I know that I haven’t been posting as frequently as I was at the beginning of my service but I can assure you that this is due neither to laziness nor lack of free time.  Given the most recent Chicago cold snap, this may be hard to imagine, but here in the north of Madagascar I’ve been unable to work regularly on my computer for fear of destroying the keyboard with the buckets of sweat constantly pouring off of my hands and my brow.  Sadly, I’m not exaggerating. Temperatures have soared into the hundreds and the strong winter winds that I had grown accustomed to have completely stopped only to be replaced by regular humidity.  Still, it is better than winters in Chicago.

Much like the lack of real winter/snow in Chicago, my region is experiencing anomalous weather conditions.  Typically, the rains come in sheets at the beginning of January, like clockwork, as if cued by the New Year, causing the temperature to drop to a comfortable eighty degrees Fahrenheit.  For the last three weeks; however, we’ve had little more than the occasional sprinkle.  As a result, the usually reliable farming schedule is thrown badly out of whack and stores of last season’s rice are being depleted before the crop is ready for harvest.  My friends still can’t plow their bone-dry rice fields and both rice and corn will be late this season exacerbating an already difficult ‘hungry season’ from January to March.  In such situations, it’s not uncommon for the price of rice to double because sustenance level farmers must begin to buy rice imported from other regions or as far away as Pakistan.

It’s been extremely painful waiting around every day for the rains that never come and being greeted by worried faces whenever I walk through my community knowing that there’s nothing that any of us can do.  Last week, some of the area’s residents butchered a cow on the sacred mountain behind my house as a sacrificial offering while others have turned to the church, causing Saturday service attendance to nearly double.  Yet the drought continues on a scale that defies recent memory.

As bad as the drought has been I’m not the least bit worried for the community of Ankazambo because, as a result of being raised in such a rugged and isolated place, it’s home to some of the toughest and most resilient people I have ever met.  We’ll be fine even if we have to do the unthinkable and substitute the ever-familiar rice with boiled corn for a month or two.

I digress. In its entirety, the purpose of my correspondence here has never been to evoke pity or sympathy, rather to share a few stories of a more light-hearted nature.  Over the past two months I have accumulated quite a few of those stories mostly because yesterday marked my 55th consecutive day in Ankazambo. Since arriving at site in May, this is the longest stretch without a short vacation—not that anyone is counting of course.

This has inevitably helped my work progress more quickly but the best part about being entrenched for so long is that I haven’t missed a thing and have been witness to some pretty awkward and, in retrospect, funny situations.  This particular post is about some of those days.

Malagasy New Year’s Eve…Fortnight

One of the most important holidays in Madagascar is the celebration of the New Year during which time the Malagasy drink and feast for weeks.  It’s been explained to me that this is especially true in the villages and Ankazambo is no exception. By the time the New Year rolled around I was feeling comfortable enough at site to simply be myself and stopped worrying about trying to impress everyone.

I’d like to say that this encouraged me to willfully indulge in the alcohol-fueled party to ring in 2013; however, it’s more accurate to say that I finally caved to the peer pressure of my friends and coworkers, and struggled to keep up with their frenzied drinking pace while not embarrassing myself too much.  Before reading any further, let it be known that my college days are behind me and I acted like a responsible adult and presented a positive image of Americans despite the strong temptation to do the opposite.

It was decided that my drinking buddy for the first week was to be the mayor.  He claimed that his intention was to watch over me, making sure that no one forced me to drink too much.  By the end of each night, our roles were reversed and it was my responsibility to reign in his drinking.  The mayor of Ankazambo is Rabemaro.  He’s a good-natured, middle-aged man with an easy laugh and a charming but mischievous smile.  Upon meeting him, you’re immediately impressed by his charisma but quickly begin to feel as though he’s playing the angles and you’re his potential mark.

At 3pm every day for a week, the moonshine began flowing, the impossibly loud music was turned up to eleven and the dancing commenced.  The celebrations then continued relentlessly each day until 3am the next morning.  Needless to say, this was not my most productive week for business development initiatives or trainings.  My plan was to indulge my neighbors with my presence for a few hours each day, have a drink, let them see the foreigner try to dance, and leave before dark when the relatively tame party devolves into what resembles a saloon fight scene from a classic Western.  Rabemaro’s insistence; however, made it more difficult to leave than I initially imagined.

By the end of the first day of partying I came down with a cold and developed a terribly painful sore throat.  This was probably because the custom is to drink homemade alcohol out of one communal bucket, reusing two unwashed glasses for the entire community of 900. Planning to take the second day off, I laid low but when the mayor came calling in the afternoon, I had no choice but to partake in the celebration yet again.

I explained to him that I was sick and that while I would join him at the parties, I couldn’t drink any alcohol.  He listened sympathetically and agreed: it was decided that we wouldn’t drink any alcohol; we would drink beer.  All this time, I had been under the impression that beer was alcoholic.  He patiently explained to me that beer is good for your health because it has water in it and isn’t ‘hot on your throat’ like the infamous Malagasy moonshine (toaka gasy).

So, for six hours we sat in home after home and chugged warm bottles of the cheapest beer in Madagascar, ‘Castel’ which I enjoy for its soda-like carbonation and subtle hints of aluminum.  The taste didn’t bother me so much this time because we weren’t exactly nursing them. Every time I looked away, the mayor’s cup was empty so I chugged with the determination of a fraternity pledge in order to keep up since I was buying nearly every round.  Every gulp made my throat ache.  I was comforted; however, by Rabemaro’s conviction that the warm beer was good for my health.  So we kept drinking.

That evening we stumbled out of the only bar in town—which is actually my neighbor’s living room—and wobbled through the dusty alleys, greeting every stranger that passed through Ankazambo.  Liquid courage had me convinced that I had achieved fluency in Malagasy and launched into elaborate and completely fabricated stories about my childhood while the mayor ignored me and pointed out the angry drunks that I should avoid.

He then invited me to one final party at his home.  By this time I had forgotten all about my sore throat and agreed to join him for one final beer.  We shared this one while we sat on long wooden benches and watched the barefoot, dancing women kick up enormous clouds of fine orange dust silhouetted by the glow of the setting red sun.  I didn’t feel out of place, awkward, nervous or even frustrated that the partying had seriously delayed my self-imposed work schedule.  A tremendous peace of mind overtook me as I stared blearily at the festivities.

This calmness lasted all of three minutes before the mayor’s wife, who was tipsy but not inappropriately drunk, insisted that I dance with her.  Hesitant, as always, not to cause an international incident I glanced warily at the mayor whose face immediately lit up with drunken joy.  As it turned out, he was just as determined to get the foreigner to dance at his party, as his wife was to dance with the 23-year-old.

So we danced, stomping and swaying rhythmically to the fast-paced accordion music.  A crowd gathered.  After the end of the first song I thanked them for their hospitality and went to retrieve my seat but Rabemaro grabbed me and kept me on the dance floor for three more songs, dancing wildly without pause for a half-hour.

My knees were starting to buckle from exhaustion, my head was pounding and my throat was raw so I finally pulled myself away from the party and returned home, accompanied, of course by the mayor, Rabemaro.  He understood that I was a lightweight and gave up on trying to keep me out and dancing so he bid me a good night and went back to the party which continued for several more hours.

Before doing so, however, Rabemaro used my bathroom, which is nothing more than a packed mud hut with a thatched roof and two doors.  One door leads to my toilet (kabone), which is simply a hole in the ground, while the other is my shower (ladosy), which has a small drain and room enough for a bucket bath.  Mine is the only home in town with a toilet or shower. (Most people prefer to bathe in the river and relieve themselves in the woods).  The mayor, therefore, not being accustomed to my bathroom situation, used the wrong door and urinated in my shower.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him so.  I’m told that he returned several hours later and did it again.  We have not had a drink together since.

My Naked Best Friend

Much earlier in my service while I was still figuring things out, I had an early encounter with full-frontal nudity.  Since that day I’ve had many more so I’ve pushed the experiences into the recesses of my mind only to see the light of day today.  I was riding my bike with the president of the blacksmith association, my friend Fizel.  Fizel is tall and athletically built and although in his late-thirties, he possesses the genuine and endearing innocence of a much younger man.  He has experienced more heartbreak that I care to mention but has remained the most upbeat and optimistic person I have ever met.

On this particular day, the president and myself were riding our bikes into Befandriana to meet with my counterpart NGO.  The meeting was scheduled for 9am but, as is typical in Madagascar, we were running very late.  We left for town at about 9:30 but were delayed first by bike problems and then because Fizel forgot his bag and finally, because he had to make a phone call.

On our fourth attempt to leave Ankazambo, I was starting to get the impression that we were on our way when he stopped abruptly and said, rather sheepishly, that he had the pressing need to shower.  By this time we were about two hours late for our meeting and he clearly sensed my anxiety.  I could only laugh and I turned my bike around to head back to Ankazambo so that he could shower.  When I turned back around; however, he was completely naked, sprinting away from me down the hot blacktop only to leap over a roadside hedge into a standing pool of mossy brown water.

Dumbfounded, I waited by the side of the road for him to finish his shower.  Meanwhile, he carried on about our plan for the upcoming meeting while waving to passing taxi brousses still standing stark naked in the shallow pool.  Ten minutes later, he emerged from his shower dripping wet and, as he struggled to put on his shorts, he explained to me that the Tsimihety custom is to take advantage of the natural resources, showering whenever there’s a convenient source of water, even if this means showering in less than pristine waters—such as those offered along the side of the highway.

The hotter it is, he explained, the more they shower.  We’ve reached the peak of Malagasy summer and I’ve seen more naked men, leaping over hedges into dirty pools of water than I care to remember.  More often than not, they stop and wave while I pass on my bike.

Etiquette and Public Exposure at the Hotel Musulman

The ‘Hotel Musulman’ is the one good ‘hotely’ (quick and cheap Gasy food) in all of Befandriana. Whenever I am in town, I get together with a fellow volunteer to grab a quick meal at Musulman.  The restaurant is run by its patron ‘Mama Be’ and her second in command, ‘Mama Kely’.  The preceding words mean big mama and little mama respectively but this refers to their status rather than their physical stature—both are large, matronly women.  Mama Be, a woman of Middle Eastern descent in her early sixties is severe and blunt with the air of an interrogating mother in law while Mama Kely, a heavy-set, dark-skinned woman in her forties is outgoing, inquisitive and completely unabashed.

On this day my friend and I stopped into the Musulman for our usual ‘akoho sauce’ (a small piece of boiled chicken in a thick tomato broth served over rice).  The Musulman also serves the best chai tea in town.

Mama Kely served us and, as always, vied desperately for our distracted attention.  She’s middle-aged but craves attention like an eight-year old.  She cooks the best food in town so we humor her when we can stand it in the hope of an extra piece of chicken.  She was worse than usual on this day and visited our table for unknown reasons, forced her way into our conversations, and sat with us while criticizing how little we ate.  We were polite but clearly uninterested until after the meal was over and I was enjoying my tea. She sat down across the table and began breast-feeding her infant son.  Of course, I’ve lived in Madagascar long enough to become desensitized to women breast-feeding their children in front of me and typically I’m unfazed; however, Mama Kely was actively encouraging me to watch in the hope of eliciting shock.  I didn’t even know that she had a child and it’s entirely possible that she doesn’t.

