Stage Setting

Because airports are awesome I decided to visit five of them on my way to Cyprus. Heathrow posed the only serious challenge as I had to book separate flights and formally cross the border into the United Kingdom to collect my luggage. Then I had to drag all my possessions from the sleek and trendy Terminal 5 to Terminal 1 zone K which looks and smells like a public swimming pool. I then took a graceful nap slouched over my carry-on in front of electronics store. At noon I boarded my flight which was packed full except for the seat next to mine which was graciously empty. The woman occupying the window seat on the other side of the vacant space was a late middle aged British woman with hair dyed emergency-flare red to match her knee-high socks. She had a snake skin handbag designed for shop-lifting watermelons. I kept to myself for most of the flight as her bag, shoes, jacket, and empty plastic wine bottles slowly conquered the empty seat between us. As the plane approached Cyprus she noticed I was eager to peer out the window and began giving me a free aerial tour. “There is a great little Armenian restaurant in that town there.” She said gesturing towards some tall hills “And from that monastery over there you can see Lebanon on a clear day, it was built by St. Helena you know…” Just as she was about to introduce me to her favorite diving spot we were on the ground and I became concerned about exactly how large this island is. We landed in Larnaca on the east side of the island. Larnaca is not the capital, Nicosia is, but one cannot fly into Nicosia airport because it is on the wrong side of the green line. Just so no one is lost and everyone can know what a green line is and why it matters I am going to give a brief history of this fair island island. Cyprus has been the little guy wrapped up in big power politics since ancient times. In 58 BC a certain Roman noble by the name of Publius Clodius Pulcher got himself kidnapped by pirates. He asked the King of Cyprus to cover the ransom, and when he refused Cyprus promptly found itself annexed by Rome. It remained in Roman/Byzantine hands until the Byzantine governor insulted Richard the Lionheart’s wife while Richard and the entire army of the 3rd crusade was parked in the southern port of Lamassol. The resulting invasion of 1191 left Richard with an island he didn’t want so he sold it to the Knight’s Templar. The Templar put up some fresh paint, steam-cleaned the carpets, stained the cabinets, and re-sold it to Guy de Lusignan in 1192. This French family turned out to be not so good at collecting taxes and after 300 years the bankers of the Middle Ages (Venice) foreclosed on Cyprus. In 1570 the Ottoman Turks showed up with 60,000 troops and asked the Venetians nicely to leave. They did not and after a bloody show down Cyprus joined the Ottoman Empire. The Turks found the island affable and decided to settle a bunch of people there. In 1878 the Ottoman Empire lost a war to Russia which had nothing to do with Cyprus whatsoever, but as a result Cyprus was leased to the British Empire. I was heretofore not aware nations could be leased. Perhaps our own government could raise some money this way by leasing Ohio to Canada or something. When the Brits took over formally in 1914 they found the island inhabited primarily by Greeks (left over from the Byzantine/Roman era) but there were also a significant minority of Turks. The Greek Cypriots began clamoring for the British to give the island over to Greece which upset the Turks living on the island who did not want to be governed by Athens. Cyprus became independent in 1960 under a deal that said that the Island would remain independent and that Turkey and Greece should keep their noses off the island. Things came to a head in 1974 however when a bunch of Greek Cypriots staged a coup declaring their intention to join with Greece. 5 days later in the defense of the Turkish Cypriots, Turkey launched a full scale invasion of the north of Cyprus. By the time international pressure halted the invasion, some 2,000 people were dead, some 230,000 people had been forced to flee their homes and 37% of the island was under Turkish control. The limits of that occupation, known as the green line, runs right though the capital, splitting it in two much like Berlin during the Cold War. “Northern Cyprus” has declared its independence from the southern part of the Island, but the whole of the international community (except, of course, Turkey) recognizes Turkey’s 1974 invasion as illegal and refuses to acknowledge the Turkish Cypriot state. Therefore it is illegal to enter Cyprus from via occupied areas. Nicosia’s airport is on the Turkish side, so I can’t use it. That is why I had to fly into Lacarna. Once I was on the ground on the right side of Cyprus I took a bus 30 minutes to Nicosia and was dropped off at the small student housing complex that will be my home for the summer. It is 85 meters from the green line. If the Turks decide to invade the south I will be the first to know. However, any further military action is highly unlikely and would be seen as pointless by both Greeks and Turks. The rest is for the politicians and diplomats (ahem…) to figure out.

Ranomafana Video!

