My Life Part 1

It is amazing how much one’s conception of normal can change in a year. I like to think that as I become adapted to the Malagasy lifestyle, the less material I have to blog about since what would once be considered shocking and worthy of excessive gawking is now literally ‘nothing to write home about.’ A text message from a friend that she had just boarded a taxi-bus with an 8-foot hammerhead shark strapped to the top elicits little more than a smirk and a roll of eyes from me. What I find more fascinating these days is the westerners who are fresh of the plane and are frightened of taxi-stations, have never squatted to use the toilet, and wear white t-shirts. Thus in an effort to better acquaint you all with my normal I thought I would walk you though some typical scenes in my life.
It’s usually some activity over at Rodrigue’s that gets me up in the morning. His chicken flock has been steadily multiplying over the past months up to some 30 obnoxious birds peeping, squawking, fighting, and cock-a-doodle-doing all about my yard. The flock is culled only be the occasional taxi brousse that comes barreling by and graciously kills one or two a month. Then we have chicken for dinner. Rodrigue’s industrious wife is also awake. She has to start a fire and have rice ready for breakfast before she walks Riza and Oni 1.5k into town for school at seven. She is also eight months pregnant. Although all my windows and doors are securely shut, there is light streaming into my house from cracks in the wood and holes under the roof. Soon the sun will commence baking my tin roof making my bed intolerably hot and forcing me to start the day.
One of my first and favorite morning rituals is stumbling about the nursery trying to find the toilet. The story of my outhouse and its exceedingly inconvenient location dates back to my original installation in Ranomafana last January. It is a Peace Corps requirement that each volunteer have their own private shack-with-hole to use. Mine was located less than 10 feet from Rodrigue’s kitchen whilst Rodrigue and company had no outhouse at all and made creative use of the bushes across the road. Eventually Rodrigue began to construct his own facilities back behind the nursery. This, however, resulted in the ridiculous and counterintuitive scenario where Rodrigue’s family would have to pass by my house to use the toilet while I was making daily visits to their house to conduct similar business. I quickly rectified the situation by insisting upon trading, accepting a longer toilet commute so that Oni, two at the time, could potty train at a more convenient location. This actually worked to my benefit last April when the path to the new outhouse passed though the avocado grove and my daily morning ritual resulted in enough fruit to make lunch.
The trouble started when SAF/FJKM decided to mow down the avocado trees and turn my pleasant jungle path into an expansion on the tree nursery. The nursery and resulting bamboo fence forced me to take a prohibitively difficult route over a muddy cliff, though the thick coffee and banana stands, knee high grass, spider webs, mosquitoes, flesh eating moths… etc. A slightly better alternative was discovered when Alison was visiting. This path ironically passed right past my old outhouse and required (don’t ask me how this works) climbing over the same waist-high wall three times. Alison proved not very apt at this and actually has physical scars from her Ranomafana outhouse experience.
Clearly this was not a sustainable scenario and after a serious discussion with Rodrigue, some choice holes were made in the bamboo fence around the nursery. Now, when I emerge from my slumber I squeeze though a vine entangled hole in my fence, climb down though the nursery to the litchi in the back where the bamboo fence has been thinned out, I part the bamboo like a curtain and make my way down the embankment to my outhouse. As I sit inside I take comfort in the fact that although there is no way to measure how much progress I am making in the lives of the Malagasy people in Ranomafana, I am making measurable progress in filling this hole with poo.

