RIP Kindle

Also written November 25th, 2012 but disturbing enough to warrant it’s own entry

This is probably the most upset I have been over the course of my Peace Corps service thus far. I use(d) my Kindle for everything, everyday. I read on it at least 2 hours a day and had all of my technical agriculture documents stored on it. It kept me sane and working hard.
Here is what happened, I dropped it, but I refuse to say I broke it. It was was such an itty bitty drop and I cannot believe the damage it has done. I was sitting at someones house sitting on a seza kely (little chair) waiting for lunch and reading. A seza kely really is little  maybe about 3 inches off the ground.

Seza kely: a drop that should NOT kill a Kindle.

Add the height of my hands and you get what, 9 inches, maybe a foot? And it didn’t even drop onto the concrete ground! It dropped onto a woven mat! After it happened all the kids looked in horror and said “its broken!” and I said “no it’s not, it’s strong” oh wait…..
So there are no cracks anywhere but the screen is all streaked and won;t go away even when I reset it and connect it to my computer (I can still access all the files on my computer though). I am so incredibly sad and disappointed  I don’t distinctly remember dropping my Kindle beforehand (which by the way, I only purchased about 8 months ago right before I came here) but it must have happened. I am SO surprised it died from such a seemingly minuscule drop.
However, I guess I have good timing for horrible things. I will be meeting up with a fellow volunteer and her parents for a Christmas vacation so, if I choose to buy a new one, they could bring it for me. It is the whole “buy a new one” that is difficult. Apparently they don’t even make the Kindle Touch anymore (when did that happen?!) and they only have some new, fancy version I have never heard of. Of course I want to buy it, but it is hard when even the cheapest one is only slightly less that your monthly living allowance. So yeah, I am undecided leaning towards not buying a new one (well, that is waht my bank account is saying at least…).
So what do you say Amazon help a very sad Peace Corps volunteer out? Help me replace and obviously fault Kindle that couldn’t survive a 9 inch fall onto a woven mat? At least give me a sweet discount?! Help a girl out!

Bad day

Written November 25th, 2012

Today was not very good, a whole buch of little things went wrong which all built up into a shitty day.
I started off my morning with a dislocated (?) jaw at 4 this morning (I now consistently wake up around 4am [and getting earlier and ealier] and lay in bed for a while and read. I have never been good at sleeping in but now it is immpossible). I went to let out a giant yawn and then discovered my mouth wouldn’t close. Fun, right? I have been having jaw issues for the past few months. I noticed that after a yawn when I went to close my mouth it took a second for everything to work itself into place, but never more then a second. But this morning it was full on stuck open. This isn’t lock jaw, that’s when your mouth is stuck closed (right?) but still pretty sucky. I had the thought of “do I call the Peace Corps doctors now or try to tough it out until the slightly less horrible hour of 6am”. Then I imagined how incredible horrible a 5-6 hour taxi brousse ride to the capital with my jaw stuck open and proceeded to panic. After a few akward jaw movements and some and some help from my hands I finally got it to pop back into place and close. It hurt like hell and is still sore tonight. I just keep on reminding myself not to yawn and everything will be fine. And of course, as we all know, nothing makes you want to yawn more than thinking about yawning all day. No good.
Then, when I went to get out of bed, I broke it. Now my bead breaks all the time so it is not that unusual. The crossboards are too short and for the first couple of months here everytime I would roll over in bed they would come unlodged and my matress would fall. Now I have those boards glued in and have to redo it every month or so but it works okay. But this time the little lip that holds the crossbars in place is broken. I haven’t fixed it yet and will be in bed in about an hour. I might be snuggling with the cockraochs on the floor tonight.

Broken piece-of-crap bed.

