Japanese school teachers spend all of their time at school. A good percentage of the teachers that I work with I've never seen enter or exit the school building. When I get there at 8 they're running around looking incredibly busy, and when I leave at 5 they look like they have about 12,000,000 times the work that they had that morning. I don't know what they do. I know that in the good old USA teachers go in to teach their classes, maybe have a couple of planning periods throughout the day, then when they're finished they go home. Japanese teachers may not go home. I wouldn't know because, as I said, I keep reasonable hours.

I have seen teachers sleeping at their desks. A teacher in my office often rambles incoherently when speaking. This could be due to the fact that he is being kind enough to speak a language that he doesn't know how to speak, in order to be welcoming to me. So basically, I'm the asshole in this situation and I should just end it here.

Here's the thing though: I make fun of the work-a-holicness, but really something is working well in Japanese schools. Teachers spend all their time there, and the students spend a huge percentage of theirs as well... and everyone knows each other really, really well. Huge emphasis is placed on the bond of the "home room" group and most of the kids seem to get it. When a teacher is in the room the kids act respectful. They don't act scared or intimidated. They just act the way that someone would act when someone whom they admire is nearby. I think education in America needs to take a cue from this... I know it's not a hugely novel idea. But the way we approach it in the US is that a teacher's job is to disseminate information and that's that. In a world where less and less students are actually finding practical ways to use what they learn in a classroom on the outside, wouldn't it make a whole lot of sense to re-focus education towards giving young people a sense of stability and the feeling that someone actually knows a little bit and cares a little bit about them, and that they're not just pieces of data?

By the way, since I only work from 8 to 5, and have a little time to go home and chill, I get to be an anime superstar.

I know it's been an unforgivably long time since I've written anything here. When I was home in San Francisco in July and August it was really sweet of everyone who told me that they'd been reading and why hadn't I posted in such a long time.

I guess it feels a little indulgent to talk about my day to day life all the time. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm extremely interesting, but you all know that already, so it's really not necessary for me to reinforce that fact on a daily basis. So, from now on, I would like to use this space, not exclusively, but mainly, to write about what is of most interest to me right now. That is the education work that I've been doing for the past few years.

The opportunities that I had in Madagascar pretty much cemented the fact that I will work as an educator in some capacity for the rest of my life. While I know that the work of a teacher is extremely valuable, I also know that it is not always exciting, it is seldom glamorous, it is often an emotional roller coaster and it's sometimes truly scary (like that time a kid brought a knife to school).

I question my decision to be a teacher on a daily basis. I end some days thinking to myself that I absolutely do not want to be a teacher and that I must get out as quickly and quietly as possible. I, at one point, very seriously considered quitting teaching and going to clown college. I know that people talk about clown college as a joke, but I actually was going to do it. Because of my unique body type I think I would have made quite an effective clown. But, sadly I found out that Clown College closed down in 1997. Eff you Ringling Brothers.

So anyway, I want to use my Livejournal to remind myself what makes me want to be a teacher and not someone who makes money. Also maybe to talk about some of the shit that has caused the American school system to go so far off course and how I'm going to solve all of it.

So, these are Jackson Bloom's lofty and boring goals for now. Let's see how long it takes me to abandon them completely and start talking about Kim Kardasshian*. I'm giving it about 2 to 3 weeks.


*Let's clarify here: I'm completely allowed to talk about Kim Kardasshian, just a little less than I may have in the past.

I have internet in my home... in Madagascar. This ain't yer momma's Peace Corps, people. Everyone has stopped writing letters to me... but I only got myself to blame for that, cuz I've stopped writing letters to everyone else... but here's the thing: I'm hoping that, in June, when I come home, I'll still have some friends in the United States of America. I'm hoping that some of the people that I've been lucky enough to share a pint of beer, shot of tequila or alcoholic energy drink with in the past will still acknowledge my presence when I come home... even though I'll be dread-locked and dashiki-ed. So, now is the opportunity for me, and for you to once again open up our lines of communications. I am making a late September resolution to  write lots of emails to old friends. I'm hoping that instead of the embarrassment of multiple no-replies, a new incarnation of our friendship will flower... I hope to connect with all of you soon.

Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use amongst other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.
-Carl Sandburg

These fruits...


This dessert...


A taqueria


Monuments that look like anything other than a malformed chunk of granite...


This amazing building


The very same amazing building from a different, yet equally amazing vantage point.

I've been holidaying in London for the past week. It's so easy to forget how delightful the industrialized world can be... even when you remember you very quickly forget again. Anyway, it was a great trip. Sadly Tana in comparison to London looks less exciting than Tana in comparison to Vohipeno.

The principal hangin' with his pals, working on his bike.


Gettin' my beer on, gettin' my kayak on, gettin' my Pangalanes canal on (beer me that kayak)


Riding on a train that, had I ridden it in the US, would have gone bankrupt due to a large number of lawsuits. We had to walk 5 kilometers, and I think they ran over a person at some point as well. In Madagascar you just grin and bear it. In the United States of America you call your fucking attorney.


A hotel on a really incredible beach where I could drink quantatious portions of THB, play a lot of cards and watch one of the most amazing sunsets that anyone could ever hope to see for about 7 dollars a night.


That sunset.

I wear this "traditional garb" un-seriously. It is called "The Arrival Dress," and we wore it to the airport on the day that the new volunteers arrived. I bet you're thinking that I'm really Malagasy, but the truth is (I think) this beautiful garment was made in Cameroon and, in fact, has nothing whatsoever to do with Madagascar.

 
It was definitely a high point of  my PC experience thus far. I’ve been planning this trip for months. I started writing the grant in January, and have not gotten a full night’s sleep since. I’m fairly sure that I actually had a brain aneurysm in the weeks leading up to the trip because I didn’t think I’d find a place for the kids to sleep and everyone would have to sleep in a field. Now, of course, I realize that I was, as I usually am, way too high strung about the whole thing. If the kids had ended up having to sleep in a field, they would have been fine with it. The nice thing about Malagasy kids is that, while they can be a big pain in my ass, they’re not at all prissy, whiny or spoiled and your average 10 year old Gasy kid is better equipped to handle the real world than 99 percent of college freshmen in the USA. One of the most refreshing things about being here has been the fact that there are not laws stating every single thing that every single person can and cannot do. Yet the vast majority of people are good, decent, reasonable people who spend most of their time doing things that are not unhealthy or dangerous to themselves or others. The pervasive attitude in the states is, especially with kids, that if you give them any control over their lives they’ll probably end up dead within a few minutes. This is absurd and 1 year in Madagascar has proven to me that a little trust goes a lot further than endless lists of what not to do. Anyway, my point here is basically that, despite all of my anxiety, the whole trip went really smoothly, and that probably would’ve been the case regardless of my stress level.

The trip to Ranomafana was fun. Of the 30 students on the 2 taxi brousses, about 25 vomited. I’ve ridden in a lot of brousses since I’ve been here, so I already knew that Gasy people have a penchant for car-sickness, but this brought everything to new heights. I think that a lot of the problem is that most of these kids have rarely been in cars, so their bodies just aren’t used to the sensation of moving so fast. It was a mess though. Kids hanging out the window, full barf bags tied up and put underneath the seat instead of thrown out the window. Looks of total despair on car-sick faces. If this was the US, I’m sure the car would have turned around and taken everyone home after the first 10 minutes. All the kids would be totally freaking out, screaming, crying. But, the throw up fomba here is different. You just throw up into a plastic bag, tie it up, throw it out the window, and that’s that. No one says or does anything. It was really funny, actually, a few months ago someone in my town who has a car took me on a short trip to see one of the nearby villages. There were also 2 norwegian tourists in the car with me. On the way back from the village we brought a bunch of Malagasy people who needed to get into town. One of the Gasy women threw up and the 2 Norwegian girls basically panicked they were so concerned about this women and were rubbing her back,offering her their water, just basically giving her the attention that would normally be given to a baby. The girl finally looked up at the Norwegians and barked at them to back off. That’s the typical attitude towards that sort of thing here. So anyway, despite all the barf, everyone was still in high spirits by the time we did actually get to Ranomafana.

