Agenda

As we approach the “year in country” mark (holy cow), I realized I’ve never told you guys the typical day’s schedule in the “ambanivohitra/countryside”. Well, it goes a little something like this:

5:30am alarm goes off. Open windows.
5:45am stumble my way to light switch to see if this day includes electricity.
5:50am take last night’s trash to burn pit and empty “po”. (TMI, yes)
6:00am get two buckets of water from pump.
6:10am wash yesterday’s dishes.
6:30am make bed, coco brousse floors, and sweep house.
6:45am make breakfast: tea, fruit, sometimes eggs.
7:00am begrudgingly go for a run.
8:00am make self presentable. (usually consists of brushing teeth only)
8:30am off to work! Depending on the day this means keyboarding lessons, silk
federation meetings, or trips to my NGO’s office in the capital city.
12:30pm home to cook lunch: whatever vegetables haven’t gone bad from
Tuesday’s market trip.
1:30pm nap/read.
2:00pm study language, write letters, or figure out exporting in sweet potato field
of choice.
4:00pm play with village children. (usually jumping over a string)
5:00pm make dinner: tea. Watch Top Chef if electricity is cooperating.
6:00pm over think the contents of my planner.
6:30pm prepare for bed/read until calling it quits.
Repeat.

Here’s to another year.

Twas the Season (Holidays in Madagascar)

New Years Eve

2012 in the Village

Girls Night Spread

Happy New Year and a great big welcome to 2012!

I hope everyone has recovered from a wonderful holiday season and is still riding the resolution train. (I’m on my 5^th draft as we speak.) Experiencing the holidays halfway across the world from loved ones has its moments, but all in all, we managed to make the spirit bright here in Madagascar. Highlights are as follows:

A girls night of Love Actually, gift exchanges, and homemade baked goods kicked off the “summer wonderland”. Soon thereafter I headed down south to spend Christmas Eve/Day in another Peace Corp Volunteer’s site, Anjoma, a small village outside of Ambositra. The people of this region are referred to as “Betsileo”, and let me tell ya, Betsileo living is slow and easy. We spent the days painting, playing (French) Scrabble, doing yoga, and listening to the soothing sound of turkey gobbles.

On Christmas Eve, we were invited to the local Catholic church’s “Christmas program”. Now Anjoma, unlike my village, does not have electricity; therefore, our escorts through the dark night (two mid-teens girls) showed up at the front door around 8pm and informed us we would be taking the route past their house as opposed to the commonly used, daytime friendly route through the market because of an “alika masika”, or rabid dog. At this moment my fellow Peace Corps volunteer pointed out that families back in America were opting for Interstate 75 as opposed to I-10 due to holiday traffic jams – the similarities of our lives are uncanny.

We arrived at the church to find a 12 foot forest tree draped in all fashions of irredescent plastic, a “stage” with a “curtain” (two shower curtains hung on a thin piece of rope), and around 700+ people stuffed into a room the size of my last US apartment’s kitchen. Next to the tree, that sat at an exact 90 degree angle, was a massive speaker through which blasted the five Christmas carols the Malagasy are familiar with. Each performance was concluded by a dramatic shutting of the curtains, regardless of if the proceeding performance was being given by the exact same group of people. Already accustomed to the countryside schedule, we retired around 9pm.

Christmas Day consisted of a nice cut of pig and homemade mulled cider (which I briefly brought aflame). We also hung a single stocking.

Next it was off to Tana to ring in the New Year with friends. A friendly cyclone joined us for the event as well. It’s been raining now for about 10 days straight. This did not dampen our evening, 2012 was welcomed with excitement by all!

I’m now back at site working on the formation of our silk weaving NGO and wishing, hoping, and praying the weavers are accepted to the Festival (we should find out this week…eek!). If you haven’t already looked at our funding proposal, we would love it if you did! Every penny helps:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=684-123

Sending good hopes and wishes to all in the New Year!

Tratra ny ho’avy indray! – And into the next!

Gimme Yo Money!

Happy New Year all!

So my first funding proposal has been posted and I would love it if you took a glance at it:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=684-123

Misatora indrindra! (Thank you so much!)

