The Peace Corps Madagascar Diet: Sud-Est version

This morning I was eating breakfast and thinking about what my favorite foods are. Mangoes, avocadoes, cherries, lobster, and chocolate all probably take the top spot. And lucky me, I live in a region that produces 4 out of 5 of those things! Still, it’s been a learning curve figuring out how to eat here, and how to cook for myself without refrigeration and running water. You all know that I love to cook, and back at home I’d think nothing of cooking everything single meal for myself. But it’s different doing that here, without having a refrigerator to rely on (for storing ingredients/leftovers), or running water, or lots of food options, or frankly, the money required to be an adventurous cook. We have tons of great local fruit in my area, so my fruit intake is excellent: right now my town is overflowing with oranges, bananas, pineapples, jackfruit, something called sakoa that I’d never seen before, my new favorite fruit pocanelle, which literally tastes like you’re eating vanilla ice cream, and soon there will be mangoes and lychees!. But I need to work harder to get greens in my diet, because I’ve been a little trepidatious about cooking the greens I’ve seen in the market. I’m also in an area with tons of great fish, but I haven’t cooked any of it yet. I will fully admit that I’m kind of intimidated by cooking fish here, since I don’t yet know how to deal with gutting/filleting a whole fish (there’s no such thing as a pre-cut, deboned salmon fillet!) But I’m hoping a fellow volunteer who lives nearby will help teach me. Also, it is soon to be lobster (langouste) season here, so I’m definitely going to be buying a lot of those!

There is a big market area in my town and every day, I can reliably get fruit, meat, eggs, grains/beans, vegetables, plus basic grocery items at any of the epiceries. However, Monday is the big actual market day in my town, and that’s when I can get good bread, and a better variety of produce. The things that I can always find—tomatoes, onions, green beans, greens, carrots, potatoes—I’m pretty sure I’ll get sick of very soon, so I’ve got to start being a little more adventurous. I was getting a little worried about my calcium intake, but then I realized that I can find really good yogurt in my town on my way to work: there is a mpivarotra yaourt who walks around the taxi-brousse station with a cooler, and sells really yummy little cups of yogurt for 500 Ariary (about 25 cents). You have to eat it on the spot because they re-use the containers, but it only takes a few minutes to eat. It’s always plain flavor, but has just a little bit of sweetness—really good.

Things that I am craving that are definitely not available here: New York pizza/bagels with cream cheese/black & white cookies (obviously), Chinese takeout (sigh), butter (you can only find margarine, which is weird since you’d think that a former French colony would have butter), cherries (double sigh), cookies and other baked goods (no one has an oven), real cheese other than La Vache Qui Rit (there’s really only 1 or 2 kinds of Malagasy cheese, and they’re only in Antsirabe, the dairy region), bacon (also strange, because there is plenty of pork here), ice cream (not many freezers here), almond milk/coconut milk, iced coffee, good wine, PEANUT BUTTER, almonds and other nuts, oatmeal…. See my updated wish list tab if you feel like sending me anything! J

For illustrative purposes, here’s what I ate one day last week:

Breakfast: coffee, 4 small bananas, half a small mofo de pain (sort of like a baguette).

Lunch: I splurged and went to a hotely (café) for lunch and had chicken with rice. That cost 3000 Ariary ($1.50), which doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’m trying to stick to a tight budget in order to save money for buying furniture as well as a vacation in-country in August, so I am trying to not spend more than 2000 Ariary a day on food.

Dinner: I made pasta with sauteed carrots, green beans, and tomatoes, and for dessert I had a grapefruit that my friend Marcelin gave me from the tree in his backyard.  As you can imagine, my weight has gone down considerably, which would be awesome except none of my clothes seem to fit anymore, especially since they’re all stretched out from handwashing anyway! It’s also fairly ironic that I’m now skinny enough to wear all the cute clothes I wanted to wear in New York, but being a Peace Corps volunteer, my wardrobe is t-shirts, tank tops, jeans, and shorts.

A few Mondays ago was a slightly more gluttonous day, perhaps because it was a national fety (Pentecost) and I was feeling celebratory, or maybe because I am finally starting to get the hang of how to cook for and feed myself here. I also walked all over town, for about an hour and a half total, though, so I figured that I probably could have used the extra calories:

Breakfast: 5 mofo balls (fried dough, each one about the size of a golf ball); coffee to drink

Lunch: fried fish with rice and greens at a hotely (splurged and went out because a friend was visiting me!); ranon’ampongo to drink (a hot tea-like beverage made from boiling the burnt rice at the bottom of the rice pot. This sounds weird but I’ve gotten to like the taste, and I drink it because it comes free with every meal at a hotely. Hydration is key, and I’ll take anything that’s free!)

Snack: a Rice Krispie treat that my mom sent me in a care package—I’d been saving it for a month!

