Extension Decision

1/17/14

Manahoana!

I wanted to take a moment to tell you about some recent decisions I have made regarding my service here and Madagascar.  My contract is up in April, when my 26 months in Madagascar is finished.  However, my nutrition project is going strong, and I feel like it has a lot of potential beyond the initial scope of the project.  However, I really want to come home and spend some time with my family and friends in America.  I have been gone for a very long time, and I can’t wait to see them again.  So, after spending a lot of time thinking about it and debating different scenarios, I have decided to request a 3 months extension to my service.  This means, I will stick around until July 18 to finish this nutrition project on my terms, to its full potential.  Then, I will begin to head home, traveling along the way, to be home in time for my 25^th birthday in August!

Look forward to seeing all of you then.

Love,

-Sarah

The Holidays Up North

1/15/14

Manahoana daholo!

Here to tell you about my last Christmas is Madagascar, and my trip to the fabulous north of Madagascar.  As always, when traveling in Madagascar, there were some definitely mountains and valleys, as well as actual mountains, valleys, and even rivers running across the road.

First off, I spent the night in Tana in preparation of heading north, since the taxi-brousse from Tana to Ambanja is at least 18 hours, so it leaves at 1 pm (allegedly). Got into Tana in the afternoon, and decided to treat myself to a pedicure at the spa near the PC transit house.  My friend, Arian, came with me to get a massage as well.  Took the lady an hour to make my feet human again (I spend a lot of time in crappy plastic shoes, walking around in the rain and mud).

After all of that, my two friends and I started to head back to the hotel where we were saying.  On a good day, it is about a 10-15 minute cab or bus ride from the spa to our hotel.  Getting out onto the rainy street, however, it was quickly obvious that we were going to have to walk.  Rush hour, two days before the election and a week before Christmas, there was not a bus you didn’t have to fight tooth and nail to get onto, and not a cab that would even glance our way.  So the vacation wasn’t off to the best start, but my pedicure and me made it back to our hotel intact.  Took a bit to wash up and catch up, and then headed out on the town.  Hung out with some of my friends that I was broussing with the next day, as well as a bunch of the most recent group of volunteers, fresh out of their in-service training after the first 5 months in country. 

We were sluggish to get up the next day, but thought we had plenty of time until we had to be at the brousse station at 12:30.  What we didn’t take into account, however, was the sheer madness of the capital around the holidays, met with the insanity of the election two days away.  I headed out with another girl to hit the bank, to make sure I had enough money to start my vacation.  Every single bank we went to, regardless of whether it was my bank in Madagascar (I gave up and decided I could use my American card), had hundreds of people waiting in line.  We walked around town for an hour (so probably should have just gotten in one of the lines) and still came back empty handed.  So feeling a little harassed (and broke), we headed back to grab lunch with the rest of the group.

Well, after a quick lunch, we headed out of the hotel to try and find a cab, which was going to prove to be a herculean task.  Most of the cabs that stopped just kept right on going when they found out where we wanted to go (not even that far, but had to cross the most congested parts of town) and one finally agreed at an exorbitant amount, and would only take 4 of the 5 of us.  So we took the luggage of the 5^th (he lives in Tana, and knows the best routes on his own) and piled in the cab.  The cabbies fears we warranted, as we ended up bailing on the cab as soon as we thought we were close enough to walk.  The guy that left our group walked most of the way and beat us there.  Luckily, we arrived at 1 pm, which is when the brousse was scheduled to leave.  Members of our nine-person group came from all over town, and had the same problems we did.  The rest of the brousse had the same problem, and we didn’t leave (of course) until after 3.

Fairly smooth sailing after that…until 2 am.  At that point, we came to a dead stop.  For four hours.  When asking the driver what the problem was, he simply replied, “water.”  After a little more investigation, we realized that every brousse going that way had stopped because there was a river across the road, due to the heavy rainstorm we had passed through.  The brousses waited until after dawn to try and ford it, and our brousse waited until large trucks had moved some of the water off the road so we could actually drive the car through, rather than pushing it.  So, rather than 18 hours, it took us 22 to get from Tana to Ambanja.

