But what do you DO?

The dreaded, but understandable, question. The problem is that I’m still asking it too; what do I do? I have some ideas of what I hope to do for ‘work’ and I will share those later, but first a little bit about what I actually have spent time doing:

-          First, there is a fence. It is quite fun to work on, but I still look forward to the day when I’m not working on the fence but on the garden inside the fence. At first, through a series of miscommunications, my neighbor and I thought we had to build a fence around my house as per Peace Corps policy. So there was a community meeting and workdays set up. No one really came, which turned out for the best because after clarifying with PC, it is now a fence around a future garden rather than a wall around my house shutting me off from neighbors; had people actually showed up when they were supposed to, I would be sitting inside my own fortress right now. Close call.

How is a fence an activity in and of itself?

Just watching… US government sponsored entertainment

I was a little stir crazy the other day, so I invited myself to transplant bananas with my neighbor. It was, to be fair, the first time I have had the occasion to plant a banana. What it was not was the first time I have ever used a shovel/dug a hole. After about 6” done, my neighbor took a break from digging to express his surprise at my ability to dig a hole. I guess he thought my offer to help was an empty one.

Potty Talk

My neighbors’ toilet habits differ greatly from mine in 3 ways:

If you think there is something crawling on you...

... then there probably is.

I was talking with another volunteer about how nice it is that here in Mcar there isn’t really much to worry about in the way of poisonous creatures. It actually makes me (slightly) less jumpy knowing that all the creepy-crawlies that pop up everywhere are mostly just harmful to their dinner. However, this does not mean that they keep to themselves. There are some bugs here that are REALLY annoying, even though “harmless.”

The World is Flat

I often eat dinner at my neighbors’ house. They are wonderful people and very nice to let me eat there frequently and are patient as I struggle to follow the flow of conversation. A few days ago the topic took a turn from a discussion about the timeline of the World Wars and the Cold War to the question/statement, “I’ve never heard of anyone who has seen the end of the world.” They were all looking at me, waiting for me to tell them exactly where the end of the world is. As I struggled to formulate my answer, they thought maybe I hadn’t understood the question. I also thought I must have misunderstood the question; we were on the same page there. But after some clarification it turns out that that was, in fact, the question.

First two weeks- a few Accomplishments

I did not burn down my house with candles/stove.
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I left my house everyday and talked to people.
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"Mahay" is a word in Gasy that is really really useful. It means either to know, as in "do you know how to cook?" "are you mahay cooking?" or to be good at something, as in "he speaks Gasy really well" "he is really mahay Malagasy". Also kind of can mean to understand, as in "mahay Gasy culture".

This isn't all it is used for, but it's a start. So, this week I have been declared mahay at the following things:
Fetching water
Playing soccer
Dancing
Saying helllo (in the local dialect)

I have a home!

It's been just over two weeks now at my new site. I'm now near Andasibe, about 3-4 hrs east of Tana. My house is great!

It is made of wooden planks with a thatched roof. Luckily they (because Peace Corps told them to) put plastic sheeting up on the ceiling to stop leaks and keep bugs from falling on me. I am supposed to be working with a local NGO that works with community organizations to manage parts of the forest (VOIs), so the carpenter working on my house\ building my outhouse (kabone) works for them.

Apparently it wasn't quite clear what I meant...

An excerpt of a g-chat conversation with Rose:

rose: i love your blog i was laughing hysterically about your bed wetting dream
  haha
  brings back memories of plastic bags over the beds
 me: those were the days.....
8:23 AM rose: so it was tea? still not sure what you were talking about
 me: what?

Patience is a virtue

Arrival in Madagascar: training center to host families and back to training center. Looking forward to the May move-in to my home for the next two years! I've been collecting seeds from interesting plants to start my garden.
So, on May 8th we get to my site; it's beautiful. We get out to look at the house, to see if it's up to PC standards, and there seem to be a few details lacking. No fence. No shower. No bathroom. No one to ask about it. Hmmmm.

New Address (and a little bit about my new site)

Observe the new address to the right -->
We are officially Peace Corps Volunteers now, no longer trainees. We had our swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday (I gave a speech in Malagasy!), and now we are scattering to the winds! I am in Tana right now, but we head out for our "installation" process as soon as I finish this and pack up. It will be one other girl, Jennifer, and I with Ursula, one of the LCFs (languag trainers). They send one of the LCFs because you have to do a bunch of courtesy visits to local authorities, so they send someone who can actually speak the language to facilitate.