Being in an urban environment, I daily encounter contrasts that inevitably make me feel more like an outsider than ever before in this country. The mad and the sane frequent the same streets, the gaudily rich are neighbors to the destitute, and the healthy unwittingly flaunt their fortune to many a Quasimodo. When I go jogging, my turning point is the richest hotel in the city, La Note Bleue. Just outside its walls sit camps of women who crush rock from under tattered lean-tos. Cool blue swimming pool overlooking the bay; little piles of rock sold by the roadside.

After intentionally seeking a drastic change in scene, I have gone from the southernmost tip of Madagascar to the northernmost. I am now living in the port city of Diego to teach English courses at the University of Ankarana until high school classes begin again in my small southern town. From the capital of Antananarivo I traveled by taxi-brousse, the equivalent of a small mini-van that by the South’s packed-produce-truck-turned-taxi-brousse standards should have been comparatively more comfortable. But it wasn’t. Since most seats were broken, I supported the full weight of the sleeping man in front of me with my knees for the majority of the 26 hour journey. Though fatigued and a little bruised, I was proud I’d made the journey on my own.

When my university supervisor drove me the several-mile journey outside of town to the campus, I was made speechless by the scene before me. Rows of concrete dormitories loomed like the lost teeth of a now snaggle-toothed giant, cavity ridden by neglect. At random, worms of metal beams squirmed out of the buildings’ sides. Plastic, sometimes scavenged plywood or corrugated metal, plugged up the gaping windows or the enormous chinks of wall that had long ago fallen away. Since there was no where else to dispose of it, dirty water, leftover food, and trash thrown from the dorm balconies gave the only proof that the place was not abandoned but haunted by students. Several times I have seen brave souls nearly get rained on by filth falling from an upper story when passing through the landfill cradled between two buildings.

Since the university is perched on a high hill on the edge of the bay, the wind blasts from the sea and batters the small congregation of buildings in a ceaseless gale. The grass is unkempt and high and wind tousled. The way the wind oppresses in a constant, punishing slap up there, it’s no wonder many of my students complain of being ill, considering quality of their shelter. After several problematic attempts, I dare to wear a skirt to class anymore.
Sometimes I laugh at myself for what I had expected to see driving up in the supervisor’s car. It being the only significant venue for higher education in the north of Madagascar, I had expected the university to have a recreation center, immaculate classrooms without the dead trails of recently pulled vines running up the walls, and white. I’d expected a place clean enough that it would be white despite the red earth. A recreation center. What was I thinking?

Before I started walking to and from the university, I took taxis to avoid walking into class with unprofessional signs of sweat on my face and under my arms. Now I go by foot, since simply being punctual to class far surpasses any expectations of professionalism here. One morning, a taxi lifted me off to school blasting American pop music so loud the driver hardly heard the destination I was calling out to him. Along the way, the driver stopped for a mother who was holding her bedraggled-looking teenager daughter by the waist. I very soon saw the reason for their awkward embrace when the daughter, though trembling to control her body, fell into the cab, her head lolled against my shoulder. Some illness was making her so drunk with weakness she could keep eyes only half open. Her mother was trying to pull her daughter back to her own body, to cradle a young woman made a child again in sickness. I tried to explain that didn’t mind the girl leaning on me, but the mother took her off of me anyway.

All the while scuttling through the streets, the driver turned up the volume on the ridiculously happy bouncy pop songs. “Come on, Barbie! Let’s go party!” The lyrics bellowed from another world of skating rinks and college parties. Over and over my mind repeated in a mantra, “Kill the music! Kill the music!” With the limp bodied girl, her calm, doting mother, me trying not to feel so useless in the back seat and the indifferent driver in the front, there was no room for such music, an exuberant, foreign sound that filled the tiny car with the choking smoke of too many juxtaposed things in too small a space. Once the two women had been delivered to their home and I to the university, I nearly bolted from the taxi but didn’t only to avoid looking like a fool.

