Mango Trees, Fire, and Presents

Organic, pesticide-free, and locally grown.

Cooking beans over charcoal.

EVERYTHING'S UNDER CONTROL!

Written December 30, 2011
Fort Dauphin   

    “Well, the rain’s not stopping.  We’d best finish this.”
    Rodin and I jumped off the porch into the downpour to finish filling in the hole around the mango sapling we had planted.
    Two hours earlier I mentioned to Rodin that I wanted to transplant some volunteer saplings from his grandfather’s yard into mine, maybe later in the week.
    “Why not do it right now?” he suggested.
    So we got to it, gathering manure from a neighbor’s cow pen and digging a hole for the tree.  Elsie, an Environment Volunteer, had given a lecture about double-digging during IST and had told me that even a small tree should have a 1x1x1 meter double-dug hole.
    A couple of the local kids came to watch (of course) and I told them they could help if they went and got shovels.  I was hoping their desire to do something with the big kids would trump any indignity over being treated like free labor.  Bon Chance, who’s about ten, was the only one who came back with a shovel, but later on one of the girls, Silvie, who’s a little younger, did the same.  We sweated hard for a good hour, tearing at the tough clay.
    After we had transferred the sapling and were filling the earth back in it began to pour.  We all retreated to the porch to wait it out, but by that time it was almost 5:30 and I was damn hungry.
    Rodin and I finished the hole quickly and I went to dry off and cook dinner.  Rodin and Fafa sat just outside my door listening to my iPod.  I had just poured oil into the pot when Fafa distracted me.  Suddenly--
    There should not be that much orange light coming out of my house.  FIRE!
    The oil in the pot had ignited and flames were leaping two and three feet high.  I panicked and dithered, but Rodin grabbed a cloth and put the pot on the edge of the porch in the rain.  When the raindrops only provoked sparks and a loud snapping sound, Rodin threw water on it.  It took three cups of water to dilute the oil enough to quench the flames, leaving all of us startled but relieved that nothing else went up.
    The rest of the week has been pretty boring.  On Wednesday I constructed a cage for the sapling to protect it from livestock.  It’s a rickety thing made of mismatched sticks and string going all over the place.  It looks... well, frankly, it looks like something a poor African farmer would build.  But it seems to deter the cows well enough.
    But this morning I came into Fort Dauphin to pick up packages.  There were not one but two waiting for me.  The first, from my grandparents in Florida, contains candy and dried fruit and a beautiful Christmas card.  The second, from my parents, has clothes, a DVD of Avatar, a cookbook, and other things I haven’t seen yet.  And best of all, A FEAST FOR CROWS, the fourth Game of Thrones novel!  Thank you all!  These are fantastic Christmas presents.  And I still have ones from my girlfriend to look forward to.  This holiday gets better and better, even after it’s over.

The First Christmas in Paradise

Written December 28, 2011
Manambaro

    The postman slit open the cardboard box and a strange green powder puffed out to waft in the air.
    Oh, great, they’re gonna think my grandma’s sending me drugs.
    But no, the customs officials were just as perplexed as me to what the substance was.  Turns out, after hearing me extoll the virtues of moringa, my grandmother in Florida sent me a canister of moringa powder, which works as an all-natural multivitamin.  The can had ruptured in transit, coating everything else in the box in fine green dust.
    After leaving the post office I went to the Kaleta Hotel for some Friday morning Internet.  I already had the last blog post written, so I had enough time to stream the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones.  And it was glorious.  Sansa’s just as annoying as in the books, and they captured Arya perfectly.  Sure, the direwolves are just big fluffy huskies and the Dothraki are Middle-Eastern-ish instead of Mongolian, but I realize HBO doesn’t have the resources to get trained wolves (especially extinct direwolves) or a host of Mongolian actors.
    I ran some errands around town, then met Jess and her boyfriend Haja at her place.  We made tuna quesadillas for dinner.  Jess wasn’t feeling well, so we all decided to turn in early that night.  But after hearing me gushing about Game of Thrones, Jess very generously offered to let me watch more episodes on her laptop.  Episodes two and three!
    Saturday morning we went to Libanona Beach and hung out with the crowd of kids who adore Jess because she’s “their vazaha.”  They’re mostly the children of the fishermen and shopkeepers who live along the beach.  She doesn’t know all their names, but she greets them all as “namako,” “my friend.”  They seem fine with that.
    The kids swam all around us, treading water easily while we stood.  A trio of French tourists swam nearby, sporting snorkels and masks.  When they came back to the beach I introduced myself.  One of the girls had a sudoku puzzle, and the children were looking curiously at it.  In a pidgin of French and Gasy we explained the rules to them, and they were hooked, entranced.  Sudoku hurts my head, so I left them to it.  I looked back a good forty minutes later and the kids hadn’t moved an inch .  They were going to beat this strange vazaha game if it took all day!
    In the afternoon Jess and Haja butchered a chicken.  Her kitchen is only big enough for two people so... more Game of Thrones!
    That night there was a Tence Mena concert at Sacrée Coeur, the top private high school in Fort Dauphin.  We met Paul there.  According to him, Tence Mena is the Malagasy Lady Gaga.  It’s pretty obvious how the one directly followed the other, but hey, derivative Gaga is better than none, right?  Tence Mena is also a force for individualism and personal empowerment in a highly collectivist society.
    She cycled outfits throughout the show, first a gold tube top and miniskirt, then a revealing Japanese schoolgirl ensemble, then a strange garment that looked like a white tank top with a hood.  Her outfits were original, her stage personality sexy and avant-garde, her music... Paul said it’s just the same centuries-old Antandroy beat through everything.  The one song of hers I sort of understood was one of empowerment encouraging women to dump alcoholic boyfriends.  Essentially the message was, “Don’t waste your time with a drunkard, you’re sexy enough to get another man in a heartbeat.”
    Next day I decided to accompany Jess and Haja to church the next morning.  I figured I’d watched enough Game of Thrones and there were better ways to spend my morning.
    It was a Pentecostal church.  We walked in the large low-slung building at 8 to find the congregation in song as the children’s choir danced on a stage draped with shiny blue and purple cloth.  Lights flashed behind them to further attract the attention.
    Are they gonna do the raising hands thing?  Yep, there they go.
    I’ve never understood the raising hands thing.  I tried it once at church with my cousins and did not get one iota of spiritual pleasure from it, just sore arms.
    Maybe it’s because my ancestral church, the Episcopal Church, was founded by stone-faced Scotsmen, but I see little place for dancing during a service.  To me it’s like dancing in the shower.  You sing in the shower, sure, but otherwise you go about cleansing yourself sedately and then step out feeling refreshed.
    Are those boys doing the robot?  No, more like Michael Jackson dance moves, but should I ever have to ask whether they’re doing the robot in church?
    After an hour and a half (halfway there!) the preacher started his sermon.  I didn’t understand most of it, but I entertained myself by trying.  I know he didn’t talk much about the Nativity story, because I would have recognized the words for “star,” “shepherds,” “gold,” “angel,” etc.
    And the preacher kept going.  And going, never flagging in his enthusiasm or the vigor of his words.  If nothing else, he was a paragon of athleticism in the name of the Lord.
    The three of us perked up when he announced that he does not approve of Tence Mena, and he would have preferred that those of us who went to the concert had spent that time in prayer instead.
    Finally, at about 10:45, he stepped aside... for more dancing from the children’s choir.  Eleven o’clock came... and went.  The service was still going?  Of course it was.  After ten minutes or so Jess said something to Haja, and he led us out.
    I dare say that’s enough worship to get me through to next Christmas.
    More Game of Thrones in the afternoon while Jess and Haja set up a hammock outside.
    For dinner we walked over to Jess’s neighbor Barry’s house.  He’s a Northern Irish expat who’s lived in Madagascar for the last thirteen years.  He works with several programs, notably the American SIT study abroad program in Fort Dauphin.
    He served a delectable meal of cheese-laden potatoes, smoked ham, salad, stewed carrots, and hard-boiled eggs, with pineapples, mangoes, and passionfruit for dessert.  I plowed through my plate, finished off Paul’s, then methodically destroyed two pineapples.  And the beer started to flow.
    Keep in mind that the bottles here are twice the size of American beers.  So after one Three Horse Beer I’m feeling relaxed.  Two is a comfortable level of buzzed.  Three is pushing it a little.
    Eight THBs...
    Well, drink with an Irishman, you get what you get, I guess.  I blame him entirely, deftly cajoling and pressuring me by turns like a manipulative teenager out of a public service announcement.  He said we had to finish the beers, both cases of ‘em, and we did.  I didn’t think it’d be possible, but we did.
    I actually wasn’t that hung over by the morning.  Yeah, drinking on a full stomach rocks!
    Jess and Haja were still asleep so... last episode of Game of Thrones!  Now that I’ve finished the season, I’ll lend Jess the books so we can geek out over both.
    Yeah, this was one of the better Christmases.