And then, horror of all horrors, my kindle broke (I refuse to say I broke it….). See the next blog post, this deserves an entry all its self.
To top it off I had/am having an ethical delima. There is a woman who lives a couple of houses behind me who I love and I really want to join my women’s gardening project. She has the perfect yard and four skinny little kids who could use some more veggies in their diet (her too, she had just had the baby when I first met her and I thought she looked very healthy [ie: fat] but now she has lost the pregnancy weight and looks skinnier and skinnier everyday). When I told her she should join she seemed very embarassed and said she couldn’t afford it (the women have to pay 25% of the cost of the tools, if they choose to buy everything [fertilizer, seeds, watering can, shovel, rake, and fork] it comes out to about $5, the deposit that is due next week is about $1.50). Another woman then went on to tell me how horrible this womans life is. Her husband left here and her youngest baby (about 8 months old) is very obviously developmentally delayed. First off, his head is abnormally big. Also, he is about the same age as my former neighbor’s baby Fandresena (he is actually a bit older) and while Fandresenda is babeling, standing, dancing, and starting to walk, this other baby (Volana) is just getting a hold of the using his neck to support his head thing. So this woman is alone, poor, and has a child who is quickly growing into toddler size strapped to her back for the forseeable future. Here is the dilema, I really, really, really, just want to give this woman the money so she can join the group. It is freaking $5! But there are dilemas. I could never openly just give her the money. It just now got to the point where I don’t get daily request from people to give them money or things. The other woman would certialy be jealous and it would start a bad reputation for me. Then I thought, well maybe I could have her do some work for me and then I could pay for her. But, she has this baby and is super limited in what she can do. Then I thought, well maybe her older daughters can do some wok for me (ages 11 and 9) but then I would be making these children work… I am still undecided and horribly conflicted.

Thanksgiving

Written November 22nd, 2012

So I hav survived my first major holiday as a Peace Corps volunteer intact (unless I have a breakdown tonight or something). It was easy becuase it does not feel like Thanksgiving at all here, it is hard to reminese about fall-type things when you are constantly in sweat-inducing temperatures. Today was actually really great though, I had my second meeting of my womens gardening group! We plan to finish and submit the proposal on December 3rd so everything is going great so far. Today I brought up that they would have to pay a deposit to reserve their place in the project and everyone was okay with it and no one complained! Yay! Each woman is going to pay a third of the total costs for the items she is getting (a little less than $2). Everyone has to pay into a communal fund (to buy seeds, fertilizer, paint [to label tools] and notebooks/paper) and then she can also purchase a watering can, shovel, rake, and pitchfork if she needs them to build her garden. Yay! So excited!

Here are some pics of my ladies! And yes, some of them are looking at books instead of listening to me…

In other news, I had big plans to make mashed potatoes for my thanksgiving dinner, but alas, there are no potatoes to be found in my village today. So instead I am having rice and a chicken bullion cube (I need a break from all the cabbage and tomatoes I have been eating…) and a mango. Happy thanksgiving everyone!

