20 August 2010 SITE VISIT: some good, some bad, lots of Vazaha

Pics: 1 of the CSB where I will be working for the next 2 years. The other two pics are of the bike ride to Ambatomainty, on the west side of Lac Aloatra, with Hoby and lots of rice

Disclaimer: Reader(s) ((do I have plural?)), This is a marathon of a blog, be like the tortoise.
Remember last week that joke I had told about the trip to my site being 5-8 hours? No, you probably don’t. Don’t sweat it, if I was in America I would probably have better things to do than read a marginal blog. Anyways, to keep you informed, last week I was giving the deets about my week-long trip to Ambatomainty, the place I will live for 2 years after I finish training a month from now, and I had said that I was under the impression it would take 5-8 hours to get there. Well, that statement furthers the fact that I really know nothing about Madagascar, BUT I’M NOT ALONE!!! One of my language teachers, Eddy, A Malagasy man, had told me this guesstimate on the travel time. Although Eddy had never traveled to this region, he thought that travel was relatively fast because a new paved road had gone in a few years ago. Sounded great, I bought it, and I prepared myself for a 5-8 hour journey. Remember this fact, it comes back into play. Now let’s fast forward to August 14th, the day of my travel. I would be hopping on a Taxi-Brousse with a different language teacher who grew up in the region, Hoby, and another PCT. We begin our voyage, and the taxi-brousse is as contemptible as possible. It’s a Mazda “Ocean Dream” van loaded with 14 people, luggage, 200kg bags of rice, 4 bikes, and wait for it….1 rooster. So were cruising in the Mazda after leaving an hour late due to the Malagasy’s lax perception of time, and 45 minutes outside of Tana the “Ocean Dream” became a smoky nightmare. We pull off the road, let the engine cool down, and come to the realization that the engine has no coolant. So you do the obvious solution here, have one of the kids riding in the car go fetch some water from the rice paddy in the distance. So that worked, and 20 minutes later we were on our way. However, 45 minutes later, it happened again, and again, and again. In four hours we had gotten where we should of in two. So we took a detour to go to a bigger town where we could jump into a different Taxi-brousse. We get to this town, and there’s a Renault MEGAVAN half full waiting to go, so the 14 people in the Ocean Dream abandon ship for the Renault, putting it at about 5 people over capacity. Then the luggage, rice, bikes and rooster got on top of the Renault and we were ready to depart. In hindsight it was a decision like giving up listening to Rod Stewart for Michael Bolton, just varying degrees of bad. The MEGAVAN was doing well for a few hours, despite numb legs and pierced kneecaps from lack of seat leisure, no real problems. Then, the road stopped. Asphalt to barren dusty roads in an instant. As this continued for some time, I then leaned over to my language teacher Hoby and asked him how long we wouldn’t have a road. Hoby, being the nonchalant man he is, coolly replies:
“eh, I think about 4-5 hours”.
At this point in time I then respond “I thought this whole trip was supposed to take 5 hours?”.
Hoby in his infinite poise simply laughed at me and said in his British trained accent “Nope, it usually takes 8, but because of our breakdown its probably going to take 11.”
My next concern became the road, as I was told by Eddy that there was a new road there. Hoby once again laughs at me….
I’ll paraphrase Hoby’s reply (Imagine this all coming from a short Malagasy man in a sophisticated British accent as he stops reading The Economist magazine in a crazy bumpy van [is this possible to imagine?]) “Oh ignorant American, Eddy doesn’t know the severity of corrupt government as well as the complexities and intricacies found in this region like I do .” “Three years ago Madagascar was given money by the E.U. to pave their roads, but the government did not regulate it, and instead told each region to pave the roads by themselves with the divided money.” “But the politicians in this region fancied the idea of personal helicopters more than roads for everyone, so never made the road.” “However, there is no federal regulation in Madagascar, so the politicians just told both national government as well as the E.U. that the money was put to use for new roads, meaning all maps say there is a beautiful new road here, but in reality it’s just dust and sand”
Yep. He’s right, I pulled out my map of Madagascar and it shows a road, but there’s no road there for 5 hours, just dust. Apparently that’s why infrastructure isn’t a selling point in Madagascar; Corruption.
Now back to the Renault MEGAVAN, it was really dogging it on the nonexistent road, so the MEGAVAN broke down a few more times and all of a sudden my 5 hour journey (which really is an 8 hour journey) became a 13 hour journey. The MEGAVAN didn’t live up to its name, and routinely died. However, the frequent death allowed for chances to get out of the car and stretch the legs. Not kidding, me and about 5 other guys got out of the MEGAVAN multiple times to push-start it. But when you do this after dark in boonie Madagascar, its pretty amazing. Light pollution is a foreign concept here, never in my life have I seen so many stars as rural Madagascar. After one last push-start we made it to our destination, Ambatondrazaka, only 6 hours after we should have arrived. Well, not all of us made it. When unloading the roof of the van, the driver pulled down the wicker basket/cage, but the rooster was no longer to be found. Anyways, I was promised by Hoby that the trip has never lasted so long, so lets hope the horror story is now out of the way.
