A Day in the Life...

“No mon. He just play the fool, cause for him dass de way life go de best.”

-Peter Matthiessen, Far Tortuga

A few days ago, Jamila, Liz, Manora (three of the volunteers working with us this summer), Robson, Augustin (two of our filed agents), and I set out from Vondrozo for Tsaratana, a hamlet 30km. away. This is the start of a 2-week field trip to do some forest mapping and awareness-raising in the villages. We were on bike, with 15 porters carrying our stuff. The porters get paid a daily rate of 3000 Ar. or about $2.00, which is good by local standards. We made it about 20 km. the first day because we left in the afternoon, then stashed our bikes in a mayor’s office and had to walk the last 2 kilometers, through rice paddies and across a small river, into town.

That first evening, the village presented us with two chickens, as an offering, and they were to be our supper. This was the first time yet that I was confronted with the dilemma of whether to eat meat and I took it in stride. It turned out to be the most spiritual meal that I have eaten since being in retreat in Nepal – pondering every bite and really experiencing my food. Parts don’t go to waste hear and I even ate the liver.

Then that night there was kilalaky, or a village dance. In silvery moonlight, a plastic drum and makeshift symbol led the beat as boys danced in a circle with the girls in a line behind them, breaking into the circle every so often in pairs to do a sort of shimmy punctuated with the blows of a whistle. When I tried to dance with them they all ran away giggling, so I had to dance off to the side as I watched with the adults.

I was explaining to the volunteers how much I am changing here and they all agreed that I seem very at home here, in my element, and that this place is good for me. That was very reassuring considering all the doubt that I have been dealing with.

Our tents were set up in the center of the village, which is strange to me. We were constantly on display and had to seek refuge in our tents in order to avoid constant stares. I was glad to head off to the forest the next day, to get a rest from feeling like an alien. I was really wishing I were better with language because the villagers seem so cool and we would try to talk but it was just so strained most of the time.

Then yesterday we headed into the forest. Our job is to map out the lines of delimitation between different usage zones in the area of forest that is to be managed by the COBA of Tsaratana. So we have to walk along, using whatever trails or ridges or rivers are available taking points every couple hundred meters for about 4 kilometers, making sure that the villagers understand where the line is and what the difference is use is. Because these zones are all towards the edge of the forest (only the last, strict protection, is solid forest) they have been cut in spots and cultivated in others, and the regrowth is often spiny and brushy, and the valleys are swampy – one volunteer fell in up to her waste yesterday. It is tough going.

Today started at 5:00with me having dreams of having to pee and in my dream I keep looking at my watch because I want to get up but it keeps showing a time like two in the morning so I keep waiting until I finally realize that I am dreaming and get up to go out of the tent. At 6:30 I have coffee with Robson and the porters, and then we have to wait until 9:00 for breakfast of rice and voanjobory, a groundnut related to the peanut but more like a bean in flavor and texture. I am proud because I can finally eat a ‘Gasy portion of rice like the rest of the guys. By 10:30 camp is packed off and we split into two teams of an agent and a local guide, with volunteers, to do the work. There is also a group of porters that will move camp while we are out to a spot a couple km. up the way. For the next 6 hours we have the pleasure of fighting through thorny, swampy, pathless lands, swatting mosquitoes, picking off leeches, etc. Not my most pleasant forest experience to date, and damn hard work. I am stoked for my cup of coffee (though I never use sugar back home, here it is very sweet and concentrated, about a shot and a half) when we finally make it back to camp. By 6:00 we are eating and here I am at 7:00 in bed. Two meals a day of heaping plates full of rice. That’s a day in the field with WWF.

Even Peeing can be an Adventure

“But Angeles Alfaro left as she had come, with her tender sex and her sinner’s cello, on an ocean liner that flew the flag of oblivion, and all that remained of her on the moon lit roofs was a fluttered farewell with a white handkerchief like a solitary sad dove on the horizon, as if she were a verse from the Poetic Festival.”- Love in the Time of Cholera

Oh, what a day.