Dinner: super amazing sandwich that I made on mofo de pain, with one whole mashed avocado, tomato, lettuce, and a fried egg; for dessert I had 1 small banana and 1 sakoa (looks like a small mango, tastes like a cross between an orange and a mango—delicious!)

Finally, you may be wondering to yourself now, how exactly does she cook, then? Although almost every Malagasy person cooks over an open fire, or uses a fatana-charbon to cook over charcoal, Peace Corps has us buy portable gas stoves that are rigged up to a gas tank. It’s expensive to buy the gas, but it’s better from a health perspective, because the particulate matter that’s inhaled from charcoal causes innumerable respiratory health problems. Also, environmentally, the production of charcoal is incredibly harmful, because it requires lots of trees to be cut down and burned. Some other PC volunteers in Mada are working on “green” charcoal production, which is made from agricultural waste products, but it hasn’t really caught on yet.

“Oh the sweetest winds they blow across the south”

(Lyric from ‘Oh My Sweet Carolina’ by Ryan Adams, which my friend James (http://frommemphistomadagascar.blogspot.com) and I sang at the PST talent show. I’ll always think of him and Peace Corps whenever I hear that song from now on, and although the song is about the American south, this lyric seems to be fitting as I find myself living in the southern part of Madagascar.)

I’m sitting here writing this at my kitchen table, cup of coffee next to me, and I’m thinking to myself that this is not so very different from how things might be in my apartment back in New York. Of course, the cup of coffee would probably be a latte from Starbucks that I picked up post-morning spin class, instead of mixed from a Starbucks Via packet. And instead of typing this up on Word in order to copy and paste it into Blogger once I can use an internet stick, I’d be buzzing around the internet, making good use of my home wi-fi that now seems like such an unfathomable luxury.

I’ve now been living at my permanent site, Vangaindrano, for almost 4 weeks. I am not ashamed to say that surviving my first week at site was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I am also not too proud to say that I cried every single day, sometimes twice a day, during that first week. I was overwhelmed by the quick and violent change of lifestyle, consumed by anxiety and insomnia over the rat infestation in my new home, and heartbroken for the absence of all the friends I’d made during training, most of whom are living laughably far away from me, all across Madagascar. I also had to contend with the reality of being the only vazaha (white person) in a town of 50,000 people, and the resulting attention (catcalls, laughter, staring, and cries of “bonjour vazaha!” due to the assumption that I’m French) that affords me. While many of my friends are replacing volunteers who just finished their service, and/or living in towns where there’s already a volunteer from another sector, I am the first volunteer here, so most people in my town have no idea what Peace Corps is, and don’t yet understand that I will be here for 2 years, living (essentially) at their level, cooking my own food, shopping in the market, doing my own laundry, and fetching my own water. My town has a few French aid workers that pass through every so often in their white 4x4s, but the difference is that they come for a week or two, stay in a hotel, and eat at a restaurant for all their meals. So it’s difficult for people to understand that even though I’m a vazaha, I’m a different one. I still get asked for money constantly, mostly by old women and children (some have sought me out at home because they ask around where the vazaha lives), and I have to tell them “vazaha iaho, fa tsy manam’bola” (yes I’m a vazaha, but I don’t have money.) But the fact that I can say that—speaking Malagasy—is the number one thing that sets me apart. For people who talk to me for the first time, it absolutely blows their mind that I am a white person speaking Malagasy, because Peace Corps volunteers are essentially the only vazahas who do—and so if they’ve never encountered a PCV in Madasgascar, this is a huge novelty for people.  An older gentleman came to my house the first week, along with his adorable granddaughter, because he’d heard there was a vazaha living there. When I started speaking Malagasy, he was blown away. “Incroyable”, he exclaimed in French.

My Malagasy is still pretty basic, and at first I could barely understand people because the dialect spoken here is so different. I’m getting better, but there are still two little girls who come over to my house every day, and I literally cannot understand a single thing they say to me. When I shake my head and say “tsy mahfantatra, azafady” (sorry, I don’t understand), then they go on to say the same thing over, but at the same time, which makes it even more impossible to understand what they are saying! When you’re not very proficient in a language but living in a country where it’s spoken, it’s incredibly difficult not being able to express yourself. For me, it’s even more difficult knowing that I can express myself the way I want to in French, but that I really shouldn’t speak it. A few men in the TIAVO office asked me, once they found out I speak some French, if I preferred for them to speak to me in French. But I shared a knowing look with my counterpart, Soanambiny, and we both said that even though I speak French, I ought to be practicing and honing my Malagasy. Some people here speak French, but not everyone, and when I work with farmers and people in the countryside, I need to be prepared to speak Malagasy. French is still the language of business, and it is used on documents in the office, so I’ll continue to keep practicing it a little bit. But my #1 goal for the first 3 months at my site is to get mahay (skilled/proficient) at Malagasy.

