I know I said I won’t post again until April, but I had some free time at site and figured I would update everyone on my life. Things have been pretty calm around MADA. No cyclones, no power outages, no fights in my town (not that there are any fights, at least none that I have seen). It’s now officially fall here, but its seemed like fall all summer so there really is no difference. It’s going to start getting colder, which I am mentally preparing myself for. Since summer was so cold, I am preparing myself for an extra cold winter. I even wore my winter hat the other day, because I was so cold. I also had wet hair, so that probably contributed to my coldness. The big news is that, as of about 5 minutes ago, I am officially done with 2nd trimester! I finished all my grading and turned in my grades to my CEG. The high school doesn’t need the grades until next trimester, so as much fun as walking out there would be, I will just go early the first Monday I’m back and turn them in. There was, of course, some confusion at the CEG about when I needed to turn my grades in, since no one tells me anything, but we got it figured out. I just turned them in this morning instead of this afternoon.
2 weekends ago (the weekend of St Patty’s) I went to Tana, to see friends and get my mom’s package (thanks mom! Oh and Christiane loved her tea. She says thank you!). It was a really fun weekend. I had been saving up so I could go out to really nice restaurants and not have to worry about finances. There is a really good Korean BBQ place close to the PC house, so we went there one night. We also went to Sakamanga, a hotel with a delicious restaurant where the duck is to die for, that’s all I ever get, Hotel du France for real sandwiches and liters of beer and M Box, a new fast food place that’s a mix between KFC and McD’s. My tummy was so happy. I hadn’t eaten meat while I was at site, so I needed the protein. The meat at my site just isn’t very good and I would prefer to not cook it myself and if I go to a hotely, eat just rice and the veggie or bean of the day. That’s just how it is.
On Saturday I head to Europe and man oh man, I’m I ready. I want to eat good food, drink good wine, and not be called a vazaha. It will be glorious. I am so happy my godfather wanted to meet in the middle, geographically, instead of coming all the way to MADA. I even want to eat a salad, that’s how deprived I feel. And I am going to do a bit of shopping, since I really only have like 3 acceptable outfits for Europe. I need some new clothes, but I have been saving American money for that (from xmas and my bday). It will be a fun adventure, made even more fun by the fact my bro will be there for a week too. Yay!!!!
I feel bad sometimes that my blog is so light-hearted. I never really write about the problems here or talk about serious issues. I want people to have fun reading my blog, not feel super sad. I am going to write a little bit today about issues in my town, and what I see on a day to day basis. If you want to read more serious posts once in a while, my friends Katie M and Katie B have blogs and they write about the issues on a more frequent basis. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of their blogs, but if you go to Peace Corps Journals (just google that) and go to Madagascar you should be able to find them. Katie B also takes amazing photography so she always has cool photos to go with her blogs. I try to post pictures too, but I always forget.
The most serious issue in my town is stunting. You would think, since my region grows the food, that this wouldn’t be a problem but it is. The reason? Since growing food is the main economy here, people want to sell all the food they can so they can have more money. The only keep a little bit for themselves and usually it’s whatever they can’t sell or is starting to go bad. As a result, kids in my region don’t get the vitamins and minerals they need to grow. There is an 11 year old boy in one of my classes whose head, I kid you not, comes to the top of my hip bone. Christiane, my site mate, talks to the women who come to the clinic about nutrition and balanced meals, but the women don’t take the information home and apply it. She knows this comes they come back the next month, still pregnant, and haven’t gained a pound. She sees babies all the time that are undernourished. They are getting food, just not the right kinds. It’s disheartening. It’s also disheartening when the pregnant women in their 3rd trimester are 20 kilos less than you, but I try not to let that one bug me. Lots of them, pregnant, don’t weigh over 100 pounds. Its crazy.
Every town has their resident crazy person (I would spell it in Malagasy, cause I don’t say crazy in English when I talk about them, but I don’t know how to spell it) and mind likes to invade peoples personal space. What he does is he comes up to you and stands right beside you, hoping you will give him money. He sometimes follows you and if he spots you will you are buying stuff, up to you he comes. In Diego there was bottle lady, who would hit you with a bottle if you got too close to her. She would also run and attack you if the mood struck her. Most of the Malagasy people will help a foreigner get rid of the crazies, but sometimes there is nothing they can do to help. You have to move quick and pay attention to where they usually hang out.
