America. I love that there's a continual search for efficiency and the best way of doing something (even if it's largely driven by capitalism). Here, it's such a traditional society that people don't question the way they do things, it's just how it's always been.* Anyway, returning to the topic of working with kids: change the way they think, change the way things are done in the future. After talking with various members and leaders of the community about what they think are the biggest problems here, the most common answers were “hmm, no problems really” and “people are poor”. Neither one of these are really great for me, because if there are no problems, I have no work, and as for people being poor...that's not really something I can help. I did get one concrete answer from my doctor though, and that's that there is a lot of malnutrition here (although, she said it's because they're poor). SO! What I'm thinking about doing for one of my projects is starting a gardening club at the secondary school, so that kids will know how to grow their own nutritious food, and at the same time, teach them what exactly a nutritious diet is.

Speaking of diets, I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was wonderful. Mine was lackluster, but it just seemed like any other day really. It was probably 90 degrees too, so it doesn't really feel like it should even be the holidays. When I went to the grocery store in Tana yesterday they had a big Christmas tree display set up, and it just felt out of place. In a country with such outstanding poverty, the gaudiness of holiday decorations seemed overly tacky. Granted, I've always loved this season in America, but here it just smacks of commercialized colonialism. It's also just easier to pretend that it's not Christmas, because then I don't think about everything I'm missing back home. At least I'll be spending it with friends. Our plan is to take the train down to Manakara, which is a beach town in the Southeast and spend our Christmas getting drunk and tan. Holiday spirits indeed.

Well, it's been a quick little visit in Tana, but sufficient enough to get a few things from the grocery store to take back to site, indulge in a little soymilk and cereal, and clear my inbox for the month. Once I get back to site I've got to do some lesson planning- I'm teaching 5eme classes at the secondary school (the French equivalent of about 7th grade) about HIV/AIDS/STDS/safe sex this week. Hopefully it won't be anything too shocking. And then I just have another week and a half till I'm back here! Our group's In-Service Training is the second week of December, and I'm so looking forward to seeing everyone again. And being able to stay at the Training Center in Mantasoa where people will cook for us, that's going to be awesome. Can't wait!

Until next time (hopefully soon), have a chai latte and bundle up in a cozy sweater for me!

So long, farewell...to Tana

Well, I'm getting ready to leave Tana in a couple hours so I figured I'd post something quick since it'll be a while before I'm back here. I can't exactly say I'm looking forward to going back to my site. There's just something so...comfortable about Tana. Sure, it's hot, crowded, and so polluted that each breath is probably the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes, but being able to take a shower, sleep in a clean bed, and bask in absolute quiet are three simple pleasures that make life exponentially better. Plus, there's Internet. Lovely, glorious Internet. I really took advantage of that fact and downloaded two new This American Life podcasts, three episodes of Glee, a few books from Barnes & Noble, and a lecture series about zombies. I'm well stocked for the seemingly infinite downtime back at site!

These creature-comforts are great, but I think what I like most about Tana is that it's a huge city and quite ethnically diverse, so I'm therefore afforded a large amount of anonymity. I'm not the vazaha, I'm one of thousands and no one cares. This must seem like a strange sentiment, but being ignored is a terrific feeling. In Tana, there are Malagasy (of course), Indians, Chinese, French, and a whole mess of other ethnicities mixed in, and people are used to foreigners being here. It's hard to go from feeling relatively normal here back to my site, where I'm gawked at, yelled at, and spit on. I guess that's the life here though and I have to take the road less traveled back to Ankazobe.

As much as I like Tana though, it's not that different from any other big city in the world, and I joined Peace Corps to experience something completely different. I know that I need to work harder on integrating into my community at site and develop a thicker skin against the harassment. All of this takes time though, and I'm just so impatient! I want to be working and doing projects, but I still haven't figured out what the problems of my community are. The CSB is well run, there are health posters everywhere, people come to the clinic when they're sick or to get their children vaccinated...why am I here again? I feel like my site is pretty free of any glaring problems, so it's going to take a lot of work to figure out how I can actually be of service. I have to keep reminding myself that I have two years (scratch that, 23 months) to get stuff done, and that right now I'm just supposed to be focusing on learning the language and getting settled in to my community. Baby steps...

So, though it's been a fabulous weekend away, the time has come to return to my little home in the highlands. Tomorrow is a new day, and I'm going to really try to completely throw myself into this experience. Haters gonna hate no matter where you are in the world, but I can try my damnedest to not let them ruin my day. Here's to trying anyway!