Harassment

Written November 16th, 2012

If you are a female thinking about joining the Peace Corps, WARNING you will be harrassed at some point. I knew that coming into this but am finding that I am having a more difficult time than I first imagined. In my village it is generally not so bad to non-existent. When I first arrived there were a few young men here that thought a perk of me living here was that they got free access to my ass every time I walked by. They know better now. I only continue to have issues with one man (a local administrator) and he is fairly easy to avoid. Whenever I go to Moramanga or pretty much leave my village at all I can count on being harassed. By far the vast majority of this is verbal and falls into one of two categories. 1: the things that are not necessarily considered to be rude and harassment in Malagasy culture but is to my American psychy. This includes being yelled at “yeah forigner!” (which literally happens probably once a minute or so when I am walking around the market in Moramanga) or comments on how I look (nice face is how they say it here). 2: the things that are considered not okay in Malagasy culture but guys still say anyways. This includes “do you have a sipa?” (boyfriend but more commonly means fuck buddy/piece on the side), “can I be your sipa”, “give me your number”, and my favorite; “take me back to France with you”. I am generally pretty good about ignoring these kinds of things. The one that really gets me are the constant shouts of vazaha (foreigner). Most the time these people don’t even have anything to say to you they just shout “Oh vazaha! oh vazah! oh vazaha!” over and over again. If anyone in my village calls me vazah though, prepare of war. I have lived here over 6 months everyone know me or either knows of me (not to brag, but I am kind of a big deal) so anyone who calls me vazaha is clearly not from around here. I usually just respond “I’m not a foreigner  I live here” and then see how they responds. Sometimes people are very nice and curious as to what I am doing is some random little Malagasy village but more often then not they are jerks and keep on calling me a vazaha. Apart from the verbal harassment  there is the grabbing. In the market men occasionally grab my thigh/ass as I walk by. This doesn’t happen very often during the day time but is a lot more common at night. The last time I was in Moramanga at night I was walking around with a fellow male volunteer and everything was great. I ran back maybe 20 feet to another stall to buy something and in the minute or so I was away from him I got grabbed at and a police officer creeped on me. It is crazy to see the difference between a single female and walking in a pair. Generally when the grabbing happens I just walk away and don’t give them any attention. However today, I kind of threw a fit. There was a group of guys playing cards over by where my taxi brousse station is so I walked past them many times during the day dropping stuff of at the vehicle. Every time I walked past they would yell something at me. The last time I walked by a guy grabbed at me and I exploded. I yelled at him and said the ultimate insult; “tsy mahalala fomba”. This sort of means “you’re rude” but more acuratlly it translates to “you don’t know the way of doing things”. This is the first time I have ever said that to an adult. With kids its totally okay, but I have heard horror stories where volunteers have said that to adults and got into physical altercations about it. Luckily nothing like that happened, but as I turned to leave I got grabbed again…. So I flipped them of and started expressing my feelings in English. It was mildly therapeutic.
Being harassed whenever you leave your village is hard but doable. But lately I have been having issues in my village with construction workers who are fixing the road and bridge in my town. They love to yell things at me and drive me insane. I have even got hissed at (the Malagasy cat call) while standing in my front yard brushing my teeth. Not okay! I keep on trying to complain to people about it but everyone just seems to think it is hilarious  my counterpart especially.He just laughs and responds with “men love to joke”. He is oh so helpful .. Most men I talk to have the same reaction while women are just sort of like yeah, that happens. I tried to talk to one of the supervisors and he just told me to talk to the boss. The same boss who is Chinese and does not speak Malagasy (and therefor I cannot talk to him). I keep on asking people when they will be done and they always say there is still a lot of work. They have been working for about 5 months (almost as long as I have lived here) and I hope they finish up and leave soon!

Good day

Written November, 8th, 2012

So far in my Peace Corps experience the good days are about equal to the bad and the mediocre days vastly outnumber them both. But I will say that when you do have a good day, it feels even better.

The start of the day was pretty shitty. I has biked to another town this morning to pick up some sawdust to make compost at the school garden (they have a mill). I figured it would be easier to just go down there than to have to collect a whole bunch of grass or other dried material. Wrong. I popped my bike tire on the very start of my journey home and had to walk it. Boo. My bike is still broken because I am lazy. I know nearly everyone here could fix it super fast but I really need to learn how to do it.

But, the day got better. So I have been wanting to build gardens with women near their homes. People in my community have farm plots very far away from the home where they plant staples that they can basically ignore until harvest (beans, groundnuts, and tubers). Very few families grow vegetables. Most veggies are brought in from Moramanga and are expensive. Also, the selection really sucks. Yesterday I was able to find cabbage, tomatoes, and these horrible little bitter eggplant things (angivy) and that was a pretty good selection.

Every woman I have approached so far about building a garden has immediately become disinterested when they discovered that I could not give them seeds and tools. They just do not have the extra money to invest in such projects. So, we are going to apply for funding! There is a program called SPA (small project assistance) that provides money for projects related to women and children’s health (gardening = nutrition).

I have been trying to set up a meeting to see if woman are interested (and those who I have talked to have been a strong yes) but to put up notices in my town you have to get them stamped from the chief-de-fokontany and it seems to be some cosmic rule that she must go missing when I need things stamped. But I found her today! I got my notices stamped and she seemed really excited about it and told me that I did a really good job on the notices (there is only about 15 words so I couldn’t screw up too badly…).

*Side note: my chief-de-fokontany is awesome. Fist of, she is a woman which is pretty cool. Also she is a health care worker and from what I have seen is super awesome at her job. She owns a store and they sell birth control front and center and have all sorts of health posters up. While I was waiting to get my notices stamped 2 women came in for contraceptive injections which was cool to see (I have heard from other volunteers that people would sit around awkwardly waiting for the volunteer to leave so I was happy they were so comfortable and open in front of me). An injection which lasts 3 months costs 200 ariary (about 9 cents) and a single month of pills costs 50 ariary (about 2 cents), insane! A sick baby also came in so she sold the mom some medicine and then scolded her for having the very feverish baby bundled up in way too many layers of clothing. I love her!