At Ambatondrazaka we did some small things like check out where my bank is, visit the Meva for Peace Corps Volunteers in the region (it’s a flop house where we can crash when we need to go to town for banking, Peace Corps stuff, or just escape Madagascar-ness and see some Americans.) The following day Me, Hoby, and Teena (the other PCT) went first to visit Teena’s site which is only 15 kilometers from mine, there Hoby introduced her to the people at the crude hospital as well as mayor, police, ect. Then it was my turn, as Hoby and I left Teena to fend for herself, then we jumped on our bikes and began our 15 km bicycle boonie excursion. It was a great ride, as it was great to be on a bike once again. However, the high carb diet of rice with a side of rice doesn’t make bike rides easy, as both Hoby and I were beat from the short trip. Once there we needed to get some energy, so we went to a Hotely (essentially the Malagasy restaurant), and went big with a meal of rice, chicken, pork, eggs, and a side of yogurt and a salad. And this cost us 2500 Ariary/person, or $1.14. Broke the bank on that one. We stayed at a hotel that was 12,000 Ariary/night, or $5.48. We were really racking up the national deficit over site visit.
So I visited my site with the man Hoby via bikes for a 15k ride each way, checked out my digs, met some midwives, realized that I really don’t know much Malagasy, walked around the market, things of that nature. My dwellings are part of the CSB complex, which is sorta a tiny clinic/hospital where they give immunizations, occasionally deliver babies, talk about condoms, washing hands, it’s really your one-stop shop for marginal healthcare. So the CSB will be my major outlet of singlehandedly saving Madagascar with health announcements and such, but if there are other things in the community that need attention, I’m there. I’ll be talking about my region quite a bit in the next few years, and I really don’t have a ton to say about it now. But I’m excited to be in the town and area as there seems to be a good peace corps network amidst the Lac Aloatra region. So for now, I’ll keep it mysterious…
Moving on, lets talk about the word Vazaha. Wow I hate that word. If you don’t know, it’s the derogatory term for a white rich person in Madagascar. Where we have training I would hear it pretty frequently, but typically by little kids whispering to their friends “Vazaha lavo be” or “super tall white guy”. There in Mantasoa it doesn’t bother me too much, as I am in fact a tall white guy. But those kids just do it to be funny and show their friends that they are bold enough to talk about the whities, there’s no real malicious intent in it. There they are used to whities all the time as Peace Corps does training, and we essentially are their source of American entertainment media, but as the whities spread themselves thinner throughout the country, they stop being in on the joke, and BECOME the joke. I think I tend to get it more than the average whitey as I am four feet taller than the typical Malagasy man, but it hardly justifies the intensity. Throughout the site visit trip I would guess I hear “Vazaha” at least 20 times a day. That can get exhausting. I guess it’s completely socially acceptable to call out the white guy, but let’s not hold grudges when doing so. Here’s the story: I did my bike ride to my site for 2 days because I couldn’t sleep there, one day with my language teacher Hoby, and one day without. But this ride is seriously boonie Madagascar, just rice paddies for miles. On the second day, sans teacher, I had passed some men working in the rice paddies about 100 feet from the road, and while the whole group stops to gawk at the vazaha, there was one shrewd and progressive scholar in the fields who was having nothing to do with me. With all the rage this man had towards me, I must have unknowingly murdered his family. My Bad, Azafady. “VAZAA! VAZAA! ALLEZ VAZAA!” he screamed as throwing down his rice paddy spade to get a closer look at the evil soul I am. Apparently my whiteness had ruined his otherwise great day working at a rice plantation. If that doesn’t get you excited to volunteer in a 3rd world country, I don’t know what would. I understand I am a pretty strange site here, but subtlety isn’t a strong point for Malagasy hicks. Another trainee was expressing their frustration at the title, and asked a language teacher if it would be fine just to respond “Mainty! Mainty!” or blackie after being called a whitie, but apparently its very offensive to call a Malagasy person black, while fully acceptable on the other hand to call an American as white. It shouldn’t get to me, and my main focus here is to bring health education, but educating ignorant farmers on class and respect sounds pretty tempting too.

