going rogue.

My friend Katie Browne wrote a recent blog that I very much want to share with all of you because it is funny as hell and perfectly illustrates my life. Here are the top ten reasons we're going rogue. Mazotoa (enjoy)!

Dedicated, with sincerity, to the special people of the world who airlift cheez-its despite the recurring fear that their daughter has truly, irrevocably gone rogue.

1. You have come to the belief that the color “dingy brown” actually compliments your skin tone quite nicely.

2. Eating rice with a fork is not just a challenge, it is a physical impossibility.

3. You take great pride in your clean-swept dirt porch. Hours a day are spent tending to it. Shamelessly, you gossip about the shabbiness of your neighbor’s dirt porch.

4. In your town, you have acquired a theme song, “Arovy, arovy, arovy ny tontolo ianatsika,” (Protect our environment!). You hear it wherever you go; it is played for you at parties. While feigning the necessary indifference, you are secretly quite pleased and walk around with the inflated tree-hugger ego of Captain Planet.

5. Often, you simply cannot tell if you are hungry or if you are ill.

6. You do not panic when your friend tells you, “I think I have chikungunia.” Again, you refrain from panic when she reports, “I have something worse.” But when she says, “I may have to go home,” YOU SERIOUSLY FREAKING PANIC.

7. You have entire conversations without uttering a single fully-formed syllable.

8. Endlessly, you and your American friends play games such as “What would you eat at this exact moment in time?” “City names with only the vowel ‘A,’” “Closest guess to today’s date wins a cookie,” and “If your name was a verb what would it mean?” None of these, however, compare to the most enduringly popular “Things I do not care about.”

9. The Peace Corps doctor kindly inquires, “Do you read a lot?” and recommends you use proper lighting as you are “straining your eyeballs.” He forgets, or neglects, to ask about you romantic life. It is only hours later that you think to be offended by this insult of omission.

10. You have lost all human empathy; you read about prison and think to yourself- applesauce and air conditioning- that sounds nice!

happy independence day.

My friend Bri standing proud next to a statue of Madagascar painted with the Malagasy flag.

June 26th marked Madagascar's 51st year of independence. I spent the holiday weekend dancing and partying with my villagers. How do you know it's a big holiday in a rural village in Madagascar? People run around all morning long chasing chickens. For a community that eats fish (and rice of course) three times a day and lives off what they catch from the sea, eating a chicken is a pretty special deal. Everyone gets out of their dirty rags and puts on their finest attire, eats some chicken & rice and dances to accordian club jams blasting at the loudest possible decibel until the early dawn.

A pic of me and my best friend Chantaly on Madagascar's Independence day, 26th June.