How to Get from Ranomafana to West Michigan

Before leaving, condense all worldly possessions into two suitcases that have heretofore been serving as Sharbaraz’s favorite place to sulk and shed copious amounts of cat hair. Everything that doesn’t fit in the suitcases including most of the tattered rags I have been using as clothes get carried over to Rodrigue’s house and donated to the neighbor family. This is more challenging than one might imagine because my house is 2.5x the size of their house and there are already five people and associated clutter residing in it. Call the taxi-van guy in Ifanadiana and arrange to have a taxi stop and pick up four suitcases, two metal trunks, two gas tanks, and two bicycles from Alison and my house tomorrow morning. Inventory furniture, make Rodrigue sign some documents in English he doesn’t understand. Go to bed, sleep poorly.
Day 1- Wake up at 5:00. Give mattress to Rodrigue and family. Sit on front stoop and cry until the aqua-marine taxi van arrives with Alison. There is too much dried cassava on the roof and there is an issue stowing another bicycle up there. Stand around listlessly as things are re-arranged. Pack into the van for grand departure. Drive two minutes to Ranomafana and stop while the driver unloads the aforementioned cassava and frets about not having enough passengers. Depart for Fianarantsoa. Arrange to have driver shirk the local police and drop us off at the Peace Corps house rather than at the taxi station. Arriving at Peace Corps house, create a spectacular mess unpacking and re-packing everything in the common-room. Inventory and return all Peace Corps property (bicycle, metal trunk, water filter, med-kit etc.) to regional office. Grab the two Galana gas tanks I have been using to heat my food and fetch a taxi-cab. Drive to no less than three Galana gas stations before we find one that will take returned gas bottles. Unfortunately, you bought these bottles in Mananjary which according to the clerk is a different gas agency than Fianarantsoa so you need to take the bottles to Mananjary to collect your deposit. Manajary is 8 hours from Fianarantsoa. Walk the bottles down the street and sell them to a sleazy looking fat man selling “used” cell phones on the sidewalk for $25. Meet up with Alison and get Chinese food for lunch.
Day 2 (Thanksgiving)- Arrive at taxi-brousse station at 6:30. “Forget” plastic bag of old underwear in trunk of city taxi. Leave 30 minutes late because some abhorrently dressed diva has decided she no longer wants to come to Antananarivo and demands to have all of her baggage unloaded. Drive for 8 ½ hours through the central highlands listening to This American Life on my Ipod, reminding myself that I never have to be put through this cruel form of transportation torture ever again. In Tana, taxi to Peace Corps house, shower, change, and transform myself into a respectable human being before going with Alison to Jane’s house for a resplendent thanksgiving feast involving turkey and plenty of box wine.
Days 3-5- Since the office was closed Thursday for Thanksgiving, most staff took Friday off and indulged in a four day weekend. Thus post thanksgiving weekend is spent lying about the Peace Corps house working up the intestinal fortitude to provide two stool samples to the medical unit.
Day 6- Arrive at the Peace Corps office and demand the full attention of senior staff. There is a two page checklist of forms, meetings, and official bureaucratic malarkey that requires the direct assistance of no less than twelve different Peace Corps personnel. Sign pledge that you have paid the electric bill in full (ha), swear on your life that you closed the bank account even though the paperwork got lost in Fianarantsoa, and pay Peace Corps the $30 ‘emergency fund’ that remained secured in an envelope under my trunk for just two months before it was used for a non-emergency.
Day 7- Report to medical unit at 9:30 for de-briefs on post-Peace Corps insurance and C-127 forms. Give three vials of blood and a TB test. Leave post haste to make 10:30 dental appointment across town. The first three 194 busses are full so you are forced to resort to using a little elbow to ensure a place in front of the swarm of pushy commuters. Arrive at Adventist Clinic. Brace yourself for the worst dentistry experience of all time. Over the next 45 minutes, the painfully shy Malagasy assistant will need to adjust the x-ray bite wings no less than four times, fidgeting with the machine many more times than necessary. The dentist is a balding half Chinese half crazy man who seems to think this is your first time to the dentist office. He breaks out the plastic model teeth and oversized brush for an interactive lesson on how to brush your teeth. He goes on to lecture about the importance of flossing, making an analogy between marriage and dental hygiene and then stretching the analogy beyond all believable bounds, including references to scripture. The assistant then introduces a vacuum the size of a fire hose to your mouth while the dentist-person uses a shriekingly high pitched aqua drill to tear plaque off your teeth all the while asking apparently rhetorical questions since the two machines and three hands running amuck in your mouth preclude you from engaging in conversation. When the power goes out, find the battery powered headlamp and keep working. Leave the dentist office feeling somehow violated and make your way through traffic to the medical unit. Stool sample tests are back and they are positive for round worm. Take these pills you’ll be fine.
Day 8- Return to office for more running around. Exit interview with Country Director, invalidate Peace Corps ID, collect passport, and leave the Office an RPCV.
Day 9- Wake up early and go for nostalgic run through the rice paddies. Have TB test read by doctor when he arrives. Pack. Leave for airport with Alison and massive suitcase in tow. Because you’re Dutch, take mass transit instead of getting a taxi. Arrive at airport to discover the check-in line wrapped around the entire length of the airport. Bribe airport worker $4 to cut in line. Waste the remainder of my Malagasy currency on overpriced beer at the airport commissary. Cry leaving Alison and pass through passport control. Dry your tears quickly because customs has your cat-hair check-baggage out in the waiting area and calls you over to explain its contents. When they consider removing some of your purchases on less than legal merits, threaten the wrath of the U.S. Embassy and begin calling Jane. When they back off, collect your things and board the plane. Find seat next to sweet elderly French couple and chat them up. During take-off pop the three benadryl that you ferreted away from the medical unit on Tuesday and pass out.
Day 10- Wake up somewhere over the Mediterranean. It is still technically Day 9 in Paris but from here on out what day it is gets a little blurry because you dosed yourself on sleeping medication at noon and have been dead to the world for the past nine hours. Land at Orly airport south of Paris at 10:45pm. Proceed effortlessly through immigration and collect luggage. Your connecting flight is from Charles De Gaulle at 7:15am and you have arranged no ground transportation save looking up a bus schedule. Inquire at the information desk three times and receive three conflicting reports about available transportation and where it leaves from. The flight from Tana is the last scheduled for the day and the airport is closing. You have only 22.15 euros, all in small coins that you bought off of beggars squatting by the banks in Fianarantsoa, not enough for a taxi. While investigating the third lead on buses through the deserted airport, find a sign for a bus listed in the bus schedule you printed off the internet. Follow this sign out of the airport, through a parking lot, around a construction zone, past a hotel to a small metal bench with space for three people covered by a small three-sided glass shelter. It is 45 degrees and it is drizzling. It is now 11:40pm. The bus comes at 1:04am. Fortify yourself behind your luggage and listen to more This American Life while casting suspecting glances at the occasional pedestrian that happens by. The bus arrives as promised. Obnoxiously drag the cat bag up the stairs and hand the driver a heaping handful of coins that totals 6 euros 30. Driving through Paris, marvel at all the smooth roads and pretty lights of night in Paris. Pass a massive Christmas tree at Place d’Italie, Cross the Seine, catch a peek at Notre Dame, and circle Bastille before getting dumped at Gare de l’Est in central Paris at 1:49am. Stand around looking lost until someone asks you where you are going, reply that Charles De Gaulle is your destination and he will usher you to another bus and shove your luggage into the undercarriage. Pay the driver 7 euros all in coins no larger than .20 euro cents. Fall asleep for about ten minutes. The Airport is the last stop on this line and you arrive at 3:48am. Convince the security guard to allow you indoors. Locate a mildly comfortable chair and unpack all three pieces of luggage onto the terminal floor. Re-pack everything so that you meet the new airline’s arcane weight requirements. Try to use the bathroom but discover they are closed. Wait patiently while a KLM employee sets up an elaborate line maze in front of the check-in counter. At 5:45 walk through line maze and check in for flight. Unpack contents of carry-on luggage an additional time for Paris security. On the 70 min flight to Amsterdam, partake in a croissant and coffee as the first bit of food you have eaten since the stewardess revived you somewhere over Kenya and fed you some fishy pasta yesterday afternoon. Arrive in Amsterdam as the sun rises. Schippol airport is decorated in a tasteful holiday cheer. You are so distracted by the shiny lights and pretty things in the shops that you miss your concourse and are late arriving to your gate. There is a long line. Every passenger is being subjected to a 30 second interview before they are allowed to board. Your interview takes 15 minutes. The security agent needs to consult with his managing officer twice over your lack of complete travel documentation from Madagascar, the fact that you hold two valid American passports, and that you had been to Niger two years ago. He also is extremely inquisitive about the fictitious trip to Switzerland that I made up to explain your return ticket to Paris in April. Thankfully you are allowed to board. You do not sleep on this flight. Inform the stewardess about your roundworm condition as a ploy to get more pretzels, crackers, and tomato juice. The retired pastor seated next to you eyes you sympathetically and hands you his roll. Ask to be served both coffee and red wine before landing. Landing in Detroit, become one of those obnoxious passengers that speed walks though the concourse to customs. Get flagged for extra screening because you “were in close contact with livestock” and “visited agricultural areas” during my trip. Meet friendly neighbor Mr. Hedges in the waiting area. Drive directly to Grand Rapids. Meet brother and his significant other for the first time in two years and go to Chipotle for a burrito with all the fixings. Shower at brother’s girlfriend’s house and proceed to my cousin’s wedding. Drink serious amounts of coffee at wedding reception to say conscious for dinner. Meet new family member. Take family Christmas photo. Drive back to Holland. Arrive Home. Mission accomplished.

