A Few Moments in My Life

         I awoke one night around 1:30am. Not sure if I was truly awake or not, I heard singing in my small Malagasy village. This doesn't happen on a regular occurrence. In fact, this was the first time I had ever woken up in the middle of the night to hear much of anything going on in my town. People close their houses when it gets dark and are all asleep by around 9:30pm because there is no electricity for lights and the few folks who have generators only run them on special occasions. Thus, I was perplexed as to why a group of people would be awake in the dead of night and singing as if it were a Sunday worship service. I sat up in my bed and wondered how to address the situation. Because, obviously, I had to do something with such a strange event happening. I remembered the "sleep-together" that had happened several months ago when a friend of mine's 2 year old daughter had died and many folks from the community went to his family's house and spent time with them, ate with them, drank (a lot) with them, and played cards and dominoes with them through the night. I feared that something similar may be happening in my community again. So, I donned my blue jeans, UNC-Asheville t-shirt, flipflops, and a hoodie. I put my headlamp on and left my house to investigate the late night chorus. When I reached the main road, only about 20 yards from my house, I encountered one of the store owners in my town and asked him what the singing was all about. "Misy faty," he said. Someone is dead. "Iza?", I asked him. He told me that Dada Gil had died. Gilbert, better known as Dada Gil, was not old by American standards. Not quite 60, was most people's guess. I had played dominoes with him many times and shared rum with him from time to time. He struck me as a classy man; he always wore a white and blue striped sports coat that reminded me of the train engineer overalls I used to wear when I was a kid. A Ben Hogan style cap was always graced the top of his head. He had cloudy eyes, which I guess made him seem older than he actually was; they made him seem wiser too. He had been sick with something for weeks, I don't know what. After returning from getting medicine in Moramanga earlier that day, he found himself unable to breath and died early in the evening. As per Malagasy tradition, the whole community would come to his house to attend the wake (I guess we would call it) throughout the night, where the women of the community would be drinking taoka gasy and singing hymns; and the men would be drinking taoka gasy and playing cards and dominoes, and Dada Gil would be lying in his bed with a sheet over his body, and candles around his head. This was the second "sleep together" I had attended, and I don't I'll ever get used to them. They're so weird, cool, sad, depressing, fun, and interesting. You never really know what to feel.

        I ate a tenrec the other day. Watch the BBC series on Madagascar and you'll see a nice little segment about them. They're kinda of like hedgehogs with more color. I went out to weed the rice fields that I and my friend, Tahiry, are currently working on. We should be harvesting around the end of April/early May. When we got to the path that leads to our fields, I noticed that there was a dead tenrec lying in the trail. Tahiry asked me, "Efa nihinana trandraka ve ianao?". I answered him, "No, I've never eaten tenrec before, nor have I ever seen one". He told me it was "really good"! I asked him how long he thought this one had been dead. "Vao maty tamin'ny maraina izy," he suggested. Considering that it had just been killed by who-knows-what during the morning, he proposed that we have it for lunch. Why not, right? So we did the work in the fields we had come to do, and when we had finished, picked up the dead tenrec to be cooked for laoka anto'andro, "that which you eat with rice during the middle of the day". It smelled ok. It tasted ok. But the tenrec is pretty much the equivalent of the North American possum. Kind of strange to think about eating such an animal. After finishing it, I was glad to have tried it and could now say that I'd eaten one. It had a very gamey taste to it. However, about an hour later, my burps began to have strange taste to them. Have you ever smelled a dead skunk that's been hit on a highway? That's what my belches tasted like. So, for future advice for those who may be tempted to eat a tenrec, be advised: it may taste OK doing down, but the "Sonic the Hedgehog" of Madagascar makes your burps taste like roadkill. Enjoy.

         I had a meeting with one of my partner organizations in Moramanga earlier this week. The secretary of the association, Mr. Franklin, had invited me attend the meeting and had asked if I would bring a certain picture of me and him that had been taken at a previous meeting in the coastal city of Tamatave. In the picture, we posed shaking hands. Always happy to attend official meetings, I came to Moramanga on Tuesday, wondering what the content of the meeting was going to be. The meeting began and I quickly realized that I had been duped. Conservation International had initiated a project about a year ago doing work with pig raising and ginger growing. However, my community's branch of this organization was not a part of this project, making my attendance of the meeting irrelevant. The project doesn't affect my town or my work. Having been here for a year, I only laughed after realizing that my attendance at the meeting was only so that Mr. Franklin could get the picture from me and get it developed. This is the indirectness of the Malagasy culture. Yeah, I would have preferred him to just ask me if we could get the picture developed in Moramanga sometime for him, but I wasn't angry or perturbed that he'd gone the round-about way of getting it. It just made me laugh.

