Cat Farming

Written April 13, 2013

Sorry for the lack of blog posts. I am quickly approaching my one year of service mark and things here in Ambohidray are no longer new and exciting. It no longer bothers me that I have to pick weevils out of my rice before I cook it, I am (slightly) more used to being stared at like a zoo animal, and I am so in love with my po (chamber pot) that I am wondering how I can incorporate into my life post-Peace Corps. As a result, I have lost my blogging motivation (and I would really rather save my laptop battery for watching movies).

Anyways, the past 2 weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. A group of 18 new agriculture volunteers (the environment and community economic development programs have been “merged” into an ag program, but it is pretty much the environment program with a new name) arrived in country in March and I spent the past couple of weeks helping to train them. Training was a bitch. I am constantly amazed at how disorganized Peace Corps Madagascar can be at times. Anyways, it was nice to meet all the newbies and to get some fresh blood. PC volunteers get very jaded and unhappy as they go through their service so it is nice to have people who are excited.

The second week of training I got to go along with the volunteers on tech trip where they get to visit different volunteer sites and learn about agricultural practices here in Madagascar. On Monday they came to my site and overall things went well. I worked my butt off to get everything planned and organized but I am glad it is something my community got to experience. In the morning the trainees split into groups and taught some lessons at the school garden. After lunch we did a cooking demo with my women’s group which was tons of fun. One group made guacamole which was a big hit. I also accompanied the trainees on their first night “out” in Madagascar (kind of a joke because Moramanga has basically no nightlife). I introduced them to meat on a stick (and promised they wouldn’t all get dysentery and die), yelled at men who were harassing us, and funniest of all, helped people navigate bathroom situations (yes, you can trust the waitress to take you somewhere safe to pee, no its not unusual that she took you to the basement to do so). The rest of tech trip I tagged along and mostly did nothing. It was nice.

I got back to site on Friday and the very next day had a meeting with the YMCA in Moramanga. We discussed health issues in the commune (or they did, I mostly sat there and played on my phone….). It was the best kind of meeting because we got there, ate snacks, talked a bit, ate lunch, and went home. We even had a “special” (private) taxi brousse which was super fun. People would try to get in and we got tell them no, it was only for special people, ha! I picked up some new round storage baskets for my house and on the way back the (slightly drunk) commune veterinarian who had also attended the meeting asked me if I was going to farm cats in the baskets. They are very nice round, woven baskets, the kind that a cat most certainly would like to curl up in and maybe have some kittens, but it certainly wouldn’t be my first thought. 

Middle school photo shoot

 

So I went to visit the middle school in my commune to attend their new years party (held in February…). The reasons were two-fold: 1. to talk to the teachers and administrators about my pad project; 2. to visit Ninah who has been begging me to visit since school started. The pad talk went good. I spoke with the directory and the secretary (both men) and they seemed passively excited about the project. But later in the day, when everyone was drunk they seemed REALLY excited. The director was even explaining it to others using a piece of table cloth as mock-underwear (some people were confused at the snaps on the crotch part. There are only 146 girls enrolled in the school right now so I am going to be able to do this project pretty cheaply. I am going to apply for VAST funding (meant for HIV/AIDS related project) and make the sex-ed component heavy on the HIV/AIDS stuff. The school PE/health teacher was really excited and wanted to help me with the education component. Yay!

Then we did a photo shoot. Pictures are a very treasured possession here. In the past it meant going into the city (Moramanga) and getting them taken. Now there are more people with digital cameras who will take photos but they make a profit at it and are still few and far between. I really hate taking pictures for people. It is generally just a pain. But, I decided to do it anyways. I took about 200 pictures and charged them only the cost to print them out (500AR or less than 25 cents a picture). I made everyone pay before hand (except some of the teachers who insisted they would pay me later, I’m never gonna see that money). Here are some pictures of the students being nerds:

Note: Grades here are much for fluid than in the states. It is more common for kids to repeat a grade at some point than not. I know we have 16-year-olds at my elementary school and I would guess the students here range in age from 11-20ish.   