Sweet Ayess Tea

Mango sellers in Manambaro

The largest bridge on the way to Fort Dauphin

Woman selling cakes to passing taxi brousses

Manambaro's town square on market day

Lohomby, looking the same as it ever was

Flatbread pizza at the meva

Driver's assistant collecting fares on a taxi brousse

Mariana, after the first round of water balloons

Tana in the rain

Written December 21, 2011
Manambaro

    They offered two kinds of sandwiches on the flight into Tana: cheese or fish.  I reached for a cheese one, but snagged a fish sandwich instead.  I’d only had a couple bananas to eat all morning, so I wolfed it down.
    Bad mistake.
    As we began to descend I started feeling queasy, but I dismissed it as airsickness.  I don’t usually get airsick, but maybe this was brought on by a lack of sleep, or reading A Clash of Kings too intently.  Breathing in the fresh, rain-washed air as I stepped out of the plane made me feel better instantly.
    But only for the time it took to cross the runway.  By the time I collected my luggage and hailed a taxi, I knew something was amiss with my digestive system.  The cab driver was chatting away cheerfully, asking me questions about America, when I had to interrupt,
    “Azafady, marary ny kibo avy ny rôplan.  Mety mandoha zaho.”  I’m sorry, my stomach is unwell from the plane.  I might throw up.
    With a panicked look, the driver rolled down my window.  I hung my head out like a dog, a disoriented, probably very pale dog, for a few miles until I loosed yellow goo from my mouth.  When I got to the Peace Corps meva I went straight to the Health Unit, where Doctor Alain handed me three different medicines and counseled me never to eat fish on Air Madagascar again.
    That night was pretty rough.  I vomited at least eight times, at roughly half-hour intervals.  I couldn’t keep water down, much less the medicine.  Vickie, Jackie, and Daniel, three Volunteers from the stage that transferred here from Niger two years back, watched over me, but there was nothing to be done.  I talked with Vickie for a while as a distraction; we commiserated about how Georgians and Alabamans and suchlike are always saying Virginia and Texas aren’t really part of the South.  But that didn’t last long.  I ended up asking Vickie for a blanket, then locking myself in the bathroom propped up against the wall a few feet from the toilet, slipping in and out of consciousness as I waited for the next attack.  At about 9:30 I felt spent enough that I wouldn’t throw up again, and I stumbled to bed.
    In the morning I felt much better, though a long way from full strength.  I went downstairs to the common room, where I spent the morning writing my CDS report, sipping water gingerly, and nibbling on some crackers Jackie had gotten me.  In the afternoon I chanced going downtown with Mariana, Jessie, and Meghan to withdraw some money from the bank.
    On Saturday I was well enough to go to the Analakely market with Sam, John, Carolyn, and Amel.  Analakely is notorious for its thieves.  John got pickpocketed as we wiggled through a crowd; later we’d learn that within the same hour, a few blocks away, a robber had dashed off with Kim’s purse.  Nevertheless, it turned out to be a pretty good day.  John, Sam, and I bought omby shirts, which are pretty much the only garment for men that is considered “traditional” in Madagascar.
    After walking around the hot streets for hours, I resolved to take it easier on Sunday.  Monday came, and with it the official start of IST, our In-Service Training.  We had a couple of sessions at Peace Corps headquarters in the morning.  The docs praised us on following their directions and staying healthy, and gave us a brief review of all the Health stuff we covered during PST.  Lydia Hall, an embassy representative, also spoke about events the embassy would be hosting and opportunities to take the GRE and Foreign Service exam.
    She warned that the Foreign Service is not for those who consider themselves “specialists,” good at doing one or a few things very well.  Foreign Service members are expected to be good at everything, and this need is reflected in the exam.  And that’s when I made my decision: I’m not going to take the Foreign Service exam.
    Because I’m not an economics guy, nor a political science guy.   I have no head for numbers and even less of one for political gamesmanship.  Foreign Service sounds perfect for my friend Iqra, but she’s already sprinting down the path to being a Supreme Court Justice, or at least a nationally renowned lawyer.
    Theirs is not my world, nor would I ever want it to be.  From what I’ve seen of it, both here and in Niger, the embassy world is one of high walls and gleaming floors, of manicured lawns and overstuffed couches and flat-screen TVs tuned to ESPN. 
    Not for me.  It’s not that I’m turning up my nose at that kind of luxury, it’s just that I’ll take a little less comfort for a little more freedom to travel and shoot.
    But luxury has its place.  For lunch Leif treated us to a sandwich buffet of crusty French bread, crisp lettuce, juicy tomatoes, tangy cornichons and succulent ham.  And cheese!  Cheese is one of the things we all miss most about America.
    Then we packed into two Peace Corps vans for the long drive up to the Training Center at Mantasoa.  Once there, we arranged ourselves in the dorms much as we had during PST.  We were all eager for dinner.  Dr. Alain had cautioned us that every IST a few Volunteers fell ill from overeating.  I don’t think anyone overate, but the food was so much richer than the fare we’d all been having at site that about half of us went to bed with stomachaches.
    For the rest of the week they kept us busier than we’d ever been in PST.  We started earlier, had a shorter break for lunch, and sometimes had sessions after dinner.  We hardly had any time to relax and socialize with each other like we’d expected.
    The first day was filled up with our CDS presentations, in which each of us gave a brief lecture on our site.  I’d misunderstood the directions for the whole thing, so where most everyone else had well-organized PowerPoints with which to present their sites, I only had a handful of photos.  It was intriguing to learn about Harry’s site, in the middle of the Androy desert, Steph’s, full of researchers studying lemurs, Sally’s, with the country’s largest cattle market, and Ellen’s, where all anyone does-- all day, every day-- is dig up the surrounding country looking for gold.  After the presentations we had more administration-centered sessions.
    And I’ll say this about the sessions: I don’t wish to be unkind to those who organized them, because I know that everyone involved had the best of intentions.  But they were... not very engaging.  They were boring.  They were tenth-grade-Chemistry-class boring.  I know the information about funding projects and organizing meetings and so on and so forth was relevant, even vital to our future success as Volunteers.  But many of the lectures that could have been done in twenty minutes had been hammered and ironed out thin so as to fill up two hours.  Lova’s and Jemima’s session on gender roles was interesting, as was the session where Sally and Travis, Education Volunteers from our own stage, gave the Health team tips on how to run an English club.  The last lesson of all, where we in Health all joined together to build a cookstove outside, was probably the best.  We all got to work with our hands, and in the end we had a very tangible result for our labors.  The rest of ‘em...
    By Thursday the ennui had reached a point where the bolder among us decided to blow off some steam.  Someone had gotten water balloons in a care package, and after distributing them to make sure the opposing sides-- boys versus girls-- were roughly even, hostilities erupted.    After one balloon ruptured ignominiously in my pocket and I banged my knee trying to dodge another, I decided on another course of action.  So I shot the rest of the fight instead of partaking in it.  What’s war without war correspondents?
    Unfortunately the next session was Johanesa’s Security lecture on sexual assault.  He glared at us as we stumbled in giggling, some of us soaking wet, but we sobered up quickly once the session began.  That one was too deadly serious to be boring.
    Immediately after lunch on Friday we packed and drove back to Tana.  Many of us were taking vacations northward, but I elected to go straight back to Manambaro.  My flight was scheduled at 5:20 in the morning.  After a few short hours at the meva I caught a taxi with Monica and another girl Mallory to the airport.  Monica was flying out to spend Christmas in Paris with her sister, while Mallory was bound for Madrid.
    I slept on the floor of the airport.  This being Madagascar, the flight didn’t leave until 6:30.  I got back to Manambaro without incident and set about unpacking.  Everyone was happy to see me back, happier than I expected.  This place is really starting to feel like home for me.
    This past week I’ve been resting up and washing a lot of laundry.  I’ve also been trying this diet my friend Wes turned me on to where I replace most of the rice I’ve been eating with beans.  Wes swears by it, and he has the physique to back up his claims.  ‘Course I’ve also heard he works out like a madman.
    I’ve also been reading the Song of Ice and Fire series.  I just finished A Storm of Swords.  I tried to pace myself, but as soon as I got to the wedding at the Twins I had to plunge ahead, all the way to the end.  Now I need to track down a copy of A Feast for Crows.
    Now I’m struggling with the fact that IST came and went.  Before IST my assignment was to get to know my community.  Meet people, show ‘em you speak Gasy, show ‘em you’re friendly and honest and willing to help them.
    Do your weekly work at the CSB, but you don’t have to do anything more than that.  Anything.
    Well, I did that.  Mission accomplished.  I accomplished that mission like our beloved president on the deck of that ship.  But now... once I run out of chores to do or letters to write or good books to read I have to face the hard truth:
    I have no idea what to do next.

