House tour!

Over the past year I've been recording videos of my house and the land surrounding it so folks back home can get an idea of what my living situation is like. I was just finally able to shoot and upload the final video, so at last I am posting these 4 videos! (And thanks, YouTube, for picking the best possible shots for the thumbnails. You're really highlighting my best angles.)

Part 1: my actual house.

Part 2: my kabone (latrine) and ladosy (outdoor shower room for taking bucket baths).

Part 3: my beautiful backyard grove of trees.

Part 4: my yard and garden.

Simplicity and luxury

When you live simply, it’s amazing how much more you appreciate the small things in life. For example, when you have to hand-wash and line-dry your laundry, you are eminently grateful for a hot, dry day that leaves your sheets crisp by lunchtime. When you have to fetch your water from a pump, you’re thrilled when it finally rains and makes the pump run at full strength. When it’s 105 degrees out and you’ve been walking around all day, there’s nothing quite as refreshing as finding an epicerie with a fridge and being able to indulge in a small, cold bottle of Coke. When you’ve spent a hot day biking on dusty back roads, a cold bucket bath can feel every bit as luxurious as a fancy hotel shower. And when you can only buy fruit and vegetables that are in season, it’s an unexpected delight to find a verdant head of lettuce at the market, and take it home to make a cool and refreshing salad.

That’s the way I’ve been living for the past 20 months, and I can already tell that it’s changed the way I’ll live forever after, even when I get home to America. Specifically, it’s made me realize that to live comfortably and happily, you don’t need a lot. It dawned on me recently that despite living in a “hardship” situation, I don’t feel deprived. I have a small two-room house with electricity, a garden and a lovely backyard, a bicycle, an old but usable laptop, and enough money to feed myself, buy phone and internet credit, and travel around the country a bit. Yes, there are difficulties and things that are uncomfortable, but  as a whole, I don’t feel as if I am suffering every time I wake up in the morning and go about my day.

Perhaps this has something to do with a shift in expectations. I’ve come to realize that in the non-Western world, not everything in life is easy. Maybe the person you need to talk to doesn’t have cell phone reception in his town—so you ride your bike there to go talk to him. Or maybe you have to wait 2 hours for your taxi-brousse to finally leave the station—so you read a book and talk to people while you wait. I’m used to it now. In Western countries, however, everything is hard-wired for comfort and easiness—where all you need to do laundry is press a button, and a single grocery store holds every possible food item you could ever want to buy, at all times. So after 2+ years of living in Madagascar, I’m expecting to be in for a serious reverse culture shock when I return home in May.

What I’ve realized since being here is that real luxuries are the things we take for granted in America: things like ice cream (I marvel at its very existence now—the fact that ice cream can be shipped and sold all over the country!); bacon and pancakes on a Sunday morning; owning a car, no matter how old and beat-up; all the way to microwaves, fridges, computers, iPods, iPhones, running hot and cold water, and reliable electricity. Reading this you may find yourself asking, but at point what does it become a necessity? Isn’t electricity a necessity? The simple answer is, no, it’s not. Although I’m a fortunate volunteer in that I have electricity in my house, few of my neighbors do, and almost none of the other volunteers in my region do, either. And they all survive. It’s entirely possible to cook and eat healthfully without a fridge. And fetching water from a pump is not as dreadful as it sounds. This is not to say that I won’t enjoy these amenities when I return to America, but I think I’ll appreciate them more now that I understand how fortunate I’ll be to have them.

One thing that’s helped me appreciate my existence here is realizing that the same simple things I found pleasurable home in the US are achievable (and just as pleasurable) here—things such as climbing into a bed with clean sheets after a nighttime shower, eating perfectly ripe, in-season, fresh fruit, sitting outside and enjoying the afternoon breeze, breaking open the creamy yellow yolk of a perfectly-poached egg, indulging in a long talk with a friend, relaxing with a book (and maybe nodding off) in a hammock, enjoying an unhurried cup of morning coffee, the smell of tomatoes on my fingers after working in the garden, and the comforting and cocooned feeling one gets from being warm and dry at home while a rainstorm pounds down outside.

Being here has clarified to me that little things like these bring me great happiness, yet there is nothing particularly extravagant about them. It doesn’t take a fancy car, expensive house, or top-of-the-line hotel to make me happy. In fact, I’m finding myself more and more uncomfortable with actual Western-style luxuries. In March I met a friend for a vacation in India, and for our stay in Delhi, I cashed in some of my hotel points (accumulated in my previous life) so we could treat ourselves to a stay in a fancy hotel. But I found myself overwhelmed by the niceness of it, and unnerved by being called “Ms. Silman” and having my luggage carried for me. What is going on? I asked myself, this is not me! I’m a Peace Corps volunteer! And things got even more bizarre for me when we booked a car and a driver to take us sightseeing after a disastrous attempt at using local taxis: when the car pulled up that morning to pick us up, it was (much to my surprise) a Mercedes, which I guiltily sat in all day, enjoying it but feeling quite out of place.

So perhaps there is something singularly attractive about coming to a largely unspoiled and un-Westernized country, like Madagascar, in order to gain perspective on what is truly important and valuable in life. I encountered a poignant description of another such journey in a book I just finished about the British writer and MI6 spy Graham Greene. (Thanks to Eric for passing it my way). The book depicts the author’s attempt to recreate Greene’s famous journey through Sierra Leone and Liberia nearly 100 years ago, and spends a significant amount of time going over Greene’s motivations for undertaking the adventurous trip. Greene went to Africa, in part, because he was becoming disgusted with the British “civilization” that was supposedly so wonderful and worth exporting to other countries, but within which he found, as the author remarks, a disheartening amount of “seediness”.  Greene wrote about his disillusionment in his book Journey Without Maps, which is the work that came out of his trek through Liberia and Sierra Leone. Greene’s writings in Journey Without Maps:

“... reveal his distrust of the ‘civilisation’ represented by contemporary Britain and the developed world, and to justify the desire to go somewhere more base, pure, and unspoiled.... he found among the native tribes of the Liberian interior the existence of characteristics he saw as more admirable and honest—a sense of innocence, simplicity, even virginity that accentuated natural feelings, both good or bad.”

