Joyeux Noel!

I am currently on the plane headed back from Paris to Madagascar after my 10-day trip. I’ll keep this short and sweet for those of you who could care less about my cushy vacation in the first world! :) Since leaving Mahatalaky and my last post, I had my Peace Corps Inservice Training. It was great to see a lot of my fellow stage-mates again and reconnect on what we’ve each been up to the past few months. We also actually did some work and training too! It really helped me refocus on my role as a Peace Corps volunteer, and a couple of my friends and I came up with some really cool project ideas were going to try and get off the ground in the next three to six months (I’ll talk about that later!) AND THEN I WENT TO PARIS!

Being this far away from home and my family and friends has strongly reinforced a few things in my life, the first and most important being how much I love my family. I feel so lucky that I was able to go on this trip with my sister and spend Christmas with family. Not to mention the whole Paris thing! Emma met me at the airport in Paris, and we caused a little scene since I was so happy to see her. I definitely felt the whole culture shock thing at first (there’s so many cars! And people! And food choices! And refrigeration!), but it’s pretty easy to fall back into old patterns. I also found that since my two worlds (first and third) are so different, there’s virtually no overlap at all so it’s not very hard to keep them separate and fit in wherever I go. The other bid difference of course was the weather. It was a little strange to be cold!! It’s been months now that I’ve wished for chilly weather and then once I got it I was wishing it were hot again! The grass is always greener, right?

Emma and I went everywhere and did everything that we could in the time that we had in Paris. The Louvre, Versailles & Marie Antoinette’s Estates, Museé d’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, the Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Christmas Markets on Champs Élysées, Cathedral Notre Dame, and that’s not even all! We definitely made the most of our time. I also ate tons of delicious well-stored and refrigerated food and drink, and made up for lost time on eating no dairy for the past three months. I also ate escargot and it was delicious! One of my good friends from college also happened to be traveling in Paris after his study abroad quarter so I got to see him. It was the ultimate jackpot, Christmas in Paris with my sister (family &) and Ben (friend[s])!! I’ve posted some pictures below from our Paris trip.

Eiffel Tower

Versailles

Sacre Coeur

Christmas Eve 

And just like that, I’ve been in Madagascar for six months! I fly back to Fort Dauphin tomorrow (Tuesday December 27) where my Madagascar family will be waiting for me at the airport. I’m excited to get back to Mahatalaky, and I feel lucky that I have people that really want me to come back too! In January I’m going to start work on Nutrition and Sanitation curriculums for kids and adults to teach in the schools and to other interested groups. If all goes according to plan, I want to plant a big community garden as a manifestation of healthy living. I’m also going to start planning and mapping out an idea I came up during Inservice Training with my two friends. We want to develop a Sexual Health and Education curriculum to implement at the school or with the Boy’s and Girl’s Club (which I’m also planning on starting in 2012) with the aim to identify specific young people who are interested in training to become peer health ambassadors. The idea behind the peer health ambassador is to ensure sustainability, so when I leave, other young peers will be able to carry on with the health education I started. I’m really excited about this idea, but it’s a big undertaking so we’re definitely going to spend some time planning and organizing before we get anything off the ground. But I hope that by summer we’ll have the beginnings of a peer health program in the works!

As you can hopefully tell, my New Year’s resolution is to figure out the ‘work’ part of my life as a Peace Corps volunteer, and I am SO excited! I feel so at home in Mahatalaky, and I am ready to really start contributing and being productive and proactive in the community. Remember, I’m always reachable, just call me or send an email! I’m going to try and get on more of a schedule for going into Fort Dauphin so hopefully I’ll be able to start better predicting when I’ll have Internet access. I hope everyone had a happy holiday and enjoy all your New Year celebrations! I think of you all often, and I’m so lucky and blessed to have the love and support from everyone at home, Kisses!

Mitsangasangana, Miresaky, My birthday, Mahatalaky!