Peace Corps Madagascar

Madagascar is like Hamlet: Beautiful, inspirational, and amazing but inexorably tragic. I have lived here for two years now and standing on the precipice of another significant life transition I am filled with so many seemingly incompatible feelings and emotions about this place. I love it. I hate it. I can't wait to leave but I don't want to go. I came here under the impression that I was going to give something to the people of this island, and I am leaving wondering what it was that I really gave and if what I gave did more harm than good.
It’s not a secret that Madagascar is a political, social, and economic disaster. Forbes magazine recently ranked Madagascar as the worst national economy on the planet. There hasn't been a peaceful transition of government in living memory. The country has been in a protracted state of political anarchy for going on three years now.
The sad part of this is that Madagascar has so much going for it, so much unrealized and underutilized potential that it breaks your heart to watch the forests burn, hillsides erode away and poor Malagasy farmers be paid a couple dollars to export their natural resources to China. There is also a sense of helpless complacency permeating the people of Madagascar. They know things are bad, but lack the will to do anything about it, knowing that anything they do is just as likely to make things worse as it is to improve them.
It is not my intent to conclude my experiences here on a depressing note. I have written extensively already about some of the unforgettable people, places, and things I have encountered on this spectacular island. Despite Madagascar's depressed outlook, I find hope Rodrigue and his family who live happy, spectacularly uncomplicated lives and in a small way are making Ranomafana a better place everyday and I am honored that I was allowed to be part of that for a time.