But, it was all worth it to get to my new favorite part of the country.  I stayed with one of the nine I broussed with, Kara, and met up with two girls that live near Ambanja, Dani and Gabby.  The rest of the crowd that broussed with us headed straight to Nosy Be, the touristy island off the northwest coast.  Dani, Kara, Gabby, and I had already planned to go to Gabby’s site, where she works with cacao farmers.  However, because of the inaccessibility and limited time, we decided to hit the beach in the port town of Ankify instead.  So we spent a day and a half lounging on the quiet, isolated beach and watching project runway all stars.  Also, playing with adorable dogs that actually like people.

The next step: Ankarana, the national park halfway between Ambanja and Diego, the northernmost town in Madgascar.  Ankarana is a large national reserve with great wildlife and tsingy, the notable limestone formations from Mada.  We spent a full day hiking around the tsingy and checking out the awesome bat cave.  After spending two nights there, we caught a brousse and headed the rest of the way to Diego.  Unfortunately, the road between Ambanja and Diego is impressively bad, especially considering the tourist traffic between Diego and Nosy Be.  So it took us awhile, and we were squished 5 across in a van that should have sat 3, but we finally made it around 9 am on Christmas Eve.

I brought some decorations to spruce up the Diego transit house, which is officially my favorite.  The open floor plan, cleanliness, and capacity of 8 vs 22 makes the Diego house definitely preferable to the one in Tana.  Plus, I am in love with Diego.  The French colonial architecture, laidback beach atmosphere, and care for aesthetic makes the town truly wonderful.  Not to mention the amazing food!  Fresh seafood, lots of Italian, French, and Spanish influence, and coconut rice.  My three travel buddies and I met up with a few more volunteers from around the Diego area and had a fabulous Christmas Eve dinner on the water at a fancy restaurant.  I had BBQ pork ribs, which is the first time I have seen that in Mada.

Christmas morning, I woke up at 6 am to watch A Christmas Story with my family watching it in Arkansas at 9 pm.  Then, the rest of the people at the transit house and I spent a lazy Christmas Day watching every Christmas special on my hard drive and making an excellent fiesta dinner.  Kara and I decided we weren’t wearing clothes, so we donned lambahoanys, traditional wraps, and had “naked Christmas” haha.  I got to skype with my whole family in Arkansas.  The video wasn’t great, but it was great to see them, however fuzzy.

We spent the next few days hitting all of the hotspots in Diego—Ramena Beach, Bodega Restaurant, the pool at the Suarez hotel, and finally, the Emerald Sea.  You have to reserve a private boat to get there, but it is the most beautiful place I have ever been.  The pristine white sand below the water makes the water an impossible aquamarine color.  There were women there who painted our faces with traditional tree bark masks.  Women use this mask all over the country for sunscreen and cosmetic reasons, but the north is the only place I have seen the women paint designs in them, like flowers.  We had an amazing lunch with fish, crab, and coconut rice, and spent the whole afternoon swimming.  The snorkeling wasn’t great because the whole thing is just white sand, but it was truly amazing.  And the whole thing cost each of us about 15 dollars, including lunch :) .  Even the rain held off; it had stormed all day in Diego, but didn’t hit us until our taxi ride the 18 km back to town.

That night, my last in Diego, we hung out with all of the groups coming from their Christmas vacations in other places to Diego for New Years.  There was probably at least 20 of us, so it certainly made for an epic party.  We went dancing, which was an interesting experience.  There were more prostitutes at the club than real people, but they weren’t aggressive, so it was actually kind of a nice place to dance; there weren’t creepy men trying to hit on all the girls, and the prostitutes weren’t bothering the men.  I left the club early, around one, so I could get a little bit of sleep before my 3 am brousse back to Ambanja to head to Nosy Be for the rest of my vacation.