-          Tim Butcher, “Chasing the Devil: A Journey Through West Africa in the Footsteps of Graham Greene”

Perhaps I have a similar disillusionment with many aspects of the ‘progress’ that modern American culture symbolizes. We are supposed to be so advanced, so forward, the most successful nation in the world—yet we spend hours upon hours toiling behind desks at the expense of time with friends and family, simply to finance a lifestyle which American culture tells us we must have. There are many cultures that would question whether a lifestyle like that really is a definition of success. Here in Madagascar, people work extremely hard, but family comes first. It is not uncommon for people to miss a business meeting or important event because a family member has fallen ill or needs assistance. Of course there are some Western developments that I would like to see more widely adopted in Madagascar—such as greater economic development, improved education and equality for girls and women, more appreciation and protection for the environment, and an increase in family planning—but I would never want Madagascar to emulate every aspect of American culture.  This country may be poor, but it’s rich in a lot of things that we’re not.

My college thesis (which this blog gets its URL from) dealt with the ideal of Arcadia, as propagated by Virgil and then many subsequent artists and writers. Without getting into too much detail, the Arcadian ideal is one of an untouched natural paradise that is free from the formal constraints of man-made law and societal structures. And because of this, it becomes a haven for artistic thought and creativity. Virgil and his followers talked of a mythical land—whether real or imagined—where shepherds wrote poetry and sang love songs in the unspoiled natural beauty of their surroundings. This verdant, uncivilized utopia was so prized precisely because of its roughness and ruggedness; man’s constructs and the ‘advancements’ of modern society were seen as the enemy. When I read that passage in “Chasing the Devil”, I finally created a link between this famous Arcadian ideal, which I devoted years to studying, and the timeless yearning, as exemplified by Greene and many others, to come to non-Westernized countries in Africa and elsewhere to discover another, more authentic way of life.

Should I be including myself among those “many others”? When I left America to come to Madagascar, it wasn’t exactly motivated by a similar desire to flee Western civilization. But maybe my time here has uncovered that as a small, subconscious inspiration for my decision to join Peace Corps. With 4 months left in my service, I am eagerly awaiting returning home, but I’m also a bit scared, and unsure if I will be able to live the way I used to. I might find myself one of those people who needs to be living abroad, or someone who always has to be moving from place to place. Or perhaps I’ll easily settle back into the familiar contours of American life. If one thing is for certain right now, it’s that I have no idea how it will play out. But no matter where my life takes me after this, I know I’ll be able to look at my experience in Madagascar with reverence and appreciation for all the gifts it has given me, not least of which is an ability to live simply and appreciate life’s small and precious joys.

The One-Packet Economy

It’s hard to think of an institution more American than Costco. In the United States, we love to buy giant boxes of things, and relish the idea of “stocking up”. Generally, most of us have big houses in which there is plenty of room to store the things we buy—be it a year’s worth of soda or cat litter or diapers—and in some cases, people often have special storage rooms in their house dedicated to their Costco or extreme couponing haul.

So one of the most striking things I’ve noticed about life in Madagascar is just how dissimilar shopping is here. There is no such thing as “stocking up”, for many reasons: one, because people’s income varies and is often based on what they sold in the market that day; and two, because most people have no room to store anything anyway, even if they did have the money to buy a large quantity of something. Simply put, most people just can’t buy any more than exactly what they need right now. So if it’s time to wash your hair, you buy an individual packet of shampoo. And if it’s time to do laundry, you buy a single-serving packet of laundry soap.

This type of small-scale consumer behavior is actually big business. I’ve just finished reading the excellent book “Stealth of Nations:The Global Rise of the Informal Economy” by Robert Neuwirth, and in one of the chapters he talks about how Procter & Gamble realized that if they wanted to market items like shampoo or laundry soap to lower-income consumers in Latin America, who typically buy items in single-use packets from small local stores, they’d have to shift away from their traditional model of producing items in rather large quantities, for consumers who’d buy them at traditional retailers like Wal-Mart or Target. P&G realized the value of selling their products to this different type of consumer, and started producing their items in smaller-quantity packaging. They then get distributed, indirectly through a multi-layered supply chain, to tiny neighborhood stores all over the world. The result has been a massive increase in their revenues and reach across the globe, but especially in Latin America.

Unfortunately, even if this single-serving packaging is a profit generator for companies like P&G, all this plastic packaging is incredibly wasteful and detrimental to the environment. In Madagascar, the brand of laundry soap that most people use is Klin (pronounced “clean”), and these discarded rainbow-striped packets are ubiquitous all over the country—but I’ve noticed them especially in my town. Litter is a problem as is, because there’s no municipal garbage pickup and people generally just throw trash everywhere, which is incredibly depressing in a country as beautiful as Madagascar. But Klin packets just seem to be everywhere, especially around water sources where people manasa lamba (wash clothes.) There’s a pretty little beach in Farafangana, my banking town, which is actually separated from the ocean by a freshwater river, where many people wash their clothes. And on this nice little beach are dozens upon dozens of discarded plastic Klin packets, littered throughout the sand, remnants of numerous laundry days. It would be a fool’s errand to try and pick them all up. From an environmental standpoint, it’s incredibly disheartening.

Detergent packets for sale in my neighbor's epicerie...

... and then scattered all over the ground. Not exactly 'clean'.