95% of the people who join Peace Corps have no idea what they are getting into. Not unlike others I stumbled uncomfortably through the questions from mildly concerned friends and relatives regarding my goals and motivations in making the decision to volunteer in the developing world. I was much more comfortable discussing concrete things like the application process or departure timeline than about serious questions like "What made you want to apply?" or "How did you become interested in the Peace Corps." Looking back I can see that I lacked eloquence on the topic because I hadn't convincingly explained the decision to myself yet and instead proffered statements to the effect of wanting to help people and see the world. At our final Peace Corps conference, our training director handed us the statements of purpose we had written during the application process, one of those superfluous application hurdles that asks you to explain your inspirations for joining and what you hope to accomplish as a volunteer. I glanced at the first sentence and quietly slipped the paper into the back of my folder and pretended to read from a blank sheet of graph paper for the remainder of the activity, fearing the uncomfortable string of fallacy that it inevitably contained. When I got back to Ranomafana I burned the document without reading it.
I joined Peace Corps because I didn't like where I was and I needed to be somewhere else. I had no direction in what I wanted out of life, no work experience, and nothing tying me down to anything. Somehow I hoped that Peace Corps would transform me into someone new. Turn me into one of those smiling white faces surrounded by a village of adoring African children. I would do as John the Baptist or Jesus and disappear into the desert and emerge completely changed. Unfortunately, Peace Corps does not do character transformations, it does character amplifications. Living alone as a foreigner in the middle of no where, I quickly learned that I was not going to be able to live with myself if I tried to force myself to change into something I wasn't. My house was not big enough for me and the person I thought I should be. Instead I made an unconscious decision to become comfortable with who I am, and let that person flourish. I learned lots of new things about myself. I am not good at cooking. I really like John Stienbeck. Most television is a waste of time. Cats are stupid. I'm an organizer. I like to please people, just to name a few.
Yet the number one misconception I had about Peace Corps is that I was doing this to help others. It has become clear to me that I gained so much more than I was able to give to the people in my community. As I discussed earlier, development is a messy business and the whole concept of 'helping' in the developing world is fought with complicated pros and cons. was my presence in Ranomafana over the past two years beneficial in the long term? Who knows? I certainly hope so, but in the context of observations I made about the culture, history, and direction of my village, I am not optimistic that my impact was significant.
Though there will come a time when most of the people in Ranomafana will have forgotten who I was and what I did. There will never come a time when I forget them. Ranomafana gave me a new family, gave me the freedom to be who I am, gave me direction and purpose to my life. Yes I put a bunch of trees in the ground and yes I painted maps and did projects. But I know my lasting impacts in Ranomafana are going to be on the relationships I forged with the people around me and how those relationships affected me and my neighbors. As I talked about previously, Madagascar is a broken place and no amount of aid money or Peace Corps projects is going to change that. What does make a difference is love and friendship between two people across the cultural and linguistic boundaries. And maybe I only made that connection with a few people here. But for me, that makes it all worth it.

(photo credit: Alison Thieme)

Health

DISCLAIMER: I am not a heath sector volunteer much less a health expert in any position to comment authoritatively on any of Madagascar’s many medical issues. Actual responses to illnesses among Malagasy vary based on location, income level, and culture. The following post was compiled only on the observations made by myself, other volunteers, and Malagasy friends. No empirical studies were reviewed, no data was collected. What I’m trying to say is I am full of it per usual.