We set up the tents and got everyone situated inside where they would be sleeping. Everyone was excited to be there, and I was in my frantic, Camp Maclean “SUPERVISION” frame of mind. As I know I’ve already written several thousand times, I’m really uptight and the gasy people are not. Everything that was supposed to happen was happening. The cooks were there cooking a huge vat of rice over a fire. Leon, our park liaison was there already introducing himself to the kids and flirting with the teachers, all the other volunteers who came to help me were also there… and that’s the way things stayed for the whole trip. Everything happened when it was supposed to and as it was supposed to. It was kind of amazing. The last night we had a little closing/awards ceremony and the kids gave me a watch and one of the students told me, “Thank you for everything that you’ve done to us…” I may have done a lot of thing to them but apparently teaching them good English was not one of those things. After dinner that night we had a big dance party in our little classroom. We had a DJ come and everything. Lots O’ fun and I improved my skills on a couple of Malagasy dances. I also did a slow dance with one of the teachers who wants to marry me. I tried to dip her. She didn’t know what a dip was, and the whole thing got really confusing and awkward for a few minutes there… but I think it will all be ok… especially since I’m moving away from Vohipeno and will probably never see her again…

One of the other high points was the hardcore tour of the national park that we took. It was insane. We were running down mud hills, getting leeches stuck to our legs, getting unintentionally abandoned by our guides for hours at a time… but we did see lemurs and a really cool, Swiss Family Robinsonish waterfall. If I haven’t mentioned it before, let me make it clear, Madagascar is an incredibly beautiful country. The thing that probably should not have surprised me too much about our little stroll in the park is that not one of the kids complained once. They were all doing this hike in flip-flops, shorts and a t-shirt (except for one of the girls who was inexplicably wearing a ball gown), and of course all of the American people, dressed in our professional hiking gear, toting gigantic bottles of water were whining, bitching, panting, slipping and sliding the whole time.

I won’t bore with every little detail of the trip but here’s the itinerary, in case you were curious:

CEG Vohipeno English club trip to Parc National Ranomafana
Friday July 6th 2007- Tuesday July 11th 2007

Program schedule

DAY 1: Friday July 6th, 2007

6:00:  Students, counterparts and taxi brousses meet at CEG Vohipeno
8:00: Taxi Brousses depart Vohipeno
1:00: Meal on the road (pre-packed picnic lunch)
5:00: Arrive at Parc National Ranomafana
∑ Move into sleeping facilities at Sekoliny’fiainana and Hotel Thermale
∑ Debrief on the weekend’s rules and activities schedule
      7:00: Dinner

DAY 2: Saturday July 7th, 2007
AM    
- Breakfast
- Swimming Pool
- Lunch
PM
- Class: Basic English to help avoid speaking in Malagasy while in Ranomafana
- Trip to a local hotel to learn about the tourism industry in Ranomafana and Madagascar (Domaine Nature) 2:00
- Daily processing discussion (Song)
- Night hike in Parc National Ranomafana (Need car)
- Dinner

DAY 3: Sunday July 8th, 2007
AM
- Breakfast
- Day trip to Parc National Ranomafana (Need Car)
- Lunch
PM
- Discussion with professional tour guide from Vohipeno
- Dinner
- Daily processing discussion

DAY 4: Monday July 9th, 2007
AM
- Breakfast
- Visit to ValBio (International Training Center for the Study of Biodiversity) (Need car)
- Tour of Jirama (Hydroelectric energy facility) (Need car)
- Visit to Setam Lodge (Need car)
- Lunch
PM
- Final presentation prep
- Final student presentation
- Dinner/Closing Ceremony
- Dance party

DAY 5: Tuesday July 10th, 2007   
- 8:00 Depart for Vohipeno
- 12:00 Stop at restaurant on the road for lunch
5:00 Arrive in Vohipeno

Sorry once again for my lackadaisicalness in posting here. I guess as I get more and more used to being here it’s harder to find things that seem interesting enough to tell everyone (and by everyone, I mean no one). But I guess that a lot has happened since last I wrote. The biggest news is that I will not be returning to Vohipeno for my second year of Peace Corps service. I will be moving to the capitol of Madagascar, Antananarivo, to work with the Malagasy Ministry of Education on a few different programs. The big one will be aiding in implementing a new national curriculum which will introduce English classes at the elementary school level. I’m really excited to be doing this job, although I’ll really miss Vohipeno. For about five months now there has been the prospect of this job and until about a week ago I still didn’t know if it was actually going to happen. This is the way things work here. Nothing is ever really for sure until it happens. So, even though I’m writing about it now, I’m not counting my chickens. I taught the phrase “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” To my adult class. They all understood that one pretty quickly. I also tried to teach them, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” It took them a really long time to get it and when they did, one of the guys raised his hand and said, “Are you calling me an old dog?” actually yes, that’s exactly what I was getting at.

I don’t know a whole lot about this position in Tana. Since it’s all been so up in the air I haven’t asked too many questions. I’m saving all that (in typical Malagasy fashion) for when I actually start the job. I know that at least one of the people I’ll be working with is lots of fun. She’s the lady that I did the teacher training with last October…I think I wrote about her a while back. Very funny old Gasy lady, that one is.

So, my big task now is going to Vohipeno and telling everyone that I won’t be coming back. That’s gonna be a long couple days of awkwardness. The thing is, I just took 30 students and 5 teachers from Vohipeno on a big field trip to a national park, and everyone had a really good time. It made a lot of people warm up to me a lot and I’m afraid now people will feel abandoned and just generally pissed off. Sorry folks. You should’ve been nicer to me while you had me. Seriously though, while there are certainly nouns (people, places and things) in Vohipeno that I will be perfectly happy to get away from there are a lot of things that I’ll miss. I’m sure that at least once in a great while I’ll have happy thoughts about my 6th graders who know how to piss me off, but do so mainly in attempting to make me laugh which they often do successfully. I’ll miss getting asked when my “happy birthday” is by my best high school student. He also likes to ask me for my “number phone.” A few times I had students over for dinner at my house. I will miss how they always pretended to love the food and would eat tons of it, but I could always tell that they were completely freaked out by it…(Malagasy people are afraid of things that have flavor.) I will miss a certain drunk someone. He may have been loud, he may have been belligerent, he may have even been a little bit psychotic, but I’ll be darned, he sure liked English! There are also those things, that, whether I like it or not, I’ll be able to experience in all sorts of places outside of Vohipeno. Dried fish, for example; it’s hard to imagine going anywhere in Madagascar without getting a healthy smell, taste, or touch of them. But dried fish or none, I got a year left here, and I’m feeling pretty positive about it.