And just like that, I’ve wrapped up my first three months of living in Mahatalaky! Since I arrived n Madagascar in July, Peace Corps has been hammering into me the concept of “the first three months.” They’re supposed to be the hardest months, the longest months, and the truest test of whether or not you’ll be able to make it living here in Madagascar. And I made it! I leave tomorrow from Fort Dauphin for Antananarivo, where I have my In-service Training for Peace Corps all next week. Then on December 17 I leave for Paris! I return here to Fort Dauphin on December 27, and will spend New Year’s in Mahatalaky, which I’m very excited about because everyone has told me that Mahatalaky is really “miresaky” aka happening during the New Year’s holiday! Since my last post, I’ve just continued living the mitsangasangana life! So basically waking up, drinking my coffee, chatting with my friends, then doing chores. I spent a few days working on building the new CEG school with the ONG Azafady volunteers, which was a lot of fun. The biggest thing I’ve done is my community Diagnostic Survey, a report that I have to turn in to Peace Corps…

Learning Something New Everyday

I thought that the report was just going to be kind of busy work to make us new volunteers feel more productive, but the more people I interviewed, the more I learned. And what struck me as the most interesting thing was that every kid and teenager I talked to had these big dreams and aspirations, just the same as any kid you would talk to in the US. It took me by surprise to realize that the kids in Mahatalaky are not limited by where they live or what their parents do. They still want to be doctors and lawyers and businessmen. Almost all of the kids said they didn’t want to live in Mahatalaky when they grew up because there weren’t jobs for them there, and that to be successful in the careers they were striving for, they would have to move to Fort Dauphin or Antananarivo. I was even more surprised to learn about the kids who live and study in Mahatalaky but whose parents live in a fokontany far away, so they live alone. There’s three boys in particular who are part of the usual gang of preteens and teenagers that are always around me who I was shocked to find out live together in one room of a hut and cook their own food and wash their own clothes because their families live in a smaller village 20 km away. That kind of commitment to education, moving away from your family and having no adult guidance or support is something that I just don’t think you would ever find in the western world. We go to school because we have to, we go the college because it’s expected, and how else would you get a job. But here in Madagascar, and in Mahatalaky, education is a privilege, and it comes at a price. It tugged at my heartstrings to hear about the big dreams these kids have, and reminded me once again why I am living here. Even more, it makes me so excited to start my new projects when I get back in January.

My birthday

Thanks for all the emails, phone calls, and facebook posts! It was great to hear from so many people on my birthday. I can’t believe I’m 23; I’m an old lady now! We had a little birthday party here in Mahatalaky with my family and friends; it was a lot of fun. We drank soda and beer (always a special treat) and ate fried bananas and lychees, my favorite foods! I even practiced dancing the Mangaliba, the traditional Antanosy dance, but I’m still terrible at it. All in all, it was a lovely day, if not a little strange what with the 90-degree weather! I’m still getting used to that. J Here are a few photos for your enjoyment and amusement! XOXO

My favorite 12 year old in the world 

Mama

Fafa

Dada

Market Day & Jackfruit: Mahatalaky Musings

A jackfruit tree

The following are some new photos I took illustrating Market day in Mahatalaky: 

My favorite coffee stand

The juice and popsicle man, he's always excited to see me ha!

Town square on Market day

A clothing vendor

Selling mangos

The lychee tree in my backyard

Since I’m settling in here and not everything is not so “new” anymore, I’m going to start blogging about more specific aspects of Madagascar and Mahatalaky to hopefully better illustrate my life.

