Last Wednesday Rodrigue showed up at my door holding the stiff rain-soaked remains of my first cat. “Maty” (dead) he said and he went over by the leeche trees to bury it, apparently life in the woods did not suit it well. Sharbaraz on the other hand is doing splendid. She figured out how to use a litter tray and has become taken with dozing in the sunlight on the floor.
That’s all the feline news for the week, I know last time I promised I would talk about work. My main work in Madagascar centers around a tree nursery run by SAF/FJKM that is located immediately behind my house. My two Malagasy coworkers are Rodrigue, my neighbor, and Ratsabotsy, an older man whose knowledge about the area seems limitless. We grow two types of trees in our nursery, fruit trees and “hazoala” or native rainforest trees. The fruit trees are our main concern. SAF/FJKM brought over a collection of high quality fruit trees from America and planted them in the Ranomafana Arboretum. Our job is to replicate these trees using direct seeding and grafting and then hopefully sell them to local people who can in turn make a living selling high quality fruit. The nursery was only started in May of 2009 so we don’t have anything sold yet. We have however been grafting and filling plastic pots with cow manure. Fun
The other part of the nursery is the hazoala. In order to acquire the seeds/seedlings required to grow these trees, we need to collect them directly from the forest. I have been on two such trips so far and they are quite an ordeal. I was warned ahead of time that they would be tough and to watch out for leeches so I donned my sole long sleeve shirt, long pants, running shoes and heavy socks. When I met Ratsabotsy at the trailhead he was in shorts, a t-shirt, and was barefoot. In order to get into the forest without going through the park (we aren’t allowed to collect in the park for obvious reasons) we need to take non-traditional paths up the slopes of mountains to reach the primary forest. On the first day it took us two hours of hiking up what can only euphemistically be called a trail to reach the forest. Once there we abandon the trail and began bush whacking through the undergrowth looking for anything interesting, and boy did we find some interesting stuff. Besides seeing two boas, we saw an endangered species of bird, lots of strange looking bugs and even one lemur, I think it was a Golden Bamboo Lemur but I am not certain. Ratsabotsy listed off countless names of different trees and plants to me in Malagasy and I remembered none of them. We collected seeds to one of the worlds smallest palm trees, some berries that were robins-egg blue, and a few things that Ratsabotsy didn’t recognize. It was great. Ratsabotsy had a good time too because he was laughing at me most of the time. The trail was slippery so I fell on my butt four or five times descending hills and I would stop every 25 meters in a vain attempt to keep the leeches from finding my legs. He found this very funny. The leeches had a hard time penetrating his calloused feet but they certainly had a heyday with my legs. By the time I got back I had well over 30 leeches on each leg and there was blood in all my clothes. I didn’t realize how serious it was until I stood up to fast and, for the first time in my life, nearly blacked out. As I lay on my floor, still bleeding from my ankles and recovering from what was a five hour hike, Ratsabotsy showed up fresh as a daisy ready to plant up out findings
The next time I was more prepared and had my pants tucked into long tube socks (much to Ratsabotsy’s amusement) but some of the leeches managed to suck though my socks, but I think if I double layer the socks next time I should be able to keep them out. Oh and another thing about leech bites, they itch like crazy for a week.
In other news, I am trying to start a garden without much success. There is a place next to my house that I have been trying to dig up, but the soil is very rock and I keep digging up old chunks of Route Nationale 26 which evidently bisected my yard at some point. I also had the idea to build a small shelter in the nursery for us to work in which we finished this week. Despite all that’s been going on it has been kind of a hard week here. I found out there was a coup d’etat in Niger so while it is a good thing I left, I have no idea about the safety of my American and Nigerien friends who are still there. There was a death in the village yesterday and some of my Peace Corps friends are having trouble at their sites which makes me worry, but there is nothing I can do. I also have way too much free time so I read A LOT. I published a reading list below so you can keep up with what I’m reading.
Anyway, Miss you all

Mike

Picture is of me and my friend Katie weeding a rice field during training.

