I can only describe consolidation as a crazy and turbulent roller coaster encompassing some of my best and worst moments in Madagascar.
I had only just left the Peace Corps Training Center at Montasoa six weeks earlier after attending In-Service Training before the Christmas holiday. Montasoa is a serene and kind of surreal place for Peace Corps volunteers. It's like being at summer camp; we stay in dorms, and enjoy the luxuries of indoor plumbing, warm showers, and 3 delicious meals plus a tasty sweet snack prepared for us daily, we don't even have to do any dishes or laundry! At the center there are plenty of cozy places to tuck into to read or write, and ample time is spent watching movies and cozying up by the fireplaces to chat with friends.
During my Montasoa stay for IST, I had longed for just one free day to hangout and relax, like we had had on occasion during training. The immediate reality upon arriving for consolidation was that I would now have an undetermined stay at the center with really nothing to do. This seemed like a wonderful, terrible, and daunting task all at once. In my heart, I was thinking, I'll just be here a few days, but my brain was telling my otherwise.
Initially, about 40ish of us were brought to the training center: all the Tana area volunteers, Mahajunga area volunteers and Tamatave area volunteers. Most of the gathered volunteers fell into the usual Montasoa scene immediately: bonfires, binge drinking, and crazy antics all set to an eclectic, yet enjoyable, soundtrack. For the first week, I had a hard time understanding all of this merry making, and wasn't interested in partaking in the festivities. I spent my evenings chatting with friends and watching movies and knitting. :D It felt wrong to me that people were acting as if they were on a special “free” vacation. It felt wrong to be blowing our generally precious Ariary (local currency) on alcohol and living it up when so many peoples' lives and livelihoods were becoming more uncertain with everyday of the conflict, people who had become our neighbors, co-workers, and friends. Not that I wasn't enjoying the comforts of Montasoa, but this stay wasn't part of my Peace Corps plan. I would have rather been with my friends and students in Marovaoy, sweating up and down the hill I lived on, eating rice, showering out of a bucket, and enjoying my simple life.
Each day, during consolidation, two Peace Corps Staff members drove out to the center to check in with us and give an update on the political situation: the events of the previous day, the results of their communication with D.C., and what the PC Mad Office was thinking about the future of our program...these became frustrating only because of the nature of the situation. In cooperation with the US Embassy, the Peace Corps was monitoring the events of the conflict and attempting to set up a rubric to determine if it was safe for volunteers to continue living and working in Madagascar. During the first week of consolidation, the then-Mayor of Tana, Andry, nicknamed TGV, announced himself as the new president of the Republic, and with the exception of a few small gathering and protests, their was no significant activity in the capital. As a general rule, the PC has no problem with regime change as long as it is orderly and adheres to the constitution of the nation; so the announcement was made and we awaited the outcome of a possible change in leadership. But it became clear quickly that we engaged in long-term waiting game, stuck directly in the middle of two opposing senarios: return to site or evacuate. The PC wasn't in a place to determine the likelihood of either of them.
During the first week of consolidation, we organized ourselves into sector-like groups and searched for “projects” around the center to keep us busy. Some of these were necessary, if not overdue projects: organizing/purging the library, erecting fences, working on the garden, moving and organized storage spaces, volunteering in the community, but they divulged into more fanciful projects, paintings and the “Dahline Stairway,” etc. Within the first week, it felt like this was going to be an endless situation. Nothing major was occurring, but their wasn't enough information about the past events or any insight into possible future events for the Peace Corps or Ambassador to confidently send us back to site, nor did the situation seem extreme enough to warrant evacuation. It was all so “uncertain.” So we waited, slowly going insane in our captivity and lacking productivity. Friday Night, we held a “dance for peace” to will peace onto the people of Madagascar and to celebrate Dorothy's 24th birthday. And then...
The first Saturday of February, Andry and his supporters stormed the Presidential Palace with the intention to overthrow the government. President Ravelomanana ordered his personal security team to fire on the crowd as they entered the place gates. Many civilians were killed and many more wounded in an event that the press deemed “Bloody Saturday.” We at the PCTC were devastated, first for the loss of lives and continual breakdown of the conflict into violence against civilians, and secondly because it was obvious that we wouldn't be returning to site in the next week as we had hoped. We received the news of the bloody showdown between government and opposition at about 3:15pm that day; the next three hours until dinner were the slowest, quietest hours of consolidation as we awaited word from the PC office, wondering if this was the final straw in the situation.