She shouted, proudly pointing to her exposed breast, ‘Daniel! Izy misotro ronono!’  (Daniel! He’s drinking milk!).  Not knowing the culturally appropriate response to such a display, I took a sip of my milk-fortified tea and responded calmly, ‘Zahay roa, Mama Kely’ (We both are, Mama Kely).

We still regularly patronize the Hotel Musulman for it’s cheap and delicious food while recognizing that the service could use some improvement.

Needless, to say, there’s no lesson in these stories.  They neither offer profound insight into Malagasy culture nor do they encourage a new way of seeing the world.  I just thought that they were funny. Perhaps they even shed some light on the relative strangeness of my job, which, of course, remains the best and most interesting job I’ve ever held.

The result of complete integration has been extremely rewarding because, while I still have much to learn, I’ve gained a relatively intimate understanding of Tsimihety culture, an opportunity that I’m extremely lucky to have.  Through this blog I’ve endeavored to share some of these experiences with those of you that can’t necessarily travel to this tiny village.  Having only lived here for 8 months, I claim no expertise regarding the culture and, indeed, my interpretations should be subject to scrutiny. Unfortunately, I’m not yet aware of any university professors currently offering anthropology credit in Tsimihety culture.  Thus, you’re stuck with me and I’ll do my best.

This post is dedicated entirely to Tsimihety cuisine and attitudes towards food.  I find the food culture of Madagascar, and specifically within my village, particularly fascinating because it differs so much from America, perhaps more so than any other aspect of Tsimihety life.  Malagasy food culture differs not only in the superficial such as differences in food type but more importantly in perceptions concerning the role of food in daily life.

The most profound difference between Western food culture and that in Madagascar is that here, the taste of the food is simply not important but the community afforded through mealtime is absolutely essential. Put simply, food is not appreciated for its taste or appearance but because it encourages communal bonds.  I’m not nearly as well-traveled as most but I humbly submit that this appears to be a divergence not only from North American and European culture but many South American and Asian cultures as well, most of which are internationally recognized for a distinctive cuisine.  Not here.  If there must exist a national cuisine of Madagascar it would be white rice.

According to the World Book Encyclopedia the Malagasy people eat more rice per-capita than any other nation on the planet, averaging ½ kg of uncooked rice, per person, per day.  ‘Mahavoky’ or (to make full) is infinitely more commonly used to complement a meal than mahatsiro (delicious).  Thus, Tsimihety people, typically considered to be one of the poorest groups of people in Madagascar are highly utilitarian in their approach toward food but not in the obvious sense.  A surface interpretation would indicate that they view food as simply a means to an end where food is consumed to live; however, deeper investigation indicates that food is used regularly in order to strengthen tightly knit communities.  Thus, the Tsimihety are utilitarian in viewing food as a means by which to build a harmonious community rather than to be enjoyed by the individual.  This brings us to one of the most common proverbs in Ankazambo: “a meal has no owner” or, in Tsimihety: “Hani-masaka tsisy tompony.”

In Tsimihety ‘hani-masaka’ translates to ‘cooked food,’ however; in practice, food is synonymous with rice.  Rice is eaten three times a day with few to no exceptions. For breakfast we eat ‘sabeda’ which is simply rice porridge as a result of being cooked with twice as much water.  The rice is served alongside an ant-covered, 5kg dark brown brick of raw cane sugar, bits of which are chipped off and dissolved into the hot rice.  On occasion, there are small bananas or a large woven bag of mangoes.  The implications of this high-carbohydrate diet manifest themselves physically, as nearly every member of my community over the age of 30 is missing several teeth.

At lunch, everyone seated at the table is served a heaping dish of rice while small dishes of ‘ro’, ‘loaka’, ‘kabaka’ or ‘losary’ are placed in the center of the table for sharing (the preceding words all mean ‘side dish’).  Side dishes are small, usually about one-fifth the amount of the rice.  What is lacking in quantity is more than made up for in overpowering flavor.  The kabaka is either incredibly oily, bitter, or heavily salted (a bottle of ‘sakay’ or hot pepper sauce is sometimes placed on the table).  Dishes are usually boiled greens, beans, or dried, salted fish and all are intentionally over-seasoned to balance the huge quantities of white rice, which is essential.  Every week or so, I cook American food for my family.  No matter what I cook, I absolutely must serve rice or else it doesn’t qualify as a meal.  Nothing epitomizes this American-Gasy fusion better than my specialty: banana pancakes served over hot white rice.

Immediately before beginning the meal water is added to the used rice pot and placed back in the charcoal fire to slightly burn the residual rice and make hot rice water ‘ranon-ampango.’  Rano means water while ampango translates to ‘the rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot.’  Anyone skeptical regarding the importance rice in this culture needs look no further than the mere existence of this word.

The centrality of rice to a meal has important cultural consequences. Most importantly, rice is easily shared with unexpected guests.  In our kitchen, I commonly eat besides visiting family members, police, gendarme, construction workers, taxi drivers and other strangers—travelers simply passing through—because, as evidenced by the above proverb, it is a cultural expectation that one offers to share his or her food.  Cooking a large pot of rice ensures enough food for the inevitable guests.

Also important is the fact that just a small amount of the starchy rice satiates one’s appetite when other food options are scarce.  I’m fortunate to live with a family that always has money to buy a bit of vegetables, beans or fish to nutritionally balance the meal; however, many families (including many of the blacksmiths that I work with) often can’t afford the side dish.  ‘Carbo-loading’ is the inevitable result and a means by which to complete 8 hours of work in the fields or the workshop despite the obvious nutritional deficiencies. Unfortunately, this lack of dietary balance has repeatedly rendered two of my closest coworkers very sick through malnutrition (lack of calcium in both cases).

Finally, rice is relatively easy to store and then cook.  While I can testify first hand that the harvesting is highly labor-intensive, cooking is merely a matter of picking out rocks, cleaning and boiling.  This is important to the Malagasy mother that has half a dozen other responsibilities on top of preparing three meals per day.  Rice can be put on the charcoal stove and just about forgotten until it is ready to serve.  For the same reason, almost all side dishes are boiled as well.

Special occasions mark a reprise from the monotony of food options. The two most important holidays in Madagascar are Malagasy Independence Day (June 26) and the New Year.  To celebrate these holidays, families get together, buy a cow and subsequently slaughter it.  Then the meat is divided into several piles depending on how many families are present.  Cuts of prime beef are mixed in with parts of the cow I previously didn’t know existed.  It’s all boiled, salted or fried until its grey.  The food is, of course, appreciated because it tastes better than dried fish heads, but what’s important is not the delicacy itself but the town gathering in which food is distributed. Not only does everyone in the community pitch in to purchase the zebu, nearly the entire town turns up to help with the butchering and distribution.  Alcohol is served, kids are taught the process and everyone works together until the work is done.  It is perhaps the most important event of the weeklong celebrations and, while it all centers around food, the taste of the food couldn’t be less important.

Chicken, while much more common than beef, is also rare.  For wealthier families a chicken dinner is often used to celebrate birthdays, for special guests, or to repay a favor.  If one’s neighbor helps him replace his thatched roof or helps to harvest his rice, it’s customary to serve some kind of special meal, typically chicken.  For instance, the construction workers building the blacksmiths’ workshop spent their Sunday installing a new window frame for me free of charge.  I killed and cooked a chicken for lunch, shared it, and we called it even.  Food is a means of getting things done and keeping harmony within this community.

What’s clear to me is that there exist fundamental differences between Malagasy and American cultures regarding the role of food.  Somewhere between my first fish head and fourth fried locust I’ve learned how easy it is to live without truly delicious food.  I still appreciate it and indulge when on vacation or when I cook with my fellow volunteers; however, when one is surrounded by a supportive and interesting community with which to share that food (rice) it makes one quickly forget the tastes of home.

Hani-masaka tsisy tompony

Unfortunately, I have no Tsimihety proverbs, funny stories or half-baked philosophy in this month’s entry.  I rushed this out because I wanted to take the time to give a quick update on things in Madagascar but more importantly, to wish everyone back home a very Happy Thanksgiving spent with family and friends.  To my family, I wish that I could be there today to enjoy your company and my favorite holiday.  To my friends, I hope that you enjoyed Black Wednesday and continue to make bad decisions in my absence.

Celebrating Thanksgiving in Madagascar is different.  There’s no turkey, football, 5K or crisp fall air.  Oppressive humidity and 95-degree weather make it hard to believe that winter is just around the corner in Chicago.Despite plans to spend Thanksgiving visiting friends in Mandritsara (about 100 km east), I awoke this morning to the sounds of a raucous demonstration that I later learned was a taxi-brousse driver strike. As a result, plans to leave my district had to be put on hold and for the moment it looks like I’m stranded in Befandriana.

There are a lot of things that circumstances have prohibited but conditions haven’t stifled my holiday spirit.  While I spent the morning preparing registration papers for the blacksmiths, I made it clear that they’re on their own for the rest of the day and visited my friend in Befandriana for the day.  I also got my hands on a box of Argentinean wine with a Turkish label in a Malagasy storefront owned by an Arabic family.  I’m thankful for the Era of Globalization.

My work is still progressing steadily and I feel very at home in my community.  I find it hard to believe that I’ve only been in Madagascar for 9 months.  It feels like I’ve lived here for years. That said, it’s daunting to think that I still have 17 months of service left; not to mention how much I still hope to accomplish.

Construction continues on the blacksmith’s new workshop and roadside store; however, as predicted, progress has slowed significantly and we currently find ourselves in possession of a workshop without a roof or and a store that’s little more than a foundation and some rebar.  Such is the reality of completing a construction project in the middle of nowhere (said affectionately of course).  With miles of bad roads separating us from the capital or any port city the construction company spends a good amount of time waiting for materials. Fortunately, after weeks of waiting for rebar and roofing, the truck finally arrived from Tana and we’re back on schedule to complete both structures by the New Year.

The blacksmith association “Loharanonkariana” is finally starting to become a business rather than a loose association of childhood friends.  This past weekend we ratified the constitution, elected an executive board and gathered member fees.  All that I have left to do is harass the last few members for their fees before registering the association with the government next week.

The news that I’m most excited about is that my counterparts have agreed to teach me the tricks of the trade.  In December, I’ll begin as an ‘apprentice’ blacksmith, studying under my friends Fizel and Evariste who have a combined fifty years of experience.  I’ll be spending three days a week working over a hot forge, pouring a significant amount of my own money into making knives that no one will buy but I couldn’t be happier to learn the new skill.

