In-Service Training

Last week I was back at the Peace Corps training site for several days of in-service training. After we've been at site for nearly 3 months, PC likes to bring us all back together to process the first few months and try to figure out where to go with projects now that we know a bit more of what it's like to actually be a volunteer. The schedule was pretty flexible so we got to help create our own sessions and get information about the things that we felt like we needed to learn and take back to our sites. It was also nice to see the other 37 people from my training class again - Shayla was the only one I had seen since I was installed at my site. We were all able to exchange horror stories about the mayhem we faced in our first few months at site and bounce some ideas off of each other for future projects.

I'm pretty pleased with how the week went because I feel like I have a little more direction for what I can do when I get back to site in a few weeks. At first I was flabbergasted at how many health-related activities are already going on at some of the other volunteers' sites. Although, many of these sites have had PCV's in the past or are in bigger, less isolated towns. My site is fairly removed from where many NGO's and aid organizations focus their work, and it's a new Peace Corps site. So there's not much going on in my area yet. After hearing everyone else's stories, though, I have realized I'm definitely NOT in the worst situation. While there's not much happening yet, I do have a pretty great clinic staff and a lot of excitement in the community so I think there's potential for things to develop.

Many villages already have many health educators who are trained in health topics and go out into the community to share knowledge and often provide basic health care such as vaccines. I either don't yet have them at my site, or they're not organized in a comprehensive and effective way yet. So when I get back to my village, I'm hoping to begin searching for people who are interested in doing health education and work with local organizations to conduct trainings and start getting people out into the more remote parts of my commune.

Perhaps what I'm most excited about, however, is a social marketing organization I may begin working with several days a week. They have organized many health campaigns and products for disease prevention, especially on malaria and STI and HIV/AIDS education. They do a lot of work on AIDS prevention and STI awareness among commercial sex workers, and that is definitely a major concern in the Morondava area. My Peace Corps supervisor introduced me to a couple of their employees who are hopefully going to get me in touch with their Morondava office so I can work with them when I'm back. I'm hoping that ends up working out because I think I could learn a lot by working with their office. Keep fingers crossed it works out!


Now beyond all the seriousness, as you can probably imagine, bringing together nearly 40 Americans who haven't seen each other for a few months results in a bit of ridiculousness and mayhem. In markets and roadside stalls all over Madagascar, you can find second-hand clothes from overseas; the Malagasy people call this stuff "frip." (I have seen about a trillion pairs of athletic shorts that say "Cleveland 23" on them - can't imagine why!) Anyway, a bunch of us decided to have an "Ugly Frip Party" during our in-service training, the idea being that we would all find the most outrageous frip we possibly could and have a dance party. It was pretty hilarious seeing what everybody was able to come up with. Here I am with other PCV's Christiane and Monique, and then Brianna. It was a fun night!




There was also a bit of chaos when we got back to the meva (Peace Corps transit house) in Tana. As the rainy season is beginning, we've had pretty heavy rain storms the last several nights. The meva is also at the bottom of a hill, so thanks to gravity water collects pretty rapidly and starts flowing into the entrance of the largest bedroom. This happened the first night we were back, but we got all of our bags off the floor and walked carefully across the tile floor. Two nights ago it rained again and we saw a ton of water pouring from the second-floor balcony, which we assumed was again from the rain. After it had stopped raining for a while, though, my friend Tisa soon discovered that the entire second floor was flooding because the tube to a water tank in the medical unit had broken and was spewing water everywhere. Several of us sprang into action, got the guards to help us turn off the water, called the PC duty officers and medical staff, and started a broom brigade to begin sweeping the several inches of water outside and over the balconies. JUST when I think I'm done with my days of being an RA - hah!

This is Lorin, aiming the still-spewing water into the sink so at least it wasn't spraying all over the med unit anymore.



Water gushing down the meva stairs.



Tisa and Monique moving dripping boxes of medical supplies off of the floor and to a more dry location.



Me, attempting to sweep up water.



There's just been all kinds of excitement these last couple of weeks!

I still won't be back at my site for a couple more weeks. I'm going to a couple of the other health volunteers' sites to help out with some projects. I'll be in the Antsirabe area for several days adding a kitchen & cookstoves onto the maternity room at my friend Glenda's site, and will spend Christmas there with her Malagasy friends and a few other PCV's. Then I'll be around Fianarantsoa at Tisa's site doing a training with the health educators. Tisa's site has 41 HEALTH EDUCATORS that do a lot of work in her community. Since that's something I want to start up at my own site, I'm excited to see how they work and get some ideas on how to begin.

I'm really not sure what my access to internet is going to be like over the next couple of weeks. I think there's a chance I'll have more access than I usually do at my site, but I just don't know for sure. I will be swinging back through Tana around January 2 or 3 before I return to Morondava, though, and I should have internet then that's fast enough for skype - so keep that in mind! Hope you all have a wonderful time for the holidays; I'm thinking of you all!

Love love.

A Malagasy Thanksgiving

This post is fairly late getting up here, but since everyone has been inquiring about my turkey/my Thanksgiving celebration, I’ll talk a little bit about that. The day was a huge success! Philbert Kely’s health problems continued, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to eat him for Thanksgiving dinner, so I was prepared to purchase a new bird closer to the day. Then he mysteriously disappeared, and when I inquired about him I got some suspicious answers from my neighbors. I’m pretty sure they may have sold him to a local Malagasy restaurant without telling me, though I haven’t been able to confirm that. Either way, we ended up eating a different bird for our Thanksgiving celebration.

Shayla, the only other volunteer near me, came over and we had green beans, mashed potatoes, STUFFING FROM AMERICA (thanks Mom!), and “sweet potato casserole.” A combination of foods being different colors/shapes/sizes here and my poor language skills resulted in me buying a million pounds of yams instead of sweet potatoes. And I did not realize this until after I had started trying to mash them up. I had marshmallows I had bought in Tana after swearing-in so I decided to see what would happen anyway. It ended up being DELICIOUS. We set up a buffet table in my back yard and let everyone prepare their plates.



My neighbors killed and prepared the turkey. I was pretty disappointed that I didn’t get to kill the bird myself, but apparently it’s taboo for women to kill animals in my region. There also wasn’t any feasible way to roast a turkey, but my neighbor’s sister cooked it in a pot with oil, curry, tomatoes, onions, and some other spices. Not your typical Thanksgiving turkey, but still amazing.

A bunch of my friends from the neighborhood came over for the feast. I’m not sure anybody really liked the food too much—there were some funny facial expressions and I had a sneaking suspicion most people were trying to politely force the food down. When I asked if everyone liked American food, many of them said, “Eka fa mbo tsy zatra,” which basically means, “Yes, we’re just not accustomed to it yet.” Here you can see the looks of hesitation on the face of Anniko, a girl who lived just down the street from me in my old house, and some of my other former neighbors.





Shayla and I, on the other hand, were beyond satisfied. It ended up being far closer to an American Thanksgiving than I ever would have imagined could be possible in Madagascar. During the meal I explained as best I could in my broken Malagasy how the tradition was started and why we celebrate the holiday. I certainly have a new appreciation for it after my first several months here in Madagascar. I told my friends I can relate to being the outsider who doesn't know how to speak the same language or find and prepare food, and that I've been grateful to everyone in my village who has welcomed me and tried to help me get settled in. It was definitely an odd way to celebrate the day, but I'm glad I was able to successfully share it with my community here.

A Break in Tana

Well, it's been a while since I've been able to update this, but it's also been a very hectic several weeks. I've been in Tana for a few days because I have in-service training next week and then will be doing business projects with some other volunteers. This much-needed break could not have come at a more perfect time. It's been nice to see all of my American friends from my training class and be back in a place with more amenities and connectivity to life off the island.