Hey. Longy time no post. I’m finishing up my spring break from site. I left on March 18th and am returning on April 11th. It’s been nice to be away, I’m really excited right now for all of my friends at home who seem to be experiencing lots of successes in their work and personal lives: pregnancies, promotions, purchases. The 3 Ps. I’m really happy for everyone, and feeling like we’re all reaching another age of transition. I think late 20s is when you really start to be an adult. It’s not just a day job to make you some money but really living for jack and ginger ales at Big Chicks at night (you know who you are, my old partners in crime). All of a sudden it’s families and careers and houses and general adultishness…. And 10 year high school reunions. Oi! I definitely feel a bit out of the loop with all that stuff. In Madagascar kids are herding cattle full time when they’re like 8 years old. Seriously. I guess my current situation varies pretty dramtically from that of most of my friends. I still am happy with what I’m doing though, and feel like I’m spending my time here in a pretty productive way.

I’ve been in Madagascar for about 10 months now, and I’m finally starting to feel like I’m not new anymore. I’m pretty used to life at site. That’s not to say that there still aren’t moments that are especially rough or especially good… and that’s also not to say that I don’t still miss all that American stuff that I’ve mentioned in the past. I have, though, begun to do things like make my own peanut butter, which is quite a grueling process which involves sorting through the peanuts and pulling out rocks, roasting the peanuts and then actually grinding them by hand with a mortar and pestle. I think it’s hilarious that I do that, and whenever I am doing it I laugh at the reaction that you all would have if you saw me doing it.

Anyway, some of my past posts have been about my recreation time, so I wanted to write a bit about what kind of WORK I’m actually doing. Because Peace Corps Volunteers do actually do work… we don’t just play guitar and smoke pot. We’re not hippies… although I definitely have had a few moments where I felt way more hippyish than I had ever imagined or hoped that I would.

Ok, so my primary responsibility in Vohipeno is teaching at the CEG (Middle school). I teach 8 classes a week totaling 16 hours. I mostly teach 6eme. Kids in 6eme average about 12 years old (although I have students who are as old as 19 or 20), and 6eme is the first year that kids take English, so I got the beginners. Each class lasts 2 hours, and involves me writing the whole lesson on the blackboard, having the students copy it, and then attempting to actually engage them in learning the lesson. There are about 50 kids in each of my classes and the majority of them are not extremely interested in anything I have to say… That’s not to say that I don’t have some great students. In each class there are several really interested, dedicated kids. The ones who don’t care either just try to sit inconspicuously in a corner or misbehave. My general policy is to send kids home when they’re being disruptive and mark them absent for the day. I have too many students to spend all of class disciplining the ones who don’t want to be there. Malagasy teachers often physically punish the kids. They get whacked with a stick, have to sit on their knees in the front of the classroom, or clean the school bathroom. I, of course don’t use those techniques. Its funny to think about how regulated everything is in the US compared to here. Although I would never physically punish a student, I think that I could probably get sued in the US for even sending a kid home.

The lessons that I teach are taken from Madagascar’s national curriculum (which seems to have been written by people who don’t actually speak English) and Peace Corps also puts out curriculum guides to help us with our lessons. We also have to implement teaching methodologies that emphasize a community focus. That just means that when we’re using dialogues, stories or teaching vocabulary we focus on things that make sense to the daily lives of the students. We don’t need to teach them how to say “Ice hockey” in English because that’s something that will almost definitely never have any significance in their lives. The lessons also have to focus on all the different learning styles (speaking, listening, seeing and doing) so I try to always give students the opportunity to say the vocab, to do some kind of activity that gets them involved, as well as the more traditional writing and listening to what I’m saying.

So that’s the teaching part. The next project that I’ve focused on is my English clubs. I’ve started 3 of them. I have one club for CEG students, one for Lycee (high school) students, and one for adults. These meet once a week for 2 hours. The focus of all of these clubs is on speaking. Language classes in Madagascar (all classes for that matter) put such an emphasis on writing that the kids may have studied English for 6 years and not be able to respond to me when I say hello, although they can perfectly conjugate any verb in the future perfect tense. So, in clubs I try to have people write as little as possible and mainly work towards gaining the ability to carry on a semi-intelligible conversation. The first club I started was for the CEG students. I run it by myself and I usually have between 20 and 40 students in attendance. It’s nice doing the CEG club because it’s the only time during the week when I’m at the CEG in a classroom full of students who really want to learn English. The adult club is open to any adult who wants to come. I only started it 3 weeks ago and I have gotten about 15-20 people each time. It’s a little more difficult because everyone is at such different levels and I’m trying to cater to all of them because I just don’t have time to start 3 different groups depending on peoples’ skill levels. I run the adult club more like a class because the adults are a little more reluctant to do some of those activities that are a little less traditional in the classroom environment (songs, games, stuff like that). The other club at the lycee is relatively new and I’m trying to run it based on the model that Peace Corps most fully supports. That is, having a community-based counterpart be a co-sponsor and putting as much responsibility in the hands of the students as possible. So, the English teacher at the lycee runs the club with me. I’ve taught the lessons so far, but I think in a couple weeks after he’s had the chance to watch me a few more times, I’ll get him to run a lesson. We elected students officers and we charge kids a very small amount of money to come each week (the money will go towards a party for the students at the end of the school year… it does not, unfortunately, go into my pocket.)

I also started teaching a class at the farming school in town. That’s probably my favorite. It is a national organization run by the Lutheran church of Madagascar, the woman who runs it and most of the staff are Merina, meaning they are from the high plateau, meaning that they are nice to me… people from the plateau are really nice as opposed to people from the coast who are generally skeptical… to put it lightly. The class is really fun. I teach the staff only and most of them are really good English speakers already. They ask me questions like “when can you replace going to with gonna?” and “when do you use ‘at’ and when do you use ‘in’” Like, for example: I am AT the hospital IN Vohipeno. which is a really hard question to explain. I mean I’m sure there’s some kind of technical rule that would make it really simple. Unfortunately I’m not aware of that rule. Anyway, the people there are great. They cook me a meal every time I teach, and they’re just generally really happy that I’m there. It’s nice to feel appreciated for a change.

The other big thing I’ve been doing is working on a grant to take a group of my really good students to Parc National Ranomafana in July. I’m asking for 1,000 dollars for the trip. It will go a really long way too. It’ll pay for 30 students to spend the weekend at the park: meals, lodging and all. I’m doing all of this through a Peace Corps Partnership grant, which means pretty soon all of you will be hearing about it because you are who gives me the money… so be looking forward to that.

I’m also getting ready to train the new group of volunteers when they get here in June. One other girl and I were chosen to be the first trainers for the newbies when they arrive. I’m excited about that. I already feel like a totally different person than I was 1 year ago… so it’ll be interesting to be back in that same spot I was in a year ago, but on the other side of it.

I’m also getting ready for my other summer project which will be teaching English to park staff and tour guides at Parc National Ranomafana. Which works out conveniently since that’s the same place I’m taking my students on the weekend trip. I’ll be working at the park with 2 other volunteers and we’lll be sharing a room at the park director’s house. Should be a tight squeeze. The park is beautiful though. I think it’s my favorite place that I’ve seen in Madagascar so far. Mountains and waterfalls and lemurs and fog and butterflies and stuff. I went for a quick visit with one of the other volunteers who will be working with me last week. It was her first time seeing Ranomafana and she was really impressed… so I think we’ll all be happy.

There’s a little overview. If you’ve made it this far into this entry you’re probably either my dad or myself.

Love and miss everyone.

Jackson lost his phone and with it, all the phone numbers of friends. He asked if you would email your phone number to him. If he hasn't emailed his new phone number yet, he will the next time he gets access to the Internet.

Happy New Year! Christmas vacation was lots o’ fun, and now I’m just trying to get back into the swing of things at site. This weekend I’m in Fianarantsoa for the Volunteer Advisory Committee meeting.