The Holidays

Christmas is not a tropical holiday. There are no silent snow blanketed nights. No sleigh bells, boughs of holly, or Fraiser Firs. Madagascar even lacks any form of large ruminid mammal that might resemble reindeer. Even looping my limited selection of festive Holiday tunes failed to inspire any Christmas spirit. One of the big aspects of Christmas in my childhood home was hauling the large box out of the basement and tastefully decorating our family living space with holiday heirlooms and color-coordinated Christmas tree ornamentation. Malagasy Christmas décor is comprised almost exclusively of oddly colored tinsel and other shiny plastic filth that could only be considered beautiful if viewed through a very fine kaleidoscope, by a raccoon. The taciturn store owner near my house had installed enough gaudy plastic cheer in her place of business obscure any potential customer’s view of her products, a frustrating state of affairs when pointing and gesturing are your preferred methods of buying daily essentials.
Closer to home, at Rodrigue’s, preparations were being made to be at church for as many as 12 hours over a period of three days. Something meaty, oily, and rice-y, was being proposed for Christmas dinner. With the walls closing in around me, I plundered as much as I considered modest of the finally-ripened litchis behind the nursery and made for the safety of the Fianarantsoa PC house with my trusty travel buddy Alison on the morning of Christmas Eve. After waiting 3 hours, cramming into a clown car, running out of gas, hitchhiking a ride in a semi-truck, and acting very grinch-like to the driver of a third vehicle, we arrived in Fianarantsoa. Soon we had forgotten all of that morning’s transportation miseries because we had electricity, internet, and an oven capable of baking pizza and Christmas cookies.
With Christmas proper behind us, we embarked on a two-day 950k journey across Madagascar to the Northwest of the island, near Mahajanga. Those with a history of heart problems, high blood pressure, or women who are pregnant or nursing should not attempt Mahajanga. Talk to your doctor or physician before taking Mahajanga. Side effects are likely to include poor circulation, peculiar rashes, headaches, temporary insanity, and foul disposition. My first destination was to be the site of a fellow Nigerian volunteer named Jenny. During training her site was talked up significantly as the mecca of dinosaur bone excavation and paleontology. This is true, for only two months every other year. Jenny’s house rests in a minuscule village comprising five huts 15k from anywhere. We spent two days there wandering about the dry, eroded, and treeless wasteland wondering why on earth people were still trying to grow rice here.
With an extra day to spare, Alison and I made haste to Ankarafantsika National Park where I had a South African friend doing research on Tenrecs, a nocturnal endemic hedgehog-like critter with penchant for injecting spines into human skin. Thankfully my friend’s specimens were safely caged and mildly sedated. The park itself was interesting not spectacular. The forest was featureless, dry, flat, and rife with wildlife. I fattened my list of birds, played with a chameleon, and got close enough to touch a lemur and took some spectacular photos (see photos). As far as landmarks, however, the only significant landmarks are a wide eroded canyon and a murky lake choked with water hyacinths.
Our New Years celebration was booked for the city of Mahajanga. We made our entrance at mid-day got a healthy dose of costal heat. Mahajunga is a truly special Malagasy city. Not only does the food and culture exhibit a mix of Indian, Arab, French, and Malagasy culture, but there are sidewalks and basic city services seem to function on a regular basis. Too many of us crammed into a single hotel near the ocean and hit the coastal boardwalk for beer and brochettes (fish and beef) purveyed by welcoming ladies at outdoor grills stalls. Joining Alison and I were 10 other volunteers from the Mahajanga region making New Years a happy convivial occasion for all involved.
Post-holiday plans included stops at the homes of my Thanksgiving-era friends in Tana and a 5 day “Advanced Service Conference” at the now nostalgic Lake Montasoa Training Center. The most significant development out of this event as far as the average blog reader is concerned is that I gained 5 pounds.