Since my first week, things have improved considerably on how people in town react to me and greet me. The children in my neighborhood, Ampasy, have finally stopped saying “bonjour vazaha”, and now say “akory aby”. Sometimes they still tack on “vazaha”, but I’m just happy to not be spoken to in French. I’ve been talking to people and reminding them of my name, telling them that I’m actually an American, and that I’ll be living and working here for two years. The next assumption that people make is that I’m an English teacher, so then I have to explain that I’m an economic development volunteer and will be working with TIAVO, the local microfinance institution, and COLDIS, its subsidiary which works with spice farmers to export their products. Slowly, people are beginning to understand and accept me, which has made all the difference in my comfort level here at site. Some of my happiest moments were the first time someone called me by my name (instead of vazaha) in my neighborhood, and when a little girl named Claudia, who lives near me, corrected all the other kids and reminded them that I’m American, not French.

My town, as described above, is big, with about 50,000 people, and is quite large and spread out. My neighborhood, Ampasy, is on the far edge of Vangaindrano and is basically the last part before the town gives way to rivers and tanam-bary (rice fields), opening up and becoming the countryside. It is incredibly beautiful here, with gorgeous fields and valleys all crowned with banana and palm trees. It’s about a 10-12k bike ride to the beach, which I need to explore some weekend. My house is situated in a nice spot, with jackfruit and avocado trees in the back, and lychee and mango trees in the front (I can’t wait for these to bear fruit). I have 2 rooms on the left side of a house that’s split into 3 aisles: I use the front room as a kitchen/living area, and the back room as a bedroom. It’s nice and breezy when I have all the doors and windows open, and it’s set back in the shade of some trees, so I have some protection from the sun. The problem is that when I have all the doors/windows open, I don’t get any privacy, because I’m on the first floor. And I can’t have them open at night because of bugs, and for safety reasons as well. This is killing me, because one of my favorite things in life is falling asleep with summer breezes coming through open windows, especially on super hot nights.  At this point my house is pretty sad because all I have for furniture is a bed, a small table for my cookstove, and (as of Sunday) a table and 2 chairs.  I’m trying to save money to get a food prep table and an armoire for my clothes, and then when a current volunteer in my banking town finishes his service in July, I’m going to get his bookshelf and desk. I will take some pictures once I finally get some furniture, but I won’t be able to post any pics until August when I can get wi-fi, because photos take too much bandwidth when you’re using an internet stick to get online.

My house isn’t fancy, but by Peace Corps standards it’s pretty much exactly what I need. I have a concrete floor, solid wood walls, and a metal roof, which is preferable to a house constructed of ravinala (a local tree, which isn’t the sturdiest thing when used for construction or roofing.) It’s basically like a souped-up summer camp cabin, albeit one with some animal residents: I have a friendly little gecko that climbs around the walls, and the other night I had to shoo a little frog out the front door. However, the animals that have claimed the most residence have unfortunately been rats. I knew I’d have to deal with this when coming to Africa, and I was prepared to deal with a few rats. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the veritable extended family of rats that inhabit the empty space between the ceiling of my house and the metal roof. The first night at site, I slept soundly because it was pouring rain and that was all I could hear. But the second night, I barely slept a wink because I heard the sound of perhaps 10 rats running around, fighting, and squeaking in my ceiling, all night long. I also heard them chewing through wood and envisioned them entering my house through the ceiling, which is made of cheap plywood and is full of rat-size holes that they can use as entry points. So I spent that entire terrible second night awake in bed, flashlight in hand looking nervously at the ceiling, anxiety racing and heart pounding, just counting down the minutes until dawn when I’d feel safe enough to get out of bed, knowing the rats would be asleep finally. My new friend Yu Sun, a health volunteer who lives 20k from my town, came to visit me that day, and I nearly collapsed in tears when she showed up. She slept over that night, after a day spent helping me acclimate to my town and shop in the market, and her confirmation that it was the loudest rat problem she’d ever heard helped allay some of my concerns that I was overreacting. As I mentioned, I can deal with one or two, but when it’s loud enough that the rats wake me up, through my earplugs and even after taking sleeping pills, that’s something I can’t deal with. After a week of this, I simply couldn’t take the anxiety and lack of sleep, and called the Peace Corps medical office for help. Dr. A helped me talk to my landlord and recommended a special kind of rat poison, available from veterinary offices, that is ideal for ceilings because it makes rats go out and seek water before they die, so they don’t expire in a building. The night after they put this poison in the ceiling, I got my first full night’s sleep in a week, and nearly cried from happiness the next morning. However, the problem has come back, and new rats seem to have taken up residence. I’m a little less anxious about it and able to deal with it a little better, but I’m asking that my landlord put the poison in again. It got so loud a few nights ago that it literally sounded like someone was breaking into my house. Also, as of last week I now have a kitten (named Maxwell), which I am hoping will help the problem. So, this will be an ongoing battle I think, but one that I am hoping to win!

