Ingavo Update

Written February 26, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    Yeah, no photos this time.  Just wasn’t a photo-takin’ kinda week.
    The only significant news is that I went out to Ebobaky again with the AVIA crew, this time to give a talk on malaria prevention.  Apparently malaria season has hit pretty hard; I missed its build-up because my house is on an almost totally mosquito-free hill slope.  I kinda thought the mosquito would appear in a giant buzzing cloud, like the Smoke Monster from Lost, and when they failed to appear in my immediate living vicinity I dismissed malaria as a major health problem in Manambaro.  And maybe it’s not a problem in Manambaro proper, but apparently it’s a major calamity in the outlying villages.  I’ve heard that eighteen children died in just the first half of January.
    Lalaina, the AVIA manager, drove Hanitra, Dany, me, and another guy named Lasa out in the big blue 4x4.  Dany met with the village committee, while Lalaina and Lasa went to inspect a pump somewhere.  Hanitra and I waited for the women’s group to finish pounding rice and come join us.
    “So we’re just waiting?” I asked.  “Okay if I walk around some?”
    Hanitra assented and I started towards the mountain.  Wasn’t going to climb it, of course, just wanted to get a better sense of the country therebelow.  I passed a marshy eucalyptus grove, then heard someone calling my name.
    “Eric!” Lalaina called from a spot on the other side of some yew bushes.  “What are you doing?”
    “Just walking.”
    The look on his face said, Oh, this vazaha is gonna walk right into some strange village and whatever happens, I’m probably gonna get blamed.  We got in the 4x4 with Lasa.
    “You shouldn’t walk by yourself.  The people here are still afraid of vazaha.  They think they steal children.”
    What, like fairies?  “Yeah, but I’m a vazaha who speaks Gasy.  I can explain to them that I don’t want to steal their children.”
    “Oh, that’s true,” he said mildly.
    We drove a short distance to where the road terminated in the middle of a cluster of huts.  This village was even poorer than Ebobaky.  Lalaina didn’t know its name.  The people seemed friendly enough.
    It’s eerie how easy it is to seemingly go back in time just by traveling farther away from a major road.  Makes me wonder if there are some hill folk or deep forest-dwellers on this island whose lives aren’t merely medieval, but neolithic.
    So because I might scare some folk on my ascent, I’ll try to avoid the villages altogether.  That’ll mean striking across some fields and bushwhacking directly up the face of the mountain.  Might be slow going, but nothing I haven’t seen before.  I’ll probably be able to find a trail on the way down, and even if that leads through a village it’ll be obvious that I’m departing the area, sans enfants.
    The malaria lecture went passably well, but I think AVIA will need a more hands-on approach if they’re really going to get the villagers into the habit of using mosquito nets.  Well, at least we got the women’s group thinking about the subject.
    Fear not, good villagers.  I ain’t after your kids, just your mountain.

    I’m 24 today.

Down Week

Written February 18, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    Let’s talk about the heat in Madagascar: it persists to an excessive and unsatisfactory degree.  This is the weather that Mark Twain, on his voyage to India, described as “hot enough to melt a brass doorknob.”  The Antanosy had 1500 years to adapt to it, of course, but me?  The only hot weather heritage I have is a minute smidgen of Portuguese blood.  Other than that I’m all Celt and Saxon.
    Only mad dogs and Englishmen travel below the Tropic of Cancer. 
    Clearly the extra-European geopolitical movements of the last 600 years, especially the Age of Exploration and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, were huge mistakes, if not outright perversions of the natural order.
    Okay, that’s out of my system.
    I had strep throat this week, so I laid in bed a lot.  The bacteria are routed now and I’m feeling much better, but I’ve still got a cold.
    Now I’m in Fort Dauphin, awaiting the return of Cyclone Giovanni.  Cursed thing razed Vatomandry on the northeast coast, battered Tana, skirted Morondava, and started across the Channel towards Mozambique.  And just when we in the South (or maybe just me) were complaining we never get any good storms, it apparently heard us (me), whipped around and is heading right here!  Luckily it’s not a very clever cyclone, because to get to Fort Dauphin it has to cross the Androy desert, where it’ll expend a lot of its moisture and force.  By the time it gets here tomorrow night it’ll be a Category One.
    Taking no chances, Peace Corps has ordered us to consolidate in a hotel in the city until Wednesday.  We get reimbursed for the hotel AND we get a per diem for those days.  Wow, ain’t been to a hurricane party since I was a kid, spending the summer in Florida while my dad was in Antarctica.
    See you after the rain!