Finally, the spirit of Thanksgiving has caused me to reflect upon what I’m truly thankful for and I’ve reached the following conclusion: I’m thankful for the opportunity to live and work in Madagascar but, more than anything, I’m thankful for the type of friends and family back home that not only supported my decision to live abroad for two years but continue to encourage and inspire me every day.  I miss you all and hope that your Thanksgiving offers a welcome repose from a hectic pace of life.  Enjoy yourselves, relax and more than anything else, enjoy the company of those around you.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Dan

I’ve also begun the early stages of working with a mpanamboatra krado (a cobbler that makes shoes out of old truck tires).  I’m excited at the prospect of working with just one individual as opposed to trying to mediate the competing opinions of 25 different artisans.  While it’s still too early to tell for sure, I believe that I’ll really enjoy working with him and a project that is entirely my own.

Izay mahari-jibiky mahazo faran’ny alanana 

The above proverb literally means, “Those that bear to dive; receive sand.”  Those that endure struggles and dive below the surface of the ocean eventually reach their goal: sand.  While I still don’t understand why anyone would work so hard to collect sand, this doesn’t change the meaning; simply that hard work pays off or, for the purposes of the below anecdote, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

I traveled to Antananarivo (Tana) at the end of September in order to attend another artisan fair.  While the trip from my site in the north to the capital in the center of the island is always an adventure, this past trip was longer and more difficult than any trip I’ve ever taken.  My experiences help to underscore some of the challenges posed by traveling in Madagascar. More importantly, however, I hope that the below story proves that a positive attitude makes all the difference and no matter how great your struggles, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel (or sand at the bottom of the ocean).

I spent the last day before leaving for the fair pleading with my counterparts to finish the orders that they swore that they could produce.  Despite having signed contracts from all of them to produce a certain kind of knife, almost every one of them produced something different and in a different quantity.  As a result, the second draft of the inventory sheet was comically unrecognizable to the first but such is the nature of doing business in Madagascar.  I was pleased to find that they had all produced very high quality products and all of them had been engraved with our new stamp.

That night, we had our final organizational meeting at 9 PM, already way past my usual bedtime of 7:30. The meeting concluded at about 10:30 when I took the final inventory and organized the knives for the fair. Then I realized that in the excitement of the day, I had forgotten to pack my bag.  I stuffed a toothbrush, a few clean shirts and some underwear into my backpack but craft fair publicity materials took up most of the space.

I spent the next two hours filling out paperwork.  The previous day, my counterpart organization had informed me that there was to be an audit of the Sofia regional office and I was responsible for reporting on all of the activities of the blacksmiths beginning in 2011.  This posed a minor problem because I arrived here in 2012.  I filled out form after form in by candlelight in Malagasy and French, two languages that I neither read nor write too well. I got a kick out of the thought that I had to come all of the way to this island on the edge of the world to become a bureaucratic paper pusher.  At least my office is in Madagascar and I have a view that looks out on the mountains.

As soon as the final report was complete, I collapsed in my bed believing that I would pass out as soon as my head hit the pillow but due to my excessively dirty and flea-ridden mattress getting some sleep before my trip proved challenging.  Then a particularly vicious dogfight began directly outside of my bedroom window.  After 45 minutes of listening to the feral animals bark and squeal, I desperately rummaged through my trunk for my earplugs, shoved them in my ears and fell asleep at about 3:00 am.

At 4:40 am, furious knocking at my door awakened me.  In a haze, I opened the door and couldn’t fully understand why there was a sudden rush of strangers into my home.  I learned that these were the taxi brousse assistants, taking the bundles of knives to put on top of the car.  They were supposed to arrive at 7:30 but showed up three hours early because it was easier for them.  I stumbled outside to find the taxi brousse waiting for me, completely empty except for two men, my counterparts, Rajaonera and Kasimo.

Rajaonera is an enthusiastic and carefree man who stands about 5 ft 6.  Despite having no front teeth due to his frequent indulgence in toaka (Malagasy moonshine), he’s always smiling and laughing.  Kasimo also likes his toaka but doesn’t share Rajaonera’s youthful exuberance; he’s very serious and has aged prematurely due to his overindulgence in toaka, cigarettes and his constant worrying.

For the next three hours, we drove around the dusty moonlit streets of Befandriana to pick up other customers, packing as many people into the minibus as possible.  At about 7:30AM, the driver was satisfied that his brousse was sufficiently full and we finally left Befandriana.

For a while, the drive was just like any other: we were stopped by gendarme and police at checkpoints six times over the washed-out dirt road, traversing the 86 km at a snail’s pace hoping to arrive in Antsohihy four or five hours later.  I tried to stay awake and talk to my counterparts but, unfortunately, due to the lack of sleep I found myself in and out of consciousness the entire ride.  My head was bouncing off of the metal walls of the brousse. I was too tired to notice until I woke from my haze to find a thin trickle of blood running down my right temple.  I ignored the small cut but I think that Kasimo was slightly annoyed by my restless sleeping style since my head was knocking into his shoulder for at least a few hours.

I finally woke about three hours into the trip to a young girl outside my window shouting “Mandrosoa, mofo ravina!” and shoving a bowl of warm banana leaves in my face through the dirty taxi window.  (Mofo ravina is steamed rice bread infused with a little bit of chopped banana and wrapped in a banana leaf).  Brousse drivers often stop in roadside villages allowing villagers to sell food to customers through the windows.  In my sleepy haze, I confused exhaustion with hunger and bought two for 400 A (16 cents) and fell asleep again.

Minutes later, I awoke to the faint smell of smoke which grew stronger and stronger until I opened my blurry eyes to see a thick cloud of black blotting out the sun in front of our brousse.  As we crawled closer to the smoke, it became clear that the source was a brushfire, a common sight in my region during this time of year.  Some are started intentionally and controlled by landowners to clear fields but it became quickly apparent that this was not controlled—probably caused by a carelessly tossed cigarette.

When we finally reached the source of smoke, our tightly packed minibus was on the edge of a raging fire that was quickly devouring the bone-dry white grass, flames lapping the edges of the pavement.  Without hesitation, the driver ordered everyone out of the car and we began to jog through the flame canyon while three extinguisher-wielding assistants tamed the edges of the fire that had encroached too close to the road.

The car’s former passengers (paying customers ranging in age from 1 to 70 years-old) had become walkers.  This is simply because in such an event anywhere but the brousse (the trunk of which is packed with several gallons of extra gasoline) is the safest place to be.  As we hustled through the flames, I felt the intense heat of the fire on my face and brushed ash out of my eyes.  At the time, jogging alongside my blacksmith friends in my exhaustion-induced fog, I couldn’t quite decide if the whole thing was a dream.  Being used to intensely hot fires as a necessity of their job, Rajaonera and Kasimo laughed and joked even as ashes and sparks fell on their bare necks until they reached the other side of the brushfire.

All of the passengers, having now cleared the flames, stepped off of the road as the driver backed up the minibus a few meters and, at a speed I’ve never seen it reach before, barreled through the flames, not taking any chances with his flammable cargo.  He cleared the flames without incident and we all piled back into the car as if nothing had happened.

We arrived in Antsohihy a few hours later and prepared for the next leg: the long, slow crawl to the capital.  Waiting for our next brousse on the dirt ground, I tried desperately to get some sleep but the combination of the horse flies, mosquitoes and stifling heat and humidity made it nearly impossible. Our ride finally arrived several hours later and I was looking forward to sleep but a fellow passenger, a dried fish salesman, talked at me without pause for nearly the entire trip.  The smell was easier to bear than his company.

It was obvious when we were getting close to the highlands because the temperature began to plummet rapidly.  While I had sweat through my t-shirt in Antsohihy, here in the highlands at the tail end of Malagasy winter, I was forced to wear a fleece and winter hat for the first time in months.

We arrived in Tana and I was anxious to get out of the car.  Unfortunately, the densely populated city proved to be another obstacle and we were stuck in standstill traffic.  We had traveled all of the way across the country and just five blocks away from the brousse station we were stuck for over an hour.

No longer able to take the waiting, I bid my counterparts goodbye, promising to meet them at the fair in a few hours, and set off walking to my weekend accommodations, the Peace Corps ‘Meva’ or flophouse.  Once there, I made full use of the high-speed internet and showered with hot water for the first time in months.  Strangely, despite my exhaustion, I was more productive than ever, designing and organizing the cooperative’s publicity materials, contracts and order forms.  It’s amazing how much you grow to appreciate high-speed Internet after months without it.

I headed back out onto the streets of Tana; first to the printer and then to the craft fair walking most of the way to stretch my legs.  I didn’t mind that the fair was on the other side of town and that I didn’t know exactly where I was going.  After asking ten different people for directions, I found the fair on the edge of the administrative district.  After registering our stall and setting everything up for the next day I departed, again not totally sure where I was going but excited to explore a city that had already begun to grow on me.

While I’m perfectly at home in the small village, there’s nothing quite like the excitement of the metropolis of a developing country.  The narrow dirty streets of Antananarivo wind menacingly in seemingly no particular direction as the capital expands out in all directions except up.  You can count the number of skyscrapers on one hand but landmark buildings sit atop steep hills.  Going from one neighborhood to another often means either climbing or descending steep stairs.

Vehicles of all kinds (taxis, rickshaws, scooters and bikes) mingle dangerously close to hoards of pedestrians that dodge traffic while stepping over the street vendors selling electronics, fruit, sandals, fly-ridden beef, guitars, fried bananas and car parts.  Their products are spread out on sidewalk tarps and fiercely protected from theft or trampling.  The air is terribly polluted and everywhere there’s a different smell; rotting fruit, fish, charcoal, burning trash or car exhaust.  The streets seem to bleed dirty water and fruit scraps that are greedily gobbled up by hungry dogs.

It’s loud, dirty and crowded but most of all its charming and alive with activity that makes American metropolises seem sleepy.  Despite its flaws, Tana is fast becoming one of my new favorite cities.

Awestruck by the energy of the city, I forgot my exhaustion and ventured deeper and deeper into different neighborhoods.  After four hours of wandering, I found myself hopelessly lost in Chinatown and stopped in for a beer.  I chatted for a while in broken French with Chinese expatriates.  I left the small bar with somewhat beery courage and decided that I hadn’t seen enough so I hopped on a bus that took me even further out of my way.  Finding myself in what I can only describe as the suburbs, I decided that I’d finally had enough and tried to hail a taxi back to town.

Unfortunately, by this time I was running a little short on cash.  I haggled with the taxi driver for 20 minutes before finally agreeing to fork over my last 5,000 ariary and a beer (that I’d been carrying in my backpack since Chinatown) for a ride back into town.  I didn’t have enough to get me all of the way home so I ended up walking the last three miles.

When I arrived back at the flophouse I was ready to collapse.  I had probably walked about 20 miles that day and in my excitement, hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours (nor had I really slept since the hour and a half in Ankazambo).

It was just as this thought was rushing through my head that fellow volunteers burst in the door, jolly from a few dinner cocktails and invited me out back to the same neighborhood that I had just struggled to find my way home from.  Never one to turn down a night out, I agreed and headed back out into the night only to wake up the next morning at 7am to attend the craft fair and do it all over again.