A World of Contradictions remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Honey Harvest remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Tsihombe Runway remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The Town with No Room remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Hello, again,

Training has ended after two and a half months of intense language classes, of often silent meals with my host family, and of every kind of survival training from pounding our own peanut butter and killing chickens to how to avoid malaria. I've already seen my site in the southernmost tip of Madagascar, and in a few days I'll return to ******, where I'll live for two years. The journey begins with a plane ride form Antananarivo to ***** and continues by taxi-brousse for about eight hours, depending on the road. For the site visit, , however, I was lucky enough to travel in the truck of the Chef Cisco from ***** with my friend Travis, who will teach there, Mike, my site partner in the environmental sector, Joe, an environmental volunteer working an hour outside of my site, and in the covered bed of the truck with the luggage, coconuts, and sugar cane sat Donne, the surveillant of the Lycee (school) at my site. We noticed that the high, green mountain peaks quickly tapered into rolling dry hills, and soon there was no great elevation at all, just a wide expanse of alien trees. The silhouette of the octopus tree at sunset with it's tentacle-like branches seeming to reach for some unseen prey in the sky, along with an occasional baobab tree and other spiny fingered plants, made the landscape resemble an old coral reef abandoned by the sea. We continued to Travis's town, where we ate chicken on a bed of rice at the hotel and became better acquainted with one another. The next day we left Travis at his house and drove the last stretch of the journey to my town. As we neared my town, a light but steady rain began to fall, and Chef Cisco looked at me through the rear-view mirror to say that I had brought the shower despite the dry season. "You bring good luck when it rains during your arrival," Mike whispered beside me. "It rained when I first arrived, too."

I only spent a few nights in my town, and though there is much to tell, my adventures continued in Manjakandriana. And I assume I'll have enough opportunity in two years to formally introduce you to my new home.

The day I returned from the deep south, all of the Peace Corps trainees and staff were invited to a famadiana, the "turning of the bones" ceremony. The preparations for the event begin when a family member is visited by a dead loved one while he/she sleeps. The dead ancestor says it's bones are cold and implores it's living relatives to wrap the bones in fresh lambas (cloth). Before the body/bodies are exhumed, a feast with no caloric comparison takes place, in which droves of people come with an envelope of money in exchange for a meal of "vary be menaka" (rice with a lot of oil) at the house of the ancestor's living relative. Vats of rice circulate long communal tables situated under a tent and are followed by heaping bowls of beef and pork. Animal fat and oil are ladled all the away up to the rim of the bowl.

With each bite of food, the oil coats your tongue and sticks to the roof of your mouth as would peanut butter. Though it glides easily down the throat, the vary be menaka sits heavily and uneasily in the stomach and leaves your mouth and hands a waxy finish that no soap can tackle.

With the eating done, the parade continues to the tomb with a lively band of drums, flutes, and 'Gasy guitars. The "mamo" or drunken men dance atop the massive above-ground tomb, while other men drive their shovels into the stone and dirt-filled mouth of the tomb.

When all is cleared away, the wrapped bodies are carried out overhead; the people underneath the burden dance all the while. In the case of famadiana I saw, nearly 50 bodies were exhumed and re-wrapped, and though the ceremony continued for hours upon hours in the drizzling rain, the electric current of human vitality throbbed on in a trance-like state and never waned.

I watched 30 of the 50 corpses being re-wrapped, my awe at the beauty of this tradition, this exuberant bridge between the living and the dead, was overwhelmed by my soaked clothes and fatigue from the journey down south. The few volunteers who stayed behind, however, had the honor of wrapping and dancing with the ancestors. I find enumerating regrets to be pointless and wasteful, but I do wish I'd stood in the rain a little longer that day.