Market Day

Every Monday is Market Day here in Mahatalaky. People come from every hamlet and little village in the commune, up to 20 km away to sell and buy in the market. Once a week my semi-quiet town is transformed into a bustling metropolis complete with music, lots of people, lots of yelling, and everything you could possibly want to buy. I love Mondays! To start out, all the food stands make the best of everything. Fried bananas, donuts, banana bread, you name it they make it, and it’s so delicious! Second of all, I love all the activity going on. Vendors calling out prices, buyers trying to barter down the price, people saying hi to their friends, kids running around. When I was first here, I found the whole experience to be very overwhelming, but now I enjoy and look forward to it each week. The other wonderful thing about Mondays is that with market day come all the foods and goods that Mahatalaky doesn’t usually have during the week. For example, there’s no bread here to buy during the week, but every Monday fresh bread comes from Fort Dauphin. Also, popsicles! Since there’s no electricity here, there are no refrigerators, and therefore no cold drinks. And yet every day I’m sweating by 7:00 am as the temperature climbs up to 100 degrees. Never before in my life have I craved a cold beer or soda, but here I am in Madagascar wishing every day for an ice cold Coke. I can’t seem to wrap my head around the idea that a lukewarm soda is somehow supposed to be refreshing. So when the trucks arrive early on Monday mornings with coolers full of frozen flavored ice, I’m first in line to buy them. We all know I love Otter Pops; so buying my popsicles is one of my favorite parts of Mondays. The vendor is no longer shocked when I buy at least five, so hopefully that’s a sign that I’m integrating! Then, just as quickly as the town was transformed, by 2 o’clock in the afternoon, everything is packed back up and the town returns to normal.

Lychees and Jackfruit

Although Mahatalaky doesn’t have bread, cold drinks, or meat a lot, one thing that they have in excess is fruit. Bananas, pineapples, papayas, mangos you name it they have it. My favorite new fruits here that they don’t have in the US are lychees and jackfruit. Lychees have just come into season, and they are the most delicious things I have ever eaten. They’re kind of like berries, except bigger, with a big pit in the center. They grow in large bunches on trees and ripe and ready for picking at the end of November, and are gone by the end of December. They are super sweet and juicy, and every lychee is like a little piece of heaven. I have at least 30 per day, but I think eating them in such large quantities is making me sick, so I’m trying to cut back. The other really popular fruit here is called jackfruit. They are the size of a watermelon and also grow on trees. The outside skin is spiky, but the inside is very sweet. When I first tried jackfruit I thought it was ok, but it’s definitely an acquired taste because I love it now. On the mayor’s compound where I live, we have a lychee tree and a jackfruit tree, all my favorite fruits in the same place!

School

Figuring out the education system here has been a big challenge, mostly because there really is no set system or levels of school that the kids go through. Or rather, there is one but there isn’t anyone to regulate it, so school is not of number one importance to anyone besides the more wealthy families. The youngest kids go to primary school, but only like four days a week in either the morning or the afternoon. The older kids (around 13 years old) go to school maybe three days a week for a few hours in the morning. The oldest kids (15 years old and up) go to school the least, three days a week for maybe two hours.

On top of the really small amount of time any of the kids are in class, “school” here is not like school in the US. They can’t afford textbooks for the kids so when the kids go to school, really they just show up, copy down a lesson into their notebooks since they don’t have a book to learn from, and then leave. Depending on the teacher and the subject, sometimes there is lecturing that happens, but there is no curriculum for the teachers to follow so it is up to their discretion how they run their class. There is no annual standardized testing or anything, so students are really only evaluated when they take the exams to pass to the next level of school. For example, my best friend Erika is 12 years old, and he is in his last year or what we would call primary school. This June, he will take the CEPE exam to pass on to CEG, the equivalent of middle school. Since this is an exam year for him, he goes to school six days a week, from 6:00 am to 5:00 pm. The most shocking thing I learned about education here is that a lot of the teachers still use corporal punishment as a disciplinary tool, or often just as a tool in general. Erika has been hit with a stick on his back many times because he didn’t know his lesson well enough. If a child is dirty or doesn’t have shoes, the teachers will often hit them. For this reason, a lot of the more poor children just stop going to school before they’ve even finished primary because they are afraid of the punishment they’ll receive. Another common reason for a young kid to stop going to school is because they have to work and their family can’t afford school, or because they are pregnant are need to get married.

