Shake it!

Some funny videos of my neighborhood kids dancing.

The song of the indri

Here are two videos I recorded in Andasibe, a national park about 3 hours east of Tana, in October 2012. They both show the indri, a special type of lemur that is unique for its "singing", and which is only found in the Andasibe area. It uses this singing to locate its family/group members, and also to mark off its territory. This was one of the coolest things I have experienced so far in Madagascar. My fellow volunteer James lives right on the edge of this forest and hears the indris from his house every morning-- lucky guy. When my brother Tim came for a visit last fall, we spent a day in Andasibe and then a day exploring James's forest, Maromizaha. The first video shows them jumping from tree to tree, and the second one records their ethereal singing.

An Open Letter to DreamWorks

Author’s note: I know that the majority of my blog posts to date have been long-winded bouts of often overly-sentimental naval gazing, but with this post I hope to do something a little different. Along with posting this letter on my blog, I am sending it via email to as many DreamWorks contacts as I can find. If you are as angered as I am by the information I’ve presented below, I urge you to sign the petition here:

To Whom It May Concern:

First of all, let me congratulate you on the success of the most recent Madagascar movie “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”, which, according to your most recent earnings report, has earned over $720 million at the worldwide box office. I have yet to see the newest film, but I look forward to watching it when I return to America in 2014, after my Peace Corps service is over.

It should come as no surprise to you that when I first announced to my friends and family that I would be serving my Peace Corps assignment in Madagascar, most people’s reactions had something to do with the Madagascar movies. And truth be told, when I announced my assignment on Facebook, I did so with the visual aid of a film still from the first “Madagascar” movie. Because of its massive success, your film series is responsible for many Americans’ entire perception and knowledge of the country of Madagascar.

However, once you get past that initial name recognition, most people will admit that they don’t know much about the actual country. I didn’t either, when I first got my invitation to serve here. But here is what I have learned: while Madagascar is indeed a wild and wonderful biodiversity hotspot, full of unique and colorful creatures like the lemurs and fosas shown in your films, it is also one of the most heartbreakingly, devastatingly impoverished countries in the world. According to the Malagasy government, more than 75% of people here live on less than $1 a day, an increase of 68% since the crippling political crisis of 2009, which ground local industries to a halt and caused many international donors to pull their aid funding. This is a country in which its people fight a daily battle just to survive and feed their families.

The needs here are so great yet so simple: access to clean water and reliable electricity, improved bridges and roads so that all routes are passable even during the rainy season, rehabilitation of schools so students have a proper learning environment, money to pay the teachers so that they don’t go on strike and disrupt the children’s learning, and in fact, money for children to pay the very meager school fees that they can continue to learn. These are all things that we as privileged Americans take for granted, but are veritable luxuries here in Madagascar.

And getting beyond basic human needs, there is an immense need for wildlife protection and natural resources conservation. This is a country that has already lost over 80% of its original growth forest to increasingly desperate farmers who clearcut land in order to plant food, only to exhaust the soil's nutrients within three years, forcing them to move on and clearcut even more land. Disappearing forests means the disappearance of animals that live there—lemurs, chameleons, frogs, birds, spiders, and all sorts of creatures that are found nowhere else in the world. They are dying because their forest is dying. Once they are gone from Madagascar, they will be gone from the entire world.

So as I began learning more and more about the poverty, despair, and environmental disasters that exist in this breathtakingly beautiful and unique country, I started to wonder if your company had donated any of the profits from the “Madagascar” movies to the country that they are named after. I posed the question to a State Department official here, and I was shocked to hear anecdotally from him that, aside from a token gift of around $50,000 (to which entity I am not clear), DreamWorks has not used any of the franchise profits to aid the people or the environment of Madagascar. Yet this is a franchise that, according to a June 2012 press release, has raked in over $1.1 billion worldwide. That is more than 10% of one year’s GDP of the entire country of Madagascar. Certainly the argument can be made that the success of the “Madagascar” movies increased the country’s reknown and elevated tourism revenue, but that is unfortunately not the case. (Even if a child saw the films and then begged his parents to take him to Madagascar, it’s just not economically viable as a family vacation destination when airfare from the United States costs upwards of $2,000 a person.)

