6/16/10
So I’m three days back into life at site after a whole month away. I was warned that after a long break from site, you experience kind of a low when you get back. I was really ready to be back home after such a long time working and traveling, and I’m happy to be back, but I feel like I need a week to be alone in my house. This is the last thing I should do I know, because I am only going to be here for 2 weeks before I leave again, and people want to spend time with me and I should be rebuilding those relationships, but I can’t help wishing for a rainstorm to come along to give me an excuse. For the 4 months before going to IST I had grown accustomed to a structured amount of alone time each day. From 6-8am, 12-2pm and 7-9pm I am alone in my house reading, cooking, writing, or working and I have grown to love it. In as many ways as I am a very social person and love being around people, I also am introverted and like to spend time alone relaxing and thinking. For the last month, I forwent any alone time at all because I had the opportunity to see friends and, frankly, there was just a lot more to do than what I experience here in Ambohitsilaozana. Now that I am back I want to read all the interesting things I have acquired in the last month, write, and basically just recover from the lack of 9-10 hours of sleep every night that I am used to. I feel like by the time I leave in 2 weeks for vacation I’ll just be getting readjusted to my normal schedule, and it almost makes me not want to leave (almost, but I’m not about to forgo vacation).
On the other side of things, it’s been great to see all my friends. People have welcomed me back home and they have all been excited to see me. When I first got back into town I was visiting some people with Lucette after going to pay respects at a funeral, and I was coughing a little (probably from the dust, don’t worry mom I’m not sick). This little old man started talking to me about how I needed to eat fruit so that I don’t get sick because it’s cold here now. I thought he was taking me to get oranges (he has almost no teeth, and I wasn’t really listening) but it turns out we were going to lemons (literally ‘sour oranges’ in malagasy, hence the confusion). I returned home from his field with 6 unripe avocados, 2 oranges, a small bunch of sour grapes and 25 lemons. What does a person do with 25 lemons? I mean I guess I could make lemonade, but that seems like an awful lot of work, so for now they are all just sitting a basket in my house. I also somehow agreed to go to church again this Sunday. The Pastor and his wife keep tempting me with delicious lunches, and this time there is supposedly another special event, what I could only understand to be an auction to raise money for the church. I mostly agreed because I really enjoy spending time with them and they also promised to invite Noeline to lunch, and I haven’t been able to visit her yet because she’s finishing up her training to become a teacher at the middle school there.

6/18/10

So I just finished my first work week in Madagascar of ‘going to work’ everyday. I started the week with a lot of optimism about it and decided that even if there weren’t patients I would just sit and talk to the doctor and rasazy for the morning. (I think the strike might be over, or if not they at least don’t have to participate anymore. The Rasazy did ask me how the strike was going, typical of her.) Monday through Wednesday we had approximately 4 patients and I was reminded all of the reasons that I can’t stand spending time with a certain someone at my clinic. I think I was gone just long enough to forget, but I was quickly reminded. On Thursday when I showed up, they told me that the doctor had gone to Ambato in the morning and I stuck it out for an hour and then went home, unable to spend an entire morning with the Rasazy alone. Today the doctor showed me some things about reporting, himself and suggested that when I take the weight I look up the baby’s history in their carnet and then check to see if it was gaining weight, had its immunizations ect and then give a one on one health talk based on that. It was a great idea and having him explain some of the reporting tools they have, made it blatantly clear that what the rasazy had told me was completely wrong. I was already getting pretty pessimistic about having to go to the clinic everyday, even just after 4 days, but I feel a little better about it after today. The patient count for the week though was less than 10, which I think is enough in itself to prove that I should be working elsewhere. And if the real problem was that people in my area don’t go to the doctor, that would be something that I could work on with the community, but people do go; they just go to the main clinic in the town I actually live in. Its frustrating, but what can you do.

On a happier note, today was the first really sunny, warm day since I’ve been back. It’s still be sunny but its gotten downright cold here. (And by cold I mean in the 50s and 60s) I have to sleep in sweats and use my sleeping bag now, its crazy how fast the weather changed. This is the ‘winter’ though so I guess you can’t expect much else. I enjoyed the day, and went for a bike ride and sat and talked with people outside. I also got a long lost letter in the mail from Natalie today, and those always make my day. All letters make my day. AND I finally got a replacement phone (my other one is in the hostel in Tana still) and I found out our VAST funds got approved from Washington! We were getting more than a little worried because we had started spending our own money because we couldn’t wait for the funds and hearing that the money will be here in a week was a big relief! So all in all it was a really good day.

