I can't speak as an authority onthe subject, but truthfully, the entire world watched Tuesday's inaugurationof President Obama. At 8pm, TV M, the only cable station here in Madagascar, switched off it's usual programming to broadcast the inauguration. the best part for me, it was BBC World, no french translation to fight with! I spent the evening at a friends house, because she told me it would beon the radio. Sowe satwiththeradio tunedin andwaited. At about 8:03, a man came running down the hill calling, "miss whitney, miss whitney! aiza i miss whitney?" he finds me,"your president is on tv! hurry!" So he mandrosoas himself into Mampihava's house as she unplugs things and replugs in the TV. The reception was fuzzy and sound difficult, but I saw the speech. It was amazing. In fact, it seems like EVERYONE with a TV watched the speech. they didn't understand it, but they watched it.
It is interesting to be here in this moment. people interested in Obama here and they are excited mainly for that fact that he is black. for the first time the malagasy, are looking at america and seeing a face that doesn't remind them of colonialism and oppression. There are a lot of confused responses. "are you upset? I mean he's black? you have to be angry right?" I tell them, I love all people! I love black people! I gave up 2 years of my life in America to live and learn with black people here in Madagascar, right? (they are unsure of my work. I'm getting rich right? why else would i come here? volunteerism and national service are not really part of the culture here, yet.) But it has been a great avenue to discuss diversity in America and to push home that goal 2 of Peace Corps, increasing the understanding of Americans abroad.
Everyday I am asked "inona no mireseka?" (what's the talk? what's the noise?) And even in little Marovoay, a rice growing capital of a poor, underdeveloped nation: Barack Obama no miresaka be! (he is the big topic!) I hear lots of things like, is your new president going to buy us new desks? Is he going to end the wars of the world? to both of these questions, I have to respond, well, no, but think he will do great things for all the world, we just might not see them all immediately. But I just hear his name everywhere! people are talking about him here! cool is that!? Theophile, one of my students on thursday just couldn'tkeep the words from slipping out ofhis mouth. I had finished teaching the lesson material for theday and giving students time to copy. Theophile sat at his desk, diligently copying, and chanting quietly, "Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Barack..." It was distracting to the class, but it hurt me to tell him to stop saying that, because it felt like I was saying, "stop being interested in the world!"
I think this is one of the first times the people of Madagascar have actually been interested in who is the president of the US, things are changing for sure. I was really sad to be away from the states last tuesday. I love politics, I love policy, I love civics! But it is really cool to be here, right now, watching this change take place. How cool?! I get educate and inform my community, friends, and students about the world outside of Madagascar. Because this is a island nation, sometimes people people seem to believe Madagascar is the whole world at times. I love that I am here to help people break through those walls of misunderstanding, mistreatment, and lies that exist between the 1st and 3rd world. And I am so proud to be doing it behind a man who has such passion and vision for what the United States should be. The next 4 years should be interesting. The next 1.5 years for me, no doubt will be interesting and I continue working and learning here.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Weather here is ominous. There is no other word for it. OMINOUS. I have never seen clouds like the ones that sweep off the Indian Ocean, pile over the Mozambique Channel and make their way across western Madagascar. It took me almost 2 months of living at site to figure out that you can't look in any specific direction to predict the weather of the day. Growing up in Central Oregon, I always looked west to the Cascades. If you woke up to a clear Central Oregon day and saw no clouds looming over the mountains you could expect a clear, sunny, lovely Central Oregon day. In Marovoay, it seemed like weather came from all directions, and converges onto the hill I live on. Impossible, I thought! So I started asking people, "what direction does the weather come from?" to this, I usually got a confused look and people just said, "weather comes." Clearly, I am not asking this question correctly, so I checked my vocabulary, put in some intensifier words, and used cardinal directions, the response: "Whitney, the weather just comes here! It doesn't come from a certain place. It just comes!" hmmm, I see. I was not really satisfied with this response. But it is true, weather patterns just converge all over the island at any given place, at any given time. I forget that about living on an island roughly the size of Texas...clealy the weather just comes.
But let's talk about the weather that comes. First, I have never felt heat like this before. The sun here is SOOOO very intense. During the really hot months, Oct-Dec, it actually hurts to be in the sun. I go to the market, at about 7:30 everymorning, wearing my big floppy hat and slathered in sunscreen. I come home everyday a little burnt. Even the Gasy people, won't leave their houses without their lambas to keep the sun off and their hats, proclaiming "may be!" (it's really burning!)
