Habitat

My summer is turning out to be busier than I expected. Two weeks ago I got to help out with a Global Village Habitat for Humanity build in Moramanga. There were 23 volunteers from the US, Australia, Singapore, and Canada who arrived for 10 days of building houses. The group was an interesting mix of retired business people, a working dentist, a military guy on leave, a contractor, a maintenance person and a random college girl. But this was the most well traveled group of people I had ever met. One of the older volunteers told me he had been to 88 countries, and was still going! He was at least 75 years old… There was even a returned Peace Corps Volunteer who had served in Pakistan in 1961, he was 82. I hope that I can still be traveling at that age.

Myself and six other Peace Corps volunteers helped out as translators, and brick carriers, and kid entertainers, and tourguides. We thought we would be just translating, but were happily allowed to help with everything else…sometimes telling three year olds not to stand on a pile of bricks, and other times asking how our bricklaying was looking. I thought the building was the best part though. Getting to talk to the homeowners and see the walls of a house go up within a week was such a nice change from normal Peace Corps work. Throughout the week we rotated between five different houses and got to do a variety of different things. Most of the jobs we could do were moving bricks, laying bricks, shoveling dirt, and entertaining the kids at each house. But compared to a normal day at site, I was happy for even the most mindless work. At least I felt productive! And it was a good workout to say the least. At the end of 10 days I actually felt like I had some arm muscle…a rare occurrence.

First few days at house 5

My best friend at house 2

Laying bricks at house 1

PCV Mada and RPCV Pakistan

Ribbon cutting at house 3

Another perk of the build was our accommodations. The church compound we were supposed to stay in was booked, so we ended up staying at the nicest hotel in Moramanga. And my friend Kim and I ended up with the suite on the top floor. King size bed, couches, flat screen tv and a bathroom bigger than my house at site. It was pretty amazing. When we first got to our room I ran and jumped onto the bed, expecting there to be a mattress…it was a painful surprise when I bounced off the wood planks that served in place of a mattress. It was interesting though, for such a nice looking hotel, there were some serious issues that we don’t usually have at the cheap hotels volunteers usually stay in. For example, one morning Kim and I work up to find our bathroom had flooded….water was leaking out of the walls. Another night someone’s door lock completely broke and hotel staff had to climb in through the balcony. Another room had their balcony door fall out their balcony, and lots of others heard rats every night….I guess you can’t win them all. The hot showers were enough to keep me happy. I probably set a record for how many showers I took in a week…it was amazing.

We didn’t finish the houses by the end of the week, but most of them were very close. A few of them just had the roof and plaster left, or the flooring left. All except one house which was the least favorite of the group. The Malagasy workers who were in charge of house one didn’t like to work but would rather smoke all day and watch the vazaha carry bricks. So that slowed down the build. They also had interesting working technique. In one case they had to pull a wooden branch out of a brick wall which was holding up scaffolding. One end of the branch was significantly larger than the other, and they tried to pull that end through the small hole…It was clearly not going to fit. They didn’t try to switch directions, they brought over a huge sledgehammer and enlarged the hole. The whole house was shaking…and I’m wondering how long those walls are going to stand.

By the end of the 10 days everyone was pretty exhausted, but really happy with the progress we had made. Of the five houses, we had finished the walls of all of them, the rooves on some of them, and the floors on others. This was probably my favorite part of Peace Corps so far. The people, the work, the experience….it was a great 10 days. Another group is coming for a build in October, and hopefully I’ll be able to help out with that one, too.

One year ago...

...

I was in Philadelphia meeting my PC stage-mates for the first time, eating Philly Cheese steaks, and getting ready to leave for Madagascar. Now, one year later...I'm poking a living mouse with a stick which has conveniently gotten stuck to my glue trap and the floor a few inches from my bed. Glue traps are highly effective but really disgusting. Basically I covered a piece of cardboard with really sticky glue and waited for the mice to come. The first night I didn't get any...then night two I caught one. But I didn't realize it until I had climbed out of my bed and looked for my flip flops which were a few inches from something that looked like it crawled out of a sewer (if they had those here).

The problem with glue traps are they catch the mouse, but you have to kill it. And I've never had to kill a mouse before... When my dad would find them at our cottage, I would hide in my room until they were gone. And the one summer when Mere and I found a mouse in the house where she was housesitting, we managed to trap it in a closet with two cats. And then I didn't have to think about them anymore. But now I didn't have my dad to kill it, or a closet and two cats....so I could have hit it with a shovel like most volunteers, but that's gross. I didn't want to look at it or hear its high pitched obnoxious squeaking noise, so I got my speakers out and put on my ipod really loud to try to drown out the noise...and then I covered my broom with plastic bags so it wouldn't also get stuck to my floor. And then I covered the mouse with a piece of cardboard so I wouldn't have to look at it...and then I poked at it for awhile until it became unstuck and I pushed it onto another a piece of cardboard and threw it down my hill. I didn't even throw up. But unfortunately it landed face up, so everytime I went outside that day, the sticky mouse on the cardboard would taunt me. Eventually it 'disappeared'...which means either the kids got to it...or the chickens, or dogs, or who knows. But it was out of my house!

Corey 1, mice 0.

The next night I caught another mouse, but didn't realize it until I was sitting in my chair, happily eating my oatmeal, when I saw a sticky mouse tail under my shelves. So I had to start the whole ordeal all over again....loud music, broom covered in plastic bags, and holding back my nausea. I eventually got rid of this one too, but it was equally disgusting.

Corey 2, mice 0.

Now that I've disposed of two living mice in my house (both before 8am!), I feel like I can do anything! But I'm over the glue trap thing....I got rid of them. I'd rather hear them squeaking under my bed than try to unstick them from my floor. This whole experience makes me grateful for parents who kill mice, and cats. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure I won.

By the way...

Things I wish pepole would tell me...'hey, today at 3 we're going to set the rice paddy behind your house on fire...'

Instead, I get to find this out on my own. I go to take a shower, and I come out 10 minutes later to find a 13 year old carrying a flaming torch through the rice paddy behind my house. Uhhh. Not a normal sight, so I was a little confused. I was reassured when I looked across the rice paddy to see a group of 3 year olds dancing in the smoke...if they weren't concerned, I didn't need to be. I think this is the next step after harvesting rice, but it would have been nice to have a warning.

Translations I'm Working On...

*Just because you have big speakers doesn't mean you have to use them to play the same three songs for 12 hours a day...I know they're there and I believe you that they work.

*Just because the tree by my shower blocks my solar panel for a few hours a day doesn't mean you have to chop the whole tree down

*Just because my window is open and doors are closed doesn't mean you should use my window as a door, especially while I'm napping. That's awkward.

*Just because the sun is up before 6am doesn't mean I want to be

*Just because there are 2 “walls” and a whole 6 inches between your house and mine, doesn't mean I can't hear everything you say, especially when you're recapping the whole conversation we just had

Independence Day

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!)

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.

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).