Knock on wood it has been 22 months now and I have managed to avoid becoming seriously ill in the Peace Corps. I have never been forced through a taxi brousse ride while vomiting or incontinent. The Peace Corps has not had to fly a helicopter down to my site to rescue me from the brink of death. I have not been evacuated to South Africa for observation and treatment. I do not have malaria. My most serious medical predicament to date involved accidentally smacking a wasp nest with a broom and the subsequent allergic swelling. Much of this bon sante is due to the wonderful and attentive medical staff that is on call 24/7 to patiently listen to volunteers as they describe their problems, real and imagined; usually something about the frequency, consistency, and appearance of their bowel movements.
In training, we are issued a black medical kit that is supposed to contain all the medicines and materials we could need to treat ourselves at site. It also came with two paper bags stuffed with materials that couldn’t fit in the black box as well as a hefty instruction manual. Most ailments can be dealt with from the contents of this kit or through the judicious application of Tylenol and/or patiently allowing symptoms to work themselves out. I have been put on antibiotics only once. I still take my malaria prophylaxis so thus far I have found Madagascar to be a medically uneventful place.
The responses to the medical challenges of Madagascar I have observed by groups of non-Peace Corps vahaza (tourists) have been far less reasoned. Many arrive on the island flouting their rejection of all three prophylaxis options citing concerns over mefloquine’s psychoactive properties, malarone’s high price, and the impact of an antibiotic like doxycyline might have on their precious digestional bacteria. This attitude persists until someone in the group comes down with a case of runny stool or a cold. Then all the stops come off and ridiculousness ensues. Not only is someone sick, they are sick IN MADAGASCAR which obviously is 1000x worse than any normal ailment and thus justifies a proportional response that defies all common sense. I have, on more than one occasion, seen colds (usually mild and of the viral persuasion) treated, without medical consultation, with cyprophlaxicin, a powerful antibiotic that acts like Drano for the GI tract. Intestinal bacteria are written off as collateral damage Everyone attending to the stricken tourist raids their zip-locked medical bags to see what sorts of prescription-only pills their doctor sent them in case of extreme emergency. Tamaflu, Coratem, and last defense antibiotics, everything is on the table. When Alison was down with a case of dysentery, one tourist wisely prescribed her Ammodium and some other pill whose properties he was not familiar with, “but it cost $300 so it should work”. Fortunately she refused as Ammodium coupled with dysentery has been known to kill patients as pressure from backed up wastes can cause the gut to burst.
It may seem counterintuitive but the rainforest, I have found, tends to be healthier than other areas of Madagascar because the water running off the mountains is clear, fresh, and hasn’t been despoiled by animal/human urine/feces/wastes. Additionally, the healthy population of feral frogs, lizards, chameleons and bats keeps the mosquito population at a minimum. Everything downriver to the east is another matter altogether. Rural Malagasy seem to have a special penchant for reliving themselves directly into community water sources, a practice I have been forced to witness/deal with the consequences of at least three times this week. And when it comes to water and disease everything revolves around feces. Our doctors succinctly informed us in training that any intestinal ailment we contract is as a result of germs originating from the intestine of someone or something else. Against this volunteers are armed with filters and bleach drops, but the general populace is left to their own devices. Madagascar has a serious lack of toilets, a recent study concluded that lack of toilets/outhouses cost the country an estimated 17.6 million dollars a year in sick workers and lost time spent wandering around looking for someplace private behind the bushes. How one would collect data for such a study is somewhat suspect, but its conclusions are not shocking. Indeed the entire commune of Lopary contains only three outhouses, one notoriously flimsy one is reserved for the resident Peace Corps Volunteer.
The proceeding should not be misconstrued to conclude that there are not serious and dangerous illnesses in Madagascar. There are many including, but not limited to rabies, typhoid, malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, shistosamyasis, dysentery, and the plague. Syphilis is rumored to run as high as 30 or 40% in some areas. However, these diseases are transmitted in ways that most vahaza and volunteers can avoid by being safe with their water, food, prophylaxis, and choice of intimate partner. Many Malagasy people don’t have that luxury or don’t know what choices are available to protect themselves. Additionally many people live far from doctors and medical dispensaries. In Ranomafana, for example, there is one doctor who works out of a small facility in town that services the entire commune of 25,000 people. Most of these people live hours hike over steep mountains and dense foliage away and are not likely to make the trip if they are feeling under the weather. Often people wait until things get critical before attempting to move a sick person when it is often too late. In many villages there are ‘Ombiasa’ or medicine men called upon to attend to the sick. Here medical blends with spiritual as many Ombiasa require possession by a spirit to conduct their healings. One Ombiasa near Ranomafana can purportedly heal broken bones in as little as three days with the discerning application of zebu fat and his own saliva. Most prescribe some combination of native plants mixed into something approximating tea. Unfortunately the spirits possessing these earthly vessels keep poor patient records so their actual effectiveness is somewhat of a mystery.
Those living near the village and the road tend to report to doctors somewhat regularly. Without fail, doctors tend to prescribe the same solution for every symptom: bludgeoning the disease to death with low-grade antibiotics. Amoxicillin, tetracycline and lots of other things with the suffix “lin” seem to be indiscriminately prescribed for whatever ails you. Some, including my neighbors, swear by the big yellow and brown amoxicillin pills that they bring back biweekly whenever some family member has a cold or headache. If baby Kanto happens to be showing symptoms, antibiotics are applied intravenously. I can’t imagine there is a single bacterium left on the island that is not immune to amoxicillin. The same drugs are dolled out for livestock but without any instructions on dosage or how to get your sick chicken to ingest a human sized dose of tetracycline. Other drugs are around. I happen to know that the lady down the street in the obnoxiously green cement house sells a host of exciting generics that in any country with laws would be prescription only. These are either too expensive and/or unfamiliar to most villagers. Someone more entrepreneurial than myself could make a killing distributing sugar capsules under the label “Super Amoxycilin-cylcin.”
While we are on the topic of heath, I would like to add an appendix (pun) on Malagasy dentistry. The dentist of choice for the Peace Corps office is the lyrically agreeable ‘Adventist Dentist’ on the East end of Antananarivo. Volunteers are entitled to one cleaning annually which is usually conducted in less than ten minutes with varying degrees of professionalism by two attendants who have been known to place as many as four hands in the oral cavity at any one time, well above the carrying capacity of most mouths. More serious dental trauma, usually a result of sorting rocks out of rice with one’s molars, can bring about memorable experiences with root canals or fillings requiring multiple commutes to the capital.
Unfortunately for most Malagsy, rice and cassava farming does not come with dental and the consequences are immediately obvious in towns and villages. The absence of any corrective orthodontics leaves some villagers with shark-like arrangements of teeth protruding from gums at all positions and angles. When three or more teeth attempt to occupy the same space, the results are never pretty. The bane of Malagsy smiles, however, is not the lack of retainers of braces it is sugarcane a.k.a. fary. When it’s not being grown plantation style to make granulated sugar, fary us useful for exactly two things: munching on raw and brewing moonshine. While the latter is widely distributed in proofs north of 90 with easily foreseeable consequences for the liver, masticating on the tough fibers does for teeth what an industrial sander and saltwater can do for the exterior of a sports car. Despite this fary remains extremely popular because it is sweet, cheap, and is a wonderful way to get rambunctious children to shut up and mind themselves for a while. Gums are not exempt from the oral devastation either. Many Malagasy are addicted to 50 ariary bags of snuff that they cram under their front lip while they go about daily tasks. The gums proceed to rot like month old wonderbread, taking on a piebald pattern not dissimilar to spoiled meat. What few skeletal teeth might be left at this point stick out of the receded gums like the stained monoliths of some ruined Greek temple. Fortunately most Malagasy cooks adhere strongly to the boil-everything-until-it’s-a-mushy-paste school of culinary arts thus teeth are precluded as a necessary prerequisite to normal digestion.