My housing situation had been growing increasingly problematic, mostly because of an overbearing landlady and many health issues. A combination of doctors' recommendations and my supervisor's visit to my site led to me being moved into a new house last week. I'm still in the same village, about a 2 minute walk from where my old house was. Luckily I don't think there are any hard feelings, and I still swing by the old neighborhood almost every day to hang out with my friends around there. I have still been eating with my old neighbors, but my work schedule and the new house have made it less convenient than it used to be so I may switch to eating with them only on the weekends now.

Here's a picture from moving day, which I thought was absolutely hysterical. I had to get assistance my friends across the street who have an ox-cart to move my furniture and other heavy things to the new house. My very own Malagasy U-Haul.



I had a great week in the new house, and I think it's going to solve a lot of my problems, making it easier to get acclimated to life here and get started on more serious work when I'm back at site in a few weeks. I'm RIGHT next to the clinic now, but I like it. Most of the other staff also lives in the vicinity, so I think it helps all the patients affiliate me with the clinic and health work when they see me around there even more frequently than before. Here are some pictures of the house: a view from the outside (mine is the room on the right; the other rooms are used by the clinic when staff comes from other towns to help out for a few weeks at a time); views of the inside; 2 of the 3 ADORABLE puppies that often sleep in the shade in my yard.







These last few days in Tana have been simply marvelous. Everyone from my training class has been trickling into town over the last couple of days - it's nice catching up with everyone and getting to explore the city a little bit. Even though I came into Tana several times during training, it was usually for half a day and was to take care of Peace Corps business; never had much free time. It felt kind of ridiculous that I've been in the country for almost 5 months and had no idea how to get around the capital city. But, I've been living a life of luxury here at the Peace Corps meva (transit house). I've had free internet, couches, flush toilets, hot showers, a kitchen, the ability to sleep past 4:30am since there are no roosters or village children in the compound, and the temperature has been in the 70's (MUCH cooler than the average day at my site).

And the RESTAURANTS in Tana are nothing short of DIVINE!! I've enjoyed Indian food, salads, paninis, and other delicious meals. The place that has just topped off the whole week, though, is an American-style cafe called The Cookie Shop. The Cookie Shop has things like bagel sandwiches, tuna melts, chocolate chip cookies, brownie ice cream sundaes, cupcakes, iced coffee, chai tea, and fruit smoothies. I had an utterly delightful Saturday brunch special there this morning including waffles topped with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Another volunteer was asked, "Would you like your carrot cake to come with the luscious cream cheese frosting?" -- to which she replied, "Why, yes, I believe I would like the luscious cream cheese frosting." The wait staff speak English, and one of my friends was even sassed with American-style sarcasm by an employee, giving us a good chuckle. (Sarcasm is a concept that is usually entirely lost on the Malagasy people.) It probably goes without saying that I have been to The Cookie Shop every day since I rolled into town.

These last several days have lifted my spirits and renewed my energy and excitement for my Peace Corps service. It is still going to be a few weeks before I'm back in my village, but I think I'll be ready for it when the time comes. These last couple of months have certainly not been the easiest. But I'm looking forward to going back and starting fresh. I've actually been learning a lot about my town and many of the health and development issues that I'll be working on . . . I'll update about all of that soon.

My Life: Always a Fiasco

Well, I certainly can’t say that my life ever ceases to be interesting. Just when I thought my house couldn’t possibly be the place of residence for any more ants, cockroaches, and rats, I discovered a termite infestation. So on Tuesday I moved all of my belongings to the center of my house while my landlady’s husband doused my entire house with poison. I subsequently had an allergic reaction on my face and arms to something, presumably the chemical. So, one of the Peace Corps doctors instructed me to leave my site, stay in a hotel, and begin taking a steroid. I still had a bit of a reaction Wednesday morning, though things seem better now.

Heading back to site this morning. I can’t comment to give my personal opinion or an “insider’s view” or anything, but I can tell you that you should check out news about Madagascar. (And, honestly, you’ll probably be able to find out as much as I know, if not more.) There was a constitutional referendum that took place Wednesday and has made things interesting to say the least. I’m currently awaiting further updates and instructions from Peace Corps. But know that I am safe and once again healthy.

Sorry this is so short, but I’ve got to head out.

Love love.

MY TURKEY HAS DIARRHEA!!

I sincerely wish I could tell you all that I’m joking, but I’m not. A couple of weeks ago, I asked Floria if it was possible to buy a turkey here since there was an American holiday at the end of November that I was hoping to celebrate with my new friends here. She told me there are lots of turkeys but that they get very expensive close to Christmas, so I should buy one now. In the spirit of embracing life here I thought, “Well, why not? Raising a turkey for several weeks might be fun.” So on Friday (market day), I ventured to the market with Floria’s oldest daughter, Nuelina, in search of a fine Thanksgiving bird. I had assumed a turkey would cost roughly the same as a chicken, so I took what I figured would be enough money. After a disappointing realization that turkeys are actually considerably more expensive, I settled on a small but decent-looking bird, figuring it may plump up a bit after several weeks. I haggled the price down to 10,000 Ariary (roughly $5.00), brought the bird home, and—despite warnings from my brother not to get too attached—named it “Philbert Kely.” (Philbert is Floria’s oldest son; Philbert Kely, meaning Small Philbert, was the closest I could come up with for “Philbert Jr.”) I figured the neighbors would get a kick out of the fact that I named the bird after my adopted host family; indeed, they think it’s a riot.

Well, after getting Philbert Kely settled in to his new home, I headed to work. About four hours later I came home for lunch only to find out that Philbert Kely is VERY VERY SICK with terrible diarrhea. Actually, not even diarrhea so much as liquid perpetually falling out of his hind end. My first thought was, “I didn’t even know turkeys could GET diarrhea.” My second thought was, “Oh, how nice. My bird is just trying to live in solidarity with me while we both adjust to our new homes.” Many of my fellow volunteers, and a few of you back home who I’ve been able to talk to, have told me, “You WOULD be the one to buy a turkey.” Fill has been the only person who wasn’t remotely surprised that I bought a turkey but instead remarked, “YOU would get a turkey with diarrhea.” Philbert Kely seems to be making a slow yet steady recovery, so I’m holding onto a small glimmer of hope. Here’s a picture of the little guy; Floria’s the one holding him, and behind them is Narindra, a girl who lives across the street.



In terms of work, I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I can be useful here. Last week at the clinic was interesting. There was a Madagascar-wide malnutrition outreach program for children under 5 (the most at-risk group for malnutrition). Vitamin A capsules, deworming pills, and vaccines were available for free to all children under 5. A local nutrition organization brought in several staff to help throughout the week. On Monday, I went around town with a woman, telling people to bring their kids to the clinic anytime this week. On Tuesday morning I went to a local elementary school to help with the distribution. That was great because I got to meet the principal of the school and she wants me to start giving presentations there this week. A couple days I helped fill out cards at the clinic, and on Friday I went with the doctor and a couple of other helpers out to a village farther away from the clinic to get the meds out. This past week the schedule was back to normal, but I’ve started taking on a few more tasks as my language skills are improving. I mostly help weigh children under 5 and chart their growth to see if they’re malnourished or at risk.

I think in the long run the clinic is not going to be where I’ll do most of my work. My clinic has a great staff (a doctor, a midwife, and several support staff), and they already give presentations on preventative health measures (which is pretty much most of what I’m qualified to do). Some other volunteers were placed at clinics that don’t even have doctors or have staff that never shows up to work, so their help is much more needed. What I really think my clinic could use would be another doctor/nurse/midwife available for patient consultations, which I’m not even remotely qualified to do. But, I’m trying to help out where I can and in the meantime am looking for other ways to contribute to my community. I’ve started giving presentations at elementary schools and I’ve met several people that do nutrition work or community outreach through various organizations. My plan is to volunteer with current programs for a little while longer and then begin to see where my own ideas can expand on the work my local counterparts are already doing.

