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.