Nosy Be

Nosy Be is a play land for white people. Much like a prison or sewer plant is build far from an American metropolis to avoid making a spectacle out of something large and socially embarrassing, Nosy Be’s geographic isolation from the mainland seems designed to insulate the island from the typical life on the mainland. It, however, doesn’t house dangerous criminals or emit noxious fumes; it houses foreign people, their money, and the facilities to suit their extravagant tastes.
Getting to Nosy Be, however, is a less than glamorous affair. Unless you have booked yourself a direct flight from Milan or Paris, the only way to the island is through the port of Ankify. This noisy harbor is perched on a small rocky outcropping and is infested with seasoned transportation extortionists, slumping shacks, and fortified groups of white folk trying earnestly to appear calm. My theory holds that Ankify’s atmosphere is intentionally surly its tattered tarmac deliberately caked in sticky mud to entice stranded tourists to lay down unspeakable sums of money to be taken anywhere else by the fastest possible means. The only economical means of transport back to Ambanja consists of a small fleet of dilapidated station wagons with decimated facades that seem to be begging to be taken out on the ferry for aquatic euthanasia.
The seaborne transportation is hardly more encouraging. The larger ferries look like botched efforts to transform large objects not known for buoyancy into amphibious craft. One ferry almost certainly served some time as an industrial shipping container and another appeared to be floating balcony or patio off a demolished high rise apartment building. These car-bearing rust buckets don’t really ply the water as much as bulldoze it with their distinctly un-nautical flat bows and rectangular disposition and usually require three hours to make the voyage to Nosy Be. We opted to shell out an additional $2.50 for one of the faster passenger-only ‘speed’ boats that, already loaded with Malagasy passengers, maintained a not quite comfortable clearance above the waterline. As we smashed ourselves on the plastic bench, our skipper tossed us one life jacket to split between the four of us as we pushed off.
One arrives in Nosy Be via Hell-Ville, a town named for some obscure French naval officer and not for its likeness to the abode of the damned. It is the largest town on Nosy Be sporting breezy boulevards and colonial architecture akin to Diego Suarez. Hell-Ville doesn’t have any nearby beaches or resorts; instead it thrives providing the services for the resort towns scattered about the island’s coast. We did not dally here long and after disembarking at the port made for Ambatoloka by taxi.
Ambatoloka is Nosy Be’s largest beach resort complex. It is a two kilometer coral beach consumed entirely by hotels, guest houses, bars, etc. All of this excitement was, of course, well beyond our volunteer salaries so we booked windowless cement rooms sans hot water just inland from the beach. For the next three days we plied Nosy Be’s various beaches by taxi and spent entire days lounging about sipping beer and staring out on at Nosy Be’s beautiful blue waters while ladies with painted yellow faces walked by selling lambas, fruits, and massages. The most spectacular beach on Nosy Be is Andilana. Located on the Northern tip of the island on a large cove, it is only sparsely populated with resorts and contains few tourists. The white powdered sand slopes slowly out to sea so as the tide receded in the afternoon, we could lie in surf only a few inches deep and let the cool waves crash over sunburned shoulders.
Although Nosy Be exists in a world separate from the mainland, there are places on Nosy Be that are themselves bubbles of such unfathomable wealth and privilege. Venta Club, a swanky Italian resort on the north side of Andilana is one such place. The cost of just wandering onto the beach is a hefty 30 €. Walk-in reservations are not welcome. Clients, flown in directly from Europe, enjoy all-inclusive rights to all food, excursions, services and amenities. Occasionally a pack of Italians would wander off their reserve down the beach under escort from well-dressed Malagasy attendants whilst the PCVs lying in the surf made rough appraisals in the upper hundreds of dollars of their in-vogue swimwear and ocular UV protectors. On another occasion, slightly lost on the beach in Ambatoloka and searching for a short-cut, we wandered in some resplendent resort that made us dirty broke beach bums feel wholly out of place and we slunk out of the vaulted reception area without making eye-contact.
Just because Nosy Be is isolated and vahaza infested doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a vibrant Malagasy atmosphere or an exciting nightlife. Some of the nicest Malagasy I have met were on Nosy Be selling street food or just striking up a conversation at a local bar. However, good portions of the Malagasy frequenting the vahaza hangouts are prostitutes. Prostitution is huge on Nosy Be, especially in Ambatoloka to the point were many hotels now refuse services to single men. Thankfully, once you have established the fact that you are not interested in their services, most Malagasy women of the trade are surprisingly courteous and have the uncanny ability to dance the night away and have an apparent good time even when all potential clients have disappeared. The clubs of Nosy Be are also a great place to enjoy live Malagasy music as nationally renown singers often come to the area to vacation and put on shows. We were lucky enough to run into notorious Malagasy heartthrob Fandrama while visiting Hell-Ville. Katie even managed to come away with his phone number.
My time on Nosy Be was certainly thrilling, and I was not even able to see most of the island’s major draws. These include world famous snorkeling and diving as well as exploring some of the small outlying islands. Three days, however, is just enough for this PCV. There is such thing as too much of a good thing and with 29 hours of public Malagasy transportation awaiting me on the mainland, my reintroduction to real life was promising to be poignant.