Books Are the New Video Games

Sunset in the fields.  This is the best shot I've been able to get so far of those feathery plants.

From the series "Eric Enjoys A Pineapple."

Village girls gathering sweet potato greens.

Rodin picking lychees with the bamboo pole I call "The Claaaaw."

Rosy periwinkle flowers.  The roots are a treatment for stomach maladies, and scientists have recently begun investigating them for possible anti-cancer properties.  It grows only in Madagascar.

Written December 2, 2011
Fort Dauphin

    My phone rang, the notes barely discernible over the hubbub of the Tuesday market crowd.  I stepped apart from the throng haggling over bananas and fished it out of my pocket.  I didn’t recognize the number, so it was probably Peace Corps.
    “Hello?”
    “Hello, Eric, this is Lova,” came the reply.  Lova was the Homestay Coordinator during training, and she works as a much-needed go-between on other tasks for Peace Corps throughout the year. “I’m calling because of the emergency...”
    Oh, great, I thought.  Was it a kidnapping?  A shooting, a bombing, a riot?  Well, I should have known everything here was too good to last.  I guess the Transition Conference will be in South Africa this time.  At least this time around I got to stay in my site for more than nine--
    “...system, the emergency contact system.  This is just a test.  Is all your contact information the same?”
    Dang it, Lova, ya scared me half to death!
    Apart from that brief jolt (Have the lemurs finally decided to rise and exterminate the human scum infesting their island?), the last week has gone pretty well for me.  I did laundry and wrote letters to Maia and Maria, two of my professors at Guilford.  I contacted Tovo about booking my plane ticket up to Tana for IST, probably on the eighth.  And I collated most of the raw data for my CDS, and started planning out the text of the report.
    I didn’t get as much work done as I should have, however, because I was reading my third-favorite novel ever, The Passage.  I read it back in June just before I left the States, but as soon as I cracked the cover, I felt the pull the story exerted on me the very first time I picked it up in Borders.
    It’s probably my fourth time reading it, and this time around I was able to pick up on things I’ve missed before, like how Wolgast and Amy pass through Homer, Oklahoma, years before the town becomes you-know-what for Sosa, one of the Twelve.  I also noticed that the last third of the book is quite similar to Watership Down, only with humans and vampires in the place of rabbits and humans.
    And from there I moved on to an even greater literary endeavor, Game of Thrones.  My parents sent me the first three books in the septology, and I’m pretty sure I saw a copy of the fourth in the Tana maeva.  I’ve hardly been able to tear myself away from it, simply because I always want to see what happens next.  The wolves, the knights, the totally-not-Mongols!  The seven-hundred-foot-tall wall of ice!  And all the intrigue, all the blood!  If ever a book was made to be a series on HBO...
    And several people have told me the series gets even more addictive after this one.  That could be a problem.
    There’s also news on the video game side of things.  My parents found the Age of Empires 3 disk that I lost years ago.  They’re sending it with the next package.  It’ll be great to have both Age of Mythology and AoE3 with me again.  I’m already making plans to reconstitute my favorite profiles on my present computer, especially my British Black Watch Kick profile, and the Ottoman variation of it that I invented and named “Turkish Delight.”  Long live the White Queen.
    I say, did I just segue a lot of video game nonsense into a Chronicles of Narnia reference?  I did, didn’t I?
    It’s been a good week.

