Little sky, lots of mud

I’ve decided that July and August in Madagascar are akin to April and May in America—they’re our “spring”. Last month, I started seeing scores of baby chicks toddling around, ducklings learning how to waddle, and zebu calves carefully following their mothers on spindly little legs. July was when the “other” annual rainy season occurred—in which it rains but the weather is cool-- and all the roads turned to muck. Navigating the mud pit of the Vangaindrano market made me extremely glad that I brought a pair of rubber boots. The grand vacances (school vacation similar to our summer vacation in America) began at the end of July, and will last until early October. While the majority of students are enjoying their time off, the terminale (senior year) students at the lycee (high school) are busy studying to take the baccalaureate exam, which is being held on Monday. Those who aren’t studying have taken to the sports field, as the vacation soccer leagues have started up. When I work in the Coldis office, the sounds of the referee whistle and kids cheering at the terrain a few hundred meters away are my ever-present audio backdrop.

The vacation also means that there’s an influx of new people in my town who have come to spend their break here, usually visiting relatives. This can be extremely irritating, because all these visitors haven’t seen me before, and so I have to be subject to the kind of staring and ‘eoooooo vazaha!’ comments that I got when I first arrived here. But, it can also be a nice chance to meet some new people, which is the case with my neighbors’ family members who have come to visit. Sweet little Sophie, from Tamatave, is visiting my neighbor Marcelline along with her dad, who has come to buy cloves and coffee. She already knows my name and loves to come over and visit. And my other neighbor’s daughter (whose name I still don’t know), visiting from Ranomena, is so kind and lovely. Her two sons give me big toothy smiles whenever I wave and say hello, and they’ve become star junior gardeners helping me with my yardwork and gardening projects.

For me, however, it isn’t vacation time—it’s the busiest I have ever been during my Peace Corps service. My work on the SSI project is in full swing, and I’ve accomplished more on it in the last 2 months than I did in the previous eight. In mid-July I organized a training on sustainable clove cultivation and harvest for myself and four Coldis co-workers. The training was held in Manakara and was conducted by Christophe, an agriculture technician with MBG (and also my friend Leo’s counterpart). After receiving that training, we were able to set up the trainings with the actual farmers, so last week the five of us spent 4 days in the countryside towns of Masianaka, Matanga, and Manambondro. We trained a total of 58 farmers, most of whom were presidents of their farmer groups. (Coldis organizes their farmers into collectives with 10 farmers in each.) And despite the remote locations, I also MacGyver-baked a gingerbread cake for each of the trainings to share with the farmers, because most of them have never even tasted food with cloves before. I explained that it was a traditional Christmas cookie (or cake) in America, but that all the spices for it are actually grown in Madagascar: cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. I think it was a nice addition to the training, and judging by the lack of crumbs left in the pan, I’m pretty sure the farmers enjoyed it.

Farmers in Masianaka enjoying some cake after the training.

Each of the farmers received booklets about sustainable clove farming (which I sweated and stressed over for months, but finally finished compiling at the end of July), and they are supposed to share these guides with their other farmers and train them on what they learned. Farmers that receive the training are then eligible to receive free zana-kazo jirofo (young clove trees) to plant, of which we are supposed to distribute 15,000 each year. Recently I realized that simply finding 15,000 clove trees to buy would be a project in and of itself... not to mention getting them out to these farmers. So that’s my next hurdle.

The product of my blood, sweat, and tears.

The last time I was out in this area was when I visited Manambondro around July 1^st to meet the farmers there and give them an introduction to the SSI project, and already then the clove trees were beginning to blossom. But what a difference a month makes: driving around these countryside roads, in an area which is essentially “clove central”, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of trees just exploding with buds. It’s also quite different from a year ago, because cloves are an every-other-year crop—meaning that one year they’ll be abundant, while the next year, the harvest will be minimal. So because 2012 was a low year, 2013 should be an abundant harvest. We passed by kids harvesting the cloves using ingenious homemade bamboo ladders; we also passed by kids harvesting them the quicker but extremely destructive way, by just cutting off the branches. Teaching the farmers why this is not a good long-term harvest strategy (because it reduces the number of cloves the following year) is one of the tenets of the sustainability training we’re giving.

Introducing the project to the farmers in Matanga. We held the training at the local elementary school.

Although Coldis encourages their farmers to leave the cloves on the tree as long as possible to let them grow to maximum  size (and thus be able to sell them for the best price), many other farmers are already going ahead and harvesting their trees, probably because they’re in serious need of the money. Right now cloves are selling for about 14,000 Ariary a kilo—approximately $7, which is a lifeline for a hungry family. But, the price per kilo should go up later in the buying season, so many farmers are also holding on to their cloves as long as they can. The roads in the southeast are now lined with tsihy (woven straw mats) spread with cloves drying in the sun. The ‘raw’ buds are pale green with pink tips, but after three days in the hot Madagascar sun, they’ll dry to a rich brown color. Driving or biking past these mats of cloves tickles your nose with their sweet and spicy aroma.