In the highlands, where I am, if you steal something and are caught, you die. That’s the tradition. This happened last week in a town close to mine. A bunch of thieves ( I say theives in Gasy when I tell this story, but again, I don’t know how to spell it. My spelling/writing of Malagasy is awful) stole pigs from the town in the middle of the night. The tradition goes that for the next 3 days, the people of that town stop working and look for the thieves and their lost property, which is what they did. They found the pigs and the people about 17km away from the town. Well back to the town came the pigs and the people, and the villagers wanted to kill the thieves. The gendarmes (they are a type of police. There are also police, and im not totally sure of the distinction between the two, but I believe gendarmes are more local where police are national) protected the thieves, telling the villagers they couldn’t kill them. Well the villagers did not like this at all, since it went against tradition. They tried to break into the jail to get them out. Gendarmes from my town had to go help and the gendarmes from Antsirabe came up too. In the melee, the gendarmes shot into the air, to try and calm the crowd/get them away and one of the bullets hit a baby and it died. 5 more were injured. I don’t what happened next, because I haven’t heard anything since. I believe the gendarme got the thieves out of the town and took them away, but I don’t know where the villagers anger level is, since they didn’t get to kill the thieves. While I didn’t know this was the tradition until last week, it doesn’t surprise me that it is a tradition. This practice still happens all over the world and while I don’t agree with it, I’m not shocked that the tradition lives on in Madagascar.
Almost all the teachers at my CEG are woman, and about 75% of the teachers at the high school are men. I think that’s interesting. It used to be a higher percentage of males working at the high school but this summer they hired about 5 new woman teachers so that helped the numbers. There was also a baby boom at my CEG last year. There are probably 6 babies between one and a half to a few months whose moms work at the CEG. I have no idea how that works, in terms of leave and who covers what classes. I do know the women get time off to have the babies and take care of them, but not sure about the classes. My classes are about 50/50 when it comes to boys and girls, but that wasn’t the case last year and there are more boys than girls at the high school. I have seen the numbers. Not sure about the CEG but it wouldn’t surprise if there are more boys than girls, though it seems to be more even there. Since the high school is the only one in the area, people who live 15km away have to board in town, with relatives or with someone willing to take them in for a fee. Many can’t afford to do that and if they can for one child, they choose the boy. So far, my smartest students, in 6th and 10th grade, have been girls, though last year my smartest kid in 10th grade was a boy. It seems like the boys don’t care as much. Im sorry to any boys I might be offending out there but it’s the truth.
The culture throughout MADA is different. In general, the highland people are meaner than the coastal people. When I was in Diego, no one bothered me, or called me a vazaha, or made me feel out of place. Granted it’s a big town with lots of vazaha, but even in smaller towns along the north coast, like Ambanja, it was the same way. Or in Farafangana, on the southeast coast or Foulepoint in the east. People there are just friendlier. In the highlands, whether it be my town, Tana, or Antsirabe, there isn’t that friendly feel. Most of the people belong to the Merina (might have misspelled that. Oops) tribe and that tribe has been in power most recently and for the longest amount of time. They have a sense of entitlement that they can’t shake. It’s frustrating cause not only do they treat foreigners poorly at lot of the time, they also treat other Malagasys poorly. For example, one of Christianes neighbors is from up north, by Ambanja. She is the sweetest person and is always willing to lend Christiane a pot if she needs it or feed her. Even though she’s Malagasy, since she’s not from the highlands, people in my town treat her differently. They will quote her the vazaha prices and tell her it’s because she’s from up north. She doesn’t like living her and wants to return to the north. I don’t blame her. I know this happens in America too, but it seems different, meaner here somehow. And tons of people, no matter where they are, have the island mentality, of waiting forever, of being passive (Katie M has a really good blog post on waiting if you want a more thorough understanding).
Well that’s enough for today. I just wanted to bring out a few issues for everyone to ponder. Below is my book list, which includes books I read back in December, since I finally got my journal. Have a great day and see you in April!
Book List
Room
On Chesil Beach
One Perfect Day
Burned alive: A Victim of the Law of Man
Making of a Duchess
The Wicked House of Rohan
Zeitoun
The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Inca Gold
Flood Tide
The Enchantress of Florence
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