Preparations

I've scheduled my appointment to get the yellow fever vaccine (next Thursday) so that I can have the medical hold taken off of my PC account. That's supposed to be done 4 weeks before departing the US so that'll easily be within that time frame.

For all you other Madagascar folk who will be reporting for staging next month, we're at 41 days (!) till we go to wherever our staging site is. Anyone received that info yet?

It's been interesting letting people know that I'm leaving and where I'm going. The questions people ask are amusing. Is Madagascar like the movie they made for kids with lions and penguins and zebras and stuff? Everyone speaks English there, right? So where exactly on the West Coast of Africa is Madagascar? Why are they MAD AT NASCAR?! (being from North Carolina, that's my personal favorite)

Though I've answered those questions a thousand times, I've gotten good at explaining the answers without sounding like I've answered them a hundred times. One of the questions that I've had a more difficult time answering is the "What EXACTLY will you be doing for 2 years?".  A simple "I don't EXACTLY know" doesn't satisfy people's curiosity about my service. But my having to explain to other people that I don't know the specifics has helped me embrace the idea that I MYSELF don't even know. It tends to go something like this: I'm in the environmental program as an "Agriculture and Forestry Extension Advisor" which means I can teach about conservation, help to maybe develop ecotourism, work with farmers in the rice fields (I know nothing about growing rice but I'm willing to learn). I usually end the explanation with some form of "I'll letcha know in 2 years what EXACTLY I did". To me though, as the PC and other volunteers on PC Journals have said, it's useless to have some kind of grandiose idea of what you're going to do in service. It seems that the first 8 months or so are used more as cultural integration and  for building relationships and trust with one's community, rather than diving headfirst into a million different projects. One of the things I constantly remind myself of is that this is not the Environment Corps, the Agriculture Corps, the Educations Corps, the Development Corps, or even the Health Corps. Yes, all of those things fall under the Peace Corps, but I think they're more of a means to an end. It's the "Peace" Corps for a reason. Not necessarily the peace we think of when we would like people to stop blowing each other to hell around the world (Peace Corps isn't really in countries prone to daily warfare). But the peace (call it respect, understanding, love)  that develops between someone and another person or group of people who are so VERY different. THAT is one thing I can tell people I want to EXACTLY try to experience while in Madagascar.

I don't know who all's flipping through these Madagascar blogs. But if you're currently serving in Madagascar with PC or you're an RPCV from there, feel free to throw me some words of wisdom from your experiences. I'd love to hear from you and to learn as much as I can before I leave.

Madagascar: "Is that some kind of hybrid vehicle?"