Here’s a little highlights reel of my vacay:

First, took the train from Manakara to Andrambovato, a tiny town about two hours before Fianar, only accessible by railroad, where 2 volunteers (a married couple) live. Andrambovato is beautiful, but it has absolutely nothing; no cell phone service, no electricity, no roads, no food, etc. but it’s beautiful. It’s right on the side of a mountain and this big beautiful cliff face juts out right above the town. There house is extremely cool too. It’s a tiny little cabin, sort of away from the rest of the town, and it just has a really cozy feel to it. Being there was nice… until the rats came out at night. The town seems really Appalachian to me. Like somewhere in the Smokey mountains. We also took a hike through the forest to an incredible waterfall a couple of kilometers away. At the waterfall we saw some mongoose, which was quite exciting. I believe that mongoose are one of only two predatory animals that live in Madagcascar. At first I saw them and said, “look, squirrels.” I then of course realized that squirrels don’t exist in this country. So, I stayed in Andrambovato for one night and then we attempted to catch the train to Fianar the next day. The train is supposed to come to Andrambovato around 3:00. So we got to the station at 2:30. We waited… and waited and waited. At 11:30 PM the train pulled up and it was like anarchy on board. A lot of these people had been on the train since Manakara, which means 7 in the morning. So, basically, people were just sprawled out like animals all over the train. We could barely even fit inside and we ended up having to stand right next to the open door. I had to talk non-stop to my friend so that she wouldn’t fall asleep and fall out of the open door of the moving train. Finally got to Fianar at 3 in the morning. We were starving and the only place that was open is the place that we’ve cleverly nicknamed “the brothel” because… it’s a brothel. So we ate there and promptly went to sleep. The next morning I headed out to visit my friend at his site which is about 33 km from F ianar. His town isn’t as remote as Andrambovato, but it also doesn’t have cell service or electricity. His town is predominantly Betsileo, which means, in a nutshell, that there are a lot of really pretty two story houses painted a lot of bright colors. I love the betsileo architecture, and the Betsileo people dress really brightly too, they’re fun to see. So, just spent one day there, then back to Fianar for a night and then to Tana. After a long brousse ride we met up with 5 other people who were going to be traveling with us to Nosy Be, at the PC transit house. It was great to see everyone after a couple of months, and we all went out and had a fancy vazaha dinner together.

The next day the taxi brousse that we had rented out for the 7 of us only came to the PC house to pick us up. We loaded up and headed off…. By this time we had been alerted that a cyclone was heading directly for Nosy Be, but we had gotten clearance to head there anyway because the cyclone wasn’t too huge. The brousse ride is kind of a drowsy blur… we all were in and briefly out of consciousness on and off throughout the night. We finally got to Ambanja at about 9 am, where we were meeting up with another one of our friends who was coming along, after18 hours in the brousse. Ambanja is only an hour away from Ankify, the place where you get the boat to go to Nosy Be. So we decided to spend one night in Ambanja and head to Ankify the next day. Ambanja was fun. It’s a larger town. That evening the 5 guys in the group had a men’s evening of drinking and a little bit of gambling at the local casino sans the women… unfortunately we didn’t tell the women that we were planning on hanging out without them, so they were a little annoyed. Sorry ladies.

The next morning (Christmas eve) we caught the taxi to Ankify. The weather was already starting to get bad because of the cyclone. When we got to the port the boat people wanted to take us, but we called the PC office and they said the cyclone was close and we would be really stupid to get on a boat. So we found a hotel in Ankify and waited. That part of the trip was really fun. We were the only people staying at the hotel and we were right on the beach. We got a little bit of swimming in before the weather got really bad, then we just got to hang out and watch the cyclone and drink beer and play cards. And the women who owns the hotel cooked us some really good meals. The next morning was distinctly un-Christmas like, but really nice anyway. The parents of one of the people in our group sent her a bunch of those Christmas popper things that you pull and little toys come out. They all had the British paper Christmas crowns in them, so we all got to wear those.

By that afternoon the weather had cleared up enough that the boats were running, so we hurried over to the port and got a speed boat. It was a tiny little boat barely big enough for the 8 of us and our luggage, and the ride, for me, was terrifying. Other people in the boat say they weren’t scared, but I don’t believe it. The waves were huge, and every time we went over one the boat jumped like 10 feet in the air. It was awful. I felt like crying. We got to Nosy Be in about an hour and our friend who lives there was at the port to greet us. She took us immediately to the coolest bar in Hellville (that’s the unfortunate name of the big town in Nosy be). The bar was great, and drinks were great. We were all really happy to be there. So we had some cocktails and then headed to our hotel which was on the beach about 10 km outside of town. We all stayed in little bungalows.

The next day, once we all got our act together, we headed over to the port and caught a boat to Nosy Komba, one of the smaller islands close to Nosy Be. Once there we brought bananas to Lemurs and they jumped on our backs and an orgy of photos and giddy yelps ensued. The day after that we were hanging out on the beach at our hotel and a tour guide approached us and asked if we wanted to take a trip to Nosy Tanikely which is another really small island close by that has some really good snorkeling. We decided to take him up on his offer and he took us straight from our beach over to the island. Actually, on the way we stopped in Ambatoloka which is the really trendy part of nosy be. It was nice, lots of cute, windy cobblestone streets, and little bars and restaurants and shops. Very quaint. Then we headed to Tanikely. The snorkeling was awesome. I love snorkeling, and the tour guide cooked us an amazing lunch which he kept saying was traditional Malagasy food, but tasted nothing like any Malagasy food I’ve ever eaten. It was a huge, grilled king fish, coconut rice, shish kabobs, crabs and pineapple. So good. But, like I said, definitely not traditional Malagasy. Coconuts can be found in Madagascar and rice is eaten at every meal, but coconut rice? Our guide was funny. He was a rasta and we called him Bob Marley. You could tell that he had worked with a lot of American tourists and you could tell that he knew how to tell tourists what they wanted to hear, even if it wasn’t true. All of us, having been in Madagascar for about 7 months now, and knowing a lot of Malagasy people, were just kind of annoyed by the guy. One of the girls in our group got a sea urchin needle stuck in her foot while we were snorkeling. She showed it to the guide and he said that he would have to pound it with a rock and then dump papaya juice on it. Considering everything else that he had said that day, we were a little hesitant to let him do that, thinking he was just creating some quaint sounding home remedy on the spot.. but we took his advice anyway, and he did, in fact, pound her foot with a rock and dump papaya juice on it.. and surprisingly it worked… so I guess Bob Marley wasn’t all bad after all.

So, lots of laying around on the beach later, we got back in a boat, headed back to Ankify and caught our brousse back to Tana… but not before the girl with the sea urchin in her foot came down with malaria. Yeah, that was a bummer… and she had to get med-evac’ed on a plane back to Tana. She’s all better now though. On a side note, I’ve been really surprised to see how often PC volunteers come down with Malaria here. We all are on the meds. Of course they’re not 100% effective, but I’ve known like 4 people already who have gotten it. It’s easily treatable, but it gets bad really fast, and if you don’t do something, you pretty much die.

Anyway, once back in Tana it was down to just 6 of us. The first couple days that we were there we just appreciated the fact that there was a tv and dvd player available to us and we just watched lots and lots of movies. We also needed a while to recover from the taxi brousse hellishness. For New years eve we went to a karaoke bar in Tana. Among other things, we were treated to a Malagasy man doing a perfect Louis Armstrong impression on “It’s a Wonderful World.” It was crazy. We also got to see the Tana fireworks out the window of the bar. Quite pleasant.

