Consolidation: Emergency Action Plan in well...action.

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...