In the next few days, more volunteers were brought into consolidation at the training center until we reached capacity at about 80 volunteers, about two-thirds the volunteers in country.
Sporadic occurrences of violence, looting, and arson were taking place around the island, but it seemed random and disconnected to the events in Tana, forshadowing the possible future of the conflicts nature. At this point we all felt pretty helpless in the situation and resorted to a lifestyle of sleeping endlessly, reading methodically, staring into space, ritualistic volleyball games, and the oddest improvement projects to Montasoa...oh and more binge drinking. It seemed about everyday we were making a massive run to the tiny community of Montasoa, carting back crates of beer, boxes of rums and the likes, and all the mixers to go with. In the course of about 3 weeks, we cleaned the town out of beer, liquor, all coke products and most of their snacks (the conflict ushered in a breakdown of efficient transport, it might have got desperate if we had stayed any longer as town supplies were running low)...and you should have seen the piles and stacks of empties! We have some great nights of dancing and sing-alongs.
In the case of unrest, Peace Corps has a general, yet somewhat flexible, rule of a two week consolidation. If things are still not certain and safe, then it is most efficient for us to return to the US or be transferred to new posts, rather than doing nothing really in consolidation. As the two weeks came and went, we knew a decision was immanent. There had been up crops of regional violence, but the PC had decided that is was not directly related to the conflict in Tana so we would proceed with de-consolidation within the week. Tuesday was the decided day; Wednesday we held one last epic dance party to celebrate the “end!” At about 10pm, we receive an ominous text: “DO NOT DEPART FOR SITE. TANA IS ACTIVE TONIGHT. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.” We all felt doomed and defeated. Breakfast was a quiet meal and their was no detail from Peace Corps as to when we would be/if we would be departing.
Alas, by 9am the first group was on the road toward Fianar and by 11am the six of us headed west were loaded into our PC car. We made a stop by the Peace Corps office and the last words I heard from the Regional Security Officer for western Africa were, “don't be surprised if we call you back here in a few days...” The reality was, the political situation in Madagascar was still unstable and uncertain, but the office in-country decided that is was safe enough for us to go back to post and continue work, for the present.
And so we went...By noon the next day I was home in Marovoay, greeted by the final day of the annual school celebration, where I watched the CEG students perform choreographed dances and was fed a lovely and balanced meal of cold spaghetti salad, bread, and fresh limeade by my 5emeIV class. It was good to be back and terrible to be back all at once...
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
The beginnings of trouble...
When “trouble” erupted in Madagascar, I was completely naïve to it, like most of the country's population who live in quiet rural communities, I would say. On Jan 24th, I skimmed a string of emails regarding student protests in the capital of Antananarivo, sent by our safety and security officer. In all honesty, I didn't really absorb any of the information. All I could think of was a month worth of internet “to-do's,” and how the rise in per minute internet costs in Mahajunga were going to make this particular day at the internet cafe even more stressful to get done quickly. Plus – as I skimmed all I could think was, the capital, Tana, felt like a million miles away to me (or a least a 12 hour, all-night taxi brousse ride) and I had no plans to be anywhere near the Analakely (downtown Tana) anytime soon. I thought, whatever was happening there, really didn't affect my life out west in my quiet town of Marovoay and generally disregarded the entire warning.
January 26th; widespread looting takes over the capital, the National Radio was burned and no longer broadcasting, along with the Malagasy TV station, TVM. Violence and chaos seem to be the general themes of the day. Like most nights in Madagascar, I called my friend Laila living on the Southeast coast of the island to chat. Her first words to me were along the lines of: “Wow, can you believe this? This is all so crazy! Eugene and I are talking about what happened today in Tana...” to which I respond, “ummm...What?! what's happening in Tana?” I spent all day in class, with students, and clearly there was no “maresaka” (talk) in my town. So Laila laid out the framework of the conflict and what had taken place during the first “real” day of protests, or the day things stopped being peaceful.