Another issue I had with my house was that when I moved in, I didn’t have a kabone (outhouse) or ladosy (outdoor shower room). The PC staffer who installed me at site asked if I could be flexible for the first couple weeks while they were being built, which I agreed to be, but it was less than ideal having to walk to a neighbor’s house every time I had to use the bathroom or take a bucket bath. But last Sunday they were finished at last, and when my landlord handed me the keys, I was elated! After nearly 3 weeks of “being flexible” and going to a neighbor’s house, I now have my very own, clean, brand-new kabone and ladosy, which has made my life so much better. Funny what we consider luxury as Peace Corps volunteers.

So, I think a big part of my difficulty the first few weeks was not having a comfortable place that I could call home. This is the way I’ve always been: if I don’t have somewhere where I can come home and relax, I have a hard time dealing with other stress. Therefore, living somewhere that literally gave me anxiety attacks, coupled with the fact that I had no furniture, nowhere to shower/use the bathroom, and nothing that felt home-like, made those first couple weeks pretty difficult, because when just simply existing is stressful, you need to have a place to call home that makes you feel at ease. Even though the rats are still here, my anxiety has been better, and finally getting a kabone, ladosy, and table and chairs has made me feel a lot better. I know that in the coming months, once I have enough money to get a few more things and really get my home set up, I’ll feel much more settled, and then I’ll really be able to focus on the work I came here to do!

This post has become quite long, so I think I’m going to address the last few random observations and thoughts via bullet points. I’m also going to write a separate post about food and cooking, so stay tuned for that next.

·         Music: I think I would literally die (or at least quit) without my iPod- it is keeping me sane and happy. It’s to the point where I’m considering having a friend who is going home in November buy me a backup one and bring it back to Madagascar, just in case my existing, 4 year old iPod decides to stop working. Electronics can be finicky here because of the humidity, plus when charging things like laptops, the electrical current is not very high quality, so computers have a tendency to die. (God I hope that doesn’t happen to me!)

·         Cell phone: my cell phone is my lifeline, and I’ve been burning through a ton of phone credit. I went through 20,000 Ariary ($10) of credit in my first two weeks at site. Oh how I miss the days of unlimited plans! But I’m expecting my phone usage will go down a bit as I get settled and a bit more independent at site. However, right now, being able to talk to and text my friends all over the country has been such a lifesaver. I have no idea how the first group of volunteers in 1961 did it, with no way to communicate home or with each other except for writing letters.

·         Electricity: I didn’t have electricity in my house my first week at site, which was challenging although I know it’s how many volunteers live. My landlord had been waiting for JIRAMA, the utility company, to set it up since December. Finally he got sick of waiting and decided to just talk to a neighbor about sharing theirs, so a week into living here, he had someone string an extension cord from the neighbor’s house to mine. It’s a bit MacGyver-ed, but it’s been working, and being able to charge my phone/laptop and turn on lights has been a blessing. But, being that this is a developing country, the power is unreliable. There’s a tapaka (cut) at least three times a week, and it always seems to go out when you’re trying to cook dinner. My other neighbor got so fed up with them that he spent a lot of money to get a solar panel, which is something I’d like to explore from a business perspective.

·         Becoming  a hoarder: I literally save EVERYTHING now, from the plastic bag that my toilet paper comes in, to empty cans from tomato paste. Trash is so different here, and things that we’d throw away without a second thought in the US are often precious commodities when resources are scarce. For example, the other day I cut off these little ties on my pajama pants because they were annoying me. But instead of throwing them out, I repurposed them, and now I have a “keychain” for my friend Leo’s set of spare key, which I really needed. Also interesting from a trash perspective: there are mpivoratras (vendors) in the market who literally sell empty plastic bottles and tin cans. These are valuable because when you go buy cooking oil, you always have to bring your own bottle. People also buy the big yellow jerry cans that the bulk oil comes in to use for fetching and storing water. Since there is no “recycling” here as we know it, the market provides it.

