quite the month

8/2/10 QUITE THE MONTH
I can hardly believe that it is already August. In my mind I’m still somewhere back in May, mostly, because the last few months of my life have been a whirlwind and this last one was no exception. I just arrived back home for the first night since I left at end of June and the time spent away can be divided into three sections; vacation in the north, Training of Trainers conference and the Fety Riba Mena- tour du lac.
Vacation, to put it simply, was amazing. After a 2 day brousse ride I spent my birthday in Mahajanga with Sara and Chantel, enjoying the beach, shopping, beers and brouchettes (charcoal grilled street meat—mmm) and going out for drinks with the RSO (regional security officer from the embassasy) at night. We then continued on for another 2 day brousse ride, picking up Katie along the way, and arriving in Diego. In Diego we spent a couple days doing ‘work,’ ie going to Brittany’s site and doing improved cookstoves and tree grafting presentations and then meeting with some NGOs who taught us all about solar ovens and moringa trees. Even though we were technically working, I considered these some of the best days of vacation. It’s incredibly valuable to see other volunteer’s sites and get ideas about projects and community integration based on what is working for them. Plus, Brittany is a stellar volunteer and she has integrated into her community so well. She gave all her friends English names and they gave her and all her friends that visit, a Gasy name and her ‘family’ knows random English words that they all enjoy showing off. Example; when her little brother was doing something annoying, her mom looks at us and says in perfect English “Baby Charlie…Idiot!” Example number 2, we were sitting in her family’s house waiting for lunch when her dad walked in. He looked at all of us laughed and pointed at himself and said, “Druuunnk.” Haha the next volunteer at her site is going to be taken completely off guard when they arrive in a year.
The NGO we visited, Sun for Life, was also really awesome. The director invited us into his home on two separate mornings to share all the information he could think of with us. His information about moringa trees far surpassed anything we received at training and has helped me develop a small side project for my site. Along with all the nutritional benefits that moringa has for people, the plant is also really good for animals. I want to start an experiment where I feed a couple baby ducks moringa every day and have a few that are the constant and see the difference in growth. I think that while people in my region are reluctant to go through the work to incorporate it in their own meals, that they would be likely to use it for their animals, which would in turn improve the nutrition of both the meat and the eggs laid by chickens and ducks. And baby ducks have quickly escalated on my list of cutest animals and it would give me a good excuse to buy some.
We spent the 4th of July/Brittany’s birthday on the beach and then having our own private dance party at her friend’s restaurant. There were 3 other volunteers on their COS trip, as well as some other americans in town, so it was all around a pretty awesome party. We continued on to Ankarana national park from there, where we got to see Tsingy, Baobabs, Lemurs and caves. We did a whole day guided hike in the park for 10000Ar a person (about $5) and stayed in the bungalows for 2 nights. Our guide was pretty funny and he enjoyed the company of 5, gasy speaking vazaha, young women; he even humored us when we wanted to video tape him saying funny things. We tipped him with a beer at the end of the trip and I think his guide friends were a little jealous. From there we continued on to Ankify, which is the port town for catching a boat to Nosy Be. We had originally thought we would go to Nosy Be, it’s an island off the coast (literal translation- big island) and one of the more touristy areas of the country because it is so beautiful, but instead we stayed in Ankify which was probably the best decision we could have made. It was literally a deserted paradise. It would be hard to believe that the island could be more beautiful and we enjoyed a beautiful beach with no one else on it for 3 days, for a fraction of the cost that we would have spent in Nosy Be. For lunch we micommanded (asked to prepare food in advance) food from a woman on the beach and enjoyed massive amounts of rice, brouchettes and freshly caught fish and then had cold beers while watching the sunset over the ocean. We had dinner at our hotel every night followed by swimming at the beach in front of our hotel in which the water had bio luminescence. This was possibly one of the coolest things I have ever experienced, and I can hardly imagine what Gasy people thought of it when they first discovered it. It seriously looked like you were throwing sparks through the water every time you moved. I posted some pictures on facebook of the vaca while in tana if you’re interested!
After Ankify the rest of the group continued on to Mahajanga again, but I left them at the crossroads to attend the training of trainers (TOT) conference. The new health/education stage arrived at the end of July and I will be returning to train them about Family Planning and Gender and Development in September. The conference was short, only 3 days, but it was fun to see all of our language trainers and meet the new staff, and spend time with my health stagements who will all also be trainers (there are only currently 8 health volunteers in the country). One of the volunteers brought a whoopee cushion that had been sent to her in a care package and we spent an entire day convincing each of the staff members to come sit down in our room to help us with the planning of our lessons, only to get a video of them setting off the whoopee cushion. This may sound childish, but it was unbelievably funny every time; made even more so because none of them had ever seen a whoopee cushion. Look for the videos on youtube if any of us ever have access to good internet.
Right from TOT I returned home to prepare for the bike trip. The Lake Alaotra crew got home on Sat, and PC brought all the other volunteers on that Monday from Tana so those first couple days back in Ambato involved crazily running around and preparing last minute stuff. Overall the bike trip was a huge success. The daily schedule went like this: wake up early and pack up the campsite from the night before. Ride to the next town (anywhere from 10km to 67km). Prepare the fety site, dig the holes for the posts, hang up posters, ect. Eat lunch.
Start the fety at 1pm with 6 tables: environment, health, small enterprise development, What is peace corps?, HIV/AIDS, and songs/hand washing. Participants had to go to each of the tables and get a signature on a piece of paper, and if they completed them all, their name went into a raffle.
At 3pm we started our formal program. The schedule was us doing the traditional malagasy opening dance on stage, followed by:
· A skit about not stigmatizing a person with HIV/AIDS
· the omby game (game that clearly shows how the virus attacks the body by using a cow, the body; Police, the immune system; Cattle thieves, other diseases; and a murderer, AIDS, which kills the police.)
· a sensibilization about what AIDS is,
· a song we made up about AIDS to the tune of a popular song
· my sensibilization on the transmission of HIV/AIDS
· a condom demonstration
· a relay race of following the 6 correct steps of using a condom
· A sensibilization about STIs
· A blindfolded condom race between two couples
· A second skit about have only one partner and using condoms
· And a final song we made to the tune of the Waka Waka, Shakira song