Anyway, those are the vacay highlights. Back at site all is well. I’m teaching and also working on my English clubs. I have one English club for the CEG students that I started before Thanksgiving, and then at the end of January I’m starting one for adults and one for lycee students. So, I’m staying busy. I’m also hoping to get work lined up for the summer. I want to teach English at Ranomafana national park, which is close to Fianarantsoa, with a couple of other volunteers… so we shall see how that works out.

As much as I’m loving it here, I’ve been missing home a lot lately. I think I’ve been gone just the right amount of time to start idealizing everything at home. Just like I was idealizing Peace Corps before it started. Anyway, sushi sounds really good right now as well as does skiing in Tahoe, going to Borders, seeing a play, going to a movie theatre, having an after work drink, eating a burrito, doing nothing except watching VH1 on a Sunday, looking at the internet whenever I want, and at a reasonable speed, walking in Golden Gate Park, talking on the phone, taking public transportation, buying clothes, going for a run in the city after work… you get the gist. Miss everyone!

OK, I have to start being a little less specific in these things, cuz… that’s the policy. So if I’m slightly vague on some topics it’s because I gotta be.

Tonight there was a CRAZY thunderstorm here. It reminded me of my Chicago days. San Francisco just can’t compare when it comes to a good storm. Things are starting to get really tropical here. When I first arrived it was the cool season: The crazy Malagasy flora and fauna were all keeping a low profile, waiting for some heat and water. For the last several weeks every day has been getting hotter and wetter. There are crazy bugs clinging to my walls, bright red birds flying past my window, little green tree frogs hiding around my spigot, huge snails crawling up my shower. Litchis, pineapples and mangoes are starting to show up in the market and the electricity goes out for a few minutes every night. (I’m told that’s a seasonal thing. I’m not sure why… I’m sure if I was more science minded it would make perfect sense.) There’s also something big that crawls around inside my house at night. I haven’t been able to see it yet, but I’m always hearing it at about 4 in the morning. I guess it’s probably a rodent of some kind, but like I said, I can tell it’s really large and my house is really small and I have no idea how it’s getting in and out… they sell mouse traps in the market but they’re not the nice, friendly little mouse traps that are found in the US. They’re big, jagged, chunks of metal that look like they could trap a person. So, I should probably get on top of purchasing one of those… Maybe it’ll just decide to cease and desist on its own? The other fun thing about the wet season is my leaky roof. With each new storm comes a new leak. Another thing that I need to deal with. I’m busy here! I need some time to myself to chill and read and write and relax. Most people here who have jobs outside of their homes have a helper. Someone who does the laundry, cooks, cleans, takes care of the kids, etc. I do have someone who does my laundry (thank god… it takes me all afternoon to wash 3 pairs of boxers). But PC doesn’t pay me enough to have someone cook and clean and take care of my children. I found the repair guy in town a couple of weeks ago and told him about my leaky roof. He came over, looked and he said he needed to get a ladder and he’d come back the next day. He never showed up again. He’s either hiding from me, or he dropped dead. I think it’s just a pain in the ass job that he didn’t want to deal with so he’s keeping his distance and hoping I’ll forget. I would like to forget… but with every rainfall comes a friendly reminder.

Anyway, the 1st trimester is winding down and I’m getting really excited about my Christmas vacation. Actually, I’ve been especially homesick lately thinking about Ma’s delicious meals, presents under the Christmas tree, Red Lobster… yeah, it’s weird, when I think about going back to he US I think fondly about chain restaurants. I know that’s an absolutely terrible thing to say, but I guess that’s why people go to Bennigan’s and places like that to begin with, because they’re familiar. There is no equivalent to that here. Well, actually here in town there is Hotel Tohanaina and Hotel Tohanaina Sud… but it’s just not quite up to par with Olive Garden… no bottomless salad bowl. I haven’t really been homesick in a “cry myself to sleep” sort of way. More in a “when I get back to America I’m really gonna appreciate x” way. Like chain restaurants, and plays and cars and toilets and Tyra Banks. Things like that. But, my vacation. On Sunday I’ll start making my way up to an island paradise. I basically have to travel all the way across the entire country. It could take weeks. But once I get to the capital I will be meeting up with 6 friends and we’re going to rent out our own taxi brousse… which means room for my go-go-gadget legs and loud singing of Christmas carols… The thought of singing Christmas carols is really appealing right now. Madagascar makes you appreciate the simple things…. Like Litchis… They’re so damn good. I eat like 45 a day. And I’m told the season for them is already almost over… a good thing like that can’t last for too long I guess. If you can find Litchis in the states I must insist that you buy and eat them immediately. I can remember eating Asian litchi flavoured candies before but I don’t know if I ever heard of the actual fruit being around in the states.

Back to vacay: my friend actually lives on the island where we’re gonna be visiting so she’s hooked us up with all these amazing things. We got a hotel on the beach for really cheap, we got a Christmas party at the hottest bar in town that’s owned by some Spaniard that she’s continuously fawning over, and she scored us a boat that can take us snorkeling and to some of the smaller surrounding islands to possibly see Lemurs and we only have to pay for gas and drinks! Amazing.

12/20 UPDATE: Apparently there’s a huge cyclone headed for Nosy Be right now, so my vacation may not be happening… Not sure yet… Will update if I’m around.


I'm emailing out pics to the people who I usually email them to. If you're not receiving those emails and want to, send me an email.

So, the last month has been pretty eventful. Things have been good. I've had moments of dislike for my site, but overall I'm happy. I got back from Fianar on September 26th I think, and started getting busy right away. Suddenly there was a barrage of requests from people for me to tutor them. I agreed and have continued to agree every time someone shows up at my door saying that they want to learn English. I don't have the heart to turn down someone who A. wants to learn and B. is actually nice to me. I will soon need to start turning down people though because I just don't have that much time and I don't actually really like tutoring. I mean there are a lot of things I'd much rather do as far as work goes. I like teaching, I like training teachers, I want to organize things in the community and I want to work on things that are more sustainable. If I'm just tutoring people one on one all the time, one day I'll be gone, and that's the end of that… so I need to refocus my efforts with that in mind. The thing with tutoring is that people just come to my house and say, "Teach me English." … or I should say they say, "Mila mianatra teny Anglisy aho." Because they don't actually speak any English. They have no idea what they want to learn or how they want to learn it, and they have no idea what gaining the skills to speak English entails. They think that if they just show up at my house once a week they'll be fluent. So that's frustrating. Some of the people, I really like a lot though. There are these kids who live just down the street from me. Their mom is a Malagasy teacher at the CEG. And they're ridiculously enthusiastic about the English language. The girl is 13, I think, and the boy is 16. They show up at my house at all hours of the day and night asking to speak English. The boy is pretty good. I gave him some old Entertainment Weeklies to read one day, and we were sitting there quietly, and he said to me, "what does 'his rep refused to comment' mean?" That was brilliant. That one line sort of completely sums up the US, doesn't it? Of course I couldn't come close to explaining what it means because this is Madagascar and what a rep is and why they would refuse to comment is not something that would make much sense to anyone here.