Fruits of My Labor

Wish List

My Fellow English Speakers,

It seems as though I often get the questions, “What do you need? What can I send you?”, from a lot of wonderful people back home and, like a kid on Santa’s lap, I freeze up. So I am sitting down today to make a list of things that would be very much appreciated (but totally not necessary) here in Mada:

Fashion magazines – Nylon, Vogue, Marie Claire, etc.

Tea!

iTunes Gift Cards - great for new movies and music

Tupperware

Toiletries – Aveeno rocks.

Perfume samples

Pictures of you!

Clif bars

Granola

Dried fruit

Batteries (AA)

Dental floss

Books

Nail polish

Cereal!

Seasoning packets

Clothes are always welcome.

Cheap, fake pearl earrings, apparently my ears self-eject them on a weekly basis.

Yourself

Love

Updates

Hopefully this helps and thank you so much for always asking, I am constantly amazed by how thoughtful you guys are. Hope everyone had a spooky Halloween and “mirary soa”!

Introducing: The Rainy Season

Ela be! (It’s been a while!) Hope everyone has been enjoying the leaves turning colors, the cooler breezes, and the return of Starbucks’ fall drinks (jealous.). Is it possible to have a Venti Cinnamon Apple Spice shipped to Mada? vc girl can dream right? Things have been uber busy ‘round these parts lately. Here’s a run down:

First and foremost, our stage was reunited! The Peace Corps provides an “In-Service Training” five months after volunteers have been at site, in order to answer questions that have cropped up while living village life. All 39 of us (yep, no one has gone home yet…props) went back to Montasoa, where we lived for the first 2 months in Mada. It was beyond exciting to see everyone and hear about what everyone was up to at site. Some of us live directly on the beach while others live in the spiny forest, and one even requires a 4-hour boat ride to get home. Everyone gave a presentation on their communities and their work at site. It ranged from upkeep of nature reserves to crunching the numbers for microfinance institutions; each and every assignment is super impressive. We also learned the different methods and options we have when applying for project funding now that we have ideas coming out of our ears. (I apologize in advance for how much I am going to bug all of you over the next few months with pleas for money/materials, you have every right to block me on Facebook.) My highlights: computer skills trainings and a fashion filled weekend!

We were lucky enough to catch Tana’s version of Oktoberfest when we returned from IST. There was a huge outdoor stage/festival sponsored by the local drink of choice, Three Horses Beer. They had an amazing line up of Malagasy performers and it was crawling with festivalgoers. Jerry Marcos is like Mada’s Usher here, and after you’ve heard his music at least 1.3 million times it becomes quite catchy. I got a bit teary because it reminded me of so many festivals back in New Orleans. This time last year we were bee-bopping around VooDoo Fest, miss you guys!

After IST, we dispersed all over the island. Everyone took advantage of us being together and planned their first vacations. It’s no surprise that the majority of us headed straight for the coast. The group I vacay-ed with went to the city of Tamatave, which is the only port city in Madagascar. It’s also the second largest city on the island…you wouldn’t think this walking around the streets. It was a ghost town. We quickly hopped on the next taxi-brousse to Foulpointe, a cute little beach town an hour north of Tamatave. It was absolutely breathtaking. We stayed in bungalows made of bamboo and banana tree leaves right on the beach and ate so much seafood I thought I was going to develop gills. The fishermen there carve their boats out of tree trunks and paint them vibrant colors, making the lines and lines of them on the beach just gorgeous. We took one out and snorkeled in the coral reef, saw some pretty rad fish, then ate a scrumptious lunch of fresh grilled lobster right there on the beach. Sunrise yoga was also on the intinerary, Bruno would be proud. Apparently my picture taking ability is nonexistent, so I apologize for the lack of pictures…hopefully I’ll be back soon.

It was difficult to bid the beach bum lifestyle adieu, but we eventually made our way back to Tana for a wonderful birthday weekend! I’m officially a quarter of a century old and it was pretty bomb to celebrate a birthday here in country. Not to mention, my fellow PCVs are amazing people to spend a birthday with.

Next on the docket was visiting my friend Kristin’s site, Ambohimiadina. Here a group of five of us spent the day with some extremely intelligent farmers who taught us how to properly plant and prepare seed beds. Their organization, TAF, focuses on ecotourism and protecting Madagascar’s unique environment. After planting, we had a scrumptious picnic of fresh pineapple, sweet potatoes, and citronella tea. We wrapped up the day with an accordion serenade from the farmers…absolutely incredible. Kristin’s house has a gorgeous wrap around balcony and separate kitchen, to say we took advantage of both is an understatement.