Tropical Thanksgiving

The cliffs of the North Bay

A ruined colonial-era bar at Libanona Beach near Jess's house

Libanona Beach, on the East Lagoon

Miramar Beach, and a larger view of the East Lagoon

Written November 26, 2011
Fort Dauphin   

    “Hello, we are merchants,” the two women said, implying, Buy something from us.  They thrust rolls of shiny bracelets towards me.
    “I’m sorry, the fire is dead,” I said.  That’s an Antanosy expression that means I’m broke. “I have spent all my money on vazaha food.  Yes, it makes me sad that the vazaha food here is so expensive.”
    And I was thinking, Where did that lie come from?  There’s no way that’s going to work.  How did I even conceive of saying something like that?  I seem to have opened my mouth and the words flowed out.
    But it did work!  The women agreed it was sad, and immediately started advising me to buy Gasy food instead.  They even launched into walking directions to a slew of restaurants where I could find, “good beef, good beans, good fish, good cat...”
    “Cat?”
    “Yes, cat.  You haven’t eaten cat yet?” The very idea of it, any person, Gasy or vazaha, turning down the chance to eat delicious cat.
    “Okay, thank you, I’ll remember that,” I said, and continued hiking up the hill to Jess’s house.
    Two hours later, Tatum arrived with two turkeys: one alive and clucking weakly, the other dead and gradually turning purple.  The latter had died en route, probably from heat stroke.  The girls gave the surviving bird water and a cardboard box to serve as a coop, showing laudable tenderness toward our captive.
    Before we tore her apart and ate ‘er.
    As the sun drew lower we walked to Island Vibe, where Paul, the PCV from Ambovombe, and Jim, an American expat, were watching football.  American football, with commentary in French, naturally.  It was a nice, relaxed atmosphere, sipping beers and listening to the banter about “les Chiefs contre les Patriots.”
    More expats trickled in, and then a large group of students from SIT, the American Study Abroad program in Fort Dauphin.  Jenny and Susan brought out the appetizer, French bread with a selection of condiments to choose from.  A white fish pate, a green chili sauce, an orange carrot chutney, a tangy powder made from peanuts...
    And that’s how I found out about pet-sakay.  I reached for what I thought was a dish of Marinara sauce.
    It wasn’t Marinara sauce.
    It was the super-concentrated form of the burning hot red peppers, sakay, that grow here.  I’d only eaten the green ones before, and I treated those the way I would dangerous darkroom chemicals.
    Reason stayed with me enough to suppress the urge to run, because you can’t run from the tissues lining your mouth.  I guzzled the last of my beer, then asked, in as calm of a strangled gasp as I could, for more bread.  I polished off half a platter of it, then called for more.  An SIT girl stopped mid-sentence to shoot me a shocked look of, “Are you Peace Corps folks always this hungry?”
    It turns out South African food really isn’t that different from English or American cuisine.  The only dish I found peculiar out of the main course was leeks in a cream sauce.  Otherwise the meal was turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, and glazed carrots. Dessert was a delectable pumpkin pie with plenty of sweet cream.  While the food was excellent, the portions fell somewhat short of our American standards.
    The next morning I rose much earlier than I wanted to so I could pick up the package waiting for me at the post office.  Thanks again, Mom and Dad!  I like the books and the dried fruit the most, but the other PCVs were far more impressed by the box of chocolate peppermint bark from Costco.  Guess I just ain’t been here long enough to get my priorities in order.
    I got back to Jess’s to find that she and her Malagasy friend Hadza had already killed and butchered the turkey.  We made a quick trip out to the main market to pick up more fruits and veggies, navigating the winding back alleys of Fort Dauphin rather than walk in the blinding sun of the main street.
    When we got back Jess fried up the turkey pieces, reminding me of the tempting smells in a Chinese restaurant.  Then she invented what should have been a delicacy among my family in Florida ages ago: turkey-fried shrimp.
    Tatum got back from running errands about noon and the four of us spent the rest of the day sedately cooking the evening’s feast.  I made eggplant stir-fry and a fruit salad of mangoes, pineapple, bananas, and lychees.  Paul and Wes showed up, bringing the drinks.  Wes and I spent a good part of the afternoon talking enthusiastically about video games, while Tatum looked on, saying nothing, apparently amused at our intensity.
    Our dinner was a great success, with a small but delightfully mixed group of guests.  Jim arrived, bringing his Irish friend Barry.  Two of the SIT girls, Jade and Katie, arrived, then Charlene and Michel, a French couple.  Israel’s good friend Skar brought two of his Malagasy friends.  We filled up Jess’s house and exhausted her supply of plates: Jess herself dined on a frisbee.  There were nowhere near enough chairs, nor floor space, so we ate standing, spilling out onto the cool, breezy lawn.
    Afterwards, I’d anticipated going straight to bed.  It was after nine, after all, and I was sleepy and full.  Jim, Barry, Charlene, Michel, the kids, and Skar’s friends seemed to have had the same idea.
    But that’s not how city Volunteers roll.  At Paul and Skar’s urging, the rest of us strolled towards Club Panorama, the city’s most popular nightclub.  Jade and Katie caught a cab to their hotel, promising to change and then meet us at there.  We met Israel and Steph outside, fresh from their holiday in Saint Luce to the west.  We seven Volunteers, plus Skar and Hadza, filed in and, for a few songs, had the dance floor all to ourselves.  In a wall-length mirror I noticed how much I looked like my father when I dance.  That’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing, just an observation.  Maybe it’s that fact that beards are beards, whether they’re Antarctic or Antanosy.
    The place filled up steadily, with everyone from nervous-looking high school girls to awkward French tourists well over fifty.  And many ladies of the night.  They weren’t particularly sexy or intimidating, just part of the place.  Their slavering vazaha customers, though, I could have done without.
    We danced and danced, cooled off out on the terrace facing the ocean, then danced some more.  By the time we got back to Jess’s house, it was almost two.
    And yeah.  That was my Thanksgiving weekend.

The Frugivore Cometh

My bedroom.

My kitchen area.  Note the gigantic stone mortar on the right.

A typical lunch: mango-cucumber salad.

Fafa and Rodin, headed to church.

My backyard.

Ambanintsena residents drying freshly harvested rice.

The main pavilion in the market.

