I went on a small Malagasy vacation with a friend of mine to Vohemar, the furthest north city in my region. I stayed with a Malagasy family, who I absolutely fell in love with, for the weekend. They taught be how to cook proper Malagasy food: Crab Farςe (steamed crab with garlic-ginger sauce), bananas beignet, soaba (tara and coconut milk “soup”/mash), gasy peanut butter, and ravi toto (crushed cassava leaves in coconut milk). The highlight of the trip, however, was waking up to the cutest 13 year old boy cocobrussing the house to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Flash mob Stockholm 2009 anyone?

In other news, I’m sprouting. Soy beans, kidney beans, raw peanuts, you name it. The gasys are really confused, and tell me that I smell like fermenting beans. Yes, this may be true, but my house is currently covered in dishes of fermenting crap. I hope to have a sprouting workshop in my community within the next few months. First, I have to convince people that sprouts are edible. I think I’ll make Thai coconut-lime soup and top it with sprouts for my little gasy friends.

March 1st marks my one year anniversary in Madagascar. I cannot believe it’s already been a year. My role as a Peace Corps volunteer is still unclear, but I’ve been working my ass off on this chicken cooperative business. Speaking of, construction begins next week. There are piles of wood in my yard ready to become the future home of a hundred chickens.

The ongoing soundtrack that is my life in Madagascar has recently included the following:

• DJ Krush & Toshinori Kondo everything (Ki-Oku will change your life)
• The Official – J Dilla
• Polar Opposite – Her Space Holiday
• Lock in the Lion – Airhead & James Blake
• Quick Canal – Atlas Sound
• A Cure – Blonde Redhead
• Discotraxx – Ladytron
• The Seed 2.0 – The Roots
• Slow – Twin Shadow
• When Things Explode – Unkle
• The Black Angel’s Death Song – Velvet Underground
• Fleetwood Crack – White Williams
• Ave, Lucifer – Os Mutantes
• Kookaburra – John Vanderslice

I had a couple of days in Antananarivo before and after Spain, which was a vacation on it’s own.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love Tana. It’s the big African city you always dream about, and it never disappoints.  I flew back to Sambava on the 1^st, and was picked up at the airport by my counterpart.  We drove directly to my village where I had a huge Bon Annee lunch with my counterpart’s family (including his French vazaha uncle), followed by my women’s group disco.  My yard looked amazing when I got back. Somebody mikapa-ed my yard, and trimmed my living fence.  I now have real light bulbs in my house, as well as my ladosy! Since my electricity doesn’t come on until 7pm, I’ve usually already taken my ladosy, but it’s nice to know that I have an option to take a shower in the dark.  I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned lasira-ing my floors (hot wax mixed with petrol, then coco-brussed with an old coconut shell), but it’s my favorite thing in the world, and will probably bring it back with me to the states.  Yea, your house smells like gasoline for a good 5 hours, but your floors look so nice (that’s for you Leslie Peck). It took almost a week for me to recover from traveling, and I slept a lot.  Luckily, nothing happens in Madagascar the week following New Years, so working was not as much of a priority.

I’m in Sambava for the weekend because two of our beloved SAVA volunteers are finished with service, and we had to send them off properly.  The story is actually a good one, but possibly not appropriate to put in a blog. Let’s just say, the reason I had to stay another night in Sambava was for recovery purposes only.

ugh, just spent an hour uploading another podcast to encounter another copyright violation on my part…. I’ll try to get that fixed and up on my blog soon.

As you know, there are currently many Mormons circling the globe spreading the good word in places like Madagascar. During training, we came across a few of these missionaries, and heard a lot about them from the Malagasy people. This is the thing, they speak REALLY good Malagasy. Although my Malagasy is nothing to scoff at, I still speak like a 5 year old. Once you get to site, you realize there are all of these tenses you know nothing about, and have no idea how they work, and then you come across a word like “zany”, which means absolutely nothing, or everything at the same time. Seriously, no matter how many times I use this word, I still have no idea how it fits into the Malagasy language. From experience, I’ve observed that usually it is just a filler word, like instead of saying “um” in English, but then it’s used in confirmation, like “tsy zany”, “is that so” Yesterday, I was having a conversation with one of my Gasy friends, and I counted zany 6 times in one sentence… Sometimes I guess it makes sense, but most of the time I’m clueless. Maybe this is where the Mormon church could help me out? My understanding is that missionaries study the local language in the states before they leave for their assignment. They must have some of the most comprehensive language programs in the world, and I doubt they’d be willing to share with a Peace Corps volunteer, unless I’d like to dedicate the rest of my life to the church. I have yet to see a Mormon church in Madagascar, but I know they’re around. I think most of the missionary work is done in the highlands, because the Christians have SAVA. All of the churches in my village are of Christian origin. I think there’s a mosque in Sambava, but most of the Muslims live further North near Diego. But for whatever reason, we still have a lot of goats in my region. Whenever I ask what they do with the goats, nobody seams to have an answer for me. It’s fady to drink goats milk, and I don’t like living the chevre-free life, let me tell you.

Speaking of church, I was forced to go to the Catholic church in my village. My counterpart’s wife gets really upset with me because I never “visit” her, but I find her intolerable, and extremely mean. But the day she told me I should start looking into buying myself a solar panel for my house, I realized that I might be getting cut off from the electricity that they supply me, so why not try to make nice and spend 2 hours of my Sunday with her at the church? Now, going to church is a slippery slope for volunteers. I’m kind of expected to go every week now, and everybody thinks I’m Catholic. The only way to break this cycle is to visit ALL of the other churches in the coming weeks. This Sunday, I’m going to the FJKM (some kind of Christian Church) with the president of my women’s group. As a side note, I still say that I am not religious, nor do I enjoy church, and that I’d be more than happy to “pray” with people of the traditional religion (you know, where you feed the crocodiles meat because you think they protect your ancestors, a snake is somebody’s grandmother, etc.). That, I find interesting.