After breakfast I went to go pee next to my latrine (it makes the shit compost better if keep the pee separate, and I can fertilize the plants) but instead I met an old board. The board had a nail sticking out of it. I was wearing shoes. The nail was very rusty. I don’t remember what we were arguing about but whatever it was, I lost the argument. The board decided to stick its nail right through the sole of my shoe* and into the sole of my foot, leaving the soul of my being stunned. I stood there for about a minute. I kept trying to use my leg muscles to pull my foot free but it wouldn’t come up. I thought I was in shock because I didn’t feel any pain, but I wasn’t. Just stuck. I finally bent down and used my hands to pull my foot at an angle off the nail. It didn’t bleed as profusely as I had feared but it was a good wound – a centimeter deep, eo ho eo (pronounced “yo yo”, meaning approximately).

When I came out from around the back of the house there was a guy there who I had briefly met the day before, and seeing me hurt he helped me bandage my foot. I cleaned it out as well as I could but don’t think I did as good a job as I should have. Then, because it was market day, I hobbled down the hill to do some shopping and he came with me and helped me carry my groceries. I was getting some funny looks in town but was pretty used to that by now. After we came back to my house, I got my first not-so-friendly visit from the gendarme (rural police). It turns out that my new friend was a known thief and they carted him off with them.

I spent the rest of the day reading.

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* A good shoe, too. My brother Shawn, for Christmas before I left says, “You’re going to a hot climate so I thought shoes with holes would be good,” and he was right – they are my favorite footwear here. Thanks Shawn. Unfortunately, now they have one hole they weren’t supposed to have.

Ambassador to the Boonies

“Ambassador to the Boonies” - Is that my job title? I forget that just being here is doing something. I am discouraged because it seems that WWF already has a handle on things: they have already done a lot of participatory rural analysis (one of the things we are trained to do), already helped COBAs create development projects, already know how to survey the forest, already speak Malagasy (my whole team is Malagasy), etc. And I have no idea, yet, how I can really make a difference in their efforts (yeah, yeah – I’ve only been hear two weeks). So I just try to talk. I share a little bit about my love of coffee and my French Press (thanks again, Tanya), about how I don’t like cars, how we don’t eat rice 3 times a day in America but how my mom prepared me well in this department, etc.

Is just sticking it out success? I don’t think so. I am starting to feel like I am doing some sort of self-imposed penance. But for what? Being born into an affluence and not doing anything with it? For having no clear vision, no vocation? Obviously I came because I want to help people, help the environment… but that is so vague. Supposedly I am gaining skills here that will be useful towards that end in the future but I am not sure what they are. I don’t rightly know if I am helping anyone by being here, but I am not willing to leave.

Hopefully I can grow to enjoy being a star, in a freak show kind of way. Right now it is a definite challenge. I am sure that with time I won’t feel like I am in a zoo. There is a fence around my house and always when I am home little eyes staring through the bars at me. Many aren’t polite (or Western) enough to stay outside the fence – maybe if I bite them and post a “Don’t stick your fingers through the fence – Vicious Creature” sign then they will stay out. It reminds me of how we treat monastics back home: with a sort of awe and respect but a definite barrier due to lack of understanding. Back home I was sometimes apprehensive about going out and interacting superficially with strangers. Here, it is my job but the apprehension is worse. It is definitely something to work on. I am finding aspects of the Peace Corps experience, like social interaction, more challenging than I anticipated. I’m up for the challenge and am sure I will come out of this having grown a lot – the real question, though, is whether I can find a way to make a difference in the short time that I have here.

I Guess I Really Am Living Here for Two Years

I am currently sitting in the bungalow that Brittany and I are sharing in Mananjary on our way to our sites. The plumbing here at Hotel Ideal is faulty (typical) but the loft is cute.

We swore in five days ago, along with our 28 other fellow trainees, as Madagascar’s newest Peace Corps volunteers. I am finally getting around to write about it now. It was at Tsimbazaza, the national zoo and botanical garden in Antananarivo. We had an hour or so to walk around and see the animals and then had a ceremony with the Ambassador and Madagascar’s Minister of the Environment, along with assorted other folks. Unfortunately, our Peace Corps Country Director was at a world director’s conference and couldn’t make it, which was a shame. For the actual swearing in, we were never asked to raise our right hands while we gave our oaths, so I don’t know if we are actually servants of the state or just pretending.

