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 5th 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=684-123Sending good hopes and wishes to all in the New Year!
Tratra ny ho’avy indray! – And into the next!
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