I've Been Busy

Hello World!

It's been a while and a lot has happened. I'll try to touch on everything and include the hopes for the future. Here we go!

IST

In mid-July my stage had our IST (In Service Training) conference. All of us gathered in Tana then headed back to the training center in Mantasoa where it all began. IST is a two week shindig. The first week was done with all of our Malagasy counterparts and the second with just the volunteers.

Our Malagasy counterparts are the people we will be working with the most and the most closely at our sites. I brought the president of the fikambanana I work with. But they are not the only people we will be working with by any means. We will all have many counterparts it just isn't feasible to have them all come to Mantasoa. So we each chose one to come with us and bring all of the information back to our villages. The week with our counterparts was awesome. I got to spend a lot of quality time with mine and met so many other cool people who are counterparts of other volunteers. We had meetings both with our counterparts and separate from them throughout the week. The idea is to get them to understand the way Peace Corps works, the challenges and opportunities of cross cultural exchange, project design and management, and the possibilities that we have going forward. When I finally got back to my site (This was a long...long trip) we had a meeting with the whole community about what we learned at the conference.

The second week, with just the volunteers, was learning how to get projects off the ground during the next 9 months of service. That includes the design and management of course but also funding if necessary. There are a few grants we can apply for for specific things but there is also one for general projects called the PCPP. It is basically a project funded by outside donations through Peace Corps. The outside donors can be anyone but are usually friends and families (who love and care about the Volunteers and want their projects to go awesome so they donate lots of money and maybe visit the Volunteers too just for fun). Anyways, I have a project that will more than likely need funding coming down the pipeline. It's still very much in it's infancy so I won't bore you with the details yet but know it is awesome and a worthy project. During the second week we also learned advanced language skills and refreshed and improved our technical knowledge. The language stuff is always fun. It's also always good to see just how much you still have to learn. Malagasy is a good language for that. Every time I start to feel really good about my language I have an experience (or 30) that puts me in my place. The technical training also will be very helpful going forward. There was a training in particular on business expansion here in Madagascar that was especially awesome and helpful (Thanks Lucie!).

IST is also the first time your whole training group is brought back together as one. It was a blast to see everyone again and find out about their sites and potential projects. One of the things we had to do are called CDS (Community Diagnostic Survey) presentations. We presented them to everyone at IST. There are about 35 of us so it can drag a bit and get repetitive. But the section on future projects was very inspiring and exciting. Also the pictures. Always love the pictures. Seeing all of the Americans was also a bit overwhelming. Not in a bad way it was just weird to be back around so many Americans after spending so much time around Malagasy people. MSC (Mid-Service Conference) is the next big training in 9 months so I'm sure that will be even more jarring. But it really was awesome to get everyone back together. I genuinely like the people I've been sent here with and consider myself blessed to be here with such a cool group.

Wrapped around IST were a couple of days in Tana with the whole group as well. Tana is always interesting and I was by no means done with it.

VACATION!!

After IST myself and a few friends went on vacation to a place called Mahajanga. It was awesome. Mahajanga is on the northern west coast of Madagascar on the Mozambique Channel. It is a beach city with all of the great beach city attractions. Namely a beach. At the main beach there (called “Petite Plage” which means “little beach” in French) you can rent an umbrella for the day for shade. And up and down the beach there are people walking and selling so much wonderful food and drink. The seafood was fantastic. I've never eaten so much shrimp and fish in my life. Needless to say I gained a few pounds on vacation. There is also a bar on the beach with ice cold beer and other beverages. I personally recommend bringing rum and buying a coconut at the beach to drink out of. You can make your first drink with the coconut water and then you have an awesome natural cup to mix in. There are also sellers of fresh made juice on the beach so mixers aren't hard to come by. Sometimes the juice is made in less than sanitary conditions but the alcohol kills everything so it's fine. That's how that works right?

Vacation was mostly the beach and partying so the description isn't really that great. I'll try to post some pics on here to do it more justice but there are already some up on Facebook as well. Mahajanga was a great place that I definitely plan on going back to. There are a few hikes and such in the area I'd like to do. This time is was just too hard to drag my ass off the beach.

Fier Mada

After vacation I headed straight back to Tana for “Fier Mada”. Fier Mada is a giant agricultural and artisanal fair at a university in the capital. It was better than similar events I've been to in the States. You can find so much there. Many NGOs and governmental organizations have booths as well as individual co-operatives and sellers. I went with the blacksmiths co-operative I work with in Ankazambo.