I am not one to enthusiastically lobby for aid; in fact, I am serving as Peace Corps Community Economic Development volunteer because I am passionate about helping people improve their livelihoods through economic activity and business development. However, when I see something as imbalanced as a movie studio making billions of dollars using the name of one of the world’s poorest countries, I feel that there is a need for rebalancing. It’s about doing what is right. If you named a film “Haiti” and then proceeded to make millions of dollars of profit from it, surely there would be a public outcry for some portion of this revenue to be shared with the country. But because Madagascar’s poverty is not quite as visible to most westerners, the public attention is not there.

I know that DreamWorks Animation is by nature a charitable company, with a namesake foundation of your own, and that your founders Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen have also personally donated much of their wealth towards charitable causes. So what I am asking of DreamWorks is this: take some of the money you allocate for charitable giving and direct it towards an organization that is doing a lot of good work here in Madagascar, such as CARE, WWF, the United Nations World Food Programme, UNICEF, or the International Red Cross, just to name a few. Or even better, how about dedicating a portion of DreamWorks’s profits that can be attributed to “Madagascar 3”? According to your most recent earnings statement, your company posted a total of $24.4 million in profit for Q32012, an increase of 24 percent profit over the previous year. That earnings statement also noted that “Madagascar 3” accounted for 25 percent of your total Q3 revenue ($47.1 million). So how about taking a very tiny part of this small portion of the film’s total revenue, and pledging it towards good works in Madagascar? A mere 1% of the Q3 revenue would be $470,000, and this comparatively small amount of money could do such a world of good here. For example, just $20 could pay one year’s high school fees for one student. $1,500 would pay to install a water pump that would literally change the lives of the people who’d use it. Even a large-scale project such as paving an important 20 kilometer stretch of road could be achieved for under $100,000—a huge amount of money to a country as poor as this, but I am sure there are Hollywood charity benefits where reserving a table commands a more princely sum than this.

I know it will be easy enough for you to dismiss this letter and its accompanying petition as a rant from a naïve Peace Corps volunteer who doesn’t understand how the business world works. But you see, I do in fact understand a little bit. Prior to my Peace Corps service, I spent over 7 years in the business world in New York, working for fantastic companies such as Food Network and EMI Music, and now I am studying to take the GMAT in order to get my MBA when I finish my service.  I read The Economist whenever I can get my hands on a copy. And what I know now about modern business is this: in order to survive, a company cannot purely exist for profit and profit alone. A company must show that it has a commitment to serving its customers but also respecting the world in which it exists. How else to explain the rise of B Corps, or the fact that the State Department’s “21^st Century Statecraft” agenda now includes a doctrine on corporate social responsibility? I hope that DreamWorks can evolve and grow as a company just as so many others are, too. And to do so, I am asking you to please give back to the country that has lent you its name. It deserves more than to just be a line item on your earnings report.

Sincerely,

Emily Silman

Peace Corps volunteer, Community Economic Development

Vangaindrano, Madagascar

March 2012- May 2014

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READERS: if you agree with me, please take a few minutes to sign my petition at Change.org:

  

Armchair linguist

One of the most unique—and challenging—componenents of Peace Corps service is that volunteers must learn and speak the local language of where they work. This often means forgoing a country’s colonial language (often French or Spanish) and instead learning the indigenous language, which allows volunteers to work closely with people who need the most help. In Madagascar, French is the language of business and government because it was a French colony until 1960. But the majority of people here speak Malagasy on a daily basis, not French. And getting outside of larger towns and into the countryside, where fewer people have gone to lycee and almost no one has gone to university, French is rarely spoken at all. So when Peace Corps trainees arrive in Madagascar, they are given 2 months of intense Malagasy training before setting off to their sites: 1 month of learning Malagasy officiel, the standard dialect and the one that’s spoken in the highlands (the capital region), and after they learn where their site location will be, another month of either continued study of officiel, or of one of the 17 other Malgasy dialects. Each of the dialects corresponds with the tribe that has settled in a particular region of the country. In my area (Vangaindrano), most of the people are of the Antesaka tribe, so I learned the Antesaka dialect. But if you go up the road 80km north to Farafangana, you’ll be in Antefasy land, so the dialect spoken there is Antefasy. However, unlike many other African countries, the dialects are fairly similar, and most Malagasy people can understand one another, even if one person is from up north near Diego Suarez, and another person is from down south near Ft. Dauphin. My dialect (along with the other Sud Est dialects of Antefasy and Antemoro) are notable for turning all “s” sounds into “sh” sounds, a fact that some of my more northernly peers like to laugh at. (So for example, the word misy, which means “there is/there are” is pronounced “meesy” in other areas, but “meeshy” in mine.) My dialect also has a fun habit of shortening words by dropping the final syllable, especially if the word end in –na, and also boasts lots of local colloquialisms like Da ta andra? Ao ka!, which basically means “what’s up? Not much!” but would never be said anywhere outside the Vangaindrano region.