Awaiting Site Visit!!!!

14 August 2010

Well I updated this a week ago, but here we go. I’m back in the capital city of Tana because I’ll be going on a site visit this upcoming week. For those outside the Peace Corps loop, what that means is I will go to the site where I’ll be living for the next two years to scope out the situation. My site is Ambatomainty, it’s a city of about 20,000 people, approximately 250 kilometers NNE of Tana. To get there one travels by road, but as I have said, infrastructure isn’t Madagascar’s forte. To get to my city of Ambatomainty one takes a Taxi-Brousse from Tana to a bigger city about 15 km away from my site. Here’s a great interlude to explain the Taxi-Brousse: the unofficial mascot of Madagascar Travel. Envision your Mom’s ‘94 Astrovan. Now snag out the six suede bucket seats that you have pictured and replace them with about 20 school bus seats. Typically a sun-faded honey amber pleather seat with questionable rips and stains. Your Astrovan was intended to seat 6-8, but the ingenious Malagasy have now equipped it with 15 bleacher seats, meaning they will sell 20 seats. This is another appropriate time to mention that the average height of a Malagasy man is 4 foot 3, and I am 150% taller than said man. Therefore transportation is a pretty crude practice for me. Legroom is a delicacy in a vehicle designed by midgets. So that’s your taxi-Brousse. The same marginal soccer-mom van produced 15 years ago, now modified with bus seats and luggage rack on the roof. But don’t fret, it’s not like they just Frankenstein these vans together, It still has the same tires as when it rolled out of the factory in ’94. Now back to the roads, let’s make an analogy. Picture your gravel driveway. PERFECT! You now have imagined the national highway! To get to my site, the 235 km excursion from Tana to the big city near Ambatomainty takes anywhere from 5-8 hours. And this is regarded as one of the nicest roads in Madagascar. Let’s think about this, A praised road’s length of travel shouldn’t vary nearly that much. Stateside, would anyone get on any mode of transportation if the driver tells you “Yea, we will get there in five hours, but if it takes nearly twice that, no biggie”? So this greatly variable trip gets me 15km away from my site. But that doesn’t get me all the way there. To endure the last 15km epicness takes place. The peace corps initially had planned for me to take a taxi to my city. But the taxis in this region are rickshaws and bicycles, and I wasn’t fancying that. I proposed to get to my site for a few times this upcoming week that Peace Corps gives me my bike early, and THEY ACTUALLY THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA. MY ROCKING TREK MOUNTAIN BIKE WILL BE JOINING ME ON THE TAXI-BROUSSE. I was cleaning my bike the other day with some Malagasy employees of Peace Corps, adjusting the saddle, throwing a new chain and tube. GOOD STUFF. GOOD STUFF INDEED. So that’s where I’m at now. Nothing crazy new exciting, just anticipating my site visit. Check back next week, I should have some good stuff to tell back from site visit.
The Pictures I added are of my 18 year old host brother Celeste, who is about 5 foot 1, A view of the Malagasy Highlands, and a candlelit pic from the edge of my bed.