Things continued much like this for the next two days and despite ‘burning the candle at both ends’ for my entire time in Tana the craft fair was another great success.  We nearly sold out of inventory and received some promising new customers; however, it was the third and final day of the fair that made the whole exhausting trip worth it.

On the final day, Kasimo and Rajaonera, my tentative counterparts, were finally ready to go out in search of resory metalique (high quality steel).  It should be noted that up until this point neither Kasimo nor Rajaonera had left the fair grounds despite numerous invitations.  They sold their products, ate and slept in our stall for three days.

Kasimo and Rajaonera were hesitant to leave the confines of the fairgrounds for fear of the same city that I had come to love.  Up until this point, neither of them had ever been more than 100 km from home and then only to other villages or small towns.  Tana was as foreign to them as it had been to me when I first arrived in Madagascar.  The people were different and spoke a strange dialect; there were paved streets and countless cars, multi-story glass and concrete buildings, ratsy olono (bad people) and more foreigners in one place than either of them had ever seen in their life.

It took over an hour of coaxing before I got them to come with me to buy the metal.  Due to my relentless exploring over the previous 3 days, I had an idea of where to look and led the hesitant blacksmiths through the crowded streets while they marveled at the scale of the city.  We were forced to stop more than once to encourage Kasimo to cross busy intersections and Rajaonera kept wandering off to buy school supplies for his kids (which are much cheaper in Tana).

We took the long way so that they could see the center of the city and walked for more than an hour before arriving at the scrap yard.  At this point, I literally hid behind a pallet of scrap metal in order to avoid being seen by the metal dealer who likely would not have hesitated to double the price assuming that I had money by virtue of being American.  From my hiding spot, I watched with anticipation as the three men haggled over the price.  It was only after they were packing the heavy metal into gunny sacks that I revealed myself to help them load it onto the rickshaw to be brought back to the fair.

I found out as we were packing up that they had gotten an unbelievably reasonable price—about 1/3 of what we paid for a lesser quality metal in Befandriana.  The salesman too, was a nice enough guy and we exchanged information.  To my delight, he mentioned that he would look into making monthly deliveries of the metal up north for a fraction of the price that the blacksmiths of Ankazambo had been paying for years.  Kasimo and Rajaonera were pleased with themselves too, not only because of the great price but for conquering the big city.

With the metal safely packed onto the run-down rickshaw, I thought that a celebration was in order and bought the five of us a round of drinks from the shanty bar outside of the scrap yard.  We relaxed, sitting on the dirty curb—two toothless blacksmiths, a Malagasy metal dealer, a rickshaw driver and a kid from the Chicago suburbs—outside of the Antananarivo scrap yard enjoying our warm beer, a little reward at the end of a long, adventurous and exhausting trip or, if you prefer, the sand at the bottom of the ocean.

Izay mahari-jibiky mahazo faran’ny alanana

Ankolany leny sosoko entana

First, I apologize for not posting in over a month.  I’ve been kept busy with a number of challenging projects meaning that I’ve had little time to devote to blogging; however, it’s also afforded me the unique opportunity to more closely observe some of the most glaring cultural differences between my own culture and that of the Tsimihety.  This entry focuses on one of the most significant cultural differences that often makes community economic development such a unique challenge in Madagascar: the decision making process.

The title comes from yet another Tsimihety proverb or ohabolana.  It translates literally to, “The wet luggage stick helps the luggage.” ‘Ankolany,’ are wooden poles about a meter long on which people carry their hentana (luggage).  Obviously, a waterlogged ankolany is not the ideal means of transport as it increases the weight of an already heavy load, thus, making the job more difficult.

Unfortunately, in many cases traditional cultural practices of the Tsimihety serve as the ‘ankolany leny’ hindering the development process.  Specifically, the means of decision-making often takes much longer here and requires more effort than in a developed country. While frustrating at times, there is nothing more humbling than being presented with such a starkly different world view that forces me to completely reconsider cultural practices that I’ve come to take for granted.  Further, while some of these practices may delay the economic development process, I’ve also found that they promote increased harmony and, in many cases, a happier community.

Before arriving in Ankazambo, I worried that I would have trouble motivating my community to take charge of the development process, one of the Peace Corps’ most important goals.  By the end of the first day, it became clear to me that apathy would not be a problem.  Literally hundreds of villagers attended the meeting at which I was introduced and immediately bombarded me with ideas for different development projects before I could even properly introduce myself in Tsimihety. Thus, the challenge here lies not in inspiring an unmotivated public but in mitigating a chorus of dissenting voices.

All decision making in my community is done through collective debate, ultimately resulting in total agreement.  I was raised to believe that the fairest way to arrive at decisions was the ‘American Way,’ through the democratic process, in which majority rules.  With regards to ‘fairness’, Ankazambo does America one better.

Here, the entire collective rules: there must be a consensus between every member of the rey aman dreny (‘parents’ or village leaders) if one is to move forward with a proposition.  This tradition of hyper-egalitarianism pervades every aspect of Tsimihety culture so strongly that village meetings (foko’olono) about even the most trivial decisions have a strong tendency to go on for hours.

When I first arrived, I made a concerted effort to attend every foko’olono but I soon found this task to be impossible as there are often six or seven gatherings per week that last up to two hours each.  What’s more difficult is that meetings don’t run on any type of regular schedule and instead occur spontaneously, whenever there is a newsworthy event or a conflict to discuss.  To host a meeting, a member of the rey aman dreny (any married person over 18) may go to the town crier, Stela, who is paid a few kilos of rice per year to walk the streets of this small village blowing a whistle and screaming at the top of his lungs for people to gather immediately. Unfortunately, Stela is my neighbor and his first stop is always outside of my bedroom window.  Often when I’m sound asleep at 5 am I’m awoken to a shrill whistle and the boom of his voice “Malakylaky! Misy fivoriana!  Lehilahy ary vehivavy jiaby hamonjy!” (Quickly! There’s a meeting!  All men and women will attend!).

At Stela’s behest, the village leaders assemble at the birao fokantany (commune building) but almost never in a timely fashion.  A common phrase around here is ‘leran gasy’ (Gasy time) which means that if something is scheduled to begin at 7am it might begin at 8am if we’re lucky but usually at around about 8:30 people start filing in.  Once at least one member of the Soja Be (village elders over 60-years-old) has arrived, the meeting can begin.  Topics debated range from personal disputes to lost cows or chickens; however, the topic that has occupied most of the rey aman drenys’ meetings since I arrived has the completion of a new workshop and store for Ankazambo’s blacksmiths.

Meetings regarding the workshop always take the longest because we have to divide the labor amongst the 6 different families that live in Ankazambo.  The men of Ankazambo have spent the past several months making bricks about three mornings per week for the new workshop and roadside store.  We wake at 5 in the morning, go to the brickyard and work for two hours before breakfast when it’s still cool.  It’s one of the most strenuous early-morning workouts I’ve ever done and, by the time it’s over, all I want to do is crawl back into bed even before washing the thick layer of mud off of my feet.

Unfortunately, following two hours of labor, the meeting, like the day, is just beginning.  Following the completion of the day’s work, there is a heated debate regarding issues ranging from which group is responsible for working the next morning to how to best arrange the bricks for drying.  A week ago, there was a particularly intense half-hour argument regarding who was responsible for asking the neighboring village to borrow an ox cart.  The task finally fell to my friend Fizel and myself and while the acquisition of the cart took us five minutes, the process of arriving at who was responsible for that task took thirty.

The term ‘heated-debate’ is not an exaggeration.  Every discussion is actually a shouting match with men yelling at each other from all different directions fighting to be heard over the noise of the crowd.  The passion with which they speak and my tenuous grasp on the Tsimihety dialect lead me to believe that every meeting is going to end in a fist fight.  Instead, everyone ends up laughing.  The yelling grows louder and louder until it peaks and culminates with uproarious laughter.  Once everyone is in agreement and a decision is made, I have never seen the least bit of resentment towards a competing party. Such an idiosyncrasy underscores the important role of collective decision making in producing harmony within this culture.

The consequence of debate; therefore, makes public speaking skills absolutely essential in order to have any power.  Here, where most the village leaders are illiterate or semi-literate, the man with the greatest public speaking skills is the most powerful.  This presents an obvious challenge for non-native speakers (namely, me) to effectively communicate positions and suggest ideas.  Luckily, my two strongest allies happen to be the most influential and captivating public speakers.  My landlord, Karim, and my best friend, Fizel, captivate audiences with ease and almost always get their way.

Karim in particular is one of the most impressive public speakers I’ve ever seen.  He’s a classic example of someone who speaks when he has something to say, not simply because he has to say something.  While at home it’s rare to see him say more than ten words in a day his speech is the highlight of every meeting.  While his public speaking is much too fast for me to comprehend, I remain captivated by his charisma and confidence.  So does everyone else—he has the rare ability of controlling the mob of dissenting voices.  While I still give my fair share of kabarys (speeches), I often speak through the medium of a respected leader so that they can effectively communicate my position in this culture dominated by public speaking.  This means that I must stay in nearly constant communication with Fizel and Karim in order to be an active player in the community.

It’s challenges such as these that keep me extremely busy here in Ankazambo but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The decision making process is one part of Malagasy culture that I would never seek to change not only because it is so deeply ingrained into social life but because, despite its slow pace, it works.  It forces every member of the community to take ownership of the development process and is both highly egalitarian and highly merit-based, favoring the hard-working and charismatic leaders.  I believe strongly in these principles, which means that for now I think that I’ll just have to put up with the wet ankolany and help to carry the heavy load.

Ankolany leny sosoko entana.

I’ve just returned to Ankazambo after a much needed but much too long trip away from site.  I, and one of my blacksmiths  left site on July 30 in order to help market their products at an annual national crafts fair in the capital city of Antananarivo.  The fair was a huge success for us and after six of some of the most exhausting days of my life, I left Tana in order to attend mandatory Peace Corps in-service training (IST) back in Mantasoa.  It was an amazing opportunity to catch up with friends that I hadn’t seen in over three months. I also learned quite a bit about cooperative organization, fair trade certification, and techniques for training in financial literacy.  I am continually impressed by the work that my fellow volunteers are doing and it was inspiring to be back amongst such hardworking and interesting people.

On my way back to Ankazambo, I passed through Antsohihy and stopped by the post office to pick up packages for the first time in three months.  Thank you so very much to everyone that sent them! I received a windfall of epic proportions.  To be exact, 16 packages had accumulated since my last time in town.  The post office workers seemed slightly annoyed, so much so that one of them literally chased me down on the street and opened the post office early just so that I could clear up much-needed space.  Therefore, thank you all for making me infamous within the ranks of the Antsohihy post office staff.

Returning to site after such a long time away was strange but I was quick to get back to work.  I found myself back in the same very fortunate situation here in Ankazambo, Madagascar to which I have become accustomed.  That leads me to this entry’s title…

Sambatra zaho

Sambatra zaho translates literally to “I am blessed” or “I am lucky.” It’s the most fitting title that I could come up with in order to describe my life and work here in Ankazambo (sorry, no Tsimihety proverb this time).