The famed naturalist Gerald Durrell writes in his book The Aye-Aye and I that “Malagasy is a fine, rackity-clackity, ringing language which sounds not unlike someone carelessly emptying a barrel of glass marbles down a stone staircase.” I don’t know if I would make that exact same colorful comparison (although Durrell certainly does have a flair for language), but I have many days when I truly do think people are rolling rocks around in their mouth. My language challenge has always been more with understanding than with speaking, and that hasn’t changed in my experience here. I’ve struggled (and continue to struggle) greatly with understanding what people are saying, and find myself frustrated on a daily basis that I can’t express myself the way that I want to.  I do have to remember, though, that I have more of an uphill battle than other volunteers, because it’s commonly remarked that language gets more difficult the further south you go, and I live in one of the most southernly towns of all the volunteers here. In the countryside towns that surround Vangaindrano, people’s accents become even thicker and their speech more rapid, which makes it incredibly difficult to understand them. Unfortunately, this is also a country that isn’t known for its dental care, so there are many people with missing or no teeth, which makes comprehension even more mind-boggling.

The Malagasy language itself is a bit of a mystery that is both a linguist’s and anthropologist’s dream: its closest relative is an Indonesian dialect spoken by one particular tribe on the island of Borneo. This gives credence to the theory that Madagascar was first settled by migrants from Indonesia, who traversed the precarious Indian Ocean on a raft for months on end. Malagasy also contains elements borrowed from Arabic, such as the days of the week and the greeting salama; this is due to the presence of Islamic traders who settled in Madagascar several hundred years ago.  And owing to the French colonial influence It also has a large number of Malagasy-fied French words. Malagasy uses no article, so words borrowed from French simply take the “le/la” and string it together with the actual word. So for example, the French for key, la clé, became lakile in Malagasy. (The alphabet does not contain the letters C, Q, U, W, and X.) La biére (beer) became labiera; la bougie (candle) became labozia. Other words are changed only slightly, such as legume, which became legioma. And a large number of French words were simply adopted wholesale, such as verre (glass), restaurant (no translation needed), and epicerie (small grocery store).

Malagasy is a comparatively easy language to learn because there are simply not that many words—one word could have 3 meanings. But this is at once both simplifying and maddening. For example, the word sahirana means “busy”, but it also means “stressed” or “worried”. So if I want to ask my counterpart if she is busy (a fairly common thing for Americans to ask in the workplace), there really isn’t a great way to do it. The all-encompassing phrase tsy mety literally means “not good”, but is also really the only way to say that someone is being rude. If I want to explain to a kid why he shouldn’t yell “vazaha!” at me, I want to be clear that it’s more than just “not ok”, it’s rude, but there literally isn’t a word for that. And the often-used word mazotoa means “good luck” or “have fun/enjoy”. But if my neighbor is on his way to take the baccalaureate exam, I don’t really want to say “enjoy the test!”—I want to wish him luck. This prevention from being specific is one of the language’s most frustrating aspects. However, my least favorite part of the language is that there is no verb “to be”. Think about how often you use some form of this verb, either in English or French, and you’ll realize how exasperating this is.

However, despite the annoyances, Malagasy does have some amusing quirks and features. I’ve written before that perhaps my favorite word in the language is mitsangatsangana, which means to take a walk for pleasure. It wasn’t until I’d spent a couple months studying Malagasy that I learned the utility behind this word, which is fairly fun. Malagasy employs a pattern whereby if you repeat the second half of a verb, it weakens it. So in the case of mitsangatsangana, it means “to sort of amble around”, whereas its parent, so to speak, is simply mitsangana, "to stand" (I guess if you're not really standing, that means walking around.) Same for the verb “to go”, mandeha, which becomes mandehadeha when you’re talking about just kind of meandering along. And one of my most frequent jokes is when people remark with surprise that I can speak Malagasy, by saying mahay miteny ‘Gasy enao!, I self-deprecatingly respond with ehhhh…. mahayhay fotsiny iaho (I can only sort of speak it), and this unfailingly causes a round of chuckles. This repetition/weaking utility is also employed with some nouns, most notably colors: the word manga mean “blue”, but mangamanga means “light blue”.