Written November 24, 2011
Fort Dauphin

    I’ve found there are few things better than relaxing on your porch on a lazy afternoon, eating a juicy mango with a big ol’ knife.
    Yes, mango season has finally started, and if this is just the beginning, Manambaro should be buried in the fruits by Christmas.  The price of mangoes in the market fluctuates wildly from day to day, but I’m told that as the supply increases it’ll bottom out at about 20 ariary (1¢).  Oh yeah.  One penny, one mango.
    I began my Community Diagnostic Survey on the 14th, since I’ll probably leave for IST on December 14th and we’re supposed to allocate about a month for the whole project.  I started with a series of interviews with influential figures in Manambaro: the mayor, Dr. Jean-Claude, hospital staff, etc.  The interviews have served to illuminate more aspects of Manambaro’s Health needs, like the fact that food security would be increased dramatically if the canals could be fixed to irrigate the rice paddies properly.
    This week I started on the grassroots part of the survey, brief door-to-door interviews.  I decided to focus on just two of Manambaro’s eight neighborhoods, since those are the two in which I spend most of my time anyway.  Maramandroso (“Many Enter”) is my neighborhood, and has the most access to the town’s fields and pastures to the west.  Most of the residents are farmers and craftsmen.  Ambanintsena (“Below the Market”) actually consists of the houses that encircle the market, and many of the residents are merchants there, although there are also a lot of farmers.
    The door-to-door process has been interesting.  It’s exhausting to put yourself out there and traipse around the town introducing yourself to people out of the blue, making rapid-fire small talk in Gasy, asking folks, “What is the biggest problem in your household?” as sensitively as you can.  Only one of the townspeople has turned me away; most seem to realize immediately that if they just answer my questions civilly I’ll get out of their hair soon enough.
    Although it is frustrating when parents can’t remember the ages of their children.
    So far there’s no one problem that people have listed above the others.  Economic concerns seem to outweigh health ones; some of the townsfolk my own age who have a moderate amount of education seem perfectly motivated to work as hard as they can to improve their station, but there extremely few paying jobs here.  They farm not because they want to, or out of adherence to tradition, but simply because it’s the only way to feed themselves.
    Hopefully I can tap into this desire for change when it comes time to choose a project.  But that won’t be for a while yet.
    I covered all of Maromandroso, except for one or two households, and a little of Ambanintsena, which means that the surveys are between one-third and one-half done.  For now the CDS is on hold.  I feel the pressure that comes whenever I’m working on a large project, but hey, it’s Thanksgiving weekend. 
    And it’s different than any Thanksgiving that’s come before.  The sun is shining, the sea breezes are sweet, and the temperature is... a whole lot more pleasant than I bet it is in Virginia right now.  I’ve RSVP’d a place at Island Vibe’s turkey dinner tonight with my friends.  Island Vibe is a bar here in Fort Dauphin run by two expat Englishwomen.  The cuisine is promised to be neither British nor American, but South African.  I’m intrigued.
    Tomorrow night I’m helping Jess and Tatum, and hopefully Monica too, prepare another feast for just us PCVs.  And I’ll also be able to pick up another package that’s waiting for me at the post office.
    Getting here this morning was a fun parallel experience to public transportation in the States.  Instead of the normal taxi brousse minibus I climbed aboard a covered pickup truck in the same function, know here as a katparkat, after the French quatre-par-quatre.  I squeezed in the back with thirteen other people for the hour-long ride.  Seeing them reach toward the overhead struts for stability while trying to doze reminded me exactly of morning commuters on a subway.
    Just outside Fort Dauphin we stopped at the police checkpoint.  The guard, a young guy wearing the standard steel-gray beret, strode up to the pickup and peered inside.  Seeing me, and my apparent ease in the cramped vehicle, he exclaimed, “Are you vazaha or Gasy?”
    “I’m vazaha,” I smiled, although I was sorely tempted to lie and play the charade.
    He must have mistaken my mirth for insolence, because he called me to the booth on the side of the road and demanded to see my passport.  I handed him the Peace Corps-issued photocopy, which he argued was invalid because he couldn’t make out an expiration date on my visa.
    I don't know, man, maybe it's an implicit invitation from your government for me to stay here indefinitely.
    Not about to pay a bribe, I dug my Carte de Résidence and my Peace Corps ID out of my backpack and showed them to him.
    “Okay, there’s an expiration date on these,” he said patronizingly.
    As I walked back to the truck I thought, wait, did I just get grilled for Riding While White?

Tragedy (Part 2)

Written November 24, 2011
Fort Dauphin

    I walked to the Lutheran church, and then to the hospital’s chapel, looking for Donaly’s wake, but both were dark and silent.  Even though I was in a perfectly safe part and relatively well-lit part of town, I was still a bit nervous.  Walking anywhere after dark is something that most Manambaroans just don’t do.
    Bewildered, I was on the point of going back to the house when I ran into Pascaline.  She led me off the main street and down some twisty sand paths to a house where the wake was being held.  A gently curving hill formed a natural amphitheater around the house, where fifty or so mourners sat on tarps and mats, solemnly talking amongst themselves. 
    I followed Pascaline inside, where the rest of the family sat on the floor.  Donaly’s body lay on a bed, tightly swathed in white cloth that covered all but his face.  People always say the dead look peaceful, but Donaly’s expression conveyed something else.  Something sad and joyful at the same time, a kind of very faintly amused resignation.  As if to say, “Oh, is that it?  Is that all there is in this world?  Okay, let’s see what’s in the next one...”
    A trio of women entered.  Upon seeing Donaly, their wails exploded and rent the air.  That’s really the best way to describe the screams, as almost physical things tearing through the weighty atmosphere of the house, like blunt blades ripping through thick wool.  And yet the screams were good, justified, cathartic.  Donaly’s dead, why aren’t more people wailing?
    A man with a carefully cropped mustache sat down next to me.
    “I apologize for this,” he said.  “It’s really just our custom here.”
    “It’s all right.  We have much the same custom in America,” I lied.  But at the time it seemed true.  Aren’t traditions of mourning basically the same everywhere?
    Desmond got up and I followed him outside, to where Fafa and Rodin sat on a dusty tarp.  We sat for about an hour, quietly talking.  Some of the other mourners offered us rum, but we declined.  Someone started singing a slow, rising folk song, and about half the people joined in, achieving a harmony that was as magnificent as it was impromptu.
    We went home about ten, leaving the old-timers to hold the traditional all-night vigil for the dead, a custom that, it appeared, was disappearing among the new generations.
    And the next morning, everything seemed to go back to normal, almost eerily so.  I got up, ate eggs and rice, swept the house, washed dishes, showered.  Then I went to see the mayor’s staff for a second round of meetings about education.
    The pigs seemed just as happy with Desmond feeding them instead of Donaly.
    The truck to take Donaly to Ambovombe arrived at two.  As I walked toward the main road to see it off, I saw about twenty men, clad in orange and white, running in a tight group toward the colossal vehicle.  Their faces were jubilant and the ones on the sides of the group carried traditional spears and everyday axes.  Those in the center raised Donaly’s white-clad form above their shoulders, as if he weighed nothing at all.  They must have loaded him onto the truck in seconds, because by the time I got to the road it was already pulling away, with the crowd of men running after it.
    That evening, Desmond, the twins, and I sat on my porch, eating lychees and watching the light fade from the sky.
    “Éric, Donaly’s in Heaven now,” Rodin said.  It was the kind of thing you’d say to a child, and Rodin said it slowly, as if I probably wouldn’t understand the Malagasy word for heaven.  But from the context I understood perfectly.
    I smiled.
    Yeah, I thought.  Where else could he be?

Tragedy

These are the only pictures I got of Donaly.  I took them just the day before.  Donaly's on the left.

Njina, Rodin, Fafa, and Donaly, with the first lychees of the season.

Donaly, Fafa, me, Desmond, and Njina.  Rodin shot this one.