The first couple days at site were rough but ultimately rewarding. While I was held up in the hotel I made daily visits to my house and “helped” build the shower stall. By helped I mean stood by awkwardly and taught the kids how to play tic-tac-toe. I should have taken it as a bad omen when a papaya tree spontaneously cracked in half and fell on my shower, crumpling the roof and destroying one of the support beams but I was unphased.
The first night in my house was without exception the worst night of sleep I have ever had. First, my new foam mattress was as hard as a rock and would require some breaking in before I could sleep comfortably. Second, I was severely sun burnt from my afternoon washing my laundry in the river. And third, my house had rats.
After I blew out my candle my house was completely black, and I had naively not brought any light generating devices to bed with me. Thus I spent at least an hour listening in the dark as the rats climbed all over my things. I could hear them on my bike, on my gas tank, on my silverware and knocking over my water bottles. I took some comfort in my well secured mosquito net which I was certain that no rat could breach. Or so I thought. Did something just touch my foot!? I sat up in bed and hurled my Air-France courtesy pillow in the darkness at my feet. Nothing. I curled up in a corner and wondered how long it would be before exhaustion overtook me.
Suddenly I had a revelation. My watch! It has a light. I took it off and desperately began scanning the room will the dim green light let off by the display. Sure enough there was a rat in my net. As reached for a pillow it bolted into a corner and fled. At this point I was faced with a choice: wear out my watch battery from the breached fortress of my bed, or go out and bring the fight to them. Using my watch I emerged from my bed and located by cell phone flashlight and a heavy shoe and for the next thirty minutes chased rats (at least two) around my living room floor. My efforts were ultimately futile but I climbed in bed tired and feeling at least somewhat avenged.
The next morning I surveyed the damage. Large chunks of my newly whitewashed walls lay on the floor where new rat holes had been constructed. The tree samples I had collected the day before were destroyed, and the pineapple I had purchased for breakfast was half eaten. Rats 1 Michael 0.
After cleaning up I went immediately to my neighbor and co-worker Rodrigue (pronounced like Rodrigez but without the z) and told him that we needed to find a cat TODAY. So he graciously walked me down the road to a guy in town who had two extras. One of the cats was a two month old kitten who was still snuggled up with its mom and the other was a year old feline who was completely indifferent to my presence in the room. Being that I was looking for a cold calculated killer who would initiate a reign of terror over my resident rat population and not a cuddly ball of fur, I opted for the older cat. I stuffed it in my backpack and walked home. I owned that cat for about three seconds before it bolted to the door and disappeared into the banana grove behind my house. After three days of searching by the entire neighborhood and two very long nights spent in mild terror in my bed I went back to the cat guy and came home with the kitten. Her name is Sharbaraz.
Sharbaraz is the name of 4th century Persian general who was commissioned by his king Kousrau to destroy the Roman Empire. I thought the name was fitting for the situation I was bringing this cat into. Never mind that Sharbaraz failed to defeat the Romans and actually overthrew Kousrau but the name sounds feline and fierce and I like it.
Sharbaraz demands my complete total and undivided attention at all times. For the first few days she had a serious infestation of fleas (affectionately called parasy in Malagasy) which I spent hours diligently picking off of her. She likes to lick my chin and sleep on my shoulder. If I am not holding her she cries. When I cook dinner she cries, when I go to bed she cries. When I leave for work, she cries on the mat by the door until she falls asleep.
Now if I could only get her to use the litter box. Everytime it seems that I leave her alone in the room I come back to find a kitten surprise left in an unsuspecting corner. She once even made piddle in my laundry. She also is not old enough to catch rats, but her presence has resulted in a noticeable decrease in rat activity in the evenings.
That’s all for now, I promise I will write some about my work next time, but my hour is up.