Finally, we applied what we learned at TAF ‘round my neck of the woods. A few weeks ago there was a huge, accidental fire on one of the mountainsides close to where I teach keyboarding. The damage was heartbreaking and created quite the eyesore. So, the five of us brought over a ton of Moringa tree seeds with the hopes of reforesting the area…and more! We taught the villagers how to prepare the perfect compost mixture (unfortunately, this includes playing in fresh cow poop for a few hours) and planted a little over a 100 new baby Moringas! Moringa leaves can be cooked or steamed for tea and contain bucketloads of Calcium, Vitamins A and C. The bark, when grounded, can remove 90-99% of bacteria from drinking water. Once the seedlings have grown 60-90 cm, we will transplant half of them to the destroyed mountainside and the villagers will sell the other half for complete profit. Hopefully this will bring in enough revenue for them to buy a silk weaving machine that will allow them to make silk by the meter (a necessity in order to be competitive in the silk market here).

Now I’m back at home, missing everyone, and cooking meals for one again. It was a stellar few weeks that ended far too soon; but I’ve got stacks of books on funding to read and am pumped to get things rolling. Oh yeah, and the rainy season has officially begun. There. Is. Mud. Everywhere.

I also just want to send a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful Mom. For those of you who know her, you know what an incredible person she is and for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, words cannot express how loving and caring she is. Thank you so much for all of the support, comfort, and reassurance you have given me and I wish I could be celebrating right by your side this week. I love you Mom!

Happy Fall y’all!

Omby Jam.

“omby” – Malagasy word for zebu (cow with the camel-esque hump on its’ back)

Most Malagasy households include omby. Some may have a stand-alone omby, others may have a whole Brady Bunch of omby; needless to say, omby are rampant around these parts. Now I’ve never been one to be frightened by the presence of a large, relatively stagnant, unthreatening grazer of an animal like the cow… until now. “Tandremo ny omby!”, can be heard echoing the arrivals and departures of these horned clod-hoppers which translates to, “Watch out, here come omby!”. After I heard grown men and women scream this in a pitch otherwise known as utter terror, I figured there must be some reasoning behind this fear. Although I have yet to witness a rabid omby attack, my imagination has run wild with the possibilities of what that would entail. Impalement? Trampling? Being sat upon? Or perhaps worse, sh*t upon? Whatever it may be, I do not intend on partaking during my two years in Madagascar.

Today proved quite the challenge in avoiding this horrible situation. Fridays are my free days. No keyboarding, no English Club…I’m free to do whatever I please with the 12 hours of sunlight. I woke up this morning with plans to bike to the nearest (larger) village for groceries, wash clothes, read, and run. Splendid right? Until I came upon the first of many of the days’ omby. While enjoying the weather on my bike ride, I came upon one of the hairpin curves carved into the mountainside. Due to the fact that I was bumpin M.I.A. on my iPod, I figured I could take the curve at the tempo of my current jam. An omby felt differently. Before I knew it I was face to face with an unhappy omby, swerved chaotically, and ended up grounded by the side of the road. Omby – 1 Katherine - 0

The women here carry large loads on top of their heads, mostly because it’s much easier than by one’s side. I have adopted this habit, although not as expertly as the Malagasy women, and perched my bucket full of dirty clothes atop my head as I made my way down to the river for laundry. Secretly, I went during lunchtime on purpose in order to wash clothes alone…the river being quite soothing. I wasn’t taking into account that the omby herders would be enjoying their kilo of lunch rice at this time too. This left me clumsily fumbling my way through the rice fields with a bucket overhead and the omby…whose territory was being encroached upon. Herders tie up these 200 lb animals with a thin rope connected to a stick they bang into the ground with a rock…yeah…right. Well, one herder thought today would be a great day to place his most threatening omby right next to the laundry rock. Rude. After a ten minute stare down with this unusually long horned omby I decided to scout a new path. My only options were a leap across the river (bucket still on head) or an old fashioned boxing match with this omby. I made the jump across safely. The leap back? Let’s just say my recently cleaned clothes are no longer recently cleaned. Omby -2 Katherine – 0

I’m happy to report that reading was successfully omby-free. Omby – 2 Katherine – 1

Eight omby butts. That was my view for the greater half of my run, stuck in an omby jam. Although, I had had it up to here with omby, one omby butt was cuter than the others. A calf! A black and white, straight off of the label on your milk carton, baby cow. I guess my petting zoo instincts kicked in and I waltzed right up to the little guy with all intentions of giving him a good scratch or two. Big mistake, Mom and Dad omby went bizerk. The herders snapped into action trying to diffuse the uproar that ensued while I tried to slip out of the picture unnoticed (a concept that does not exist when you are the one strange American in a Malagasy village). I will now be avoiding the houses of said herders for the following weeks.