Recently I wondered to myself if there is a way that people could be encouraged to not buy the single packets of soap that lead to such extensive littering. Because most people probably won’t see an increase in income that will allow them to buy detergent in bulk, there would have to be another way to achieve this. What if the little shops selling packets of Klin could instead buy a large sack of it, and people could buy their laundry soap by the scoopful? They’d have to bring their washtub or a reusable container to the mpivarotra (shopkeeper). But if it was cheaper to buy a scoop of detergent than to buy the same amount of detergent in a plastic packet, the economic incentive would be there to alter their choice. And shoppers here are already used to buying items such as rice, beans, pasta, and other dry goods out of large bulk bags, so the behavior change wouldn’t be too drastic. Looking at the detergent itself, which is no doubt extremely chemical derived and petroleum-based (as are most commercial laundry detergents), I wonder if a company in Madagascar could produce an alternative, more ecologically-friendly detergent based on coconut oil (coconuts are everywhere here) that would also be cheaper than Klin, which is imported from Indonesia. If a soap was produced locally, valuable jobs would be created, and if it was biodegradable, there would be fewer chemicals getting dumped into the rivers in which people do laundry, and if this soap was sold in bulk, there would be less plastic trash littering this beautiful country. It doesn’t get much more “triple bottom line” than this.

As an economic development volunteer, I love looking at market-based solutions to public health and environmental problems, and this type of consumer-targeted development is something that I would love to see happen in Madagascar. And the benefits it would offer ring very clear as I’m currently studying microeconomics via an online course, with the central question of whether consumers’ self-interest can be meshed with social interest. In this case, I think it can: lower prices are a factor of self-interest, and less trash in the environment is an example of social interest.

Unfortunately, with only 4 months left in my service, it’s not feasible for me to take on a new project, especially one as large-scale as this one. But as I think about what I want from my career after Peace Corps, I’m realizing that this is exactly the type of business that I want to get involved in. And so who knows, perhaps I’ll be able to work on it as an RPCV! Now that I’ve become so familiar with this country, I definitely see myself being drawn to continue working with this island that I will have called home for 2 years. Whenever I do end up returning to Madagascar, I know for sure that the sight of all those discarded plastic packets will still bother me, and I’m pretty sure that I’ll still want to do something about it.

Random tips for new volunteers

Note: this is third in a series of posts specifically for incoming volunteers.

Back when I first began navigating life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar, I started thinking about things that I was glad that I had done, or things that I wish I had done differently. I started writing these down with the intention of publishing them as a blog post at some point. So now, with about 4 months left in my service, and about 3 months until the next new stage of volunteers arrive, I figured that it’s time to finally write this up. So herewith follows a list of random tips and suggestions that have popped up into my head during my 20 months in this country. These are ordered chronologically from pre-staging, to staging, the PST, to service. Some of them may not make sense now if you’re still in America awaiting your departure, but just trust me!

• If you wear contacts and hate wearing glasses, I highly recommend getting LASIK surgery before you go, if at all possible. Peace Corps doesn’t want you wearing contacts due to the possibility of getting something nasty in your eye, so you’re supposed to wear glasses all the time. But because I absolutely hate wearing glasses when it’s hot out, I am really glad I got the surgery and so I don’t have to worry about glasses/contacts at all over here. (If you’re already been medically cleared then you would need to get this OKed by Peace Corps, though.)
• When you get your invitation and start preparing for Peace Corps service, start collecting photos, cool pages from magazines, postcards from your favorite bars/restaurants, inspirational sayings, etc. to decorate the walls of your house. Having these will go a long way towards helping you feel at home, especially in the beginning.
• If you’re a girl, you may think it’ll make things really easy to cut your hair really short before coming here. However, 9 times out of 10, girls who do this end up really frustrated by having short hair when they’re here, and they almost always grow it out. My recommendation is to cut your hair before you come, but keep it long enough so that you can still pull it back in a ponytail. Otherwise, it will just drive you crazy!
• If possible, try to arrive in DC (or Philly, or wherever you’ll be flying out of) the night before staging. This will prevent you from having to wake up at dawn to get your flight, and therefore being exhausted during staging—it’s a long day. Peace Corps’s travel agency may not give you the option if you live on the east coast, but see if you can finagle it. I was living in Vermont right before I left, and I was able to get a night-before flight because I was worried about possible weather delays if I left the day that staging started.
• Download some of President Kennedy’s speeches about the Peace Corps—the University of Michigan 2AM speech, the announcement of the executive order that created the Peace Corps, and the “ask not what your country can do…” speech. It will really help remind you why you’re doing what you’re doing when times are tough, and it’s reassuring to hear his words about why he started the Peace Corps.
• During training, save as much of your walk-around money as possible. It will be tempting to buy snacks, beer, chocolate, etc. when you have that cash in your hand—but seriously, when you get to site and are actually fending for yourself, you will wish like crazy that you still had that money. Most people end up spending a lot of money on stuff for their house—often more than we get as our settling-in allowance—so it will really come in handy if you have savings from training. Try to save at least 100,000 Ariary from your PST walk-around money. Honestly, Peace Corps feeds you so well when you’re living at the PCTC and there is really no need to be buying snacks on top of what they give you! (Something I wish I had remembered myself…)
• Take advantage of the homestay experience, and spend time sitting and talking with your host family. Don’t just treat them as a hotel/restaurant -- they’re an invaluable language learning tool. While it’s undoubtedly easier to just go to your room and close the door at night, it’s worth pushing yourself to be a little bit uncomfortable in order to gain language experience. In my stage, I noticed that the people who scored highest in the language exams were the ones who spent the most time talking with, and were the most integrated with, their host families. I wish that I had pushed myself to socialize and talk with my host family more, instead of just going to my room to study after dinner.
• Bring a set of inexpensive colored pencils (and a sharpener!) that you don’t mind letting neighborhood kids use. One of the best things I’ve done is invite the local kids over to draw pictures. They love it, and I like giving them a bit of time for creative expression, which they wouldn’t get otherwise. And I’ve gotten to learn all their names by having them sign their pictures. I put them on my wall and they love to see their artwork hanging up in my house.
• Although most members of your community will be good, decent people, they are also all human (and therefore imperfect). And with poverty as acute as it is here in Madagascar, some people will be desperate enough to see stealing from you as a way to alleviate some of their daily struggle. My recommendation regarding this is: don’t give people the opportunity to disappoint you. This is not to say that you shouldn’t trust your friends and neighbors, but it means being cautious enough to remove any temptation. It means locking your doors every time you leave your house, even if it’s just to use the outhouse or fetch water. It means not leaving anything outside your house that could be of interest. I had my Chacos stolen from leaving them outside my door to dry overnight. I’ve had a hammer stolen that I left right outside my ladosy while I took a 15-minute bucket bath. I'm 100% certain that no one would have broken into my house to steal these things, but because they were outside sitting there, it made it easy. Most crimes here are crimes of opportunity, so removing as much of that opportunity as possible will protect your belongings but also protect your relationship with your community. Never having to confront someone about theft will just make your life at site a lot easier. And another note: if there is a guard at your house or hotel, do not rely on them to take the place of secure locks and proper precaution. Frankly speaking, the guards in this country are not paid enough to give a shit, and I’ve heard many a story of volunteers who’ve had break-ins while the guard, oh so conveniently, just happened to be on their dinner break.
• You’ve probably heard about the Peace Corps rollercoaster, where the highs are incredibly high, but the lows are often unbearably low. You will inevitably have these bottom-of-the-rollercoaster days, when you just want to quit and feel like it’s pointless, and all you want to do is be alone and shut the door to the world. However, I’ve found that when I push myself to get outside and talk to people or play with the local kids, even just for a few minutes, it always helps me feel better. And if you’re naturally independent and introverted like me, try to resist the urge to be a shut-in and a recluse, even though it’s easier. I wish I had pushed myself out of my comfort zone more to socialize and interact with my neighbors, even when I just wanted to be in my house and read a book or watch TV. When you look back on your service, it’s those personal interactions that will be your best and most priceless memories.
•  My personal recommendation (and other volunteers may disagree) is that unless you absolutely have to go home to America for a family wedding/bar mitzvah/funeral/other important event, try not to take a vacation in America during your service, as tempting as it may be. Why? Although many people have a great time going home and seeing their friends and family, almost everyone I’ve talked to who has done this has reported having a very difficult time re-adjusting when they returned to their country of service. They all say that the culture shock is harder the second time around, probably because they’ve just come from a week or two of American luxuries and comforts of home, and then they get back to country and realize “ugh, I still have 18 months/1 year/whatever amount of time left…” That said, I DO highly recommend taking a vacation out of country at around your one-year mark, if you can afford it. It’s a good time to take a break from your country of service and reward yourself for a year’s worth of hard work and hardships, and you can plan a trip to meet up in another country with friends or family. I did this and went to India for a friend’s wedding, and was able to spend time traveling around the country with another friend. It was great to be able to see my friends from home without actually going home, and going to a non-westernized country (although one that’s still much richer than Madagascar) made it pretty easy for me to adapt when I was there (squat toilet? no problem!) and then when I got back to Madagascar. In short, there’s something to be said for taking a vacation somewhere that makes your country of service seem like “home”—whereas if you go back to America for vacation, you may find yourself feeling like that is actually your home. After a chaotic and busy 10 days in India, I was excited to get back home to Madagascar, and I arrived back at site recharged and ready to tackle my final year of service. Also, giving my language skills a year to sink in meant that when I came back to Madagascar, I didn't feel like I had lost any of my Malagasy ability.
• This final piece of advice actually comes from my fellow volunteer Amy, who was counseling me on the phone this weekend when I started freaking out about how we only have 4 months left and OMG, what am I going to do with myself after we COS? She reminded me that even though our remaining time is rapidly ticking away, we still need to take it day by day, just as we did in the beginning when everything was new and different and we were still learning how to live here.  At this point, with so many of our months of service behind us, it’s easy for our minds to leap ahead to the future. But we still have to live in the present and remember where we are and what we’re doing. So that’s the piece of advice that I’m personally trying to follow right now.