All of this took about 1.5 hours and then we did the raffle and PSI would take over playing malagasy music videos until it was dark enough for the movie to start. The whole thing went from about 1pm-7pm so it was an all day event. The towns really loved it and I think it that each of the 9 towns were successful, but it made for exhausted volunteers. There were great moments all along the way, and people seemed really receptive to what we were talking about. There were also very frustrating moments, ie talking about condoms and safe sex with drunk men constantly interrupting. I had a particularly rewarding moment when talking at the HIV/AIDS booth with another volunteer about STIs with another volunteer and a woman told us about how there were many women who had the symptoms of gonorrhea in the village, who don’t go to the CSB because they live far out in the woods. She got the name of the medicine that they prescribe here and promised to tell them to get the medicine for themselves and their partners when she goes to the births of babies.

Overall I think it was especially great because it helped each of the volunteer towns understand more about what Peace Corps is, what work we do, and see that we are people that have friends and like to have fun. People in my town particularly like the large amount of dancing we did during the transitions of our program. I thought the Shakira world cup song, Waka Waka, would forever remind me of watching the world cup during vacation, but I was wrong. We danced to it at least twice a day and one of our songs we made up was to its tune. It will forever be the bike trip song. I was particularly happy with the way that the fety in my town went. I was a little worried about it because it was the 8th time we did it and all the volunteers were pretty much over the fety at this time. Everyone was tired and worn out and losing enthusiasm, but the day turned out to be really nice and all the volunteers got into it. All of my friends showed up, along with all the health workers I invited from the other communities and there were crowds of people that I had never met. Lucette was incredibly helpful in every aspect and she made all the volunteers a delicious meal. Overall a lot of malagasy people are fetsyfetsy (tricky, conniving) and we had had some problems in the other towns of people trying to rip us off, but that didn’t happen in my town and I felt so proud of it. Lucette definitely spent the entire amount of money we gave her on food, and even got us a huge thermos of coffee for after the program, and I am even a little worried that she added some of her own money to the pot. My entire town was so friendly to all the volunteers and everyone wanted to talk to them and ask them about their own towns and what they did. I stayed in my own house that night instead of camping (couldn’t pass up sleeping in my own bed for one night) and I went to sleep feeling truly blessed with my town and friends and really happy about how everything went. When I walked around today for the first time, I had people stopping me all over town telling me how mafinaritra (wonderful) my fety was and how it was so great that so many guests came to ambohitsilaozana.

The tour was a stressful trip, but I am really glad that we pulled it off so well and that at least most of the volunteers really enjoyed themselves and the Lake Alaotra region.

Now it’s back to normal site life, until mid-September, when I return to Tana to train the new volunteers. From there my crazy life will start again with my parents coming in mid-October, Thanksgiving with the lake alaotra crew, and Christmas vacation with Kelly and her dad. One year in the Peace Corps will be up before I even have time to catch my breath.