Nosy Be, while definitely touristy, was also really fun.  However, we actually spent most of the week on Nosy Komba, a smaller island just south of Nosy Be.  We rented a house that was mostly just a veranda overlooking the ocean with a truly incredible view.  We dragged the bed out of the bedroom to actually sleep outside, listening to the ocean.  This also meant we had to drag the mosquito net out, they were so bad!  We had a kitchen, so we got to cook a lot during the week.  We also hit the town for some amazing seafood and to buy some beautiful souvenirs.  New Years was spent drinking French champagne and eating a ton of chocolate and Roman Parmesan.  Quiet but still so nice.

From Nosy Komba, we took an excursion to Nosy Tanikely, a very small marine reserve island about an hour’s boat ride away.  The day was stormy, so the colors of the coral were somewhat diminished, but it was some of the best snorkeling I have ever done.  I saw a sea turtle!  And millions of fish, coral, anemones, and urchins.  The island also had lemurs and a lighthouse with an incredible view.  We had lunch there, and then headed back to Nosy Komba.  As a Christmas present to myself, I purchased a plane ticket home from Nosy Be.  Incredible decision.  Would have taken an hour boat ride, hour cab ride, and minimum 18 hours brousse to get back to Tana.  On a plane, it took one hour.  Merry Christmas :)

I hope you all had an amazing holiday, and I look forward to spending the next one in America!

Love,

-Sarah

Not Yo Mama’s Zumba

1/8/14

Manahoana daholo! Hope you had a happy holiday!

So back in September, my boss at chamber of commerce’s wife started a Zumba class in our town.  It started out with about 10 women, and now we regularly have between 15 and 20 on a good day, and usually around 5 young girls.  Now, zumba in America is focused on burning calories and getting fit in a fun way, so they mostly just encourage you to keep moving, even if you are not getting the steps exactly right.  Our zumba kind of started out that way, but as we get bigger and more popular, we have started giving performances.  We have now become have dance team and half zumba group.

I missed the first couple of “performances,” which were large invitational dance classes.  Just before Christmas, however, our group was invited to perform in front of the commune for a demonstration of the dance and martial arts groups in the area.  We invited a large group of high school girls to perform with us, so they practiced with us the whole week leading up to the Saturday performance.

One of the women in the group, a good friend of mine named Nini, bought a bunch of neon colored tank tops, some of which actually said zumba, in Tana, and brought a bunch of brightly colored ribbons and make-up.  I don’t think I have worn that much glitter since middle school.  We wrapped the ribbons around our arms and legs, sported the spunky tanks, and danced the glitter off in the bright sun.

Here’s the kicker though: our coach was unable to attend, so groups of us actually taught each of the dances.  I lead one with two young girls and helped on two others.  It was really fun!  I think if I need a part time job in the states I would look into being a zumba instructor.  However, my favorite thing about my zumba team (even more than I love the dancing) is that this is the first time I have been just a part of the team.  I am an equal member in this organization, not the teacher, not the mentor, not the observer.  While it was really fun to help lead the group, I was more excited to just feel like a part of something, completely.

Looking forward to attending three times a week for the rest of my service!

-Sarah

Thanksakkah

12/6/13

Happy holidays from Madadgascar!

While I do love my job and life here, I am happy to be describing my last Thanksgiving here.  And what an epic one!  We had ten Americans, a Malagasy girl, and a French guy.  And more food than we knew what to do with!

It all started a few months ago when a French volunteer in my town, David-Pierre, mentioned that he had never had Thanksgiving food.  Well, as a food holiday enthusiast (to say the least) I was not going to stand for that.  In different but related conversation, I mentioned the existence of the “turducken,” a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey.  Well, we then decided that we had to try that.

So two weeks before Thanksgiving, David and I were at the market talking to the guys who sell chickens and ducks.  I hadn’t really seen any turkeys, but I knew Madagascar had them.  In fact, there were a few beauties living in Emma’s backyard!  Unfortunately, those were not for sale.  We talked to the poultry sellers for a bit, but never made definitive turkey-buying plans.  Two days later, a couple of guys show up at my house with a very terrified, tied-up turkey.  I decided it would be hard to find another one and they had brought it all the way to me, so after a bit of weighing (thanks, mom and dad, for the luggage scale :p) and haggling, I had myself a turkey.