The biggest education problem in Mahatalaky right now is the fact that they don’t have adequate schoolhouses. The CEG (middle school) has no roof and a broken floor and only two rooms for over 300 students. To solve this problem, the siseme level kids (around 13 years old) have class in the town hall, and the cinqeme, catreme, and troiseme kids (15 years and up) go to school in the broken schoolhouse. And when it rains, there is no school at all since there is no roof. Luckily, this problem is close to being solved because a British volunteer organization called ONG Azafady has been working here for about a year building four new schoolhouses for the four levels of middle school. The project is scheduled to be finished around March 2012.



HOME SWEET HOME

 Tying Up Loose Ends

            As I come into my third month of living here in Mahatalaky, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do here in the upcoming years. Even after five months in Madagascar, my reasons for doing Peace Corps and my perception and understanding of my role as a Peace Corps volunteer has changed so much. Being successful and happy as a volunteer is just as much about living as it is about working. I seem to have gotten down the “living” thing pretty well, and I’m still figuring out the “working” part. When I get back from my vacation in January, I’m going to start a couple new projects that are all my own and completely separate from the health center. I spend so much of my time with kids and teenagers and I see how much they could benefit from a more regimented routine than just the few hours of school, and then ‘stay-out-of trouble’ until dinner. I also see when I work at the health center how young the majority of the new mothers are. So I’m going to start a Girl’s Club where we’ll meet once a week to talk and hang out, and learn about sexual health and things like that. I’m also going to work to get the Women’s Association restarted in Mahatalaky because I think that would be a really good resource for me to use to tap into what the community wants and needs the most. Finally, I’m going to hopefully start working with the health campaign of the organization ONG Azafady as a liaison who can travel out to the different fokontanys of the commune and check up on the trained community health workers there and help with health education as its needed. So in conclusion, I have a lot to look forward, I am doing very well, and I miss everyone a lot. Happy Thanksgiving! Eat extra turkey for me. I tried to explain Thanksgiving to my friends here, and it just didn’t translate well, they were just like “…so it’s a party where you eat a lot of food? Because the white people and Indians were friends?” Maybe when I figure out how to explain colonization and race relations in Malagasy I’ll be able to do a better job of describing Thanksgiving. Kisses!

Monitalaky: MY NEW LIFE

Once again for your ease and enjoyment, I have broken up this marathon post into smaller chunks so you can read them at your leisure. 

Background Details

I arrived in Mahatalaky finally after four really long days in the car and then three days shopping for home goods in Fort Dauphin. Even though I didn’t really have any specific expectations, the town was different than I thought it would be. Mahatalaky is the biggest town on the road to Fort Dauphin, so there are a lot of trucks and taxi brousses that pass through, so it’s actually a pretty bustling place. The health center is also really busy, with people coming from little villages up to 15 kilometers away to get health care. It’s not nearly as small as I had expected it to be, which I was really happy about. I live right next to the town hall, on the mayor’s compound. My house is a little two-story bungalow with a table and chairs on the bottom floor and my bed on the top floor. It’s small, but sturdy and comfortable, so I like it a lot. I also feel very safe where I live, because I am so centrally located and live directly next to the mayor, which really helped me feel settled in Mahatalaky more quickly. Mahatalaky has a big market every Monday and there are always all kinds of fruit and meat. There’s also a couple little restaurants to eat, and places to get coffee and bread in the morning. It’s a fun little place.

A Typical Week

            After six weeks here, I’m starting to settle into a routine, but what I do on the day-to-day really depends on whether or not I have work at the health center. For the purposes of this little narrative, I’m going to talk about a workweek. Monday is Market Day in Mahatalaky, so starting at about 4:30am; people are setting up stalls and staking out their places to sell their goods. I usually get up on Mondays at around 5:30am because by that time, the roosters have been crowing for over an hour and a half and people are selling things right outside my house so it’s impossible to sleep! After I get up, I head across the street to the place where I have my coffee every day, and sit and watch all the action going on around me, and chat with my friends. At around 8:30am (yes, I’ve already been awake for three hours) they start blaring music videos, so I’ll go watch that a lot. Then I do a little shopping in the market, and head off to the health center at around 9am. Mondays are busy there because so many people come in for the market. Also on Mondays the nurse does all her family planning counseling with young women and mothers. As I’m getting better at Malagasy, I participate more actively in the counseling, but in the beginning I just did a lot of observing. We also administer free STD testing. I finish work usually by noon, and then I head home for lunch. Then in the afternoon, I pretty much just hang out, go for walks, read, write letters, etc.