In all my struggles with the language, I try to remind myself that I’m lucky that I didn’t have to learn a new alphabet, or one of those notorious African languages with clicks and other unwritable sounds. And when I get depressed about my lack of language skills, it’s important to remember that I’ve only been studying and speaking Malagasy for a year—I spent 10 years becoming fluent in French. But above all, I’m proud to be able to (sort of) speak Malagasy because it sets me (and other PCVs) apart from your average French-speaking foreign aid worker or European tourist. It allows us to gain the trust and respect of the people of Madagascar, and well, let’s be honest: being able to blow someone’s mind by being a white person who speaks Malagasy will never get old.

Mariazy

During my first 7 months of being at site, I made great strides in my language skills as well as my level of integration within the community, but I still felt like I something was missing-- that my neighbors still didn't consider me to really be living there. Other volunteers from my stage had regaled me with stories of being invited to weddings, circumcision parties, and famadihanas (the "turning of the bones" ceremony that honors a family's dead ancestors), and I felt envious of their invitations, because I hadn't received an invitation to anything. It was beginning to weigh heavily on my conception of how well I was truly integrated.

In early December I had a language learning session with my neighbor and Malagasy tutor, Madame Titine, and she mentioned that another one of our neighbors, Madame Priscaline, was getting married in town in a few weeks. I'm close with many members of Priscaline's family and talk with them on a daily basis, but none of them had mentioned the wedding. Later that day I stopped by the epicerie that Priscaline's mother, Madame Marcelline, runs, and I mentioned hearing about her daughter's upcoming mariazy (wedding). She clapped her hands with delight as a smile lit up her face, and invited me to come. And just like that, I finally had an invitation to my first Malagasy cultural event!

The wedding was a big deal for the people of Ampasy, my neighborhood in Vaingaindrano, and on the morning of Saturday December 15th, people were up and about getting ready. My teenage neighbor Sonia wanted to braid my hair for the event, so she came over at lunchtime and gave me a beautiful set of braids that, if I wasn't quite so white, would have made me fit right in with the other women in my town. My 8-year-old friend Marinah, sister of the bride, came over afterwards and we did our nails together. And then I put on a nice dress that I rarely wear and headed out to the main road to meet the rest of my community before walking to the church. The sense of joy and excitement was palpable, with little girls giddily dressed up in their finest dresses just for the occasion, wearing swipes of lipstick courtesy of Sonia, our glamour goddess. I brought my camera out and took lots of pictures of everyone dressed in their best, which made it truly feel like a special occasion. About a half-hour later, we all walked to the FLM (Lutheran) Betesda church and stood outside while we awaited the arrival of the bride and groom. I passed the time by taking more pictures of everyone-- an activity that never fails to entertain, and about a half-hour later a silver Peugeot decorated with flowers pulled up in front of the church. Here comes the bride!

I shouldn't have been surprised at this, but my eyes began to water just like they normally would at a wedding back home. I am a serial wedding-crier, and I can't help it. This was at the same time both a regular wedding like you'd see in a America, but also not normal at all, because an occasion like this is truly special. These are people who hard incredibly hard and don't often have the chance to dress up in nice clothes and celebrate a special occasion. So when I saw beautiful Priscaline step out of the car, resplendent in a gorgeous white dress and veil, tears began to stream down my cheek because not only was this a wedding, but it was her wedding, her special day, and I was so happy that she got to experience a day of joyfulness of her own.

Her fiance, Ralahady, followed next, walking arm-in-arm with his regal-looking mother. At first I wondered to myself who this young man in a white suit was, but then it hit me that it was, in fact, the grooom. (Is this a sign of my advancing age?) And then the cute little groomsmen/ring bearers tromped in behind them-- little 5-year-old Totona, my neighbor, as well as another boy who I presume was Ralahady's relative. After the rest of the family entered the church the guests streamed in and took our seats. I sat with some of the children from my neighborhood and kept us cool in the sweltering church by using my paper fan. The wedding ceremony processed pretty much as it would in America, albeit in Malagasy instead of English, with one exception: the FLM Betesda church choir sang two beautiful hymns, which is something I've never seen before in a wedding. It was lovely and so fitting to this wedding, where it truly felt like the entire community was there to bless the union of Priscaline and Ralahady.