Till next time, take care.

1 month down, how many to go??

OH MY SHARKS, THAT WAS A LONG TIME AWAY FROM THE INTERNET! Don't worry, I haven't been cannibalized or attacked by rabid lemurs, just cut off from effective communication for the last month which is nearly as bad. Turns out most people in my town don't know what the internet is, much less have any need for it, so Tana is probably my closest connection point. For the next couple months posts will probably be sporadic if existent at all, but I'm hoping to have a more reliable internet source around December. We'll see though, I don't want to get my hopes up too high.

Remember what I said about the futility of making plans in Peace Corps? Well, this has once again proven to be true. For the last month I was planning on going to a volunteer meeting in Antsirabe with all the other PCVs in my region. All the arrangements were made, hotels reserved, proper people notified, and then two days before I was planning to leave I get a text. It's my program director saying “Hi Health volunteers, sorry if I already told you could go to the meeting, the latest news is that you can't. My bad.” 2 DAYS BEFORE I WAS LEAVING! And I had asked permission to go a month ago.
Ugh, Peace Corps! So instead of going to the meeting and seeing my friends, I'll just be staying in Tana because I need to see the doctors about my thumbnails that are falling off. Anyway, carrying on from this bit of downer news...

So what the heck have I been doing now that I'm at site? Good question, glad you asked! The answer is, most importantly, surviving. Getting used to an entirely new town, people, and job has been difficult, so for now the name of the game has been “Just Get By”. This is harder than you might think, and of our initial stage of 42 volunteers, 3 have already Early Terminated. It's really a bummer, because they were all great people and will definitely be missed. While I don't currently foresee myself ET-ing, it really is a rollercoaster here- some days you can feel on top of the world. Maybe it was just that you had a nice little chat with the man you buy bananas from or that you made some kick-ass English muffins (they were delicious), or maybe you even felt like you accomplished something bigger, like talking to a thousand school kids about hand-washing (more on this later). Then other days, it can feel like everything is falling to pieces around you, either because of the incessant harassment for being a foreigner/woman/person in general, getting food poisoning from eating street food (that one probably served me right), or just plain old feeling homesick. The low days suck, but there's some comfort in the knowledge that the next high day can't be far away. Unless there's some sort of freak accident and the roller coaster breaks and you go shooting off the tracks...wait, this metaphor is getting out of control. Moving on!

So, aside from adjusting to life in this town, I have actually started working. Usually I work in the mornings at the CSB (clinic) and then stop when everyone leaves for the lunch break. So far I've just been giving little talks to the people waiting to see the doctor, either about nutrition or hygiene, and am generally just met with blank stares. I can't really blame them, if I were sick and waiting to see a doctor, the last thing I'd want to listen to is me. Oh well. There's no Highlights or Redbook in this waiting room (actually, there's no waiting room either), so I'm the best entertainment they'll get. Other than that, I weigh a lot of babies. And pregnant women, I weigh a lot of them too. So I'm pretty awesome at working the scales and recording measurements in the metric system. *Side note- if even Madagascar can be on the metric system, why isn't the United States? I mean, come on!* Every Thursday is vaccine day at the CSB, so parents from all over the region bring their babies in for their free vaccines. So far I've only given out the oral polio vaccine, but my doctor is really jazzed about teaching me how to do injections, so that's next on the agenda. (UPDATE: I've started giving injections! My doctor was kind of just like, “Alright, your turn!” this Thursday, so, despite my shaking hands and impending nausea, I gave my first injection. And then about 50 more. It freaks me out because the needles seem so long and the babies legs are so teeny-tiny, but apparently that's fine. I kind of like it actually, because it's a very tangible way to improve the future health of the community). I can also take blood pressure and count pills, so I do about the half of the prenatal consultations.

The first independent project I did was on National Hand Washing Day. I made a “Hand Wash Station” which is a big water bottle on a string with holes in the cap so that kids can just tilt it over and wash their hands by themselves and a bar of soap. I had talked to the director of the EPP (elementary school) and she was really excited about it, so I came back the following week to set it up. I hadn't really known what to expect in terms of how many kids would be around, but it turned out to be a frightening amount. I mentioned to the director that there were a lot of kids at the school, and she said “Yes, a thousand!” So I talked to the thousand students about proper hand washing technique and why it's important, and then a few pairs of volunteers demonstrated how it's done. All in all, a pretty good success I think!