TURKEYS ARE LOUD!!!  Also very weird, the waddle thing on their face feels so strange!  The turkey, dubbed Ood (from Dr. Who), only stayed at my house for a day, tied to a tree.  He gobbled all afternoon.  The name for “turkey” on the coast is just that sound, the gobble that it makes.  That evening I took him to the French volunteer house because they have a bigger yard and had made a pen for Ood.  Over the next two weeks, at the recommendation of various Malagasy friends, we fed Ood corn covered in vegetable oil to make him fat.  When I bought him, Ood weighed around 7 kilos, or 15 ish pounds.  We didn’t weigh him before we killed him, but we were guessing the dead bird, void of all innards and feathers, weighed probably 20 pounds.  Big bird!

Most of the crowd arrived the day before Thanksgiving, which actually coincided with the first night of Hanukkah.  Emma and our friend Zach are Jewish, so they helped us celebrate.  We made latkes, a traditional potato pancake, and James read us a children’s book called “Grandma’s Latkes,” which he found in the donated books he received for his town from the “Books for Africa” project organized by some previous volunteers.  We also decided to cook the turkey the night before so the oven would be free for all of the cooking the day of.  I was actually working, finishing up the mural with the church by my house, so by the time I got home the boys had already killed, gutted, and plucked Ood, and he was all ready to be dressed.  It was probably good I wasn’t there while they were doing all of this, since killing the bird I had taken care of the two weeks probably would have made me a little sad.

We nixed the turducken idea, since we found out they are made by machines because you have to debone the duck and the chicken.  But we did make a delicious duck in addition to the turkey, and David got to try his hand at making fois gras for the first time.  On Thanksgiving, we spent the day cooking garlic-mashed potatoes, duck, two kinds of green beans, pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes, stuffing, guacamole, bread, fruit salad, banana pudding, and peach cobbler.  I was really impressed with everyone’s contributions.  It tasted like a real Thanksgiving dinner!  In honor of Hanukkah, Emma also made matza ball soup, even though it wasn’t the right holiday (that one is for Passover).  She also had a menorah her mother sent her, so we lit that and said the Hebrew prayer as well.  We also talked about watching sports, and many of us missed football.  As a replacement, we watched videos from the 2012 London Olympics that Christina had downloaded.  Allllllmost the same, haha.

I was thankful for my volunteer family, we all were.  Most of the people in the room had been here as long as I have, and some had lost family the previous year.  We expressed our thanks for our families at home and our new one here in Madagascar.  We invited the “First Thanksgiving-ers,” the Malagasy girl and French guy, to break the wishbone, and passed a wonderful evening eating, drinking, and laughing.

Most of the crew stuck around for brunch the next morning, where we finished off a large part of the leftovers.  We also made latkes again, because Zach was not there the first day, and had brought applesauce, which you are supposed to put on the pancakes.  Delicious!  Then most everyone took off and went back home.  I was so happy to have all of them in my town to celebrate one of my favorite holidays, but I am looking forward to being home next year!

Love,

-Sarah

Halloween VAC

11/25/13

Manahoana indray namako!

Hope you all are enjoying your holiday season.  I recently got packages smelling heavenly of cinnamon so I am getting in the spirit too!  Sad I will be missing another set of holidays at home, but excited about my last five months of service here in Madagascar.  Well, the time has come again for me to coordinate another meeting/part for all of the highlands volunteers.  We returned to Ampefy (Emma’s town, 30 km west of me) for some beach fun and a costumed Halloween party.  It was great fun, but as always there were some frustrations involved in planning an event for 20 people.

