Taxi-brousses are an unsual experience. Most brousses have a driver and a mpanampy (helper) sitting with the rest of us. The mpanampy is usually running around for most of the ride putting stuff on top of the brousse and collecting money and such. On the brousse I took into Fianarantsoa this weekend, the brousse pulled over not long after we left my town. The mpanampy got out and paid some guy on the side of the street for 4 water bottles - but just for the bottles - there was no water in them. He got back into the brousse and we kept going. After a few kilometers he opened one and the smell of gasoline hit everyone like a brick wall. I assume gas had been in the bottles before and then they just trapped the fumes in. He proceeded to start huffing from all four bottles and we continued on our way. I have been in this country for nearly 7 months, but I am surprised every day.
Last week I went to visit a few Italian volunteers that work at the hospital in my town. When I got there one of the volunteers was watching over a two-month-old baby who was born with a twin. Their mother gave birth to them and left. Being born as a twin can sometimes be a death sentence for babies in this country. Sometimes when a woman gives birth to twins she will not look at them, she will not touch them, and definitely will not take them home. That is exactly what happened to this poor duo, but thankfully they were born in a hospital and not in the woman’s home so they have a chance. I’m not sure if this still happens, but during training we were told that in the deep south of Madagascar if a woman gives birth to twins, the parents will take them outside and have their cattle trample over them. If one of them lives, they keep that one.
I don’t mean to depress anyone, but I’ve realized I haven’t really explained much about the culture, so I thought I would mention that. There are so many things that I found so strange when I first got here, but now they are just commonplace. You all might get a kick out of it though….
Malagasy people have a strange schedule. They work with the sun. When it is light outside, they are working in the rice fields. Epiceries usually open soon after and the day gets going. Around noon everything shuts down: the epiceries close, everyone goes home to eat rice and then sleep. Around 2 or 2:30 the town starts functioning again until about 5 or 6. Meals are like clockwork. People eat rice three times per day and anything else is so out of the norm that they often can’t fathom it. I have tried explaining that it is just different in the US – that people eat when they have time and for a lot of people that doesn’t mean having a meal three times a day. They were blown away. Americans are defined by our work. Malagasy would never let work get in the way of rice or sleep. I went to visit someone in my town the other day around 3:30 in the afternoon (during the week), but he was still asleep after eating.
Fripping is also an interesting experience. Fripping is basically like shopping at the Salvation Army in the United States. Everything you have ever “given to the poor,” Salvation Army, or Goodwill shows up here in Mada. Sometimes, you can find some unbelievably nice clothes (ex. one of my stage mates bought a polo collared shirt for something like 2- or 3,000 AR or $1). More often, though, you will find ridiculous clothes - like a 25-year-old man wearing a pink t-shirt that says, “Pretty in Pink” or “Mommy’s Little Princess.” It can be hard to walk by some of these things and not burst into laughter, but it’s also interesting to be around a culture that really doesn’t put any thought into outward appearance. These people have no idea what anything they are wearing says. One of the volunteers I talked to said the best shirt he has seen in this country was a New England Patriots 19-0 t-shirt from when they lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl a few years back. The Pats loss became Africa’s gain (as I’m sure it has for every runner up in any championship game ever).
Anyways, enough with the culture comparison.
School is still going well. Getting back into teaching after a nice vacation wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had expected. My English club for adults is going to start on February 5th. I am going to have two classes per week and I’m pretty excited about it. I think it will be a little bit more relaxing to teach a smaller class that is not made up of kids. I really enjoy teaching the younger crowd, but getting them to care about a language that is spoken by a good portion of the world is not as easy as you might think.
Every once in a while I will have classes where it seems like nothing is getting through or maybe we do a quick review of the last lesson right before class starts. Sometimes it turns into 45 minutes because they don’t get it and can’t retain information – the lesson from two days ago may as well be written in English. Get it. See what I did there.
Just this past week I was teaching a lesson about agreeing and disagreeing. We read through a dialogue, defined all of the vocabulary, picked out any additional words they didn’t know and I explained all of them in Gasy. Granted, I am no expert at this language, but I'm pretty positive I was on my game that day. Also, usually when I say something incorrectly in gasy I get laughed at for several minutes before the lesson can continue. Anyway, I felt really confident about what I had just taught them and was pretty sure they seemed to understand it so we moved on to a speaking part. It was pretty straightforward – I gave my opinion on something and then asked, “Do you agree?” (ex. I think English is great. Do you agree?) Even with all the vocabulary written on the board in front of them, the necessary translations and such, only a handful could formulate a response. I even asked the question in Malagasy and told them to answer it in Malagasy and then we could translate together. Still, they couldn't do it. It was definitely a difficult teaching moment. After you’ve exhausted all avenues of teaching a particular topic what do you do? At what point do you move on with some kids still not understanding the lesson? Keep in mind this is very different from the US - Gasy students rarely, if ever, come to my house to ask me questions. If you do poorly or don’t understand something in class in the US, you go to talk to the teacher before or after the class and figure it out. My obstacle has been getting kids to care enough to want to do that. I’m working on it.
Living in this country/being a Peace Corps volunteer is strange as far as the ups-and-downs go. Little victories can go a long way. I had a conversation with a teacher the other night and he spoke at the pace that Malagasy people speak. Normally, if a gasy person speaks to me at the rate he would speak to one of his gasy friends, I would be lost. But in that conversation I understood everything. I didn’t have to ask him to repeat anything and we talked for about a half hour. I even started giving him some English pointers and explained how it would compare in Malagasy. I was flying high after that. Little victory. The next day, I taught agreeing and disagreeing and, well, we all know where that went (or didn’t go).
I will hopefully be going to Manakara in the next few weeks to talk to a contractor to start working on this library project. This weekend I’ve also started writing a proposal to get funding for it. If my proposal is accepted, Peace Corps will set up a link on their website to my project where you can donate if you’d like. First, I have to create a budget, but once I have raised the amount needed to complete the project, the page closes. It’s kind of a cool way to give aid in that you know exactly where your money is going and what it is being used for. I’ll keep you guys posted on when I have gotten to that point. Any help you might be able to give would be greatly appreciated.
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| My Proviseur and I outside the Peace Corps training center in Mantasoa in December. Our counterparts spent three days with us learning about Peace Corps and brainstorming ideas for secondary projects. Hoping Proviseur Adrien and I can get a library in Ampasimanjeva. |
That’s all I’ve got for now. Hope everyone is doing well!