I undertook my final grand adventure in the north with my neny (Malagasy Mom). I took my dada's (Malagasy Dad) place in a wedding invitation. Expecting a humble, traditional Malagasy wedding replete with a meal of vary (rice) and some dancing, I was surprised by the lavish wedding and reception that was held in Antananarivo, but I was more baffled by the fact that neither the bride nor groom, though Malagasy, didn't speak their native language, as they had lived in France for most of their lives. It felt strange to be whisked away from my daily routine of washing dishes in my host family's dark kitchen to dancing in a sparkling ballroom and eating a five course meal. I almost felt guilty for taking part in such extravagance, but my conflicted feelings were only compounded when riding in a shuttle van to the home of my dada's brother. Lining the road slept vegetable vendors under plastic tarps in numbers resembling post-battle scenes from a Civil War film. The lingering taste of wedding cake in my mouth soured with horror at the blatant juxtaposition between rich and poor and the expansive gap in between. I'm supposed to drift in this middle zone and build a bridge between these extremes with an English class. I now know how intimidated David must have felt when he faced Goliath. My mind settled when we arrived at my Uncle's home. With little space to sleep, my neny and I crawled into a child's bed together and giggled at our closeness as we fell asleep. I reminded myself as I shifted uncomfortably that David killed Goliath after all.

Strange travels, a Wedding remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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My training schedule has been intense, as we just finished 2 and 1/2 weeks of teaching training. For the 1st week, I was having so many discipline problems with the students that I wondered if I actually had the talent to teach. But after some advice from the trainers, I learned how to give the naughty students a death glare, move those who talked to their neighbor to another desk, and yell at them to be quiet. So far, these tactics seem to work, and I now have confidence that I have a place in the classroom. The best day was when I taught the 7 year olds a lesson about the environment. My vocabulary included "to drop" and "to pick up", but none of the kids seemed to be paying attention as they were focused on something under a girl's desk. I told the girl to pick up what I thought to be her pen, but the commotion continued on that side of the room. As I continued to try to explain the vocabulary, the girl kicked something out from under her desk in my direction: a dead mouse. I was so flustered that I unthinkingly picked up the mouse by its tail and kept pointing at the word " to pick up" on the board to illustrate that what I was doing was relevant to the lesson. Then I walked the mouse body over to the trash can, all the while pointing and repeating the words " to drop".

The women in my homestay family have particularly befriended me and have shown me how to survive here cooking and cleaning-wise. You'll be proud to know that I can wash my clothes without a machine and can make my own peanut butter by pounding it with a blunt staff by hand. The fresh peanut butter is delicious. We eat it with watery rice for breakfast, which sounds revolting, but it is actually quite good. It's better than eating the rice plain. Alas, the eating of rice can be tiring, since we eat it 3 times a day. But there are always side dishes (laoka) to eat with it. Believe it or not, but they eat a lot of collard greens here, and I look forward to them every time my family buys them at the market.

I guess you guys have already heard that I'll be living in the southernmost tip of Madagascar. The location isn't quite a desert, though it is very dry there and the vegetation is called spiny forest. Don't tell mom, but turtles abound in my region, because it is fady (forbidden) to eat them. In ancient times, it is said that a turtle carried a woman lost in the forest on it's back all the way to her home, and so it is highly disrespectful to kill them.

Teaching by hook or crook remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Hello all,

Since coming to Madagascar, there have been several instances in which I've forgotten my name; once when I scaled a mountain outside Manjakandriana, where I found a royal tomb and a lone tree on the deforested and windswept peak. Again, I forgot when standing with other volunteers in the house of a woman whose godfather had died. We offered our condolences with money and a polite hand shake, telling her in low, solemn tones in Malagasy not to be sad. Though the room was dimly lilt, I saw her expression wore the same shock, the same quiet despair I've seen at funeral wakes and at gravesides in Georgia. These feelings of disembodiment or loss of self accompany moments in which your American experiences and American identity synchronize with Malagasy culture most unexpectedly. All at once you feel isolated in a foreign setting and alternately enveloped in the commonalities that unite us. And in the midst of this contradiction, I continually search for my name in all three of the bowls of rice I eat each day, hoping that by the last spoonful I'll be closer to equilibrating the raw material that is me to the enormity of simply being human.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