            On Tuesdays, we do prenatal consultations at the health center. The youngest pregnant woman I’ve seen was 14, and she weighed about 95 pounds four months pregnant. Most women have had at least one child by the time they are 20 years old, and then keep having babies into their 30s. All the pregnant women get free prenatal vitamins, tetanus shots, and malaria prophylaxis. The nurse at my health center is very smart and hard working, and does very thorough check-ups. Wednesdays at the health center are family planning days again, so we do STD testing and birth control. Thursdays are prenatal consultations again. How busy I am at the health center really depends, but when it is busy, it is really busy with sometimes over 40 women waiting for a consultation.

            Every night in Mahatalaky, they have a movie in the town hall, which people can pay 100 ariary to get into. Starting at about 6:30pm, once it gets dark, they play Malagasy music videos until the movie starts at 7:30pm. The music here is great, it really cracks me up. Malagasy people LOVE Akon, so they play a lot of his songs. Akon is playing in the background right now as I write this! But actual traditional Malagasy music has an island vibe and is very danceable, since everyone here loves to dance. The traditional dance of the region here is the mangaliba, and I’m starting to get pretty good at it. Everyone gets a kick out of me when I imitate any of the traditional dances, but they say I’m actually pretty good! The movie ends at around 9pm, and then I go to bed. On the weekends a lot of times I’ll go to a big market 5 kilometers away, or will go on a little excursion somewhere, it just depends. Mostly what I do is “mitsangasangana…”

Mitsangasangana

            In Malagasy, “mitsangasangana” means to hang out, and that is what I spend a lot of my time doing. The first couple weeks here, I really struggled with the fact that sometimes I would just have absolutely nothing to do, because American culture values productivity and always doing something. I read A LOT. My second week living in Mahatalaky, the nurse was sick and had to go to Fort Dauphin and the health center was closed, so I had no work. After a few days of sitting around by myself, I realized that if I didn’t become more comfortable with just hanging out and talking to people, I was going to have a really hard time assimilating into the culture and community. So after that, instead of sitting in my house reading or staring off into space, I would go and sit across the street at the place where I would get coffee in the morning, and there was always people around there. A 12-year-old kid named Erika, who took me under his wing, also befriended me. At first, he was one of the only people who could ever understand anything I was trying to say, and he would just sit with me quietly in the afternoons when I had nothing to do, not even talking because I was so horrible at Malagasy. Little by little, he started taking me around town and getting me to talk to people and helping me get comfortable in Mahatalaky. When he went back to school a few weeks after I arrived, I would just sit and wait for him to come back because he was my only friend, and everyone would tease me saying I was so lonely without my 12-year-old sidekick! It was then that I realized I needed to make more friends.

            It’s hard to be brave and confident and talk to people in a language you don’t really know, but that’s exactly what I had to do in order to settle myself here. I am so lucky because everyone here is so kind and friendly, so it’s not so hard to talk to people, as long as you have the courage. Once I started being more comfortable just sitting around with people, I realized that they were really eager to get to know me. They ask about all my friends and family at home, and are shocked when I tell them I am not married, nor do I have any children, and I also don’t have a fiancée or a boyfriend. A lot of people think that Andy is my boyfriend, no matter how much I say he’s not, because there are pictures in my photo album of us HA! People just can’t accept that a young woman like me is completely unattached; even though I point out I came here to Madagascar all by myself. I try to explain that it’s normal for me to not be married yet at 22 years old, but they can’t really wrap their heads around that. :)

           

