just live.

"just live. living is hard enough."

that is what a fellow PCV, who's been in madagascar for almost a year & a half, said when helping me get settled my first day at site. i had asked her, feeling a strange mixture of bewilderment, terror and giddiness upon arrival in my village, "what am i supposed to DO here?" i initially thought her advice almost irritatingly vague, but after spending my first month in the beautiful fishing village of ambolobozokely, her words make perfect sense.

and exactly how do i live? ah, there is so much to tell.

first of all, i will start with my village. ambolobozokely (named after the small baobab trees that live in the area) is a coastal community of about 700 fisherpeople. the main "road" of town is a sandy path running parallel to the beach, and lined on both sides with thatched roof huts in various stages of disrepair, some just frameworks of houses torn apart by cyclones over the years. the rocky beach is lined with dugout canoes, which the people take out each day to gather large quantities of fish, crab, octopus, squid and other seafood to sell in the nearby bigger city of diego. yes, i eat fresh fish every single day, but i'll get to food later on.

there is electricity in my village, produced by two large windmills that were installed in 2008. this is both a blessing and a curse, for it means two things: one, i hear malagasy music all day and all night long, being blasted from my next door neighbor's house and the "discotheque" in the village center. two, every night people gather around their televisions to watch movies (there is no satellite reception, so they watch some of the strangest, worst movies you could imagine... horribly-dubbed kung fu flicks, bad american movies from the 80's or african booty-shaking music videos.) to be clear, i'm not complaining about having electricity; it is a wonderful thing to be able to keep my cell phones charged and turn on a light at night to see what thing is crawling in my house. but i never thought that village life in africa could possibly be so noisy. they like to blare the music and TV sets as loud as they can go. it is impressive. let's just say, i adore my ear plugs.


my house is small, probably about 20 x 15 feet, split into two smaller rooms. like all the houses in the village, the walls are made of sticks, which you can sort of see through, and the roof is made of leaves. i have a cement floor, a small table, a chair, a bed with misquito netting and a bookshelf. for me, it is a little slice of heaven. i feel at times i am living as i did when working in wilderness, and also as i did in alaska, for the lifestyle of living close to the land and without excess belongings is one i am used to. i have a beautiful little shower house which was built just for my use when i arrived, again made out of sticks and leaves, and i take bucket baths with salty wellwater every evening under the stars and moon with breezy coconut tree branches waving overhead.

not to say it's all ease and glory.

my main struggle remains language, and everyone says it will probably continue to be this way for at least another three months or so. everyday, depending on who i am talking with, i will either here that i am "efa mahay" (already smart) or "mbala tsendriky mahay" (still not yet smart). the fluxuation of feeling like i'm actually getting somewhere or that i'm a complete moron is a hard thing to manage. evenso, there are funny elements to the language barrier, and i try to take it all in stride and use at least five new words or phrases everyday. sometimes, just the short 30-second walk to the village center takes courage, for i know i will have to try, once more, to interact in some way with others in a language i am still learning.

the people of ambolobozokely are warm and gracious, and are always inviting me to come sit and talk with them, even though i really can't say much. i appreciate their invitations nonetheless, and have been overwhelmed by everyone's kindness. one woman took me out to her father's homestead nearby, where he has lived for almost 100 years (and in that time fathered 20 children). she asked a family member to climb up a coconut tree and knock down several coconuts for me. we sat drinking coconuts out of the shell in the shade, watching the fishermen out at sea. another woman who is almost the exact same age as me (our birthdays are three days apart), has been taking the time to teach me how to weave baskets, which is what all the women of the village do everyday when they're not cooking rice, caring for children, or gossiping with each other in their sing-songy lyrical way. this woman is thus far my only real friend in town, and has also taught me how to cut and cook fish the malagasy way. yet another woman, (who reminds me dearly of my grandmother, for she she is strong, capable, and never idle), makes me coffee every morning and helps me learn new words which i keep track of in the notebook that never leaves my side. and yet another kind soul has let me come along on many fishing trips out at sea to help drag in fish using makeshift nets. i feel happy in these times, even though it is marked by feelings of inadequacy and inability to express myself well, but it is good enough to just live here, among these people.

and just living is hard enough.