I've lived with my Malagasy host family for two months now, and like most true, realistic familial situations, I've experienced more joys and frustrations with them than with any other aspect of my life here. After having established myself as a family member by integrating myself into the daily chores, I thought it time to cook a meal after the second week. Chili seemed like the most appropriate cross cultural exchange, since it's so distinctly American and because I'd been craving it in this cold and wet highland weather. The responsibility of preparing the evening meal meant much more to me than simply putting food on the table; it was an opportunity for me to graduate from my linguistic and social status of an infant to a competent participant in the nourishment of my host family. With the help of my sister, I practiced bargaining for the ingredients in the market, and with pride I demonstrated with excited gestures to my family how the flavors would blend and complement one another. My neny (mom) and rahabavy (sister) helped me chop the vegetables and sprinkle the sakay (chili powder) into the broth. I presented the dish to the table with pride. "Here's a dish they'll tell their neighbors about. New flavors they've been missing all this time," I thought. My dada(dad) helped himself first. As he gingerly touched the spoon to his tongue, the indifferent expression on his face curdled into a scowl of disgust. His spoon clattered as he dropped it into the bowl. The table remained silent. I waited for his apology: that it wasn't to his liking due to being too spicy for his taste; but he only stewed in his discontent and made movements of the mouth so as to divest ownership of his own tongue. In a fluster, my sister ran to the kitchen to cook her father an omelette, but in hurrying, she forgot to clean the pan that had cooked French toast earlier in the day. Again, my dada spit out the syrupy sweet egg with a grunt. For the rest of the meal I stared at my plate while my mom and sister made apologies for the pastor. He, however, didn't muster a one. After clearing the table, I helped my sister, Hasina, wash the dishes. "Maybe chili wasn't a good idea," I tried to explain in Malagasy. Hasina replied, "Maybe eggs and sugar aren't good either." Eggs and sugar, the idea was enough to set us laughing hysterically. The culmination of dada's toady reaction to the food, my mom's attempts to allay the tension with humor and apologies, and my fallen pride kept me laughing alongside my sister for half an hour.

Not every Malagasy family is the same, but the patriarchal dynamic I see in mine will disturb me until I'm no longer part of it. While my brother or dad sleeps in the morning and afternoon, the women are building the coal fires, cooking meals, and constantly cleaning. One day my sister washed so many clothes that her knuckles bled. Sometimes I wish that for my home-stay, I were a man so that I could be an example of how inconsequential some gender roles can be. And so that I could show my dad and brother that life is hard enough here in Madagascar without assigning the most arduous daily labor to any one sex. I've never been so happy to brag about my American dad's French Toast and other culinary talents as when the pastor is piling mountains of rice he never cooked onto his plate.

Our house here in Manjakandriana has electricity, and every room has a bright, florescent light, except the kitchen. The light hasn't been changed since I arrived, and at night a dim reading lamp barely illuminates the most used and useful room in the house. I spend most of my time here talking with the women in my family, helping prepare meals, and wash dishes. I may have to bend close to see the onions I'm chopping in the shadows of the kitchen, but it will always be the place I found the most light during my stay in the Highlands.

My Place at the Dinner Table remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Of the island's two official languages, French is spoken by those who were educated while Madasgascar was a French colony. Generally, however, all Malagasy speak their native tongue. Though unified by a common language (despite varying dialects), the diverse tribes of Madagascar represent its rich cultural history, including the Madagascar's blend of Asian and African cultures. Human beings didn't set foot on the island until 2,000 years ago, just after the death of Christ. These new settlers came from Malaysia and brought with them their Malayo-polynesian language, religious beliefs and cuisine that still resonate in Malagasy culture today. Approximately half of the population practice animistic religions, most of which center on ancestor worship or a strong connection between the living and the dead. One ritual among the Merina and Betsileo tribes is famadihana, or "turning over the dead," in which family members exume the remains of a loved one, rewrap them in silk, and rebury them. But not before dancing and singing through the streets with the bodies of their ancestors lifted high over the crowd.

45% of the population is Christian, which is evenly divided into Protestant and Catholic congregations. And about 7% practice Islam, as result of the Muslim traders on the island who created an alphabet for the Malagasy language, called Sorabe.

The Malagasy diet remains true to its Asian roots by keeping rice as its gastronomic cornerstone. Rice is eaten with fish, meat, beans, and vegetables, and dessert usually consists of fresh fruit sprinkled with vanilla. Obviously, starvation won't be a part of my life in Madagascar.