I’m still eating dinner with my neighbors every night, but I’ve had fun experimenting with various concoctions at breakfast and lunch. It’s always a gamble what I’m going to be able to find at the market at any given moment, so I’m trying to be creative with whatever’s available. I’ve had moderate success. In addition to being really, really good at boiling carrots, I have also successfully made a couple of meat dishes, tortillas from scratch, and homemade refried beans. I have unsuccessfully made several things not worth mentioning. One night I offered to cook “American food” for Floria’s family. Since many of the village children have made faces at my cooking and told me that I should make “good Malagasy food—rice with maybe some sweet potatoes on the side,” I decided to keep it pretty standard. I cooked beef in a tomato sauce and threw in some steak seasoning I had bought in the capital, a dish I’ve just about perfected. And I served it, of course, over rice. Everyone seemed skeptical at first, but it was a big hit. Here you can see Philbert (for whom my bird is named), and Calaneny, a friend who stayed with them for a few days.



Before I include a couple more pictures and sign off, I want to say thank-you to everyone who’s sent me stuff. Brenda, I got your package! And I’ve gotten letters/cards from the Hummels, Grandma and Grandpa, UMSA, Greta, and VB. And I’m sure there’s more on the way—things seem to be coming very sporadically. Some stuff comes in 10 days; some was sent over a month ago and hasn’t yet arrived. Anyway, this post is coming off of a pretty good week, but I would be lying if I said I’m acclimating and that things are getting much easier. In all of the seemingly endless frustrations, I often ask myself what I’m still doing here. There have been so many moments when if somebody had said, “Just come home,” I probably would have done it. But in those times that I’ve forgotten why I wanted to be here, your letters/cards/phonecalls/texts/emails/prayers of encouragement have reminded me a little bit about where I come from and where I hope to go in life. And they remind me that I have tons of people rooting for me back home (who are probably reading this from their iphones while sitting on the toilet . . . but I won’t even get into that.)


Here are some more pictures of the area around my house. Here you can see my water source. I lower a small bucket about 15 feet underground through this barrel.



These are the pig pens behind my house. The pink and purple thing behind the pigs would be my shower and latrine. I wasn’t kidding when I said they’re attached to a pig pen.



The slightly more pleasant view from my back yard, once you go a bit past the pigs.



As always happens when I pull out the camera to snap pictures, the village children were all ecstatic and wanted me to take pictures of them. There are mango trees growing all around my house, and in the picture several of them are holding up small, unripe mangoes. They LOVE to eat unripe mangoes with salt. It’s not my favorite snack, but I just really, really love ripe mangoes, so I’m willing to wait a few more weeks till they’re ripe.



So there you have it! A few more pieces of my life here :)
Love love.

First Two Weeks at Site

Before I talk about my first couple of weeks at site, I want to tell you all that yesterday was a very important day for two reasons: 1) it was my mom’s birthday, and 2) it was Global Handwashing Day. I’d tell you how old my mom turned, but I’m pretty sure Malagasy numbers don’t go that high. If you see her, please wish her a VERY HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY for me. Make sure you talk really, really loudly though so she can hear you. (Hah—just kidding, Mom! I figure if I’m a pain even through the internet, maybe you won’t miss me so much!) There’s more about the handwashing business later in the post.

Well, I had kind of been waiting for the reality that I was in the Peace Corps to sink in. And boy oh boy did it sink in these last couple of weeks. Having come out of being really sick and an extremely frustrating move-in process, I probably wasn’t really in the best frame of mind to have suddenly been dropped off on my own. There were a lot of things I had planned on accomplishing during installation that just didn’t happen in all of the chaos. For instance, buying my furniture, working out my schedule with my doctor, etc. So there I was, confused, lonely, and with nothing to do since I wasn’t supposed to start working at the clinic until my fifth day. The thing I had been most excited about—cooking my own food and planning my own diet—actually proved to be a bit of a disaster. First of all, did you know how depressing it is eating three meals alone every day? I lived in the residence halls and stayed on the meal plan for all four years of college, so I usually met friends at one of the campus dining locations or cooked food in the lounge of my floor. But eating by myself and not having anyone to talk to was really lonely. Then there was the whole issue of WHAT to eat. I knew I would have much more limited options than what I’m accustomed to in the states—that’s one of the challenges Peace Corps makes abundantly clear we’ll likely ha. But I guess I figured I’m on a tropical island, and I’d be able to find stuff. Furthermore, the dialect that I learned during training is hardly similar to what they actually speak in my village. My neighbors make fun of me for using certain vocabulary words that my teachers specifically taught me were spoken at my site. So I can’t really communicate my needs to people, and I can’t understand their responses. Several times I tried to buy certain foods and couldn’t. I pretty much just stayed holed up in my house except for when I absolutely needed to get out and get something. The first couple of days were pretty miserable.

But then I decided to get my act together and do something about it. Any LOST fans will appreciate this. I thought about that incredible scene at the beginning of the series where Jack is coaching Kate through stitching up his wound. He tells her about his own experience performing a life-altering surgery on a young girl. He closed his eyes, let himself feel five seconds of fear, and then got going with what needed to be done. So I finally marched next door to my neighbors’ house and politely asked if I could eat dinner with them every night because I was lonely and wanted to practice speaking Malagasy better. They more than willingly agreed, and I have now eaten with them every night since my third day at site. I help cook and clean, and I give them money for food (which they argue with me about taking, but I insist).

GOD BLESS THIS WOMAN, MADAMO FLORIA, AND HER FIVE CHILDREN FILIBERT, NDRINA, NUELINA, ANJELA, AND HASSINA. I seriously am not sure I would still be in Madagascar if it weren’t for this family. They have been SO welcoming, hospitable, helpful, and patient. Some of my neighbors and coworkers have been a little less than understanding about my poor Malagasy skills and the fact that I come from a different culture. But Floria and her kids explain things to me 80 times if necessary and try to teach me different ways to say the same thing so my vocabulary is slowly expanding. We’re getting comfortable enough with each other to joke and tease each other, so they’re rapidly helping this place start to feel like home. I have had several really challenging, frustrating days here. But after every single dinner with them, I feel happy, refreshed, and ready to face the next day. I don’t think I can possibly express the full extent of my gratitude for them.

Life still has it’s challenges, though. It feels like in the epic battle between Kristen and the universe, the universe is winning. And by “universe,” what I actually mean is, “incredibly large army of ants that has repeatedly tried to stage a coup of my house since approximately 3 seconds after I moved in.” My first night, I thought I felt a couple insect bites so I flicked on my flashlight and found literally hundreds of ants crawling in my sheets. I slide my mattress away from the floor which has helped immensely with this, though I do still find the occasional renegade. The issue since then has been with them getting into everything ELSE in my house. They are EVERYWHERE, they get into EVERYTHING, and they are RELENTLESS. I find them in my clothes, they chew through sealed packages of food, they are EVERYWHERE!! (They got into my Laughing Cow cheese. Which is wrapped in foil. Inside a cardboard box.) I keep designing new contraptions that seem fool-proof. And just when I think I’ve found the solution after a day of losing nothing to the ants…they find a way to get in. The latest design (a Pringles can covered completely with duct tape) has kept them at bay since this morning, but I guarantee they’ll figure out a way to be in it by Monday. Note to anyone sending me a package: PLEASE PUT ANYTHING YOU SEND IN HEAVY-DUTY TUPPERWARE CONTAINERS. Little do these ants know just how "maditra" (stubborn) I can be - and I am GOING to conquer them!! But enough about the ant rant.

Aside from the thousands of unwanted roommates, my home is actually quite lovely. My “house” is the middle room of three rooms that share a porch. It is made of wood, with a cement floor and a tin roof. The walls and roof aren’t sealed, so I see a fair number of lizards coming in and out, which don’t bother me except when they make this ridiculous clicking sound in the middle of the night. I had a mouse friend for my first couple of days I can hear literally EVERYTHING going on in my neighbors’ rooms, and can actually sort of see into them a bit through the tiny cracks between planks of wood (and vice versa)…so I’m kind of left hanging with the concept of privacy. And my sleeping schedule is generally determined by those around me.

