Getting Settled.

Sept 5, 2008

Today I have officially been in my house in Marovoay for ONE WHOLE WEEK and I am exhausted! I arrived last Thursday, early evening, and have spent the last 8 days figuring out how things operate here. And I can confidently say, I'm still not exactly sure, but I've survived the first week and I'm enjoying it, so it can only get easier...right? heee...

But first things first. Installation...
Early Saturday morning after swearing-in and after the crazy fun night we had in Tana, Lauren and I loaded up the PC Land Crusier and headed out west. Our driver, Doda, is quite possibly the hippest, chillest, most down Malagasy man, EVER. The man just smacks of cool. He's got the spikey hair, knock-off Gucci shades, some sweet driving gloves, and just a really cool aura. And of course our installer, the Chocolate Man himself, Robert, who is also the PC Training Director. (We call him Chocolate because the best chocolate here in Madagascar is called Robert...naturally.) So we drove all day Saturday. ALL DAY. It was an 11 hour drive and Doda is a professional! The PC tells us to double the travel time in a PC car versus the Brousse during the rainy season...that means when I head to Tana in December for In-service Training it might take 20 hours...ugh. I'll deal with that when the time comes...as for now, the National Route out to Mahajunga is one of the best - it's paved and well maintained the whole way. So I've got that going for me. We take a night brousse out west usually because its such a long trip you might as well sleep through it, so it was really amazing to actually get to see the landscape on the way at least once. All in all it's a lot of beautiful nothing, reminiscent of parts of southern California; huges dry mountains, with valleys below, some scattered farmland and a few sparse villages.
When we finally got to Mahajunga, we checked in to the 2nd choice PCV hotel, Kanto, because Chez Chaubad was full. (Kanto is 14,000AR = $8.75 a night...and you get what you pay for...our bed was a frame with random slates of wood and about 4 inches of foam, the shared showers, just a faucet about 2m up with cold water...the toilet, not pretty.) That night we decided to test the strength and health of our digestive systems with a meal of brochettes and beer, the Mahajunga specialty. Down on the boardwalk women set up shop each night, cooking delicious beef brochettes on a charcoal grill. The brochettes are always served with lasary (grated veggies and green mango in vinaigrette), and then there are platters of samosas, cutlus (mashed potatoes with garlic, ginger and onion and fried into patties), mangahazo (cassava, the root tapioca is made of), and pakopako, (tortilla like things); you just tell the lady how many of what and she heats it up, and for dessert coconut crepes and super sweet fried bananas. And of course it wouldn't be a true experience without the national beer, THB, to wash it all down. Clearly a healthy meal (ha!) but it is amazingly delicious and very Malagasy.
Sunday was “vacation day.” Robert, Doda, Lauren and I went to the plague (beach) and oh was it sweet. We spent the day laying on lamaka (straw mats) under umbrellas, relaxing, laughing and eating fried fishes, fried breads, more brochette, and drinking beer. The ocean felt amazing and it was the most perfect transition day after the frustrations of training and before the unknowns of settling in at site. Also, Lucy, a 3rd year edu volunteer out west came to help us shop, and Tara the environment volunteer across the bay came too! Our whole banking crew minus Dave was together!
Monday was the shopping day, and it was such a terrible, painful experience that I think my mind is already starting to repress the memories. ha ha! Imagine, 2 American women each with a list of things to purchase for their new homes, 2 Malagasy men, and a Malagasy city where there is no such thing as a Home Depot, Target, or Fred Meyers. In fact the concept of a specialized store is really non-existent here. So you just wander the streets looking at the market, street stands and random little shops, and of course we as American women want to know our options, just imagine the events that occurred...also, people here see foreigners and they naturally think tourist and $$$$! So prices are higher naturally, that's why we have our Malagasy PC escorts to help us out...but Robert seemed to always piss off the vendors on the street and then they wanted to charge us even more. The highlight of my day was when Lauren snook away with Lucy to actually buy the stuff she needed and Robert took me into some little general store and said, “you need food, right? go buy it.” Everything there I had at my site...I wanted things like spices, kitchenwares, etc! anyway, frustrating, but we did it. It took ALLDAY - it was exhausting.
Lauren has a brand new site, with an empty house, so I tried to let her take the shopping lead and prioritized buying the big things (mattress, table, etc) for myself and grabbing other things in the places she needed to be. Likewise, I got spend a good amount of time with Doda and when I thanked him for driving us around all day and being so patient, he said there was no reason to thank him because he loved helping volunteers and so naturally he loved his job. He was one of the original PC drivers when PC came to Madagascar in 1993...this man knows almost every town in the country and seems to have a friend on every block of every town, no matter how big or small. he's amazing.
Tuesday we came to Marovoay – set up my house, met the local authorities, did the health and security checks on my house and Wedneday we went to Lauren's site, Mitsinjo. She lives across the Mahajunga bay, and about 3 hours down a bumpy dirt road. Her town is about 1/30 the size of mine, but it seems really great. She lives in the old Red Cross house that has been vacant for quite sometime. At site visit it needed a lot of work, and needless to say it wasn't quite finished when we arrived. But Doda got right to work as soon as we arrived making sure that all the windows and doors were to PC security standards, prioritized the work of the community members helping out, and us ladies got to work killing spiders and sweeping out cobwebs! yuck! When we left Thursday mid-morning it seemed like she was in a good place...furniture to be delivered that afternoon, working stove, and a list of things she wanted to get done. As for me, after we got off the ferry, Doda and Robert dropped me off at the taxi brousse station... and immediately it struck me: I actually live here now.