So after I got my stamps I got to walk around town and put up my notices (we have 4 spots for them in my town). Every place I went people would gather around to see what I was putting up. All the woman seemed excited (some of them yelling down the street to friends) and everyone I asked said they would go. All the men seemed obviously less excited. When they asked me why I was only working with woman I gave them the honest answer that if I worked with women we could ask for money because it was related to child health (for the record there are lots of other reasons such as I feel more comfortable working with women and women are the main ones in charge of agricultural work). All the men seemed okay with that answer but I do want to start some sort of ag classes to reach a wider audience.

So I am a happy girl and have something to look forward to. The meeting is Thursday morning at my house so hopefully lots of people come but not too many!

Elections and rabbit lady

Written November 7th, 2012

I spent election night/day in Moramanga with some other volunteers so we could watch the outcome on a tv. We managed to get a free room at the nicest hotel in the city (shout out to Bezanozano!) because a fellow volunteer had made friends with the owner. I had my first shower with a real shower head (the kind you just stand under and don’t have to hold) for the first time since arriving in country! Needless to say, it was amazing. East coast polls started closing around 3am here so we slept a bit beforehand. Watching the election was great and I am certainly happy with the outcome. I don’t have a new boss’s boss’s boss!

The night of the election we went out to buy some snacks and I met a woman affectionately called the rabbit lady. We were waiting for some chicken to grill so we had a while to chat. She found out I have a background in animal husbandry and invited me to come see her house and her 100 rabbits the next day. I politely tried to dodge the invite but she was persistent so I made a plan to meet her there at 10 the next morning. Well… when 10am the next morning rolled around Obama was still giving his acceptance speech and we still hadn’t eaten breakfast so I bailed. I know that sounds horrible but Malagasy people are so incredibly flaky that it’s really not so bad. Probably over 50% of the social plans I make fail because people just don’t show up so I figured this woman probably wouldn’t show up or wouldn’t care if I didn’t (plus I had a completely valid excuse, right?).

I was wrong. She sent a little girl (a house girl I think? Not her daughter) to the hotel to try to find us while I was out at the post office (where my package was clearly broken into but everything survived! Yeah ECHO seeds!). Then when I was headed off to make my reservation on my taxi brousse she ran up to me. Apparently she was out driving and looking for me. Slightly creepy…. So I apologized and figured I should get it over with. I got in her car (isn’t this how kidnapping stories work?) and took about a 5 minute drive to her house. Her house was beautiful! Probably the most western house I have seen outside the capital. She fed me lots of food (including rabbit) and talked about all the westerners her family had befriended. Apparently she had really good contact with previous volunteers but none recently (she even had pictures of volunteers with her family up on the wall). She also has good relationships with the Mormon missionaries in Moramanga. After eating I saw the rabbits (she tried to give me a pair but I had literally nothing to carry them in) which was really amazing. She has tons of them! Then she drove me back to my taxi brousse station and then went shopping with me. I politely tried to ditch her but she wouldn’t budge. I figured she fed me so I could put up with it. She bargained hard for all of my produce and picked out all the best stuff for me. When I was only going go buy a single mango because they were expensive she bought be a whole 2 kilos.

So rabbit lady might be a bit insane but I think she is defiantly a good friend to have.

Hilarity stolen from elsewhere

Hilarity stolen from elsewhere

Please go and read this hilarious blog from a volunteer in the far south of the country. I actually don’t know this person but it doesn’t matter.

 

PC Time

Written November 4, 2012

 

When you live without electricity time takes on a very different meaning. Its dark out by 6:30, I am in bed reading by 7pm, and usually asleep before 8am. My wake up times have been getting earlier and earlier along with the sun rise. I am at a point now where I rarely sleep past 5am. People start getting to work as soon as the sun gets up. I live on the main part of town so it gets loud pretty early. If I wake up and see light peaking through my windows and doors, I can’t go back to sleep (it probably doesn’t help that I am getting about 10 hours of sleep a night). When I was in Tana I would stay up late to make use of electricity, wifi, and other volunteers company but I would still get up with the sun which means I am pretty exhausted whenever I am there. Luckily many other volunteers suffer the same fate. There are always other volunteers to commiserate with at 5 am in the meva (the Peace Corps house).