Everyone wants to know about the actual living conditions. I have no electricity or running water. I fetch water from a giant underground basin by lowering buckets down into it. I don’t think it’s really a well, and I’m not exactly sure where THAT water comes from. But as long as it’s there, I suppose I don’t really have to worry. I keep a few of my electronics charged with a combination of solar chargers or tapping into the kindness of the people down the street who have a generator they turn on occasionally. (Which is usually to blast obnoxiously loud Malagasy music that can be heard for miles around…but I suppose it’s a small price to pay for keeping my phone charged.) My “shower” is a wooden stall, connected to my latrine as well as the pigpen that is in my back yard. I take bucket baths though, since there’s no running water. The entrance is the same location as the spot where a lot of…..leftovers, shall we say….from the pigpen get left behind. (Don’t even get me started on the sanitary conditions of that. I usually just hold my breath and tread carefully.) My living allowance works out to be something like $4.20 per day. A small pile of vegetables or a loaf of bread is usually the equivalent of 10-15 cents; a cup of rice is about 30 cents; a cup of peanuts, flour, or sugar is double or triple that; a roll of toilet paper is about 25 cents; mailing a letter back home is $1.00-$2.00. [WHEN I SEND YOU MAIL, I EXPECT A RESPONSE!!!!]

My clinic also doesn’t have electricity or running water. There is a pump for water. The refrigerator they keep vaccines in runs off of petrol, when they can get it. My first week here, they ran out and had to turn patients away for several days because they couldn’t keep vaccines here. This is pretty indicative of what the public health situation here is like in general. In just these two weeks, I have seen countless cases of malaria, malnutrition, dehydration, fevers, and other common ailments that are no big deal in the states but are likely to cause death here. There are REALLY young girls who are pregnant (some about 14 years old!), and mothers don’t space their births out very much. So, there’s definitely a lot of opportunities for me to do some health education intervention here. I’m still trying to figure out how to that exactly. The staff at my clinic already has things running pretty well, and they give talks on the busiest mornings with basic health messages. I’ve started helping out with these talks. That’s actually what I did yesterday for Global Handwashing Day—talked about basic hygiene/handwashing, as well as vaccination, as important ways to prevent life-threatening diseases.

This post is getting incredibly long, so I think I’ll cut it off here and update again in a few weeks when I’m back in Morondava. For now, know that I’m alive and healthy and surviving at site, even if things haven’t really gotten easy yet. There’s a joke among Peace Corps Volunteers that “some people see the glass as half empty and some see it half full; Peace Corps Volunteers see it and say, ‘I can take a bath in that!’” While I don’t think I’m at that point yet in terms of resource conservation, I do think it accurately describes how I’m trying to approach life right now. I see situations, and I don’t necessarily know what to make of them. Depending on my attitude, life can be good or life can be bad—it all depends on how I choose to use what’s in front of me.

PS: I will try to put pictures up next time - I have already been on the internet for far longer than I should have allowed on this tight budget.

P.O. BOX!!!!!: A Small Triumph in the Midst of Setbacks

SUCCESS!!!! Shayla and I just opened a P.O. box that we’re going to share here in Morondava. I’ll only be able to get my mail when I come into town to do banking, and I don’t know yet how frequently I’ll be doing that. But at any rate, you can now start sending my mail to:

Kristen Walling
B.P. 294
Morondava 619
Madagascar

It’s such a relief to have done that. We did it completely on our own (without the help of our Malagasy installers), and almost exclusively in the Malagasy language. After a rather frustrating and exhausting week, it was good to realize that we can in fact accomplish tasks on our own here. START SENDING MAIL!!!!

Which is good, since I’m finally almost ready to actually be out at site. As you may have read in my post a couple days ago, myself and the other two volunteers in my region have had quite the time trying to get situated at our respective sites. Sure enough, they hadn’t finished the construction on my latrine and shower when I tried to move in. (Rather, they’d hardly even started—they had dug the hole for the latrine but that was it.) It’s apparently finished now, though. I moved most of my things in yesterday but as everything wasn’t 100% finished, I couldn’t stay. I had a couple more courtesy visits to the police and such in Morondava to finish up today anyway. As it would turn out, I actually got pretty lucky that I couldn’t move in right away.

I’ve had a pretty nasty struggle with what the doctor assumed is acute food poisoning since Saturday night. For the first 36 hours I was making excursions to the bathroom every 20-30 minutes. Even though I’m not staying in the most posh hotel in Morondava, I definitely appreciated having a flush toilet for the experience as opposed to a hole in the ground. (Although the couple of drives to and from my site trying to get things moved in were certainly…..interesting, shall we say.) After a while the doctor put me on an antibiotic which started to turn things around pretty quickly. I’ve been improving very rapidly for the last 24 hours. I tried to eat a good meal last night but ended up just nibbling at the food. I finally got some more substantial food in me today. (Mom, I know you laughed at me for saving those granola bars I received in the package a month ago. But boy am I glad I did! Breakfast this morning was utterly delightful.)

The schedule’s still tentative because Shayla still can’t move into her house. I’m assuming at this point that I’ll be dropped off by my installers at my site whenever they are completely done with everything and ready to head back to Tana. They have to drive through my site anyway. But, depending on how things go, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just decided to go out there and drop me off tonight. Who knows. Go with the flow.

This week has certainly epitomized what I expect much of my life to be like for the next two years. Ups and downs abound (a lot more downs this week than ups), and it’s going to take a lot of willpower to stay committed to being here. But despite all of the challenges, there are still many moments of great joy. On Saturday night we walked out of our hotel to head to dinner right as the head of government’s motorcade drove by. All the windows were down, and he WAVED TO US!! FROM 15 FEET AWAY!!!! It was pretty cool . . . I’m pretty sure I’ll never get that close to any American President. And when I was moving my things in yesterday, all the kids and women in my neighborhood started crowding around my house to watch the whole production. They seemed very excited that I was moving in. So, it’s the memories like these that I need to hold on to during the moments (or days, or weeks as it may be) when I’m struggling. As the Malagasy would say, “Mazotoa!” (Enjoy!)

Love love,
Kristen

ALSO I think I got this picture upload to work. So here's what the pictures are: 1) me with my host family during training, 2) my host family enjoying the s'mores I taught them how to make one night after dinner, 3) my host family's house, 4) me giving a demonstration (in Malagasy!) to the neighborhood about clean/safe water, 5) me at swearing in, with the Malagasy and American flags behind me

More Pictures and a quick update

Greetings from Morondava!

Due to a slew of problems installing myself and the other two volunteers in the western part of the country, I find myself with a free afternoon at an internet cafe. The internet is fast enough for pictures, I hope. But it is costing me 100 Ariary per minute. My breakfast today cost 600 Ariary. By the time these are up I will have sacrificed at least 6 breakfasts. Also I'm using a French keyboard. Which is a challenge. Please forgive typos and lack of punctuation as they may appear. Point is....I expect mail from all of you to be on its way. Unfortunately I still haven't opened a PO box...angamba Latsinai (maybe Monday). In Malagasy "angamba" means maybe. But you often say it when really it means no. Same as in America.

