03/22/10
Just heard on the radio that Obama’s healthcare bill passed by 7 votes! GObama! There probably is a lot of criticism of it back home on tv and on the radio, but here on the other side of the world, where people realize that everyone needs healthcare, there is nothing but excitement and congratulations on the radio. I mean really, it’s been embarrassing when I have to explain that America has problems too and that, in fact, there are many people in the United States who cannot even get as good of healthcare as people get here for free. Thank god we have Obama to see a bill like this through; it’s long overdue.

On a second note, I also learned today that the African Union placed new sanctions on Madagascar. There are actually 4 acting presidents right now, but Andry won’t let the other 3 back in the country. Then this week the African Union declared that Andry and 18 people from high up in his party, will not be allowed into any other African country, and France placed the same sanctions on them. So as it stands, the other 3 presidents are in Southern Africa and not allowed back here, and Andry is here and is not allowed to leave. It sounds kind of like an argument little kids would have. France apparently started to stop granting visas to Malagasy people, as well. Here in my town no one has even talked about politics at all and I would never even know anything was going on if Tom hadn’t heard it on the radio, but it does make me a little nervous when people start throwing around sanctions. I am very tamana here and I don’t want to leave.

I went to Ambato today and Tom and I met with the Medecin Inspectuer (he’s in charge of all the clinics and hospitals in the region) and also with the doctor in charge of AIDS testing for the district about our bike trip. Our friend Rivo came with us, he is completely fluent in English and stepped in when our limited Malagasy wasn’t cutting it. We don’t have exact dates or anything yet, but we wanted to just make them aware of the fact that we are planning this big event and get any input they might have from the start. They basically told us that they can’t tell us anything definitive yet, but that they like the idea. I always think it’s kind of funny how things like this work out. We weren’t sure where the Medecin Inspecteur’s office was and we didn’t have an appointment, but we just wandered around and asked until we found him and he granted us a meeting on the spot, even though he had another meeting to go to. And this is a pretty important guy. Next time I’ll call and set something up, but it’s really funny how easy it is as a vazaha here.

I also got a newletter today from Peace Corps which they accidently sent to Tom’s post office (which was disappointing in its own way because I have yet to receive any mail in my own box here in my town), and in it they told us about the ability to get internet at site via a USB modem from a telephone company. It’s about $90US (maybe less now, I’ve heard the value of gasy currency is going down) and you prepay $20 at a time for credit. In some ways it sounds like the perfect idea. It would probably pay for itself over the course of 2 years because the internet cafes are pretty expensive and I spend forever waiting for pages to load and it would allow me to keep in touch with home better and upload pictures, download new music, ect. But I also feel like that isn’t really what Peace Corps is about. And while it’s cheap in American dollars, its really expensive here. I get $200 a month for everything (including my vacation pay of a whole $24) and that allows me to live a pretty comfortable life, but having internet to access at any time might start to wipe that out pretty quickly, not to mention the month when I bought it. I don’t know it’s a tough call. I already feel really spoiled as a Peace Corps volunteer with electricity and a water pump next door (even though its only worked for 2 weeks of my service so far and is out again), especially having started in Niger. And do I really want to be able to say at the end of 2 years that I had electricity, water and internet at site? It would be convenient, but life doesn’t always have to be convenient I guess. For now it’s just far enough out of my price range that I don’t have to think about it.

24/03/10
Yesterday afternoon, I finally rode my bike out to Ambohimanga (one of the fokotanys near me) to visit my friend Noeline. She has stopped by to see me a few times because she was friends with previous volunteers and I had promised to visit her a few weeks ago, but the rain kept preventing me. I am so glad I went. I can already tell that she is going to be one of my close friends here. She is like Lucette, in the sense that she knows how to talk to me so that I can understand, and her whole family was really nice and I enjoyed talking to all of them. I spent a couple hours talking to just Noeline and then her daughter and son came home (her daughter is in middle school and her son is a teacher). I went over some of their English lessons with all three of them and did some translating and corrections. She sent me home with a huge bag of onions from their farm too that I shared with Lucette’s family, because there is no way I could go through 25 onions before they go bad.
Today I rode my bike the 30 kilometers round trip to get the vaccines for my clinic. I was supposed to meet the midwife at 9, but I got there at 7am and got breakfast and sent my proposal off to Peace Corps. At the café there was another vazaha who I hadn’t met before and I could tell he wanted to talk so I walked over and introduced myself. Unfortunately he didn’t speak English; he was an older man from Brazil. Every time I tried to respond to him in French, Malagasy came out. He happened to understand quite a bit of malagasy, even though he couldn’t speak it, because he has lived in Tana for the last 7 years and so we struggled through a short conversation in 3 languages; laughing the whole time. I went back to my table and when he left a few minutes later, he said goodbye and wished me luck on my work. When I went to pay my bill, the woman who owned the restaurant told me that he had paid it for me already. Haha my life here is so random and I love it.
This was overshadowed slightly by the annoying Malagasy man who sat down with me after the Brazilian guy left and wouldn’t believe that I didn’t want to go on a date with him. He was in his late 30s, but apparently thought he was hot stuff. To prove the point I finally just got up and left the restaurant. Then I walked up to the hospital 20 minutes early to meet my midwife to get the vaccines, just in time to catch her leaving. When I asked her why she went early and not at 9am like she told me, she told me that it was sunny today and that she didn’t want to walk there in the sun. (Well, thanks for letting me know! I only rode 15 kilometers here in the sun and if I hadn’t come at just that moment I wouldn’t have even known that she went without me!). There’s no point in even getting mad at her though I just took the vaccines and went home.

To top it off after I had showered, eaten, and napped I set off to walk the vaccines to the hospital. This is the first time that I have attempted the walk since the cyclone and the path was still very muddy. Muddy enough, in fact, to cause me to slip and fall with both hands full. I got muddy up to my knees and ripped my favorite dress that I found in the market. Mind you I fell in front of some middle school boys and will probably never live this down, but there was also a meeting going on at the commune where the regional officials were giving rice, soap and a little money to all the families whose rice fields were ruined by the flood. Thus while they were leaving the meeting, dressed in their best outfits; I was walking back from my trek to the clinic covered in mud, with a large rip in my dress. Haha I can’t even look back on today and call it a bad day, there were many annoying moments, but I think my patience has gotten much stronger since I arrived in this country.
So I keep coming back to this entry today because more and more random things keep happening to me. This evening Lucette watched me cook pasta and just talked to me while I was doing it. When I was finished I brought a little bit over to their house for them to try and then her and Fara (a teacher who lives with them during the week) came back to my house with me and brought a bag. They produced a cold beer and some fried snacks. I was a little confused and asked them what the fety was? And they just laughed and said that there wasn’t one. I think the whole purpose was that Lucette wanted to tell us about the fact that she might have a new sipa (boyfriend) in Ambato and that is why she didn’t come back on Sunday like she had planned. Said sipa also gave her a hickey! I’m excited for her, her husband is kind of an asshole and it’s about time he got a little taste of his own medicine. He’s never here anyway and even when he is he sleeps at his sipa’s house. The conversation turned into a conversation about periods and what we use in the states, and while explaining and laughing about tampons and diva cups, my contact fell out. It was the first time either of them had seen one and that led into a whole new conversation. After a while they went home and I couldn’t help laughing about the whole situation. I just shared a beer and giggled about boys and periods, in a foreign language, with 2 grown Malagasy women. Could my life possibly get much stranger? Probably not, and that’s what I love about it so much.