 

Today I got up extra early, at about 4:30 am. Shortly afterward I heard someone open my gate and whispering. I went out to see what was going on to find 2 of my VOI members sneaking around my house. Apparently they say my gate open earlier than usual and were worried that someone had broken in. I just explained that nope, I was already awake and they laughed and said that I “efa Gasy” (already Malagasy). Oh the glamorous life of a Peace Corps volunteer.     

Dead Party

Written November 3, 2012

 

So I ended up being lazy and skipping my VAC meeting (where volunteers get together from a given reason and complain about issues they have with Peace Corps) and heading straight home from Tana. A couple days in a big city was enough and my bank account thanks me for my decision. Upon my return (last night) a whole group of kids ran up to saying that my rabbit died (I pay a couple of my neighbor girls to feed the rabbit and water my plants when I am gone, roughly 5 cents a day each). So… that sucks. My counterpart came to talk to me about it (maybe he thought I would be really upset?) and said that there girls went and told him when they discovered and apparently they were very afraid that I would be mad at them. I reassured them that it was fine, they certainly didn’t kill him. Apparently something super duper contagious was going around because two other families that live near me also lost rabbits. My counterpart ate him and said he was fat and delicious, so at least he didn’t go to waste. So now I am rabbit-less. I am going to wait until I return from my Christmas vacation in Portugal before I get a new one, that way I don’t have to worry about anything while I am gone.

 

Today (Saturday) I was able to with my counterpart to his families “fety maty” or dead party. November first was the day of the dead and throughout the beginning of the month people are having these parties. We went to two of his families tombs and cleaned them up (removed weeds and built a fence at one of them). There were lots of speeches, drinks, and we got to burry stuff around the tombs for the ancestors (I gave money, other people gave cigarettes, and splashes of alcohol). It was awesome to meet my counterparts family who came to visit from Tamatave and he was very happy he was able to show off his vazaha. One of the tombs had very western style graves near it from about the 50’s and 60’s. When I asked about them I was told that they were from a time when the church tried to take over the death rituals. They were not too happy with the whole turning of the bones ceremony and tried to westernize the process. Now though most churches consider the process purely cultural and not religious so things have reverted back to the traditional way.

 

After taking care of the tombs we went to a super fancy house in my town. I had seen this house from a distance (it is behind solid metal gates) and I knew it was nice, but I had no idea how nice! They had tiles floors, real walls (not falling apart clay like mine and everyone else’s) and tons of electronics powered by a generator. They even had light switches! We sat around and listed to music and I worked hard to fight off lots of drunk men trying to dance with me. My counterpart was actually fairly sober (rare for him) and we got to chat for a while. We ate some food (rice and goose) and I eventually snuck out at around 2pm before things got too rowdy and my polite attempts to decline men no longer worked.    

Life Updates!

Greetings world! So it turns out I suck at this whole blogging thing, oops. Well, I am in the capital for a couple of days helping out with my regions GLOW camp (Girls Leading Our World). Most of the second year volunteers in my region set up a girls empowerment camp where they brought in 4 girls and 1 adult from each community to the capital to learn about all sorts of stuff. I only came for the last two days because the capital is so dang expensive but I had a great time! The first day was about life goals, they went to the American embassy to talk to the women Malagasy staff members and then went to watch a professional women’s soccer practice. The next day focused on health topics. The program they got funding for is focused on HIV prevention so this component has to be included (even though girls empowerment in general is a HIV prevention strategy). Peer educators came and spoke to the girls about STIs and family planning. I heard that this went well but there were a few funky things said (like that fingers and mouths are dirty and you shouldn’t put them in your vagina). The next day we went to Education USA (a program sponsored by the US State Department to teach people about studying in the US) which was really awesome. After some university students came in to speak about student life and answer any questions. Things started to get weird with them. They said they wanted to show some motivational videos before hand. We set them up with laptops but near the end of the first video it was clear that these were religious in nature. So eventually we had to pull them out and tell them that was not okay. I am not sure where the break down in communication happened. I feel like they were taking liberties…. We were supposed to go to the university in the afternoon but there were some protests going on with rock throwing and tear gas so we went to the zoo instead! We had to complain a while to get the Malagasy price rather than the foreigner price (20 cents vs. $5!) but the eventually let us in and we all had a great time. The zoo was beautiful and much nicer than expected. There were lots of walking trails and picnic areas and it seemed to be a popular date location for young couples. The last day was spent going on a tour of the city and then doing some wrap up activities and hand out awards. Overall it was great and I can’t wait to do it again next year with girls from my village! Here are some updates on other aspects of life:

School Garden

So most of my work lately has been with my school garden. My school is actually super lucky and has 2 school gardens! Schools in my commune are supported by Dior (yes, that one) and they help us out a lot. The big garden is amazing. When I first arrived there was pretty much nothing there but now they have a “guard” living out there (he is super awesome and does way more than guard, he is more like a garden manager) half a fence, a few garden beds, outhouses, and a playground and outdoor classroom in the works. They woman who is the liaison between the French organization and the school is amazing and I am so excited to start working with her! We have had a few meetings about the garden but on the 10th we have a meeting to talk about starting up an agricultural/environmental education program. The oldest five grades work in the big garden it the plan is for them to come once a week. Also, once there is produce ready we are going to start serving snacks! Dior has also talked about buying us a dairy cow so the kids can have some milk (there are NO dairy animals in my community). Obviously I am super supportive of this! I really want to put my degree to use!

The small garden is in rough shape and I am working on a Peace Corps Partnership Program to get some funds to fix it up. The main issue there is the well. There is a nice well in terms of it is deep and concrete lined. But, the door is huge and low to the ground so it is super dangerous for the children. They have it fully fenced off so kids don’t fall in. So, kids have to walk about 10 minutes to a river to get water for the plants or any other use. As a result, things aren’t watered and suffer for it (although the rain is coming!). So we want to by a new, safer cover to install. Other projects are fixing the fence and building a gate (which my parent teacher association is paying for!), building a compost container, and buying tools, seeds, and teaching materials. The PCPP means that once my project is accepted (I turned it in yesterday!) it will be put on the Peace Corps website for people to donate to, so keep your eyes out 🙂 My community is giving about 25% of the total cost (mostly through labor) and we are requesting about $300 (a super small amount compared to other projects on the site).

I also am looking into applying for funding to get a water source for the big garden. It is 2 hectares and has only a single well (which itself is too shallow and tends to run dry). Water Charity is awesome for such projects so I am going to look at maybe pumps (which would be awesome for the kids!) so another well or two.    

Women’s Garden Club

I am also looking into starting up a women’s gardening club. I have tried approaching a number of women to start stuff up but nobody has money to purchase watering cans or seeds. USAID has a funding program which focuses on women and children’s nutrition and can be associated with household gardens. So once I return to site (today) I am going to try to set up a meeting and see how many women are interested. This (and all) also has a 25% community contribution requirement but I am hoping that since this will be for stuff that the women will personally get they will be willing to supply some of their own money.

VOI 

Work with my VOI (my Peace Corps assigned work project) is slow and frustrating. Meetings are not often and irregular. They really, really want me to give them money and they tell me about it all the time. They also apparently told me somewhere that I could get them tools (not true) so I always get asked if I can buy them hoes, shovels, hand weeders, ect. (Conservation International actually does do this for them [as a part of an improved rice-growing project] so I know where they are getting that info). I keep on explaining that if there is a project that I can apply for funds, but it is our project, not mine. I can help as much as I can but it is not my thing to take charge of. They just recently mentioned that they are interested in starting a fish farming project, something I know nothing about….. I wasn’t able to find any recourses on fish farming in Malagasy and even though there are NGOs that work on such stuff in country, they aren’t in my region. So, I don’t know what I’ll do. I know at least one VOI member speaks French so maybe I will print some stuff for him. There are lots of resources in English but I don’t want to be the only one with any technical knowledge on the subject! In other news, the VOI president (my counterpart) is always drunk and the VOI vice president is on a mission to get me to give him my camera.

 

Otherwise life at site is good! I am headed of to Portugal for a vacation around Christmas and am super excited! I am off to shower and make use of running water before I leave for my village again!