Omby – 3 Katherine - 1

How It's Made: "Lamba"

this is a wonderful video about the Malagasy silk weaving process. although this video takes places in Soatanana, my weavers (in the Talata Volonondry region) produce the same products. enjoy!

9 to 5...or something like it.

So what exactly am I doing here? Good question….that I think I can now answer! It has been four months in village, I’ve gotten my bearings, and have figured out what sort of work related goals need to be accomplished. Thanks to my incredible family, we successfully shipped our first carton of scarves back to the States last week. Now that I am familiar with average freight costs, needed mark ups, and duration of delivery, we can get the ball rolling on a larger scale! I have already begun keyboarding classes with two different groups of weavers and they are taking to it extremely well. We have class three times a week for two hours each class. A few of the U.S. Embassy employees here provided funding for us to buy five keyboards and we use a huge poster of a keyboard hung on the wall for the weavers to look at while memorizing the typing strokes. I bring my computer to class as well and we rotate so that everyone gets a turn with a fully functioning computer. One of the groups is already close to finishing! Now that they have mastered typing, I am writing a proposal to do a weeklong “Basic Computer Skills” training through the NGO I’m working with, Prosperer. We will all go to Antananarivo and use an office that has many computers with free Internet for artisans associated with Prosperer. There I can teach them the basics of computer knowledge and how to navigate around the information superhighway. This will hopefully give them the foundation to move on to the next training I have in mind: Gmail. Before we can even begin to think about exporting their scarves, the weavers need to be familiar with a free and convenient way of communicating with their customer base abroad; therefore, I would like to do a second training in regards to general email etiquette and working with Gmail’s interface. Madagascar is a Francophone country and most of the weavers are close to fluent in French, so we will be using the French version of Gmail. (I, on the other hand, am on a hasty search for a French tutor as my high school studies just did not stick in that arena.) After they have completed the keyboarding, computer skills, and email trainings we will then move on to Paypal. With the end goal of starting an Etsy store in mind, Paypal knowledge is a crucial step in the preparation process. Once again, we will have a training in Antananarivo on the subject of transactions through Paypal’s site. The final training will be actually opening their Etsy sites for business! If you have not yet visited Etsy.com, please type it into your browser immediately! It is a wonderful E-bay-esque site that provides “storefronts” for artisans specializing in handmade goods at a mere .10 cost per item posted for sale. It is also offered in French and therefore we will be using it as so. This will, in the click of a few buttons, open up the Malagasy silk market to most other foreign countries. (Post to come about the type of silk here…spoiler alert – you can ONLY get it here in Madagascar, pretty cool.) So there we have it, five trainings that should get the weavers up and running with a long-term, sustainable method of marketing and distributing their products abroad. If time permits I would also like to put together/video tape a fashion show displaying the variety of products offered by these super talented people. This would provide a much more cost efficient way of emailing a “sample book” to wholesalers/retailers back in the States as opposed to paying postal costs. Also I think the weavers would have a blast strutting down the catwalk.

Peace Corps has an “In-Service Training” during which we learn how to write grant proposals and draft budgets re: applying for funding. Ours is at the end of September. Hopefully I can get these trainings going after learning those funding tools. Voila, the next two years wrapped up into one little blog post! I am bursting at the seams with excitement and am so lucky to have been placed with such motivated artisans…here goes nothing!

And now for this week’s bullet points:

Am now a member of the Protestant Church Choir. Still not quite sure how it happened.

· Had our first successful shipment of scarves to America!

· Attended a luncheon/fundraiser raising money for a new police station in my village. There was a raffle. I won liquid dish soap, two chocolate chip cookies, and one razor.

