Friday, January 30, 2009

Civil Unrest

If you have searched deep into the depths of the internet for international news, you may have heard that there has been some civil/political unrest here in Madagascar .

I am fine, and safe. Nothing has happened in my town. But, Peace Corps is moving most of the volunteers in country to a training site, called Manatasoa, in case there is any further unrest this weekend. Things got a little scary last Monday and Tuesday after a weekend rally, and there is another one scheduled for this weekend, so Peace Corps security just wants to take precautionary actions to keep us safe. For me, I feel more in control of crazy situations when I am well informed. So, I decided to inform/enlighten you all.

Alright, so where do I start. How about with a little background/history? Madagascar gained its independence from France in 1960, which isn’t that long ago. The first President was “pro-France” and had to step down in 1972 due to increasing unrest and student demonstrations against French neo-colonialism.

His replacement was a naval officer, Didier Ratsiraka, who introduced his own brand of “Christian-Marxism” which involved nationalizing the banks and other socialist policies. Within a few years the economy collapsed, but Ratsiraka was re-elected twice, though there were claims of ballot rigging and intimidation. In 1991, a pro-democracy coalition organized a series of strikes and daily demonstrations calling for Ratsiraka to resign. 500,000 people marched on the Presidential palace grounds, unarmed and orderly. However, they were shot at by the palace guards and over 100 people were killed. At the end of the year, Ratsiraka relinquished executive power and agreed to a referendum that approved a new constitution and elections in 1992. A guy named Albert Zafy won the election, but soon refused to accept the limitations of his executive powers written in the new constitution. His continued breaches of the constitution led to his impeachment by the National Assembly and in the ensuing election, the former President Ratsiraka emerged the winner.

Once back in power, he added many amendments to the constitution to restore the dictatorial powers he once enjoyed, and they remain to this day. In December of 2001 there was an election for President. It seemed like a majority of the Malagasy people favored the young challenger, Marc Ravalomanana, who was then the mayor of Antananarivo , over the incumbent Ratsiraka. Results showed Ravalomanana as the winner, but Ratsiraka did not believe the numbers and refused to step down.

Thus began the 2002 Political Crisis. Peaceful marches followed, and Ratsiraka declared Martial law, which was countered by Ravalomanana declaring himself President and installing his own ministers in government offices. Ratsiraka retreated to his coastal hometown of Tamatave, along with his government, and was supported by the Governors of the other coastal provinces. There was minimal violence until Ratsiraka’s supporters isolated the capital by blocking all roads leading into the city and dynamiting bridges. Gas prices increased ten-fold and basic staple food disappeared from the shops. The army was split between the two leaders, as there were two “presidents” in two “capitals” with two sets of “ministers” at the time. (A cultural note: racial tensions between the people of the plateau and the people of the coast played a huge part in this political crisis.) As months passed, the blockade caused death for the poor and hardship for most. In May, a court-monitored recount confirmed Ravalomanana had won the election, and he was sworn in as president. Ratsiraka refused to accept and the blockades continued and the death toll started to rise. The army’s support swung towards Ravalomanana and the blockades were forcefully dismantled and Ratsiraka fled to France .

Ravalomanana has done many good things for this country and has a worked hard to implement the Madagascar Action Plan (MAP), which is a detailed strategy of how to develop the country. He has done lots to help conserve the rainforests and wetlands here, as well as push towards better foreign relations with Africa . But, he has also overstepped his power by amending the constitution to allow a president to serve for more years (while he was in office), taking land from citizens under government control to use for his own personal businesses, and holding a monopoly on the country’s only yogurt, milk, and cheese industry. In the past few years, people in his political party (T.I.M.) have gained complete control of the National Assembly, making it hard for anyone not in his party to win, even in local elections. Gradually, resentment towards him and his party have grown, especially in the capital city, where people rejoiced when a member from an opposing party won the election for mayor, signifying a change in public opinion.

Most recently, he has angered people by ordering a national radio station to be shut off because it spoke negatively about him. This radio/TV station just happened to be owned by the new Mayor of Tana, Andry. He also recently bought an airplane, for presidential use, with government money which was not approved by the National Assembly, while thousands of Malagasy citizens starve during the start of the poor season. The recent plans to lease half of Madagascar ’s arable land to Daewoo to plant corn and help South Korea prepare for a food crisis, without purchasing it from the current residents on it, have enraged the Malagasy people. They believe he is exploiting the lack of legal land-ownership of poor rural farmers and leasing away the ancestors land for profit without consulting the Malagasy people. So, the Mayor of Tana has been calling gatherings every Saturday to talk out against the President. On the 24th of January, he called for the President’s resignation and for a transitional government to be put in place.

