For the past month everyone has been talking non-stop about vignt-seis, Independence Day! According to every Malagasy person I've ever talked to, its the biggest holiday of the year, and people start talking about it months in advance. So I was expecting...something?
I made plans to meet up with some other volunteers and spend the holiday together. The day before we hung out, I got food poisoning (life lesson: never eat shrimp when you're not on the coast), we sat on a balcony of our hotel and people watched/watched drunk people set off fireworks inside a store front (probably not a good idea), and went to bed expecting to be woken up by a big party for independence day.
Instead, I woke up to a 4 person marching band outside our hotel at 6am. It was terrible. But funny? And we assumed it was a precurser to the parade that was supposed to happen later that day. So we got breakfast and waited around to see where the party was going to happen. By lunchtime when we hadn't seen anyone, and no parade, we felt a little suspicious. So we asked someone where the parade was...and apparently we had missed it. I'm not really sure how, since we were eating lunch and breakfast right downtown...but oh well. So we assumed it would be more exciting that evening. There was a carnival set up in front of town hall, so we went to explore that. We saw a man powered ferris wheel (no joke) as well as a ring toss to win moonshine liquor and the "kick a soccer ball in a hole" game. That was fun. I considered going on the ferris wheel until I saw the base made of rotting wood...seemed a little iffy.
So we gave up and had our own party.
I'm hoping my own celebration for 4th of July will be more exciting...but I'll be alone at site, so not sure if that will happen. In any case, Happy Fourth of July everyone! I hope you have warm weather, outdoor barbeques, fireworks, and the strawberry, blueberry american flag cake that I eat every year...(family, you know what I'm talking about!)
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Kazoos
Remember those really annoying kazoos that we had when we were little? Well those have recently popped up in my little town in Madagascar, and I can't say that I'm pleased. The kids start marching around my house beginning at 6am playing their "instruments" as loud as they can until I finally wake up and open my doors. And then they start parading through my house. I've tried ignoring them and they just keep playing them louder and louder until I have to kick them out. Oh Madagascar.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Ambanivolo Be
I used to think that my little house and my life in Tsarasambo was rustic living…but I have a new perspective on that whole term. I spent four days venturing out in the ambanivolo (countryside) with my counterpart to weigh babies and talk about nutrition with three villages.
My counterpart prepared me for our little trip by telling me to bring…sureau (the bleach used to clean water), candles, toilet paper, lots and lots of bug spray and spaghetti. We set out on Sunday, late afternoon, which meant it wasn’t excruciatingly hot. However, it gets dark pretty early here, so I was wondering why we were setting out on a 15k hike an hour before dark…oh well. Everything runs on Malagasy time here, so maybe the sunset would be late too.
Off we went, and as we passed people on the road everyone kept saying, “you’re taking the vazaha to the countryside…” Apparently that was a surprising thing…along with me being able to sit cross-legged. (Everytime I sit like that people are shocked and comment on it for hours). Who knows…
The hike was pretty though. Especially as the sun was setting in the hills with the ocean on the other side…it was definitely a beautiful hike, although the constant uphill trek was exhausting.
We got to Sahatalevena, our first village stop, right as it was getting dark. We made the normal visits to the chef fokontany and then ended up at the house of a health worker. My counterpart handed me a watering can and led me behind the house where there was a waist high fence, and that was the shower. Privacy is definitely a western concept. I took a “shower” and then we went to make my spaghetti. My counterpart had this idea in her head that I couldn’t eat food in the countryside (maybe because it would make me sick….) so she told me to bring my own spaghetti. However, she never passed on that message to the people we were staying with…so I ate my pasta happily, and then I had to eat an entire other meal of rice and fish broth.
After my two dinners, we went over to the house where we were staying, and went to bed. My counterpart and I ended up sharing a twin size bed in a house the size of 2 twin size beds. Other than waking up to hear the rats crawling around on the roof and having kids screaming about rice outside the door at 5am, I slept pretty well!
And then the baby weighing began. There were lots of them. Most of them cute, some of them annoying, and one really underweight child which was depressing (5kilo at 3 years old…a healthy 4 month old baby should weigh 5 kilo). We weighed all morning, and then a little in the afternoon and then headed out to the next village.
The next village was about 2 k away, the village of Vanana. My counterpart and I got there and the town was deserted. Its rice harvest time, so during the day the villages empty out into the fields, and only in the evening do people begin to surface. We wandered around town, she taught me some Malagasy, and we just sat around until the health workers showed up. This time our accomodations were more spacious, as we were staying in the “trano fandanjana” or the baby weighing house…However despite having a pretty spacious room for the two of us, we somehow ended up sleeping in a twin size spot on the floor so we could both be under the mosquito net. I would have risked the malaria for a little more space! That’s not true…malaria is bad, but I do like my personal space.