After the vows were taken and kisses were exchanged, the bride and groom walked out of the church, followed by their families, and formed a receiving line outside the exit. The main difference between an American and Malagasy receiving line is that here you do the customary one-two-three cheek kiss on every person on the line, so it takes a while to go through. Afterwards I met up with Madame Titine and we walked to the nearby Tropic Hotel for the reception.

I wasn't expecting much for the reception because these are not wealthy people, but I was duly impressed by the care that the hotel proprietor had taken to make this a special event. A large white tarp was draped over the open area south of the hotel building, forming a sort of tent, and underneath it were about 20 tables (borrowed from the middle school across the road), each bestowed with a tablecloth, bottles of soft drinks, and bowls of snacks. It took about an hour for the wedding party to finally arrive at the reception, at which point an emcee took to the microphone to make some speeches about the couple that I couldn't understand. Titine, our tablemates, and I all ate sambos and kaka pigeon while the speeches were being made, and then lined up to give our gifts to the couple and receive a piece of wedding cake. Malagasy tradition dictates that you give an envelope of cash as a wedding gift, and I silently worried that I hoped I'd included the right amount of money-- I didn't want to give too much and look ostentatious or wealthy, but I didn't want to give too little and look like a miser.

After giving our gifts and receiving cake, Titine and I walked home because it was getting late. It had been a 5-hour event and the sky was darkening. I was happy to be getting home, but I was also curious if there were other wedding events. There was no dancing and no alcohol served (probably the biggest difference from American weddings), though I'm not sure if that was indicative of all Malagasy weddings or just this particular family. But I walked home with a big smile on my face because I was so thrilled and so honored to be included in Priscaline and Ralahady's special day. Unlike American weddings where people gather from all over the country (or the globe), this felt more like the coming together of an entire community than a collection of various friends and relatives who don't know each other. Indeed, it really felt like everyone from Ampasy was there, and my inclusion was a watershed moment for me in terms of feeling like a true member of the community. I wasn't there as a special guest or token white person; rather I was included because I'm just a friendly person living in the neighborhood. And one of the main things I strive for in my Peace Corps service is to be seen as just that.

Money during Peace Corps service

This is second in a series of blog posts written specifically for incoming volunteers.

The question of money is a big one when it comes to the Peace Corps, especially if you’re like me and quit your nice, stable “real world” job in order to pack up and fly halfway across in the world in pursuit of world-changing and dream-chasing. Some of my biggest unknowns were how I would handle my financial affairs while I was away, and just how much money I would need to have saved in order to fully experience Madagascar and even some neighboring countries.  So with that, here’s some money-related information I wish I knew before coming here:

First, the basics: you won’t need to access money (and won’t actually be able to anyway) during the 2 month training period—which, looking back, I realize was actually kind of nice and liberating. While you’re living at homestay (first month) and while you’re living at the PCTC (second month), you will have all your meals provided for you and won’t really need to buy anything, except maybe for some snacks, a bar of soap, flip-flops, etc. For this kind of expense you get a weekly allotment of what Peace Corps calls “walk-around money”. Think of it as your weekly allowance from the Peace Corps. It’s enough for you to buy phone credit, occasional snacks/soda/beer, laundry soap, and other miscellaneous things during training. It’s also a good way to practice your Malagasy because you willl have to talk to different vendors while you buy things! It is pretty impossible to actually spend the entire amount each week, and my recommendation is to save as much of this as possible—trust me, you’ll be glad you did once you get to site. (A note about phones: every volunteer buys a local cell phone to use here, both for communicating with your family/friends back home, and for talking to people in-country. The way they did it for my stage was that during the first couple days of training, they took a list of who wanted a phone, and a PC employee bought us all phones and SIM cards in Tana. They deducted the cost from our first month’s living allowance, and I think they gave us the phones about 2 weeks in. So you can expect to have a local phone number which people can call you/text you on after about 2 weeks of training. You’ll be using a pay-as-you-go system, which is a culture shock if you’re used to all-inclusive plans. It is super expensive to call/text America, but it’s free to receive texts and calls, so have your family set your number up in Skype…. Which I think is around 40 cents a minute to Madagascar.)