Something about the west...
We spend most of training talking about the indirectness and reservedness of the Malagasy people. That doesn't apply here in the west. People here always talk at a slight yell and sometimes the tone they use is a little abrasive. After 3 months of plateau life, this can be a little overwhelming at times.
Getting on the taxi brousse to get back home immediately made me wonder what the hell I was doing here in Madagascar! Five guys were all yelling at me to get in the car and trying to charge me twice the fare. After I informed them that I was a volunteer and that I know how much the ride costs they let me be, for a minute. But then when it was time to go because no one had filled the extra seat next to me they said I had to pay it. I said, “are you crazy! I'm a vazaha , but I'm not stupid!” They got very quiet. This was also like the 5th time they had told me I had to pay for the 2 seats upfront and the 5th time I told them no deal.
Likewise, in the market, people are always grabbing my arms, poking me, yelling at me. It's a little much at times. I always try to go to the morning market with someone because there are so many people, and they push and there is no such thing as a line here, and I don't really know where I fit into this system yet. The stores are the same way. Here you don't go into a store, browse, select your items and pay the cashier on the way out. Instead, you go to the store and all the items are behind the counter, so you do your best to see what there is, what you want, and then you tell the store owner, they get it and you pay. It seems silly, but it is kind of intimidating. I'm still learning what there is here, and it seems awkward to just go in and look and not buy anything...and the store owners always seem to have a scowl of their faces so it doesn't make the experience any easier or more pleasant! But I have made a few friends at the epiceries (that's what the stores are called) so I can go in and chat and and look with a little more ease.

As for where I'm I've living...
I feel really lucky to be living where I am. To you all back home, my town would probably look pretty miserable and bleak, but for here in Madagascar I live in a pretty sizable community, I'd say around 20,000, which means there is a decent market everyday with Tuesday and Saturday being the biggest. I can buy almost anything I want here in reason, given growing seasons and what is actually available here in Madagascar (however, I can only buy butter by the pre-cut pat. I tried to see if the store owner would save a chunk the next time butter came in, she seemed unenthusiastic...but I've got two years! one day we'll strike a butter deal, I know it.)
I would say that Marovoay is about the size of Sisters maybe a little bigger, but including all the little neighborhoods, not the just tourist strip on the highway. Bigger towns here in Madagascar are broken up into smaller communities. I live at the top of the hill in which the city is situated around. To an outsider there is one way to get to my house/the CEG...the road, and it is a long, slow, gradual climb. But there are about 6 different lalana kely (foot paths) which are quite dusty, but make the trip into the town center more manageable. The village at the top of the hill is called, Tsara Rivotra, (Good Wind) and it is really the best part of where I live. It's incredible hot, but there is generally at least a light breeze. the worst part of the house...wooden shutters. It is culturally not acceptable to leave a windows open at night for breeze and my house has thick wooden shutters. So whenever, I leave and when I sleep, I have to close my house all up...and needless to say it can be a little stuffy. Clearly I'll survive. :D