Scheduling and conducting these training sessions was one of the biggest accomplishments of my Peace Corps service, and something that I was extremely relieved to have behind me (although I now know we’ll have to schedule more.) After our final session was over, I drove back to Vangaindrano with my coworkers feeling relieved and content, and thrilled to be getting back to my house after four days without electricity or cell phone reception. My coworker Titus drove us in his car for these trainings, and on the way back we gave a ride to a local Manambondro woman who was going to Vangaindrano for the week. Funnily enough, her name turned out to be Emilie—the first namesake I’d met in Madagascar, which is surprising to me given how many people here have French names.  As we navigated the muddiest part of the road leading out of Manambondro (during which we got stuck 3 times), we passed through an area called Kidilanitra where a lot of the Manambondro farmers live. In the dialect of Malagasy spoken in my area, kidy mean “little”, and lanitra means “sky”, so we asked Emilie why it was named this. She said that it’s because there are so many trees there that when you look up, the sky is small. Looking out the window at the rows and rows of pink-tipped clove trees, ravinala palms with their leaves spread like an open hand, banana trees with their purple-wrapped bunches of fruit hanging like a necklace, and majestic two-stories-tall lychee and mango trees, I thought about how much I love being surrounded by all of this green. And it suddenly hit me that with only about 8 months left in my service, I want to soak it all in as much as possible. So until April, I’m trying to enjoy and explore as much of my area as possible. I’ve lived here long enough that sometimes I forget what a special and beautiful country Madagascar is, and as much as I love New York, when I’m back there I know I’ll be pining for afternoons spent in my backyard hammock, lazily reading while a tropical breeze sweeps over me and into the rice fields below. If I could bottle that feeling, I would.

Still here!

Recently I looked at my blog and was shocked to realize that it’s been about 3 months since I last posted. I’ve tried to figure out why that is, and the only thing that comes to mind is that because I’ve now been here almost 17 months, and can count down the remainder of my service in months instead of years, I don’t feel as though I have as much to write about! I guess that because I’m pretty settled into the realities of life here, things are not quite so noteworthy-- at least in my eyes.

Now that I am sitting down to write something in order to get this blog up to date, I find myself at once having both everything and nothing to say. When I first think about it, I feel like nothing really has happened lately. But in fact, the past 3 months have been busier than ever. Right after the malaria event that I last posted about, I left site for 5 weeks, which I spent in South Africa, Botswana and Zambia (to take the GMAT exam and then have a vacation with my family), then in Tana for my Mid-Service Conference and to take care of some medical appointments. Then when I returned to site the first week of June, I jumped back into my main work project, as well as worked on preparations for the GLOW (girl’s leadership) camp that I am putting together with some other volunteers in the region. I also worked with my language tutor to develop a listing of words in the Antesaka dialect of Malagasy (the dialect spoken in my area) for inclusion in a new edition of the Malagasy-English dictionary. At the end of June, I went up to Fianar for a small Peace Corps training and to meet with my boss at the Coldis office there, then I returned south for our thrice-yearly regional volunteer meeting (VAC; it’s a boring acronym that I won’t waste your time with), which for the Sud Est was held in Sandrohy, a neighboring town of my fellow volunteer Nick’s site. We chose Sandrohy because our previous 3 regional gatherings had been held in bigger towns, and so for this one, we decided that we wanted some outdoorsy fun. Nick and Rory, our Sud Est regional leader, put together an amazing weekend of camping and hiking in the gorgeous mountains surrounding Sandrohy. We all arrived at Nick’s site on a Friday, biked 14km into the countryside where we had lunch and chilled out at a waterfall, then biked another 2km further into the countryside, imbibed some fresh coconut water, and hiked an hour through rice fields and up into the mountains to our camp site, which was breathtakingly situated on the top of a mountain with 360-degree views. (The sunrises were epic.) We camped for two nights, enjoyed lots of s’mores and ate rice and beans way more than we wanted to, and then on Sunday hiked back down the mountain, which, because it had rained the previous night, was muddy enough to make me fall slam-down on my tailbone no less than 5 times. Even though I was in pain, I still had to bike back, so I did some awkward yoga and stretching in Nick’s friend’s house, then hopped on my bike for the 16km back to Nick’s house. And then 17 of us squeezed into a taxi-brousse (with 14 bikes strapped to the top) back to Manakara, which ended up being the most entertaining brousse ride I’ve ever had.

Since getting back to site after VAC, I’ve been a busy bee working on my SSI (Sustainable Spices Initiative) project for Coldis, and biking a ton in order to get back in shape and lose the weight I put on indulging in all the good food in South Africa. The first week of July, I traveled 58km south to Manambondro to introduce the SSI project to the clove farmers there, which was the last of 3 countryside towns that I had to visit. Then I biked to Matanga (Leo’s site) to work with his counterpart on the SSI project, and also fit in an amazing 4^th of July party that included an indescribably good Southern feast of pulled pork, sweet potatoes, and pseudo-collard greens, plus a dance party featuring lots of Robyn songs and a techno remix of “America the Beautiful”. I’ve never felt so patriotic. Then, after a few days at home I left site once again to go to Manakara for the training on sustainable clove farming that I’ve been putting together, then went 160km further north (100km of it by bike!) to Mananjary for a GLOW camp meeting that weekend. After the camp meeting I got back to site, finished writing the training guide for the clove farmers, then returned to Manakara this past weekend for a going away party for my fellow volunteer Meghan, who has finished her service and is about to head home to America. Just when I think I’m going to have a quiet few months at site, all of a sudden I’m busier than ever.

