Top Ten (or more)-Dad's Trip to Mada

Its hard to believe that my dad's trip has already come and gone. I'm taking him to the airport tonight and then off he goes to the US. We had a great time, and had only a few minor mishaps...which is pretty impressive for a 2 week trip in Madagascar! With this trip come and gone though...I'm going to have to find something else to look forward to. Hopefully a trip home for Christmas/New Years will be possible. Anyway, here are some of our highlights...

Receiving a suitcase full of 45 pounds of Oreos, Parmesan cheese, Trader Joes snacks, conditioner, magazines, games and toys for my town, rechargeable batteries and NYT crossword puzzles. 

 





Befriending a 3 year old at the brousse station who was ready to come to Vatomandry with us. She had no problem touching our hands and telling us…"these are the vazaha’s (foreigner’s) hands” until her mom pulled her away.

 

Deciding to splurge on a lobster dinner in Vatomandry for about $14 only to find out that each meal came with two lobsters.

Introducing yoyos, bubble wands, and UNO to Tsarasambo. Also the iphone. 

Having a relatively problem free brousse experience, with only one flat tire and only 7 minutes of repairs…(this must be a country record).  Also Dad climbing in the back of the truck with 20 other people for the trip to Vatomandry.  

VAKONA LODGE in Andasibe. Chocolate cereal (with real milk), scrabble, hot water, ping pong…and lemurs. Also one of the most beautiful hotels I’ve ever been in…it was culture shock all over again.

Not being able to get to our hotel in Tana because of mass demonstrations blocking all the streets downtown…tear gas, lots of police and tens of thousands of people. I still deny the fact that there was ever tear gas…although my Dad says otherwise.

Surviving the road to Berenty in the dark…worse road I’ve ever seen in my life. My dad agrees. We spent more time driving next to the road than actually on it. The trip home was maybe worse seeing as I had been sick all night and had only stopped throwing up an hour before we left.

 Lemurs everywhere. Tanning in the sun, hanging in the trees, and watching us eat breakfast.

Hiking in the spiny forest and seeing all kinds of crazy looking plants. Also getting rained on despite it being a desert…luckily I had a bright orange umbrella to hike with.

Adventuring to Lokaro Bay in Fort Dauphin but first discovering we were traveling by boat…with a very dark storm in the distance. Arriving at a deserted beach and having a fresh fish lunch on the beach. 

 

 

 

 

Sitting at a local Malagasy bar looking out on the Indian Ocean, and literally feeling like we were going to fall into the ocean because of the slanted balcony. 

 

Being trailed by an Israeli couple for the second half of our vacation…from the airport, to Berenty to Fort Dauphin, to the isolated beach in Lokaro Bay. Eventually we started a conversation and became friends. Had the next few dinners with them in Fort Dauphin and Tana, and planned a future trip to Israel.

Bargaining on the streets of Tana for an instrument we didn’t actually want. The first price was 50,000Ar, and within 5 minutes they were down to 5,000Ar. And then 5,000Ar for three instruments…we still didn’t buy. 

Overall it was a great trip, and its sad to see him go...but he's leaving with lots of good stories and  great pictures. And seeing as it went really well...all I can say is that you should probably come visit too.

Books, books, books...

Seeing as I spend a large part of my PC life reading, it seems only fitting that one of my first big projects at site is starting an English library in Tsarasambo.

With a group of 18 volunteers in Madagascar, we're bringing 22,000 English books to Madagascar, and starting 18 libraries throughout the country. And Tsarasambo is going to have its very own English library with over 1000 books...which is a huge increase from the 0 English books we currently have. Interestingly, an NGO came and built a library at my site a few years ago...but there are no books in it. Maybe they forgot that small detail?

But just about every day I have people coming to my house to ask if I have any English books or magazines they can have...and I usually have to turn them down. But not for long. Although I live in a really rural village, its amazing to see how many people are trying to learn English. Its seen as a gateway to better work opportunities, and kids, teens and adults are always approaching me to teach English! But its hard learning a new language with no books or people to practice with...so this library is a great opportunity for my community, its schools and the motivated people trying to learn English.

But although the books are being provided by the American organization Books for Africa (booksforafrica.org), the volunteers and our communities have to cover the costs of transportation...which adds up pretty quickly since Madagascar is pretty far away....so now I'm going to make a shameless plug for your help.

We really could use your support in helping to fund this project to get our libraries up and running.

To read more about our project and learn how to donate you can follow this link:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=684-132

Sorry again to beg for money (and I'm extra sorry if I already emailed you about this)...but this really is a great cause, and even the tiniest donation will make a big difference all through Madagascar!

Pictures from the last few months

The house on the left was my house before the cyclone. The house on the right is the house they finished right after the cyclone.

Moving out of my old house...it didn't take too long.

At least the sunset makes the house rubble look pretty.

Dancing in cyclone rubble.

The soccer field and almost all the rice fields looked like this after the 3 cyclones/tropical storms...

But the kids still love to dance.

 

Vacation in Foulpointe.

Bungalows on the beach.

Nutrition education and baby weighing in Ambodivontaka.

SET made its way to Madagascar and the kids love it.

Winter?

