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!

travels in lemurland.

I recently took a trip to Anja Park, about two hours south of Fianarantsoa in the highlands of Madagascar. It was one of the most beautiful places I have been on planet Earth, and left me in awe of nature in all its diversity and splendor.

Ring-tailed Lemurs (Lemur Catta).

It has been such an incredible experience traveling through a new part of Madagascar. There are so many differences from the northern part of the island that I call home... the Betsileo people that live in this area speak a completely different dialect, their style of dress much more conservative and provincial, their facial features more Asian influenced, their livelihoods based solely on rice farming and cattle herding, the city filled with beggars in rags.

Anja Park, outside of Fianarantsoa.

The landscape is vastly different from the coastal north as well, one of enormous granite-lined valleys filled with rice paddies and two-storey mud houses. I couldn't decide at any given moment if I felt like I was traveling through Utah, Australia or Montana. In any case, this is not my Africa. This is not the little fishing village of which I have made a home away from home, with its strong African-influenced music, culture and pace of life. Here we sat listening to lemurs calling out to each other at the start of their mating season. Here we passed through thick jungle and climbed through granite caves where lemurs sleep at night. No, this is not my Africa, this is the Africa that separated from the continent millions of years ago and has become home to an incredibly diverse number of endemic species.

one year.

I have now been living in Madagascar for over a year, as of March 3rd. There is still over a year left of my Peace Corps service, set to end in May 2012.

My one year anniversary offers a bit of time for reflection. It's gone by both incredibly fast and painfully slow, depending on the day or sometimes the hour. One thing I've learned about this experience is just to hang on through the rollercoaster of ups and downs; even during the worst times here, the smallest pleasure can turn everything around.

Do I like living here now that I'm a little more used to things? Not always, but the feeling of contentment is much higher than it used to be. Do I both dread and live for the feeling of stepping off the plane into the chaos and ease that is America? Constantly, so much so that I do not know which universe I belong in anymore, here or there. Do I think I should speak the Malagasy language better, more thoroughly understand the Malagasy culture, be more accepted and less stared at? Daily. But I have to recognize the accomplishments I've made in these areas or else I will lose my mind.

What I am experiencing increasingly here as my time passes is an acceptance of what I can stand. My patience during unpredictable and frustrating situations grows exponentially. So has a unhealthy level of apathy. Or maybe it's actually more an ability to truly appreciate joy born out of the simple life.

They say year two of Peace Corps service is fun and fast, surreal and fleeting. And so the sojourn continues...

death.

The old midwife of my village died yesterday morning. It was the third death since my arrival ten months ago, the first of someone I knew. Everyone called her Mama ny Zill.

I could immediately sense something bad had happened upon awakening, just by the heavy weight of silence hanging over the morning. Usually the early hours of day, between 5 and 7, are filled with sounds: mothers calling to their children to fetch water, start the fire, cook the rice, men repairing fishing nets, women scraping burnt pots of rice with sand, scrubbing clothes in buckets or pounding cassava leaves, rice or flour by hand in massive wooden mortar & pestles.

On the morning of Mama ny Zill's death however, nary a sound could be heard- it seemed even the birds and chickens had enough sense to refrain from song. People all around the village stood in silent tableau; I felt like I was the only thing moving through a series of still-life paintings.

The loss of this particular community member came as a devastating shock to all. In her mid-50s with six children of her own, she was the only "doctor" for miles around and had helped birth countless babies over her many years as midwife. She was every woman's doctor, gynecologist, doula, pharmacist and masseuse. She trained no one.

I'm not even certain why she died- some people said she was "too hot" while others insisted she had "oil in her heart." Malagasy explanations for most things are bizarre at best.

In any case, I thought I'd offer up a list of the very specific roles people played on the the morning of her death, depending upon their age group and gender. I think the rituals and traditions surrounding the three-day Malagasy funeral are fascinating, as I've already intimated at in my previous blog, "a day at the cemetery." Here is what everyone did within two hours of receiving word that this beloved community leader had passed away in the night.

young men.
Chop down limbs and branches of nearby trees and immediately build several makeshift, leaf-roofed shelters for people to sit under, wrestle a cow or two, tie up its legs, slaughter, butcher and cook it in several large pots over wood fires; drink rum and beer heavily starting mid-morning, argue amongst each other til sunrise the following morning; around 8PM begin banging on "drums" (actually just any plastic container or jug that's lying around) and begin clapping, chanting and singing rhythmic songs til exhaustion in the early dawn. Next day, repeat entire process all over again. Young men may not enter the house of the deceased until the third day after death.

boys.
Band together in small groups collecting endless supplies of firewood for all the cooking that must be done from morning til night for hundreds of people; some boys go into the forest by oxcart to gather large fallen limbs; boys as young as 7 are also responsible for managing & steering oxen; also dance, chant and clap with men in the evenings. May not enter the home of the deceased until the third day, unless they are still toddlers.

old men.
Sit under the shelter built by young men that is nearest the home of the deceased; are the first ones to eat during meal times, which must be done in shifts; old men sit on mats or leaves and most wear Fedora-style hats. They do little else in regards to the goings-on other than sit, talk and eat. May not enter the home of the deceased until the third day.

young women.
The first morning, go from house to house gathering large cooking pots, serving bowls, metal pot stands, etc for all meal preparations; sort and winnow massive 50-pound gunny sacks of rice; breastfeed babies and care for toddlers (every woman has at least one breast-feeding baby and toddler to manage at all times, if they are over the age of 15); visit home of deceased, crying out in sad, high-pitched wailing sounds; must wear their nicest print wrap dress and matching head scarf; cook rice over smoky wood fires morning, noon and night; serve rice and beef to everyone, working in shifts; women eat last.

old women.
Sit inside the house of the deceased for three days (the body is laid on the floor and covered in a white sheet with fake flowers), coming out only to eat and occasionally sleep; wail and carry on sometimes to the point of hysterics; welcome (and by this I mean talk shit about) visitors coming from outlying villages.

peace corps volunteer.
Flutter about awkwardly here and there, trying to fit in with young women (but sorely out of place for lack of her own breastfeeding baby); withstand endless, non-stop, never-ending, ceaseless staring and commentary from strangers, drunk men and even locals who see PCV every single day; take long walks alone along the empty stretches of nearby beach to maintain some level of sanity.

small possessions I prize.

The idea for this blog comes from "A Companion for Owls" by Maurice Manning, a book written in the voice of American pioneer Daniel Boone. I asked my friend to send it to me (thanks Becky!) for the sole purpose of referencing a short inventory titled "Small Possessions I Prize." My own inventory is nowhere near as quaint as his ("porcupine quill, stained purple; stone blade from the Indians; buffalo vertebrae"), but I still think it is illustrative of a time, a place, a lifestyle.

- sahafa (woven, circular mat), used at least three times a day for winnowing and sifting rice, cutting vegetables, sorting beans

- small red notebook for writing down Malagasy words I've learned

- two five-gallon buckets, which hold the entirety of my daily water usage for washing, bathing, drinking, etc (average daily water consumption is 69.3 gallons in the US, but things change when you have to haul it yourself)

- buck knife from the states; knives here are cheap and flimsy

- tsihy (woven mat), placed on the floor of my house or in my front yard; must sit on one when you eat, must be barefoot

- handmade ceramic mug my Malagasy family gave me at the end of home stay

- a big, sturdy spoon, the only utensil I eat with anymore (yes, I even use a spoon to eat fish with bones)

- battery-powered speakers, so when the electricity goes out, I can still have a private dance party in my hut

- letters from friends, to be read and savoured again and again