three goals and ten steps.

Goals look different to everyone. But as Peace Corps Volunteers, we have additional goals that we strive to accomplish during our two-year service:

1.) Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2.) Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3.) Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

These are all fine and noble causes.

However, I came across something funny the other day as I opened up the pages of what appeared to be a long-forgotten book at the Peace Corps library in Diego. In it, I found a small scrap of paper written by a volunteer who served way back in 2006, listing her version of the three Peace Corps goals:

1.) Don't go crazy.
2.) Don't drive other people crazy.
3.) Have fun!

This seemed somehow so much more illustrative of the Peace Corps experience. Which reminds me of a small pamphlet a fellow PCV friend made recently entitled, "The Ten Step Guide to Surviving the Peace Corps," fully illustrated with cut-out cartoons from New Yorker magazines.

Here they are, for all of you considering service in the Peace Corps:
1.) Stay optimistic.
2.) Cultivate that sense of adventure.
3.) Lower entertainment standards.
4.) Love naps!
5.) Apply problem-solving skills.
6.) Forget that you once had a thing called pride.
7.) Be patient with Peace Corps bureaucracy.
8.) Remember you are doing good and noble things.
9.) Self-motivate.
10.) DON'T GIVE UP.

the chickens go to bed.

A short poem I wrote a bit ago around sunset in my village.

Chickens clucking their way to bed in the mango tree.
Lentils on the stove.
Rain falling steadily. Now intermittently.

Red wine in a rusted tin cup.
Men sewing fishing nets.
Not itching.
Not itching mosquito bites.

Neighbor girl gutting fish. Now frying fish.
Mothers calling their children home.
Me: quiet in the dusky corners of my doorstep.
Wearing blue lamba, loosely hanging over tired legs.

Chickens cluck softly.
Now fall silent and fade into leaves.

I don't want to be anywhere but here,
living my life away from
life
in my home away from home
away from home away
from home.

writer's block.

I never thought that this would happen to me, particularly while living such an interesting life in a foreign land, but lately I have felt at such a loss for what to write about on my blog. This scares me a little. Every time I've had a chance in recent months to write, I think, what could I possibly have to say? Have I really become so used to my life over here that I hardly notice that it's still really, really freaking weird? Has the interesting become mundane? The life that once seemed so bizarre and unusual has slowly, over time, become more or less "normal." And while even the most seemingly commonplace of tasks, such as shopping for vegetables at the market or traveling throughout the country may seem quite an exciting endeavor to those of you who still read my blog, I have become about as African as I've ever felt. Which is pretty dang relaxed.

So what does all this mean?

It means that it took me about one year to accept the fact (still somewhat begrudgingly) that while traveling in Madagascar I will have absolutely no idea when I will depart or arrive at a certain destination, nor by what means. While recently traveling several weeks ago around the southern highlands, I was struck by how indifferent I felt to this one singular uncontrollable factor that used to drive me insane. Sitting on the side of the road, waiting to catch a passing ride might mean being squeezed in a 15-passenger van with 38 other people (yes, it's happened), sitting in the back of an open-air pickup truck with chickens and buckets of fish, catching a lucky lift in a fancy vazaha (white person) Land Rover or sitting next to the driver of a massive 18-wheeler beer truck. Who knows? And anyway, what does it matter? You'll get there when you get there (fingers crossed).

Getting used to life here also means that I have developed a healthy Malagasy work ethic. You show up for work (such as fishing, painting, house-building, cookstove-making, what-have-you) pretty much when you feel like it. There are two times of day here when you can say you'll start working: morning (meaning between the hours of 7-10) or afternoon (sometime after 3 and before dark). Mid-day is meant for eating rice and sleeping, and evening is meant for eating rice and relaxing before sleeping. So, that limits the true "work day" to about four or five hours, if you really stretch it and take plenty of rest breaks in between. And here's the clincher: if you (or they) don't show up at all, it really, really is no big deal. I've learned to live by this here, particularly when dealing with work: "Mbola misy fotoana" (There is still time). That pretty much sums up the entire Malagasy culture, too.

Another great example of this ethic came to me while staying at a fellow PCVs village last week. I passively observed (my M.O. these days) our work schedules: we'd start building cookstoves with kids or painting a map on her village's town hall in the morning before temperatures reached the upper 90's, and then spent the rest of the day hiding out in the shade or lying on her concrete floor waiting for the heat to pass. By 4PM it was time to start working again, much to the amazement of other villagers, who couldn't believe we were so mazoto (hard working)! When we ran out of painting materials mid-week and had to wait a day for them to arrive from a nearby city, no one from her village seemed to care. In America, if you aren't cranking out work at top capacity at all times, you're pretty much a failure at life. Here, you get things done as you can, when the circumstances allow.

How else has my mid-service writer's block of African proportions manifested itself? Well, for one thing, it takes a lot to get me excited these days. I live in a perpetual state of stoicism and indifference, which is a complete product of my environment. We've all heard of how relaxed life can be in village Africa; imagine added into the mix a stereotypical island culture and voila! you've reached whole new levels of idleness.

The way to survive in Malagasy culture is to seem completely uninterested and disassociated from anything that may happen. You never look someone in the eyes (too confrontational) even if you're having the most uninteresting of conversations about the price of rice. You never show anger or irritation, and if you do, you'll just be met with a slightly amused look that says: that's nice, you weird white person. Want to talk to someone about a work project or presentation? Better be prepared to wait a day, week or month until the person's around and then hope it all pans out. If, in a public place, you hear someone speaking in a voice other than hushed, best not to look in that direction, the person is more than likely insane. Being loud or demonstrative is, above all, unacceptable in this culture. For example, some months ago I attended a concert in Diego in which one of Madagascar's most famous singers performed. You'd think everyone would have been going wild. Not the case. As my friends and I were dancing, I looked around and felt as though I were standing inside a museum: everyone was standing stock still with faces that might as well have been watching a cow chewing its cud. Talk about a tough crowd.

In any case, I don't want this to seem like I look down upon the Malagasy culture, quite the contrary. I think it's been quite good for me to take a step back from the frenetic pace of American life and look at things from another angle. So, next time you're sitting at your office or classroom and staring down at that overwhelmingly impossible to-do list, just take a second to remind yourself: Mbola misy fotoana ("BO-la miss foo-TOO-ah-na"). There is still time.

And if you have any suggestions on how to kick my butt out of writer's block, please feel free to comment!