Maromandia

Given Ranomafana’s winter reputation for miserable weather, I collected a few of my vacation days and decided to ditch town and head up to Maromandia to visit my friend Katie. Much like Alison, Katie is a member of the Niger stage, an excellent travel companion and not my girlfriend. Her site is located in the far northwest corner of the island. The area near Katie’s site is hot and dry all year round, consisting mostly of arid shrub land leading out to the Mozambique Channel. She lives nearby Sahamalaza National Park, a newly protected area established in 2007. The park was created for a remote patch of forest that is home to the Blue-eyed Lemur (the only other primate besides humans with blue eyes) and continues to include massive swathes of thick mangrove forest, and a collection of coastal islands wallowing in some of the colorful coral reefs in Madagascar. The issue is there that all of this wonderful biodiversity and wildlife is about as accessible to tourists as Mars or other celestial bodies. Hiking out to desiccated reforestation site on top of a hill, Katie pointed out a mangrove island in the distance where rare Fish Eagles amass like dirty dishes after thanksgiving to nest. On the opposing side of the hill lay a deep swerving valley. The valley floor was blanketed in a concealing layer of trees and screwpalms trailing off into the distance where an escarpment jutted out of the hills and sealed the ravine’s tip. Katie reported that there was a waterfall at the edge of the cliff, but the valley’s steep sides prevented anyone from venturing into it.
Upon hearing this I immediately set about finding a way down, and lo, a skinny path appeared and ten minutes later both of us were picking off burs from our shorts and soothing our scratched legs in the bubbling stream that ran across the valley floor. Setting out East we sloshed through the muddy undergrowth until we emerged on a clearing. The spiny pandanus forest ended abruptly on a large pool of water surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs. Over the east side of the cliffs a heavy stream of water split three ways and plunged about forty feet, crashing loudly on a pile of boulders and spilling into the pond. The damp shaded backside of the cliff was studded with mosses and small purple orchids pushing their delicate flowers out earnestly towards the sunlight. A more beautiful and swimming hole could not have been imagined. For twenty minutes we sat silently on a rock in the dappled sunlight with our feet in the water munching on melted trail mix wondering how on earth we get paid to live like this.
With my penchant for hiking and exploring satisfied, we spent the remaining few days in and around Maromandia, meeting with local counterparts and stuffing ourselves on the North’s delicious foods. On market day Katie bought crabs and her jolly counterpart came over and prepared them with tomatoes, onions and something else that made them taste magical. Another spectacular plate was Akoho voinyo or chicken cooked in coconut sauce and served with a spicy lemon salsa sauce. Although vegetables are almost non-existent and almost all food disappears from the markets during the hot hunger season, I would still take the northern diet over what passes for food in the hotely’s of my region.
Another thing about Maromandia, everyone likes to be naked. Whether you are down at the river for a bath, in the stream doing laundry or just out for a swim, why not disrobe entirely with all your neighbors and do it naked? Maromandia’s nudity complex is compounded by its one and only bridge and primary thoroughfare which provides an excellent vista over the town’s riverside bathing facilities. No one sees fit to make any attempt to cover themselves, and some even shout and greet their friends on the bridge. This behavior may be a result of the northwest’s sweltering temperatures; more relaxed unencumbered culture, or highly developed sense of community. But flaunting our over zealous modesty, Katie and I still did our utmost to avoid catching any bare buttocks in our pictures of the flaming orange sunsets over the river.
I have already published a scathing review of Madagascar’s public transportation system in a previous post, and our drive into Ambanja that morning did not depart from those norms, except that I really enjoyed it. Maromandia has a dumpy brown van that ferries Maromandia’s masses to the regional capital in the morning and faithfully returns before dinner. Affectionately referred to as the “chocolate brousse” by area PCVs, it is driven by an unkempt portly man in a striped shirt. Arriving late, the three PCVs were smashed into the front seat, an arrangement preferable to the muddled mountain of humanity which piled chaotically five and six to a bench in the rear compartment. Katie’s position sitting nearly on top of the driver obliged her to hold down the break pedal with her left foot when the driver stopped and concerned himself with forcing in additional passengers. The Chocolate Brousse has gained an unparralled reputation among the townspeople living along that stretch of the RN6 for his unorthodox way of of the announcing his presence. The van’s abused horn has been beaten so thoroughly that only a feeble electronic fart serves to alert to country folk to his impending arrival. Spotting any pedestrian he would pound the horn, take his hands off the wheel, lean out the window, and do an animated version of jazz-hands into the air bellowing “ARABEEE!” [this is a tribal greeting meaning congratulations] to his adoring public. Children run to the road to greet him, men and women put down their chores and return the quirky jazz-hands wave. Stopping to take on more bodies, our driver greets everyone more completely. “Arabe on your rice harvest!” “Arabe on your new t-shirt!” “Arabe on your house with a small door!” Self-confident women with their distinctive Sakalava quarter-bun hair styles and painted faces mill about and the arrival of the chocolate brousse becomes a community event. Everyone smiles, Everyone laughs, the drivers fat hands thump the horn a few more times and the overloaded chocolate brousse coughs and putters up the hill to the next hamlet.
As we approached Ambanja, we stopped briefly in Andampy. Andampy is the North’s newest sapphire boom town and is a remarkable testament to the destructive power of disorganized humanity. The discovery is only three months old, so recent in fact that the rice stalks surrounding the pits still contain streaks of living green. An entire slum has sprawled out from the main road towards the pits. Nearby towns have been emptied of people and produce as more energy and resources go to the mines and away from the rice fields. In typical form, a boom of any precious resource in the 3rd world has proved to be an environmental bust. For days valley floors are ripped apart by hand and the cut earth bleeds into the nearby streams and rivers. The chocolate brousse had stopped near a temporary used clothing stand to drop off another hopeful settler who unloaded a bunch of building materials and set off to make his fortune in the dirt.
Ambanja is an unremarkable Malagasy regional city save its towering triangular bridge and streets lined with towering shade trees. Unlike my regional capital of Fianarantsoa, Ambanja is not blessed with a Peace Corps transit house so PCVs are on their own to find accommodations. In Ambanja, however, a fat old woman with a saintly amount of patience and a spare foam mattress shaped like a comma allows transiting PCVs to overnight in her house. Local PCVs revere “Mama Peace Corps” with a peculiar blend of gratitude and trepidation as quick stops at her place to drop off luggage or catch a nap are liable to digress into long superfluous conversations about local news, family gossip, and the weather. Given that I can only understand pieces of her flowy Sakalava dialect, I snuck in late and left bright and early in a taxi to the port for Nosy Be.