Yes, he is holding an (empty) beer bottle 

Two of the three kids from my community who go to middle school! Ninah borrowed my sunglasses.

Stuffs a’happening

Written 2/6/13

Long time no blog. The internet café in my banking town has gone to shit so blogging has been even more difficult. The wifi there has been getting progressively slower and it is to the point where I am unable to load WordPress (or Facebook for that matter). It is hard to get in the mood to write a blog when it won’t be posted for a long, long time. Even worse, the wifi there was completely down today. Apparently there is another decent internet café about 1km off the main road so it looks I will have to investigate that.  But anyway, I am sitting here is the fancy restaurant in town charging my computer and trying not to get annoyed while a woman is taking pictures of me on her phone (at least turn the sound off lady!) so blogging it is.

School Garden:

This is going good so far! Despite having a very difficult time trying to find people to volunteer to build things for the school, the main construction aspects are finished. I kind of had to scare people by saying that if the community didn’t work hard on the project that Peace Corps wouldn’t give us anymore money (partly true, if it turned out to be a big hassle I probably wouldn’t have the motivation to apply for more funding). The well now has a new cover and the fence around it is basically complete (I just need to finish adding bamboo to the other half). It looks beautiful and everyone (especially the teachers) is really excited. We also have a beautiful roofed compost/fertilizer area. The poor guy who built it was supposed to have people help him but he got bailed on for two days and ended up doing everything by himself. What a trooper! We are working on putting in raised garden beds right now (logs) and I am supposed to have someone help me cut notches in the poles tomorrow. I tried to borrow some woodworking tools to do it myself but it turns out I am lacking such skills. I still have all my fingers and toes though! I would still like to add a little tree growing area, more raised beds, and maybe a trellis, but all those require is logs which are super easy for me to order (ie. approach any man on the street holding a big knife and offer him money). One big project ended up getting dropped. When my project was over funded I talked to the school director and suggested we add a tool shed with the extra money. He said yes but when meeting with other involved in the project, the idea was shot down. They are scared of theft (of course it would have had a lock, but that is easy enough to get around) which is all too common in Ambohidray. So we are using that money in other ways and have hopeful plans to convert an area in one of the classrooms into a storage area sometime in the future. I bought a whole bunch of supplies today and still have about 120,000 Ariary to go. I was able to purchase 50 packs of colored pencils so when we do classroom activities there will be enough for ever student to have one. Yeah! So excited! Thank you again to everyone who donated and stay tuned for more updates & pictures!

Women’s Gardening Group:

Last week was the big day where the women were able to collect their tools. It was a great! Peace Corps is supposed to be about teaching and building human-to-human interactions, NOT just giving people stuff like so many aid organizations do . Even so, seeing the look of absolute joy on these women’s faces when they had all their tools was amazing. It is one of the best days of my service so far. The issue of women not having enough money to make the payments ended super quickly when the tools were actually here. All but 2 women fully paid for and collected their tools that day and everything was done by the end of the week. I am still trying to find enough fertilizer for the group. We need another wagon load and a half and nobody in town has any (fertilizer meaning mature manure, all the poop now is still “manta” or unripe). So the lady’s living in the southern section of town may have to wait a bit. Due to bargaining and buying cheaper notebooks than originally accounted for, we still have about 40,000 Ar to spend. A large portion of this will go towards photocopies and also a communal supply of seeds so they women can try new varieties. Each women got 4 packs of seeds as a part of the project but everyone basically chose the same few things (carrots, greens, cucumbers, and zucchini). Hopefully tying something new will open their horizons. Also, I am going to hold the communal seeds hostage so that they can only use them when I am present. I keep on telling the women that I want to help them set up their gardens, but no one has taken me up on it yet.

 

We have had one meeting since the tools were distributed and, as expected, some of the women did not show up. No matter how much you try and account for it, some people are going to lose interest in the educational component once the physical items are in hand. That being said, there was still a good group of women and the class went really well. We talked about double digging and some helpful soil amendments. Most of the time was just spent chatting which is really wonderful. We snacked on some squash and sunflower seeds which they found very strange but interesting. People took home sunflower seeds, mint starts, and rosemary starts. I have some malabar spinach growing which everyone loves so I took some cutting and am trying to see if I can get them to root and then can hand them out. Everyone seems pretty excited about these new things!