-Mike

The Big Transition

The events of the past week serve as a case study of what happens when a first world bureaucracy and a third world social organization combine with a language barrier to boot.
On Sunday everyone was bussed in to Antananarivo in preparation for the big day. There were many meetings to attend and papers to sign as well as lots of shopping that had to be done. First however, I needed money. Because all the branches of my banking company in Madagascar are locked in a childish battle for supremacy, I was unable to open my bank account in Antananarivo, I would have to do it in Mananjary. Peace Corps solved this problem by handing me my entire settle-in allowance and my first months pay in cash as I left the bureau HQ. Thus for the next week I would be responsible for keeping track of a stack of bills the size of a small chapter book all while commuting around a city that is experiencing one of the biggest spikes in crime in recent memory. Awesome.
Swear-in was great. It was held at the American Ambassadors residence in central Tana. It was a beautiful complex with landscaped gardens and an astounding view of historic Antananarivo. Despite the fact that most of the ceremony was conducted in incomprehensible rapid fire Malagasy, all of the trainees remained entertained by the huge lawn turtle that patrolled the grounds occasionally attacking the ambassadors folding chair. After the ceremony we were given run of the house and the pool as well as having Pizza and beer catered in. However, the highlight for me was my 5 minute conversation with the ambassador about the current state of Malagasy politics.
After that, chaos ensued. All 36 of us VOLUNTEERS, staying at two distant hotels in the city, needed to go to banks, do protocol visits, and shop for our new houses in the remaining daylight hours without the use of Peace Corps vehicles. The result was a frequent clown-car style taxi rides in little Renaults that only started by rubbing two wires together.
On Wednesday I was up early to catch the van South and by 7:30 we were “off like a herd of turtles” as Melissa so eloquently put it. By “We” I mean Ashley, Matt, Alison, Melissa, and myself, the sole volunteers responsible for the Sud-Est region of Madagascar. (A chuck of mountain and coast with two paved roads that is the approximate size of Portugal.) After passing through the beautiful cities of Ansirabe and Anbostra, we arrived first at my site, Ranomafana, by late evening. The plan was to visit my house, introduce my to people, and most critically to leave most of my belongings locked in my house while I continued on to Mananjary to do my banking. When I arrived at my house there was a very happy Malagasy family of four living inside of it and a big pile of sand and rocks outside on the road which turned out to be my no-yet poured cement floor. My house needless to say was not ready. We were assured that it would be ready soon, they only needed to pour the floor and finish building the new house for the existing Malagasy family. The family’s new home was next door to mine and was still lacking a roof. “It will be done by Saturday when you return!” Right.
Thus we were off like a herd of turtles again to Mananjary. We arrived before nightfall and Peace Corps put us up in modest beach side bungalows on the beach overlooking the Indian Ocean. Although the waters are shark infested and the under toe strong enough to drag down a full grown water buffalo, it did not prevent us from stealing out to the beach in our underwear at 9:30 for some frolicking in the waves by moonlight.
Now to the task at hand: Banking and Shopping. Essentially we had 24 hours to do all the shopping for our new homes and set up new bank accounts. The only hard part it turned out was buying a gas stove top. After buying the stove and the gas hose at store A (where incidentally we were greeted by the reigning Prime Ministers brother serving White Wine in plastic cups) we toured the city trying to find the gas to hook up to it. Eventually we returned to store A to buy an empty gas tank, bought a connector at store B and proceeded to store C to have it filled. However, store C which had earlier reassured us that they has gas was now suddenly out of gas, as was every other store in the entire town (we checked). This required us to drive all the way to Fianar the next day, an hour in the wrong direction, to finally get the gas.
Upon my return to Ranomafana, My house was still not done (surprise surprise) so I got put up in a Hotel until Wednesday when I was allowed to move in. There is lots more to say, but I cant afford to stay on the internet for more than an hour at a time so until next week

-Mike

Training in Anjozoro

I apologize for my lack of writing in the past month, but I have thankfully been very busy and I have not seen a computer with Internet access since Christmas so to make up for it, this post is going to be immense.

Christmas in Madagascar turned out to be a flop. On Christmas Eve I came down with apocalyptic food poisoning out the backside and was forced to spend Christmas morn curled up in my bed listening to reruns of “Car Talk” and “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” from last summer on my IPOD. Thankfully I regained enough constitution to brave the three-hour ride to Andasibe National Park on the 26^th. Our day at the park was a resounding success; we saw three different species of lemurs, including one family, which descended to the forest floor to play a game of tag while our cameras went wild. In addition to the primates, we also saw snails the size of tennis balls, Roly-Polys the size of golf balls, as well as colossal tree ferns. It felt like we had been transported not to a national park, but to the late Creosotic Period.

New Years in Madagascar was a tricky affair, mainly because none of us could agree on what time it was. The party planning committee (including myself) orchestrated an elaborate system of banners to be unfurled at various intervals leading up to Midnight when a big red exercise ball inscribed with HAPPY EW YEAR would be lowered from the ceiling. In the end, our decorations failed to be opened at the correct time and the ball dropped when no one was looking, hitting Melissa in the head and prompting everyone to yell Happy New Year at about 11:53.

