Some more wonderful musings and thoughts...

I'm back! And much sooner than last time. I think I am getting better at this. As will probably be the theme for my entire time here, I have some pre-written posts that I am going to batch together as one. Let me know if that is a dumb way to do things or doesn't work well. Here we goooooooo.....

The first one is a better description of my site and the people there than the small blurb I wrote before:

My site is all kinds of awesome. The people at it are great and the people I will be working with are very good at being patient with me and helping me learn the language. I can't wait to get working with them.

My first 3 months at site are focused on getting better with the language and getting to know my community and culture. I hope to have some ideas for projects and even have started somethings before the 3 months are up but it's after that first part that I really get going. One of the things I'm excited about that is already happening is gardening. On Wednesday this week I am starting a garden at my place with my landlord. I live in the same building, and share a front entrance with, a family that includes a mom, dad, 17 year old boy, 15 year old boy, and a 2 year old grandson who is hilarious. The dad is an adviser with the blacksmith's co-op that I will be working with and a very respected person around town. The mom is also a respected person around town and is the village community health worker among many other things. She is the one I am doing the garden with although the whole family will be involved. It's very exciting because one of the things the community needs help with is better nutrition and food diversity. There are not very many vegetables grown in the region. They import almost everything from Tana which is about a 24 hour taxi-brousse ride away (btw taxi-brousse's are the main form of long distance travel here. They are little buses that can be crammed with 20-30 people depending on the size of the van and/or the people. They break down quite a bit but they are always an adventure). So the vegetables at the market are very expensive and most people cannot afford them. If I can convince people to garden they will be able to grow their own diverse foods and have a better diet. If the garden at my place goes well I hope to use it as a model for the rest of the community to learn from. My landlady is very committed to this and I know she will be a great help with pushing things forward.

She is also helping with a community-wide child health week this week. I don't really have much of a part in it but I am excited to see things and help as much as I can. There will be Vitamin A classes, vaccinations, and de-worming pill distribution. Pre-natal and early childhood help is a very big part of both the Peace Corps and National Health programs here so I am excited to see it in action.

Another main counterpart of mine is the president of the blacksmith co-op and he is awesome. He (along with my landlady) is great at understanding my broken Malagasy and translating it for people and he is also good at helping me to understand what people are trying to say to me. He is very excited for me to be here which definitely makes me excited to work with him and to do the best I can. He is also very good at helping me navigate the local village culture. There are certain people that should be kept involved in things (village elders, etc) and other things that are important for integrating and he keeps me up to speed on all of that. I'm excited to work with him and the blacksmiths and hopefully to help them improve their organization greatly.

I am very much still getting adjusted to things and every great moment is followed by an awkward one or a moment of doubt. But all in all in has been wonderful thus far and I am excited to finally be where I will be living for the next 2 years and excited to be starting my work.

And now the booze here:

Finally a blog about something really important...the alcohol here.

The most widely available stuff is beer and rum. You can find vodka or wine in some nicer places and there are stores in Tana that stock pretty much the same liquor types as we have in the US but with mostly different brands of course.

The beer is not too bad. The isn't much selection or variety but nothing is bad. The biggest brand is called Three Horse's Beer (THB). It's a pilsner brewed here in country. It's pretty good and I've gotten to know it very well. We have become very close friends. THB always lends a helpful ear when you have troubles and that sombitch is always the life of the party. Great guy. There is also a beer called Golds which is decent too but I prefer THB. They carry Castel which is from South Africa and is also completely inoffensive but unexciting. They have Guiness here and it is brewed here. I really want to visit the brewery during my time here. It's good and one of the only dark beers you can find. It tastes different than the stuff in the States but not in a bad way. It is more like the extra stout and isn't nitrogen carbonated. I've also sampled a local beer called Karibo which was fine. I tried it because Karibo means “welcome” or “come in” in my dialect so I felt like I had to.

The rum is plentiful and cheap. There is expensive stuff but my cheap ass hasn't tried it. The cheap stuff is better than the cheap stuff in America. It doesn't taste like lighter fluid. They also make an alcohol called “toaka gasy” here. It's kind of like moonshine. It is sold everywhere but it might be illegal. I honestly don't know. Peace Corps encourages us to not drink it because it isn't exactly sanitarily distilled and you can't have any idea how strong it is. So of course I haven't tried it. But if I had I would probably say it tastes bad but not awful. But the smell makes you want to throw up. I would say that the smell is indescribable but that I would not necessarily recommend to any but the most adventurous. That's what I would say. If I had tried it. Which I haven't.

Overall the alcohol here is pretty good and does a good job at what you want it for. It is also incredibly cheap. Come visit. I can help you sample it.

The next one is about some of the ceremonies we had at the end of training. They were amazing:

It happened a little while ago but I wanted to post about the swearing in ceremony and the ceremony we had for thanking the host families because they were very cool.

First the host family one. It was held at the Peace Corps Training Center in Mantasoa which is on a lake so it was beautiful. They set up a tent outside and luckily it both didn't rain and it wasn't hot as hell so it was a great day. I was actually chosen to give one of 2 speeches by trainees in Malagasy because my fellow trainees have terrible taste apparently. It actually went pretty well. Malagasy speeches are definitely different than American ones. Every speech starts with shout outs to the dignitaries in attendence. Then you introduce yourself. After that you apologize for any number of things. I apologized for being to young to have the floor (the oldest are supposed to be the ones speaking here although if you aren't the oldest you just apologize and then move on) and for not speaking clearly because I am still learning Malagasy. Then you do the speech. When you close it out it's customary to make a joke about how long or boring the speech was so I said that I was sorry that the speech was as long as I am tall. They liked that. The craziest part was that as I gave the speech it was translated into English by one of the Peace Corps staff who is Malagasy. It was very surreal. After the ceremony we took some pictures and hung out with our host families one last time. They were awesome so that was very fun.