Also as expected, once the tools were distributed I was inundated with women wanting to join (but where were you at the beginning when I was begging every woman I saw on the street to come to my meetings?!). I keep on kindly explaining that they are welcome to join the group and learn about new agricultural techniques, but that they cannot buy the items because there is only enough money for the 15 women who were involved in the project from the beginning. They generally don’t like this answer, but oh well.

Progress!

Written January 22, 2013

Today was such a good day! Proof:

• The guy I ordered all of the boards and post from for  the school garden construction finished them 2 days EARLY (unheard of in Madagascar) and wasn’t even mad when I didn’t have the money to pay him (I am going to the bank tomorrow).
• I finally killed I giant (hand sized) spider that has been hanging out in my shower so now I can go back to bathing in peace.
• I think I officially scared away the biggest trouble maker of the kids who hang out at my house. After she visited one day I noticed that a whole container of plants at the front of my house was torn up. The next time she came over I spied on her and caught her in action and when I yelled at her she ran away looking terrified. She hasn’t been back for three days!
• I found a company that is willing to donate the PUL fabric for my washable pad project! YAY!
• I arranged for a community member to go to Moramanga with me tomorrow to buy supplies for the school garden project so I don’t have to stress out about it all on my own (funny story, he came over to check out the budget and to make sure I had everything we needed to buy and it turns out I forgot one thing… the bribe money for all the police stops along the road, ha).

Progress with my woman’s gardening group is going slower mostly because this is such a bad time for me to be asking them for money. We are coming up to the main rice harvesting period soon but right now everyone is out of money from selling rice last year and we are dealing with high food prices because cyclone season is not kind to crop production (or roads meaning that even packaged food prices have increased due to transport difficulty). I had a meeting for the women to pay the second payment (2,600 Ariary or slightly about $1.20) and only about half paid. Some people came to the meeting and said they couldn’t afford it and lots of people didn’t come for the same reasons. I told them all it was fine. I am going to cover the remaining portion of the community contribution up front and once they pay me back they can collect all their tools. I think once all the stuff is actually here for the women to collect (end of the month/beginning of next month) the women will be a bit more excited and willing to scrounge up the funds.

Marijuana

Written January 20, 2013

So I was hanging out with my site family today and the dad was telling me a story about how in Firenana (the commune NE of us) they grow some sort of drug and how people from the Comoros come and buy it. They want to make sure I understood the word drug so the girls were listing off examples for me. “Cigarettes, alcohol, chewing tobacco……”. So I naturally added “marijuana”. They looked at me with blank faces. Then I asked the parents, “but you guys know what marijuana is, right?”. They didn’t know either. This wouldn’t be so unusual if pot motif wasn’t common. But it is. You see random pot symbols all over the place, mostly because “rasta” style things are popular. It is especially funny when you see a grandma with a lamba around her waist featuring a giant picture of Bob Marley’s face adorned with pot leafs along the edge.

What’s especially interesting is that this family has a video called “Relax” which has a strange into that everyone loves to watch on repeat which is super pot heavy. The intro is pretty much little GIF images and just about every other one is marijuana related. They were absolutely shocked when I pointed this out to them. Sorry to ruin your favorite video guys! I hope to someday get past the intro to the Relax video. We get to the point where the first music video starts playing (from Angola, 2007) and the put it straight back to the intro.

Note: Other people in my community DO know what marijuana is. I have had young guys jokingly (?) ask if I could teach them to grow it.

Back in the saddle

Written January 11, 2013

Well here I am, the end of my first full day back at site and all I can say is “it wasn’t that bad”. By that I mean the transition from first-world Portugal (or high class third-world in Tana for that matter) back to my village life. I think this is a concern of all volunteers who take vacations abroad during their service, it certainly was for all of us volunteers camped out in the meva trying to come up futilely with reasons as to why we should push our return to site back…. just one more day. Funny enough, 6 of us volunteers ended up on the same return flight from Paris to Tana (which involved getting chair kicked and hair pulled by some horrible French children who were WAY too old for such behavior) and upon arrival in the airport we almost immediately began to discuss how we didn’t want to be there.