En Tana, avec le jacaranda

It should be said that I really, really dislike Tana (short for Antananarivo), the capital of Madagascar. It's inexplicably in the middle of the country (on an island-- really?), dirty, expensive, crowded, and full of sneaky pickpockets, crazy traffic, and terrible pollution. There are literally no working stoplights in this massive city, and it's impossible to navigate on foot because every inch of the sidewalks are covered in street vendors. When I think of Madagascar, I think of the beautiful coastal region where I live, and so whenever I come to Tana it always screws with my head a little bit as I try to reconcile being here with the idyllic, tropical reality of life at my site.

However, the more time I spend in Tana, the more layers of the city have been peeled back for me, and I've begun to find some interesting things. It's also made me realize that despite its flaws, Tana does have some qualities that should be appreciated. I've recently had to make several unexpected trips to the city to handle some business and medical issues, and so I've tried to make the most of it by exploring, walking around, and actually taking some pictures. The best part of being here when I have been lately (September/October/November) is that it's when the gorgeous purple jacaranda trees are in bloom all over the city.

Jacaranda trees ringing Lac Anosy, in the middle of Tana. Unfortunately it wasn't a great day for photos so you can't really see just how vibrantly purple the blooms are.

The blossoms litter the ground almost everywhere you walk (or stand, in my case here.)

I'm also really enamored by the beautiful old train station at the end of L'Avenue de l'Independence. I've always been drawn to beautiful old train stations, and while I wish this was still a working station, I'm glad that it's at least been restored and has a new life. Right now it's home to a few expensive shops and boutiques, plus one of my favorite restaurants in town, Cafe de la Gare.

A relic of the colonial era, the station is emblazoned with the French name for the city, "Tananarive".

My other favorite piece of architecture is this Telma building which I randomly stumbled across while walking around one day. Telma is the name of the main cell phone/land line provider in the country, and before it was privatized it was the national phone provider, Telecom Malagasy, so I'm assuming this building dates back to when it was still government-run.

The Telma colors are yellow and green, hence the paint job on this building.

An old sign for a Telecom Malagasy payphone.

Here are some other miscellaneous photos of things I found interesting in Tana:

The fancy Hotel du Louvre and its beautiful jacaranda tree.

I'm kind of obsessed with all the post offices in this country because all the lettering is done in this fantastic mid-century modern font. I hope they never modernize! This post office in Tana is my favorite.