This week I'm helping with a teacher training out of town. The president of Madagascar wants to start having English taught at the primary school level. And so the ministry of education decided to make the first training in my region. On Friday we gave tests to teachers in town. 16 people showed up but we could only accept 7 people for the training. It was hilarious. It was totally like community theatre auditions and I, of course, was the one turning people away. The women who was proctoring the test along with me is one of the two women from the Ministry of Education who's running the training. She's hilarious. She's Polynesian looking. She's a large woman. In the morning she wears clothes that the mother of a bride would wear and in the afternoon, nothin' but muumuus. She's 58 years old… but seems much more like my grandmother than my mother, although she's full of energy. She has a huge personality to go along with her huge body and when she walks into a room everyone's attention turns to her. Whenever we walk into a restaurant she says hello to everyone. She has lots of hilarious vocal ticks and speech patterns that you, of course, have to speak Malagasy to really appreciate, but, for example, instead of saying "Manahoana" for hello she always says "Manahoanooooooooh!!" and anytime someone is talking to her she'll constantly go, "uhuh, uhuh, uhuh,…." Which is like saying "yeah, yeah, yeah." So anyway, on Friday, after we finished the tests I was showing her around Vohipeno because she'd never been before and we noticed one of the people who did not get accepted into the training following us. He came up and asked to see the results of his test. He said he was surprised and distraught that he didn't get chosen for the training because, he said, he's very good at English. Of course he got like 2 points on the written portion which basically consisted of filling in blanks like: "How are you? I am ______, how are you?" and he did about the same on the oral part which was basically "Spell your name." So after Voangy talked to this guy who was following us she turned to me and said "These people are crazy! I'm so glad I get to get out of here after today!" Ummm… I gotta live there for 2 years, so I hope that they aren't too crazy. :-)
This woman also tells amazing stories. We were talking about cornichons for some reason at our meal the other day and I told her that in the US we call them pickles and that they're quite a popular condiment and snack item. She said, "I have a story about these pickles! When I was in the UK…" (She studied English in the UK in '91 and ALL of her stories take place in the UK) "… I arrived on the first day and there was a kitchen in the dormitory that was for 6 of us to use. There was a bottle of pickles on the table and I thought it belonged to one of the other people who was sharing the kitchen. The pickles sat there on that table for 6 months, and on the last day of our training one of my friends came up to me and she said, 'don't forget your pickles.' and I said 'those pickles aren't mine!' and my friend said 'those pickles aren't mine!' so we asked all of the other people who shared the kitchen with us. They all said that the pickles were not theirs. So, we brought them to the airport when we were all leaving and the Korean woman from our class who lived across town said that the pickles were hers!!! A ghost took the pickles from her house and brought them to our dormitory. We know that it was a ghost because the Korean woman was sure that she never took the pickles out of her house!!" She's a classic. Another one of her stories was about her Japanese friends from her training in the UK: "They invited me to eat dinner at their house and it was awful but I pretended to like it. They gave me red beans soaked in sugar and rice wrapped up in algae and I had to eat with my hands and sticks. And then we had our kimono party and she was helping to dress me and she was bent down fixing my clothes and I turned to my friend who was standing next to me who had a camera and I said 'Quick! Take a picture! There is a Japanese woman kneeling before me!'" And she has another story about her friend with the camera: "When I got to the UK I noticed that my skin was turning white and I was getting black spots all over my body. A lot of the food in the UK causes cancer, so I was very scared and I ran into my friend's room crying and lifted up my dress and said 'Look, I think it is cancer!' and she was turned away from me. I thought it was because she was putting some clothes away in her closet, but all of a sudden she turned around and she had her camera and she took a picture of me with my dress pulled up! I was so ashamed! She gave me the picture, but she kept the, what do you call it… negative. Lucky for me, since her husband died she's become a very serious woman. She doesn't like to joke around anymore."

So, the things she says sort of make sense and sort of don't, and that's what I'm finding to be generally true about people in Madagascar. They're mostly Protestant and Catholic with a few Muslims, but they sort of mix the religions with their traditional (pre-colonialism) beliefs. For example, the English teacher at the lycee, who I would consider to be one of my better friends where I live and who was educated for 6 years at a university in Moscow, came to my house the other day and informed me that a 14 year old boy had drowned in the river that day. The reason, he explained, was that the mermaid who lives in the river had pulled him under and drowned him. He clarified, though, that there, of course, is no such thing as mermaids in a river, because mermaids live in the ocean. It was actually a rivermaid that drowned the boy.

The boy drowning in the river is not the only bad thing that's happened here recently. It was, strangely enough, Friday the 13th of October. The whole day was really bizarre actually. All day I was seeing and smelling smoke all over the place, coming up in small clouds from across the river. This isn't very out of the ordinary. People burn their trash all the time and the infamous slash and burn farming method is a favorite of the Malagasies. But for some reason, that day I was taking note of the smokiness. I had friends over to my house for dinner and the first thing I said to them when they came in is that I had noticed a lot of fires that day. They said they hadn't noticed. If my life here is a really badly written movie then some serious foreshadowing was in effect. The first bizarre incident occurred at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I was sitting on my chair grading tests and I heard a distant roaring crowd. Friday is the big market day in Vohipeno, so the town is jam-packed with people. The noise was getting closer and closer to my house. By the time I decided to see what was going on people had already started to pass my house chanting angrily and heading towards the police station. I asked my neighbor who was standing outside what was going on. He said there was a pick- pocket that they had caught and they were bringing him to the police station which is 2 doors down from my house. I didn't get all the details of how they caught the guy or how many people he'd actually pick-pocketed, but I was amazed at the size, and rage of the crowd. After they delivered the guy to the police they stood outside just waiting. They were like a crazy lynch mob, ready to tear the guy apart if he came outside. After about 2 minutes of the crowd just waiting, one of the officers came out side and shook a big stick at everyone, basically signaling that he was going to beat them with it if they didn't go away. They scattered, and of course since the attention was off of the pick-pocket, it was re-directed towards me because I was the next most exciting thing. In fact, I seem to almost always be either the most exciting thing or the next most exciting thing. I'm definitely tired of that. Anyway, when the attention started coming my way I discreetly slipped back into my house attempting to look as if I had an important reason for going inside and not just because I didn't want to be stared at.
That was that. I had my friends over for dinner. They left, I went to sleep and woke up at about 11:45 to lots of noise outside. It's usually completely quiet out by that time of night, but there had been a couple of times when I'd woken up hearing a lot of noise outside but it had always passed quickly and I'd just go back to sleep. So I just ignored it at first. After about 10 minutes of constant noise that sounded distressed, I decided to see what was going on. I went to turn on my light and it didn't work. No electricity. So I opened the window and the street in front of my house was as light as day. I looked to my left to see that there was an absolutely humongous fire that appeared to be about 10 feet from me. So, I of course flipped out. I grabbed my money and my computer (the important things in my life) and got the hell out of my house. Everyone in town was up and outside watching the fire that was actually more (but not much more) than 10 feet from my house. It was raging and every couple of minutes there was an explosion. I thought for sure that my house would burn down. There is, of course, no fire department in Vohipeno, so the way that people fought the fire was by standing in a line in the street with sticks and if the fire moved in their direction they would try to hit it away from them with their sticks. Not the most effective way to put out a fire. Luckily the wind wasn't blowing too badly that night… really rare actually; almost every night it gets really windy here. So, after watching for a while, there was nothing that I could really do, and the fire was moving away from my house, so I went back home and tried to sleep. I couldn't. And I kept opening the window every 15 minutes or so to make sure the fire wasn't coming to get me. At 3 in the morning I hear sirens blazing through town. I open my window and see the fire department zooming to save the day 3 hours too late. They came from only about 26 miles away, but for some reason it doesn't surprise me that it took 3 hours for them to get there. The next morning I went to check out the damage and it was really bad. 24 houses and lots of stores burned down. And, it's right in the center of town, so everyone passes by every day and see's a huge empty spot of charred ground. There's a family who owns a store in town who's been incredibly nice to me since the day I arrived and their house burned down. I saw one of them the next day and she seemed to be a little freaked out, but was pretty upbeat. That, in fact, has been pretty much everyone's attitude about the situation. It surprised me. I think I would have been flipping out much more. The whole thing is really sad because our town is really one of the last places that can afford to sustain that much damage and loss of money and goods. The town is a mess. I mean, everything was pretty much just haphazard wooden shacks to being with, but all the things that were were lost won't be easy to replace or compensate for. I gave some money to some people, but besides that I can't do a whole lot.