Hmm...nevermind. Pictures seem to still be a no go. I will try once more but if not, sorry. Here's an excerpt of an email I just sent to my parents, to give you an idea of why installation is such a fiasco:

Peace Corps Washington has just altered the payment system so our money wasnt deposited to our accounts on time. Then the banks here took forever to process them. I spent 3 hours at the post office yesterday afternoon, was there till it closed; and almost still had to wait till Monday. Customer service is nonexistent here. Luckily I finally got it. Brenda, who we were supposed to drop off near Miandrivazo is still with us because she couldn't get money till yesterday either. We tried to install Shayla today. There is a family living in her house, allegedly getting evicted as we speak. So either she's making a family homeless, or she has to live in a temporary house for a month. Great. I drove though my site yesterday but we didn't stop to do anything. As of site visit I had no shower or latrine...I'd be willing to bet a lot of Ariary that they still don't exist. Also the "president" of Mcar, as well as Jerry Marcoss (biggest pop artist here) are both in Morondava this weekend. Shopping and getting around have been insane. I think I have almost everything I need though...at least to get by for a few weeks. Anything else I'm hoping I can get at my site or do without for a while.

Done With Training!

Important alert in the event that you get bored and don't read all the way through the post.....but I have a new phone #. The provider I had for training doesn't have service at my site, so I had to switch. My new number is 032 844 9699.

Woohoo! I have finished training and am now officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! And tomorrow marks the 2 month anniversary of my arrival in Madagascar! I wish I could tell you that the time has flown by – but that would be a lie. It seems like training has taken FOREVER . . . but here I am, finally, trained and ready to go. So, here’s what I’ve learned from training:

1. The Malagasy people are extremely hospitable. A staff member shared with us a Malagasy proverb that says “We are not like the Ikopa River who turns red when other rivers come to join us.” The people in my training village have done nothing but prove this to be true—they have been incredibly welcoming, friendly, and helpful. I’m always invited into people’s homes while walking down the road, and the Malagasy people are always delighted to engage in conversation. My host family has been absolutely wonderful, teaching me to cook Malagasy food, playing games with me, and trying their best to explain things to me when I’m confused (which is still about 80% of the time.)

2. Malagasy numbers and quantities will probably continue to baffle me for the duration of my service. The Malagasy people say their numbers in the opposite order from English, they specify each digit individually, and there are no abbreviations. For example, the number 428763 is recited in Malagasy as the equivalent of “three and six tens and seven hundreds and eight thousands and two ten-thousands and four hundred-thousands.” You would think such a large number would never be an issue . . . but the exchange rate is currently about $1.00 = 2100 Ariary, so I do deal with large numbers on a pretty regular basis. Describing quantity is also a bit of a challenge for me. Saying a word twice means you have less of it. At times, this is pretty straightforward. (i.e. “adola” means “crazy,” as in a person is actually crazy, but “adoladola” is how you might describe your silly friend; “mitovy” means “the same” but “mitovytovy” means “like” or “similar to”) However, this gets challenging with “kely” (“small”) and “kelykely” which is actually LARGER than small because it’s like saying “less small than small.” Very confusing when your brain still functions in your dominant language of English.

3. Peace Corps is a very humbling experience. My host family, my trainers, and people in my training village repeatedly tell me “efa mahay,” meaning already experienced/already knowledgeable. This is a lie. My 4-year-old host brother can chop up firewood with a machete. My 9-year-old host brother can build a fire and keep it going; even after two months of practice, every time I blow on embers to get a spark going again, I end up just blowing the fire out completely. Women carry buckets of water up mountains like they’re running a marathon; I still have to switch hands every couple of steps and am completely out of breath when I go less than 100 meters from my well to my house.

We finished up training by moving out of our home stays and staying at the training center for a few days. We had a few final sessions, mostly on administrative and logistical stuff, and packed up all of our luggage. On Friday all of the host families came to the training center for a thank-you celebration. Two of us trainees gave speeches - one on behalf of the education trainees, and me on behalf of the health trainees. I threw in a lot of jokes, and everyone actually laughed! A lot! I'm starting to move from being funny because I don't understand the language or culture, to being funny because I actually know how to tell a joke in Malagasy! It's a nice feeling. (Although, admittedly, most of the jokes were poking fun at myself and the other Americans.)

We came to Tana for our swearing-in ceremony this morning. Normally it's done at the Ambassador's Residence....but as there is currently no American Ambassador here, that was out of the question. But we did have the ceremony at the Peace Corps Country Director's house, and there were representatives present from both the American Embassy and the Malagasy government. It was a pretty short ceremony, but very well done. The Malagasy and American government officials alike were encouraging. It's quite the journey I have ahead of me for the next two years, and I'm feeling very anxious about it all suddenly becoming real this week. But I'm still eager to get to site and get settled in.

Tomorrow I'll start making the permanent move towards site. There are two other volunteers who will be traveling with me and getting installed before me. But by Saturday/Sunday I should be mostly settled in.

A few notes on mail/packages. I definitely appreciate everything - ESPECIALLY letters. I've received things so far from Grandma and Grandpa, the Hummels, Greta, Clara, Rachael, and Maggie. If you've sent something that hasn't arrived yet, I will get it eventually, but probably not till mid-December. The address I originally gave you will be good for the duration of my service, but now that I'm moving out to site I'll only get mail sent through there when I'm in the capital (once every several months at best). I'm planning to open a PO box when I get out to my site - hopefully I'll have the address for that by the end of the week (though no promises). Mail will also take MUCH longer now that I'm a couple days from the capital. Many of you should have mail coming to you from me already.

I have no idea what my internet access will be like over the next several weeks. But keep the emails coming, keep the letters coming! Hopefully you'll hear from me again soon!

Love love.

PS: I may try to put up a few more pictures again. But the internet and my computer are being very finicky at the moment. And quite frankly I'd rather try to use skype and call some of you than put up pictures.

Pictures!!

Yay! Pictures are up! Here's what they are: 1) The dead, headless, and featherless chicken courtesy of yours truly. You can see my host mom holding up the head in the background (which I didn't know she was doing until after the picture was taken...she thought it was hilarious! Which, let's be honest, it was.) 2) The lake that our training center overlooks. 3) Me, back in my element! This picture was taken during one of the stops on our long two-day drive out to Morondava. 4) A sunset over the beach in Morondava. 5) A baobab tree along the main road out to Morondava.

Eventually I'll try to get some up of my host family, living arrangements, etc. But I couldn't resist showing you some of the scenery I get to see!

Back from Site Visit!

Well, I’m back from my site visit, and I finally feel like I’ve returned to Africa! AND I have now seen the village where I will be spending a little over the next two years of my life! As much as I have enjoyed my host family, the village where we’ve been training has been cold, rainy, and extremely mellow – not at all what I remember from my few months in West Africa. I have loved it, though it has been oddly unfamiliar. I knew that going to an island on the other side of the continent would mean the culture and the people would be very different, yet it has been so different that it was easy to forget that I was back. But this past week in Morondava has reassured me that I am, in fact, back in a part of Africa.

On Sunday morning, I embarked on my journey with Felicia and Shayla (two other trainees), Eddy (a PC staff member), and Andry (a PC driver). We drove to Miandrivazo, the biggest city about halfway between Tana and Morondava. Felicia’s site is just outside Miandrivazo, so we dropped her off and the rest of us continued on to Morondava. We stopped in my town for a few minutes on the way since it’s along the main road. Over the next couple of days I made short trips back to my village (once with Eddy, once on my own), but I spent probably about 3 hours total in the village. I was able to meet the mayor of my town, a midwife at the clinic where I’ll be working, and a couple of other people. I’m still a little bit confused as to my living arrangements, because it appears that the original plans had to be scrapped (I’m not exactly sure why). But I think the “house” that’s going to be mine is actually the middle room in a row of three houses with a shared porch. It is very small—smaller than your standard double room in a college residence hall—and will somehow have to fit a bed, table & chairs, makeshift stove, and dresser. Also probably not ideal for privacy…but, the people who I will share a porch with seem very friendly, and having neighbors will definitely make my house more secure and help me with integrating into the community.

