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Saturday, July 14, 2012

I love Indris

After my last trip to Tamatave for meetings with Conservation International, I returned to my site/bungalow for one night and then headed up to Moramanga again to watch the Euro Cup final with a fellow volunteer. Austin Rios, very sorry about Italy but they need to leave the fast-break offense to the pros: the NC Tar Heels. I then returned back to site and began preparing a 4th of July presentation for my local community. On Wednesday, July 4th, I had it all ready. Posters with interesting facts about the States and some good ole American playing. About 30 minutes after the time I said the presentation would start, about 50 people come walking down the road to my house. 50! That's about 48 more than I expected to show up. It went surprisingly well. Especially since I had learned most of the Malagasy vocabulary for the presentation only during the two days before actually giving it. Though it wasn't so much a presentation but a question and answer session. Mark it down as a small success for PC service.

I finally moved into my house! After living in my touristic bungalow for 2 months where nobody else lives and it's way too calm and quite (lame), I have finally moved into my PC site house and town. Now, in order to get all my stuff up to my house, we had to use what the Malagasy call a "kalesy". There is no English equivalent. A kalesy is cart made of wood, three roller skate wheels (two in the back, one on a swivel axel in the front for steering), some rope for turning the front axel, and a hunk of tire rubber nailed on the back which is stepped on as a break when going downhill. I have moved many times in my life and I consider myself to be fairly well experienced in it. But this was like no other. Pushing this kalesy up Route National 2, with ALL of my stuff packed high upon it, with semi-trucks and taxi-brousses flying by, and three very nice Malagasy guys to help me, we got it the 1.5km uphill to my town and house. My shower area and WC are not done yet, however. This is no problem as there is a WC at the elementary school (a 3 minute walk) and it's been just too cold for me to even want to take a shower. I actually took my first shower last night for the first time in almost two weeks. And I didn't even smell THAT bad. 

My house: a two story structure built of pine wood and a roof made of ravinala (traveler's palm). Probably one of the biggest houses in town. The downstairs consists of what will be a office/meeting room for me and the local NGOs and community organizations to use. The downstairs also has my kitchen, where I use a propane gas stove to cook my food. Though, a very nice lady in town cooks my rice every evening for my dinner (more about Mama Helene later). Upstairs above all of this, is my living/sleeping area and my porch, which overlooks banana trees, bamboo, RN2, and the river. I think I've gotten pretty lucky with my living situation as far as many Peace Corps houses go. I thank the guys that built my house everyday for the great job they did.

Rats: one of the most common problems Peace Corps volunteers deal with. They tend to just be a fact of life for most of us that we just have to accept and get used. There are many things about my service here that I've learned to accept and deal with and just get along with life as it is. But...I. Hate. Rats. In my bungalow, I had a few of them (I killed three with a trap). Moving into my new house, I was so excited to be getting into a place where there would be no rats to keep me up at night and rummage through my stuff and food. Oh, how wrong I was. My first night in my new house, I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of those nasty, disgusting, devilish creatures running around my house. I open my eyes to find one staring right into my face on my bedside table. I scream at it. Not from fear, but just plain anger. He scurries away and leaves. I don't sleep very much the rest of night as I can hear them rustling around my walls and ceiling. The next day, I go to Moramanga and buy some materials to plug up the holes in my house that they were coming in through. This works!...for a few days. They continue to find ways of getting into my house during the night even though I've plugged every visible entry point that I can see. This is one of those things that I can't "just get used to". This is one of those things where "I declare war upon thee, foul rodent!!!". The first stake-out is tonight. If I had a Batman mask, I would wear it.

Since moving into my house, I've also had the opportunity to go out into the Maromizaha Forest (the rainforest that I live adjacent to) and help the local research guides with Indri observation. There are approximately 100 individual Indris in Maromizaha. Of which about 20 (comprising 4 family groupes) have been habituated to human presence, allowing the researchers and I to get VERY close to them for observation (check my Facebook page for great Indri pictures, as well as other photos). Also, here's a link to a video I took of some Indri Vocalizations. I went out twice this week, and I cannot wait to get out there all the time. The Indri are not the only species of lemur in Maromizaha, there are 11 different other kinds: 6 total diurnal, 6 nocturnal. There are also diademed sifakas, which sport an orangey kind of color to the time and are absolutely beautiful (though I'm yet to see them in Maromizaha). There is also a researcher named Jody Weir from Canada doing studies on the Indri and diadamed sifakas and their infants' development. Check out her video blog. She is here at Maromizaha with her husband until September this year and I look to forward to talking to them more about possible collaborative efforts that we can put together.