     I've taken up playing dominoes with the local men in my town. Women don't play. I didn't make the rules or the cultural norms, sorry. But I find playing dominoes is another way to further integrate into my community. I've learned a lot of new, very applicable words (and a few dirty ones), my ability to count in French has gotten much better (though I tend to count in English in my head then announce the sum in French), and the local men have come to see me more as just one the guys in town, not just the "vazaha", though I definitely am still that. The dominoes table is set up in a little shelter made of wood and palm leaf along the highway next to one of the busier stores in town. Previously, this building was use to keep sacks of charcoal out of the rain. The table itself is a flat sheet of old plastic-like material, set on an old tire. The seats are logs and stones. The dominoes themselves are perennially dirty as they fall off the table quite often when the Malagasy slam the pieces down on the not-so-sturdy-table, an action meant to display the superiority of the domino they are playing to those that the other players have in their hands. Their hands are also often very dirty as well, most of them being charcoal makers. But, such is the way of it. We put 200 Ariary on each game, if you win you make 400 Ariary. 200 Ariary is the approximate equivalent of 10 cents in the United States. 10 cents can actually get you a quite few things at the local store: 2 cigarettes, 4 small packs of peanuts, 2 cookies, 2 tomatoes, 4 small onions, some cooking oil, a little kerosene for your lamp, or even a double shot of Malagasy moonshine. Making 400 Ariary (about 20 cents) is a nice little pick up at the end of the day for most of the men in my town. I lose a lot. Most of the time, I play, enjoy myself playing a game with the guys of my village, and lose 200 Ariary. Being the guy from who-knows-where across the seas of the world, they aren't expecting me to win. I don't expect myself to win, I've never been much of a dominoes player anyway. But sometimes, I don't lose. And when I don't lose, the guys who are watching are so surprised I get a full round of fist bumps. The money I do make I use to buy cigarettes or a small snack for the guys I beat. But I'm starting to get good, well, better than I was. But it doesn't really matter to me so long as the guys keep letting me play with them and be just another guy in town, killing time and hanging around.

My MOM will be here in Madagascar in two week!!! I can't wait to meet her at the airport in Antananarivo and show her the life I live here. Bring your camera, Mama.

Until next time, I hope everyone enjoys NCAA March Madness. Tennessee's playing today (3/15) to get into the semi's of the SEC tourney. Go VOLS.

Amin'ny manaraka indray e!

James

One Year

First off, some shout outs are indeed in order:

Steve and Carol: Thank you guys so much for the Christmas package! Just when I thought my Christmas was over, I had another package waiting for me at the post office. You guys are great! And I loved the card with dogs on it. Good looking dogs are a rare sight for me these days and you guys sure have an eye for them. Love y'all!

Barbara, Baily, Ninh, Amanda, and Ellen: You guys are hilarious. I open your package and get vomited on by the quantity of Starburst flowing out of it. I particularly liked the list of "first world problems" that I don't have to deal with here (i.e.: iPad vs. Macbook). However, there are NEVER enough outlets in this country!!! Thank you guys so much for sending the love. Pile all your money together and send yourselves over here. Miss you guys.

Holmes Family: Much love to Pat, Jill, Jeb, and Jessie for thinking of me during the holidays! Miss you guys a lot and can't wait to see you when I get back.