Taxi Broussing

Believe it or not, the entire transportation system for the 20 million people living on this island consists of six paved roads and perhaps a thousand elderly Mazda and Toyota passenger vans. Given these conditions, there is no earthly way transportation can be a pleasant experience. These vans called “brousses” by the locals tear about Madagascar chock-a-block with cargo and people. Best evidence is that these cars were sold at a discount to taxi companies and imported from Europe when they became obsolete. Once in Madagascar they are stripped down and refurbished to accommodate the maximum number of legal midgets physically possible. There is no safety equipment to speak of. The vans are more or less metal cubes with engines and big gas tanks. Plastic containers on the roof can also be filled with gasoline to ensure that all passengers can enjoy an exciting fiery death should the driver misjudge the wrong corner.
Overstuffing a brousse is technically illegal in Madagascar and police check-points outside the major cities are there to ensure passenger’s safety and security. However, a few thousand ariary can make any potential traffic citations disappear so capacity rules are no longer heeded. Some brousses come equipped with mini-video screens so passengers can view some horrendous and often shockingly explicit music videos while they are being carted around like packed sardines. Heavy sub-woofers also come standard on every brousse, when turned up to full volume, the advancing sound serves to clear docile Malagasy villagers off the road as the brousse approaches.
To top it all of, many brousses are customized. Rather than install decent interior upholstery, seat belts, or repair the inevitably broken side mirrors, taxi vans spend their money buying custom car horns, glue-on imitation chrome side ventilators, flashy stickers of all kinds. I always know the brousse that operates out of Ranomafana because it has two massive Hannah Montana decals in the rear windows. Other vans opt for a more religious tone, sporting a crucified Christ, Madonna with infant Christ, or bible verses written out in cursive glitter type. By in large, however, most cosmetic additions attempt to intimidate or flaut the car’s illustrious but also fictitious racing prowess. Pink and orange flames cover the running board and meaningless logos such as “MAZDA SPEED RACING” are plastered on their dented bodies and broken windscreens. Who these stickers are meant to appeal to is up for debate.
Worst then puttering about this island in one of these tin cages of death is trying to get one of them to leave at the Taxi Gare. Always located in the most unbecoming sections of town, come within 400 meters of any Taxi Gare and you will immediately be set-upon by 10 or more persistent hagglers. These people make a career out of forcing innocent and unsuspecting travelers into their particular vans. They usually open by asking, in French, where I am going. When I ignore them they just start guessing. “Your going to Tulear? This car is going there right now! [lie] its already almost full! [lie]” I am not going to Tulear, as I continue to spurn their advances, more hagglers are attracted to the approaching white person heavy laden with bags. Soon everyone is screaming various destinations and pushing each other out of the way to get a better angle on me. The hagglers begin accusing each other of being drunk. Fights break out as I look on apathetically. One or two of the men will start grabbing at my bags pulling me one way or another. This is not ok. I yell at them in Malagasy though their garbled French bickering. On more than one occasion I was certain I was going to be shoved into a moving van professional-kidnapping style. The event ends anticlimactically when I fight my way into a particular taxi company office to buy a legitimate ticket.
Hapless white people are not the only targets of harassment. I once witnessed an elderly woman holding hands with a young girl enter the Gare. The pair was swarmed with 6 or 7 seven full grown men trying to herd them into their particular van. When the woman resisted, two men seized the screaming child and began to pry her away from her guardian. After a few seconds of valiant struggle the old woman lost her grip on the girl, tripped on a paving stone and fell hard onto the cement with a cry. The basket of personal effects she had been balancing on her head scattered across the lot. Collecting her things the woman ran off in tears after the girl, I never saw her again and a little bit of my faith in humanity died that day.
Having beaten off the unkempt, unfriendly, and unrelenting hagglers, the search for a van begins. Not so easy when everyone you speak with is lying to you and trying to scam you. Not only is every price quote you receive heavily inflated, but every departure time is completely misleading. Every bus is leaving “right now” or “in 5 minutes” or “as soon as you pay.” Once you have handed over your money, everyone, thankfully, losses interest in you and you are liable to wait as many as four hours for your car to leave. Unfortunately there is perhaps no worse place to be sitting for hours than a Malagasy Taxi Gare. Generally, these places are little more than a glorified parking lot encircled by tiny cement huts that serve as offices. While you bake on black tarmac under the tropical sun, you are constantly subjected to the most diverse assortment of Malagasy riffraff begging for money or selling rancid food and new shiny plastic garbage from China. I bring a book and try to hide, usually not very successfully, in the back of a car.
The only plus about the transportation terror that I have just described is that you are always thrilled to reach your destination and you always tell the best stories. On a brousse from Manakara, the entire bank of windows on the right side of the car fell off as we were doing 75 kph and shattered all over the highway, puncturing a tire. There are no restrictions on carry-on luggage. Mattresses, entire motorcycles, geese, goats, and even illegally poached herons are all kosher; the only universal no-no is dogs. I counted 30 people (myself included) in a van designed for 12, but refitted for 15. I have watched on in shock as 20 bags of cement were pulled out of the nooks and crannies of an already packed bus. We ran over a turkey. I have shared my personal space with drunk old men, vomiting teenagers, jolly nuns, xenophobic toddlers, and terrorized chickens to name a few. Thankfully when the rents come we are renting a private van.