Now that I’ve been at site for more than a year, I’m watching the months tick away and comparing things to how they were in 2012, when I was brand new to Vangaindrano and still figuring out how to exist here. I spent pretty much my entire first month suffering from shock (at the drastic change in living conditions from the training center) and anxiety (over the terrible rat problem in my house). It took me a full 3 months to really feel tamana (settled and at-home) in my house, and because I just didn’t feel comfortable in my town or my home, I spent a significant amount of time socializing with other volunteers in Farafangana, which is my banking town. Now, by contrast, I am hesitant to spend too many weekends away from site. As much as I enjoy socializing, I am extremely comfortable where I live, and I no longer feel like I have to escape. I have my neighborhood kids who come over to draw pictures and color, my little garden that is a never-ending project, my very comfortable backyard hammock that is a perfect reading spot, and still plenty of areas in town that I want to spend more time exploring on my bike. I’ve also become much more integrated with people in my community, which is probably the most rewarding aspect of my Peace Corps service to date. Last year on Vingt-Six (June 26; the Malagasy Independence Day), I was still fairly new to site, and was bewildered about what to do with myself, so I sort of wandered around town trying to figure out how to celebrate the holiday. But by contrast, for this year’s Vingt-Six, I wasn’t worried about what to do. I went to visit my neighbors, then went to watch the town parade with some of their kids, before inviting them over to my house to drink juice and paint our nails. (I also had an unfortunate incident where I was served a plate of potato salad by my neighbor that was covered in raw egg, and I was pretty much forced to eat it. My GI system was not especially pleased about that.) Still, even though I’m finding myself much more integrated and comfortable here than I was a year ago, some things haven’t changed. I still relish being able to close my door at the end of the day and inhabit my own little world until bedtime, free from inquisitive kids and prying neighbors who always ask where I am going, what I am doing, what did I buy at the market. And even though I am accustomed to living without western luxuries, I am still longing for the day when I will once again own a refrigerator and be able to take a hot shower.

So now here I am, with just over 8 months left in my Peace Corps service. I’m beginning to give away unneeded clothing and household items to neighbors and new volunteers, and I’m continually patching my two ratty pairs of jeans because I can’t justify buying a new pair this late in my service. Since I’ve already been here for 17 months, being here for 8 more doesn’t seem like long. But lately when I talk to friends and family, I’m hearing reactions along the lines of “you’re STILL there?”... or, “you don’t come home until May 2014? But that’s still so far away!” As I wrote about in a previous post, time passes in the Peace Corps both at a snail’s pace and at warp speed. You could be bemoaning the fact that you still have over a year left, and then all of a sudden you get busy with a project and realize that you only have a few months left. For me, the next 8 months will undoubtedly go quickly, but not until I get through the months of August, September, and October, which will be chock-full of work on my primary and secondary projects. After that, with 2014 in close range, it will really start to feel like the end.

Being in my final 1/3^rd of service has made me understand why so many PCVs extend their service for the optional third year, because I’m just now beginning to experience the fear of returning to America after working so hard to integrate and establish a life in Madagascar. For the longest time I kept thinking that I couldn’t wait to get back to my life in the US.  But just recently I had a lightbulb moment when I realized that actually, I don’t have that life anymore. I gave up my apartment and left my job, and NYC will probably be so changed by the time I get back that I’ll feel like a newcomer. Friends have moved away, and it seems like everyone I know is moving in with a significant other/getting engaged/getting married/having babies. And where does that leave me? I, too, want to grow and move further into adulthood, but I can’t—yet. I feel slightly stifled and stunted, knowing that I need to make some serious life adjustments when I get back, but unable to do anything about it from here. It’s bizarre and scary to think that I have no idea where I will be living or what I will be doing a year from now.  I’m still planning to apply to business schools, but what if I don’t get into a good school, or get enough financial aid to be able to afford it? And if I decide to go back to work instead after Peace Corps, how on earth can I look for a job all the way from Madagascar? As someone who has always thrived on looking forward and planning ahead, it’s extremely scary to legitimately have no idea where I will be this time next year.

Right now, the best thing that I can do is continue focusing on my work projects to make sure that I finish my service feeling fulfilled. I know that if I think too much about life-after-Peace Corps, I’ll go a little bit crazy, so I’m trying to balance my need to plan and prepare with the necessity of focusing on my work here and living in the present. Luckily, I have enough work projects and travel plans to keep me busy, and I’m sure that by the time my COS conference rolls around, I’ll be thinking “but I need more time! I’m not ready to leave!”