My town is about a 90-minute taxi-brousse ride from Morondava (more on taxi-brousses in a moment). I actually spent most of the site visit in Morondava because my village doesn’t have a hotel. Shayla and I shared a hotel in Morondava each night, and spent the days exploring the city, hanging out near the beach, and trying to accomplish various site visit tasks (pricing out items in the market that we’ll need to buy upon installation, etc.) It’s a big tourist town since it’s the easiest point to get to and from a lot of national parks, river trips, and other places. As with any tourist spot, it has certain amenities for those willing to pay (in this case, places with hot water, A/C, internet access, pizza, ice cream), but also has an authentic culture for those willing to seek it out. So, it will be a fun, occasional getaway on the days I’m allotted to go into the city for banking and other business. Also, FYI if your Madagascar geography is still as mixed up as mine is…other than Shayla who is a couple hours from me, I’m about 6 hours away from Felicia, who will be the next closest volunteer, and another 5 hours or so beyond that from other volunteers. So I’m fairly removed from anyone I know, but that will just mean I’ll be forced to integrate more quickly into my new home!

Tomorrow morning I head back to my training village, and I’m pretty sure we won’t be back in Tana until the end of training/swearing-in/installation during the last week of September. [quick interjection: please send me mail!!!!] But before I go, I’d like to add a little more about life here in general.

Similar to the Ghana tro-tros, which you’ve probably heard a million stories from me about, the easiest and cheapest form of transportation here is in taxi-brousses. These are 15-passenger vans that have been converted so that nearly twice as many people can fit in them. Many of the seats are sideways, or backwards, or are constructed to flip up and down easily to allow passengers to slide in and out…..in other words, MASS CHAOS. But, they are my favorite way to get around. They’re usually not in the greatest condition, every type of person travels in them, you can usually find several animals (chickens, goats, zebu) either inside of them or tied to the top, and consequently there is usually some ridiculous incident that transpires during the journey. During one of my trips to my village the other day, I counted the number of passengers that were in the vehicle. 27. 27 people in a 15-passenger van. But, they are the perfect place to practice the Malagasy language and have pleasant interactions with people. It’s so nice to be back in a place that uses such an entertaining form of transportation!

I’m going to try to put a few pictures up on here, but the internet connection has been spotty so I’m making no promises. In the meantime, write letters, give my phone a call, or you’ll hear from me again in about a month!

Love love.

How to Walk Up a Hill

What luck! I'm back in Tana for the night before heading out to my site visit, so I have internet! I head out first thing tomorrow morning to start driving out to my permanent site, so I get to stay at the MEVA (transit house) in Tana. For security reasons, we're not allowed to travel at night, so it's going to take two days to get out to Morondava, the biggest city near my site. It's a 12-17 hour drive usually, depending on the weather/season/condition of the road, so it'll probably be nice to break up over two days anyway.

Although I'll be staying at a hotel in Morondava, on Tuesday and Wednesday I'll take day excursions about an hour and a half away to my permanent site (again, I can't publicly say the name of my exact site). I have certain things I'll need to do - introduce myself to the mayor and police in my town; check on my house to see what (if anything) needs to be added/repaired/etc; visit the clinic where I'll be doing a lot of my work; and hopefully I'll have time to meet some of my coworkers, neighbors, etc. I'm excited mostly just to see the city where I'm going to spend the next two years...but I'm also keeping my fingers crossed for a few days of some hopefully warmer and less rainy weather.

People have asked about the weather. It's fairly sporadic and the sky changes really quickly. It's usually pretty cold and rainy - remember, it's winter here - and it gets really cold at night. But there have been a couple of sunny days which have been GORGEOUS, and the sunny days seem to be increasing in frequency. The locals promise that the weather will only get more pleasant over the next month. I wouldn't be opposed to a few more sunny days. On clear nights, the sky is filled with the brightest stars I have ever seen in my life, and the Milky Way absolutely glows. It's too bad I can't really stay out after dark to look at them, but I can get a few glimpses here and there. When I'm at sight I'll have a little more freedom for things such as stargazing :)

The highlight of this past week was probably Sunday morning, when my family taught me how to kill a chicken. I knew this was likely to happen during training, and I was actually pretty excited about it. I'll probably be more likely to eat meat at site if I prepare it myself, and I thought it would be interesting to learn. During breakfast that day, my host dad pointed out the live chicken sitting in a basket that I had not noticed the day before. He said it was a small chicken and had only cost 3,000 Ariary (less than $1.50). I asked if I could learn to kill it, and they told me yes. I assumed initially that this would be a few weeks later, when it had grown bigger. I quickly realized that the chicken was actually going to be our lunch and that I would be killing it that very morning.

While I hesitate to glorify the slaughter itself, it wasn't as bad as one might guess and the event in general was rather funny. My host mom basically had me stand on the chicken (one foot over its wings, one over its feet), hold its neck, and slice off the head. Not really knowing what I was doing, and wielding a knife I thought far too large for the task at hand (really, "small machete" would be a more fitting term than "knife"), I made a fairly big mess of things and created a bit of chaos. We stayed in the kitchen rather than go outside, which struck me as odd but having never killed a chicken before I figured it wasn't my place to suggest otherwise. Since I was standing on the bird, it obviously couldn't run around with its head cut off as the expression goes, but it did wiggle rather uncomfortably under my feet for several minutes. After a few moments of stillness, my host mom would poke it to see if it started moving again. Though my Malagasy is still very limited, I do know the words for finished ("vita") and chicken ("akoho"), so I kept saying "akoho vita, akoho vita," which my host family thought was hilarious. It seems I am a constant source of amusement for them. Although, I wouldn't have it any other way since my host brothers never cease to amuse me either. Anyway, after the chicken died my host mom showed me how to remove the feathers and take it all apart. We later enjoyed a delicious lunch and dinner.

Aside from the chicken, this past week was pretty much the usual schedule - language class, tech sessions, administrative and medical stuff, etc. I would say the language barrier continues to be my biggest challenge. I'm amazed at how quickly I'm able to retain information, but I still obviously can't have very extensive or insightful conversations with anyone. It's funny the things I can say. In addition to learning basic things I need to know for my own survival (greetings, food, directions), I'm also learning health-tech-related vocabulary, safety and security, and various grammatical things. So as I flip through my notebook, I realize I can string together odd sentences like "she doesn't have AIDS yet," or "the police officer shot the thief." I know with time and patience I'll develop more fluency, so I just need to keep at it.

There is a Malagasy proverb that says "If you start up a hill like a young person, you will finish old; if you start up a hill like an old person, you will finish young." My frequent hikes up and down the mountain every day have taught me that in the most literal sense this is true. I have a lot more energy at the top if I go slowly and take small steps on the way up versus when I hurry or take big steps. Beyond the literal, though, these words are proving true for life here as well. It's a lot easier to take things one step at a time, one task at a time, one day at a time than to focus on too much all at once. Hopefully I can keep this in mind over the next couple of years.

Well, I want to get some sleep before heading off to site visit in the morning. Miss you all!
Love love.

Alive and Well in Madagascar!!!!

Manahoana daholo (Hello all of you)!

It has been an absolutely wonderful first couple of weeks here in Madagascar!! I am having a blast with my fellow trainees as well as all of the Malagasy people I’m meeting. So much has happened in my first two weeks that I obviously can’t tell you everything, but I’d like to share several highlights and first impressions. (Note: this is a realllllllly long entry.)

After what seemed like endless days of traveling (approximately 40 hours), we finally arrived at the Ivato Airport outside of Antananarivo (Tana). PC staff assisted us through customs, shuttled us into vans, and took us to the MEVA (regional PC transit house). We spent the night of Thursday the 22nd where we had a very fast couple of safety/security, medical, and language sessions. Then that Friday we went to the village where we’ll be staying for the duration of training. I’m not allowed to give the specific location of myself or other volunteers….but I can say I’m not too far from the capital.