Here's a sign for the office of a dental surgeon with some fairly impressive credentials.

"Buvez Coca-Cola!"

Street corner scene.

What the Malagasy call "le propagande"-- election posters for one of the presidential candidates. NB: "fidio" means "choose", and "filoham-pirenena" literally translates to "leader of the country". Hajo is the first name of this candidate.

Tana is a very hilly city. Here's a view looking towards Lac Anosy.

Zaza kely

If there's one commonality among all Peace Corps volunteers around the world, it's the frequency of our interactions with kids. Children, in their natural openness and curiosity, tend to glom on to Peace Corps volunteers in any town-- visiting our houses, saying emphatic hellos, and wanting to help us with daily tasks. I often find myself acting as a sort of combination Pied Piper/court jester for the under-10 set in my neighborhood of Vangaindrano. On days when I am feeling just "over it" and sick of my town and Peace Corps life, I can always count on my little kid (zaza kely, in Malagasy) crew to cheer me up. Here are some photos of some of my favorite little ones:

These are 4 of my favorite girls, and I just love this photo of them. From left to right it's Prisca, Marinah, Rojo (pronounced "rood-zoo"), and Lanisa. I just love Lanisa's little hand-on-hip pose, and the fact that my cat Harry wandered into the picture. Sadly, Rojo and the rest of her family (including her little sister Fenitra who was my absolute favorite) moved to Tana back in October, so I will probably never see her again.

One thing that irks me about this country is that it's bad luck to say that a kid is cute, because there is a superstition that cute kids will be snatched away by some evil spirit. So to 'protect' a kid, you're not ever supposed to comment on his or her adorableness. And since there is also a widely-circulated myth that vazahas (white foreigners) steal babies, I REALLY can't ever say a kid is cute. The problem with this is that there are so many absolutely adorable children, and not being able to say something kills me! So to get around it I say that they are really good at smiling, or something similar.

This little girl, Sarobidy ("precious" in Malagasy) was one of the best parts of my homestay experience during my training in Mantasoa. She came to stay with my host family about a week after I arrived-- I think she was a cousin-- and she just brightened my life whenever I saw her. She loved posing like this for photos and she always had a smile on her face when she saw me and would exclaim "AIM-LEEEEE!" My favorite memory of her is when I was going to fetch water with her and my host sisters Eva and Tanya, and I was wearing my sunglasses (as I always have to in this intense sunlight). Suddnely Sarobidy decided that she absolutely had to wear sunglasses too, and refused to go with us unless she had a pair on like me. So after a mini (comical) tantrum, Eva lent her a pair of hers. Watching this little toddler wearing oversize sunglasses while walking to the water pump was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

This photo captures one of my favorite Peace Corps memories, one which really epitomized the barrier-breaking cultural interactions you can have when you embrace openness and spontaneity. I took this on the beach in Manakara back in August 2012, when I was hanging out with my friends Matt, Emily, and Nick. We were just chilling on the beach when a bunch of kids came over and started flying their homemade kite next to us. We asked them if we could help/play along, and then Matt asked them if they wanted us to bury them in the sand. Naturally, to a kid, this sounds awesome-- why NOT get buried in the sand? So we got to work, and the kids screamed and laughed and generally had a silly, fun time. I love the combined look of joy and terror on their faces in this picture.

This little ham--  he of the funny faces-- is Fanomeja ("gift" in Malagasy). He's really become one of my favorites, and unlike some of the other kids who decided it was no longer cool to hang out with me after a while, has stuck by my side. He loves to come over and color and has also been helping me in my garden lately. He is definitely one of the poorest kids in my neighborhood, and usually only has one threadbare set of clothes that he wears. So I decided that for Vingt-Six (Malagasy independence day), I would buy him a shirt and pair of pants at a frip (used clothing) seller so that he would have a nice outfit to wear on the holiday like all of the other kids. I told him to come over to my house (so that I could give it to him without all the other kids knowing), and he was so excited to have a nice set of clothes that he changed into them right then and there. Usually I'm kind of against just buying stuff for people, but he is such a genuinely sweet kid that I wanted to do something nice for him.

Here I am (looking extremely unglamorous) with my little neighbor friend, who is also named Sarobidy. I've watched him grow up into a toddler who knows how to say my name, and without fail, he'll squeak out "'kor ab' Ay-ee" (his best attempt at saying "Akory aby Emily") every time I pass by his house. Woe to me if I forget to say hi to him back! Lately I've been indulging him by giving him little rides on the back of my bike (while I walk my bike and hold on to him), and much to his constant delight, giving him piggyback rides as well.

Finally, no blog post about kids would be complete without a picture of them coloring at my house. One of the best things I did was get a set of colored pencils from a volunteer who COSed (finished his service) and invite the neighborhood kids to come over and draw pictures or color in coloring books (which my mom has been sending in care packages). In the beginning, I had them sign all of their pictures, which really helped me learn all of their names. Now they're all extremely zatra (accustomed to) coming over and using the pencils, paper, and books. In the process, they get to practice sharing and picking up after themselves. And, I love that they get to have an outlet for creative expression, which is something these kids rarely have a chance to do.

The ABCs of Peace Corps Madagascar

A few months ago I was sitting on a taxi-brousse and feeling very bored, so I started writing this out in my notebook. Special thanks to Rory and Briana for giving me additional ideas.

A is for: akoho (chicken), ariary (local currency), ambani-volo (the countryside/bush), Airtel (cell phone provider) and akondro (bananas).

B is for: beaches, biking, brochettes (kebab-like meat skewers), and bucket baths.

C is for: cats (necessary rat protection), Cipro (a miracle drug when you have dysentery), cyclones, composé (sort of like pasta salad), Castel (a type of beer), coconuts, and chocolate (what we’re always craving).

D is for: dysentery, Dzama (cheap local rum brand), Delmonaco (ubiquitous sardines beloved by most PCVs), dahalo (Malagasy version of organized crime—cattle bandits), and Dahlia’s (our favorite hotely in Farafangana).

E is for: eggs (in many places, the best protein source there is).