The Perfectly Anticlimactic Storm

Fish in the bottom of a canoe at Libanona Beach.

Tatum writing postcards at Israel's house.

Tortoises in Hotel Anita's courtyard.

Monica giving a lecture in English at the Cultural Center

Written February 22, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    Well... no cyclone.
    We’ve had rain: a handful of sunshowers that each lasted no more than a few minutes.  But nothing close to a proper thundershower, let alone a hurricane.
    Harry, Tatum, and Wes arrived from the west on Sunday.  All of us except Jess checked into the Hotel Anita, which Peace Corps had booked for us until Thursday.  It’s nice; apparently it was a favored hotel for Volunteers until they raised their prices a few years ago.
    And... nothing much has happened.  I helped at the Cultural Center on Sunday and Monday, then ran some errands.  Went to the beach, chilled out at Freedom Bar, watched some of Harry’s movies.  Really the most exciting thing that has happened to me since arriving here has been Monica’s downloading the fifth Game of Thrones novel onto her Kindle and letting me borrow it.  She’s still on the fourth book.
    We also had our VAC meeting Monday night.  Since all of us were here, it doesn’t make sense for us to reconvene in Ambovombe in just another week.  Most of the meeting was just untangling a series of rumors about whether Peace Corps is going to place any more Volunteers down here in the South.
    So we all got a regional reunion, and a few days that might have been spent huddled inside were instead filled with sun, friends, drink, and good books.  Tant mieux, Peace Corps.  Tant mieux.

Down Week

The bridge near Nosibe on the way into town.

Inside a bush taxi.  You can't see the two massive pigs wedged in the trunk.

Manambaro woman planting rice.

Fort Dauphin kids playing games at the American Cultural Center.

Written February 18, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    Let’s talk about the heat in Madagascar: it persists to an excessive and unsatisfactory degree.  This is the weather that Mark Twain, on his voyage to India, described as “hot enough to melt a brass doorknob.”  The Antanosy had 1500 years to adapt to it, of course, but me?  The only hot weather heritage I have is a minute smidgen of Portuguese blood.  Other than that I’m all Celt and Saxon.
    Only mad dogs and Englishmen travel below the Tropic of Capricorn. 
    Clearly the extra-European geopolitical movements of the last 600 years, especially the Age of Exploration and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, were huge mistakes, if not outright perversions of the natural order.
    Okay, that’s out of my system.
    I had strep throat this week, so I laid in bed a lot.  The bacteria are routed now and I’m feeling much better, but I’ve still got a cold.
    Now I’m in Fort Dauphin, awaiting the return of Cyclone Giovanni.  Cursed thing razed Vatomandry on the northeast coast, battered Tana, skirted Morondava, and started across the Channel towards Mozambique.  And just when we in the South (or maybe just me) were complaining we never get any good storms, it apparently heard us (me), whipped around and is heading right here!  Luckily it’s not a very clever cyclone, because to get to Fort Dauphin it has to cross the Androy desert, where it’ll expend a lot of its moisture and force.  By the time it gets here tomorrow night it’ll be a Category One.
    Taking no chances, Peace Corps has ordered us to consolidate in a hotel in the city until Wednesday.  We get reimbursed for the hotel AND we get a per diem for those days.  Wow, ain’t been to a hurricane party since I was a kid, spending the summer in Florida while my dad was in Antarctica.
    See you after the rain!

Commuting for America

Sandra with Baby Dolin.

Hanitra lecturing about moringa in Ebobaky.

Water dripping on my floor from my drying clothes.

A boy in Ebobaky pounding rice.

The ScratchMap Kelsey sent me, with all the countries I've visited.