And since this post has already surpassed normal length, I’ll save Nosy Be for another post.

Alison

Earlier this month, Alison moved to town. Alison and I are both members of the now infamous “Niger Stage” of volunteers and is arguably my best friend on this oversized island. Her original site of Lopary could be euphemistically described as ‘poverty stricken’ and offered her no electricity, no latrines, few edible food products and even fewer work opportunities in the Environment sector. Together we made some fortuitous work contacts and well placed e-mails and earlier this month she moved up to replace Mark at the Friends of Madagascar house when he left in late May. Alison has already featured prominently in past bloggings, accompanying me for numerous vacations and commiserating with me on American holidays.
Our friendship over the past two years has been nurtured by thrifty text messaging deals on Malagasy cell phone carriers and a mutual penchant for sarcastic humor, practices only encouraged by our newfound proximity. Having a site partner in the Peace Corps can completely change the experience of being at site, and having Alison around has certainly done that for me. Suddenly I have someone to come with me on daily project activities, as well as assisting her on her initiatives. On a less professional level, I’m suddenly cooking a lot more meals for two and rediscovering my addiction to card games.
Having someone else around also results in rash and exciting group think. For instance, while I am not dumb enough to wander off into the rainforest by myself, I am certainly dumb enough to do it with someone else. In this spirit, Alison and I recently struck out from Ranomafana towards the forest with no particular objective, direction, or exit strategy in mind. We eventually discovered a mildly discernable path through the weeds and cassava fields which after and exhausting 45-minute climb led us up the mountains to the forest edge. We had entered the ring of semi-degraded forest that surrounds Ranomafana National Park. Completely open, unregulated, and unprotected, this area is open to anyone with enough stamina to drag themselves up the treacherous and unforgiving footpath Alison and I had just endured. It is also an excellent way to see the various methods of deforestation the Malagasy have developed to plunder the forest’s resources.
As far as I can tell, there are three main methods to this madness. The first is tavy, exhaustively described in a previous post, it consists of merrily chopping every living thing to pieces, baking it all in the tropical sun for a few weeks and setting the resulting pile of brush on fire. What remains is a good amount of ash, a clear place to plant and nothing resembling a forest. Deforestation type-2, or as I like to call it “banana tavy” is designed specifically for the cultivation of this yellow phallic fruit. All of the forest under story, including but not limited too tree ferns, screwpalms, hardwood saplings, orchids, palms, and other such plants of little interest, are laid waste and left to rot on the ground and hold in moisture for the precious banana plants that are scattered sporadically about. The largest trees are often left orphaned in a sea of pale-leafed bananas. Finally there is selective logging, where specific trees are removed for lumber rather than burned on site. The forest giants are felled by hand and slowly dismembered and carried people’s backs down the mountain trails to town. Evidence of this activity is revealed when the forest trail opens up on a gradually decaying pile coffee saucer-sized woodchips and a conspicuous hole in the forest canopy.
Alison and I witnessed all these fascinating variations as our trail wound deeper into the forest. However, after a few hundred meters, our trail began to dissipate and the phrase “I think it’s this way” became an acceptable term of navigation. The ground foliage oscillated between dense and oppressive. We scaled a sharp incline caked decaying leaf litter in order to escape a marshy valley only to literally fall into a patch sticky briars which attached themselves in the thousands to our hair, clothes, and skin by the thousands. Seeking relief we came upon a clearing of the ubiquitous selective-logging chips and took ten minutes to clean the curiously oily briars from our persons as well as evict the small colonies of leeches that had collected around our socks.
Tired, scratched, and discouraged we decided to cut our losses and head back having failed to see much more than a lot of green leaves. We quickly realized, however, that we were quite securely lost and even if we could retrace our steps, we weren’t sure we wanted to. I eventually acquiesced to Alison’s suggestion that we just keep moving downhill, a strategy which on more than one occasion had us both gracefully falling on our butts and scooting down the mountain. After nearly inflicting upon myself a serious life-changing injury by placing my weight on a thick log which turned out to have the approximate consistency of papier-mâché, we emerged on a rushing stream cascading down the mountain.
The scene that greeted us was, perhaps, the most beautiful forest scene I have even seen on this island. The stream came clamoring over the moss carpeted boulders into in an endless chain of small waterfalls broken up by deep cold pools of pristine water. The branches of surrounding trees leaned in over the river’s banks creating an emerald tunnel pierced everywhere by bright streaks of light. We panted standing on a deep green boulder with a commanding view while I fumbled with my camera. The picture was intensely underwhelming. Never before has my camera so resolutely failed to capture a desired scene. Undismayed we clamored down the slippery rocks and were confronted over and over again with scenes of stunning beauty. There were more subtle shades of green in a single scene than I heretofore thought existed and the limits of digital photography with a hand held camera were unceasingly evident. We followed the stream down exceedingly dangerous rocks, crisscrossing its path in search of the route least likely to kill us until we at last reached a deep deluge that forced us to seek other means or decent.
Striking off the river we soon emerged on a massive patch of fresh ‘banana tavy.’ My camera had no trouble with the abundant shades of brown, tan, black, and sickly yellow. We also got a chance to see a bunch of shade loving orchids left high in the remaining trees to bake in the unforgiving sun. One happy consequence of clear cutting natural underbrush is that the plants that emerge in the aftermath are usually covered in thorns and spines which enthusiastically tore at my exposed legs until they bled. We eventually discovered a descending trail and emerged in the rice paddies surrounding Ranomafana, both agreeing that our hike was both one of the most exciting, but also one of the least intelligent things we had ever done.