F is for: frip (used clothing stalls), fish, fady (cultural taboos that vary from town to town), fomba (“custom”, or way of doing things), fiangonana (church, or that thing that noisily wakes you up every Sunday), and FYFG (inside joke with my stagemates.)

G is for: giardia, Gold (beer brand), and gony sacks (how pretty much everything is packaged and transported).

H is for: hard drive (where we store and trade all the media that keeps us entertained at site), hotely (small local restaurant), “How’s Life?” (rule to live by), and Happy (Rory’s favorite cookie brand).

I is for: iPod (don’t even think of getting on a taxi-brousse without one).

J is for: jus naturel (delicious homemade juices made with local tropical fruit), Jumbo (the super-vazaha grocery store in Tana where we tend to waste all our money on peanut butter and imported food), and jirofo (cloves, aka the thing that’s currently blowing up my town with money and buyers.)

K is for: kabone (latrine/outhouse), kaza (cassava—so unhealthy but extremely easy to grow, so people eat a lot of it), and kilalaky (really annoying type of local pop music).

L is for: lemurs, lychees (fresh, and only 5 cents a bunch!), Libertalia (pirate-themed beer brand), lambas (cloth wraps worn by local women), and laoka (the side dish that goes with rice... never enough at hotelys).

M is for: moka (mosquitoes), mangoes (10 cents each), mofo (bread), mud (welcome to rainy season), and meva (the PCV transit houses in Tana, Fianar, and Diego, where we like to camp out to use wi-fi and real showers).

N is for: nap (every afternoon during the post-lunch siesta period).

O is for: omby (cow), Orange (cell phone provider), and Outcool (one of our oft-frequented bars in Tana).

P is for: parasy (sand flea that lays its eggs in human feet, which then have to be dug out), pocanelle (aka the ice cream fruit), pineapple (the sweetest you’ll ever taste), paositra (post office), peanut butter (something we’re all addicted to and stock up on in Tana), and palm trees.

Q is for: quatre-quatre (4x4, and we feel like we won the lottery when we manage to score a ride in one instead of having to take a taxi-brousse).

R is for: ranon’ampango (tea-like drink made from boiling the burnt rice at the bottom of the pot), and ravenala (endemic palm tree that is used to build houses).

S is for: Sur’Eau (chlorine solution that we use to sterilize our water and wash our produce), solar charger (vital for volunteers without electricity at site), Skol (beer brand), Smecta (diarrhea treatment), sambos (samosa-like fried snack), shrimp (so cheap!), siesta (that time every afternoon when it’s acceptable to take a nap), Skype (what we live for whenever we get on wi-fi), and Sud Est (BEST REGION EVER REGION!)

T is for: Telma (cell phone provider), tenrec (hedgehog-like animal endemic to Madagascar), THB (the most commonly found beer brand), toaka (alcohol), taxi-brousse (decrepit, overstuffed, cargo-laden vans that are our main form of transportation in this country), and tacos (what we most often cook whenever there’s a PCV get-together).

U is for: USB modems (which allow you to get online almost anywhere) and Uvita (cheap Argentinean boxed wine that is somehow available here).

V is for: vary (rice, the staple food), vanilla, voandalana (souvenirs; literally translates to ‘fruit of the road’), vazaha (white foreigner—a word that all of us hate being called because it usually means tourist/stranger, which we’re not), voalavo (rats, which are in many houses, and are the reason that I have cats).

W is for: water (something we have to fetch from a pump every day), weaving (a common handicraft), Wi-Fi (a rare luxury), and worms (something most of us contract at some point during our service).

X is for: Xavier, the Peace Corps education program director.... the other programming staff are Stan, Lucie, Hoby, Jemima, Lova, and Tovo.

Y is for: yaourt (yogurt—locally made and so good!)

Z is for: zaza kely (little kids, our constant companions and dedicated fan club), zandry (younger sibling and also used to describe newer volunteers), and zoky (older sibling, or volunteers who’ve been here the longest).

GLOW, baby, GLOW

Even before I became a Peace Corps volunteer, I had heard about and seen pictures of volunteers conducting GLOW camps. Along with world map painting, it’s a PC project that has reverberated throughout all the countries in which Peace Corps places volunteers, from Albania to Zambia. GLOW (yet another Peace Corps acronym) stands for “Girls Leading Our World”, and is a PC-designed secondary project that creates a temporary summer camp, usually about a week long, for volunteers to bring girls from their communities to spend time learning about a variety of subjects, but above all, to have fun, build confidence, and learn that there their lives have more potential than just being a mother and a housewife.

It’s been said, most notably by Nicholas Kristof, that a country’s level of development can often be gauged by looking at the status of its women. So it’s no wonder that for nearly every country that Peace Corps serves in (and which is therefore identified as ‘developing’), the majority of female citizens do not enjoy a high level of opportunity. In Madagascar, for example, the traditional gender role of a woman as a childbearer/childcarer/cook/homekeeper is still very much alive. Far too many girls get pregnant before they finish lycee (high school), and then they drop out to have the baby and get married, and their life falls into the pattern that has persisted for centuries. And then far too often, that woman’s daughter will grow up, and perhaps the family doesn’t have enough money to send her to high school (only the brother), so she gets pregnant and the cycle repeats itself all over again. So part of the goal of GLOW camps is to at least show girls that their lives are worth just as much as men’s; that they are important, they are strong, they are intelligent, and that they can make choices that will help them have the life that they want.

