Holidays in Mcar

Tratra ny taona daholo! ("Happy New Year everyone!" But literally "catch the year" everyone)

I hope you all ushered in 2008 with dancing, eating, and a little bit of alcohol! I wish you all the best in this next year and hope you made new years resolutions that you will stick with!

My Christmas and New Years were great, despite the lack of American family and friends around. My IST, or "training after three months of service" was amazing and has helped me narrow down some secondary projects I want to do for my community. We learned about money sources we can apply for to fund small projects and I'm excited for the possibilites! The money can go towards anything from building outhouses, helping build water pumps, supplying the town with garbage receptacles, supplying a library with new books or a computer, starting a school lunch program, etc... I'm excited to get started with my secondary project now that I am settled here and feel like life is normal, since all the culture shock has melted away. I'm already planning to have an English club for the students once a week for them to come and actually speak the language. There will also be a teacher training for the middle school teachers in my town. They teach English but actually speak very little.. meaning they can say small talk or recite memorized phrases but can't produce sentences on their own. I will also have an English Club for all of the English teachers in my town to promote the english language and give them a chance to speak it in a more relaxed setting. I also have a English language radio program in the works so pretty soon I will be as famous as Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Casey Casem, and Delialah. Ha! And finally, because I feel all of that is not yet enough, I'm going to start a Girls Club at the high school. So those are just my, what I like to call, "primary" secondary projects outside of teaching 600 students during the week.

I have many ideas for my secondary projects and am starting to talk to local people to see which plan they like the best. Its completely useless to start a project that the towns people are not interested in because it won't continue once I leave and thus won't fulfill the ultimate goal of peace corps projects of being sustainable. I will fill you all in once I come to a decision.

So, my Christmas. I traveled from Tana to my site with three other volunteers in my education training group. It was awesome showing them my town and introducing them to all of my friends. They were all jealous of how friendly the people are in my area and absolutely adored the family that owns the Peace Corps transit house here in my city. It felt amazing to feel like this was my home that I was showing off to my friends and made me extremely excited to host my parents who should be coming here in July! So, on Christmas we killed a goose, and ate rice with a vegetable sidedish (cooked carrots, green beans, zucchini, onions, and garlic with curry sauce), and garlic mashed potatoes. We ate with with the family next door, which entails five middle aged siblings who all live together. 2 males and a set of female triplets. 2 of the women are widows. The daughter of one of the triplets also lives there with her husband and their 1 year old baby. They are both younger than me and the mom, the daughter and her husband and child all share one bedroom. Imagine how weird that would be! Anyways.. they are amazing to volunteers because one of the triplets' son married a former peace corps volunteer and they now live in the US. They know how to speak "american" malagasy and love joking with us and chatting.

The day after christmas us 4 volunteers set off for Tamatave, which is on the East Coast of the island. We took a night taxi brousse. We left my town at 3pm and arrived in Tamatave at 2am, but could not get out of the car until daylight. This type of traveling is exhausting.. you are so tired but there is no way to sleep. Especially when the top of the brousse is filled with 150 ducks, geece, and chickens in makeshift poultry carriers and the lady sitting next to you stinks of body odor and sleeps soundly with her arm raised above her head situated perfectly at nose level. Then, every once in a while, this lady would open the window and use a long stick to poke the chickens on the top in order to "stop them from fighting". As she poked them, large amounts of chicken poop would fall from the top of the brousse and land on my arm and leg which were next to the window. Needless to say I wasn't quite fond of the BO chicken lady. I arrived in tamatave almost comatose, drenched in sweat, and caked in chicken poop. But I am extremely happy I went there, depsite the travel. We slept in bungalows, swam in the ocean, drank fresh coconut juice, and I grew jealous of all the volunteers who live in such a tropical location!

The next day, we all headed down to another volunteers site, traveling another six hours by taxi brousse. She lives in an oceanfront village and had started a Malagasy baseball team. She invited volunteers there to play in the game to raise money for the girls club in the village. We did a promotional tour the morning of the game. By this I mean we rented a huge flatbed truck that carries freight and stood in the back of it dressed in our jerseys and followed a small truck in front of us that had a generator powering huge speakers and a cd player that blasted music and as a guy talked about the game through a loud speaker. This was by far the weirdest and yet coolest thing i have down here. The Malagasy team was on the truck with us and was determined to play the "new" Brittney Spears song "Gimme More" on repeat the entire 2 hours. hilarious! Anyways, we ended up losing the game, and by losing I mean we were killed by the malagasy team that had just learned the rules three months ago. 21-4! It wasn't a proud american moment, ha. But, most peace corps volunteers aren't the athletic type.. it was painful to watch them try to throw or catch! ha. but afterwards we had an american style barbeque and then a dance. Oh, you have to love the cultural exchange that occured that day!

The next day I returned to my site, after a 12 hour taxi brousse ride. I don't think I want to travel for another three months. On New Years Eve my friend met me in my town and then we headed up to his home village which is 20 kilometers north of my town. The taxi brousse would only take us about 15k so we had to get off and walk in the pouring rain for awhile until a half tractor type thing picked us up and drove us a little ways and then we took a bicycle taxi the next part of the road until it was too dark and muddy to ride bike anymore. From there, we proceeded on foot for half an hour in complete darkness, pouring rain, and ankle deep mud all while carrying our luggage and food supplies for the dinner. Needless to say, it was an awesome adventure that I will never forget! I laughed almost the entire voyage. Once at his village we ate a huge dinner of rice and fish (talapia) and then drank some homemade punch made of lychees fermented in rum and then danced until midnight when we had to go outside and run around to every house in the village and wish them a happy new year and give them the greeting of the three cheek touches while making a kissing noise but never actually kissing their faces. I did that with every single person in the village because they all wanted to be wished a happy new year by the white foreignor! It took half an hour!! but it was awesome! Then the next day there was a huge village dance outside with music and everyone dancing! It was really fun and I danced up a storm! Then at dinner, my friend was asked to officially announce to the family that we are dating because the custom here is that the parents won't accept that we are anything but friends until it is officially announced. Then, his father proceeded to fire questions at me about how I like life here and how I am adjusting to living in such a poor country. Then he moved right into the important questions of where we are going to live if we get married, if its possible for me to live here or if I would even want to and if our kids will speak malagasy. At this point, I was extremely out of words to say. I lost all ability to speak malagasy and he had to translate for me. He told me that in malagasy culture it is necessary for the parents to ask questions about the couples future and that its even expected by the children. I, however, was not informed ahead of time of this because he didn't know that the American custom is for the parents to stay as far away from relationship decision making as possible and only be told the outcome once its final. The customs could not be any more different. I explained to him how those questions would be considered rude and prying in my culture and that I didn't even know how to respond to them. But, while being interrogated by his dad I gave honest and uncertain answers. It was probably the most nervewracking conversation I have ever had to go through. But, we explained how he plans to visit the states with me when I leave and how hes looking to study in the states and that I completely understand their fear for the situation their son is in. they said that they accept me and that they believe I fit well into this culture and that they can tell I am being myself and not pretending to like it here. that ended the conversation on a good note and I went to bed exhausted. Anyways.. that was a cultural lesson I didn't think I would have to learn here.