This brings me to a story: the week I got sun-poisioning. My 2nd day back from vacay, I noticed some little white bumps on my arms. Hmm, odd, I thought. By the end of the day, I was covered in little tiny blisters, arms, chest, back, only where the sun touchs me. Dutifully, I call the Drs. in Tana to tell them what's up, they report sun poisioning and lecture about suncreen and hats. thanks, I say, I wear them everyday. I'm just "vazaha fotsy be" (a really white foriegner.) The perscription, apply lotion and stay out of the sun. Cool, I live in Madagascar, almost impossible. I did manage to stay home most of the week, i live where I work, so that reduces sun exposure, and I sent kids to the market for me, (they love being entrusted with responsiblity and helping.) So I healed. The best part was the Gasy response to me being covered in little white blisters. These are a people to never let something slip by with out beating the subject into the ground. And of course they all have an opinion of how this happened to me and how to prevent it. My two favorites: my friend Richard told me it's because I bathed while I was still sweating. You see, you have to let the sweat dry and go back into your skin. If you wash your skin while you are still sweating you depleat it of something, he didn't know what exactly, and that is why I got those little blisters all over me. cool. thanks. the second, an old woman, who hates white people proclaimed it was god's way of telling me to go back to my own country, clearly the sun makes vazaha sick and there is no way of escaping the sun, GO HOME. at this point the crazed old woman was drug away from me in the market, and people assured me that they liked me and wanted me there...oh Madagascar. But mainly people would just look at my skin amess with blisters, make a face and say "don't you have some special vazaha medicine for that? it looks really bad!" again, thanks for the compassion, Madagascar.
Moving on from the heat comes the thunderstorms. Growing up in Central Oregon, I was always kind of scared of thunder and lightening. But in comparisson, the storms of my childhood were just light rumbles compared to what I experience here. Here, you can hear the the storms approaching hours before they actually arrive. From a hundred kilometers away, you can feel the earth shake with the thunder. And when the thunderheads build they are like towers of white marshmellow fluff reacing up to the heavens, they are beautiful. I never knew that clouds could be so BIG! In November and December we had dry thunder storms that would last all night long, never loud cracks, but long, slow, rumbles that made the earth tremble. The storms have changed a bit. The rainy season is upon us, and the storms I get are usually the spin out of cyclone action taking place in the region. Many a night, I study, prepare or read in my house with a beautiful, purple and blue light show outside my house. The storms are up in the clouds, not under them. And I have experienced a few energy charged storms that have passed right over my house, and make me so glad that the tallest object up in Tsara Rivotra, my commune, are the 3 cell towers! I can't even explain the light and crack here. It is deafening, terrifying, and thankfully passes quickly.
And lastly, there is the RAIN! oh the rain! when it rains it pours! a cool yet still very tropical rain. It's not cold but coolm with a warm breeze, bizarre and beautiful. The entire land becomes a river, just rushing by my front door. No leaks in the house yet! the plus to the rain: passive collection of CLEAN water. the water in Marovoay is anything but clean, I have big containers to let water settle out and I filter all the water I drink and cook with. Also, the pumps up on Tsara Rivotra are famous for being shut off for days or weeks at a time. With the rain, I just put my buckets under the eves and catch my delicious, clear water. glorious! the negatives, flooded, muddy, slippery roads and pathways. I have yet to fall down in the mud. But the day is approaching, I can feel it in my bones! I have however fallen into a sink hole...ha ha. avoiding walking through the dirty puddle collected in the road, I was trying to balance and jump like an acrobat...I missed. My shoe was swallowed by the muddy sink hole, i winced, grimaced, and kept searching with no luck. This was a chaco...you can't leave it behind. A stranger came and helped me fish it out of the muck eventually and a lady brought me a bucket of water to wash up with. Of course, I was still covered in mud, and the collection of people who had stopped to watch the vazaha struggle in the mud made sure to point out every speck of mud on me as I went along my way. And, I still had to walk through the market and do my shopping. There was a lot of tongue clucking in disapproval of my muddiness...when i got home, the pump wasn't working. oh the life here! I've also started sleeping without the fan, which is basically a miracle. No longer do I sweat 24 hours a day, now just a few...it's blissful. I am definately welcoming the change. I never thought I would say this, but I was a little tired of a hot, perfect, beautiful sunny day everyday. And the rainy days make me think of home, makes me appreciate a cup of tea so much, and makes me crave soup!
But let's talk about the weather that comes. First, I have never felt heat like this before. The sun here is SOOOO very intense. During the really hot months, Oct-Dec, it actually hurts to be in the sun. I go to the market, at about 7:30 everymorning, wearing my big floppy hat and slathered in sunscreen. I come home everyday a little burnt. Even the Gasy people, won't leave their houses without their lambas to keep the sun off and their hats, proclaiming "may be!" (it's really burning!)