In an unrelated aside I would again like to take the opportunity to harangue Madagascar’s Postal (dis)Service for their extemporary failure to perform above a third-grade aptitude.
A few months ago, my dearest Aunt Mary carefully filled a padded manila envelope with food, letters, and lots of love. Having read my past blogs featuring unforgiving tirades against the post, she bravely decided to take the risk and entrust the package to these purveyors of incompetence and my some miracle it only took a matter of weeks for them to get it though customs where Peace Corps, like a white knight in shining armor rescued it from the dungeons of the Postal depot in Tana. However, it was only after I had triumphantly returned with my prize did I realize that my celebration was premature. While lingering in the dark purgatory of the customs office, a rat had chewed though the envelope and violated its contents. The double-packaged dehydrated milk had been breeched but not seriously plundered. However, the homemade cherry-smoked chicken jerky was opened and entire precious strips were completely absent. I was irate. My mail has about as much chance of reaching me as a mentally challenged tuna fish has in a shark tank. This is the second package to be assaulted in such a manner, both tragedies befalling Alphenaar packages. Maybe just send e-mails and think non-hungry thoughts?

Antananarivo (Tana)

I really don’t like Tana. Allow me to enumerate a few of my gripes with this city. First and foremost, Tana has perhaps the worst city planning I have ever had the privilege to witness in all my travels. The roads into the city disappear into a morass of crammed dirty backstreets. There are no highways in Tana, but enough traffic to make ten kilometer journey downtown a two hour project. The only mass transit is provided by antiquated Mercedes busses called ‘Taxi-be’ that charge 15 cents for the pleasure of being crammed into a child-sized seat next to an overweight Malagasy person as the engine chugs and sputters in gridlock traffic while you breath in enough exhaust fumes to induce a significant headache. Security is a big problem in Tana. Entire sections of town are no-fly zones for volunteers. Purses are slashed. Pockets picked. One volunteer a few years ago had his face beat in with a brick on his way back from a bar and had to be med-evaced for facial reconstructive surgery. Tana is also the city where the divide between rich and poor is most pronounced. Some residents live in shacks built in the swampy recesses of the rice paddies while the educated elite cruise through the garbage strewn streets in their European imports. Homes and businesses are secluded behind high walls decorated liberally with barbed wire. Rent-a-cop companies make a killing standing outside mansions housing the foreign and the wealthy. It is not for me to pass judgment on people for wanting to protect themselves and their possessions. It just makes for bad aesthetics.
Unfortunately this is the only city in Madagascar that you can’t avoid. As Madagascar’s capital, the terminus of four paved highways, and the home to the island’s only international airport, everything in Madagascar filters through this lackluster hub. Accordingly, finishing my wonderful vacation in Morandava found me staying at Peace Corps transit house in the wealthy suburb of Ivandy on the north side of Tana. The date was November 17, a normally inconspicuous date on the calendar but this year it happened to coincide with a controversial constitutional referendum being put to vote by the Malagasy government. As I was busy uploading my vacation photos onto Facebook, a group of ranking military officers decided to use the referendum as a pretext to over throw the current regime. From their base near the airport the officers announced to the world that a supreme military council was now in control of Madagascar, telling one French television station that the airport and presidential palace would be stormed the following morning preventing anyone from leaving the island and effectively paralyzing the current administration.
These men, however, failed to properly ensure the support of the rest of the island’s military apparatus and within 24 hours it became clear that the only thing the “Supreme Military Council” controlled was the building in which they sat and a pile of burning tires on the road out to the airport. Peace Corps and the Embassy, however, were not amused. A warden’s message was issued. Peace Corps extended a no-travel order to the entire country and I, as well as seven other unlucky volunteers, was more or less restricted to a one block radius containing one affordable restaurant and a gas station for a week. Even though the faux coup d’etat was quickly put down, my plans to go back home came to naught and a trip downtown was hastily called off when an improvised explosive device was detonated in a popular plaza.
As the walls of transit house closed in around me and the other volunteers, the embassy staff living in the area rescued us from excruciating boredom by inviting us to social events. Feeling a little awkward in a faded t-shirt and dirty sneakers we sipped expensive alcohols and got a little glimpse of the Foreign Service life. I became friends with one officer in particular, Jane and her nephew Aaron who had just arrived in Madagascar for a six month vacation. Jane invited myself and a slew of other volunteers to share Thanksgiving with their family and we feasted together on traditional American fare. For most of us it was a challenge to stop from eating the marvelous food even when our stomachs were well past capacity.
With the situation in the capital under control and our travel restrictions lifted, Jane’s nephew and I escaped on a weekend vacation to the sleepy costal town of Mahanoro for a real Peace Corps Thanksgiving. The volunteer living in Mahanoro had purchased herself a live turkey, which she had affectionately named Marvin, and had been stuffing it full of beans for the proceeding week. Mahanoro quickly gained the distinction of my new favorite coastal town. Quiet, friendly, unassuming, and with some 80 kilometers of sandy beach for running, the town would have been frequented by me on the weekends if it wasn’t some 800 kilometers from Ranomafana. Turkey-day-prep started early in the morning and after cooking furiously we managed to have a meal large enough to feed the 20 or so gathered holiday makers just before sunset. After ingesting Marvin, we hit the beach for beers and campfire under a spectacular canopy of stars, playing with the phosphorescent plankton glowing like glitter in the surf. I tried not to think about going back to Tana the next morning.