January 27th; I set out on a morning mission to find out what my community was saying about the conflict. The general response seemed to be a lot of rolling eyes at the historical mess of Malagasy politics, with everyone saying, “tsy mahay manao politique i Malagasy!” (Malagasy people don't know how to do politics!) There was a lot of talk about the issues in contention, like Mr. President purchasing an AirForceOne-type jet for millions of dollars amongst a land of humble farmers, and his obvious monopoly on manufactured dairy products, oil, and soap, and the distribution of imported goods, just to name a few. In a nutshell, people were pissed. They seemed to think the Ravelomanana got what was coming to him...but they weren't so easy to endorse the fighting and violence. They agreed change was necessary, but they sure wouldn't be taking up arms, and they seemed rather indifferent to what a resolution would entail. Nevertheless, the ladies told me to stock up on soap and oil the next day at the market - products that become scarce when politics heat up in Madagascar.
When classes ended, I called Laila to discuss the events of day and tell her what I heard in Marovoay. From her I find out that Peace Corps had been sending out texts all day which I had not received! The situation had gone from bad to worse. Protesters had sacked Jumbo, the foreign supermarket, looted it completely and burnt it out. Then they moved over to Magro, kind-of like the Malagasy Costco, owned by the President, and hit a variety of other Tana businesses. That day the sacking of Magro took place nationwide, including in my dear Mahajunga. The worst, the death toll was rising, 33 were burned to death in Tana and 3 in Mahajunga. Rumors started to swirl - all food reserves had been destroyed...all food and cooking oil manufacturing plants had been burned...this is the work of the exiled President Ratsirika...Mahajunga was a smoldering town in chaos...PC is going to call for evacuation in the AM...etc. I spent the majority of the night on a 4-way phone call between Laila, Rachel and Jeff. I spoke with the PC Security Officer that evening about the safety of my town, and as we spoke for the first time, my town was not quiet at night. I could hear shouting and clanking in the distance; people were looting two large stores/warehouses in my town. I was scared and so, I painted my toenails because I couldn't sleep.
January 28th; I walked into my 8am class and burst into tears. I turned my back to the class and started to write their lesson on the blackboard, trying to pull myself together. All I could think about was that heinous rumor of evacuation. I had committed to two years of life and work in this town. If I left there was no teacher to replace me, my students relied on me to teach them the curriculum to prepare them for their entrance exams for high school. Additionally, I felt guilty about my easy out in this situation. If times got hard, my government would send me home where soap and oil were plentiful, where trade and transport don't break down on a whim, and while no government is perfect, I could rely that through thick or thin, even in the worst of times and economies, my government would do its best to ensure my welfare. These are luxuries the Malagasy people can't depend on. What would happen to my students and their families, who are literally scraping a life together daily from the soil around them?
At my High School English club, I gave my dutiful students a vocabulary set for them to talk about the conflict, wrote some open-ended questions on the board to guide their thought processes, and asked them to spend 30 minutes exploring and writing about their opinions of the current conflict, its orgins, the impact in our community, and what they thought would be the ideal outcome. I was overwhelmed by their sharp analysis of the situation, and was shocked to find out not a single teacher had brought up the current events of the nation in 3 school days! I led our discussion to address the non-violence movement, remembering that I had seen books in French about Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. in the town library, and encouraged them to investigate and learn more and of course I was always available to talk.
For the nation, Wednesday was a day of tense calm. The first two days of the week had brought so much destruction and disarray to the country, it was an eerie calm. It was another sleepless night for me, our status had been moved to “standfast” which meant have a bag packed for emergency evacuation and be ready to leave at a moments notice. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much for another night.
Rumors continued to swirl between the plateau and the coastal areas. With the break down in the national radio broadcasting system, concrete events were hard to come by and as the capital was dividing into pro- and con- government groups, it was hard to sift through all the hazy reports and get the facts about the situation. But it seemed certain that the conflict had not yet come to a head, and “uncertain” became the name of the game in Madagascar.