·         Biking: Peace Corps thankfully issues every volunteer a super cool Trek mountain bike, and this has become one of my most prized possessions—I don’t know what I would do without it. My town is so big, and walking to the TIAVO office from my house takes 30 minutes, which is a pain is you’re going back and forth a few times a day. Biking has also allowed me to explore the surrounding countryside, and see a lot more of the town than if I was just walking. And, I take my bike with me on the taxi-brousse when I go to Farafangana, my banking town, so I can bike around town with the other volunteers and visit our favorite beach, about a 15-minute ride. My bike is brand-new, and I’ve now got it tricked out with a bell, rack, saddlebags, and water bottle cage.  I’m looking forward to taking it on some longer rides, such as when I go visit my friend Leo’s site, Mahtanga, which is about a 2 hour ride from my town. I have to be super careful about locking up my bike whenever I take it somewhere, and I leave it in my house overnight, because it attracts a LOT of attention. It’s definitely the nicest bike anyone here has ever seen—although tons of people here have bikes, mine is the only fancy American-style one. All the guys who run the taxi-brousses comment on it, and I get many requests to borrow it (which I never allow.) I’m careful about safety too, and always wear my PC-issued helmet. However, that didn’t prevent me from getting into my first bike accident here a couple weeks ago! I was heading to the taxi-brousse station around 7AM, when the roads are full of hordes of students walking to school. The roads in my part of town are unpaved and full of giant potholes and ditches that you have to swerve to avoid. That morning, I swerved to avoid a student, then had to turn to avoid another pothole, but when another student got in the way, I couldn’t move in time, and fell off and scraped up my knee pretty badly. Hopefully this won’t happen again now that I have a bell I can ring!

·         Water: as mentioned before, I don’t have running water at my house (like most volunteers), and my water situation is less than ideal. I pay monthly to share in a private tap that’s about a 50 meter walk from my house. The tap is only open from 6-8AM and 12-6PM, so I have to make sure to get my water then or go without, and this often means waiting for a while, because the tap is slow. The upside of this is that it’s allowed me to meet and talk to neighbors while waiting, and my banged-up knee has provided a good conversation starter. I usually fetch about 3 buckets of water per day. One I use for bathing, one I use for drinking/cooking (it goes in my water filter), and other one I use for washing dishes. It’s pretty amazing to think about how much water we use in the US, and then realize that I am able to get by with 3 buckets of water a day. I am a little nervous about my water situation, because we’ve already had one outage at the water pump, and I’ve heard that it happens more frequently during the dry season. So to hopefully combat any water shortage, I just bought a giant plastic barrel to use to collect rainwater. I need to clean it out and rig it up with a gutter from my roof, but once I have that working, my water situation will be so much easier!

"Every tear on every face tastes the same"

(Continuing with my theme of titling blog posts with lyrics from songs that I’ve been listening to a lot. This is a lyric from “You’re Not Alone” by Mavis Staples, which a great friend of mine shared with me when I was feeling homesick at the end of training. It’s a good reminder that when you’re having a hard time, there are others out there who are maybe experiencing the same thing, and can offer support. It’s a song- and an idea- that I relied upon a lot during my first week at site.)

I’ve now been at site for just under 2 weeks, and although there’s so much I want to talk about in regards to life here, I first wanted to finish a blog post I’d started about the end of pre-service training.

On May 4^th, 2012, myself and the other 28 trainees were sworn in by John Reddy, the director of Peace Corps Madagascar, and officially became volunteers! As I sat there under the tent, dressed up for the first time in 2 months, it was hard to believe that 9 weeks of training had passed by, and suddenly everything was becoming real: I am no longer in training to become a Peace Corps volunteer, I really am a volunteer now, and I was soon to be set forth on my own to figure out life at my site, a multi-day journey away from the area I’d called home for two months. The last couple days of training were a blur of packing, partying, and preparation for our moves to site. On Saturday May 5^th, the sleep-deprived lot of us said tearful goodbyes and packed off into cars, with each car headed to different regions of the country (and some going to the airport, for those volunteers living in the far reaches of Madagascar). My car headed first to Fianarantsoa for the night, then went east and continued down the southern coast to Farafangana, where myself and the other 2 volunteers in my region were welcomed heartily by 6 volunteers currently living in the area. The drive to Fara from Fianar was beautiful, with the landscape unfurling itself and transforming before my eyes: from the mountainous highlands to the palm- and banana-tree dotted landscape of the south. With the change in vegetation and increase in temperature, it almost felt like I was entering a different country. But whereas the highlands area of Madagascar sometimes doesn’t actually feel like Mada (or Africa at all), there’s no mistaking that you’re on a tropical island when you’re in the Sud Est.  As we neared closer to Farafangana, I began to feel a sense of fear and anxiety about the fact that I was leaving so many friends whom I’d become so very close to during the last month of training—how could I bear to eat dinner without their company, let alone live a 2-day taxi brousse ride away? But our boisterous welcome by the group of current Sud Est volunteers helped allay some of my fears, and although I miss my friends terribly every day, it’s a source of great comfort knowing that I have a Sud Est family here.  So thank you, Maria, Abe, James, Paul, Erika, and Yu Sun, for making us feel at home.

As I neared the end of my time at the Peace Corps training center (which we’d moved back to after 4 weeks at homestay and a 1 week technical trip), I tried to remember what it felt like arriving at the PCTC my first night in country and the foreignness I felt. It was difficult to transport myself back to that feeling, since those once unfamiliar corners were so very home-like at the end. My comfort level at being in-country went up substantially, and so did my language skills. When speaking with the other trainees, we couldn’t seem to talk in English without peppering it with Malagasy. Now, it’s hard to imagine a vocabulary that doesn’t include mahay, misy/tsy misy, tsy mety, betsaka, or misaotra betsaka (“’saot’ bets’”).

