Misoatra Betsaka!

Words in a blog post could never really do justice to my excitement or gratitude to what just happened in the past few weeks with my library project. It appears as though the goal amount has been met and the webpage has shut down. For this I say THANK YOU SO MUCH!

One of the reasons Peace Corps turned down my original library proposal was because it was too expensive, which I understood. The whole idea of Peace Corps is to help build sustainable ideas, not necessarily giant structures. Trust me when I say this library is far from a giant, but hopefully it will serve as a tool for continued education and English learning for the hundreds of people who can’t finish school for one reason or another.

When Peace Corps turned down my first proposal they told me that the average volunteer project takes about 6 months to raise $4,000 (or something like that). You all helped me raise $6,000+ dollars in only a few weeks. For that, I, along with the thousands of residents of the Faraony region, am eternally grateful. To everyone who donated, reposted the link, emailed it to friends, or made personal sacrifices to donate a few bucks– you have helped raise a large amount for a Peace Corps project and apparently did so in record time. Thank you!

I have not received an official email from Peace Corps saying the project goal amount has been reached, but my parents and I checked the site every day while on vacation this past week until we didn’t see it anymore. Peace Corps said the money would be transferred into my account 7-10 days after the goal amount is reached. Nothing yet, but I’m sure it’s on the way. I am headed back to my site today to work on collecting the money owed by my community. I believe I already mentioned it, but your portion is 75% of the project’s total cost. The other 25% must come from the people in my community. It can be in the form of manual labor, material donations or money. Three different groups agreed to give me the rest of the money needed to build the resource center. Now, I just need to go get it. I am hoping to start building in November or December. Obviously, I will keep everyone in the loop throughout the process and try to post pictures of it all.

I thought I might end this post with a quick story since everyone seems to like hearing about weird events that happen in Madagascar. A few weeks ago I was heading by to my town on a taxi-brousse from my banking town and the place where I taught for two weeks this summer: Manakara. On the way, I saw a rare, albeit fairly disgusting site. I should preface this by saying that there is no shame in public breastfeeding here. All mothers do it at all hours of the day in all areas of the country. Sometimes these mothers can be a bit older and that can be a tough thing to see.

Anyway, so we are in the brousse and everything is going well (or about as well as any long distance trip can go in a sh*tbox with wheels). At that point, one of the twin boys belonging to the woman in front of me breaks out in a sobbing cry that could easily be mistaken for an international siren warning of Armageddon. In effort to silence the child, the mother lifts up her shirt and starts breastfeeding. Not two minutes later, the other twin realizes there may be some favoritism happening so he starts balling his eyes out. So, the mom picks up her other child, lifts up her shirt completely and the boy starts feeding. Last year, such a site would have been mildly disturbing. Now, I call it Tuesday. The boys have since stopped screaming so I try to fall asleep.

A few minutes go by before the woman sitting next to this mother taps me on the shoulder and asks me if I have a plastic bag. To ask for a plastic bag inside a moving taxi-brousse is to say, “I am about to blow chunks. Please help me out.” Unfortunately, I didn’t have one but thought to myself, ‘if you turn around and face anywhere but my direction, I will move mountains to help you find one.’ Turns out, there were a few up near the driver so he passed one back to this lady who then held it in front of the mother (she has no hands at this point since they are occupied by her two breastfeeding children). The bag is placed in perfect time and the mother proceeds to throw up and ungodly amount of food that would give even the most potent of projectile vomiters a run for their money. What made this whole scenario hilarious/disgusting/surreal was that the two kids didn’t even come up for air or to see what was going on while this was happening. Even funnier maybe was that not a single person in this beyond capacity taxi-brousse was acknowledging it. I could do nothing but laugh as the whole situation.

Just another funny experience I thought you may all want to hear. Thank you all again so much for your help with my library project! I can’t wait to get started and show you all how it is going.