The village where I am is an absolutely GORGEOUS town in the plateau region. There are tree-covered hills rolling in all directions, connected by mud/dirt roads and paths and freckled with small neighborhoods of farms and houses. There are also rice paddies and small ponds at the base of all of the hills. There is a small market, a post office, a mayor’s office, and a couple of small shops in the center of town. From there, several dirt roads wind up the hills in different directions. Most of us trainees are in clusters along one of these roads. My house is at the top of a hill, what I would guess is 1-2km from the center of town. All of the host families came to the primary school to greet us and help escort us to our respective houses. My mom (Lala, though I’m supposed to call her Mama out of respect) came and showed me the way to my house, where I met my host dad (Jean de Dieu, but call him Dada) and two younger brothers (Herizo, age 9 and Eric, age 5). They primarily raise pigs for a living, but we also have 3 rabbits and one day there was a random zebu in the garden. My host dad disappeared the next day for a week, and the best I could gather in my very limited Malagasy is that he was in Tana to sell the zebu.

[Interjection #1: Peace Corps is not the job for you if you need to know what’s going on more than 20% of the time.]

To say that the first couple of weeks of my home-stay have been a fiasco would be quite the understatement. Although I’m learning quickly, I can only speak short, broken, and usually incorrect sentences in Malagasy; having a real conversation is entirely out of the question. I have gotten pretty good at making silly faces and shadow puppets by candlelight, which my host brothers find hilarious. Every time I try to teach them an American game, they think I’m trying to play a Malagasy game and just play that instead. However, I did successfully teach them War last night! (Having finally mastered a few words such as good, very good, bad, better, you, me, the same, and some numbers, I felt up to the challenge.) It’s also been hard because they speak Standard Malagasy in this region and I switched over to learning the dialect they’ll speak at my site, so that adds to the communication barrier. In general, Malagasy people can understand each other even though they speak 18 different dialects….but that definitely assumes some mastery of correct grammar and pronunciation. I do keep reminding myself that I’ve only been at my home-stay for two weeks now, so it’s OK that I’m still far from fluent!

As I expected, my house has no electricity or running water. It’s dark by about 6pm, so I use a combination of candles and flashlights to study, read, and journal at night. My family usually sends me to bed between 7 and 8 every night, and I usually go to sleep by 9 (cultural note on that in a minute). My bathroom is a pit latrine about 20 steps from the house, surrounded by a tarp. The “shower” is also a small stall surrounded by a tarp. There is a well down a hill behind my house, which I walk down several mornings a week to get a bucket of water. It’s not very far, but the biggest challenge is trying to walk up and down the hill without slipping in the mud since it has rained almost every single day. They are modest accommodations, but honestly are much better than what I had been expecting and was mentally prepared for, so I’m content.

Regardless of where you are in Madagascar, people probably won’t go out after it’s dark (i.e. 6 or 7 pm). The reasoning behind this varies greatly depending on who you ask. I had read in several places before my departure that witches, evil spirits, and rabid dogs are the primary concerns, though each region, village, or even family may have its own explanation. While I’m still not sure, I get the sense that my family observes this practice more out of tradition than fear of anything (my mom laughed at the word “mpamosavy”—witch—when it came up in my flashcards). Well anyway, one can imagine that not being able to leave the house after 7pm or so could create some challenges…..especially when the “kabone” (pit latrine) is in a stall separate from the house. Enter the “po” (bucket with lid). Any bodily or hygienic function that needs to occur at night goes in the po, which is emptied the next morning into the kabone and then cleaned. As I was well aware of this practice, I approached my first night at my home-stay with a cautious mindset, fully prepared to time my bathroom excursions accordingly and thus try to avoid having to use the po. After dinner my family showed me how to close and lock my door, and before I really realized what was happening I was suddenly in my room (clearly for the night), nowhere near the kabone, and needing to take care of business. I’ll leave the details to your imagination, but I will say that as I had not yet had any digestive problems and didn’t particularly want to give them reason to start, there I was on my first night….caught in a rather impressive balancing act over my po.

[Interjection #2: Madagascar is not the country for you if you have no sense of humor or ability to laugh at yourself.]

Well anyway, I made it through the night alive and well, woke up to a delicious breakfast, and met back up with my fellow trainees for some more orientation.

For the duration of training, all 42 of the people in my training class stay in the same village and surrounding neighborhoods. The PC Madagascar program is Community-Based Training, which means that most of our training is actually directly in the village and not at a PC site. One day a week we do all have sessions at the Peace Corps Training Center (PCTC) that pertain to the entire group (vaccinations/medical info, administrative stuff, safety & security, etc.) We will have the occasional overnight there if we have field trips the following day, but for the most part we are with our families. We have training all day Monday-Friday and only in the morning on Saturdays. Every day is a bit different, but a typical day is as follows:

around 6:00am (perhaps earlier): rise and shine!
8:00-12:00 (with 30 minute break): Malagasy Language
12:00-2:00: lunch back at host family’s house
2:00-4:30: full-group sessions, or technical training (Health for me, Education for others)
evening: head back home for dinner. I’m usually sent to my room by 7 or 7:30 (which I’m actually OK with since it’s about the only time of the day I have to study Malagasy, write in my journal, or read)

It’s an exhausting schedule since the sessions (especially Language) are jam-packed with information, and since it means four times a day I’m hiking down or up the hill to my house (about a 20-30 minute walk each way depending on which part of town I have to go to). Sometimes we’re in schools or community buildings, sometimes we’re in people’s houses. And though it’s exhausting, I’m still loving it—the immersion from not only the home-stay but also the constant interaction in the community is definitely the best way to start transitioning into what my life will be like for the next 27 months.

I’ve been eating reasonably well so far; my family really takes care of me. The books ARE NOT KIDDING when they say the Malagasy eat rice 3 times a day. Every meal involves rice and “loaka” (side-dishes). Loaka can mean anything from a hearty vegetable soup with spaghetti noodles to salad to chunks of beef or pork to shredded carrots to beans to eggs to French fries or anything else. But rice is always the main course, and the loaka is scooped on top of it to give it flavor.

[Interjection #3: Madagascar is not the country for you if you don’t like combining the foods on your plate.]

Peace Corps medical staff have extensive sessions with the host families about our diet and food preparation, and my family seems to have really taken their suggestions to heart. I have a fairly varied diet, and I’m DEFINITELY getting my share of vegetables. If I were to have any wish, it would probably be that I have a bit more fruit….but it is the middle of winter here, and I do still usually get an orange or a banana every day, so I really can’t complain.

Also, believe it or not….I AM THE TALLEST MEMBER OF MY MALAGASY FAMILY!!!! I had read that the Malagasy people as a whole were fairly short, but it didn’t quite register in my brain as I myself am only 5’4” (and a quarter!) However, I’m not kidding when I tell you I am taller than my four host family members. YES!!


I have internet today because I am in the capital. Since we received our site assignments last week, Peace Corps brought us into the city to open bank accounts according to what our site will be. I probably won’t have internet again till the end of training, or close to the end of it at least (i.e. the last week of September). If an opportunity comes up, it will be a nice surprise. I do have a phone now. Reception is very sporadic in our training village, and since I have no electricity I can’t charge it very often. But if you want to talk, give it a shot. (Just please try to remember that I’m 7 HOURS ahead of Eastern time, and that I go to bed by 9pm every night.) If you’re dialing from a landline, dial 011 261 34 439 7767. If you’re using Skype, the number should just be 034 439 7767.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, PLEASE EMAIL/FACEBOOK ME YOUR MAILING ADDRESS. I did not bring very many with me; I ran out of time when packing. Rather than trying to figure out whose I do and don’t have, just assume that I don’t have yours and please send it to me so I can write to you! Since mail takes at least 3 weeks, please make sure it’s an address that will be valid starting in September. Also, please write to me! I promise to write back to anyone who writes me. So far I have received one card from my mom and one from Greta (both were received yesterday, FYI).

As I mentioned, I do know my permanent site. Since this post is already REALLY long, I’ll tell you about it some other time. I go on a site visit starting next week so I’ll know lots more after that anyway. But if you’re curious and want to look up some info yourself, look up Morondava. That is the closest major city to where I’ll be. (By the way, IT’S AWESOME AND I’M THRILLED!!!!!!!)