I take no credit for this wonderful situation.  I played no part in the selection of Madagascar as my country of service and, after arriving here, simply asked the Peace Corps Madagascar staff to place me where they thought that I could be of the most help.  By sheer luck, I find myself in this exact town with these exact people, exactly where I’m needed.  Therefore, tena sambatra zaho, “I am very lucky.”

In the course of my ramblings about cross-cultural exchange and travel, I’ve neglected to write about my work, the thing that’s most important to me and the reason that I traveled halfway across the world.  In that sense this entry may be significantly drier than my previous but I though that I should enlighten you as to where a very, very, very small portion of your tax dollars are going (too small of a portion; write your congressman).

My official Peace Corps title is “Community Economic Development Advisor” but I just tell people that I’m a “mpampiofana orin’asa madinky (a trainer of small business).  I live and work in the small village of Ankazambo Atsimo, made up of 6 large families and a total of 960 people (I counted).  The primary income generating activity in Ankazambo is blacksmithing.  The majority of the men in town make small agricultural equipment, mostly different kinds of field knives. Their wives, mothers and daughters are primarily responsible for bringing their products to a variety of small markets throughout the region, a few of which are 30 km away.  The men make the products while the women are primarily responsible for marketing them and keeping the money.  Therefore, nearly everyone within Ankazambo is involved in the blacksmithing trade to some degree.

While I have done some small projects with storeowners and beekeepers, most of my work centers around these blacksmiths because developing the capacities of the blacksmith community will simultaneously develop the community as a whole.  I’m incredibly lucky because my role is very clear in this respect.  Peace Corps volunteers often complain about an ambiguous work situation but this is definitely not the case with my site.  The blacksmiths and their wives are always eager to develop their businesses and community.  That keeps me perpetually busy.

My counterpart organization, Prosperer (a French NGO), is also staffed by some of the hardest working and most qualified people I’ve ever met.  They too haven’t hesitated to ensure that I’m always busy with one project or another.  What’s best; however, is that in conjunction with nationally-mandated initiatives, they give me the freedom to implement my own programs while providing both support and resources. Again, not all volunteers have both structure and freedom.  Tena sambatra zaho.

That leads me to the number of projects that I find myself juggling at the moment.  The biggest one (not to mention the one that is bound to cause the most headaches) is the construction of a new workshop and point de vent for the blacksmiths.  Right now, they all work individually, under tin or grass roofs with one small kiln per workshop.  When it rains or is too windy, they simply can’t work. This is a major problem because it’s always windy in Ankazambo and rains relentlessly for 3 months out of the year.  The workshop will provide both shelter from the elements as well as an area for them to work together, allowing for the exchange of techniques and greater cooperation.

The point de vent will be located on the side of the national road that passes through Ankazambo and will prevent the sellers from needing to travel 30 km by bike with dozens of knives in order to market their products.

The workshop and point de vent are both Prosperer initiatives that I’ve somehow found myself spearheading. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the men, women and children of Ankazambo, we are a mere 3 days away from completing the production of 20,000 bricks, 50 square meters of sand, 15 square meters of blockage, and 9 square meters of gravel, the materials that the community was required to provide before construction.  Making and transporting these construction materials to site required an incredibly large degree of commitment on behalf of this small community and they saw it through.  The construction company arrives from Antananarivo on the 30th of August and we break ground shortly after that all thanks to commitment of my incredibly diligent community.

The construction project will be completed by the end of December. After that, the plan is to get right back to work in hopes of beginning talks with JIRAMA (Madagascar’s electric and water company) in order to help bring a solar panel to Ankazambo.  The electricity will be used both by the blacksmiths in their work and the Ankazambo community in general.

While facilitating the construction, I also have the freedom to advise the blacksmiths in the best ways by which to improve their businesses.  I work exclusively with the fikambanana (cooperative) named “Loharanonkariana” (“The Source of Income”).  The hope is to grow the cooperative into a much larger federation, which will incorporate every blacksmith within the area immediately surrounding Ankazambo.

While incredibly hardworking, the blacksmiths are also very disorganized.  I’ve directed my attention to four areas: organizational management, financial literacy, marketing, technical trainings.  We’ve organized bi-weekly meetings, are in the process of receiving registration from the government, and are making a constitution now.  I also have begun trainings in bookkeeping and financial literacy and use a portion of the meeting to teach these principles.  Technical trainings, focusing on new techniques and products are in association with Prosperer but marketing is the most fun for me.  I’m happy to say that a radio program, knives engraved with the name of the cooperative, business cards and a catalogue are all in the works.

The final project that keeps me most busy is craft fairs.  I just returned from accompanying my counterpart to one in Antananarivo and there is another one much closer in Belalana, Sophia on the 28th of August.  The fairs are a huge boost to business and are our greatest marketing tool.  In Tana, we sold our entire inventory and distributed over 200 business cards to other entrepreneurs and buyers.  Belalana is an even bigger task.  Instead of sending 65 knives like we did to Tana, we’re sending 230.  It also has the potential to be even more helpful in establishing new markets because it is so much closer and more accessible than Tana.

I’ve enjoyed my first few months at site so much and have enjoyed some success only because I’m surrounded by a group of people that share in my passion for development.  My counterpart organization, the blacksmiths, their families and the entire Ankazambo community has been incredibly welcoming, helpful and receptive to new ideas.  I’m constantly impressed by their work ethic and desire to develop their community.  They’ve made my job extremely fun and relatively easy and, for that, Sambatra zaho.

It’s an incredibly simple philosophy but one that I think is absolutely essential to being a Peace Corps Volunteer, so important, in fact, that I have this particular proverb written above my door, reminding me to spend as much time in my small community as possible.

If explored more deeply, it can be applied well to travel in general. I consider ‘an-trano’ (the home) to be anything familiar and therefore comfortable with a conspicuous lack of ‘things’ a characteristic that makes it so important to explore the unknown.

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to the northern most tip of Madagascar, the coastal city of Diego Suarez (Antsiranana) in order to attend a Volunteer Action Committee conference (VAC) that lasted three days.  After two straight months in the “ambany-volo” (village), I had become very “zatra” (used to) living without electricity, running water, privacy, or English.  As it turned out, I was so immersed in village life that the bright lights and fast pace of Diego took some getting used to.  In traveling to a “big city” for the first time since leaving Chicago, I was truly stepping out of my comfort zone and saw some things that I’ll never forget.

Almost all travel in Madagascar is done by mini-bus (taxi-brousse). Taxi-brousses are vans built for 12-15 people; however, in Madagascar, it’s not uncommon to see one of these vans packed tight with over 30 people.  During one short trip I took earlier in my service there were 35 people in a van with 10 seats.  My landlord’s son just left on a 24-hour trip to Mahajanga in a bus packed even tighter.  He spent the first five hours of the trip hanging out of the open door.

On our trip we were lucky enough to get seats.  Even luckier, our brousse was only filled with about 25 adults, 5 kids and 4 chickens. What was slightly unfortunate; however, was that the first leg of the trip (the 86km, 4 hour drive from Befandriana to Antsohihy) took 7 hours because the driver drove around Befandriana for three hours trying to pack more passengers into his van.   In the process our van ran over one dog, one chicken, and the driver slapped an employee of a competing taxi company in the face as he passed at 15 miles per hour. It was a drive-by-slapping.

It was twenty-four hours and three taxi-brousse rides similar to that described above before we reached the shores of Diego.  This would have been frustrating had it not been for the great company of two fellow volunteers and the beautiful, ever-changing scenery of the Sophia and Diana regions.  I’ve been in Madagascar for over five months and I’m still blown away by how much the terrain changes from place to place.  At one minute you’re surrounded by the beautiful mountains of Ankazambo, the next you’re on land as flat and as arid as Western Texas.  You wake up from a nap and you’re in the rainforest. As you’re getting used to the lush rainforest, you arrive at the coast.  It’s astounding.

As if my senses weren’t overwhelmed enough by the drive, our last stop was the bustling city of Diego.  Although I’ve been here for quite some time, Diego was to be the first time I actually spent in a large Malagasy city.  Frankly, I found my first day in Diego to be a bit too much.  The first thing that struck me was the amount of cars.  While there are six or seven taxis in Befandriana, the district capital of my region, in Diego there are hundreds of yellow Volkswagens speeding around the streets.  I also found the level of development to be beyond my comprehension.  There are sidewalks and streets in Diego. There are also multistoried buildings, restaurants, cafes and bars. In Befandriana, there is one paved road and the rest is red dust.

Finally, the population of Diego is different.  I am one of two people of European descent in the District of Befandriana Avaratra.  The other is another Peace Corps Volunteer.  In Diego, the streets and cafes are filled with European tourists, mostly older men, taking in the sights.  I still feel as though I spent a weekend in a different country than I had become so accustomed to.

For the duration of our trip we really lived the ‘vazaha’ lifestyle (vazaha is a derogative term for foreigner).  We indulged in coffee and croissants in the morning, calamari and shrimp in the afternoon and steak in the evening, all for a fraction of US prices.  We went to the beach town of Ramena and ate fresh seafood on the beach after swimming in the Indian Ocean.  At night we drank coconut rum-arrange at bars owned and patronized almost exclusively by French expatriates.  We ate ice cream at a new Italian-owned coffee shop almost every day.  We spent our trip living much in the same way that a tourist visiting Madagascar might have lived.

Such decadence in Diego while my neighbors and friends remained isolated in Ankazambo caused my emotions to waver between bliss and guilt throughout the entire trip.  Why should I get to eat ice cream and swim in the ocean while my closest friend in Ankazambo battles hypertension, malnutrition and works 10 hours a day over a smoldering kiln?  Is it because my country is rich and his is poor?  Or maybe its because I had the opportunity to go to university while he had to drop out of school at the age of 12 and become a blacksmith in order to support his family.  Whatever the reason, there was something about my trip to Diego that didn’t quite sit right with me and it was only after returning home to Ankazambo that I figured out what it was.

A tourist coming to Madagascar will spend a few weeks in the biggest cities, eat in the finest restaurants, relax at the world class beach resorts and return home to the developed world with a skewed perception of what life is like in Madagascar.  While it’s not necessarily the fault of the tourist, these people have yet to catch a glimpse of life in Madagascar as experienced from the Malagasy perspective.  The reality is that 80% of Madagascar’s population lives in highly underdeveloped rural villages and the majority of these people have never seen those same cities that the vazaha associates with Madagascar.

Truly understanding a nation and a people takes more than just a vacation.  It takes immersion in the culture and forgetting one’s self within it.  It’s for this reason that I’m so thankful for my Peace Corps experience thus far.  I’ve been given the rare opportunity to truly experience what it’s like to be part of another culture.

I am constantly reminded of how incredibly lucky I am to be here in this exact country, in this exact region and with these exact people. I am possibly the first outsider to ever be invited to a Tsimihety funeral or butcher a cow for Malagasy Independence Day.