The swearing in ceremony was all kinds of swanky. It was held at the US Ambassador's residence in Antananarivo. The grounds are beautiful and there is a pool. I wouldn't mind being invited back for a pool party if anyone from the State Department is reading for some reason. Everyone dressed really nice and I even showered and everything. It was a very big deal. But the biggest deal was the new Prime Minister of Madagascar attending! It was awesome to have him there. He brought out a ton of media and we were all over the national news. We also got to take a picture with him which is on Facebook if anyone is interested. After the ceremony, which included quite a few speeches and quite a bit of me trying to find the right combination of shade and breeze to not sweat in my fancy clothes, there was a cocktail hour. The food was amazing. It was some of the best food I've ever eaten and I have gotten down on some food in my life time. There was also an open wine bar. Needless to say that was enjoyed by myself and my fellow volunteers. We cleaned them out before it was all over. It was a great celebration and a fun last event with everyone before we all went our separate ways.

Afterwards we went out and partied in Tana. That was a blast. We had some great cheeseburgers at Sakamanga, which means the “blue cat”. If you're ever in Tana go there. The food is great and you can get karafes of Malagasy wine for like $3. After that we went to a bar close by then a dance club. I showed off my ample dancing skill and I am know everyone was very impressed. If there were cameras present I probably would have started an international dance craze. Taking taxis in Tana is also interesting because they are all these tiny little old french cars. But they have surprisingly roomy back seats. The interesting part is that everyone of them sounds like the axle and wheels might fall off at anytime. Quite an adventure.

This next genius post is about continued language learning:

Oh language..language, language, language. Why must you be so tricky?

I am doing a pretty good job (I think) with picking up the Malagasy language so far. But I am constantly reminded how far I have to go. I often get myself into situations where I have started to say something or make a point and I realize I have no idea how to do it in Malgasy. Then dictionaries and a lot of gesturing and pantomiming are the only things I have left. And maybe some poorly drawn pictures.

I think the easiest thing for me will be to realize that I will always be behind everyone and accept the fact that I won't understand a lot of things. Even after 2 years. But that is a really hard thing for me to do. I want to be very good and be able to express all of the things I want to say. Even though most of them are not exactly profound.

One of the cool things I am learning are Tsy Mihety proverbs. They love proverbs here. And they are very cool. But also very hard because they are usually long and use a lot of strange words and word forms. But they are coming along. My favorite so far means something along the lines of “that person is always lazy, they needed to be whipped like a cow to get going”. That is far from a direct translation and it sounds a million times better in Malagasy but I like it. Also, it's metaphorical. No one actually gets whipped. Just to be clear.

Continuing the language learning outside of the classroom is also a struggle. You have to be very intrinsically motivated which comes and goes for me. I have a little notebook that I try to keep with me at all times to write down all of the new words I hear. It helps a lot but can also be overwhelming because everyday there are at least 10 new words. And those are just the ones I catch or remember to write down. Luckily the people in my village are very patient with me and very helpful in making sure I get the point.

The language is an ongoing process and will be my entire service. It is a fun struggle though. I'm very happy to be learning a dialogue. It's kind of cool to learn something so obscure. There are many Malagasy people who don't know some of the things I am learning let alone Americans. Very cool.

And finally, something productive I have actually done. A garden!  Here we go:

I've been at my site for almost 4 weeks now. I really like it. We just finished our garden behind my house! It looks awesome. Now it needs to grow.

One of the things I really want to work on here is food security. It is part of the Agriculture project framework and very important in Madagascar and at my site. One of the main struggles in my area is a lack of crop diversity and poor nutrition. The people in my town often eat only rice at meals or maybe rice with beans or chicken if they have the money. When they do eat vegetables it is either greens (which are grown in abundance here and are cheap) or tomatoes. The reasons for this are many but the main ones are that the market to get more diverse crops is 7km away and everyone can't get there often, they don't have the money, they don't know how or feel comfortable growing it themselves, they don't know how or feel comfortable cooking the different things, or often a combination of them all. That is why the garden is such a good opportunity.

I have a good list of people who are interested in starting their own gardens and want my help. It's an awesome opportunity. I can teach people some new techniques in a one on one setting so that hopefully the teaching sticks. And then they can teach others long after I leave. That's the main development philosophy of Peace Corps. The build sustainable growth that will last after volunteers are gone.

Along with the gardening I would like to teach cooking and nutritional classes. Another hurdle is that, once people do have different kinds of food, they do not know how do use them. I'm no gourmet chef but I can teach some simple recipes using the unfamiliar things. It is mostly a stigma because the people here can definitely cook these things and almost certainly cook them better than me. I can use the cooking trainings to talk about nutrition as well. The promise of free food usually draws a good crowd.

I am really excited about my start here at site. I just need to make sure and keep the momentum up.

So that's that. Sorry if the formatting sucks. I pay for internet by the MB so I try to be on it as little\quickly as possible.  Feel free to talk trash in the comments or in a personal email. If you are planning to be particularly vicious, please use the email. My boss may or may not check in on this so no foul language. Misoatra (Thanks).