The internet is far too slow to upload pictures right now, but I’ll try to get some up eventually. For now, you’ll just have to be content with the knowledge that I am happy, healthy, and loving my life here so far. Every day has its challenges, but every day also has its blessings. A few days ago there was a GIGANTIC rainbow stretching across the whole sky. It’s impossible to stay frustrated for long when this country has so much to offer. So long for now!

Love love,
Kristen

Madagascar, Here I Come!!

In my complete lack of any website-making knowledge whatsoever, I apparently had several settings making things difficult for some of you. I think I have now corrected these problems - you should be able to comment on the posts even without having a blogger profile, and you should see options on the left to add an email subscription or RSS feeds. Hopefully things are easier for you guys now!

There are 41 of us in my training class - about half are in the community health project with me and half are in education. We all checked into the hotel yesterday and had about 4 hours of pre-departure sessions. Sessions included talking about some of our anxieties & aspirations, reflecting once again on our commitment to Peace Corps service, and covering logistical travel info. Then everyone split into groups to go to dinner and hang out for the night. I really like the other volunteers I've met so far - it seems like I'm with a group of pretty down-to-earth people who care about similar things as me and are ready for an adventure. And boy, is it going to be an adventure!! Since I'm facebook friends with a few of the volunteers, some of them noticed my nickname and have already started calling me Wallie, which has also now been expanded to "WallieWallieBingBang." Haha!

In less than 3 hours we'll be checking out of the hotel and heading to the airport. But before I go, I want to leave you with the words of one of my favorite characters from The Office:

"I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me." - Dwight K. Schrute

HOW TO SEND ME MAIL!!

Hello again! Since everyone wants to know how to stay in touch over the next 27 months, here's all the info you should need for writing me letters. Peace Corps tells me that snail mail is the best way to communicate back and forth. While I may open a local P.O. box once I have my permanent site, the following address will be valid for my entire service:


Kristen Walling, PCV
Bureau du Corps de la Paix
B.P. 12091
Poste Zoom Ankorondrano
Antananarivo 101
Madagascar

I've heard a lot of different suggestions for how to help make sure that the mail gets there. Peace Corps says that sending padded envelopes is better than boxes because boxes usually have heavier customs taxes. Sending things via airmail (write both "airmail" and "par avion" on it) is likely to arrive faster, though is also probably more expensive. For packages specifically, current volunteers recommend declaring on the customs form that the value is $20 or less, and that it contains religious material. (Writing "God is good" or similar phrases is apparently a good idea.) I guess all of this makes it less prone to "sticky fingers."

I also say....don't bother sending things through express or priority mail. It will be crazy expensive, probably significantly more money than whatever is contained in the package. I don't mind waiting for things, and there's a good chance that after training I won't even be in the city where my mail will be delivered to very often. Sending it through faster services will likely mean you spend extra money for it to sit and wait for me.

If there happens to be some small, time-sensitive item to have to send, you can use DHL. (I personally recommend avoiding this just because it will be so ridiculously expensive!) The address for sending anything via DHL is:


Kristen Walling, PCV
c/o U.S. Peace Corps Madagascar
Villa les Lierres
Lot IIk76, Bonnet Invandry
Antananarivo
Madagascar

You'll also need to include the PC phone #: 261-20-224-3820.

Since I haven't even left yet, it's a lot easier for me to say that I'll be fine without a lot of things. But it's probably true. So, if you are inclined to send things, remind yourself that I don't need much. What I'd appreciate more than anything is letters and cards so I know what you're up to.

It can take several weeks or even months for things to arrive....so start writing me letters now and you may get a response by Thanksgiving!

My Best Answer

Well, this is it! One week from today I'll be getting on the first of many flights to Madagascar to start a 27 month gig with the Peace Corps. This Saturday I'm headed to DC to visit all of my college friends for one last hoorah. Monday I check in at a hotel in Georgetown and officially begin as a Peace Corps Trainee. We have a whirlwind 24 hours of what Peace Corps calls "Staging": paperwork, shots, and covering basic info like safety/logistics/etc. On Tuesday evening just before 5:00 myself and all of the other volunteers beginning with my stage (I think 20-30 of us?) fly out. We will land for a stop in Dakar, Senegal on Wednesday, continuing onto Johannesburg, South Africa. We have an overnight in Joburg and another flight for a few hours on Thursday to arrive at the Ivato airport, just outside Antananarivo (aka Tana, the capital). We'll spend a night at a Peace Corps site in Tana, have a quick Malagasy language class, and move in with our host families on Friday. Chaotic doesn't even begin to describe how I imagine my first few days going, but I'm thrilled nonetheless.

I'll then spend the next 10-11 weeks living with my host family and training at a site about an hour outside Tana. I've seen some things leading me to believe we're not supposed to say publicly where we are, so for now I'll leave out the name of the city until I get further directions or approval from Peace Corps. Training will consist of intense language courses, health and security measures, and technical things I'll need to know for when I move out to my permanent site at the end of September. While I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing yet, I have been assigned to the community health sector. Some of the biggest concerns in Madagascar are infectious disease (including HIV/AIDS) and sanitation, so I imagine many of my projects may involve these issues. I will probably be placed near a clinic and do some work there, as well as other community outreach/education projects. Beyond that, I just need to wait and see!

Since I decided last September to begin my application, people have asked me repeatedly why I
chose the Peace Corps, why Africa, why such a long time? While I don't know what I plan to do with the rest of my life, I know that I am interested in international relations, specifically in Africa, and possibly relating to public health. Tentatively I'm planning on pursuing a masters degree in public health, and I thought living abroad and working for an extended period of time in the field would give me a ton of knowledge and experience. My career advisor at American encouraged me to look at Peace Corps because it's a great foot in the door for future careers that may interest me with the State Department, the UN, USAID, etc. Additionally, if I complete the full 27 months, I'll get some benefits for grad school and/or hiring in federal positions.

Beyond that, though, I'm kind of in it for the whole experience. I don't entirely know what to expect, and there's something about that that's just really exciting. I think the truly best way to describe my feelings right now is to use an excerpt from a book I read during my semester in Ghana. The book Somebody's Heart is Burning by Tanya Shaffer is an absolutely phenomenal read. It's Shaffer's travel memoir about her experience volunteering for several months in Ghana and then traveling around much of West Africa and a few other parts of the continent. She articulates so beautifully many of the frustrations, joys, emotions, and interactions I had during my semester, most of which I didn't understand at the time and feel like I still continue to process even now, over a year later. I imagine my Peace Corps experience will be much the same way: never fully comprehending what is going on around me, and figuring its meaning out at some later date. So, it is from the following passage that I draw the inspiration for the title of this blog:

"Sitting on buses and tro-tros, I find myself repeatedly telling strangers the story of my life. Sometimes, hearing myself talk, I feel as if I'm doing it more for my own benefit than for the hapless individual sitting beside me, listening with such polite attention. Some need seems to drive my narration, as if through the telling I'm constructing a self-image that I can anchor myself to and believe in. I want the events to be linear and the lessons cumulative, building on each other like Legos: this led me here, and I learned this, and then I was here, and I was lost, and I found this.

Life, of course, was never so orderly. It was more like my long hair used to be after a ride in the open back of a truck: an ungovernable tangle. Growth wasn't like that either. Growth happened when I wasn't looking. It happened later, after I'd given up hope. And love wasn't like that: so transparent and unequivocal, a balance sheet of pros and cons. Life was life and love was love. All the explanations came later."

So, there you have it! I'll update this site a couple more times this week when I dig out the info that has my mailing address, etc. After this week, though, I probably won't get a chance to update more than once a month or so....so I highly recommend subscribing to the blog so it will automatically send you an email when I update. Save yourself the trouble of stalking my site all the time!