I had read advice tidbits from a lot of current and former volunteers before coming here, and one thing that echoed across all countries of service is that Peace Corps is a rollercoaster, where you’ll experience the highest highs and lowest lows. Thinking about this, I’d say my my lowest point during training was the moment during our tech trip, eating breakfast in Antsirabe, when our outdoor table was surrounded by sickly beggar children asking for food. When a piece of cheese fell from my sandwich onto the ground, and a boy lunged for it and put it in his mouth, I crumbled inside out of powerlessness and heartbreak. And possibly my highest moment was a day during the end of pre-service training when I went running through Mantasoa with two friends, exploring the beautiful river as it wound its way through the woods and towards the dam that created Lake Mantasoa. I remember running along the river, through the rice fields and basking in sunlight, and being awestruck that I was running, in Madagascar, on the most beautiful day I could remember. Of course, the rollercoaster can sometimes happen within one day, which is something I wasn’t expecting. The day before our final language exam I was at a low point, stressed out over studying and anxious about my abilities. But then a package arrived from two of my best friends back home, full of candy and magazines, and my heart leapt with gratitude from the magnitude of their gesture. Overcome with emotion, tears of happiness and relief sprang forth from my eyes.

I haven’t been experiencing too much homesickness, although a toothbrush bearing my dentist’s name and a 212 phone number has become a talisman of my former life in NYC that I can’t bear to throw away. There have been a few small Proustian moments when I am whiplashed into thinking of home, such as when the maintenance crew mowed the lawn at the PCTC, and with that distinctive scent in the air, all I could think of was summer in Vermont. Sometimes an olfactory memory will pop up unexpectedly in my head—eggs for breakfast at Shelburne Farms, the scent of the creamy grass fed yolk meeting the air, the slightly sour scent of O-Bread toast. And when refrigeration is barely existent, I long for a glass of clinking ice cubes, or just one scoop of ice cream. How bizarre to think that when I lived with my parents pre-Peace Corps, ice cream was a daily foodstuff for me, not the true luxury it is. The things I long for now are all things I took for granted back home, and perhaps that magnifies the pang of their absence.

Physically, I look slightly different after nearly 3 months in country:  I lost 20 lbs during homestay and tech trip (and then gained 10 of them back after a month of being spoiled at the PCTC, then lost 5 of them again after moving to site). I have substantially more freckles now, all over my hands and arms and face, even though I am religious about sunblock. My hair is bleached from the sun and the bottom half of it has taken on a reddish color all its own. And, I have a Z-shaped tan line on both feet from my Chacos (the unofficial footwear of Peace Corps volunteers). I’ve postered the walls of my house with pictures from back home, and how funny it is now to look at pictures of myself in New York, dressed up and wearing high heels and makeup as an everyday occurence. Sometimes I long to return to it, but for now, that era of my life is on hold.

More to come soon (I hope) on life at site… internet access is incredibly slow when I do finally get on it, so once again, I apologize for being out of touch on email.

Stomping Out Malaria: World Malaria Day in Mantasoa

April 25^th is World Malaria Day, and because Peace Corps volunteers of all sectors are heavily involved in malaria prevention efforts across Africa and Asia, our training group participated in a special event today in Mantasoa.

Last Saturday we gathered there to paint a mural on the wall of the fokontany building (kind of like a town office), which illustrated the dangers of not sleeping under a bed net. Although malaria is not as prevalent here in the chillier highlands than it is in the coastal area, there were 2 cases reported in the area last week. Many people have a false idea that they can’t get tazo moka (the Malagasy word for malaria, which translates to “mosquito fever”), so a lot of education is needed. Today’s event presented the mural to the residents and lehibes (town authorities such as a the mayor, chief of the fokontany, head of the gendarmes, etc), as well as the press. The director of the malaria initiative at USAID gave a speech about the goals for eradicating malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and in Madagascar specifically, and there was also a demonstration on how to make natural mosquito repellant using the neem plant, which grows wild all over Madagascar.

The completed mural!

Peace Corps’s malaria prevention efforts work in tandem with PMI (President’s Malaria Initiative), which is a program started by President Obama. All volunteers are supposed to incoporate malaria prevention activities into their work, and for me, it will be especially important because my site, Vangaindrano, is in an area with high malaria rates. I’m really excited to incorporate tazo moka education and neem oil training into my projects at site.  

