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.