Update from Madagascar

Hi everyone, this is Annie. I'm posting this blog on taylor's behalf:


I’ve been in M-ascar for 2 weeks. Here’s the abridged version of the happenings:

I met 41 other PCV trainees in Washington D.C. and had a short orientation on July 19th-20th. Half of these people are with public health, and the other is teaching English. Anyways, on the 20th we sat on a plane for about 20hours, stopping in Dakar to refuel and landing in Johannesburg, South Africa for the night. Now this would have been a great opportunity to meet other volunteers in sitting beside them for 20 hours, but I decided to forego that situation. I had my seat moved away from all those hippies to get an exit row seat with GREAT LEG ROOM. However I still couldn’t get comfortable in this seat and for a few hours over the Atlantic decided to lay down on the floor with its massive leg room and take a nap. Apparently this is a big no-go in flights, and I was woken up and yelled at by a furious South African Flight Attendant . This was such a big faux pas that they came over the loud speaker on the flight to note to all passengers that sleeping under seats was NOT permitted. Now you have been warned. Back to abridged… The following day after the marathon flight we had another 3 hour flight to Antananariva (Tana for short), Madagascar and stayed a night there in the capital city. But we don’t go stay their often, as political coups in that city are as frequent as a 6 foot 4 white guy getting noticed in an African country where the average height is 5 foot 3. But don’t worry Mom, 1) We don’t go there during unrest, 2)I’m not the only tall white guy with the Peace Corps.

Anyways, all of our training is in a village called Mantasoa. This was a 2 hour, painfully bumpy, 10 person packed Toyota Land Cruiser trip. In that 2 hours we traveled a grand 30 Kilometers. Infastructure isn’t a selling point to M-ascar. As soon as we got to Mantasoa (just southeast of Tana) we met our host families and had out first night with them. Just a tad bit intimidating, as I knew about 3 words of Malagasy opposed to their zero of English and 4 of French, “Ne Pas Parle Francais”. So yea, that’s whats up with me, just settling in with this family, adapting to their affinity of white rice at every dining opportunity, and learning the language everday during class. Moral of the abridged version, I am alive and well, and I hope the friends and fam stateside are also. That was my best attempt at an abridged retelling of the past few weeks. But honestly, that’s like summarizing Moby Dick in a paragraph. If you are still interested, please read more! It’s the first time I’ve had internet yet so I apologize for the heavy load, but hey, you don’t have to read this all in one sitting. Take a break, I’ll give
you a reference point -> ((((((BREAK))))))





(((((RESUME))))))
Welcome back! So you probably have no idea what Mada is like after my abridged version. That’s intentional to keep you reading. But really, how do I explain this place to make any sense whatsoever? From a western perspective this place is completely nonsensical. Let’s give some highlights to emphasize my point. My neighbor in my quainter that quaint village is a band leader and EVERY NIGHT from about 7-9 play the same 8 minutes of music on loop for 2 hours straight. This isn’t your angstful teenage neighbor, rehearsing 90s grunge rock with his high school bros in the garage with thoughts of being the next Pearl Jam. Nope, think more along the line of Lion’s Club marching band. It’s a group of about 10 guys in their fifties and sixties playing wooden flutes and marching drums. And they couldn’t be happier rocking out while the village attempts to go to bed and ignore the Malagasy Association of Retired People Marine Band. I suppose a sense of community is lovely, but the 4/4 time of the bass drum is running a bit thin to me. I’m planning on introducing them to some Jay-Z next week for my sanity. I feel they would really embrace and appreciate the message of “99 Problems”. I asked my 18 year old host brother in
broken Malagasy “Tia Musikany Dadibe ve ianao?” or “Do you like the grandpa’s music?”. And he began to laugh hysterically and say “Tsia, Ratsy! Ratsy! Ratsy be!” or “No, it really bad!” I’m trying to stay optimistic and assume he understood me and was referring to the music and not my language skills, but either is possible.

