I apologize for yet another long absence
from the blog. All is well here on the red island. I am one week in to a 2-week
BAC prep course that I am teaching in my banking town, Manakara. I may or may
not have explained this already, but the BAC is a weeklong exam that all
students graduating high school must pass in order to get their diploma and be
eligible for university. The passing rate for this exam is shockingly
low (10 students out of about 70 terminale students from the school I teach at
passed the BAC last year) and it doesn’t seem like these low numbers seem to
bother people. While I don’t know what the minimum passing score is, it is
nothing close to the standard that students are held to in the United States
(no matter what test we would be taking). The average Malagasy student who has
desires of going to college in North America would be royally screwed because
the test expectations are so high. But back to the idea that no one seems to
blink an eye when only 10 students pass the biggest test of their lives. This
apathy, generally speaking, is the attitude toward education in this country.
Clearly, this is extremely depressing as someone whose humanitarian work and
entire purpose for being in this country is based on education, but also just
as another resident of this country. I’ve become close to a lot of host country
nationals here so seeing the apathy in teachers and students alike after
repeated attempts to explain what the average educated person can do in his
life compared to the person who is not – it makes you question your purpose on
a large scale.
Good news, though, speaking of promoting
education! I just received more than 1,000 books for my town. The books are
from Books for Africa, an organization back in the states. About 20 volunteers
started this project roughly 2 years ago and unfortunately a lot of them are no
longer PCVs in Madagascar anymore so they weren’t able to see the books in
their towns, but several other PCVs (including myself) took over for those
people and benefited greatly for it. Big thanks to Brittany Bemis! No Peace
Corps experience is complete unless a million things go wrong; you have a few
mental breakdowns, another few days of pure bliss and a few dozen Malagasy
people calling you vazaha. This was exactly that. While you have moments of
pure misery and vague thoughts of ETing (early termination of service) during
these projects, the end result makes everything so worth it. Another reason
Peace Corps is the hardest job you’ll ever love. Anyways, so my books are at
the house of a volunteer 12 km from me. The big truck carrying the books
couldn’t bring them all the way to my site because the road is so bad and they
never would have made it. It’s usually pretty bad, but it has been raining a
lot recently turning what was a pretty bad road into complete mush.
Quick side story
When I was coming to Manakara to teach this
course we got stuck in mud 3 different times so everyone got out to push. It’s
always funny to hear the reaction of Malagasy people when they see a white
person. Sometimes its excitement, sometimes its anger (thank you to the French
and colonization for that one), and other times it is complete terror, but that
is usually just with young children (no joke. There is one child who breaks
into a deathly cry whenever I walk past her house). Anyways, watching people
watching me push a taxi-brousse up a mucked up hill was amusing. It’s weird
because Malagasy people can be so cruel to vazaha, but they still seem to look
at any foreigner as royalty. The shock on their faces as I was slipping and
sliding around and getting covered in mud was the equivalent of the face of any
hockey fan if the Columbus Blue Jackets won the Stanley Cup and everyone on the
team only had one leg – it seems impossible.
But back to the books! So, they are waiting
in a town near me and I am going to bring them the rest of the way once I am
finished with this English course here in Manakara. These are books for basic,
intermediate and advanced English learners, math textbooks, science textbooks,
encyclopedias in French and English. It’s really unbelievable. Speaking of
unbelievable, I was told last week that my library project is going to be
approved (though I’ll sleep better once it actually is) and is just waiting on
a signature from our Country Director. Rainy/cyclone season around here is no
joke, so you can’t really start building between December and February.
Depending on how long it takes to raise the money, I am hoping to start
building in either November or at the end of February. The builder says it
should take a month to complete and by that time all the books will have been
sorted/coded/etc and ready to be put on the shelves meaning we could open it a
few months before I end my service. This is obviously my hope for rest of the
library project, but as I mentioned earlier no Peace Corps project is complete
without plenty of misery and pain. Can’t wait to see what that will be.
A few weeks ago I was a trainer for the new
education volunteers who just arrived in country. New volunteers are a really
big deal in Peace Corps culture. Everyone gets really excited to see new people
– I guess we are like Malagasy people in that sense. Huh, interesting. Anyways,
I was at the Peace Corps training center for a week talking to 29 new people
about my experiences in the first year and it was a great time. I basically
gave presentations on teaching English as a foreign language as well as the
Malagasy education system and its culture. It was really weird to be on the
other side of the training experience. I’m obviously still learning every day
that I am here, so being the one to pass on the knowledge was strange.
So, I am here in Manakara for the next week
and a bit teaching this English course. After that, I am going back to
Ampasimanjeva to hang out there for a few weeks before heading to Fort Dauphin,
a city down on the southern coast, with a few other volunteers. After that, my
parents are coming here for a week although we still have no idea where we are
going. Then, I go to Tana for a ‘one year in’ meeting before heading back to
site for another school year and hopefully some library building.
I meant to tell everyone this a long time
ago, but I forgot every time I wrote a new post. I don’t use the P.O. Box
address in Manakara anymore. The volunteer to whom that PO box belonged to left
the country back in April and closed up the box when he did so. Let me know if
you sent anything to that address since April. I should still be able to get
it. For the future, you can use this address for the Peace Corps office in Tana:
Peace Corps
Lot II K 76
Bonnet Mahatony Ivandry
Antananarivo 101, Madagascar
It is harder for me to get because I don’t
go to Tana very often, but when people from our region go up there we usually
pick up stuff for each other and bring it back. It’s also cheaper to receive
packages there than here in Manakara.
Finally, in a previous post I mentioned that I recently organized a meeting for my region in the mountains. Here are some pictures from the weekend.
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| The whole group near our camp site. |
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| A nice little trek through rice fields on our way up to the camp |