Peace Corps Passover

            When I joined the Peace Corps, I knew I’d have to make some sacrifices and adjustments to the lifestyle that I’d been accustomed to— chief among these was how I practice Judaism and observe holidays. From conversations with my Peace Corps placement officer I knew I would have to tread carefully since I’d be living in a country where most people probably don’t know what Judaism is. And, let’s be honest, I wasn’t really expecting to be able to find matzoh anywhere in a country like Madagascar. One thing I did know for certain, however, is that I didn’t want to lose the Jewishness from my identity, because among other things, I credit its influence with helping me be the person I want to be—someone who serves as a Peace Corps volunteer, quite honestly. In fact, my short answer to the oft-asked question of “why did you want to join the Peace Corps?” could probably be two words: tikkun olam, which is the Hebrew phrase for the Jewish ideal that translates to “repairing the world”.

            So when I realized at the end of March that Passover was coming right around the corner, I knew that I wanted to do at least something to observe it.  Obviously it wasn’t going to be feasible to observe the dietary laws when I still have to eat whatever they serve us at the training center, so that part was out of the question. But as fortune would have it, I discovered during our tech trip that one of my fellow volunteers, Emma, is also Jewish and was hoping to do something for Passover as well. So, on the second night, we held a very modified seder at the training center. One of our non-Jewish friends also joined in, and we had a fun time making the best of it given our limited resources. I made a Peace Corps-version seder plate using, among other things, cooked potatoes in place of matzoh, and sakay (hot pepper relish that’s popular in Madagascar) in place of horseradish.  My crowning achievement, however, was my Macgyver-ed “wine” for the 4 cups, which I made using vodka and water mixed with Cran-Grape drink mix packets. Hey, you have to work with what you’ve got.

Cups of "wine"

            After the seder, a few more friends joined us at the table and Emma and I ended up talking about Judaism and Jewish holidays with them—trying and failing to remember any Passover songs, and making plans for celebrating Rosh Hashanah together, somewhere in Madagascar.  The night ended up being perfect, and just what I needed to help me keep some bit of connection to my Jewish identity and my life back home. I haven’t had that many moments of homesickness since being here, but when I got to thinking about not being able to celebrate Passover (or any other holidays) in New York with my close friends, it all hit me at once. Realizing that I could keep up some sort of observance during my time here was a balm that smoothed some of the rough edges of that little bit of homesickness.

            At the end of the seder, after we said “next year in Jerusalem” (but let’s be honest, it’s more likely to be “next year in Antananarivo”), we went around the table and talked about what Passover meant to us being here. For me, I have a very distinct connection between Peace Corps and Passover, because it was while I was at my friend Jesse’s parents’ house for a seder last year that I got the phone call from Peace Corps saying that I was finally medically cleared for service.  So it was a great moment to be here in Madagascar, exactly one year later, celebrating the holiday with new friends yet remembering everyone back home, and reflecting on my good fortune to exactly where I am right now.

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

"I'll write you a letter tomorrow. Tonight, I can't hold a pen."

[Note: I've decided to title my blog posts with lyrics from whatever song I've been listening to a lot lately. 'Can't Hardly Wait' by the Replacements has been on heavy rotation lately, and the first lyric is ringing true for me. Exhaustion comes more quickly here in Madagascar, with the extra exertion required of living in a foreign culture, and at night my grand plans of letter writing often gives way to a 9PM bedtime. So, please know that I am thinking of each and every one of you, even if you haven't seen a letter from me yet.]

With my new friends Sarah, Christina and Amy in Sandrandahy

Internet access at last (albeit just for a few hours), and how can I begin to sum up the past five weeks in Madagascar? My life has changed so utterly and completely over the last month that it’s impossible to even begin to describe it.  I’ll offer a few favorite moments to color in the lines: goofing off and dancing to Europe’s “The Final Countdown” with my host sisters while doing dishes. Getting pineapple (mananasy) juice on my Malagasy notebook because I brought it to the dinner table to practice sentences. (The pineapple here is the best in the world.) Taking a truck of questionable safety standards to the market in Manjakandriana with my fellow trainees, and then having to get out while the driver worked to get it unstuck from the rainstorm-ruined muddy road. However, probably the most Peace Corps poster-girl moment was when I sat with my host sister eating cassava sweetened with the Vermont maple syrup that I’d brought my host family as a gift.

To get to Madagascar, you fly to the edge of the earth, and then you fly even further. It is unfathomable to think about how far away from home I am now. After a day of staging in Washington, DC, the 30 of us trainees boarded a plane in Dulles to start the long journey to Mada. After 10 hours we landed in Dakar, Senegal for refueling, and then promptly lifted back up into the sky to continue our trip, arcing over the coast at sunrise as the small Senegalese fishing boats set out from the beach in search of the morning catch. After an overnight stay in Johannesburg, we boarded another plane to Madagascar, and all felt our hearts jump as we began our descent over the lush mountain ranges in Madagascar’s highlands.