So that’s an intro to my Village: Andrefany Poste.
Approximate population of the big AP: 60. Exact number of last names found in the village: 1 (yep, everyone is related to everyone in AP) Number of PCTs staying in various houses in AP: 5. FUN FACT: It is estimated that the total amount of teeth in place for the five PCTs MAY OUTNUMBER the total amount of teeth of the 60 malagasy AP natives. Yea, this town isn’t full of routine flossers…. But they sure have heart. All the 42 volunteers are spread out a few kilometers around Mantasoa in small villages like AP. But from what we have seen, the AP seems to be the poorest of villages. No running water, No
electricity. But they sure have hearts… and candles. When I leave my village of Andrefany Poste on my walk to language
class it quickly becomes evident that Northeast Ohio is aways away. It’s a 20 minute walk to the classroom consisting of decrepit and uneven muddy red clay roads, astounding views of the Malagasy Highlands, multiple rainbows occurring at once, and countless livestock running and marching without direction. Cows assumed to be owned by someone feed on the grass aside the road as chickens and geese get in fights only to be broken up when a Malagasy man blows past them in his 1970s Peugeot Bike with a basketful of bananas and pineapple. However, these sights are not the best on the walk to
class. The best by MILES are all these GREAT TRUCKS that transport various agriculture on the dilapidated roads as they splash muddy puddles onto pedestrians. What is fascinating about these trucks? Well, they are all MERCEDES! Every single truck you see is a Mercedes benz, its remarkable that Mercedes has made themselves viable to this third world country! Turns out Mercedes doesn’t really do that. If you get close to one of these trucks you examine the Mercedes hood ornaments, and then it hits you. Nope, these certainly aren’t Mercedes’ in Rural Madagascar. You get close to them and see that these ornaments are all chinsey plastic junk superglued over a spraypainted Chinese Manufacturer logo. Its done so shoddily though, its rare to even see the Merc logo at the right angle/alignment. So turns out all these trucks were Fauxcedes. Oh Madagascar..
Moving on, now lets talk about my salary. I rake in 35k/WEEKLY! Not annually, but WEEKLY! Quite impressive being out of college for 2.5 months. Well…….. not quite. That’s Ariary, not USD. 35,000 ariary approximately equals 16 bucks per week. That’s what I get paid during training when I don’t have to pay for any food or living costs as I'm with a host family. But seriously, with 16 dollars of expendable cash in rural Madagascar, YOU ARE A GOD! Would I like that soccer ball?
Sure why not, its only a buck fifty. How about a cell phone, well that will set you back a big 9 buckaroos. This money they give us is essentially for snacks or drinks and sanity during training, but I’ve been pretty frugal with the walk around money. A snack of fried mofo runs 100 ariary- or 4.65 cents, or about twice that for a small bar of chocolate. But I’m holding back. Why you ask? For the countless bootleg DVD collections you can find at epicieries or teenage boys cruising through town on their mobile blockbuster bicycle. I haven’t checked prices yet, but there are some good collections that I’m eyeing- such as the Keanu Reeves collection (featuring SPEED 1-3, MATRIX 1-3, and THE LAKE HOUSE), or perchance ill snag the SCHWARTZENEGGER VS JACKIE CHAN ACTION COLLECTION. You can’t make this stuff up.

Lastly, if you ever feel like sending me a letter, I’d love that. However, in this blog I have told 2 different locations that it can be sent to, and I’m changing it again on you. The address to send to is the original one provided, the one with B.P. in it. Sorry, my inconsistency in this department is becoming comical, but I promise you it isn’t intentional. I give you warning though, It will likely change again in another 6 ish weeks.

Thanks for your strength in getting through this monster blog. I’ll work on getting pictures up here sometime in the future. Keep the States wonderful everyone.


* This is Annie again, I've gotten questions regarding how to contact Taylor. You can call or text him at +261 346056067 (be sure to dial the + sign). He doesn't have electricity so his phone might not be on all the time. If you text or call him I'm pretty sure it's free for him, but of course he will have to pay to text you back, so if you don't get a text back from him, you know how much he likes you.