Maybe I'm adjusting to the climate here, but for the past week its been cold. And I thought I had forgotten what that feeling was, but I remember. And I don't really like it. I wore a sweatshirt for the first time in 6 months, and even though its 76 degrees, I no longer judge all the Malagasy people for pulling out their winter parkas to walk across the street. If I make it home for Christmas in December, Michigan is going to be a rude awakening.

New Roommate

So right before vacation I found out that I had a new roommate...a mouse. And because I hadn't seen it but only heard it, I was okay with that. But then I started seeing it. And I felt like it was taunting me. I would sweep my house and leave for 5 minutes only to come back to mouse poop in the middle of my floor. I finally bought some mouse poison and thought that would take care of the problem. But it didn't help for the first week. The highlight (if I can call it that) of my week was when I woke up in the middle of the night because the mouse was in my bed. I didn't want to turn on my flashlight and actually see it, so I just tried to make a lot of noise to scare it away. Needless to say, I didn't really sleep after that. The next day I saw it sitting on my bed again in the middle of the day. I got the broom and started hitting it, but I think it was on its death bed because it didn't really move. It just stayed attached to my mosquito net not running away. I left for a few hours and when I came back it was the in the middle of my floor twitching. And then it died. I liked my previous roommates better.  

Vaca

A few weeks ago I went on vacation with some other PCVs for the Easter holiday. A group of 7 of us went to Tamatave and Foulpointe, two beach towns north of my site. The great thing about vacation (aside from being with friends) is that you don't have to feel guilty about not working. When I'm sitting in my house reading all day, I feel guilty for not doing something more 'productive'...but that feeling is gone the minute you're on vaca.

Vacation got off to a frustrating start when my friend had the brousse he was on pick me up at my house. That was a nice convenience. However, what we didn't know was that is was a regional brousse which meant it stopped every 5 minutes. What should have been a 4 hour drive lasted 7+hours. We spent the first few days in Tamatave doing touristy things...eating ice cream and milkshakes, eating pizza, fripping and hanging out on the beach. The new group of trainees were also in Tamatave so we got to meet the new environment volunteers (and finally give up our name as the new stage!). We continued northward and went up to Foulpointe where we somehow ended up at the nicest hotel in town. We got a bungalow right on the beach, and since we crammed a few extra people in, it turned out to be pretty cheap. The hotel had a pool, flat screen TVs, a bathroom with a door, and customer service (a rare find in this country). The next few days we lived in paradise, playing in the pool, eating fresh oysters on the beach, drinking coconuts and pretending we made dollars instead of ariary. Our final night we hired some guys to cook us a lobster dinner on the beach. It was delicious and cost only $5. After renting out a brousse for a little extra money and the promise not to pick up other passengers, we went back to Tamatave where we set out to find hamburgers for lunch. Of the three of four places all advertising burgers, zero actually had them. So we settled at a different restaurant where we saw someone eating delicious looking fried chicken. So four of us ordered 'akoho frite' (fried chicken) and we specifically told the waitress that we wanted what the other guy was eating. However, something always goes wrong and when they brought us our food, they brought 4 entire chickens. And the guy who ordered steak ended up with the mea the four of us with full chickens had wanted. You just can't win.

Not wanting vaca to end, we all went to Moramanga for one last night before dispersing to our sites. I should have known it was going to be a bad transportation day because we woke up to a massive storm which turned Tamatave into a very liquidy trash pile. Gross. We found a brousse though, and took off. An hour into our trip we got a flat tire. And two hours later, the same tire bloew out. We sat on the side of the road (conveniently at a house that sold stools) and watched our driver disappear and reappear with tires and tools. We did make it to Moramanga, but about three hours after we expected. Oh well.

I got back to my site on Easter day, just in time for the day after easter festivities. The Monday after Easter, everyone goes on a picnic to celebrate. So I went with the mayor's family to 'manao picnic.' I thought it was odd that we were carrying speakers and a generator to the picnic...but I should have learned by now not to ask questions. It was fun though. We ate a lot and the men all got really drunk, and I somehow became the event photographer. People were lined up to have their pictures taken. And by the end of the day the village president was walking me around advertising 'Easter souveneirs 600Ar'. But now I'm responsible for printing 80 pictures and I have a constant stream of people coming to my house either to pick up their pictures, or have more pictures taken. I'm the new Tsarasambo mpaka sary.

Giardia. So gross. I had dinner at my friends' house after getting back from vaca. It was delicious, but 6 hours later I felt like I was going to throw up my insides. Maybe it was just food poisoning, but I self-diagnosed giardia. I spent 24 hours in my bed not really moving. Interestingly, its as if the mayor's wife has a detector for when I'm sick. Seriously 20 seconds after throwing up she was at my door asking what the news was at my house. It was 2:30am.  

Public Transport

Yesterday was just a typical day. I had to go to my banking town to pick up some stuff at the post office and use the internet, so I got in the first brousse that passed. Unfortunately, it had seen finer days. Everytime we stopped to pick someone up, the car would stall. And the only way to get it going again was to do a Little Miss Sunshine start. So that was fun. They didn't ask me to help though. After a few stops the driver started to get frustrated so he asked me to hold my foot on the gas while he got out and let people in. My Malagasy was good enough to copilot a bus here! Yay me.

And then the driver said we should get married. When I said my husband was in the States (my usual response when I get marriage requests) he said it didn't matter because that was far away. The other marriage proposal I've gotten included a free vacation....

And then we hit a chicken.