Home stay

With the holidays out of the way, all of us trainees were moved into our Malagasy host families for the last 3 weeks of training. Thus on Jan 4 we were shuttled out into the sticks to an idealic little Malagasy hamlet called Anjozoro. My family turned out to be an older Catholic couple pushing 60 with six grown kids. How many people are in our house at any given time is completely variable, but most of the time my family consists of Mom, Dad, their 21-year-old daughter Flora, the heavily pregnant daughter Clara, her four-year-old son, and a 23 year old named Antoine. Additionally, there are three cows, three kittens, one cat, four pigs, two ducks, a bunny, one puppy, and a gaggle of the most poorly behaved chickens I have ever met. The chickens are constantly invading the house and my room looking for little specks of food to steal. I cannot leave my bedroom ‘door’ open for more than 30 seconds without a mother hen and six chicks leaping through the door.

The cats my parents own are seriously ugly felines. Aside form being uncomfortably skinny; their coats are a combination of orange and grey. They look as though you had taken an already unsightly orange tabby cat and stuffed him in a vacuum cleaner bag for a few ours. Unfortunately one of the kittens perished in one of the freak rainstorms that strike at least once every day. Our puppy is a different story. Shortly after I moved in I asked Flora what his name was, but she looked at me as if I had just asked her to name a gardening trowel. After I explained to them that all dogs in America have names, my mother proudly announced that the puppy’s name is Roky. Dad bought Roky for a chicken and he is maybe five months old and is incredibly cute when he is not covered in mud or bugs, which is not all that often. I also think Roky is responsible for the fleabites I have covering my legs and stomach.

We live together in a mud-brick house with five rooms. Per Peace Corps regulations I have an entire room to myself on the ground floor. The only way to get into my room is to climb through an oversized window because some large sacks of feed block my bedroom door. When I first arrived, I found my room furnished with a desk, bed, bookshelf, a broken coffee maker, and a refrigerator dating from the colonial period. My family has no electricity so I used the appliance to store my trunk. On the walls my family had hung a collection of Catholic paraphernalia, including a calendar from 1999 featuring the Virgin Mary and a portrait of a Malagasy Cardinal who I think died during the course of my home stay. His funeral was turned up on the radio in the kitchen for an entire day.

My mother is a stately old woman with skin that looks like old leather. She is an amazing cook and has been making amazing meals almost everyday. Food with my family is usually rather simple, always rice with some sort of veggie or sauce and desert always involves some fresh bananas or pineapple. Mom usually spends most of her day in the smoke-filled kitchen over an open fire making up the next meal. Her kids like to tease her because she has only five or six teeth; a condition she claims is a result of eating too many peanuts.

Food at my host family has been an interesting affair. We eat around a table in one of the bedrooms, by candlelight for dinner. As follows are some the high and low points of what I have been eating.

Lows-

Mangahazo (Cassava) –

Both the root and the leaves of this plant are considered edible here and Madagascar and it is the leafs that are particularly unappetizing. They are generally served pounded into a green pulp with pork over rice of course. Although it is probably healthier than swallowing a fist full of vitamins, it has the effect of making perfectly good meat taste like mud. One could probably replicate the taste, appearance, and flavor of this popular Malagasy dish by scrapping out the underside of your lawnmower and mixing it in with pulled pork in lieu of barbeque sauce.

Trondro Frite (Fried Fish)-

I normally like fried fish; fried Perch has to be one of my favorite foods. However I am not a fan when the fish are the size of match-boxcars and is both served and consumed whole. It reminded me of the locust I ate in Niger, crunchy and mushy at the same time.

Peanut Butter-

My family mistook the practice sentence “Mihinana voanjo aho” (I eat peanuts) written in my Malagasy notebook to mean that I love peanuts and all of their byproducts above all other foods, and I don’t have the heart to beak it to them that I only really like peanut butter spread over toast with honey or jelly. Thus breakfast was often simply peanuts, peanut butter, and plain rice. Better than just plain rice, but not by much.

By the end of my home stay, I was actually very somewhat thankful to my mother for preparing these dishes because I have actually developed an appreciation for these foods that I originally baulked at. I can de-bone a fish with confidence and have even acquired toleration for cassava.

Highs-

Soseti-

Soeseti is a hairy lime-green fruit that looks like a cancerous pear. It grows on a vine and I think it is in the squash family. In spite of its lackluster appearance, it is really tasty, Served with beans, it has the texture of a cucumber with twice the favor.

Rano Garana (Passion Fruit Juice)

Passion Fruit grows like a weed around here and there is tons of it in my parent’s garden. Flora will often come in before dinner with 30 of them and her and I will juice them by hand by candlelight before dinner.

Mofo Akondro (Banana Bread)

In America banana bread means bread flavored with bananas. In Madagascar, it is fried breaded whole bananas. Probably the best way to eat a banana in earth.