Once you finish training, you receive your monthly living allowance via direct deposit into a local bank account, and it’s up to you to go to your banking town monthly/twice-monthly/whenever to get money out. (This is another culture shock if you’re used to swiping your debit card for everything—this is pretty much an entirely cash-based country, except in major cities!) There are 3 main banks here in Mada: BFV-Societe Generale, Bank of Africa, and BNI. You will be assigned a bank by Peace Corps based on your site location, and you will be given an ATM card around when you get installed at site. (However, these are not like American debit cards that can be swiped like a credit card—you can only use them to take out money at an ATM, and only at your actual bank. So you can’t just pay a fee to use the BOA ATM with your BFV card, for example.) All of these 3 banks accept VISA debit cards as well, but only BNI accepts MasterCard debit cards, and BNI is more sparsely spread out than the other two banks. Additionally, their acceptance of MC is not reliable—I have yet to be able to use my USAA MC debit card, even though I am technically supposed to be able to. So if you are looking to have access to American money while you’re in Mada, make sure you have a VISA debit card.

The topic of accessing American money brings me to the thing that I wanted to address most in this blog post. As mentioned before, this is a big question I had before coming here, and I don’t think the information I got from a current PCV was very accurate, so I want to correct that for you guys. The volunteer who helpfully answered a lot of my questions pre-departure told me that I wouldn’t really need to dip into my American savings for anything while I was here, and that the Peace Corps living allowance would be enough for the lifestyle that most PCVs live. Wrong! My experience here has been that not just for me but almost all other volunteers, you need to dip into American money for vacations in-country, splurging in Tana, or other big expenditures. For example, I was a new volunteer (as opposed to replacing a volunteer) and so I moved into a house without any furniture. I ended up having to dip into some of my savings in order to buy some things for my home. I also have to dip into American money whenever I go on vacation in-country. I do save some of my living allowance every month for traveling, etc., but it is never quite enough, especially for holidays like New Year’s when you want to splurge a little bit. Some volunteers who live in the countryside save a lot because they spend practically nothing while at site-- everything is cheap and they don’t have cell phone/internet access, so there is no way they can possibly spend much money until they go into their banking town. However, I’m in a bigger town and have cell phone reception/3G, lots of good food options, and great frip shopping, so there are ample opportunities to spend money on phone and internet credit, food, clothes, etc, and therefore it is harder for me to save money.  So I want it to be known that it’s definitely possible for you to save money and not have to spend American money while you’re here, but it will be harder if you’re in a bigger town, or close to a big city. In general, when I just stay at site and live “normally” for a month, I never have a problem with money. But it’s when I’m spending time in Tana, or traveling in-country, it gets very expensive.

Some further explanation about Tana (aka Antananarivo, which is the capital): all of us volunteers joke that trips to Tana suck us dry. If you’re in a town close to Tana and end up going there frequently, you will find yourself spending a lot of money going out, taking taxis, etc. For example, a taxi at night will cost 10,000 Ariary (although you can split this with friends), and you’ll find yourself spending maybe 15,000 Ar for dinner, perhaps 20,000 Ar for drinks, and then before you know it, you’ve spend 50,000 Ar in one night. For me, that’s half of my food budget for a month. A former volunteer always told me that he’d go through his living allowance in 4 days in Tana. Of course, you don’t need to be going out and spending a ton if you’re in Tana; it’s easy enough to just hang out at the meva (PCV transit house), cook in the kitchen, and chill with friends. But you will often find yourself wanting a night out to celebrate a birthday, go out with your PCV friends, or just experience a bit of city life to get a break from life at site. Also, some PCVs are generously supported by their parents are all able to go out without much regard to budget. It gets difficult when you want to go out with friends and end up having to “keep up with the Joneses” and then spend a lot of money that you can’t afford. For me, I don’t receive support from my parents (other than care packages), and all of my savings were very hard-earned, so I personally can’t justify a lot of lavish nights out in the capital—I’d rather put that money towards traveling.