Afterwards, we hung out at the ambassador’s pad for a celebratory lunch; you know, the typical Peace Corps life – swimming, and lounging, eating and schmoozing. Really though, it was an amazing treat.

Then, the next morning, that’s it, vita, done. Two months of spending all our time together and then, poof! we are all off to our respective corners of the island. Brendan, Brittany and I left at 6:30 the next morning. We spent the next two days together shopping for mattresses and stoves and whatnot, as well as visiting partners and government officials (It is a typical cultural practice here that whenever somebody goes into an area to do any sort of work they meet with everybody in charge from the chief of police to mayors to traditional kings. To not do so is perceived as anywhere from disrespectful to downright suspicious). Then after setting up Brendan’s BLU antennae (there is no phone coverage around his site so he uses a radio to communicate – it has an antennae that is about 30 feet long and 20 feet high, strung across two poles that we erected), putting his bike together and eating lunch, we leave him at his site.

To get to his site you have to take a ferry across a river. When we were leaving, as we waited for the ferry, a funeral procession caught up with us. They came walking down the road, singing and chanting, seemingly cheerful and nearly ecstatic. The corpse was on a sling wrapped up in cloths. We rode across the water together, the body not more than five feet from me, and it stunk. It was somehow refreshing to be washed over by such a potent display of life and death. Though we were by no means a focus of their energy, I felt like it was an appropriate welcoming to us as we were in the process of beginning our new lives, adding cultural and existential perspective to my myopic self-centered view.

We're Eating WHAT for Dinner!?

Tomorrow is the day of our final presentations and then in two days we have our final language test. Then, granted we pass, we finally get to be sworn in as volunteers. So the whole last week has been either studying language or stressing out about language, though I actually feel pretty good about things. My final presentation is a game about beekeeping and I am pretty excited about it. All of our host families will come tomorrow and we will give our 15 minute presentations in ‘Gasy. Making it interactive, aside from any pedagogical benefits, means I have to speak less, which definitely has its peace-of-mind benefits for me.

So guess what my family had for dinner tonight? I got to eat the usual, but my family’s laoka, or side-dish (you know, everything other than rice) was a bowl of invertebrates, mostly small black shrimpy things, that my host-mom sieved out of the rice paddy mud. Among other creepy-crawlies, Tslavina, my 7-year-old brother, got a giant water boatman about the size of a quarter; he relished biting its head off and sucking out the juices. This coming from a kid who cries (throws a fit, really) if carrot salad even touches his plate! So while I have been pondering eating meat, I can definitely say that I was not the least bit tempted, nor expected, thankfully, to join in this culinary adventure. I felt like someone inserted a clip of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom into my Madagascar documentary. Though really, it is a good source of protein that, as a rice growing culture, is readily available, so it makes perfect sense to eat it.

First Rainforest Excursion

We are at Mahatsinjo, a private reserve run by an NGO where another volunteer works, literally across the street from Andasibe National Park, the most visited park in the country. We are all excited to finally see the rainforest after 1½ months of seeing only the transformed landscape of the plateau. Most of us are in a hotel but a few of us have chosen to camp at the park. They have a few sand pits with ravinala roofs over them that you can set your tent up in. They even have a light bulb, which I think is a bit excessive.

It is really nice to be in the rainforest, though it is awfully dry and there are eucalyptus and pine trees all around. But as soon as one gets back into the forest proper it is clear how much incredible biodiversity there is here and how totally unlike the rest of the plateau it is.

Two days ago we went on a night hike. I didn’t see any nocturnal lemurs, but rather a huge chameleon, and a nocturnal moth and snail, both of which are the size of my hand. We also saw Brookesia, the family that claims the smallest chameleon in the world.

Today, we got to see and hear the Indri, who’s haunting song carries for kilometers and is one of the most incredible noises I have ever encountered. Sifaka, brown lemurs, couas (one of the five endemic bird families on the island), paradise flycatcher, giraffe-neck weevils, you name it. Everything but the golden bamboo lemur, one of the rarest primates in the world, which was recently discovered in the area.