On the 26th, all hell broke loose in the capital. Andry supporters stormed the national TV/radio company owned by the President and shot a security guard and cut the transmission of the station. Then they set the huge building on fire and it burned to the ground. Meanwhile, others targeted the President’s bulk food stores called Magro, and also sent them up in flames, along with all of the food in it. Looting and rioting followed and stores were broken into and many things were stolen. In all, around 35 people died. The next day, South African troops were sent in to try to keep the peace, but even with all of the national TV and radio communication cut, the chaos spread to the coastal cities. Mahajunga, Antalaha, Andapa, Sambava, Diego, Tamatave, Tulear, Antsirabe, and Nosy Be all reported wide spread looting. Mobs broke windows of stores and walked away with TV’s, fridges, and stereos, while the police just stood and watched. There is a rumor that the President told them not to intervene for fear of police brutality, which would escalate the situation even further. The following day, nearly all of the President’s Tiko and Magro stores in the country had been burned down, along with its contents. In total, 100 people have died in the past three days, but nothing has gone on here at my site. It has been life as usual, without any national TV/radio.

As a precaution, Peace Corps Staff have been monitoring the situation and have initiated the Emergency Action Plan, which is a four stage security plan when there is civil unrest or cyclones. We are currently in the 3rd stage, which is Consolidation, where we are asked to go to our banking towns and receive further instructions. Mine happens to be my own city, so other volunteers are coming here. The final stage is Evacuation to South Africa or Kenya and then either waiting it out or going back to the US . Here, it has been quiet and calm, despite the hiding of food products that have all been burnt in the President’s stores in other towns. It’s going to be really hard to get any butter, cheese, milk, yogurt or cooking oil for the next few weeks. Anyway, just thought I would fill you in. Check BBC news or Malagasy websites for updates if you are so inclined.

Honestly, I feel extremely safe in my town and people have been checking in with me often to see how I am doing. Right now I have to pack up and say goodbye to everyone I know, not knowing if it is the last time I will ever see them. This is NOT how I want to say goodbye. I can only take a 10kilo bag of stuff with me, so I have left many things in my house and have had to write a list of who they go to if I don’t return. It felt like writing a will. Nuts. Other than sadness, I also feel guilty to just leave my friends and “family” here because if things do get bad, there is no one protecting them. Meanwhile, I am being whisked away by Peace Corps in a missionary plane. I don’t see the fairness in that. If, God forbid, stuff does actually get bad here, who is to say that my life is any more important than theirs? Humans confuse me sometimes.

Well, I love you all and hope you are well. If you pray, or believe in karma, or whatever, try to give a shout-out to the people of Madagascar .

Friday, January 9, 2009

Christmas and New Year's

As my month here with Jamie comes to a sad end, I feel the need to sum up our holiday vacations here in Mcar. We started out the Christmas season by giving my neighbors a whole duffle bag full of clothes that Jamie had brought from my dad and mom’s old clothes, along with some of my own. They were ecstatic to get them and have been wearing them everyday since. It’s funny seeing the guard of my high school sporting a Chi-Hi soccer shirt as he walks around the school yard. After a week of having Jamie in my classes with me, we headed off to the capital and then hopped on a brousse the next day to Fianarantsoa, a regional capital south of Tana.

From there we went to Isalo National Park, which was a gorgeous sandstone formation surrounded by desert. Inside the sandstone were small canyons and natural pools with tropical vegetation. We were all exhausted after the first entire day hike into the park, especially because of the downpour we encountered. We showed up to our campsite soaked through and our feet were torn up. The next day we spent swimming in all of the natural pools, which were gorgeous and felt amazing in such a hot climate. The next day we packed into a small brousse, sitting four people across, surrounded by young German tourists. We drove through a small sapphire trading wild west-ish town that was filled with young men.

We also drove through the town where the female PCV was murdered in 11 years ago. At a police stop, we were again apologized to by the policemen and told that they wanted Peace Corps to come back to their community. I have experienced this many times while I have been here. The Malagasy are extremely ashamed of the horrific incident and still make sure to remind all of us volunteers of it. The man who did it is still in jail and people in this country use his name as the greatest insult you can call someone. I want to just add that I have never felt unsafe here, not even for a second.

We finally arrived in Tulear, which is a coastal city on the southwest coast. We ate some good pizza and crammed into a hotel room. The next day we took a local brousse to another PCV’s site just south of Tulear. This site was on the ocean, as advertised, but in a bay full of seaweed, and mangroves, which was not advertised. Needless to say, it was hotter than heck in this place, clean fresh water was hard to come by and going into the ocean after the tide finally came into the bay was like wading in a huge bucket of hot concentrated pee with stinky seaweed under your feet. It was not a great experience. There was no electricity there, which meant no cold drinks and it was 95 degrees when we woke up at 7am, according to our travel thermometer. The volunteer’s neighbors did pull through on the goat though, and we watched it be killed, and charred on a fire before being cut up and cooked and eaten with rice. It was tasty. Then that night we had a bonfire on the beach with smores and an amazing view of the stars. We also celebrated Hanukkah every night because one of the PCV’s with us is Jewish. We ate potato latkes with jam and laughing cow cheese and lit the menorah every night. The next day, we returned to Tulear on a packed truck filled with the morning’s catch of fish, shrimp and sea cucumbers. I’m proud of Jamie for holding back complaints about that smelly, hot, crammed trip!