So then the question is, how much money do you need? The amount will vary for everyone, and I won’t tell you how much I saved, but I’d say that in general, it would be ideal to have about $1,500 to $2,000 set aside to see you through your 2 years of service. I know this is not possible for many people, but it will ensure that you can live comfortably and take some vacations in-country, as well as give you a cushion in case you run into any unforeseen expenses. If you want to travel outside of Madagascar during your service, plan on saving several thousand more. For example, a flight to South Africa is about $1,200 round trip (you’d think it would be cheaper because it’s so close, but it’s surprisingly not.) For traveling after you COS (close of service), be aware that you can take up to 1/3 of your readjustment allowance and put that towards your COS trip. So that’s how most PCVs finance their COS travels.

It is definitely possible to come here and live without having any American money to tap into, so please don’t read this and think that you won’t be able to come here and be a happy PCV if you don’t have money saved. But if you want to live only on your living allowance and be able to take vacations/go out in Tana, you will have to budget very carefully.

I know that the money thing can be a sensitive topic, so please do not interpret anything I’d said here as wanton disregard for the purpose of the Peace Corps and the fact that we are supposed to be living like local people, not rich expat aid workers. I merely wanted to give some honest information that I think would be helpful for incoming PCVs to know in advance, and present you with the reality of the situation you will face when you come here. Money can be a big issue for a lot of PCVs, and it leads to moral dilemmas for me because I constantly think about the fact that I am supposed to be living on a local level—but how can I be, if I am taking out American money to take a vacation over the holidays, and able to pay someone to wash my clothes? But on the other hand, if I have money saved to travel here, why shouldn’t I use it, and support tourism here? And if me paying my neighbor to do my laundry means that she gets to earn some extra money to feed her family, isn’t that a good thing? These are the type of puzzling issues that occur a lot, and you will just have to figure out how you feel most comfortable dealing with them. Anyway, once again I hope this information was helpful for those of you who are going to be new volunteers. (I realize it’s a little late in the game to be telling you how much money to save, but hopefully the August stage volunteers will see this!) 

Thoughts on Christmas

Note: I struggled with whether or not to write about this, but in the spirit of wanting to be as open and honest as possible about what my life is like here-- describing both hardships and triumphs-- I decided to go ahead and share this with you. Please do not interpret anything written as a personal attack or judgment on anyone.

Can it still be Christmas when it's 90 degrees out and you're sitting next to a palm tree instead of a pine tree? That's a question I had to ask myself as I prepared for my first Christmas away from family. I'd already experienced Christmas abroad before (Buenos Aires in 2010), but that was a trip with my family, so this year was still going to be an entirely new experience.

Because I was worried about being lonely if I stayed in Vangaindrano for Christmas, I decided to take a vacation and head north to Diego Suarez, a beautiful beach town on the very northern tip of the island. About 17 other volunteers also came up to Diego, and it was an epic 3-day journey to get here, including a day-long brousse in which they had decided to squish 5 people into each row, but all the travel difficulty was worth it as we spent a magical Christmas Eve boating in the Mer d'Emeraude and snorkeling in the cerulean waters, and a luxurious Christmas Day splashing around a fancy hotel pool, splurging on a decadent lunch, and drinking vacation-worthy tropical drinks. I was pleasantly surprised to find that as much I wished I could be with my family back in Vermont, eating our traditional Christmas brunch of french toast, bacon and mimosas, I wasn't actually very homesick. Spending the holiday with my Peace Corps family was exactly what I wanted and needed, and even though we're all many thousands of miles away from home, we became each others' family. After our day at the pool we all went back to our hotels to shower and put on nice clothes, then went out to a local bar where we danced to a fantastic band was playing a set of both American pop songs and Malagasy music. The highlight of the night was when we all got up to sing along and cheer as one of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers belted out an amazing rendition of Adele's "Someone Like You". That moment cemented for me the epiphany I'd had earlier that day: that Christmas and Hanukkah are not about the gifts you give or receive; rather, they are about the people you spend them with. There is no way I could have been happier than I was that night, jubilantly dancing with my friends in a random bar on the tip of a tropical island. And even prior to Peace Corps, every passing holiday season that saw me another year older also saw me less and less interested in gifts being a part of the Christmas experience. I found myself thrilled to just be able to spend a day with my family eating good food, going for snowy hikes up a local mountain, and just being able to enjoy relaxing together. If anything, my feeling of contentment and happiness during this year's gift-less holiday was simply a natural progression of how my enjoyment of the holiday season has evolved. So after that wonderful moment of dancing and singing, when some people went back to the bar for another round, I decided to end the day on a high note and headed back to our hotel in a touk-touk (a motorized rickshaw cab).