It is very inspiring to see all the scientific work that this local NGO is doing, and how they are using ecotourism to fuel the development of their village. I also got a chance to build some rainforest trail and help plant trees in a forest restoration project. They collect mycorrhizal soil and seeds form the forest, grow the seedlings in the nursery, then plant them in strategic patches close to the forest, paying attention to the interspacing of fast and slow growing, short and long lived trees. The forest is given enough of a head start this way that it can out compete the invasives that one finds all around where people once cut and burned the land. It is an incredible process to see and unfortunately in danger from loss of funding.

Life in Our Training Village

So I have been in Madagascar for over a month now, and am finding my training both challenging and rewarding.

I live in a small village on the plateau, within easy driving distance of Tana, by means of a nicely paved road (which is a rarity in this country); that is, once I walk the two kilometers to the bigger town next door.

The main income in town, aside from housing all of us volunteers, is rice farming, and the valley bottoms all around this hilly area are filled with paddies. On the hillsides, people farm other subsistence crops like manioc, carrots, potatoes, and taro. There are also several stores in town, rooms in the bottom floors of their mud brick homes, that sell candles, soap, toilet paper (the first kind I bought was more like sandpaper than tissue), bananas, dried fish, and assorted “Made in Mad” (or China) processed foods.

I live with a family of 4, very small my Malagasy standards, and have a room to myself. Christin and Noeline are 32 and 28, respectively, and their girl, Ioni is 11 and Tslavina, their boy, is 7. There is no electricity or plumbing, even in this fairly wealthy area. Life is simple and nights are ling. I use a chamber pot at night and empty it into a latrine in the morning. It is not culturally appropriate for us to go out at night here, everyone is in doors after dark, which arrives at 6:00ish. One reason is fear of witches, of which there are many stories, but there may be others as well. Since I have a separate entrance to my room and am shut in by myself after dark, I am often asleep by 8:00. I find a full belly and candlelight less than conducive to staying awake (though many a Monday and Tuesday night I have a hard time sleeping at all because I am still having crazy prophylaxis dreams after taking my weekly dose of mephloquine).

My shower is a bucket with water heated in a pot, on a grate, over the wood fire that serves as a kitchen. It is certainly a challenge to learn how to cook over a fire. As for food, I eat rice 3 times a day and am actually fond of it! I’ve already come to the point where I don’t fell full unless I have rice, and a lot of it. In addition, I usually eat beans and carrot salad and bananas or pineapple for dessert (oh, the pineapple!) Some days though, we do eat pancakes or latkas for breakfast, though I think Peace Corps taught them how to cook those so that we don’t go crazy. And, thank Andriamanitra (or God), my family drinks coffee every morning (even the seven year old, though I have tried with my feeble language skills to warn against that).

Apart from everything that we learn just by living with our host families, we have daily workshops on topics from building fuel efficient cookstoves, to improved rice growing techniques, to maintaining tree nurseries, farming chickens, community needs assessment, the nature of sustainable development, etc. Mostly, it is current volunteers who do the training, but sometimes we have guest speakers, Like Dr. Steve Goodman, a zoologist who is an expert in the biodiversity of the island, and Mark Freudenberger, head of a USAID program here with many years experience in development work. When we aren’t doing technical training or learning about Peace Corps policies (my favorite – boy do I live bureaucracy!), we are in language class. I am the only one headed to my particular region of the country in the Southwest so I have a language class to myself and nobody in the village speaks my dialect. As you might guess, I am having a challenging time learning to speak Antefasy. I am progressing though, and by now can have what would at no other time be considered a conversation, but right now is the pinnacle in cross-cultural communication:

“It’s hot outside.”
“Yes it is. I’m tired.”
“Me, too.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”

Or

“What did you do on Easter?”
“I went to the lake for the party and ate fried bananas.”
“I ate samosas.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”

So tomorrow, after five weeks of training, I leave to visit my site for the first time. Then four more weeks of training before all 32 of us are cut loose across the country to do our best to make a difference (I’ll settle, for now, on just having a conversation).