Back on the electricity thing, turns out my counterpart bought a solar panel (6 Million FMG – $600 USD, they tell you the price of EVERYTHING), which cuts me off. I don’t really want to talk about it…

VANILLA!

Other happenings at site, well, waiting for Peace Corps to process my funding request application and get it up on the website. Trying to get that done before I leave for Spain. I’ve been in contact with the Red Bluff Daily News about writing an article, which would include a link to my funding request. It’s just around $1,000 USD, which should only take a couple of months to get full funding, but everyone is asking me about it in Nosiarina, and all I can say is that Peace Corps is taking their time with the application. Still working with my women’s group, farming peanuts this time of year. It’s hard work, but we need the money for our New Year’s disco. The president had a little breakdown in the field yesterday, as our peanuts have been infested with rats, and they had already eaten well over half of our crop. I have a meeting in Tana mid-Dec with an agro-investment firm that is interested in SAVA vanilla. More on that later. And, the big project for early 2012 is getting a public library in Nosiarina. No details on this yet, but I’ve had many requests. My women’s group wants me to help them build 2 new wells next year as well. Which brings me to my next topic of discussion: water.

There is no water in my village.

The wells are dry, and if you hear a rumor that a well has water, you wake up at 4am and go to that well to find a line of 30 or so people with multiple buckets waiting to “mangala rano.” I seriously waited 2 hours for water the other day. If I don’t wake up early enough, I don’t get water, it’s that simple. A few days ago I had to decide between taking a shower and having drinking water. You might ask if there is a river in my village, and yes, there is. The Bemarivo is home to the wonderful malaria mosquito, crocodiles, and pollution! The Gasys use the river to wash clothes, dishes, and to bathe, but they won’t even let me get near the river. I was pretty desperate for water the other day, so I grabbed a couple of buckets and headed down to the river (a far distance to carry water, mind you) and I didn’t even make it across the street before I was sent home. Oh yes, and in a previous post, I mentioned that I had a panampy who fetched my water. Well, before going on vacation for all saints day (Nov 2), for what she said would be 5 days, she asked for an advance on her salary, which I gave her, and then she proceeded to never come back to Nosiarina. Don’t know if I had mentioned this, but I also gave her a cell phone in September, and she won’t even answer my calls. Her vady, or “husband” (but really he’s her boyfriend, because they aren’t officially married) found out that she had another vady in her hometown, and is apparently going to bring her back today, but it looks like I may need a new panampy. Have you ever tried washing a double fitted sheet in a bucket?

And oh crap, I’m going to Spain in 17 days….

By the way, look what I saw at the parcage. Can’t decide if this is Globalization at it’s best, or at it’s worst…. Clos du Bois in Mcar

It’s vanilla season in Nosiarina! Life smells good these days.

Babies show up on my veranda in buckets!

My neighbors cleaned up my tena maloto garden for me. Here is the view from my “kitchen” window.

What is Mallory doing in her Malagasy home? Hiding away and watching all of the movies and tv shows she got in Tana… No, actually I wish that were true, but I’ve been hard at work. Today may be the day that I submit my request for chicken cooperative funding. It all depends if the doctor is in at the CSA (Centre Service Agricole) and can give me prices on vaccinations and such. It was a fun little application consisting of 8 excel pages, stuff about capacity building, sustainability, etc. I mean, I get it, potential donors need to know this stuff, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy spending hours locked up in my house on the computer (I hide my computer from the Malagasys). At least I have music, currently 57.8 days worth of music. What I have been listening to lately you ask? Here is a sampling from my “Recently Played”:

1: My Night with the Prostitute From Marseille – Beirut

2: Cobrastyle (Bloody Beetroots Remix) – Robyn

3: Everything You Do Is A Balloon – Boards of Canada

4: The Keeper – Bonobo

5: Odessa – Caribou

6: Le Senza (Colly Remix) – Camille

7: Very Fancy – Die Antwoord

8: The Bells Sketch – James Blake (actually, anything and everything James Blake)

9: Can’t Tell Me Nothing – Kanye

10: Youth Gone – Les Sins

11: Tonight – Lykke Li

12: Boyz – M.I.A.

13: Only Girl In The World (Hood Internet Remix) – Rhianna

14: Heartbreaker – Will.I.Am

15: Dougie Vision (Cali Swag District vs. Toro Y Moi) – Hood Internet

16: Hood Internet’s Mixtape #5 (one hour of amazing) p.s. if anybody would like to send me a flash drive of all of the Hood Internet mixtapes that I’ve missed, I would be much appreciative, and will send you some vanilla!

New pastimes: Spending my mornings on my veranda with my neighbor/thief watching babies waddle down the street, watching Lady GaGa music videos on my iPhone with my gasy lady friends, waking up to my neighbor blasting gasy music at 5:30am only to notice the generator is louder than the actual music, receiving 6lbs of bananas at a time as a “cadeau”, and being summoned from my house to take French-speaking tourists to look at a semi-defunct pepinaire, only to struggle with miscommunication and frustration on both of our parts after the “guide” failed to show up. 6 lbs of bananas, a common Malagasy gift! I think that’s all I really have to report at the moment.

gasy babies are the best…

“I mean, I feel pretty clean. I took a shower yesterday. No, wait… did i?” -my dear friend Lili