The fair was amazing! First the fun. The food was so so good! I had everything from a delicious pineapple slaw with parsley to a hamburger with an egg on it. Also on the menu, fresh grilled fish with veggies, waffles, pate sandwiches, and more I'm sure I am forgetting. The best part was that all of it was local companies or individuals. I even got to try, and purchase, the best honey in Madagascar. It's called BeeFarm (produced by my one of my Peace Corps language trainers Mbola and her husband Faly with the help of a few hundred thousand bees) and there are a few excellent flavors. Some of it will be coming home with me to the US for sure. There were also live music performances and a visit from the Prime Minister. He even came by our booth and talked with my counterpart for a photo-op. We go big like that in Ankazambo. There were also a lot of stands with great crafts to buy. I will be stocking up on presents to bring home at next years fair without a doubt. All of the people running the booths were awesome to interact with as well.

I also got a lot of work done in between stuffing my face and perusing the goods. We shared a booth with other people from our region. Everything was run through a program called Prosperer which does some amazing work here in Madagascar and who I work with quite a bit. There were three booths in total reppin' the Sofia Region. Ours had us, another blacksmiths co-op from Mandritsara, and a chicken farmer from Mandritsara. In there other two booths was honey from all over the region, siramamy Gasy (sugar from sugar cane made into big blocks), peanut butter from Mandritsara, and some hand woven baskets and purses. We sold a ton of knives! I even got to try my hand at selling and kind of liked it. Being on the other side of the bargaining process is surprisingly fun. Plus people get a kick out of negotiating with a vazaha (foreigner). Networking at the fair was also a huge success. We met a few people who may be interested in wholesaling the knives which would be huge. I also was able to meet a lot of potential work partners for myself and fellow volunteers in all aspects of agriculture. I purchased quite a few seeds for the garden including watermelon. I can't wait to grow that. There were tons of awesome strawberries but I wasn't able to get any for the garden. They are a pain to grow from seed and I didn't want to purchase a seedling that needed to be carried around with me for a few weeks. Hopefully next year. I loved meeting all of the different groups there and seeing what everyone is working on. I learned techniques I will definitely use and met people I most certainly will work with. Such a great experience and I already can't wait for next year.

It should be mentioned that many other volunteers came to the fair and represented Peace Corps well with two others being there and working at a booth everyday like me. The Volunteers here in Madagascar are a great group.

One last story from the fair. In the deep south region of Madagascar there is a dialect spoken called Tandroey (not sure if that's spelled right). It is widely known here on the island as the dialect hardest to speak and be understood. Most native Malagasy speakers can't pick it up. I went to booth that had some cool stuff from the region and started to talk to the man running it. He spoke to me in Tandroey and blew my mind. I kept trying to speak with him in Malagasy Official and he always came back with Tandroey. It was difficult and a little embarrassing. Turns out he was messing with me. He also speaks great Official and knows Peace Corps well. He has been a counter part for volunteers in the past and, since he figured I was a volunteer when he saw me and I spoke Malagasy, decided he wanted to give me a bit of a hard time. He is an awesome guy and I actually may be able to get some help from him since he uses a type of metal we don't have access to in the north that I want to try and get for the blacksmiths. He may be able to help me figure out where I can find it.

Fun, fun at the fair then off to more adventures!

Lasy ny Ankizy

Next up on the agenda was helping at my friend's lasy ny ankizy (children's camp). She is running an 8 week summer camp at her site and a village close by that will teach English, agricutural techniques, and basic health and life skills to children. It is a great idea that I expect will be stolen by many other volunteers in the future including (maybe) myself. Each week a different volunteer comes to her site to help with the camp and do trainings on areas they excel in. I was the first week. We did garden bed preparation which I am very comfortable with and have done a lot of at my site. On the English side we did basic greetings, times of day, and simple questions. Basically small talk. Which is good because I don't really excel at the finer grammar points of English but can usually handle basic intros.

The camp went incredibly well, especially considering it was the first week so bumps in the road were inevitable. The turn out was awesome with something like 300 kids over 3 days. It was funner than I expected teaching the kids, who were very well behaved for the most part. At her site she has 3 separate school gardens and seeing those was great too. It is a good opportunity to get children started on good farming practices at a young age. Madagascar is an extremely agrarian society (something like 80% but it might be even higher than that). Almost all of these children will grow crops of some sort when they are adults and hooking them early is key to improving things here.