 Written February 12, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    The mountain has a name: Ingavo.  Pretty Kenyan-sounding name for a Malagasy mountain.  Only three syllables.
    On Friday I went back to Ebobaky with Hanitra, and another AVIA worker, Dany, to give a lecture on moringa.  I expected to just hold a poster or something while Hanitra talked, but as soon as we started out, she yielded the floor to me.  I quickly improvved a speech about how moringa has massive amounts of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium, and protein.  So it’s like eating meat, oranges, milk, and greens all at once.  The women who attended the lecture seemed convinced and impressed, although it’ll probably take a while before they really see moringa as an integral part of their diet.
    And the more I looked at Ingavo, the easier it seemed to climb.  I’ll get on that soon.  I should be able to see Sarisambo and the ocean from the summit.
    Earlier this week I figured out that I can actually complete one of the workouts in the Men’s Health Kelsey sent me.  I just have to substitute a pounding stick for a barbell and a bucket of water for a kettlebell.
    Jess has been working with people from the embassy to set up the American Cultural Center all this week.  It finally opened on Friday, and I helped with it yesterday.  Mostly I help kids, some of whom have never used a computer before, figure out our computer games.  The only one that’s really easy enough for most of them is a point-and-click game by National Geographic.
    We also watched movies, various documentaries about America and Madagascar.  When people asked for a change Jess put on the movie Wild America.  I enjoyed explaining to the audience what a moose is: “It’s a big d- oh, you don’t have deer here.  Well, it’s... It’s a really big animal.”
    I’m helping at the center again this afternoon.  They have a few History Channel DVDs; I promised Skar I’d show him Life After People.  Humans disappear, and we get to watch the world crumble until only Mount Rushmore and the flag on the moon remain.  AMERICA!

Despair for the Fleas, Hope for Everything Else

A squash seller in the Karamena market

A Karamena man harvesting coconuts

The mountain to the south of Ebobaky

This girl got dragged along to the baby-weighing with her younger siblings

Hanitra (in white) and Marie-Louise (in pink) give children Vitamin A supplements in Ebobaky

 Written February 4, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    The fleas are still here.
    Well, I was pessimistic about the poison working to begin with.  From the bites on my body, I’d say maybe a third of the fleas were killed; the rest are still alive and well.  I envision them as miniscule Talibs kicking back in their caves with some hashish, cackling about how the stupid blundering American will never get them.
    According to a book on parasites which I discovered in Israel’s house, it may take up to twelve applications of the poison over a period of six months to fully destroy the fleas.  So I may be in this fight for the long haul.  Much like American forces in Afghanistan, in fact.  Thankfully my date for withdrawal is already fixed, though it be far in the future.
    So, with this new perspective, I’ve resumed my habit of putting absurd amounts of garlic in all of my food.  Back in October, mere days before the fleas arrived, my parents sent me a large jar of Costco garlic powder, intended to last me the rest of my two years.  The jar is now two-thirds empty.  But the garlic seems to be impregnating my skin enough to keep most of the fleas from biting me.  They’re still there, though, and they still wake me up at night.
    Well, they say people who live next to waterfalls stop hearing the water after a while.  Maybe the fleas are one more aspect of Madagascar that I’ll have to learn to live with.
    ...And pray there are no outbreaks of bubonic plague near me.  The south is actually the least likely region for a plague outbreak to occur, which is nice.  And even if it does, this is the twenty-first century-- plague is easily defeated by modern antibiotics.
    Things are pretty good in Manambaro otherwise.  I’m healthy, the tannest I’ve ever been, probably the fittest I’m been since I wrestled in high school.  Last night I stumbled upon one of the tastiest dishes I’ve ever cooked here, simply by combining eggplant with plenty of garlic and oil.  My mango trees are growing well.
    On Tuesday I went around my yard pulling up invading plants, grumbling about how my upstairs neighbors should at least make a perfunctory offer to do the work themselves.  Their kids use the yard a lot more than I do.  But then Silvie, the ten-year-old girl, came out and spontaneously began helping me.  We worked for about an hour, with me getting more and more tired and her keeping a constant, energetic pace.  We bonded a little.
    I went to Ebobaky again on Friday with Hanitra to help her weigh babies, and found out more about the structure on top of the nearby mountain.  It’s visible on clear days from my house, and it’s clearly manmade. It’s not a fortress, as I first though, but a tomb.  What I thought was a wall is more likely just a ring of stones that are level with each other.  The central part, which I thought was a tall sloping roof, is probably just a larger triangular stone, maybe the actual summit.  Sooner or later I’m gonna climb up there, but first I have to scout the approaches some more, make sure there’s not a crocodile-filled river running through the foothills into which I could stumble.
    One day at a time.  Is it really February already?