· *WARNING – graphic. Vomited while biking. That’s a first.

· Have started bucket showering again now that it has warmed up…much to everyone’s relief.

· Garden has sprouted!

· Accidentally participated in a Malagasy Police Force morning exercise session; took a few days for my quads to fully recover.

The Saga That is My Garden. (excuse my lack of terminology.)

Upon arriving in Madagascar and unleashing my inner bush child, I decided that painting my thumb green would be an integral part of squeezing every bit of “experience” out of these two years. Before leaving, my Mom (the family’s resident gardener) and I went seed shopping in the States. I came to Mada toting a Ziploc bag full of all varieties of horticulture! Each time a group of volunteers arrives/is trained, they are a mixture of two sectors; ours being Small Enterprise Development (me!) and Environment volunteers (all of my roomies!). Therefore, my desire to produce a heap load of …produce… grew even stronger while being surrounded by these highly experienced farmers. Watching them plot, till, and create beautiful plants lit a fire in me that had never even come close to a spark. We also learned a little bit about sustainable farming techniques that we could pass on to the village farmers.

So, after I had gotten over the initial awkwardness of being the strange white person in a village of Malagasy, I asked my neighbor where a good place would be to start my garden. Mistake number one. She doesn’t like me traveling too far from our neighborhood on the pretense that I might be stolen and/or killed; consequently she told me she would prepare a plot for me the very next day. Splendid right? Wrong. I woke up the next morning, walked to our village trash burning pit and there, not two feet away from me, was my brand new garden plot…complete with chickens and ramen noodle wrappers galore. Dilemma: how do I explain that this area was probably not going to cut it without seeming ungrateful? Solution: avoidance. The longer I “waited due to the cold winter” the more trash and chicken traffic piled up on the land. My neighbor then realized that not even weeds would be able to grow successfully there and suggested that I go with Zafi, their crop worker, the next day and use a piece of their potato plot in the rice fields. Sweet!

Early the next morning, I put on my most “I’ve Done This Whole Farming Thing Before” looking clothing, grabbed my recently purchased watering can, and headed out to the rice fields. As we meandered our way through the different plots, guffaws of laughter could be heard from each and every direction. Apparently a woman, let alone a foreign woman carrying a Ziploc bag full of cute little seed packets, does not waltz into the farmer’s clique very often. We got to our plot and set up shop. We also met up with two other farmers, Njaka and Rakotomanay, that would be working in the same field as us. So, I rolled up my sleeves and asked what needed to be done first. The land was already tilled and sectioned off (see picture above), next it needed to be beaten, for lack of a better word. I, being a lady, was not allowed to partake in this step, so I observed as Zafi and Co. used long handled spades and logs nailed horizontally to a vertical handle to literally beat the ground. This broke up the dried mud-like dirt into more manageable pieces.

Next Rakotomanay told me I needed to go buy liquor. Obviously. So I walked up to the only “liquor store” in our village, shocked everyone inside when I asked for rum, and brought it back to my fellow mpambolys (farmers). Njaka then poured some in the soil, said something I absolutely did not follow, threw back a fourth of the bottle, and passed it down the line. Mind you it was around 9 AM and it was a full handle of rum; by the time it reached me there was not a drop left in the bottle. Now began the discussion of which seeds were going to go where. My ability to communicate in Malagasy with business terms? Fabulous. My ability to communicate in Malagasy with farming terms? Disastrous. They finally gave up on even including me in the planning, and gave me the single job of dropping the designated amount of seeds in each hole and watering them. It became somewhat of an assembly line: Njaka digging the hole, Rakotomanay adding fertilizer, and me dropping and watering. This after they repeatedly let me know that my watering can was much too small to be considered a reputable farmer…my cover was blown.

Around 11:30 we walked back up to the neighborhood to eat rice, then back down again to finish things up. In about a month or two I should have cherry tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, zinnias, basil, parsley, rosemary and best of all – sunflowers!!! Yes, when I am walking to work in a few weeks I will look down among the vast, flat rice fields and right smack in the middle will be a ray of yellow sunshine! So far every morning after fetching water, I walk down with my puny watering can and pour some love on my seeds. I think I’ve gained some clout with the farmers…at least now they don’t laugh as hard. Above are before and after pictures, be sure to notice Rakotomanay posing with my comical watering can.

Mandrapihaona!