(Side note: In the US there are often complaints about class sizes of 30 children which is defintely too much. Here most classes are double that if not more. The largest class we taught was 95 children. It's amazing that people are able to teach and learn in that environment. It is out of my league and knowledge to write intelligently about the topic nor could I begin to address it. I only bring it up to say the teachers here as a whole do a pretty good job with the hand they're dealt and every kid who comes out of there and excels is extremely deserving to say the least. Disappearing into the crowd would be very easy to do.)

The other cool thing about working at the camp was seeing another person's site. Her site is in the highlands around Tana so the environment couldn't be more different than mine. Right now it's hot and dry in my region and cold and wet in her's. She is from Portland in the States and she said it is wetter here than there. So yeah it's different. But very pretty. It still has some forests unlike mine including a protected area I didn't get to check out but that sounds cool. We got to bike around a lot as well so I got to know the terrain very well. But the best part was meeting all of the people in town and who she works with. I love meeting and talking with new people here. I could bounce around the island just conversing with people forever. I love it. I love hearing their point of view on things and what they would like to do for themselves and their communities. It's inspiring for me and so great to hear. Plus I can be a bit of a talker as some may know.

Lasy ny ankizy was a success and then it was back to Tana.

COSers and Biz-nass Time

I headed back to Tana because myself and the closest Ag volunteer to me in my region had some business to do in Tana and the timing was great because I was already in the area. We needed to contact some people about projects we have coming up (including the unnamed super awesome project from earlier in this novel of a post). We also wanted to meet with some ministries and NGOs that have offices in Tana to see if they work in our region and if so what we can do with them. It was a productive trip and we got some good information and started the ball rolling on some great stuff.

While we were there it was also the first week of COSers for the Education stage that is finishing up (COS stands for Close of Service. It's the people who are finishing their 2 years of Peace Corps). Included in this group were both of our site mates and some other Volunteers who we have become good friends with over the past few months. It was so nice to be in town as they were closing things up to be able to say good bye. We had some good nights out and some excellent dinners. If there is one thing Tana has more than enough of (besides trash) it's good, over-priced, almost but not quite there American and other kinds of food.

It's funny because I have only known my site mate for a few months but we have become very good friends. I think it is a combination of being so close geographically which inevitably means you see each other often, having another American around who is experiencing what you are so you have something to bond over, and my being a super awesome person...just kidding it's definitely the other way around. I'm just grateful she was able to put up with me while she did and will miss her very much.

The good news is I get a new site mate. I've already met her and she is great. The black hole is getting some good new volunteers who will hopefully love the region as much as all of us here do. Unfortunately I will be in Tana for the committee meeting when she gets installed at her site. We will (actually already have by the time this gets posted) miss each other by a couple hours. Luckily the trip for the meeting is very short and I can welcome her to the area when I get back. I'm excited to introduce her to all of the nice people in the market and the best hotelys (restaurants) in town. This group coming in now is the group my stage will be here with the longest so it's exciting to meet them and welcome them to the country. Everyone I've met from there stage seems great so they should do well here.

So after doing some big city business and seeing some friends off it was back to site for me. Finally. It was much too long away and I missed everybody. Now that I am back for the foreseeable future (other than a quick trip back to Tana for a committee meeting that I'll write about in another post) I am excited to get to work here. I have so many things I want to do. The garden needs to be re-planted for a new season and many other things big and small need to be done. Although I have only lived here a short time this is very much my home now so it is also just so great to be home. Back to rice every meal and my rat and cockroach roommates. Home sweet home.

I'll have a post about the committee meeting and future plans up soonish and of course anything else that comes up. Let me know what you like, dislike, hate, whatever about the blog by the way. I am enjoying writing it and am trying to improve it so any feedback would be nice. I know there is only about 10 people or so who read it so feel free to eviscerate me via email or comment on the blog. Thanks!

(Quick garden update since I apparently can't get enough parentheses. Most of the first batch of things are done and it was overall a success. The greens and onions kicked major ass. The beans were okay but not spectacular. Tomatoes the same. The potatoes were a bit of a disappointment because, although tasty, they are very small. The bok choi was also apparently good and much enjoyed during my extended absence. Carrots are still going. Black eyed peas died but I want to try again. Peppers look promising but they started later than others. Overall a solid start. Okay, now I'm done. I promise.....SYKE! I miss all of you guys back in the States and abroad, especially in Moldova, who support me. I love it here but dream of 2016 and seeing all of your lovely faces then. A special thanks to the Hams for the care packages. You guys are too nice to me. Now I'm done. End scene.)