A little bit more about the training I'm doing this week. I really love it. There are 34 participants and the two funny Malagasy ladies and me. It's really nice for a change to teach people who are truly interested in learning. In my town I teach kids who are in their first or second year of English and the vast majority have absolutely no interest in learning. I don't really blame them. When I was in 7th grade I wasn't exactly a model student. I mean, I probably spent 45 minutes throughout the entire year doing math work outside of class. BUT, in Madagascar I truly am a valuable resource. The president is making a hard push for people to become fluent in English because it'll really help the country to come into to the international market and start being competitive. I mean, Madagascar has a lot to offer, but if they don't know how to sell themselves, they're resources are just going to end up being taken advantage of. Americans, or Europeans or rich people from somewhere will come and say, "Let us take care of this stuff for you." And the Malagasies will end up just being pawns. So, my point is, I just want to figure out a way to get through to these kids that I can help them A LOT if they let me. It's amazing to see how successful people who know English actually are in this country.

Ok, that's all for me for now. I will be back in the big city for Thanksgiving, so I'll post again then. Thanks again everyone who's sent me letters and packages. I have a bunch of packages waiting for me to pick up that I haven't opened yet and am very excited to do so when I get back to site after IST. Miss you all!

Hi. I can get letters and very thin envelopes with something in it at my Vohipeno address. But for packages with anything larger, please mail to the Fianarantsoa address.

I’m writing this on 9/17 and will hopefully post it when I have access to internet on the 22nd or 23rd. Anyway, I’ve been at site for almost 3 weeks now, and it’s… different… interesting… scary… lots of things. I think that my review so far, though, is overall positive. I started teaching last week which was a good thing. Being here for 2 weeks without any official work to do was kind of rough. There’s really not a whole hell of a lot to do here, although I shouldn’t complain because my town is larger than a lot of the other PC sites in Madagascar. I shouldn’t complain, but I think I will a little. (I have a lot of good things to say too, but I’m just gonna get the negatives out of the way first.) There are 2 places to eat in town and I think they’re both owned by the same person and the only things that you can get are chicken, omby (beefish),and fish (the fish isn’t tuna, or salmon, or bass, it’s just fish… some little thing that they caught in the river, served completely whole.) That sounds like an ok selection… but that really is ALL you can get. No side dishes (except for rice, which is just a given because no one eats anything without rice here.) and you have no control over what part of the animal they serve you. Today for lunch I was excited for my chicken, assuming I would get, maybe like half a breast… but no, I got 3 pieces that I couldn’t even identify. The meat was sparse and very dark. I’m pretty sure one piece was the neck. Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. You get three pieces of meat with any meal that you order. Two of the pieces are usually decent and the third piece is almost always an innard, fat or a bone. I have, however, been cooking my own meals a lot which is really nice when it actually works out. I wanted to make scrambled eggs this morning. I was all excited for scrambled eggs. I went out and bought 4 eggs (fresh out of the chicken… maybe), and some milk. I got the eggs all mixed together with a little bit of milk and I cut in some slices of Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow “cheese”… the only “cheese” you can get here.) . I put it in the frying pan where it slowly turned in to something resembling mashed potatoes and tasting like fish… so I threw it away. 1000 Ariary down the drain. Ok, 1000 ariary is only 50 cents… but we’re supposed to live on about 6000 ariary a day here… so it was kind of a big deal. Last night I was going to make spaghetti with a tomato and ground omby sauce. I was excited for that as well until something turned out to be terribly wrong with the meat (I’ll spare you the details) and I had to throw it away. I desperately need protein… but here, I won't get much.

Ok, on the upside of food, there is a hotely (little, casual bar/restaurant) that my boss at school showed me when I was here for site visit, and I ate all my meals there in July. They don’t have meals pre-made but if I want to eat there now I just go over and tell them I want to come for dinner and they’ll have food ready for me. They're so nice to me. There food is good too (pretty much standard Malagasy fare, but better than elsewhere.) The first weekend that I was here the owner took me for a bike trip to the ocean with the (Ranomasina-salty water) which is about 10km east of here. It took about an hour and a half to get there and it was a beautiful ride. We went through several tiny villages that make my town seem like a booming metropolis. Like, these places have 5 huts made of bamboo and the closest thing to a business of any kind is a woman sitting on the ground with a large pile of peanuts in front of her. Anyway, we got to the ocean and came upon a guy who had just caught a gigantic, silver fish. I don’t know what kind it was, but it looked a lot yummier than what’s served up at the good old “Relax” in my town. The guy tried to pay us to take the fish back to his village on our bikes, which would have been absolutely impossible. I have no idea how he thought we were gonna do that… so obviously we didn’t. Then we just hung out on the beach for a few hours. We had a picnic lunch which may have been the best meal I’ve had since arrival. My neighbor then climbed a coconut tree, picked coconuts, cut holes in them and we drank the juice from inside. I felt all Swiss Family Robinson or something. The ride back kicked my ass. I was exhausted. Everyone staring at me everywhere I go doesn’t get to me most of the time, but on that ride back it did. Normally I would say “Akory aby!” to someone who was staring at me and they’d be taken aback by the fact that I speak Malagasy. I was not in any mood to talk to people that afternoon so I ignored them and that made them shout and stare more which just put me in a worse mood. But we finally got home…. Or just across the river from home. And we got to take a pirogue across which was very cool. It’s a giant dugout canoe that can seat probably 15 people and the driver stands on the back and navigates it kind of like you would a gondola. So that elevated my mood a bit. Anyway, that was a memorable day. There are not a ton of people in Vohipeno that seem really excited about me being here, so when I meet someone who goes out of their way to make me feel welcome, it warms my cold heart just a little bit.

That leads me to my next topic, the people. The people here are completely unlike the people in Manjakandriana. They look different, they act different, they dress different, they basically speak a different language. First of all, the people in Manjakandriana are mostly members of the Merina tribe (I can’t remember if I’ve written some of these things on the blog already… so bear with me) which is traditionally the ruling group in Madagascar. Physically they look more East Asian than African and they are generally fairly low-key, quiet, reserved, people. The people in my town are from the Antaimoro tribe. They look more African, and I believe that many of them are descended from people that the French brought here from the African mainland hundreds of yeras ago in the slave trade. The people here (in general) are not reserved. They’re loud and ebullient. In the official Malagasy language (which is spoken by a majority of the Merina people) the usual greeting is “manahoana” (pronounced mah-na-OH-na) in the dialect that is spoken here in Vohipeno the greeting is Akory Aby (ah-koo-ree AH-bee). You can kinda tell just from the sounds of those two words that (at least I think so) things are a little more rough around the edges and all up in your face here. There is a lot of drinking going on in town, too. One night I was eating dinner at my favorite hotely, the one owned by the guy who took me to the ocean. It’s a tiny little place. In walks drunk proviseur with a couple of his teachers and they surround me. I didn’t know right away that he was the proviseur because it was my first time meeting him. It was kind of an intimidating situation, but I held myself together and of course everything was fine. Anyway, obviously he knew that I was going to be there and he wanted to confront me because he has a chip on his shoulder because of whatever problems have occurred between him and Peace Corps. He was telling me, in a really intoxicated, scary way that I shouldn’t be scared of him and that he was a nice guy. I told him I wasn’t scared and that it was nice to meet him. I saw him on the street a few days later at about 11 o’clock in the morning. He staggered up to me and put his finger up to his lip, as if telling me to be quiet. Then he walked away. Whatever…