Today, I sit here in Moramanga again, about to head back to site and go to a party with the Maromizaha guides this afternoon out in the forest where Jody and her husband, Alastaire, are staying.
Much love to everyone and do keep in touch!

James

Monday, July 2, 2012

June

I have a new address (send me stuff)!!!

James Shelton, PCV Peace Corps
BP 73
514 Moramanga
Madagascar

During the trainings with Conservation International (CI) that I attended a couple of weeks ago here in Moramanga, I happened to meet several Sri Lankan gem miners who were staying at the same hotel as me. I was in my room blasting some Bruce Springsteen on my laptop when a knock came on my door. I opened it to find what I thought was a Malagasy person because he looked like one and when I began speaking to him in Malagasy, he responded in Gasy as well that he was looking for a friend of his and that he had found the wrong room. I wound up hanging out with this fellow and several of his friends for about an hour and a half that night, speaking only in Malagasy because we had no other common language. Who would have thought in my life that I would meet Sri Lankans and the only common language we had would be Malagasy? Hooray for the world!

Also, during the same training sessions with CI, we went out in the rain forest to practice what we had learned (what I had taught) about using GPS. What I wasn't told is that we would be doing a "transect", a forest survey where you pick two points in the woods, 2 kilometers apart, and go and map it with the GPS and see what you see. This was quite likely the most difficult 2 kilometers I have ever walked in my life. Not because it was an uphill/downhill sort of trek, but because the rainforest here is some of the thickest, most dense forest I have ever tried to walk through. You fight the vines (many with thorns), the ground and forest is completely soaked, the trail (haha there wasn't one) is extremely slippery. I came out of the rainforest, transect accomplished (which took 4 hours) and I was completely drenched, dehydrated, hands and feet cut to shreds thanks to the vines, and utterly exhausted. And SOMEHOW, all of the Malagasy folks came out totally dry, not thirsty at all (they didn't even bring water out there with them and I had had a liter of it), no scrapes, cuts, or bruises, and remarking that tomorrow we would be doing the same thing again. I did not join them for Round 2 of the Death March.

The following Sunday (June 24th), I went to Andasibe again to join some fellow volunteers to celebrate another volunteer's birthday. Her parent's were in-country on vacation and they took us out to dinner that night to one of the finest restaurants Madagascar has to offer at the Vakona Lodge (thank you again Hoggards!!!, if you ever happen to read this). But earlier that day, we went to the Vakona Lodge's "Lemur Island". Yes, this is one of the most touristy places one could go here in Madagascar, but I didn't care, I wanted to see lemurs up close and personal. And that we did, climbing all over us, jumping from shoulder to shoulder, following the park operators offering of bananas. (There are some cool photos on the Facebook page). One of the most ridiculous things about Lemur Island is you have to take a canoe to cross about a 3 meter stretch of water that's only about 6 inches deep. Peace Corps volunteers would much rather trek through the mud, but we were tourists that day and took the canoe.

Myself and 3 other volunteers left Andasibe for Moramanga on June 25th, the day before Madagascar Independence Day and were joined by two more later that day. There was a parade at night with people carrying candle lanterns and LED glow sticks and laser pointers. Plenty of drunks as well. Kids were throwing firecrackers in the streets, they particularly liked throwing them at semi-trucks. The day of the 26th of June (Independence Day), the town fell quiet. Apparently, we had all missed the memo that the party is on the 25th and the 26th is used as a family/recuperation day. Ah well.

On the 27th, as I was getting ready to head back to site, I get a text from my counterpart saying that he'd forgotten to tell me but there were some more trainings starting the next day in Tamatave and that I should go. An hour later, I was on a brousse heading for the coast...again. I attended another round of meetings with CI (quite similar to the meetings I attended about a month ago). But I can't complain, I like these free trips to the coast.

It's very hard to believe that I've been at site now for almost two months, though I don't actually live in my house yet cause it is STILL not done. Such is the manner of things here on this island. But time seems to fly here, though everything seems to move along quite slowly. I have my in-service training (IST) beginning the 4th of August for a week back in Mantasoa with all of the other volunteers from my stage. When I was installed on May 9th, it felt like 3 months would drag along and that it would take forever to get to IST, but it's 5 weeks away now and I realize that that's going go by very quickly. Can't wait to see everyone again back at the ole training center for some Tranobe time!

If you folks have any specific questions about my goings on here or about Madagascar, feel free to send me an email at jwshelto@gmail.com, and I'll try to answer as honestly and quickly as I can.

Amin'ny manaraka indray!

J