Written Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Manambaro

    My host brother Donaly died today.
    Donaly was the nephew of M. Dieu-Donné and Mme Josy.  I didn’t include him in the blog post numbering the family, because he wasn’t part of the immediate family.  He was quiet, and a bit solitary.
    Donaly drowned in the river at one of the nearby towns, Tsihary.  A bunch of the guys, his friends and mine, had walked there to swim and cool off.  I didn’t go because the mayor’s staff had invited me to a meeting about education in the town.  As best as I can figure, he hurt his legs and his right arm on the rocks somehow, and succumbed before anyone could get to him.  By the time a crowd of people carried him to the Lutheran Hospital here, it was far too late.
    Just before 5 I was heading to the market to buy oil, when I met Mme Josy, walking quickly towards the house.  She told me in a strained, hushed voice using simple Malagasy that I’d be sure to understand,
    “Donaly fell in the water at Tsihary.  We don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”
    I met my friend Rodin outside and we ran to the hospital, passing the market and the big Lutheran church.  We ignored the cheerful children who called out to me.  We met the crowd carrying Donaly on a big, sagging reed mat.  I thought, there’s no way all of you could have known him.
    We burst through the gates of the hospital, the clamor of the crowd echoing off the concrete walls.  The men carrying the mat hurried Donaly into the emergency ward.  The doctors checked for a pulse, but there was none.  They didn’t try to resuscitate.  Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows, bathing everyone in orange, making the colors of the walls garish.
    In Malagasy grammar, no one’s ever just dead, “maty.”  You say “efa maty,” already dead, as if everyone in Madagascar routinely lives to 100.
    And I kept seeing those words, never hearing them, seeing them spoken between women in the cramped but newly renovated emergency ward.  I didn’t want to see them, I didn’t want it to be true.
    There were shockingly little tears.  Mme Josy cried for about five minutes, then collected herself.  Yvette cried for longer and went to be by herself.  One woman I didn’t know cried hardest of all, shrill sobs that sounded almost metallic.
    Well, I thought, it’s different from Niger.  Among the Zarma tribe, no one cries, ever.  Zarma women are famed for not even crying during labor.  Or so the Nigerien saying goes.
    As the crowd dispersed I walked home with the family, wishing I could be of more comfort to them.  M. Dieu-Donné was in Fort Dauphin for a teacher’s conference.
    I stood with Fafa, Rodin’s twin brother, on the upstairs porch.  Fafa had been there at Tsihary.
    “He was attacked by a lolò-rano,” Fafa murmured, staring toward the darkening horizon.
    “A what?” I asked.
    “It’s an animal.  Donaly’s nose was bleeding.  They feed on blood.”
    I thought he meant a freshwater shark; Lord knows there’re enough saltwater sharks off Fort Dauphin.
    “A big animal or a small one?” I tried to clarify.
    “An animal,” he replied cryptically.
    Curious, I went downstairs and looked it up.  A lolò-rano is a water demon.  I had an image of a huge, spectral rat paddling furiously toward a struggling man.
    Of course there’s the rational part of me that says demons aren’t real.  But at the same time, why not?  He couldn’t just... die.  He couldn’t be running and smiling and gobbling lychees in the sun one day and destroyed the next, unless he was the victim of some malevolence.
    The family walked to the road to look at the schedule of trucks that would pass tomorrow.  Because Donaly was Antandroy by birth, custom dictates that he must be buried in Antandroy lands; one of the big cargo trucks would have to be arranged to carry his body and a small escort of relatives to Ambovombe, the Antandroy regional capital.
    I stayed behind to cook dinner.  I knew I had to make some for the family; there wasn’t even a question of following the traditions of my Southern upbringing, it was just something that had to be done.  I threw together a stew of greens, tomatoes, and onions, and boiled a double portion of pasta.  The stew was pretty bland.  I considered adding the Italian herbs my parents sent me, but decided they’d be too pungent and unfamiliar for Malagasy palates.  A dash of garlic powder instead.
    I carried a plate upstairs to Pascaline, the only person left in the house.  Pascaline is another relation of Dieu-Donné.  I’m not sure of her relationship to Donaly.  I think if she were his sister she would have been more distressed.
    She accepted the plate graciously, accepting my explanation that it was part of an American fomba, tradition.  As I turned to leave I reflected that the tradition here is actually the reverse of what it is at home.  You give flowers for death and food for sickness, usually a piece of fruit.
    I wish I could write more, but I have to go.  The wake is starting.

Good News and Bad

Written November 11
Fort Dauphin

Just a quick update here: since the blog post I wrote on Wednesday, two significant things have happened.  The first is that I have gotten fleas in my bed.  They're not as itchy as I imagine fleas could be, certainly nothing to compare to Amarilis's flea problem out in the desert, but just annoying enough to keep me awake most of the night.
     All in the line of duty, though.  There are two solutions I'm going to try.  The first is just putting my bedroll and my mattress out in the sun, like you do for bedbugs.  The second is going to Manambaro's pharmacy and hoping they have some kind of anti-flea wash for bedsheets.  And one of those had better work, because it takes three weeks for the Peace Corps Health Unit to send packages down here.
     But despite running on two hours of shuteye, today has been a pretty good day so far.  I caught a bush taxi just as it was pulling out of Manambaro at 6, then had a nice leisurely walk to the post office.  The customs agent opened and inspected the package from my parents right in front of me, so I know nothing was stolen out of it by some less scrupulous official.  I haven't looked through it all myself, but I did glimpse some National Geographics, clothes, and jars of spices!  Thank you, Mom and Dad!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  Very few things brighten my mood like receiving a letter or a package.
      Because the box is pretty unwieldy, especially since it's open now, the customs agent generously gave me a big tarpaulin sack to carry it in, like some eighteenth-century peddler.  So I figure I'll transfer the most important things into my backpack to make the sack lighter, and, yes, walk all the way back to the taxi brousse station with the sack over my shoulder.
     Why don't I transfer all the box's contents into my backpack and throw the box and the sack away?  And waste perfectly good cardboard and tarpaulin?  Bah, I'd sooner take one bite of a cheeseburger and throw the rest away!  (The cheeseburgers here aren't very good.) It's all part of my new... what would you call it?  Interior decorating scheme?  Anyway, nerd that I am, I've decided that my house will have a theme of "post-apocalyptic chic," or "Post-Apocalyptique," to borrow from Zoolander.  I will waste as little raw materials as possible, and use them however I can to prettify my abode.  Don't think I'm decorating my walls with trash, that's where the "chic" part comes in.  The whole thing is like "hippie chic," only with less psychedelic colors.  For example, I can't wait until I've used up the multivitamins my parents sent me back during training.  Then the bottles will serve as two new glass cups.
     And some of you (Carolyn Murphy) are shaking your heads right now and going, "That boy is so weird."
     To which I say, "Oh, yes.  Yes, I am."