I’d known that I’d wanted to participate in a camp for some time, and one reason was that I don’t feel like I have very much opportunity to work with kids in my town, since my work is either office-based, or field-based working with farmers. More than anything, I just really wanted to do something for the girls in my town. So I joined up with 6 other volunteers from 4 other towns in the Sud Est to hold a GLOW camp in August. We started working on it in early spring, with Teena (a third year extension volunteer in Mananjary with previous GLOW camp experience) taking the lead to write the proposal to receive the grant money from USAID. Each town was allowed to bring 4 campers, chosen from the quatrieme (about 7^th-8^th grade) level of CEG (middle school). We decided to hold the camp in Mananjary, the northernmost town in the Sud Est region [it’s technically in the Vatovavy-Fitovinany region, but for Peace Corps purposes we group it together with the Sud Est region], which is a beautiful smaller city right on the ocean with tons of great seafood and a laid-back feel. In June I held an essay contest to choose the girls, and I worked with my counterpart Francia to choose the four best entries. So then on Saturday August 17^th, Francia and I, along with our four campers Sonia, Jemicine, Emeren, and Angelina, rolled out of Vangaindrano to start the weeklong adventure. 

The first day proved to be difficult and stressful even before we got to the camp. Jeremy, the volunteer north of me in Farafangana, and I had rented a private taxi-brousse to take us and the girls to Mananjary, otherwise we’d never be able to get there in one day. We’d reserved it in advance, revisited the brousse office multiple times to confirm, and paid half of the amount up front. But when we stopped by the brousse company office in Fara that day to doublecheck that we were all set to have them drive us home on the 23^rd, they claimed that we told them we were leaving on the 21^st, and were about to refuse to drive us. They insisted that this was not a normal route for them and that they had to obtain a special permit, and that there was no way their drivers could wait for us for the whole week. Although infinitely frustrating, this situation proved to be a good exercise for the type of problem-solving that I’ve had to perfect in the Peace Corps. When you work in a country like Madagascar, many, many things go wrong, and in fact few things go according to plan. When this happens you can either wring your hands and complain about it, or you can stop, breathe, and say “ok, this is messed up, so how do we work around it?” For this scenario, both Jeremy and I knew the company was lying—we’d never ever mentioned leaving on the 21^st, and we assumed that they’d made a mistake and were just trying to blame us to cover their asses—so I knew it wouldn’t do any good to quarrel with them. At that point there were about 6 people arguing—the driver, the brousse office worker, our 2 chaperones, and then Jeremy and myself. I took a deep breath, interjected, and calmly and quietly said to the woman, “ok, we know there was a mistake, but we still need to get to Mananjary. What can we do to make this happen?” That changed the tone of the conversation from an argument to a discussion on how to work together, and after many phone calls to Teena to figure out logistics, we worked out that we could use this brousse company for our intra-camp travel to and from Ranomafana. And so an hour later, we were finally back on the road. Although this was definitely not something that I wanted to be dealing with on the first day, I was proud of how I handled the situation, and that I was able to work through the argument in Malagasy, in the baking sun in the middle of a crowded taxi-brousse station, with 8 teenage girls impatiently waiting for us.

After picking up another PCV, Nick, and his campers in Ambalona, we finally arrived in Mananjary just as the sun was going down. We set the girls up participating in a series of icebreaker games to get to know each other, and the rest of us got to work helping to get dinner ready, because we’d been tossed another challenge: the cook we’d hired did not show up with the helper she’d promised to bring, and so she was trying to cook for 35 people alone. We finally managed to get dinner on the table—spaghetti with meat sauce—and learned our first lesson of the camp: if you’re bringing girls to an unfamiliar place, it’s best to at least give them familiar food. This dinner was too American for many of them, and that combined with my heavy-handed portions (I’m a Jewish mother even though I’m not yet a mother) meant that there was plenty of uneaten pasta on their plates at the end. But no matter, we had Nick and Jeremy, with their superhuman male PCV metabolisms, volunteer to finish it off.  After we announced this to the girls, Nick and Jeremy soon found themselves being delivered plate after plate of half-eaten pasta. And to their credit, they finished nearly all of it.

Nick and Jeremy, the pasta champs.

 After announcing the chores chart (some girls were on dish duty, while others were on cleaning and water duty), we set up the sleeping area for the girls in one of the classrooms of the CEG where they camp was being held. How do you make a sleeping area in a classroom? You MacGyver it by rigging up mosquito nets onto stacked desks, and place straw mats underneath each one. Credit goes to Jeremy and Nick for coming up with this plan.

My chief responsibilities for the camp were to conduct one session for the campers, and also to work with Jeremy to handle all things water and sanitation. This meant filling up the water filters, and keeping a constantly-stocked handwashing station for the girls to use before every meal (and thereby reinforcing the lesson that Teena taught during her health and hygiene session.) For my actual session, I decided that I wanted to teach something about money and budgeting, since I am a business volunteer. One of the main problems that I see here is that people are not used to saving money, and don’t often think long-term when it comes to planned or unplanned expenses. So this creates a problem in my area especially, when clove farmers receive a sudden windfall from their yearly harvest, and are so overwhelmed by finally having money that they spend it on things like a TV, or clothes, or alcohol, without considering that they should be saving it for the lean times. To teach this, I designed a game that was essentially a very scaled-down version of Monopoly: each girl pretended that she was 30 years old, working in an office, and was married with one school age child. After starting off with giving each girl a small amount of money as ‘savings’ to start, we then went around in a circle, and for each turn, the girl received a ‘weekly’ salary, but had to ‘spend’ (i.e. give back to me) 2/3 of it for essentials such as food, phone credit, and charcoal for cooking. Next she had the option to buy a ‘want’ item—such as new clothes, a vacation, a TV, a fancy phone, etc. But then at the end, she had to pick a card that listed a scenario in which she would have to spend money, such as buying medicine, or needing to pay for home repairs, and if she didn’t have enough money for that, she’d be out of the game. The goal was to try and teach the girls that they have to be prepared for unforeseen expenses, and even if they may technically have the money to buy a luxury item such as a TV, they need to plan for the future and make sure they have money set aside for the inevitable things in life that cost money.

Working with Ode to prepare my session. (Note: Sonia, one of my campers, had braided my hair the day before the camp. It was beautifully done and very intricate, but I look pretty awful in braids. To be considerate, I kept the braids in for a few days but I wore it half-covered with a scarf .)