Canoe Trip to Morandava

Mark and I decided we needed a vacation. I had yet to use any of my 49 vacation days from Peace Corps and Mark had just finished a major project. We heard about a trip in the West that visited some of the major sites for a reasonable price. A canoe was apparently involved. I got a phone number, made some calls, and here is what transpired.
The trip began less than gloriously. We spent 14 hours in three different taxi vans only to arrive in Miandravazo, a town notable only as the hottest place in Madagascar. After passing the first of many nights drenched in my own epidermal excrement, our tour group coalesced next to the Tsiribina River.
Mark and I, as it turns out, were not alone on our trip, joining us would be an unlikely motley of interesting people of European origin. Our group included four Italian-speaking middle aged Swiss tri-athletes, two friends from Spain, and a Polish man married to a Slovak living in Belfast. Four Malagasy men joined to row the boats. Serious linguistic Olympics ensued. The Pole and the Slovak spoke decent English, but talked to each other in an unorthodox Slavic mélange that was neither Polish nor Slovak. The Swiss were wonderfully chatty and their brazen Italian, but only one of the Swiss and the Spanish woman spoke English. Even my Malagasy was slightly handicapped as I speak Betsileo dialect and our rowers were Sakalava. In the end, although none of us hailed from the former colonial power, French became our main mode of communication.
The Tsiribina (means “Don’t Dive” in Malagasy) is much less a river in the conventional sense than an organized flow of dissolved red clay particulates. The water smelled mildly of cow manure. Bubbles on the surface would combine with one another to form foamy hunks of scum that floated by like a rancid sponge. Five or six naked women bathed next to our boats. The question on everyone’s mind was whether they would be cleaner before or after going into the water. Presently I dipped a foot in. The temperature was an un-refreshing 85 degrees, providing no relief from the unforgiving sun. Accordingly I would never go more than knee deep into this stale water for the next three days.
As we all clamored into our boats, we were each issued a cheap plastic parasol. Mine was pink with purple flowers and baby blue designs that suggested Asian calligraphy. Though I shunned this hideous present at first, I came to my senses fast after we pushed away from shore into the open river. My cheap parasol was the only thing between me and the African sun for the next 6-8 hours. Even the constant application of prodigious amounts of SPF 45 could prevent my pasty knees from turning the color of raw meat.
Once I got past the heat and the state of the river, the trip turned into a spectacular adventure. Far from any passable road, we were in the real wilderness of Western Madagascar. The scenery looked like what I imagined Africa would be like. Tall reeds hiding endless plains of grass and scattered trees dominated our world for all of day one. On the second day we paddled though a string of tall hills blanketed with pristine dry deciduous forest. White Sifaka lemurs leaped between trees and herons prowled the water for a meal. Large bats huddled under the high red cliffs as the loud songs of black Vaza Parrots reverberated off the rocks. Consistently, at about 4 pm the heat of the day would break and self destruct into incredible sunsets.
With daylight failing our entourage would disembark on an undisturbed sandbar, and busy ourselves setting up tents on the soft ground. With nothing but loose sand to stake the tents, wind was an issue. Food prep was handled by the Malagasy rowers, except for day two when they allowed Mark and I were each allowed to kill and denude the hens that had been heretofore keeping us company in the back of the Spanish canoe. One of our lunches took place at a waterfall oasis a few meters off the river in the forest, this stop was also notable because it provided a chance to wash off the layers of muck, sweat, sand, and oily sunscreen that had been festering on our skin for two days.
