To Market, To Market (aka Iron Chef Madagascar)

Because I’m a Peace Corps volunteer within the CED (Community Economic Development) sector, my technical training during PST has been focused on applying business principles to developing countries, and specifically to Madagascar in some instances. We’ve done numerous projects to help us practice the kind of work we’ll be doing at site, such as meeting with and consulting on existing small businesses in the town of Mantasoa (where we lived during homestay). One of the more memorable projects, however, was when we had to create an IGA (income generating activity) for the market at Manjakandriana, the big market town an hour’s drive from Mantasoa. The intention of this was to help put us in the shoes of a typical Malagasy person who we’d be helping.

The 14 CED volunteers were split up into 4 different groups, and we had to brainstorm something to sell at the market, then determine how the business would operate and what our expenses would be, then buy all the materlals and figure out how to price our product. My group members and I decided that we wanted to sell a food item, and make it something that would be somewhat familiar to Malagasy people but with an American twist. Out of our initial 3 ideas of Rice Krispie treats (because rice is the most widely eaten food here), corn on the cob, and french fries, we settled on fries, also known as “ovy frites” in Malagasy. Emma, Monica, and I spent the day before the market washing, peeling, and cutting 4 kilos of potatoes and getting everything ready to take to the market. Peace Corps told us we had to be in charge of getting ourselves to the market (to further simulate a real-life experience), so we all “reserved” spots in a taxi-brousse (similar to a bush taxi and how probably 90% of people here get around) for 5 AM, in order to get to the market by 6:30 when we could start setting up.

On market day I got up at 4AM, and my host family did too—they insisted that I needed to at least have some coffee and bread, so they got up to start the fire and brew the coffee, and then my neny (host mother) and sisters walked with me to the taxi-brousse station in the pitch-dark early morning. (This was one of the moments during which their kindness astounded and humbled me.) All 14 of us waited around for an hour with no sign of the taxi-brousse, which at this point we had been prepared for due to the cultural indifference to timeliness here. At 6:00 AM, a truck with a covered bed pulled up, and two guys from our group inquired if it was the taxi-brousse to Manjakandriana. The driver told us to get in—and we stopped to debate it for a minute. It didn’t look like a taxi-brousse, which are more like maxi-vans. But we had been waiting for so long, and we were already running late. So we proceeded to pile in, which ended up becoming a clown car experience as we tried to fit 14 people plus materials for 4 market stalls (tables, groceries, etc.) into the back of what was essentially a large pickup truck. Midway through trying to cram everyone in, one of the volunteers who was squished in the back started to have a panic attack because her claustrophobia was setting in.  A small amount of chaos ensued as we tried to get her out of here plus get more people in—and then all of a sudden the truck pulled away, leaving 6 people behind. Those of us in the back of the truck stared at one another in shock for about 10 seconds, then burst out in nervous laughter as we realized that we were on our way to the market in a truck of questionable safety standards, and there was nothing we could do about it. There were 8 of us crammed in the back of the truck, plus another passenger as well as the driver’s assistant. I was wedged in next to the hitch and was just praying that it wouldn’t open during the trip. To make matters more interesting, there had been an epic rainstorm the night before, and the roads to the market was even worse than normal (which is still really bad.) What should have been an hour-long journey took 2 hours, and at one point the truck got stuck in the mud and we had to all get out so the driver could get it unstuck.

But, we made it to the market at long last around 8AM, and the rest of the group made it about a half hour later (the real taxi-brousse showed up shortly after our truck left.) We set up our ovy frites station, which involved using a fatana-charbon (portable charcoal stove), and started cooking. I began calling it Iron Chef Madagascar because it was hands-down the most stressful cooking situation I’ve ever been in: I had to haul a heavy stove from my host family’s house, on a truck that should have been a taxi-brousse, then set it up in the middle of a crowded market, light the charcoal and keep the fire going, and cook french fries as crowds of Malagasy people stood around me, staring and telling me I was doing it wrong. Yes, it was a difficult morning. The french fries were really slow to cook, and I realized after the fact that I should have used a different pan and more oil. Needless to say, our group was not the most profitable of the 4. We sold all the french fries we cooked, but we didn’t break even on our expenses (mostly because we bought ketchup to serve with them, which is really expensive here, and because we spent more money on cooking oil than we should have.) But the true lessons there were about how to deal with failure, which unfortunately happens often as a Peace Corps volunteers, and how to approach daily challenges, like what to do when the taxi-brousse doesn’t show up? I also reminded myself to think of the small victories: I managed to figure out how to cook french fries in the middle of a crowded market in Madagascar. I’d like to extend that challenge to Bobby Flay, or any of the other Iron Chefs. 

Team "ovy frites"! Thanks Leslie for the pic. (It was