Thursday January, 29th; the Peace Corps made the decision to move into the next phase of the emergency action plan, Consolidation. In the next few hours, volunteers started to move together into groups where the Peace Corps would be able to better manage the crisis, and connect with groups of volunteers by a single phone call instead of calling each of us individually. Peace Corps cars would be able to retrieve groups of volunteers with one stop on a main road. I received the call for consolidation just as I had returned home from my morning classes about noon (although Laila had already informed me via text message.) I was told that I would be moving to the Peace Corps training center in Montasoa because Mahajunga had been unstable throughout the week, there were concerns about holding us in a conflict hot spot, obviously. I knew there wasn't enough time to catch the afternoon brousse to Tana that day, which was nice, as I had a chance to do some packing, prioritizing, and well, laundry and cleaning.
I prepared silently. I knew there was a chance that I would not be returning to my home, I was told to relay the message to my counterpart that I was attending a security conference in Tana for the weekend, and didn't know exactly when I would be returning. I couldn't bring myself to tell my counterpart Bonne that I was going on Thursday. At noon on Friday, I got my courage up and told him I would be leaving in the afternoon, as if I had just found out myself. He looked sad and worried as I told him I was leaving for the “meeting.” He kept saying, “the kids. the kids. they are just getting used to you. they like you. it would be so sad for you to leave them. they would be so sad.” To which I wanted to scream: “what about me!? I'll be sad if I have to leave them! I love them! This is my life here too!”
To my friends, I gave them all big hugs (er...handshakes, Gasy people are big into the handshakes) and told them I would see them soon. They all looked at me like I was CRAZY. There was a BIG protest planned for Saturday in Tana. Why was I going TO the conflict? Everything was perfectly safe in the quite metropolis of Marovoay, why would the Peace Corps have me leave my town to be in possible danger? But it was the question that reverberated all the way down the hill that haunted me: “handeha hody ianao?” (are you going home?) To which I responded: “of course NOT! just to a meeting in Tana...see you in a few days!”
And so I left my town, house, friends, students, and life for almost three weeks of consolidation in Montasoa...
January 26th; widespread looting takes over the capital, the National Radio was burned and no longer broadcasting, along with the Malagasy TV station, TVM. Violence and chaos seem to be the general themes of the day. Like most nights in Madagascar, I called my friend Laila living on the Southeast coast of the island to chat. Her first words to me were along the lines of: “Wow, can you believe this? This is all so crazy! Eugene and I are talking about what happened today in Tana...” to which I respond, “ummm...What?! what's happening in Tana?” I spent all day in class, with students, and clearly there was no “maresaka” (talk) in my town. So Laila laid out the framework of the conflict and what had taken place during the first “real” day of protests, or the day things stopped being peaceful.
January 27th; I set out on a morning mission to find out what my community was saying about the conflict. The general response seemed to be a lot of rolling eyes at the historical mess of Malagasy politics, with everyone saying, “tsy mahay manao politique i Malagasy!” (Malagasy people don't know how to do politics!) There was a lot of talk about the issues in contention, like Mr. President purchasing an AirForceOne-type jet for millions of dollars amongst a land of humble farmers, and his obvious monopoly on manufactured dairy products, oil, and soap, and the distribution of imported goods, just to name a few. In a nutshell, people were pissed. They seemed to think the Ravelomanana got what was coming to him...but they weren't so easy to endorse the fighting and violence. They agreed change was necessary, but they sure wouldn't be taking up arms, and they seemed rather indifferent to what a resolution would entail. Nevertheless, the ladies told me to stock up on soap and oil the next day at the market - products that become scarce when politics heat up in Madagascar.
When classes ended, I called Laila to discuss the events of day and tell her what I heard in Marovoay. From her I find out that Peace Corps had been sending out texts all day which I had not received! The situation had gone from bad to worse. Protesters had sacked Jumbo, the foreign supermarket, looted it completely and burnt it out. Then they moved over to Magro, kind-of like the Malagasy Costco, owned by the President, and hit a variety of other Tana businesses. That day the sacking of Magro took place nationwide, including in my dear Mahajunga. The worst, the death toll was rising, 33 were burned to death in Tana and 3 in Mahajunga. Rumors started to swirl - all food reserves had been destroyed...all food and cooking oil manufacturing plants had been burned...this is the work of the exiled President Ratsirika...Mahajunga was a smoldering town in chaos...PC is going to call for evacuation in the AM...etc. I spent the majority of the night on a 4-way phone call between Laila, Rachel and Jeff. I spoke with the PC Security Officer that evening about the safety of my town, and as we spoke for the first time, my town was not quiet at night. I could hear shouting and clanking in the distance; people were looting two large stores/warehouses in my town. I was scared and so, I painted my toenails because I couldn't sleep.