Our trip happened to coincide with the beginning of mango season in Western Madagascar. A few notes on these fruits before we move any further. This entire land is rife with these juicy fruits. Monumental and fecund trees are commonplace, but some abhorrent percentage of useful fruit is wasted because there are not enough people to eat them, equipment to harvest them, or infrastructure to transport them. Selling these fruits in Madagascar is like selling sand on the beach. Instead children toss them in the river to watch them splash. On the two occasions for which we sought the shade of a mango tree for a tent site, only to be startled awake by these large fruits crashing onto our thin nylon roof at unpleasant hours of the morning. Second, there is no polite way to eat a fresh mango. The flesh, unlike a peach for example, is bonded to the pit so after the fruit is peeled the edible portion has to cut or eaten away from the center creating a sticky mango mess. Also they are wildly stringy so one is liable to get half the fruit gracefully wedged between one’s incisors. Stabbing away at the offending orange stringys with a toothpick
After three days on the river, we were driven some distance north to Tsingy Bemahera National Park. If you have access to a November 2009 issue of National Geographic, locate it and observe closely the cover art. This is where I went. This place is completely beyond words to accurately describe, but I shall do my best. A “Tsingy” formation is a maze of thousands of tiny deep valleys cut sharply into hard limestone. The effect is other worldly. The tops of the rocks are a dark grey color, razor sharp, and tough as nails. Climbing up the valleys requires harnesses and cables as a safety precaution. One misstep climbing around here and you would be facing multiple broken limbs if you were lucky. Squeezing through tiny crevices no more than a foot wide to the valley bottoms, the rocks become a marble white sporting crystallized stylites and cool dark caves that connect the valleys in an endless web of confusing splendor. Somehow, life manages to thrive here and green trees canopies poke out of the tops of the valley providing a pleasant leafy contrast to the sea of black spires. Entire ecosystems of weird bats, spiders, snails, and caterpillars thrive on sandy valley floors. Tsingy truly deserves its status as a UNESCO world heritage site: there is no place like it anywhere else in the world.
After a full day of Tsingy exploration, we crammed into the 4x4s for a 180k drive to Morandava. A thorny task without considering the road had more craters than Ypres in 1918 and that our driver was trying earnestly to end our lives. Wearing tinted aviators and an outdated professional basketball jersey he very clearly considered himself and his elderly Toyota Landcruiser too cool for school and he wasn’t going to let his paying clients interrupt his flow. Horrified we watched on as he nearly turned a joyful family of lemurs into fuzzy white road kill and when one of the Italians shrieked at him to slow down as we approached a mother cow nursing her infant calf on the side of the road, he merely laid on the horn startling the poor beasts into the brush as he blazed past. Emerging finally on the sandy riverbed approaching the ferry, he revved the engine, accelerating to the edge of the water before skidding to a stop at the waters edge, slamming his passengers against whatever was immediately in front of them. Emerging dazed and sore, he had the gal to smile at me and say “Ca va?” Unfriendly glances and a mild tongue lashing we directed his way.
As the sun sank low we arrived at the famous Avenue de Baobabs. This cluster of trees near on the dusty highway north is, perhaps, the single most picturesque location in the whole of Madagascar. I dare say that a mature Baobab is the most beautiful, stately, and sublime tree anywhere in the world. Solid monoliths of grey and maroon soaring over the dusty flat earth cresting with a collection of craggy branches dusted with green spring leaves. The effect was stunning. The trees also happened to be in fruit and one of the Spaniards was gracious enough to buy us one of the brown fuzzy fruits. Ranging in size from a softball to as large as my head, Baobab fruit is dry, foamy, tasteless, but mildly sweet. It was the perfect little snack as we struggled to squeeze that last bits of life from Mark’s camera to capture the wonderful spectacle.
As night fell, we finally arrived in Morandava, a sweltering costal city with a heavy, dazed, relaxed, and overwhelmingly Rastafarian atmosphere. Mark and I tented in the front yard of a new volunteer and had a day to wander the sand-paved streets of the hot city. We ducked the noon heat in a ice cream shop in the center of town and dined on fresh seafood in a breezy beachside bistro before our car back to the capital, and an exciting political crisis and attempted coup d’etat awaited.

Thanks

Hey I just wanted to give a quick thanks to Grandmas A and W, Randy and Sharon, and Aunt M who I got packages from today! Your the food, books, pictures, and letters were wonderful. Thanks so much! miss you guys!