More importantly, I’m the first outsider to ever take an interest in the subtle technique of Ankazambo’s blacksmiths, make bricks alongside the village elders, or play soccer with their kids.  That’s a pretty humbling feeling and I’ve done it all simply because I left my home and went.

Mandehandeha mihita raha; mipetraka an-trano mihita jofo

First, allow me to set the stage.  The day I arrived in Ankazambo, one of the first things that my landlord asked me is if I was ready for ‘vingt-six Juin’ (June 26th—Madagascar’s Independence Day).  Mind you, I arrived in Ankazambo on May 10th; however, the good people of Ankazambo impatiently counted every single one of those 46 days like chubby kids with chocolate Christmas advent calendars.

I got just as wrapped up in the excitement as all of my neighbors and it seems like every day I was starting conversations with questions about the twenty-sixth, nervously trying to prepare myself for this mysterious holiday.  What I was able to gather in the weeks leading up to the big day was this: for a whole week following the 26th of June there are speeches, dancing, red meat and everyone in the village gets really, incredibly drunk.  For a young man in my position, this sounded like a recipe for disaster.  My mind kept going back to my first kabary (speech) and then I imagined being forced to give a similar speech to drunk people after being forced to drink moonshine myself.

Needless to say, the week of the 26th was going to provide experiences that I would have to see in order to believe.

Killing the cow
In the weeks leading up the Fety Pirenena Malagasy (Madagascar’s Independence Day) the thing on everyone’s mind was cows.  Or, Malagasy zebus to be exact.  This is because to celebrate independence, the Tsimihety families that can afford it, all pitch in and buy a cow together with ten other families.  The cow is butchered on the 25^th and in the week following Independence Day, these lucky families eat beef for every meal.  Here in Madagascar, where we eat white rice for every meal, you can imagine everyone’s excitement at the prospect of supplementing that rice with precious red meat for an entire week.

My landlords were in charge of their group of ten families.  They took the precious savings, which took everyone months to collect and purchased our cow from the nearby market in Sabotsybe where nearly all of the cows in the Sofia region are herded every other Saturday.  In Malagasy, ‘Sabotsy’ is Saturday; ‘be’ means big.  The massive crowd of zebus and people together at the market more than lives up to the town’s title.

For two weeks after purchasing our cow, I had to take an alternative route to get to my outhouse because the massive animal that we purchased was tied up in my back yard and blocked my usual path to use the facilities.  There’s something very strange about getting to know your food so intimately.  I didn’t grow attached to the cow in any emotional way but I will say that every time we sat down to dinner in the week that followed the 26th, I couldn’t help but remember what my dinner looked like when it was still a living, breathing animal.

I intimately remember the 25th of June: the day we took our cow to a nearby stream to butcher it.  If you have a weak stomach, I’d skip the next few paragraphs.

There were 33 of us: 20 men, 10 boys and 3 dogs all anxiously anticipating the conversion omby (cow) into hena-omby (beef), food that would last a week—210 meals total.  The less experienced among us were visibly nervous and even the older men were tense having only butchered cows once per year.

We led our cow through green hills, thick woods, and finally into a deep creek bed, that, in the dry season, is host to only a trickle of water and still, mossy pools.  As we made our way to a suitable spot to kill the animal, we passed three other large groups already dissecting their animals and dividing hunks of beef into ten equal piles on the wet stone creek floor. Hungry dogs eagerly lapped up still pools of red blood and the heads and hooves of two cows littered the creek bed.  I can only imagine what our cow thought as we passed through the carnage.

It took ten men to bring the zebu down and tie its legs.  The man who did the actual killing was a fiery young guy named Richard who has a serious Napoleonic complex.  With the animal on its back and a sturdy log holding its chin back, Richard used a sharp borjiny (machete) to saw through the cows neck, spilling blood into the shallow water and causing its eyes to roll back into its head just before the spinal cord was severed and its legs stopped thrashing.

The minute the zebu stopped moving is the same minute we set in on it with a litany of sharp knives, machetes and axes.  The hooves are removed and set aside next to the head.  The tongue is chopped out and divided amongst the kids who light a small fire and grill it over open flames as the men work.  I had expected to watch from the safety of the shore but when my friend needed another pair of hands to hold a back leg while he cleaved meat from bone I was called in from the bench.  Having only experienced meat either cold right out of the refrigerator or hot after its been on the grill, there’s something very strange about holding the warm dead flesh of an animal in your hands while its being butchered.

For butchering, we use farm tools instead of the specialized equipment of a professional butcher.  Bones are broken with axes rather than sawed through with power tools, however; with 30 men working, in under an hour we’ve created ten precisely equal piles of meat on the slick stone floor of the creek.  Each pile had exactly the same amount of each kind of meat. Many cuts I failed to recognize from the grocery store aisles of the States but upon inquisition I learned that I was looking at organ meat of all different sorts.

Liver, stomach lining, and intestines were all included in our hena-omby grab bag.  Also mixed in amongst the dregs were delicious dark red filets that would have fetched a high price if sold to a Chicago steak house.

No sooner was the meat divided than it was taken, with each family receiving their share and returning home triumphantly.  I carried a 5-gallon bucket overflowing with still-warm beef back for my family and we took our share of the cow’s liver and fried it up for lunch. Together with rice, one tenth of the liver fed 7 people.

Somondraram-binanto; raha mbola ho hita.  I’ll believe it when I see it.

Fety Pirenena Malagasy
I had prepared myself for the day of Malagasy Independence based on the stories that I had heard.  It was to be an exhausting day of complete cultural immersion given the fact that most promised to be very drunk and more talkative than normal.  I wasn’t worried about the language barrier because “Drunk” is a universally understood dialect. The trick is just to laugh when they laugh and pretend to agree with anything they say regardless of if you can understand them or not. The only thing that really made me nervous was that I had to give another kabary.  Fortunately, this time I was much more relaxed than on my first day.

In the spirit of our own Independence Day, I’ve included a copy of my speech (with a translation).  While I’m not a sentimentalist, I am very proud to represent the virtues of independence and peace over here in Madagascar.

Andriamatoa Chef Fokantany.  Andriamatoa Soja be.  Anareo rey aman dreny Ankazambo.  Faly miarahaba are zaho.
Respected Sir Chef Fokantany.  Respected Sirs Village Elders.  All you village leaders of Ankazambo.  I am happy to greet you all.

Miala tsiny izikoa mandray fivolanana satria tsy zoky zaho fo zandry. Avake, tsindriky mahay mivolana tsara satria mbola mianatra teny Tsimihety.
I apologize if I take the floor because I am not the elder but the younger.  And, I’m still not very skilled at speaking well because I’m still learning the Tsimihety dialect.

Sambatra zaho satria mipatreka aketo Ankazambo Atsimo.  Are tena mahay mandry olono avake zaho tena tamana eto.  Dikan’ny zany, afara roa tano tsy ti-hody zaho!
I am blessed because I live in Ankazambo Atsimo.  You have all been incredibly hospitable and I am very at home here.  This means that after two years I won’t want to go home!

Misoatra betsaka satria anareo manasa zaho mankalaza Fety Pirenena Malagasy miaraka are jiaby.  Amerikan zaho, na zany aza; niany zaho mankalaza mitovytovy ny vahoaka Malagasy.  Niany atsika mankalaza independence.  Niany atsika mankalaza paix. Niany atsika mankalaza fahaleovantena.  Tena ravoravo zaho miaraka mifaly amin’areo satria trandraka an-tany mena, volon-tany arahiny.
Thank you very much because you invited me to celebrate Malagasy Independence Day together with you all.  I am an American, regardless of that; today I celebrate as if I was one of the Malagasy people. Today we celebrate independence.  Today we celebrate peace.  Today we celebrate freedom.  I am very happy to share in your happiness because when the hedgehog is on the red ground, his hair will become red as well.

Zaho misolo tena ny vahoaka Amerikan fa miarahaba anareo: Tratra ny Fety Pirenena Malagasy!  Na, amin’ny Anglis: On behalf of the American People, I say to you today: Happy Independence Day!”

I say to you on behalf of the American people: Happy Independence Day or in English: “On behalf of the American People, I say to you today: Happy Independence Day!”

My speech was very well received and I had to pause four times for enthusiastic applause.  I think that a lot of the enthusiasm may have just been because the people of Ankazambo have been listening to the same men give the same speeches for their entire life and seeing someone mix things up was a nice novelty. Regardless, I think that they appreciated my efforts.

Following a slew of other speeches was dancing.  Each fikambanana (organization) in Ankazambo puts on a choreographed dance to a circle of spectators constituting everyone in Ankazambo and the surrounding
area.  To raise money for their organizations, they also put out a collection jar and it’s customary for everyone to donate between 200-500 ariary to each group, regardless of how good their dances are. Some of the dances were very well rehearsed while others were very hard to watch.  Every group received a good deal of money regardless of if they received any applause.

After lunch the dancing kicked off again but, this time, it was initiated by a late afternoon toaka circle.  The village leaders and myself sat on long wooden benches facing each other and passed around five liter buckets of alcohol, sharing the same cup.  Toaka is Malagasy moonshine made from sugar cane and fermented fruit.   There are two kinds in the Sofia region.  ‘Madio’ (meaning ‘clean’) is as clear as water, but, if made correctly, has the sour smell of summer garbage.  ‘Betsa’ looks like orange juice but with the smell of rotting oranges and the intoxicating effects of grain alcohol.  From what I understand, madio has an alcoholic content of over 70% while betsa is closer to 50%.

Needless to say, the drinking culture here is feast or famine.  Either you drink to get very drunk or you don’t drink at all.  The Adventists here have a religious objection to alcohol (as well as cigarettes and coffee) but seem remarkably tolerant of their neighbors’ decision to get more than a little bit tipsy.  I practiced restraint and had one small cup of betsa to show respect to both parties.

Then, there was lots and lots of dancing.  Tsimihety dancing is more like walking to the rhythm of the music in a circular conga line.  The old, the young, the drunk and the sober all do it because it doesn’t require too much skill and it feels good to be moving to the music, kicking up a great deal of fine red dust in our wake.  Of course, some of the younger women also practice less traditional dances, gyrating and shaking their hips rapidly, almost violently.

That night there was a ball (or disco).  The villagers fenced off an area right in the middle of the town amongst the mud and thatched-roof houses, rented a massive speaker system, and danced the night away. Literally.  Here, dances last the entire night, until sunrise. Despite being completely haggard in the morning from drinking and dancing the whole night, most don’t sleep the next day and opt instead to keep drinking.  It’s exhausting and even painful at times to watch.

Things carried on much like this for a week.  Needless to say, some of my neighbors really know how to party.

Somondraram-binanto; raha mbola ho hita.  I’ll believe it when I see it.

Tsimihety funeral
Shortly after the party died down, I received some sad news.  On Sunday, we got word that one of our neighbors in the village of Antanambasoa had passed away.  He was 49.  When I inquired as to the cause of death, everyone, even my closest friends, declined to talk about it.  I was invited to the funeral (along with everyone else from my commune of Morafeno) and I went in order to show my support for the small community of Antanambasoa even though neither I, nor anyone whom I went with, knew the deceased.  I also went for the reason that I do just about everything at site—to experience something that I’ve never seen before.  The funeral was definitely an experience that I’ll never forget.