January 28th; I walked into my 8am class and burst into tears. I turned my back to the class and started to write their lesson on the blackboard, trying to pull myself together. All I could think about was that heinous rumor of evacuation. I had committed to two years of life and work in this town. If I left there was no teacher to replace me, my students relied on me to teach them the curriculum to prepare them for their entrance exams for high school. Additionally, I felt guilty about my easy out in this situation. If times got hard, my government would send me home where soap and oil were plentiful, where trade and transport don't break down on a whim, and while no government is perfect, I could rely that through thick or thin, even in the worst of times and economies, my government would do its best to ensure my welfare. These are luxuries the Malagasy people can't depend on. What would happen to my students and their families, who are literally scraping a life together daily from the soil around them?
At my High School English club, I gave my dutiful students a vocabulary set for them to talk about the conflict, wrote some open-ended questions on the board to guide their thought processes, and asked them to spend 30 minutes exploring and writing about their opinions of the current conflict, its orgins, the impact in our community, and what they thought would be the ideal outcome. I was overwhelmed by their sharp analysis of the situation, and was shocked to find out not a single teacher had brought up the current events of the nation in 3 school days! I led our discussion to address the non-violence movement, remembering that I had seen books in French about Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. in the town library, and encouraged them to investigate and learn more and of course I was always available to talk.
For the nation, Wednesday was a day of tense calm. The first two days of the week had brought so much destruction and disarray to the country, it was an eerie calm. It was another sleepless night for me, our status had been moved to “standfast” which meant have a bag packed for emergency evacuation and be ready to leave at a moments notice. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much for another night.
Rumors continued to swirl between the plateau and the coastal areas. With the break down in the national radio broadcasting system, concrete events were hard to come by and as the capital was dividing into pro- and con- government groups, it was hard to sift through all the hazy reports and get the facts about the situation. But it seemed certain that the conflict had not yet come to a head, and “uncertain” became the name of the game in Madagascar.
Thursday January, 29th; the Peace Corps made the decision to move into the next phase of the emergency action plan, Consolidation. In the next few hours, volunteers started to move together into groups where the Peace Corps would be able to better manage the crisis, and connect with groups of volunteers by a single phone call instead of calling each of us individually. Peace Corps cars would be able to retrieve groups of volunteers with one stop on a main road. I received the call for consolidation just as I had returned home from my morning classes about noon (although Laila had already informed me via text message.) I was told that I would be moving to the Peace Corps training center in Montasoa because Mahajunga had been unstable throughout the week, there were concerns about holding us in a conflict hot spot, obviously. I knew there wasn't enough time to catch the afternoon brousse to Tana that day, which was nice, as I had a chance to do some packing, prioritizing, and well, laundry and cleaning.
I prepared silently. I knew there was a chance that I would not be returning to my home, I was told to relay the message to my counterpart that I was attending a security conference in Tana for the weekend, and didn't know exactly when I would be returning. I couldn't bring myself to tell my counterpart Bonne that I was going on Thursday. At noon on Friday, I got my courage up and told him I would be leaving in the afternoon, as if I had just found out myself. He looked sad and worried as I told him I was leaving for the “meeting.” He kept saying, “the kids. the kids. they are just getting used to you. they like you. it would be so sad for you to leave them. they would be so sad.” To which I wanted to scream: “what about me!? I'll be sad if I have to leave them! I love them! This is my life here too!”
To my friends, I gave them all big hugs (er...handshakes, Gasy people are big into the handshakes) and told them I would see them soon. They all looked at me like I was CRAZY. There was a BIG protest planned for Saturday in Tana. Why was I going TO the conflict? Everything was perfectly safe in the quite metropolis of Marovoay, why would the Peace Corps have me leave my town to be in possible danger? But it was the question that reverberated all the way down the hill that haunted me: “handeha hody ianao?” (are you going home?) To which I responded: “of course NOT! just to a meeting in Tana...see you in a few days!”
And so I left my town, house, friends, students, and life for almost three weeks of consolidation in Montasoa...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