Again in the evening we made my spaghetti after commandeering the kitchen of some neighbors. And again I ended up having to eat two dinners. In the morning we weighed some more babies. We also did a cooking demonstration and cooked a nutritious meal for the underweight children. After lunch we headed out to our final village. Another 2k hike. We got to the next town in the middle of the afternoon, and there was nothing going on. I had brought a magazine along, so we spent about two hours looking at the pictures in the Economist with me trying to explain the gist of the stories in my broken Malagasy. I’m pretty sure most of our conversation was lost in translation. My counterpart and the local drunk guy were pretty entertained though.
In the morning we woke up to do more baby weighing and nutritional food cooking. By this point I was exhausted from speaking all Malagasy, being around people all day every day, and spending a little too much together time with my counterpart. I also didn’t sleep very well since we were in a twin bed, with no mattress, and she snored in my ear. But its all part of the adventure…? After lunch we were finally done with work and headed back to Tsarasambo.
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to get to my own little house with my own big bed and my own personal kabone and shower shack with a door. It was definitely an experience to go out into the “real” ambanivolo, and I have a new appreciation for the luxury of my little house on the side of the highway in Tsarasambo. It was like coming back to a 4 star resort….(that is most likely an exaggeration, but you get the point).
My counterpart prepared me for our little trip by telling me to bring…sureau (the bleach used to clean water), candles, toilet paper, lots and lots of bug spray and spaghetti. We set out on Sunday, late afternoon, which meant it wasn’t excruciatingly hot. However, it gets dark pretty early here, so I was wondering why we were setting out on a 15k hike an hour before dark…oh well. Everything runs on Malagasy time here, so maybe the sunset would be late too.
Off we went, and as we passed people on the road everyone kept saying, “you’re taking the vazaha to the countryside…” Apparently that was a surprising thing…along with me being able to sit cross-legged. (Everytime I sit like that people are shocked and comment on it for hours). Who knows…
The hike was pretty though. Especially as the sun was setting in the hills with the ocean on the other side…it was definitely a beautiful hike, although the constant uphill trek was exhausting.
We got to Sahatalevena, our first village stop, right as it was getting dark. We made the normal visits to the chef fokontany and then ended up at the house of a health worker. My counterpart handed me a watering can and led me behind the house where there was a waist high fence, and that was the shower. Privacy is definitely a western concept. I took a “shower” and then we went to make my spaghetti. My counterpart had this idea in her head that I couldn’t eat food in the countryside (maybe because it would make me sick….) so she told me to bring my own spaghetti. However, she never passed on that message to the people we were staying with…so I ate my pasta happily, and then I had to eat an entire other meal of rice and fish broth.
After my two dinners, we went over to the house where we were staying, and went to bed. My counterpart and I ended up sharing a twin size bed in a house the size of 2 twin size beds. Other than waking up to hear the rats crawling around on the roof and having kids screaming about rice outside the door at 5am, I slept pretty well!
And then the baby weighing began. There were lots of them. Most of them cute, some of them annoying, and one really underweight child which was depressing (5kilo at 3 years old…a healthy 4 month old baby should weigh 5 kilo). We weighed all morning, and then a little in the afternoon and then headed out to the next village.
The next village was about 2 k away, the village of Vanana. My counterpart and I got there and the town was deserted. Its rice harvest time, so during the day the villages empty out into the fields, and only in the evening do people begin to surface. We wandered around town, she taught me some Malagasy, and we just sat around until the health workers showed up. This time our accomodations were more spacious, as we were staying in the “trano fandanjana” or the baby weighing house…However despite having a pretty spacious room for the two of us, we somehow ended up sleeping in a twin size spot on the floor so we could both be under the mosquito net. I would have risked the malaria for a little more space! That’s not true…malaria is bad, but I do like my personal space.
Again in the evening we made my spaghetti after commandeering the kitchen of some neighbors. And again I ended up having to eat two dinners. In the morning we weighed some more babies. We also did a cooking demonstration and cooked a nutritious meal for the underweight children. After lunch we headed out to our final village. Another 2k hike. We got to the next town in the middle of the afternoon, and there was nothing going on. I had brought a magazine along, so we spent about two hours looking at the pictures in the Economist with me trying to explain the gist of the stories in my broken Malagasy. I’m pretty sure most of our conversation was lost in translation. My counterpart and the local drunk guy were pretty entertained though.
In the morning we woke up to do more baby weighing and nutritional food cooking. By this point I was exhausted from speaking all Malagasy, being around people all day every day, and spending a little too much together time with my counterpart. I also didn’t sleep very well since we were in a twin bed, with no mattress, and she snored in my ear. But its all part of the adventure…? After lunch we were finally done with work and headed back to Tsarasambo.
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to get to my own little house with my own big bed and my own personal kabone and shower shack with a door. It was definitely an experience to go out into the “real” ambanivolo, and I have a new appreciation for the luxury of my little house on the side of the highway in Tsarasambo. It was like coming back to a 4 star resort….(that is most likely an exaggeration, but you get the point).
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