The attitude at this particular funeral was neither somber nor joyous and I’m told that this is the case every time an adult dies because the family does not join in the funeral procession, just friends.  The day after the body is buried the family goes to pay their respects.

From what I saw, it appears that Tsimihety funerals are both very similar and very different to those in the USA.  First, villagers walk from all over the area to gather at the home of the deceased.  I crammed with about 40 other people into the small 20 by 20 foot home of the deceased with about 300 others waiting outside.  Also in the home is the deceased.  The smell of the body is not overly rancid; partly because it is covered up by the smell of 40 other sweating villagers packed into a mud home.  During the long wait, we all sweat profusely and became quite smelly.

We all donated a small amount of ariary to the family of the man we were about to bury and waited in the hot, confined room with his body for about 3 hours.  When everyone had finally arrived we prepared the procession.  A hearse was constructed out of bamboo reeds and the shrouded body was placed on top.  Next, a cow (yes another one) was butchered and the head was placed on a pike to lead the procession into the mountains.

A group of close to 400 villagers followed the cow’s head and the body into the surrounding mountains walking faster than I have ever walked in this country.  I’m told that this is because the body is heavy and those in the back rapidly need to run up and replace the pallbearers who become tired after only a few meters on the rugged path.

The gorgeous, rocky mountains with thick flora and shallow rushing streams comprise the burial site.  We hiked for close to an hour before we reached the spot that had previously been prepared for burial: the base of a large boulder with the soil underneath dug out four feet deep.  The village leaders that have made the trip help to lay the man down and someone else then begins to break up the hearse into small pieces to be buried with the body because it’s fady (taboo) to bring back anything that the dead have touched.

Then, everyone goes off to find one rock and places it on top of the grave site in order to completely cover the deceased.  A small prayer is said after the burial and we return home.

Upon returning to the village of Antanambasoa we feasted on the cow of the man we had just buried in the same home that had just hosted the body.  In fact, I sat in the very spot that he had laid which made it slightly difficult to enjoy the mountains of meat and rice that had been placed before me.

After feasting, the mayor reads off the names and amounts of money that everyone donated to the man’s family and says a small speech.  Then after nearly an entire day of waiting, walking, burying and feasting, I returned home.

To my surprise, my landlady would not allow me to enter her home in the same clothes that I wore to the funeral.  Instead, she explained to me that it was fady (taboo) to wear anything that had been in close contact with the dead into ones home so she washed my clothes that day with scalding water and made me take my first hot shower since arriving in Ankazambo.

Somondraram-binanto; raha mbola ho hita.  I’ll believe it when I see it.

Thanks for reading.  I really do appreciate everyone’s kind words and I thank you sincerely for being patient with me and my lack of communication at times.  Also, I apologize if these posts are getting a little bit longer and more sporadic.

Finally, I wanted to let you all know that I love it here in Madagascar and am truly happy as a Peace Corps volunteer.  I’ve seen and done so much already and my only hope is that I can give half as much to my village as they’ve given me.  My work is proceeding well and we’ve begun construction on a new workshop for my counterpart blacksmith organization, Loharanon-Karena.

I miss you all very much and can’t wait to hear about all of the great things you’re doing back in the US.

Your friend,
Dan

In that spirit, I’ve compiled a few things that comprise a typical day for me.  I should note that I debated quite a bit about whether or not to write this post at all at the risk of sounding self-righteous, trying to prove to the world how tough I have it.  This is not my intention at all.  This small collection of experiences is not meant to complain or brag.  On the contrary, it’s meant to show how quickly one adapts to a new environment when fully immersed in another culture.

Regardless of the minor annoyances that come with living in Ankazambo, I haven’t once wished that I were back in the land of electricity, running water and internet. This is a testament to how much I love living amongst my new neighbors and working with my counterparts (the blacksmiths and beekeepers).  The annoyances are many but, just like everything around here, I am already used to it or, in Tsimihety, “Efa zatra zaho.”

Home Life (An-trano):                                                                                                                                Everyone in Ankazambo, myself included, cleans his or her house two to three times per day and this is not because we’re particularly tidy. It’s out of necessity. Ankazambo lies in the shadow of semi-arid mountains and, during the dry season, winds coming down those mountains pick up astounding speed and dirt, perpetually covering everyone and everything in one’s house in a thin layer of red dust, even when doors and windows are securely closed.  I’m assuming that in two years anything white that I own will match the bright red soil of Madagascar.

Mold also poses a problem.  When it does rain, it comes down in sheets causing my concrete floor to become very moist.  Needless to say, keeping things up off of the ground is an endless chore.  Claritin comes in very handy on rainy days. Again, while these problems annoyed me for the first few weeks, I don’t even think about them anymore.  Living in a new place, completely immersed in a different lifestyle rapidly changes your perspective on things.  While I’d be lucky if I cleaned my home once every three months in the states, in my new home, I don’t think twice about sweeping, dusting and de-molding every three hours or so.

Cleaning regularly also helps with the bugs.  One summer, when I was a kid, my family had, what I considered at the time, to be a ‘unbearable ant problem.’  I vividly remember when my family instituted a ‘scorched earth’ policy against a colony of a few hundred tiny ants. We tried literally every trick in the book (sprays, traps, repellants, Tupperware, etc.)  I think that for a time we even used cayenne pepper. In spite of our earnest effort, the problem persisted and we were all incredibly demoralized that fateful summer that nature conquered man.

Then I came to Madagascar.  Here, it took me all of two days to surrender to the will of a colony of little red ants that resides in the packed mud and brick walls of my kitchen.  As I write, a long line of the industrious little guys is systematically picking apart my futile efforts to protect my food.  They have infested my flour, honey, and assorted fruit.  For the first week it drove me crazy to think that they had won but then I started thinking about it not as a problem but simply a reality of life here.  Life in the little village is all about compromise with the elements rather than an attempt to subdue them.  Yes, ants cover my entire kitchen and all of my food but that’s fine with me, I can always brush them off.  Here, you can either go crazy trying to control the elements or compromise.

The first night in my new home, a small cockroach, about the size of my big toe, ran across my foot and I was furious.  Before going to bed, I made a protective bubble out of my mosquito net, making sure to securely tuck the edges of every inch of the thick mesh fabric underneath my mattress, preventing the incursion of the dreaded cockroach.  It amuses me how upset I was on that first night because now I could care less when I see cockroaches the length of my palm.  I find killing them to be good sport and I started to keep a tally.  To this day, the only thing decorating my bedroom walls is a small patch of my handwriting that reads: “CRK” (Cockroach Kills) with 15 tallies after it scratched in with a variety of different pens.  The only reason that there are so few is because I quit keeping score after a few weeks.  They’re winning the war but I take pleasure in knowing that I don’t let them bother me anymore.  I’ve become very used to their presence and, like the other minor annoyances, it simply doesn’t bother me.

Rats, on the other hand, are nuisances that do bother me.  I spent several hours of the last two nights, armed only with a hiking boot and three candles, flushing out and eventually killing a rat the size of my foot.  The amount of pride that I felt as I stood over the corpse of my slain nemesis was frightening.

Last night, I awoke when a small lizard crawled across my face. Thinking that this was another rat, I shot out of bed, grabbed my boot and prepared to do battle once again.  When I discovered that it was only a lizard, my heart melted and I set him free simply because he was a different species than my recently departed enemy.  This kind of tenderness that I’ve begun to show towards pests the size of my hand can only mean one of two things.  Either I’m slowly losing my mind, or maybe exterminating a monster rat that lives in your walls changes your perspective on things.  Suddenly, other pests don’t seem so bad.

Mealtime: Mahavoky (it makes you full)
In my last job before leaving for Madagascar, I worked as a server in one of Chicago’s finest restaurants.  Despite spending the previous four years in college muddling my pallet with ramen noodles, fast food and cheap beer, several months in the service industry made me feel as though I was starting to develop a more refined and sophisticated taste.  Then I came to Madagascar: the “White Rice Capital of the World.”  Here the biggest complement you can give a cook is, “Mahavoky!” (It makes you full). I eat three meals a day with my landlords.

Their persistent hospitality is something that I’m very grateful for because it’s really helped my immersion in this community and improved my language skills.  I also don’t love to cook.  That said eating with a Tsimihety family is astoundingly different than eating with one’s own family in the United States or even a family from the Malagasy highlands.  For instance, no one says please, thank you or excuse me. Ever.  Also, no one ever complements (or complains about) the food, however, everyone eats so rapidly it would seem as though the their dishes have a hole in the bottom.  Discarded fish and chicken bones are discarded all over the table and it’s perfectly acceptable to take food off of another’s plate if you really want it.  I’ve become so used to Tsimihety dinner etiquette that I worry that I’ll never be invited to dinner in the USA again.

Here you are also intimately aware of where your food comes from.  I often help my landlords out by biking the 6km into town to buy fresh fish or the occasional live chicken.  When I return, the fish are promptly gutted, fried and eaten whole.  It’s considered wasteful not to eat the heads or small ones.  On the rare times that we’re lucky enough to have chicken for dinner we all help in killing, plucking and boiling nearly the entire thing in a large pot.  Food here is the freshest I’ve ever eaten.  For instance, if I return with a chicken at 3PM, it’s plucked and stunned head is looking up at me from my stew by 6.

Finally, to the meal’s main attraction: rice.  I love rice.  I crave it in the same way that I used to look forward to eating a 16 oz. filet mignon.  I’ve become quite skilled at distinguishing subtle differences in grain quality and preparation.  After a month, I honestly don’t know how I’ll go back to eating rice one time per week, like I used to.  A meal without good rice isn’t a meal at all; it’s a side dish.

Social Interactions:
The people of my community put great weight in the formality of greetings.  While things are much more lax in the ‘big city’ of Befandriana, here in Ankazambo, we respect the greeting.  For instance, everyone you pass on the road must be greeted with either: “Salama tompoko!” (Hello sir) or “Akory e!” (Hi!).  The greeting is then repeated and followed by: “Mbala tsara” (Still good). You can say the more casual: “Karakory” to your close friends but it’s considered incredibly rude to say this to a “remandreny” (elder).

“Mamangys” (visits) are also an important part of Tsimihety culture. People come to your home to show respect and concern for your well-being (for example, if you’re the new guy in town).  This is an instance where formality is most important.  The visitor shouts “Odi” (knock knock) and the host responds “Mandrosoa” (come in).  The host is expected to invite everyone into his or her home regardless of if he wants to or not.  Following the invitation, the visitor walks in with his or her head down and finds a seat.  He or she says nothing to the host before finding a seat.  It’s only after sitting that the visitor makes eye contact with the host and says “Salama tompoko!” The host repeats the greeting and then MUST say “kabary?” (speech) to which the reply is ALWAYS “Ehe, tsy kabary!” (No, no speech).  It is only after this very formal greeting process that a conversation can take place. After the matter at hand is resolved, there’s typically 1-30 minutes of awkward silence (the time typically increases with the age of the visitor).  At first I thought that the silence was just a result of my lack of language fluency but, as it turns out, this silence is prevalent throughout households in Ankazambo.  When the visitor finally decides to leave, it is customary to give a small gift to show your appreciation (usually fruit or rice but sometimes bread if the person is very old and well-respected).