Mine was one of the first sessions of the camp, and I was really nervous for how it was going to go. I spent some time preparing for it with my counterpart Francia, and Jeremy’s counterpart Ode, who is fluent in English, helped me translate some key concepts that were tricky to express in Malagasy. Thanks to their help, the session went well, and the girls had fun pretending to ‘spend’ money and be able to ‘buy’ things. Although none of them took the bait and bought the big-ticket items like a motorcycle, the act of taking away part of their (fake) money each turn to pay for something mundane (but essential) like taxi-brousse frais or a gift for a family member’s wedding reinforced the concept that life costs money, and so you have to be prepared for it by planning and saving wisely.

Me during my session, with my co-worker Francia to my right.

That night it was my turn in the rotation to sleep in the CEG with the girls and the chaperones, so I bunked down with another volunteer amidst the twittering and chattering of 20 pre-teen/teenage girls. Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of sleep, especially because we had a very early morning wake-up call the next day: we were heading to Ranomafana! Ranomafana is a beautiful national park and eco-tourist attraction about a 4 hour drive inland from Mananjary. It’s one of Madagascar’s conservation success stories, and is a living, breathing example of how when tourism is developed responsibly, income generation and wildlife conservation can go hand in hand. The girls were really excited to visit (a first time for most of them), and so after loading up in the taxi-brousses, we made our way through the twisting rainforest roads. Our first stop in Ranomafana was the arboretum, which is where my fellow Peace Corps volunteer Jesse works. Jesse met us there and helped with our programming for the girls, which included a nutrition session (conducted by Nick) and an arboretum scavenger hunt to help the girls learn about the different types of plants and trees in Madagascar. Then we headed to the CEG, which Jesse had helped arrange as a place for us to sleep and eat for the 2 nights of our visit.

The group at the Ranomafana arboretum.

The next day, we were scheduled to take a guided hike of the rainforest (and hopefully get to spot lots of lemurs and chameleons), but we woke up to a drizzly, gray day, so we postponed the hike to the afternoon, and instead started the day at the Centre ValBio, which is a beautiful research facility and is Jesse’s other workplace. The girls did a session on study skills with Jeremy and Ode, and then they got to enjoy a special treat enjoyed by Jesse: some time to play around with laptop computers. Most of these girls have never really even seen a computer, let alone been able to use one, so this was a new and exciting experience. The computers were One Laptop Per Child laptops, also known as the $100 laptop, and are very durable and easy to use; Jesse had secured them from a Canadian NGO last year for use in his town. They have a proprietary operating system which is designed to be intuitive for kids, and sure enough, the girls picked up how to use them in a heartbeat, and were quickly drawing pictures, taking photos, typing messages, and even playing around with the computer-to-computer chat. They all had a blast and hated to leave, but we had to get them back for lunch. After lunch, we piled back into the buses and drove up the mountain to the park entrance for our forest hike. Although the animals are more active in the mornings, we nevertheless did get to see some bamboo lemurs, which was the first time I’d seen that type of lemur, and perhaps the first time ever seeing a lemur for many of the girls. Our park tour guide was excellent, and you could sense his pride in showing these girls the forest. One of the most poignant things he said was when he talked about how foreign tourists spend thousands of dollars to come here to see the wildlife, and so the girls should feel proud to be Malagasy and call this country home.

Me showing some of the girls how to use a laptop. Pardon my tired, haggard appearance... it was a sleepless week.

I love the look of pure joy on Sonia's face here.

And Emeren's face of happiness, too!

The next day, we gave the girls the option to stay in town and visit the natural hot water pool in town (Ranomafana means “hot water”, and is so named after the local hot springs), or to go back to Mananjary and visit the beach. About ¾ of the girls preferred to visit the hot springs, so I stayed behind with them and one of our hired taxi-brousses, while the other volunteers went back to Mananjary with the other campers. Seeing the joy in the girls’ faces as they splashed around made me extremely happy: between schoolwork and helping out around the house, these girls barely get a chance to relax, let alone visit a place like Ranomafana. I felt extremely fortunate and glad that I was able to give them this small chance to take a trip and just have fun.

The Vangaindrano girls at Ranomafana! From left: Jemicine, Sonia, Emeren, me (who else sticks out this much?), Francia, and Angelina)

After returning to Mananjary for lunch, more sessions, and then dinner, we set up a special treat for the girls: a campfire with s’mores. It doesn’t get much more typical American summer camp than that! After the s’mores, the bonfire evolved into a dance party where they’d call someone into the center to dance as everybody clapped and cheered. Inevitably, all of us PCVs got called into dance quite often, but I gamely made a fool out of myself dancing, and had fun doing it.

Jeremy instructing on s'more creation.

Me and my campers in our GLOW camp t-shirts!

The next day was our final day of camp, and although the girls wanted the camp to go longer, all of us PCVs and chaperones were ready for it to end: with all the planning, preparation, and daily work, it had been an exhausting experience! We finished off the camp with a few more sessions and a career panel where successful Malagasy women spoke to the campers about their education and career paths. Then we distributed camp t-shirts to all the girls and took some photos, before heading over to a nearby dance club (at 3pm, mind you) for our special end-of-camp party, expertly arranged by Nick. The girls got a chance to dance with the club all to themselves, plus enjoy soda and tsaky-tsaky (fried snacks such as samosas and french fries), and once again, they didn’t want to leave.

The next day we all had early-morning wake up calls to get everything and everyone packed up and ready to go home. Despite our brousse debacle the week before, the transportation home ended up being fine, and our driver showed up at 8AM for the long trip back to Vangaindrano (but first, Ambalona to drop off Nick and his girls, then Farafangana for Jeremy and his crew.) It was a long, long trip back home, and Francia, Emeren, Jemicine, Angelia, Sonia, and I were all ecstatic once we finally pulled into Vangaindrano at around 6pm. What struck me was that when we had all left Vangaindrano a week ago, the girls were shy, quiet, and not talking much. But when we rolled back into town, we were all joyful and exuberant, blasting Rihanna and dancing and singing along together. It may not have been much, but my small effort to have a little impact on these girls’ lives already seemed to have brought out their confidence and happiness. And for that, I came home elated.