At lunchtime there was an incident where a duckling and chick both managed to fall in the little hole that leads to the pit my latrine drains into. They managed to rescue the duckling with some string and a stick, but I can still hear the chick chirping away from inside my latrine. It’s horrible, but if you had witnessed the entire scene unfolding you would laugh about to. I can’t believe they managed to get the duck out, and I am waiting for the chick to climb right out my toilet at some point.

I’m going to end for now because there is a whole crowd of women in my yard getting their hair done for the big concert tomorrow in my town. Jean Aime is coming and then for 5 or 6 days after that there is a big market (which I believe will be like a fair) leading up to the independence day on the 26th. Should be another eventful weekend in Ambohitsilaozana.

06-21-10

So yesterday was quite the day. I went to church with the pastor and his wife. When I arrived in Ambohimanga, their house was already locked up and they had told me that if it was I should just meet them there. I knew that it wasn’t going to be at the church, but I wasn’t sure where exactly it was so I went to Noeline’s house because they’re always late for everything. Her kids were all there getting ready to go to church and they told me that Noeline was already gone because she wasn’t praying today, but cooking the food for everyone. I seized my opportunity and told her niece that I wanted to help her instead of praying. When we left I was feeling pretty good about my sneakiness and glad that I had gotten out of the church part of the day.

When we showed up to the place there were hundreds of people outside on benches. Mantre (Noeline’s niece) was taking me to meet her, but unfortunately I had to walk right by the huge crowd of people and I was spotted by the Pastor’s wife. She immediately led me away to sit with her and her kids. Now not only was I going to church, but I would be sitting through the whole service sitting facing the hundreds of people with the Pastor’s family. And not only his family; apparently the word I had not understood when they were describing the event was the word for ‘coming together.’ The event was all of the Catholic and Protestant churches from 4 towns. I was seated with all of the religious leaders, commune officials and their families facing all of the congregations. Further, it’s against fomba (culture) for women to wear pants to church. I disregard this rule because I have to ride my bike to get there and because I don’t have any skirts that are church appropriate really. Not only was I sitting in front of everyone, the only women in pants in the whole huge group, but when you give offering you walk one by one in front of the whole congregation to put your money in the basket. I didn’t have any mandinka (small bills or change) so I had to hide the fact that I was only going to donate into one of the baskets and I had to put 2000Ar in (usually people put 50 or 100Ar in each of the three baskets). One basket was pretty lucky that day. I’m going to end this by simply saying that church went on for not 1, not 2, but 3 and a half hours! Followed by a really weird lunch where I was sitting with some people from churches from another town who were not talking at all. And also with this little old man from another town who was dressed in this spotless white suit, shirt and bag; until his blue pen leaked all over him. He was pretty entertaining. I really like the Pastor and his family, but that whole day was a little ridiculous. I left for church at 8:30 in the morning and returned at 2:45pm. And there wasn’t even an auction, it must have been cut from the program.

At night I was talking to Lucette and the conversation went kind of like this:
Lucette: “What did you do today?”
Me: “I went to ambohimanga to the ‘coming together of churches.’ I didn’t get home until 2:45”
Lucette: (Lots of laughter) “Did the Pastor invite you?”
Me: “Yes. I had to sit in the front facing the congregation with the Ramatoa (pastor’s wife).”
Lucette: (Even more laughter) “You can’t sit with the Pastor’s wife! Everyone watches you there, and you can’t leave when you get bored.”
Me: “I know now”

Later when Yanza came in, she escorted her away saying that I was tired from praying and they had to leave me alone now (still laughing). This is why I love Lucette.

6/24/10 The Upside and Downside of Being a Vazaha at a Festival

So for the last few days we have been preparing a fair in my town for the pre-independence day celebration. Everyday it’s grown a little bit and since no one actually explains what’s going on to me, I was shocked each day to see that there was something more. It was all preparation for today, as I learned, and I’m not going to lie, I actually felt like I was at a fair.