But as happy as I was all Christmas day and night, I couldn't ignore a feeling of something bothering me deep down inside. It wasn't until I got back to an empty hotel room and began to process it that I fully understood what it was. One part of it is that Diego is one of cities here with the highest prevalence of sex tourism, and it's hard not to feel disgusted when you see lecherous old French men sitting with underage Malagasy prostitutes at the next table over. (Because really, is there anything sadder than being alone on Christmas and feeling the need to pay someone for companionship?) But it was something more than that that really got to me. While I was at the pool and the bar, I was using my phone to check Facebook and post holiday updates and greetings. Doing so allowed me to see many, many photos of people's Christmas trees overflowing with brightly wrapped gifts, and pictures of their children gleefully tearing open new toys, dolls, video games, iPads, and other symbols of a privileged Western existence. I was overwhelmed by the contrast to life here; floored by the sudden appearance of so much excess, so much unnecessary spending and consumerism. And, I was horrified to think of myself as a child who had been a part of this system, begging my parents for gifts that they very often indulged me in. And then I thought of the reverse side of the coin, how childhood is in Madagascar and other places with poverty so extreme that it's unfathomable. I thought of the kids in my neighborhood, who I can now affectionately call "my" kids because they stop by my house every day to play, and because they call out "Ay-mee-leeeeeee!" as I go to fetch water. I thought about sweet little Marinah, my new tag-along 8-year-old best friend, who delights in following me around and loves to use my colored pencils to draw pictures on scrap paper-- a common activity for American children, but an exciting luxury for kids here. I thought about little Liba with his bright smile, who loves to come over and flip through the picture books I have in my house for the kids; he can't read, but he happily looks at the pictures over and over, describing what he sees. I am fairly certain this is his first time ever seeing a book. And I thought about the countless other children who live near me, who maybe own one or two sets of threadbare clothes, and perhaps not even a pair of plastic flip-flops, but smile and play and run around joyfully just like kids are supposed to, even though they're probably always a little hungry and spend every night sleeping on a threadbare mattress that they share with the rest of their family. I can't give these kids money, but I give them fruit when I have it, a banana or mango here and there, and maybe some peanuts to try and make up for the some of the protein their diet is missing every day. They are ever grateful and gracious at any act of generosity. No parent ever has to remind these children to say thank you.

And so when I thought of "my" kids back in Vangaindrano, along with the majority of all the children in Madagascar, who want for so many basic things yet ask for so little, and then thought of the pictures I saw of waste, excess, consumerism, overconsumption-- all brought about in the name of a holiday that is supposed to celebrate peace and goodwill towards others, I broke down into uncontrollable sobs. I called my mom, tears streaming down my face as I tried to explain why I was so upset. No, I wasn't homesick, I said; this was something far different. Such a complex mix of feelings brews a storm of emotion that is hard to dissect and explain. I felt angry, guilty, helpless, heartbroken. For some reason little Liba stuck out in my mind, as I sobbed to my mother, he doesn't even own any shoes! Almost all of them are malnourished and can't afford to go to school-- how can I look at these pictures of wasted money spent on ridiculous things and not feel angry? But I can't solve the problem-- it's a broken system. Me buying things for the kids in my community won't fundamentally change anything, just as Americans not buying Christmas gifts for their kids won't change anything either. And who can fault them for wanting to shower their children with love and affection in the form of things that make them happy? Who doesn't respond to the glee in a child's face when they open up a gift? I am a generous person by nature and absolutely love to give gifts, although mostly of the homemade variety. So how can I change anything? All I know is that this Christmas, something changed in me, and I will never be able to look at the holiday the same way again. On a larger scale, I also hope this helps me become less of a materialistic person when I return to the US. And when I have kids, I hope to do something different with Christmas and Hanukkah, something that isn't centered around buying things. An idea came into my head yesterday as I was hiking through the beautiful natural rock formations of Tsingy Rouge, a park near Diego Suarez: I thought about how wonderful it would be to use the holiday season to travel every year and explore another corner of the world. There is so much beauty to be seen in the world, and if I am fortunate enough to have the money to explore it with people whom I love, I can think of no better way to honor the spirit of the holiday season.

I hope all of you back home have a joyous new year and are able to drink a toast to a happy and healthy 2013 with your friends and family. Love to you all, and Bon Année from Madagascar.