After another day in Tulear enjoying cold drinks, good food, and a trip to the local discotech, we took a 36 hour brousse ride to Morondava. Morondava is also on the west coast, but there is no road connecting the two cities during the rainy season. We left at 7 in the morning and arrived at 7pm the next day. I barely slept and our ears were practically bleeding from the blaring music the ENTIRE ride, but we were able to see tons of the land, which changes from coastal beach to dry desert with baobabs to sandstone to huge granite rock formations to the plateau rice fields and back again. There was a lot of peeing on the side of the road that went on during that day and a half long car ride.

When we finally arrived in Morondava, we stayed in a super cheap hotel the first two nights so we could splurge for New Year’s Eve by staying in a bungalow on the beach. We rented a taxi one day to take us to a secluded and gorgeous beach outside of town. We swam there for a while, and played in the crashing waves on the white sand beach. It was the exact opposite of our Christmas beach experience. Then we hopped back into the taxi and drove to the Avenue of Baobabs, which is an area where a lot of baobab trees are alongside the dirt road. These massive trees look amazing, especially at sunset when we went to see them. We walked up and down the rows of trees, taking a million pictures and talking to the children that live nearby. We started dancing one of the local dances with them, called kilalaky, and gave them plums that we had gotten on the plateau. It was definitely one of those experiences where I felt like I was inside a National Geographic magazine picture that had come to life. I loved every second of it.

We also went to this amazingly posh restaurant where we ate tuna crusted with shredded coconut and prawns in garlic sauce and sautéed vegetables. It was the most delicious meal I have eaten in this country. And probably the most expensive. This place was high-class, with rooms costing 130-180 Euros a night to stay in, which is unheard of in this town, let alone this country! This new place had every amenity and would be a great place to stay in for a nice honeymoon. On New Year’s Eve we upgraded and stayed in a place that had a pool as well as ocean front property. It felt great to use air conditioning for my first time in this country! My site is hot, but this place was like dripping sweat every hour of the day hot. Thankfully the ocean water was cool though. That night we ate dinner, I had delicious crab legs, and then headed out to the local Malagasy drinking establishments and ended up in a Bob Marley bar at midnight, with people playing bongos and other drums and dancing and drinking guava juice and rum while ringing in the New Year. It is a great memory to have.

The trip from Morondava back to Tana was probably the most mentally challenging taxi brousse ride I have had in the year and a half I have lived here. We arrived at the station at noon and sat in the hot wooden shack waiting for everyone else to arrive. At 2pm, we finally all got into the car and drove off… and stopped a block away in front of an ice shop. We all got out of the brousse and waited another half an hour for a lady on our brousse to buy ice. Then, we were off again and made another stop at the hospital. I could not believe my eyes as three nurses carried a frail elderly lady out to the car with just a sheet wrapped around here. She looked minutes from death and was hooked up to an IV and a catheter. The driver took out the portable fire extinguisher and hung up the IV in it. She was to ride the entire 20 hours laid across her loyal husband and son instead of in an ambulance because there are none that go from city to city here for cheap. Whenever I accidentally got a glimpse of her ghostly face, my eyes filled with tears and my heart sank. We had to stop at two small hospitals on the way to have people fix the IV drip. The woman sitting behind me was carrying a five day old baby on her lap and she kept asking us to hold it when she got in and out of the car. I remember feeling forced in between life and death, and it made the fragility of life so conscious. We had one more stop to make before we departed that day. We waited at the house of the woman that I will forever call the “ice woman” for two hours, in the blazing heat with a new born and hospital patient sitting in the hot car. She had to break up her ice and put it in Styrofoam boxes to keep her shrimp cold that she was bringing to the capital to sell. The driver had to take all of the baggage off of the top, add her cheap coolers and then put our stuff back on it. Meanwhile, the ice woman ran and took a quick bucket shower and the rest of us sat and sweated. A lot of cursing took place at this part of the story. Then, we were finally off. We were traveling on a holiday, so when we stopped to eat rice, there was none cooked because none of the roadside hotelys were open. So, we went without dinner and continued on to the capital. It had started to rain and while driving through the dark we felt the tires slip underneath us as we tried to go up small inclines in the mud. At one point, the car died and the men got out to help push start it. When we finally arrived in Tana, I got my bag off of the top of the brousse and it was drenched in shrimp water. The ice had melted and the water had leaked out of the boxes onto my bag. This was the last straw for me. I walked up to the ice woman and asked her to give me money, explaining that now I would have to clean my bag and everything in it and that it was her fault. She laughed and said, “Oh, silly foreigner”. I went off on a rant about how she had no soul and how she made a sick elderly woman and a five day old baby wait two hours in the afternoon heat just so she could pack her stuff and get ready. I informed her that my stuff smelt horrible and my clean clothes were now dirty and that her soulless self should give me some money to buy soap to clean it. She and everyone around here was shocked that I had gone off in Malagasy at her and she dug in her purse and gave me four hundred ariary, which is enough to buy a bar of soap. This ride was definitely an experience that I will never forget.

That’s all I can think of for memorable parts of my vacation. Sunday I bring Jamie to the airport and then the next few weeks are full of exams, my birthday and more teaching. I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and I will see you all in six months!