Today I leave my home to go to Atlanta in preparation for tomorrow's flight to the Peace Corps staging event in Washington D.C. I'm sharing my last cup of coffee with my parents, and soon, I'll pet my funky little dog goodbye. I'm going to miss my life here in Georgia, but I can't help but be comforted knowing that among the many fruits in Madagascar, peaches are one of them. To think that I might have a peach tree growing a taste of home in my future front yard in Madagascar! Allez-viens!

Give us our daily mofo remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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From what I've read on other Peace Corps blogs, marking packages with crosses and the words "objets religieux" wards away those whose superstition supercedes their curiosity of what's inside. Also, please number your letters so that I'll know if one has been lost. The address above is relevant to me throughout my three months of training, but thereafter I'll send along my site address.

At the moment I am still sorting out a packing list, which seems to procreate new items and amenities every time I sit down to it. The most fervent advice I've heard from the Peace Corps and other volunteers is not to meet the 80 pound packing limit in clothes but wait for the markets in the capital, Antananarivo, where second-hand European fashions abound. I feel it's going to be the few electronic devices that prove most valuable, like my ipod (accompanied by some travel speakers for listening exercises when teaching English in the classroom) and digital camera. Through an online chat group, I've met the volunteers with whom I'll serve, and many are bringing their host families gifts. We'll be living with and learning from our host family for the two months of training, and I want to show them the utmost respect and appreciation for their hospitality. But I'm stumped as to what I should bring them. A soccer ball might be a good choice, but beyond that I'm clueless.

I've also just returned from the beach with my family, a trip my parents thought might isolate us from the stress of my leaving, but I think the fun we had together only emphasized all the more how much we will miss one another. Several moments made me briefly ask myself why I wanted to leave my wonderfully upbeat parents and my brother, a best friend and progenitor of many side-spliting, inside jokes, to go to the other side of the world. During a bicycle ride I spyed some blackberries growing beside the path. While I picked and ate them, I wondered if I would have the tart sweetness of a blackberry melt in my mouth while in Madagascar. At least they have mangoes, I think.

My brother, Will, and I also went kayaking during our time on the coast of South Carolina. We paddled in a little salt water marsh past oyster beds and through seas grasses that tickled our arms as we drifted by. The waterway curved like a snake, making sneaking up on birds particularly easy. We would spy a bird from afar and then quietly propel ourselves around a corner to sidle up close to the snowy egrets, grackles, and herons as stealthily as possible. It reminded me of when Will and I were little and would pretend we were hunting for treasure in quartz-strewn soil or cleaning the leaves out of the indian hole, a mysterious pit in the woods behind our house, in preparation of building a fort.

Now we were at it again in our kayaks, just chasing a different sort of treasure: a peek at marsh birds that we never would have seen from land. As we rounded one corner, we abruptly hushed the splash of our paddles when we confronted by only a few feet a great blue heron standing majestically with one bright eye fixed unconcernedly into the space beyond us. This is how I hope to find Madagascar, I thought. Sudden, beautiful, unfearing. And a place so otherworldly and wonderful that I would never believe it unless I had been there myself.

Mental Preparation remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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To acquaint myself with Malagasy culture conveyed in their own words, I sought a book of contemporary Malagasy literature, and in it I found a poem in the form of an antsa ("a chant to celebrate royal victory") by Jacques Rabemananjara that struck me [Bourgeacq and Ramarosoa. Voices of Madagascar]. I cannot claim to know the cultural and historical context of the poem or the poet's intent, but I do understand its affirmation of the power of the written and spoken word. In apostrophe, the speaker calls to the island, "One word, Isle / And you vibrate! / One word, Isle / And you leap up / Ocean rider!" By the poem's end, the one word that animates the island is "Freedom". My assignment in Madagascar will be to teach English as a second language, and my hope is that my work will help further the Malagasy in achieving the freedom of which the poet chants, whether it be economic, academic, or spiritual.

The Beginning remains copyright of the author lealow07, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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