Hotelys

Contrasting my male coworkers who have wives attending to their three squares, I fend for myself. Cooking from scratch every day can be a monumental task. Rather than sacrifice all of my potential fecundity to become my own domestic slave, I have expounded several methods of satisfying my notoriously ravenous appetite.
I mentioned before that I pay my neighbors to eat with their family for dinner each evening. This experience continues to yield mixed results, especially as boiled intestines have established themselves as a family favorite. Irregardless, my late afternoon laziness continues to prevail over satisfying my increasingly numb pallet. So dinner is taken care of at least for the near future.
Breakfast has also been sub-contracted out to the local villagers. There is a lady down the road who pounds cassava root into balls and fries it into crunchy tasteless pellets. Although they acquire the consistency of rubber if allowed to cool, catch them fresh and douse with a generous amount of imported catsup and you can be full for just under 10 cents.
That leaves lunch, far and away the most challenging meal of the day. Often when out on orchard visits with Mano or working in the nursery with Rodrigue we do not finish before 11:30 of 12:00. The prep time for any meal that I would consider discussing publicly is at least an hour and a half, an unacceptable state of affairs when I have been working all morning. Sometimes I will take a few hours and prepare a mountain of food that I leave un-refrigerated in a pot for upwards of three days while I chip away at it. More likely, however, is that I will cave and bike into town to eat at a traditional Malagasy “hotely”. I can speak about these peculiar Malagasy dining institutions (restaurants is too euphemistic a word) in general terms because all Malagasy hotelys are exactly the same. Unlike American businesses which thrive on differentiating their products to gain a competitive edge and increase market share, these places seem to thrive on their ability to be exactly the same and defy basic business sense.
From the roadside, a Hotely does not look very endearing. If such structures existed stateside they would be used to store the lawnmowers or to manufacture methamphetamines. The walls are plastered with posters alternating between scantily clad late-90’s American pop-stars and digitally enhanced pictures of fruit. The menu is always uniform. Chicken, pork, or beef, stewed in beans, cassava leaves, or its own juices. Everything comes with the obligatory mountain of white rice. Chicken is always hit or miss. Hit being leg or breast and miss involving butt, neck, or other things considered inedible in America. ‘Pork’ is actually a misnomer; the menu should read ‘pork fat attached to skin and bits of meat.’ I stick with the beef generally. All the food is cooked and served in enough oil to power one of those modified car engines for a week. It also precludes the need for chap stick or laxatives.
The service at a hotely is uniformly horrid. The proprietress behind the counter is always taciturn and rotund (rare for Malagasy) and the underage girls who wait the tables appear to be hired based on their ability to be rude, unapproachable, and completely mute. I have on more than one occasion arrived at a hotely to find the waitress sprawled out asleep on a table. When not unconscious on the furniture, the staff is hypnotically glued to the 19 inch television behind the counter. Politely ask for salt and be prepared to receive dazed stares followed by lackadaisical shuffling and about the room before a container of damp congealed salt is apathetically placed in front of you. Heartfelt expressions of gratitude for this onus service are never met with so much as a ‘your welcome’ a phrase which has apparently been surgically removed from their vocabulary as a prerequisite to employment.
To use the facilities at a hotely is to bear witness to a voluminous quantity of flagrant health code violations. The pit toilet is never far from the cooking area and when passing through the kitchen, prepare to avert your gaze less you lay eyes on the unsanitary squalor from whence the meals emanate. Not only is the bright placard reminding employees to wash their hand before returning to work conspicuously absent, but also all the materials and facilities required therein. Also disconcerting is the pride of ratty housecats that often swarm unattended tables to plunder leftover bones and lick the grease off the plates so never leave a table unguarded.
Some hotelys do try and break from the nauseating homogeny that envelops these eateries by offering oily pasta, fried rice, and French fries to appeal to the occasional white person. Caution is however advised as these dishes are not pre-made in the kitchen like the others so you are liable to sit and wait for up to 35 minutes for your meal whilst you watch your friends satisfy their hunger on traditional Malagasy fare. Also catsup in this country is treated like a precious metal and is doled out only when requested and in the most minute of quantities. Eating with some friends, we ordered five servings of fries and “lots of catsup” but we were the recipients of only two platters graced with modest red dollops the size of York Peppermint Patties to divide between the five of us. The Great Catsup Shortage is however a myth because bottles of the stuff sell for less than a dollar.
With the unsanitary atmosphere, pathetic food, foul service, and downright criminal catsup stinginess, I sometimes wonder why I still frequent these establishments, but when I consider that I can get a full meal for less than a dollar and not have to dishes, my righteous indignation cracks, I get my bike, and I head into town for another meal at the hotelys.