Overall my mother is an amazing cook. For a diet that is restricted to rice and the things that go on top of it, there are a so many tastes and flavors that the Malagasy have invented to top it. Seriously, Malagasy food is good stuff.

My chores around home have been pretty typical, do the dishes, cut up the onions, and look after Zaza manditra be (The very misbehaved child). I did get to spend some time climbing the family plumb trees picking fruits and passing them down to my dad. Saturday was laundry day and after an hour of unsuccessfully trying to was red mud out of my kaki pants; my clothes, underwear and all, were hung out next to the muddy road leading to the center of our village.

Things got a little crazy on Sunday afternoon as we were sitting down for lunch. Mother and Flora had prepared a meal of rice with soseti cooked with peanuts (sigh) when it started raining. Again. Flora and Clara jumped up and ran outside to grab my laundry, which after 24 hours, was still out by the road drying. At this point Clara went into labor and soon everyone was out of their seats running about except dad and I who sat eating our lunch and exchanging awkward glances. Mom ran in and shoved four clean plates in her purse and Antoine grabbed the big duffel bag of clothes as the family prepared to walk the 8 kilometers to the doctor’s office in the rain. After dad and I helped ourselves to a double helping of fresh pineapple for desert, father roused himself, went downstairs, captured one of the chickens running around the yard and stuffed it, clucking and squawking, into a yellow plastic bag. He told me that the family would eat it when they got to town. Flora returned later that day to report that Clara was in fact not having her baby but would remain in town for a few days with mom.

In Madagascar, one’s ability to stay clean is intimately related to the weather. Laundry must be done out doors when there in no rain in the near future. Hanging it out to dry is a real challenge. The sun is rarely out for more than an hour at a time so if you expect it to dry in one day you need to be lucky and pick a day with an abnormal amount of sun. Time on the line is often cut short by afternoon showers. When the rain does come, attentive housewives desperately collect the damp laundry, but sometimes it is left out is left out in rain. It will dry eventually. Bucket baths here are more challenging because of the weather. In Niger, our water was warmish out of the well and made hot by the afternoon sun. Here, summoning up enough gumption to pour a truly frigid cup of water over one’s head is more than can be asked of someone on a daily basis. There are two solutions to this problem. One is to ask my family to make a fire out of wood cut down from the forest to heat up my bath water. Not a terribly sustainable thing to be telling my host family as an environment volunteer. The other is to leave my bucket out in the sun for a few hours to warm it up. Again, very dependant on having a few hours of uninterrupted sunlight. Thus the more rain we get, the less likely I am to be showered or in clean clothes.

On January 22^nd, 2010 exactly three months to the day after we landed in Niger we officially competed our Peace Corps training. All of the trainees were moved back to the lakeside-training site and subjected to a language assessment. At 2:00 Peace Corps brought all of our Malagasy families to our training center for a thank-you ceremony. Each family was presented a certificate, the Country Director and the Mayor gave a speech, and all 36 trainees stumbled through a Malagasy song about being homesick. After the ceremony the kitchen staff rolled out a feast worth of appetizers that we demolished with astounding efficiency. Our families, some of whom barely have the means to put enough rice and beans on the table, were treated to shrimp, egg rolls, meatballs, peanut butter, brownies, and pizza. The scene that unfolded gave new meaning to the phrase ‘storming the food table.’ My sister told me she had not ever had many of the foods served, but still consumed them eagerly except the mini-pickles which she did not enjoy. Nothing went to waste. The unfinished bottles of soda were slipped into purses and little kids stuffed their pockets with broken potato chips. Once everything was picked clean, an impromptu Malagasy dance party ensued in the cafeteria. Everyone, including the mayor, chief of police, and elderly Malagasy mothers were all in on the action. Unfortunately all of our families had to be bussed back home before dark so the festivities were cut short.

The plan for the next couple days promises more excitement and activity. We are being taken to Antananarivo on Sunday where we will be prepped for swear in at the Ambassador’s residence on Tuesday. The event will be televised so any of you with Malagasy TV can tune in at 3 AM to watch. I want to give a special shout out to Grandma W who sent me the awesome package; it arrived on the 22^nd Thank you so much. Thanks as well to everyone who has sent letters everyday mail comes it is like Christmas for us. I will have a new address in the coming days, but the old one will still work, PC will just forward any mail on to my new one. I HOPE to have some decent Internet access at Ranomafana so I will be able to update my blog more thoroughly communicate more regularly with you all.