On Saturday, an English teacher at the lycee came over to my house with his son. They were both very nice and told me that they’re really happy that I’m here. He speaks great English, which is a rarity in Vohipeno… so it was nice to talk to him. He’s from here and he went to universite for 6 years in Russia. How someone from here or from anywhere in Madagascar ends up in Russia is beyond me, but I’m sure there’s a good explanation for it. He also asked me if I could explain to him how to play poker and how to play baseball. I obliged. I was surprised at how complicated of a sport baseball is. I was also surprised at how much I knew about baseball. Anyway, the bottom line of his visit was that he wants me to teach at the lycee. I can’t. I already have a full schedule… but I just found it interesting with what PC told me and my encounter with the proviseur that I was being asked to do that.

The weather: It’s hot and getting hotter with each passing moment. The natural landscape is actually really beautiful. Again, totally different from Manjakandriana which is at a high altitude and has been basically deforested. Here it is really lush and tropical. Palm trees everywhere. Tons of bananas and coconuts in the market. The river runs through town and straight to the ocean. It’s really wide and I’ve been told over and over again to WATCH OUT FOR CROCODILES! When I come into my house at night and turn on the light tons of lizards scurry into their hiding places. I don’t mind lizards but I’ve had a few gigantic cockroaches and today a gigantic arachnid of some sort, which I do mind. The roaches are not very difficult to kill because they don’t move fast and they’re huge targets, but when you do kill them it creates an ungodly mess. The spiders, on the other hand are quite agile and quick considering their size. I was unsuccessful in my bid to destroy the one that took up residence in my home today. So I’m fairly sure I will wake up at some point in the middle of the night to find a spider on my face. There also a bat cave outside of my front door. It’s not actually a cave but a hole in the roof. Which means that when I sleep the bats are above my head. I’m sure of this because I hear them…all…night…long. But it’s ok because my mattress is just a piece of foam. The brand name is “Malagasy Foam.” So if the bats didn’t keep me awake, the bed would. The town is fairly hilly, which I enjoy. It seems like a lot of the towns really close to the coast tend to be really flat. The town where I bank is flat… and I think it’s not that pretty even though it’s way more touristy than here… I guess the fact that it’s on the ocean is what seals the deal. Of course my town has exactly zero tourists but truly a more beautiful place than some of the towns that cater to the tourist trade.

I went to my banking town last weekend cuz I needed money, and I actually had a nice time. A lot of volunteers go to do banking in a town where other volunteers bank… or some live in a town where others come to do their banking. Unfortunately neither of those things is true for me. Anyone who has the same banking town as another volunteer automatically kind of has a best friend for 3 days a month. But my banking town is for me only. But I decided I was still going to have fun anyone. So I went to a vazaha restaurant by myself. I was surrounded by old French men with young Malagasy women and then a bunch of younger French and, I think, German tourists. I was the only American, and I was just sitting at a table all by myself, drinking beer and whiskey. I don’t drink at home, so I felt entitled to drink alone, there. Anyway, it was fun, but of course a little sad at the same time. I stay at the same hotel everytime I go to bank. I think the name mean “cheap and uncomfortable.” It’s really bad. In fact I don’t think I can stay there again. There’s a Malagasy midget that always hangs out around the place though, so I guess that makes it kind of special.

Teaching: I teach 6eme which is the youngest age that PC volunteers teach. They are the youngest grade at the CEG (basically Jr. high) and they have never taken an English class before. The national curriculum states that I am supposed to teach each class of 6eme students for 3 hours every week. But, unfortunately there are a lot of 6eme students in my town and not a lot of classrooms or teachers. So, I am the only 6eme English teacher and I have 7 classes on 65 students each that I only teach for 2 hours a week. It’s frustrating at times that they do not understand a single word, but they’re cute and some of them are really intelligent. The age range in the class is 10-20 with the average age being somewhere around 13. It’s pretty hilarious to see the tiny 10 year old kid who’s the best student and then the 20 year old man sitting right next to him who has no idea what’s going on. So, yeah, the teaching can get a bit frustrating, but after having taught for almost 2 weeks, it’s not as crazy as I thought it might have been. I’ve heard stories from other volunteers about being completely terrorized by the kids, but, honestly, I think these kids are probably easier to handle than American kids would be. The other day one of the kids was being obnoxious. He wouldn’t stop talking and I asked him to go stand out side. The Directeur saw him there and asked what was going on. I said he was being bad. The directeur got the Surveilant Generale (dean) to come deal with the kid. I look outside and they have him shoveling dirt behind the school. See, Malagasies know how to give a real punishment ;-)

So this weekend I’m going to a Volunteer Action Committee (VAC) meeting. I don’t know what the Volunteer Action Committee is, but I guess I shall soon find out. I’m really excited to see some other Americans, as I have not in almost a month. So, I will, hopefully, come back home next Monday refreshed and ready to integrate. The next time I’ll have internet access will probably be on October 27th when I head back to Tana for our In Service Training. Until then, keep writing, calling, texting and SENDING PACKAGES to me. I love hearing from you all and I miss you tons. I really appreciate the effort that people have put into talking to me. It gets lonely here, so believe me, when I receive any form of communication from someone it makes me very happy.


If you want my phone number and you don’t have it, email me.

Miss you all!

P.S.

OK, it's the 22nd now. My night taxi brousse was rough. I haven't slept in a long time! We got here at 3 this morning and some passengers said they were not comfortable leaving the station by themselves in the middle of the night so they driver would not unload any of the luggage and we all had to wait until 6 to get our stuff. So, for three hours after I needed to be, I was trapped in a crowded, small, stuffy taxi brousse. I'm a little fried right now, but I have a cozy bed tonight, so hopefully I'll get some sleep and be back to my normal, peppy selp tomorrow morning.

Also, I hope that you all take my sarcastic negativity with a grain of salt. I really love being here. My attitude is more just sort of shock at how completely different life is here from the comforts of the U....S....A.

Talk to you all soon!

Hi,
Jackson's Dad here, again...

Jack asked me to post how to get a low cost calling card with access # to Madagascar.

I use Speedy Pin. There are about 6 - 7 different ones that work to M'Car.

Go to this site: http://speedypin.com/ and enter the country you're calling from and the one you're calling to to view the options. Lowest cost is about 15 cents/minute.

Thanks.

Hello, this is Jackson's dad posting a new address for Jackson. He has one in Vohipeno, (where he just arrived and where he will be for the next two years) that he's not sure works yet until we test it. So for now, please mail to:

Jackson Bloom; PCV
Corps de la Paix
BP221
Fianarantsoa 301 Madagascar

Thanks!

I'm an hour north of the town I will call home.. I will be at my site tomorrow. I got to see the Indian Ocean for the first time today.... It was nice to know that I am actually on an island... well... I guess I've only seen one beach, so that doesn't really prove it. I think we're really in some sort of US gov't facility... Ok, gotta run... hopefully I can get my dad to post my new mailing address and where to buy phone time so y'all can call me.

Later
Jackson