Sundays

With the recent re-population of the Route National 25 corridor with new volunteers, I am suddenly facing a new and strange phenomenon: American neighbors. Rebekah and Ally are now 21 and 47 kilometers away respectively opening up the possibility of a day trip to visit one another. Accordingly, we planned a weekly Sunday brunch.
An excellent opportunity to spend one day a week with university educated Americans and to avoid spending an entire day alone in my house with my recalcitrant cat, our little dinners have become the highlight of my week. We make the most of our time by having an impromptu American cultural hour before we start chopping the vegetables. Complete with poetry readings, scripture, favorite music, and book readings it is easy to forget that we don’t speak the mother tongue for the other six days of the week.
Food prep is coordinated by the culinary despot Rebekah which is ok by the rest of us because it always turns out scrumptious.
Emerging from our collective food coma in the early afternoon, we embark on a walk around whoever’s site we happen to be visiting that week. Last week, when promenading about the district capital of Ifanadiana, we wandered up the palm-lined avenue to the Maison du Chef de District de Vatovavy (French speak for Governor’s Mansion). As the center of administration for one of Madagascar’s 22 regions, the hilltop château gracing the top of the town certainly left something to be desired. The splendid wrap around verandah was collapsing in places, the moss infested gutters hung distended from the roof like thick vines, and weeds had re-conquered the careful efforts of the evicted French colonial gardeners. Presently a portly Malagasy man bedecked in athletic shorts and an old pocketed t-shirt advertising a local laundry detergent met us in the yard. In the course of our ensuing polite banter, this unassuming character revealed he was, in fact, the Governor himself. Still reeling from this somewhat surprising revelation, we were further taken aback when he invited the three of us inside to play a few rounds of Dominoes.
Entering the dilapidated mansion, we were led into a room decorated like the operation center of an Eastern European drug kingpin. Painted a deep shade of blue, the outsized room contained no windows or light fixtures. The only furnishings were a semi-circle of gargantuan leather chairs facing a rugged coffee table. In the far corner was a pile meter high stack of official looking papers positioned ominously next to a blackened fireplace. The worn leather recliners swallowed us with ease, although I quickly realized that playing a game with my posterior only inches above the floor and my knees pointing straight up in the air would be challenging indeed. An underling arrived with the dominoes and the Governor asked seriously if we would be bothered if he smoked, as if we were really going to tell him to abstain. Though the governor insisted on sitting out while the three volunteers played, he dictated strategy to Rebekah and eventually assumed praetorian control of her little white rectangles. Though I got off to a disappointing start, I managed to win both matches we played, shutting out the governor in round two. We lingered and chatted while he choked down his 9th cigarette before we excused ourselves. Though we had a great time, I realize we should probably desist from spending our weekends with the upper echelon of regional government. Next Sunday will undoubtedly be less eventful.
In a brief prologue I would like to submit the following incident as evidence of the monumental incompetence of what masquerades as postal service in this country. Last Wednesday, the unfortunate little postal worker who has borne the brunt of my ire with ‘Postera Malagasy’ and their failure to perform even the most rudimentary tasks, excitedly indicated through intense gesticulation that for the first time in four and a half months I had mail. Overcome with anticipation for the mountain of letters and well wishes from friends and family back in the developed world, I gripped the counter as he disappeared in the back room for a few minutes, no doubt he was trying to consolidate all my envelopes into a single box or at least wrap them up in a thick bundle of happiness secured with a strong rubber band. Beaming with pride, he emerged from the back room bearing a single envelope addressed to “Katie Browne PCV, Madagascar National Parks AMBAJA Madagascar.” It was all I could do not to throw the mishandled mail back into his beaming face and lend him a piece of my mind. Instead I politely informed him that my name is not Katie and that the person he is looking for lives some 800k away on the Northern coast of the island. Knowing full well that if I resubmitted this letter for delivery it may never see the light of day again, I resolved to hold onto it until I see Katie again in January. To illustrate my point a bit further, when the letter in question arrived in Antananarivo via airmail, the nincompoops at Malagasy Post only managed to get the letter 435k FURTHER AWAY from its desired recipient. Meanwhile I still have no mail.