But alas, it hasn’t been bad. I knew things would be good when I got into Moramanga and ran over to my brousse stand to get someone to help me with my bags. They were all very excited to see me and just as helpful and nice as they ever were (I may take the most giant, broken down, SLOW brousse ever but I love my driver and other assorted staff!). I got into my village at about 2:30 which was perfect because most people are still out working and it was therefore fairly calm.

Left up to its own devices, my house does some crazy shit. First off literally ¾ of my yard was overgrown with squash and cucumber plants. All I could do was laugh when I say it because it looked insane. Inside the house many chunks of my clay walls had fallen out (normal) and judging by the quantity of mouse poop they enjoyed my vacation as well (even though I locked up every piece of food in my metal trunk, they must just enjoy the cozy atmosphere). There were also the usual bajillion spiders, millipedes, cockroaches, and other bugs. Nothing unusual.

Overall people were excited to see me and didn’t give me the guilt trip I was expecting for being away for 3 weeks. Apparently Christmas and New Years were quite here because no one has enough money to party. Food is very expensive right now. Even my beloved eggs which I eat soooo much of have gone up from 350AR to 500AR! Also, it is still dry here, apparently cyclone season is skipping my town. Half my plants died and it is brought up at least once in every conversation. Mandrosa ny orana (come on  rain!).

In other news, remember in my last post how I was complaining that I hadn’t heard updates on my SPA project and that it was moving slow? Ignore that! Literally the next day I ran into the staff member in charge at the PC office and he told me my project was approved! I will get the money with my next living allowance at the end of the month. Now I have TWO projects to work on. Yay!

Back to Mada I go

Today is my last day of vacation here in Portugal and I am off to Madagascar tomorrow morning. The trip has been amazing and I am so thankful to my friend Gabby(redislandliving.com)  and her family for bringing me along. We visited all the sites in Lisbon and Porto and more importantly enjoyed first world comforts like electricity, running water, and delicious, delicious food. I feel refreshed and ready to get back to work in Ambohidray (I fully admit I was going a bit crazy the week or so before I left for vacation). Also, my suitcase is packed full of goodies (chickpeas, lentils, spices, nuts, seeds) which makes at least the food prospect of returning back to Mada a bit less daunting.

Look at all that Port!

You cannot escape the litchis, even in Portugal!

In work related news, my PCPP (Peace Corps Partnership Program) funds for the school garden are in (or should be very, very soon). The Peace Corps funding office was closed for a freaking long time for the holidays so I am glad to have things moving again. I am spending one day in Tana before heading back to site to buy some things (the price and selection in Tana is much better than my district capital of Moramanga). Then I need to hold a meeting to put people in charge of the construction projects (well cover, compost area, tool shed, and hopefully raised garden beds) and make sure that the supplies lists are okay before I go out and buy everything. Then we construct and the kids start learning. Yay! We planted some things before I left (rainy season was slow to arrive) so hopefully there are already some sunflowers, squash, and green beans for the kids to be excited about!

My SPA (Small Project Assistance) project proposal for the women’s gardening group has been submitted but is in limbo because of holidays. A new staff member recently took control of the SPA grants and she is on vacation in the states so I am just waiting (still waiting…. it was submitted about a month ago and have heard nothing). Plus I have been warned that the USAID review process of the proposal is slow as well. This project is going on Gasy time…

My mind is already working on my next project, washable sanitary pads (which I have mentioned before). Hopefully I can meet with the school teachers/administrators and health workers to get things moving fast and get the proposal submitted! The biggest issue with this is that ideally, supplies need to be ordered from abroad. This includes water resistant PUL fabric and snaps. Not only is this expensive, but funds can’t be used to pay for shipping so I would have to cover that which is difficult on my finances. Not to mention how slow and unreliable shipping to Mada is!