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?