After I work in the mornings and have taken my lunch break/nap, I go hang out in the pharmacy. I think I mentioned the pharmacist, Hanta, in an earlier post, and she's one of my friends here. She tries to help me with Malagasy, and she's actually a pretty good teacher because she's patient and gives a lot of examples. It's still kind of slow-going though, and I'm still skeptical that I'll ever get this language. I know enough to manage, but I'd like to feel as though I wasn't always just barely keeping my head above water. Anyway, Hanta has two younger daughters who are 20 and 16, so they've also become my friends. I've gone over to their house a couple times to eat and play games, and their family has basically adopted me as their white, strangely tall, incomprehensible daughter. It's fun though, and we all laugh a lot at our attempts to communicate. I hang out with my other Malagasy friends a little too, but they all have young children and don't have a lot of time for fun. One of the best things about my site is that I have a site-mate, Esther, who is an education volunteer. She's already been here a year, so she's a huge help with all things Madagascar and Peace Corps related. Plus, she's totally awesome! It's great to have someone here who can actually understand me and who I can understand without having to second guess every single word. So that's fantastic. It's great to have someone to cook with, have lunch with, or even just brave market day with, and it makes this whole isolation from the rest of the world thing seem much more bearable. Since I brought up cooking, I have to also mention that we made a killer Mexican fiesta lunch with homemade tortillas and salsa and then the next week we went Italian and made marinara meatballs and garlic bread. It was probably some of the best food I've had since being in Madagascar. When I'm cooking by myself though, I'm pretty lazy. Banana pancakes and ramen constitute most of my meals, but fortunately I've found the best ramen ever here. Like most ramen, it comes with a seasoning packet, but what sets it apart is that it also comes with sesame oil, spicy chili sauce, sweet soy sauce, and french-fried onions. It really is so good. Mix that up with veggies and a scrambled egg and you're in serious business.

So, I work in the mornings, but that still leaves me with a ton of free time, and cooking ramen only takes up a very small portion of it so I have to find other ways to occupy myself. A pretty big chunk of this time goes to reading. I'm trying not to blow through my entire stash of reading material before we even have IST, but it's been hard with all this available book time. I've also watched quite a few movies, and more seasons of How I Met Your Mother than I should probably admit. There's really just not a whole lot to do in my town. I asked my friends what their hobbies were, and their responses (sitting, sleeping, watching TV) were pretty disappointing. I like going on walks, but it's a careful balance between “how much do I want to go for a walk” and “how much harassment can I tolerate today without completely losing my mind”. It can go either way depending on the day. I just don't know how to explain to people that I'm really not that interesting. No matter how many times you yell “Vazaha!” at me, I still don't do any cool tricks. No matter how many vile instructions you give me, I will never, EVER, even come close to following them. Generally the harassment comes from men, and they're typically drunk. Since people get drunk at 7 on a Tuesday morning, it's a pretty frequent occurrence. It's probably my least favorite part about living here, but hopefully it will go away soon (says that very tiny little optimist part of my brain).

There's not a whole lot else to mention about life right now, it's pretty slow going. Although, it's encouraging to think that I've already spent over a month at site and it went by...well, slowly, actually, but the point is, I've already been here over month! Less than 23 to go! If I can just do the first month 23 more times, I can do it! Pep talk! Encouragement! Exclamation points! I think once I'm able to leave my site to go do work elsewhere time will go a little faster too. Even having this weekend in Tana (and formerly Antsirabe) to look forward to was like a little pinhole of light in the darkness. I think even three weeks before we were supposed to go Esther and I started planning our trip to the big Tana superstore and to get ice cream while we were there. Like I've said before, it's the little things that keep you going here. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other. Sure, somedays you might step in a giant pothole, but then the next you just step out of it. That's the plan for now anyway!

Surely I don't need to reassure you all that I still miss you, but just in case- I still do! I think of everyone from home all the freaking time (consequence of having so much free time), and wonder what you're all up to. Drop me a letter so I can stop wondering, won't you? Mail seems to get to my site relatively quickly (about 2 weeks usually, although sometimes up to a month), however it takes much longer for it to get from me to you I think. Unfortunately, the mail service people here can't be trusted, and I've had many letters come to me opened and re-taped shut, and have even had things stolen out of envelopes. The padded envelopes and boxes seem to arrive unrifled through, but regular letters seem to prove too tempting for the sticky fingers in the post office.

Apologies again for the horrific delays in postings, damn the lack of technology in developing countries! Until next time (whenever that might be), do take care, and I'll try my very best to as well.