This brings me to a story: the week I got sun-poisioning. My 2nd day back from vacay, I noticed some little white bumps on my arms. Hmm, odd, I thought. By the end of the day, I was covered in little tiny blisters, arms, chest, back, only where the sun touchs me. Dutifully, I call the Drs. in Tana to tell them what's up, they report sun poisioning and lecture about suncreen and hats. thanks, I say, I wear them everyday. I'm just "vazaha fotsy be" (a really white foriegner.) The perscription, apply lotion and stay out of the sun. Cool, I live in Madagascar, almost impossible. I did manage to stay home most of the week, i live where I work, so that reduces sun exposure, and I sent kids to the market for me, (they love being entrusted with responsiblity and helping.) So I healed. The best part was the Gasy response to me being covered in little white blisters. These are a people to never let something slip by with out beating the subject into the ground. And of course they all have an opinion of how this happened to me and how to prevent it. My two favorites: my friend Richard told me it's because I bathed while I was still sweating. You see, you have to let the sweat dry and go back into your skin. If you wash your skin while you are still sweating you depleat it of something, he didn't know what exactly, and that is why I got those little blisters all over me. cool. thanks. the second, an old woman, who hates white people proclaimed it was god's way of telling me to go back to my own country, clearly the sun makes vazaha sick and there is no way of escaping the sun, GO HOME. at this point the crazed old woman was drug away from me in the market, and people assured me that they liked me and wanted me there...oh Madagascar. But mainly people would just look at my skin amess with blisters, make a face and say "don't you have some special vazaha medicine for that? it looks really bad!" again, thanks for the compassion, Madagascar.
Moving on from the heat comes the thunderstorms. Growing up in Central Oregon, I was always kind of scared of thunder and lightening. But in comparisson, the storms of my childhood were just light rumbles compared to what I experience here. Here, you can hear the the storms approaching hours before they actually arrive. From a hundred kilometers away, you can feel the earth shake with the thunder. And when the thunderheads build they are like towers of white marshmellow fluff reacing up to the heavens, they are beautiful. I never knew that clouds could be so BIG! In November and December we had dry thunder storms that would last all night long, never loud cracks, but long, slow, rumbles that made the earth tremble. The storms have changed a bit. The rainy season is upon us, and the storms I get are usually the spin out of cyclone action taking place in the region. Many a night, I study, prepare or read in my house with a beautiful, purple and blue light show outside my house. The storms are up in the clouds, not under them. And I have experienced a few energy charged storms that have passed right over my house, and make me so glad that the tallest object up in Tsara Rivotra, my commune, are the 3 cell towers! I can't even explain the light and crack here. It is deafening, terrifying, and thankfully passes quickly.
And lastly, there is the RAIN! oh the rain! when it rains it pours! a cool yet still very tropical rain. It's not cold but coolm with a warm breeze, bizarre and beautiful. The entire land becomes a river, just rushing by my front door. No leaks in the house yet! the plus to the rain: passive collection of CLEAN water. the water in Marovoay is anything but clean, I have big containers to let water settle out and I filter all the water I drink and cook with. Also, the pumps up on Tsara Rivotra are famous for being shut off for days or weeks at a time. With the rain, I just put my buckets under the eves and catch my delicious, clear water. glorious! the negatives, flooded, muddy, slippery roads and pathways. I have yet to fall down in the mud. But the day is approaching, I can feel it in my bones! I have however fallen into a sink hole...ha ha. avoiding walking through the dirty puddle collected in the road, I was trying to balance and jump like an acrobat...I missed. My shoe was swallowed by the muddy sink hole, i winced, grimaced, and kept searching with no luck. This was a chaco...you can't leave it behind. A stranger came and helped me fish it out of the muck eventually and a lady brought me a bucket of water to wash up with. Of course, I was still covered in mud, and the collection of people who had stopped to watch the vazaha struggle in the mud made sure to point out every speck of mud on me as I went along my way. And, I still had to walk through the market and do my shopping. There was a lot of tongue clucking in disapproval of my muddiness...when i got home, the pump wasn't working. oh the life here! I've also started sleeping without the fan, which is basically a miracle. No longer do I sweat 24 hours a day, now just a few...it's blissful. I am definately welcoming the change. I never thought I would say this, but I was a little tired of a hot, perfect, beautiful sunny day everyday. And the rainy days make me think of home, makes me appreciate a cup of tea so much, and makes me crave soup!
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