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.