        In case you don't remember, I left the USA just over one year ago. I filled out a bunch of paperwork for the application process, said goodbye to family and dear friends, got on a plane, became fast friends with a group of random, kinda weird, and very good hearted fellow PCVs. Then, we all got on a plane bound for an island in the Indian Ocean that about which many Americans ask, "Are there people in Madagascar?". Yes, there are people here. More than 20 million of them. And they are Malagasy people. Just Gasy (GAH-see) for short. And they are amongst the world's most impoverished peoples, both in their lack of income and in the lack of opportunity for improving their lives within the borders of their coasts. But they are also a people full of love as well. Since the day I was welcomed into the home of a random Gasy family during the homestay portion of my training a year ago, to the nightly conversations I have with my Gasy best friend at my site, Tahiry, I have become friends with the Malagasy. Yeah, they're weird. They're ignorant of a lot of things going on in the world ("Oh, you're from the Etazonia? That's close to Brazil and France, gotcha.") But I love em. And my Mama is coming in a little more than 3 weeks!!!! I can't wait to show this country to someone from back home and to see this country again through fresh eyes. It's strange to think that everyone that I have seen in the past year has only been in my life for that amount of time. So come on, Mama, can't wait for you to see this weird, crazy, beautiful, disgusting, fun, boring, loud, stinky, amazing place I live in.

Also, anyone else who wants to come (and can afford it) is always more than welcome to make their across the world and check this place out. Come anytime, we're always open.

Also, NO MORE BIG PACKAGES. Thanks sooooo much to everyone who sent me their love in a box! But please stop sending them. I am well stocked on everything I need and if I ain't got it, I don't need it. You guys are so awesome for sending so much great stuff. It also costs me 7 dollars (14000 Ariary) everytime I pick up a big package at the post office (plus holding fees if it takes me a while to get there). And on a $200/month budget, that can add up. So, again, thank you thank you thank you thank you! Now stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it. Small things are fine, just not the boxes! You guys are great.

Take care everyone.
One year down.
One year to go.
See ya again before we know it.

James

The Law is a Human Institution

            About two months ago, I returned back to my site after a very nice Christmas vacation in Diego-Suarez, the northernmost city in Madagascar. It was great to be back where I was integrated into the Malagasy society where folks are used to seeing me and aren't surprised at the fact of seeing a white person who knows how to speak their language. My best friend at site, Tahiry, came over and caught me up what was going with him. He informed me that this sister's daughter, his niece of 12 years old, had disappeared from her house just before Christmas and had not been heard of since (two weeks at the time). He asked me if he could borrow my bike so that he could go to Moramanga, the closest banking town and where his sister's family lives, and help with the police investigation and help in the search for his niece. Sorry Peace Corps, I know we're not supposed to do it, but I let him borrow my bike for two days. He came back, having had no luck looking for the girl. He and his family had filed all the necessary paper work with the police and had asked around the town for any information they could gather, finding none. The girl's younger sister claimed that she saw her getting into a white car with a bunch of people in it.  I asked Tahiry if this kind of thing happened often in Madagascar. He told me that child disappearances were actually a fairly common experience on the island, mostly from kidnappings. This brought to mind stories of kidnappings in Mexico, where people are held for ransom. When asked why children were being kidnapped in Madagascar (this country being extremely poor, making kidnapping for ransom not a very lucrative practice), Tahiry told me that children are often kidnapped by organ thieves. There are often reports of bodies found, organs missing. A grim outlook for a family with a missing child. Asked what the police would do about the situation, I was told that pictures of the girl would be put up at police stations in the region, with little hope of actually finding the girl. Police stations do not have computer systems as well (still in the typewriter age). Now, the girl has been missing for more than 2 months, without a word or lead as to where she may be and little hope of the law enforcement system being of any help.

About 3 weeks ago, several gentleman from community were released from jail after being accused of cutting areas of eucalyptus forest owned by a woman who lives in Antananarivo. The idea of "innocent until proven guilty" is either loosely enforced or non-existent in Madagascar. The woman who owns the trees simply brought forth the accusation to the Gendarmerie that these certain gentlemen had committed this crime, and they were duly arrested and held in prison for a month and a half without trial. There trial date was finally held and the proper fines (bribes?) were payed to the court officials so that they could be released from jail. No evidence was ever found in favor of the plaintiff.

             There is a scene in the Cohen Brothers' film "O Brother Where Art Thou?", where Everett and his companions are about to be hung by the sheriff and Everett says, "It ain't the law!". The sheriff replies, "The law? The law is a human institution."Brings to mind that earlier in the movie, Tommy Johnson describes his encounter with devil, to whom he had sold his soul, and describes the devil's appearance as being very similar to that of the sheriff. Indeed, the sheriff's character may have indeed been the devil. However, the law is a human institution, free to be influenced by passion, money, power, and malaise.