On Halloween, the day before everyone was set to arrive in Ampefy, Eric and Emma joined me in my town to help me carve “pumpkins” for decorations.  These are really a kind of large squash with a green outside and orange inside, but they still work fairly well and taste like pumpkin.  Our planned designs using paper cutouts didn’t fair so well, the pumpkins were too small and oblong, so we ended up mostly free handing and trying to correct our mistakes.  All and all pretty amusing.  We also decided to have a Tim Burton movie marathon, and ended up watching Batman Returns and Beetlejuice.  Eric had never seen Beetlejuice!  I couldn’t believe it.  Not my usual Halloween night, where my family and I always watch Young Frankenstein, but I took care of that one, Hocus Pocus, Sweeney Todd, and Halloweentown earlier in the week J Also, I used the pumpkin guts to make a pretty good facsimile of my mom’s sweet potato casserole.  Yum!

The next day, we headed out to Ampefy to get ready for the arrival of all the other volunteers.  Nearly half the group who came out was new volunteers, so helping all of them navigate to Ampefy after only swearing in 6 weeks prior was a bit of a trip.  We have a new volunteer, Ian, in our region, and one close by, Zach, so they showed up fairly early and joined Eric, Emma, and me for a pizza lunch.  The way Ian looked at the pizza it was like solid gold and rubies, too funny. Everybody else was coming through Tana, so the few volunteers who had made the trip before had to help heard all of the newbies on their way.  Everybody finally arrive between 7 and 8 in the evening, so we mostly just got dinner, grabbed a few drinks, and caught up with everyone we hadn’t seen in awhile or hadn’t met.

The next day was set for the big meeting at the beach.  Emma had talked to a tax-brousse driver in town and set up a private ride for us the 8 km to the beach on the lake owned by a hotel.  The guy was supposed to pick us up at 10 am, so when 10:30 rolled around and he still wasn’t there, we began to call.  He said he was in town and on his way the first time.  15 minutes later he said he was in a town 10 km south of Emma dropping people off, even though we paid him extra not to work in the morning so he would be on time to pick us up.  At 11 we wouldn’t get ahold of him, but 10 minutes later a smaller taxi-brousse with a different driver arrived.  The driver said the guy we had set everything up with was on the road from Tana but had four flat tires so he called this new guy to come pick us up and take us.  This new guy would not budge from the price we set up with the previous guy, even though that was at a premium because we wanted him on time.  So an hour and a half late and too much money later, we finally got on the road to the beach.

The actual beach day and meeting were pretty relaxing.  The weather was beautiful, the food was delicious, and we had a beautiful sandy beach with beach chairs and umbrellas all to ourselves.  However, late in the day it started to look incredibly stormy, but we waited until the last minute to leave.  Hilarious mistake.  The clouds had surrounded our little beach on the lake, coming from all sides.  We had just gotten under the pavilion to square the bill when someone shouted, “look! A double rainbow!!”  People started taking pictures of that awesome spectacle, but then someone said, “look at that wall of rain coming across the lake, how cool!”  That is when I yelled, “let’s head for the car before that hits us.”  Unfortunately, everyone was too engrossed in the rainbows to listen to me, except for two people.  So the three of us headed to the car, and got in just as a mini-cyclone hit the area.  There was deafening wind, pounding rain, and even hail!  The road on which we had come was mostly mud anyway, but would be nearly impassable if the rest of the group didn’t come soon.  They start racing one by one to the car, looking like they had been swimming even though none of us had touched the lake.

We finally got everyone in the car and started on the road back.  The driver could barely see out the windshield, so I was glad this wasn’t a well-traveled road.  We passed houses with their roofs blown off, lost our spare tire off the back and had to return for it (it was already in someone’s ox cart to be sold somewhere else, they had to buy it back), and got stuck in the mud multiple times.  We volunteers were used to it though, and all still in good spirits when we finally arrived back in Ampefy.

The plan for the night was dinner on your own, then meet back for a Halloween party.  Our hotel had hosted us at the VAC in February, and allegedly knew what we wanted.  However, when we returned from dinner, they were not selling any alcohol or snacks, the communal area with the speakers, karaoke machine, and couches was shut up, and all of the staff was asleep.  It was 8:30.  In a mass scramble, we went and bought nearly all of the beer the small town of Ampefy had to offer, set up an ipod on some small portable speakers, and managed to salvage the party by 10:30 pm.  So there were definitely some unexpected hiccups, but that is life in Madagascar.

Love,
-Sarah