This culture of gift giving was the one thing that took me a long time to get used to.  In American culture, gifts are revered and sharing is uncommon but in Tsimihety culture, gifts are commonplace and sharing is expected.  After receiving a gift, it’s uncommon to say thank you, regardless of the size or importance.  You are simply expected to come up with a similar gift the next time you meet.

Personal hygiene:
This is the area that took me the least amount of time to get used to. Despite the nearly constant heat, showers here are taken once, maybe twice per week.  Most bathe in the Ankazambo River where as I have my own shack with a bucket because I’m rich.  Taking cold showers on the hot days is another thing that I greatly look forward to.  As a result of sparse bathing, I’m sure that we all smell pretty bad by American standards but here I don’t even notice my own stench and the smell of those around me is nearly undetectable (unless they’re very drunk or sitting on top of me in a taxi-brousse). One place that the people of Ankazambo devote a significant amount of cleaning effort is to their feet.  Everyone wears sandals all of the time and feet can get pretty grimy after a week as a result of being constantly bombarded with fine red dust.  Last week my landlord’s sons washed their feet for nearly a half an hour, which I still find astounding.

One time, before going to the nearby village of Sabotsybe to observe the blacksmiths sell knives at the zebu market, my landlady was insistent that I wash my feet because there would be girls in Sabotsybe.  I laughed and half-heartedly splashed some water and soap on my feet but she wasn’t satisfied.  Before I knew what was happening, she proceeded to scrub both of my feet (tops, bottoms and toes) mercilessly with a stiff-bristled brush until they were raw.  So there I was: a 23 year-old white man having my feet washed by my adoptive Malagasy mother right in the middle of Ankazambo.  I tried to stop her more than once but she was incredibly insistent that she was the best foot washer around.  I have to admit I don’t think that my feet have ever been that clean in my life.

These kinds of normal things happen to me on a daily basis.  To the foreign observer, each event is stranger than the previous; however, they happen so frequently in Ankazambo that I hardly notice and I struggle to remember what would have been strange to me when I was still living in the States.  This must mean that I am used to it.

Efa zatra zaho.

Thanks for reading.  I really do appreciate everyone’s kind words and I thank you sincerely for being patient with me and my lack of communication at times.  Also, I apologize if these posts are getting a little bit longer and more sporadic.

Finally, I wanted to let you all know that I love it here in Madagascar and am truly happy as a Peace Corps volunteer.  I’ve seen and done so much already and my only hope is that I can give half as much to my village as they’ve given me.  My work is proceeding well and we’ve begun construction on a new workshop for my counterpart blacksmith organization, Loharanon-Karena.

I miss you all very much and can’t wait to hear about all of the great things you’re doing back in the US.

Your friend,
Dan

The above phrase is a common Tsimihety proverb (or ohabolana). The rough translation is, “when the hedgehog is on the red ground; his hair will become red.”—the Tsimihety equivalent of “When in Rome…” It’s also one of my favorite proverbs because it properly encapsulates my first month here in Ankazambo. I’ve been living much in the same way as my neighbors in an effort to be as integrated as possible or to be like the red hedgehog (trandraka mena), so to speak. I’ve found myself in an incredibly fortunate situation with kind, welcoming neighbors and diligent coworkers that are eager to learn and improve their businesses. I’m learning more about Tsimihety culture (and as a result my own culture) than I could have every imagined. After just a month here I’ve already come to love living in a small village where everyone calls me by name and goes out of their way to make me feel at home (tamana).

Being like the ‘trandraka mena’ often means saying yes to so many things that every day ends in physical and mental exhaustion. These are things that the Tsimihety do every day but, to me, are new experiences. Most of the things that I do around here are unglamorous. For instance, I join my landlords in the fields to help harvest rice, go on long walks with friends or help my blacksmith friends to make axe heads. My landlords insist that I eat every meal with them and their large family. My landlady in particular was very insistent about this fact and considers me to be one of her kids. She washes my clothes, cooks my food and even tries to clean my home, which I’ve been successful thus far in thwarting.

I wake up early and go to bed early. I use my computer once a week and only to write this blog. I’ve abstained from using my solar charger or other electronic gadgets and haven’t missed running water
or electricity one bit (probably because my landlords spoil me so much). I don’t drink at site because most of my neighbors are Adventists and don’t particularly care for alcohol. My best buddies are rice farmers, beekeepers and blacksmiths and they visit every night to gossip or talk about the United States.

Life moves at a much slower pace around here and there are few distractions besides conversation, which has been a blessing because people are always eager to talk about where I come from. Despite
constantly discussing the United States, at this point, I don’t miss the comforts of home at all because there are too many new experiences around here to even think about the comforts that I left behind.

Here are some of the highlights from the first month:

Food:
I eat every meal with my landlords. Typically I’ll let them use my propane stove or buy the side dish in exchange for a hot meal. The Malagasy eat rice three times per day and lots of it (two to three
dishes of rice each meal). The side dish is often beans, boiled greens or fried fish. My landlady is a pretty good cook and likes making snacks like fried bananas and rice bread. They use a lot of oil in their side dishes and they’re not always nutritionally complete but I’ve made a special point to supplement meals with healthy snacks. I eat enormous quantities of bananas and oranges and I’m rarely, if ever, hungry.

My work:
The only thing that I love more than my village is my work. Things are proceeding well with the blacksmiths, my primary project. I’m working every day to learn everything I can with regards to the specifics of their business and become integrated within their ranks. They work from sunrise to sunset nearly every day to produce incredibly high quality products, primarily agricultural tools such as knives,
machetes, sickles and axes. They make everything by hand using only anvils, hammers and charcoal ovens fueled by hand cranks. Watching a raw piece of metal be transformed into a useful tool is really a cool sight and the amount of knives they crank out on a daily basis is astounding. I spend most of my days hanging out with the blacksmiths and helping in the limited way that I can: turning the hand crank to fuel the fire. While hardworking, the blacksmith organization is disorganized and needs help with pricing, marketing, quality control and accessing new markets outside of the Befandriana area. The first step that the president and I have decided to take is to work towards consolidation of the informal group into a formal, nationally-recognized company after which time we can move towards better marketing and distribution.

Bee-keeping:
Aside from the blacksmiths, I’m also looking to work together with Ankazambo’s large number of beekeepers to help to help restructure their organization, explore new markets and improve marketing
techniques. Knowing absolutely nothing about the art of beekeeping I asked my landlord, Vice President of a local beekeepers’ organization, to tag along while they collected honey. I figured that I’d sit and
observe but my counterparts had different plans: my job was to collect the honey, presumably as a sort of beekeepers hazing ritual. For the first few hives I was in charge of smoking out the bees but after I
got comfortable I was made to remove the honeycomb. It’s important to note at this point that Malagasy beekeepers don’t invest much of their profit in protective equipment: no mask, no suit, no gloves, and just a little smoke to keep the angry bees at bay. The feeling of bees covering your entire body is a little disconcerting and distracting while you’re trying to do such a delicate task but, thankfully, I was lucky enough to only be stung three times, once on the back of the head and twice on the hand. The bad news is, this time, our efforts were in vain. The honey yielded by the bees was ‘mafaiky’ (bitter) this month due to the cassava flower that’s currently in bloom. That didn’t stop my coworkers from each eating pounds of honeycomb shortly after gathered. I believe that they arbitrarily decided that it was too bitter to sell so that they could eat it. Needless to say, this particular group needs quite a bit of work in order to transform their organization into a profitable, professional business.

Hiking in the Rice Fields:
Everyone in my village owns a rice field, even the blacksmiths. I love mindless manual labor so I often offer to go out and help with the harvest. Harvesting rice is possibly the hardest job I’ve done thus far. Thankfully, the harvest is done for this year. You stand in mud up to your knees and bend at the waist all day in the hot sun gathering and cutting bushel after bushel of rice. There’s also hiking through rice fields that doesn’t involve work. My best buddy here in Ankazambo is the president of the blacksmiths’
organization. Every week or so, when we finish the week’s work, we go on long hikes through the rice paddies, wade through dozens of streams, cross the green rolling hills of Ankazambo in the shadow of
the craggy, astoundingly-steep mountain “Ampotsitrondroia” (translation: “The Mountain That You Don’t Point At”). The hikes last about three or four hours but are considered short strolls by Tsimihety standards. About half of the walking is through flooded rice paddies or streams so no one wears shoes. Walking in the thick mud and water of a rice paddy requires a significant amount of practice and I’ve fallen into the water more than once. The destination is usually a shaded stream on one of our friend’s
property where there are banana, papaya and orange trees, sugar cane fields and a beehive that always yields sweet honey.

Hair braiding:
I have yet to get a haircut since arriving in Madagascar and I don’t plan on doing so for two years. My landlords are absolutely obsessed by my volo-lava (long hair) and, the other day while I was studying at
my desk, my landlady walked into my home and casually began braiding my hair without saying anything. A favorite hobby amongst Tsimihety women is to braid each other’s hair all day; however, the men all have very short hair. Therefore, they think that it’s fun and funny to braid boys’ hair. When she finished, I had a head full of greasy cornrows. Since I haven’t shaved since arriving at site, I looked
kind of like Axel Rose in his post-Guns and Roses spiral of self-destruction.

Thursdays:
On Thursdays in Ankazambo it’s considered ‘fady’ or taboo to work in the fields; therefore, the ‘remandreny’, or village elders, spend the entire day visiting different members of the community. This means that Thursdays are the days that I work the hardest. Literally from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed, I’m entertaining a seemingly endless stream of visitors. It’s exhausting but has done
wonders for my language abilities. Conversations usually center on the differences between Chicago and Ankazambo. Nearly every Thursday we talk at length about how Illinois has snow, corn and skyscrapers.
They still don’t believe me when I say that we eat rice only sparingly and that there are no banana trees in Chicago.

Radio interview:
My counterpart NGO hosts a radio program once per week to promote its services and the small businesses with which it works. There’s one radio station in the Befandriana area. My counterpart NGO insisted that I give an interview in order to introduce myself to the people of Befandriana and the surrounding areas. Given my history of shaky kabarys I was terrified. Instead of speaking to a room full of a few hundred, I was expected to address the thousands that live in all of the surrounding villages that receive 101.3 FM. Everyone owns a radio and listens to it every day, all day. Luckily, this time, I had ample time to prepare for the prerecorded interview and I’m happy to say that it went very well. My
pronunciation was probably still pretty rough but people from Ankazambo have been approaching me everyday to tell me how much they liked it, probably simply because I threw in my favorite proverb at
the end.

Trandraka an-tany mena; volon-tany arahiny