Emerald of the Isle

Written October 9, 2011
Manambaro

On Friday the 4th I got word that a package my parents had sent me had arrived in Fort Dauphin.  I was delighted, and I thought that Dawid, the postmaster, had told me that it’d get to Manambaro on Tuesday.  However, I must have misunderstood his Malagasy.  On Tuesday at the post office he gently informed me that, no, I would have to actually travel to Fort Dauphin to pay the customs fee and pick up the package.
    So I’ll take the first bush taxi in on Friday.  Luckily I also found out that Volunteers are allowed to come into the city more often than three days per month, as long as there’s a legitimate reason like picking up a package or meeting with an aid organization.  I doubt the same customs tax will apply to international letters, since there was no fee to receive them during training.
    In the meantime several pursuits have occupied my time.  The first is a duel of wits against the mouse that has taken to snuffling around my kitchen area.  I bought a rattrap at the market, but I haven’t been able to figure out an effective form of bait.  My next step is to buy boards and nail them to seal off the spaces under the interior doors that lead to the other half of the downstairs.  I keep thinking of my neighbor Tracy’s story about the US Park Ranger who would kill mice in his cabin by flinging his Bowie knife at them from across the room.  I kinda want to be that guy.
    And I might be soon!  Just yesterday I bought a hatchet at the market and discovered it’s weighted almost perfectly for throwing.  I practiced on the massive tree just outside my door, then reflected I should probably practice on dead trees.  Axe-throwing may become one of my main stress-relieving activities here.
    Not that there’s been much stress.  The days pass quickly, probably thanks to my two-hour siestas in the middle of them.  Every day it’s eggs for breakfast, salad for lunch, greens for dinner.
    But on Monday I’m beginning the biggest project I will have had since the Project HOPE blog.  I’m starting my Community Diagnostic Survey (CDS), a report intended to give me a clear picture of my town and its needs, strengths, weaknesses, etc.  I plan to interview a handful of key town figures, and do a brief door-to-door questionnaire for the rest.  It’d take a team of census workers to cover all of Manambaro in the month allocated for the report, so I’ve decided just to cover the third of the town where I live.
    I’ll also be able to break out my camera; the next blog post will have pictures.  Hopefully some really expositional shots showing the houses, fields, trees, and especially the people.  Just like in Niger, most Malagasy have a tendency to adopt a sober expression for the camera, which I love.  Smiles, unless they’re really candid and genuine, make photos seem frivolous.  But expressions of gravity, not too grim, just politely serious, are what I really love in my shots.
    This morning I arranged an interview with the mayor for next week.  He also gave me a CD containing the 2009 Plan Communal de Developpement (Development Plan for the Commune) in French.  A commune here is roughly equal to a county in the US.  This document will be invaluable for the CDS because it literally lists Manambaro’s strengths and weaknesses in the areas of Agriculture, Education, Health, etc.
    And I get to see the progression of ideas that led to my coming to Manambaro.  The town could have requested a SED Volunteer to help promote business here, an Environment Volunteer to help curb practices like slash-and-burn pasturage, or an Education Volunteer to bring a fresh perspective to the local school system.  But in the end they decided on a Health Volunteer, because the commune’s report concluded that it is most critical for the townsfolk to learn about basic preventative health practices.
    It’s very interesting to see my mission in this context, and to know that I really will be giving my neighbors what they need most.  Not money, not the English language, not even better crops.  But knowledge about simple things like hand washing, latrines, and the importance of mosquito nets. 
    Of course it’d be ideal for Manambaro to have the full set of Volunteers, Health, Education, Environment, and SED.  There is such incredible potential in this town and all the surrounding villages that it’s all too easy to imagine a future where this area is the jewel of all Madagascar.

America Is Strange, But He Sports A Fine Beard

Written October 28, 2011
Fort Dauphin

Well, one month down.  Many more to go.
    And it has been a pretty good month.  Everything in Manambaro has progressed much as I expected it would; I started out a nervous, green outsider, and now I’m well on my way to being an integral member of the community.
    Physically my living quarters are two rooms on the ground floor of a large two-story house.  The floor is concrete and the walls are plaster, much like the monastery where I stayed in Briançon, France.  Before I moved in the mayor used my room as an office, and before that another Volunteer, Alicia, lived there.  The other half of the downstairs is closed up, because the floor on that side, which is wood, for some reason, has started to buckle.
    The upstairs is home to my host family; they’re not officially my host family, but we’ve gotten so close that they’re a lot more than just neighbors to me now.  The father, Dieu-Donné, is the principal (directeur) of the town’s primary school, and his wife, Josy, is the secretary for the mayor’s office.  Their children, Desmond, Yvette, Joe, Jolin, Faniry, and Jacquino, are 22, 19, 17, 15, 6, and 4, respectively.  Right now Joe and Jolin are away attending high school in Fort Dauphin.
    One of the defining parts of my first week was learning how to cook for myself.  Luckily, Mme. Josy took it upon herself to show me a few recipes for laoka, Malagasy side dishes.  I also drew from the Peace Corps cookbook we received during training.  The most available foods in Manambaro are rice, sweet potatoes, cassava, tomatoes, and several types of greens.  Little by little I pieced together a pretty diverse menu for myself, then threw it all away because it’s easier to just cook the same thing every day.  My favorite dish now is one of my own invention: sweet potato leaves with ginger in peanut sauce over rice.
    Although Manambaro has several butchers (I have to duck around a bloody side of beef every time I go through the market) I decline to buy meat because of the lack of refrigeration.  And it’s expensive.  Same deal with milk and fish.  So I guess you could say my miserliness, laziness, and paranoia about food-borne pathogens are all converging nicely to make me nearly vegan.
    Except for eggs.  I do not compromise on eggs.  Three eggs every morning, cholesterol be damned.
    My diet choice rankles M. Dieu-Donné.  Just about every third night he’s after me in a mix of Malagasy, French, and English: “Éric!  This is not Antanosy food!  Dinner should be rice and meat!  Or... or... comment est-ce qu’on dit?  Fish!  Not leaves!”
    He means well; most Malagasy think that rice is the be-all-and-end-all of food, and all other foods are secondary.  There’s also a social stigma against eating too many greens; they’re so cheap that supposedly only very poor people make a habit of eating them.
    Well, it’ll just be a matter of course for me to change this way of thinking.  Just one of the many challenges for the future.
    In terms of my Health work so far, things are going well. My counterpart, Dr. Jean-Claude, has been extraordinarily helpful and supportive.  Every Tuesday I go to the clinic to observe prenatal consultations and introduce myself to the patients.  They usually come from the outlying villages and have no idea who I am.  I also give oral polio vaccinations to any children who need them.
    Since my only official duties with the clinic are once a week, I tried to branch out and discover other healthcare agencies whom I could work with.  First I tried Manambaro’s Lutheran Hospital, which was founded by American missionaries in 1954.  However, they didn’t really have a system for someone in my position to just come in and start helping, so they referred me to their NGO partner, Project AVIA.  AVIA is a separate organization with a handful of offices around this area of Madagascar.  The one in Manambaro deals with maternal- and child health.  The nurse in charge of it is Hanitra, and she welcomed my help wholeheartedly.  I’ve accompanied her and her manager Lalaina on three trips to other villages: Ebobaky, to the west, Nosibe, to the east, and Italy, a long ways to the south on the coast.
    Visiting those places showed me just how well-off Manambaro is as a fairly large town.  The people in the bush villages subsist mainly on farming, their clothes are noticeably more ragged, their school facilities are in a lot worse shape, and the ratio of children to adults is staggering.
    Working with both Dr. Jean-Claude and Hanitra has given me a pretty nice weekly structure.  In my downtime I do chores, or just walk around the village and try to meet people.  At first when I would mitsangatsanga, go for a walk, it seemed like even the chickens would stop and go, “Wait, it that guy white?  Humans are white now?  What is going on?”  Most everyone hailed me as “vazaha,” the slightly pejorative term for white foreigners.
    However, things have steadily gotten better.  This past week hardly anyone has called me “vazaha,” and it seems like more and more people, especially kids, know my name.  It’s so funny to have six-year-old boys pause in their game of soccer and call all the way across the field to me, “EREEEEK-A!”  A lot of people seem to tack an “a” on the end of my name, probably because two syllables is just too few for the Malagasy.
    The village is beautiful, everything everyone promised it would be during training.  Rolling sweet potato fields, peaceful rice paddies, elegant palm trees swaying in the breeze...  And this is just springtime.  Summer promises a whole new range of delights.  Lychee season starts in November, and from there there should be a veritable cascade of mangoes, pineapples, and citrus all the way through February!
    Sorry there aren’t any pictures.  On the advice of some of the other PCVs I’ve decided to keep my camera locked away for the first month and a half at site.  Around mid-November I’ll begin my Community Diagnostic Report, a survey of Manambaro and it’s history, resources, problems, etc., and I’ll be able to introduce photography as part of my work, rather than as a selfish leisure activity for me.
    I have to go get my money for the next month now, before the bank closes.  Thanks for reading, and I welcome any comments!