The most immediate feeling I had upon arrival was that of relentless uniqueness. From the black worms that I accidentally crunched under my sandal twice in one day, to the green burrs that clung to my jeans when I walked around the training center campus, everything is new and different here. I remember listening to birds calling early in the morning as I law awake with jetlag insomnia on my first night at the Peace Corps—what bird was crying out? My constant companion during my month-long homestay was an electric blue butterfly that flew along with me everyday as I walked down the hill from my house, its wings beating in a shade of blue I’d never seen before in nature.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that I am simply not designed to be in Madagascar; my fair Scottish-Eastern European skin and blue eyes require constant applications of sunblock and donning of sunglasses and hats, and my ample height causes me to constantly whack my head on low ceilings in the houses that are designed for the very petite Malagasy. The country seems to know I don’t belong here, too, and has been exacting revenge for my transgression in the form of constant insect bites (mosquitos and fleas), searing sunburns after just an hour of exposure (even when wearing sunblock), and intermittent gastrointestinal distress (which is to be expected anywhere, of course). It’s a bit ironic that the two items helping me most to survive here are a British water filter and extra-strength French sunblock—funny how colonialism breeds ingenuity.

But despite that, I’m walking up relentlessly happy every morning, and I’m beyond thrilled to be where I am and doing what I’m doing. Someone asked me last night if it felt weird to not be sitting behind a computer all day, and I have to say that I am loving it. The month-long internet diet that was forced upon us actually felt very liberating and freeing, although I am nevertheless thrilled to be back online for a short bit. The strangest part of pre-service training has had to be the change in scale of my life. What I mean is that I now find everything in life to be magnified—things that would not be a big deal at home are suddenly gigantic here. For example, my biggest stress lately was a small Malagasy language test. Would a somewhat insignificant language test cause me to wake up with anxiety every morning back in the US? Probably not. Additionally, there are some other stresses and anxieties that come with being thrust into a fishbowl, where you’re suddenly paired with 28 other people you’ve never met before, and everywhere you go, people stare/laugh/point/yell “vazaha!” (white person) at you. But I think I’ve been handling it as well as can be expected.

Our month-long homestay ended last week and we’re currently on a 6-day tech trip visiting current volunteers to get a sense of what it’s like “in the trenches”. It’s been a whirlwind but generally a lot of fun, because we’d all been itching to get out of Mantasoa and see a little bit more of Madagascar. My homestay family were just simply awesome, and I feel that I really lucked out. Not only did they live on top of a hill with the most beautiful view in town, they were probably the kindest, most loving people I’ve ever met. I can’t even begin to describe the fear I felt on my first dinner with them, when I’d only been studying Malagasy for 2 days and suddenly had to communicate with them. But the days got easier as my Malagasy got better, and I was able to sit around the table and have short conversations with them after just weeks of study. As one of my friends remarked, we learned more Malagasy in one week than he did in an entire year of French class at home. On my last night with them, the family presented me with a birthday gift: a beautiful lamba hoany (traditional Malagasy printed fabric) as well as some inexpensive jewelry. Tears welled up in my eyes from the sheer magnitude of their generosity. This is not a wealthy family by any stretch of the word, and the gesture was both humbling and overwhelming. I once read a piece of advice from a former PCV which said “let people be generous, no matter how poor they are”, and it was what ran through my mind as I tearily thanked them for welcoming me into their family for a month.

With my host family on my last day in Mantasoa.

Language note: my favorite Malagasy words are “skoubi-dou”, which means flip-flops, and was undoubtedly started by someone who had a pair with Scooby-Doo on them; ”mitsangatasangana”, which means to take a walk for pleasure-- this I mainly like because I can finally say it; and “umby” (oom-beee), which means “cow”, because it just sounds cute. However, I now need to start learning my specific dialect, Antesaka, which requires me to turn all my S’s into “sh” sounds. (Example: “salama” becomes “shalama”.) This causes all kinds of hilarity among my fellow trainees.

My dialect is one spoken in the Sud Est region (“Oh yeah, Sud Est yeah!”) in Madagascar’s southeast coast. Yes folks, this means I’m going to the beach! I’ll be serving in a town called Vangaindrano and will be working with an organization called COLDIS to help spice producers improve their exports—so my projects will involve cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and other spices. YES! I’m really thrilled that I will get to use my culinary background, and I’m already brimming with ideas. I have one more month of pre-service training, and then I head down there (a 2-day journey from Tana) around May 5^th. I’ll be joining an (in)famous group of tight-knit volunteers down in the Sud-Est (with the aforementioned slogan), so I am looking forward to beach bonfires, eating lobster for Christmas dinner, and gorging myself on the thousand different kinds of local fruit that’s available there.

I’ve been cobbling together memories and vignettes from the past month, which is giving this blog post a smorgasbord-esque feel. I apologize for not being more concise. It’s just nearly impossible to sum up a month that has seen my life swing in such a different direction. I hope that future blog posts will help do it more justice.