As you can see from my mailing address, I live near Andasibe, a town of about 6,000. It’s surrounded by rainforest (with a buffer of eucalyptus, planted by the French a long time ago). The forest is a part of the Zahamena-Alanamazaotra forest corridor, the last stretch of remaining rainforest running north to south on the east side of the island. The tourist business is big here, so wandering around town I still get the “vazaha, give me candy!” calls from little kids. It is a very accessible town from Tana, due to the paved roads that come all the way here (and then stop at the entrance to town), and also because of the relatively short distance. There are lemurs galore in the forest, which is the reason most people come to visit. And they really are pretty awesome. There is one species (the largest lemur) the Indri-indri that has an incredible communication call. Their call is the longest-traveling audible land animal call (aka elephants and whales definitely have them beat, but if you add in the qualifiers, then it’s impressive), which can travel about 3km.
There is a Malagasy NGO here, Association Mitsinjo, which is the organization that requested a PCV. I am partnered with them, the idea being to have a sort of representative of theirs “on the ground” in one of the main communities they work in. They have a website, so you should Google it if you want more info. But in short, they’re great. When I come into Andasibe I stay with a wonderful family that works with Mitsinjo. They have adopted me as a sort of temporary 10th child (I would be second to youngest). There is electricity in Andasibe, so this is where I charge things/do computer work if I need to.
I live 11/13km out of town (depending on if you go the road or the path), in a small village. It takes about 2.5hrs walking and anywhere from 1-2hrs by bike, depending on the level of mud. It’s on the edge of the Torotorofotsy wetlands, a protected site. The fokontany (smallest unit of governance here- anywhere from a small village to a good-sized town) I live in has somewhere around 1,600 people spread out over just under 400km2 in small villages. My village currently has 14 adults (me included) and 14 kids living there. We’re talking seriously small. And 3 of those are teachers who go home on weekends and during the summer. But, when they are gone, the 8 or so older kids (11-21) who go to school in town come home, so it balances out. The next village is about 2km away, and then the villages continue being spread out in and around the forest and marsh, with some single-family houses scattered around.
Despite it being one of the smallest villages it is the seat of the fokontany, so the school, town meeting house, and a church are all there. This is in part due to the fact that we are pretty much dead center of the fokontany, so to come to meetings etc. everyone has to walk similar distances. But it is also due to the fact that my neighbors are important people, whether they currently have official titles or not, which helps pull resources to us (two of the 5 water pumps in the fokontany are in my village). So there is a constant flow of people in and around us, from about 6am to 7pm.
While there is no public transportation that goes out there, there is a really well-maintained road leading to a mine. This facilitates work with NGOs of all sorts, so just about every day there is a car with NGO/mine people of some sort who come to see my neighbors. Unfortunately this doesn’t mean an endless supply of free rides (I think there must be policies in place from the higher-ups in the various bureaucracies forbidding it), but on occasion someone will take pity on me and I get a ride to town. It is always a Malagasy NGO that takes me, which makes me think it’s a vazaha thing (think lawyers) not to let random people catch rides.
I have my own house, and it is great. It’s in the middle of the other houses, so privacy as I was used to it isn’t quite the same. But I got used to it and it doesn’t bother me (much) anymore. I actually quite enjoy being surrounded by other families because, as some of you may know, I am a fairly jumpy person who is scared of the dark, so having them all right there keeps me calm. There are no animals worth fearing here, and having close neighbors who are respected people keeps any nasty people away.
All of the families around me, with the exception of the three teachers that come there to work, are related. Four of them are sisters and their families, and the other two are the generation above them, aunts and uncles and their families. So, essentially, I have one family I stay with in Andasibe, and then another that I live with all the time. I love it. The family dynamics are surprisingly good, which I appreciate. There are some issues, but they do a good job of working around them. However I think they are just now becoming comfortable enough with me to tell me when things aren’t all good, so we’ll see if I learn about more issues in the future.
I know that the idea of Peace Corps is that I am here to help them, but they all pity me, not the other way around. They often give me food, and when I try to buy food from them (ie greens, zucchini, rice), they won’t take my money. I was talking to one neighbor, and he said that when he’s gone for a few days and comes home, he asks his wife if I have been over in the evenings because he thinks if I’m in my house alone I will be really lonely and sad. And all of them, when they see me working, immediately send a child or five over to help me. One time I was working on my fence and one lady saw me, but she and her kids were all clearly busy so no one could help. Pretty soon though, the youngest came over with a pile of bananas. I’m pretty sure it was an apology-through-bananas for not helping me.
There is some truth to what the one guy said. When I’m in my house alone in the evenings, that is when I tend to feel lonely/sad on occasion. So I have somewhat forced myself into the daily life of one family. They are clearly the wealthiest (you should see how many rice fields they have! And they have cows), so I think I’m less of a burden on them. Also, they seem to genuinely appreciate having me around, at least most the time. It varies, but there have been some weeks when I ate there 4-5 nights. I often try to arrange it so that I bring the side dish for the rice. Sometimes I just bring them beans and they cook them. I like that deal best because then I don’t have to use up my gas on beans, and they are also much tastier when I don’t cook them.
The village is up on the top of a little hill, looking over the Torotorofotsy marsh with rice fields in the foreground. It’s gorgeous. Then there is a border of eucalyptus (notice a theme here?) where there is an old French railroad, after which is rainforest. My village is fortunate to have rice fields so close to their houses. Many people have to go quite a distance to get to their fields. Anything aside from rice is dry-farmed on hillsides (in addition to hill-side rice; you can’t ever have enough of it), so those crops are still pretty far away in general. It’s a daily activity to go and dig up cassava roots, so invariably someone takes off with an empty sack and an hour or two later returns with a bag of tubers.
Life starts pretty early, somewhere between 4 and 6am, depending on the chores of the day. They start chores immediately while the rice is cooking. The first thing to be done is to pound the rice to get the hulls off. I often wake up to the sound of rice being pounded, and as I slowly start my day I feel lazy when I look out and see my neighbors’ kids already working up a sweat. Then it’s off to the fields for hours, with one person coming home to cook lunch (in my area that means starchy corn, cassava, or rice, depending on the activity). After lunch is usually not the same work as the morning. In general, the morning is for the field work, and then the afternoon is the random daily chores like laundry and firewood. Then pounding rice again for dinner. Bedtime is pretty early, anywhere from 7:30 on. But on occasion, if no one was home to take care of the rice, I’ve eaten with them as late at 9pm. Really, it’s just like life anywhere else; there is a general schedule, but it’s always adapting according to the circumstances of the day. It’s just that the base activities here are totally different from our lives at home.
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