Each of the 10 fokotany’s of our commune had their own ‘Booth’ to showcase their village and then different NGOs and organizations in the area were invited to create a booth too. People went all out for it which was pretty awesome. They had cut down flowers, fruit and whole parts of trees to decorate it. There were even cows, pigs and rabbits in their respective pens for people to look at. And most importantly, there was a stand with the carnival game where you throw balls at a pyramid of cans, loud music, fried food and a carousal.

I was part of the CSB (hospital) booth. Our booth wasn’t all that interesting but, it did give me the opportunity to meet the people who work at the other CSB in town though, who until now I’ve heard all about but have never been introduced to. I almost feel like a traitor just writing this, but Dr. Voahangy was very nice to me after the initial reluctance to meet me and pretty funny (this is the woman that Lucette’s husband has been cheating on her with for the last 10 years, and who charges money illegally for free services). I am not about to become friends with her, but I’m glad we’ll at least have a working relationship if the need should arise at some point.

Now, for the upside of being a vazaha during a fety. I automatically get invited to all of the special events and at said special events, I get treated like a lehibe (the bigwigs of government, organizations, ect.). Because of this treatment, I get to meet all of the actual lehibes and spend time talking to them about a variety of topics and they are usually very interesting and nice. Being a part of this group generally entitles you to a free lunch and drinks and transportation if you need it. Further, once you get invited into the circle of the lehibes once, the whole town sees you there and now other people think of you also as a lehibe and think they should invite you to their own special events and provide you with resources and help if you request it (ie. I asked the head of CAF, an organization in my town, if we could use their guest house during the bike tour instead of having to camp in our yard, today and he instantly agreed to reserve it for us free of charge).

The downside: Malagasy love Kabaris (speeches). Actually no Malagasy love kabaris and while people are speaking they are often ignoring them, shopping, talking, dancing; basically doing anything and everything but listening the speech. As a part of the Lehibe group today, though, I had to sit on the stage with the other lehibes for the entire duration of the speeches and kilalao (traditional dances). And despite the fact that kabaris slowly torture all that have to endure them, they still go on for forever at every event; today’s were upwards of 2.5 hours. While everyone else went about their day at the fair, I was stuck sitting on the stage pretending to listen to the speeches, with one of the lehibes trying to talk to me, in a whisper, the whole time.

Second, after enduring hours of the kabaris I had a brief break where the lehibes were looking at each of the booths. I hung behind the pack and chatted with the people at the booths, my friends, and the random vahiny (guests, people from out of town) who came up. All in all, I played my part as the token gasy-speaking-vazaha quite well. It’s always nice to have vahiny, because they are impressed by the simplest gasy, ie saying ‘hello how are you’ is a reason to erupt in my favorite gasy response ‘wheeeh! Wheh! Wheh!’ And call over a crowd of people to check it out.

This brief period of time of fun was interrupted quickly by the start of the conference. The conference was basically all the chief fokotanys (traditional village heads) and the lehibes that had been participating thus far. We got shuffled into a room where we listened to the mayor and heads of the region and districts give more kabaris, followed by people standing up and talking about what problems they saw for development in the commune. I realize that this should have been a great opportunity for me to talk, but its especially hard to understand malagasy when people are talking quickly in a microphone, and while I caught most of the points that people were bringing up I never actually figured out whether people were merely talking about what they noticed, or making formal requests for services from the commune. Thus I kept my mouth shut and watched. This went on for another couple hours and ended with each of the representatives giving another kabari and the woman from the regional office went on for a good 45 minutes. At one point the young guy running the powerpoint dragged the little clock on his computer the center of the screen, a joke meant for his father’s eyes, but I gladly caught. Granted at this point it is now 2:30pm and no one in the room has eaten their rice yet. Malagasy people need their rice at 12pm, and most of the people in this room are men, who tend to be more stubborn about such things. They brought out soda, beer and snacks for us and we finally left at about 3:30pm.

That puts us at 6.5 hours of formalities for a festival. All I have to say is that I am getting great training at being patient. That’s the really bizarre part; I don’t even seem to notice that I have spent hours on end pretending to listen to formalities anymore. It’s kind of unsettling when I think about it. I should be more upset that I just spent an entire day of my life half-listening to kabaris, but even with the downsides, there were those upsides to the day too.