South to the Future

The hills right outside of Fianarantsoa

 Driving towards Ihosy

The dry grasslands between Ihosy and Betroka

The thorn trees of the Spiny Forest, near Ambovombe

The rice paddies and mango groves of Manambaro, looking north

The north beach at Fort Dauphin

Written September 20, 2011
Fort Dauphin

    The past couple days have taken us from the magnificent heights of the central Plateau, to the heart of the most unique forest on the planet, and finally to one of the most singularly beautiful places I have ever been.
    There were five of us: me, Monica, Harry, Donné, our driver, and Jouvin, our Installer.  Jouvin used to be a language teacher with Peace Corps, but has since risen to manage Peace Corps Response.  He and Donné are both from the south, fluent in the Antandroy and Antanosy dialects.
    From Fianarantsoa we backtracked north a little, then turned southwest, following the paved road towards Tulèar.  Like the country around Ankazobe, the rolling grassy hills distinctly reminded me of the Idahoan Rockies.  Only instead of cow pastures, these hills were lined with pineapple plots, rice paddies, and small banana groves.
    After having lunch in Ihosy, we climbed a long slope and then, at the top, turned off the paved road.  Where the dirt road began, the hills abruptly ended, turning into a high, flat prairie that stretched to the horizon.  The road was flat and straight, and we flew along.  Sometimes we slowed and followed other tracks through the grass to avoid spots where the road had degraded.  The road reminded me more of a watercourse as it forked and twisted and rejoined itself over and over.  It was as if Man had endeavored to make a straight, artificial road across the grassland, but had instead been tricked into making something far more organic, something of Nature’s devising.
    The terrain became rockier and drier, and the grass thinner.  We crossed about twelve streams, some no more than trickles.  Maybe half had functioning bridges; those without bridges or with broken ones, we forded.
    We discussed the different tribal areas we had passed through.  Tana is the domain of the long-ruling Merina (mehr-ih-na) clan, while Fianarantsoa was the seat of their neighbors, the Betsileo (bets-ih-lay-oh).  After some distance on the unpaved road we entered Bara (bah-ra) territory.  South of the Bara are the Antandroy (an-tahn-droo-ey), the desert dwellers.  Turning east towards Fort Dauphin there are the Antanosy (an-tah-noose-ey).
    That night we pulled into Betroka, the half-way point between Ihosy and Ambovombe, where the unpaved highway forks directly east and west.  The town has a certain Wild West feel to it, since it mainly functions as a stopover for travelers and truck drivers.  We booked a hotel and took a walk with Jouvin before dinner.
    On the street we saw a man insouciantly carrying a spear made from a length of rebar.  My first thought was, “Huh.  Haven’t seen one of those since Niger.”
    We left Betroka bright and early, munching on plain baguettes.  The landscape kept drying out little by little.  Around 10 we saw the first cactus.  The prickly pears multiplied, along with wild sisal and acacia-like thorn trees.  This vegetation grew more and more prevalent until we crested a hill, turned left, and suddenly were in the thick of the Forêt des Épines, Madagascar’s Spiny Forest.
    What makes the Spiny Forest so intimidating is not that so many of its trees are covered in organic knives.  It’s the fact that some of the trees just seem to scream out, “LOOK AT ME!  I’M COVERED IN KNIVES!”  For instance, there are trees that are just one long stalk, with a layer of tiny round leaves covering the upper sections.  But aside from the leaves, every square centimeter of that tree is occupied by a thorn. 
    But even a place as forbidding as the Spiny Forest offers hidden pleasures.  In this case, Antandroy bananas.  They’re shorter than regular bananas and noticeably fatter, with an incredibly delicious and complex flavor.  Picture the best banana you’ve ever had, with a taste that’s lemony at first, but then expands to encompass flavors that have little right to exist as part of a banana, like the savoriness of whole-wheat bread and the richness of well-cooked steak.
    We made it to Ambovombe at sunset, and this morning left for Fort Dauphin.  The road from Ambovombe is paved, but in bad condition, with one cracked ridge of pavement running down the middle and dirt tracks to either side.  The country slowly became greener as we left the desert behind and moved toward the lush coast.  We passed sprawling sisal plantations as we headed toward the mountains, the Chaînes Anosyennes.
    The mountains turned to be about the same height as the Blue Ridge, so we passed over  them quickly.  At the top we had a fantastic view of the valley below leading to Fort Dauphin and the ocean.
    We passed through some villages where the houses were made of wooden planks and thatched with palm leaves.  Soon we reached my village: Manambaro.
    Apparently Tuesday is market day, so the town was bustling.  Merchants were hawking everything from radios to cherry tomatoes.  Jouvin led us on foot up a hill to the CSB, where we met with my counterpart, Doctor Claude.  The doctor showed us to my living quarters, one room in the former mayor’s house, but we couldn’t get inside for lack of a key.
    Claude said that the current mayor had procrastinated on the repairs to my room that he had promised, and they still weren’t done.  So the five of us (Donné stayed with the car) pushed through the market again to get to the mayor’s office.  He received us in good humor, and listened while Jouvin very diplomatically asked, “Hey, can you do those thing you promised to do three months ago?”
    On our way out the mayor said he was very happy I would be there to teach the townspeople English.  He seemed so pleased,  I thought it would be rude to point out that English ain’t my job.  Oh, well, I’ll deal with that issue when it arises.
    At least my town’s leader isn’t an Islamic zealot, like that piece ‘a work back in Gala Beri.
    As we got back on the road I fell asleep, drained from seeing my new home for the first time.  And I woke up to see the pure blue of the Indian Ocean.
    Fort Dauphin is built on a fantailed peninsula with a round lagoon on either side.  With the mountains as a backdrop, the palm trees, the white sands, and the elegant French colonial architecture, it is jaw-droppingly beautiful.
    And it’s my banking town for the next two years.