Friends & Family

            I am probably the luckiest volunteer in the Peace Corps, because a huge family here has adopted me as their daughter. Like I said, I live right next to the mayor, and he and his family realized pretty quickly that I was bad at cooking, washing clothes, etc, and they took pity on me. I eat all my meals with them, go on excursions with them, and always have someone to hang out with. I miss my family and friends at home a lot, so I honestly don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have this family to take care of me. They tell me all the time, ‘we know if you’re not smiling, then it means you’ll want to go home, so we will do whatever you need to make you happy.’ The mayor and his wife have one son, and they tell me they are so happy that they now also have a daughter. My ‘brother,’ Fafa, is married with two kids, a six-year-old boy named Christian, and a new baby girl born on September 30 called Christiana. My best friend Erika is the mayor’s nephew, and he has an older sister named Cicia who I am good friends with, and a younger sister named Olivia. The family who I buy my coffee and bread from in the morning is also related somehow, and they have a son, Berthin, and three daughters, Sylvianne, Charlaine, and Nicole. The mayor’s youngest niece is named Elena and she is three years old and very precocious. She calls me “Mama Vazaha” now. I feel so lucky to have been welcomed so warmly into this vivacious and kind family, and I really feel at home with them. I am never alone unless I want to be, and I honestly couldn’t ask for more. Having an understanding and patient support group of people has really made the difference for me in getting better and more confident at Malagasy and settling in to my life here in Madagascar. Now when I come into Fort Dauphin, I stay at Cicia’s house and hang out with my young friends from Mahatalaky who go to school here. But I am so settled in my little routine and life in Mahatalaky that when I’m in Fort Dauphin, I miss my little town, my little house, and my not so little Malagasy family, and really just want to go back!

Having people who care about me and my success and happiness as a Peace Corps volunteer really makes the whole thing more worthwhile and manageable. Any time someone notices that I seem unhappy or like something is bothering me, they immediately ask what’s wrong, and they won’t take ‘nothing’ for an answer! Then they will start playing American music (Shania Twain and Celine Dion are all the rage here), or they will play English music videos that night during the film time. Madagascar is slightly behind the times here, Vengaboys and Aqua are still experiencing momentous popularity, but it always makes me laugh. I also feel a lot more confident speaking to people I am comfortable with and people who reinforce what I’m learning and doing. I’m finally starting to feel more confident about my speaking abilities, and recently people have even been telling me I actually speak Malagasy very well! 

The family takes me on lots of little excursions to see and learn about the place I’m living for the next two years. There are two big rivers within a five-kilometer vicinity that I’ve been to a number of times and gone swimming. I’ve also been to the mayor’s little village waaay out in the country and to his wife’s village waaay out in the mountains. They have a 4x4 truck, so they always take me along too, if I can go, when the mayor goes hunting, or to Fort Dauphin to visit the little baby. [Side note: Malagasy culture dictates that if a woman has a baby girl, she has to go back to her parent’s house, and stay in bed for three months, so Patricia won’t be back with us in Mahatalaky until December 30.] It is so ridiculously beautiful here, with huge mountains on one side, and a plateau on the other. The rivers keep everything lush and green. I try and explore as much as I can, but there’s still so much for me to see.

Funny Stories

            After the first week when I had absolutely nothing to do and Erika went back to school, I was feeling really lonely. I would sit all day and wait for him to be done with class at 5, and then we would go on a walk and I would practice speaking and tell him about my day. This particular week has been really difficult since I hadn’t really figured out the whole “mitsangasangana” concept yet, and I was feeling a little homesick and frustrated. We went on a walk with some other kids, and Erika led us all up into the mountains behind Mahatalaky, and I was getting more and more pissed off since I was wearing cheap Madagascar flip flops trying to climb up a mountain. Then we had a cross a rice paddy, which is essentially just a giant mud puddle with a skinny little path that crosses it. Christian was with us, and he had already had his bath that evening, and I knew that his grandma would be mad if he got all dirty again, so I was carrying him across the rice paddy so he would stay clean, when my foot slipped of the little foot path and I fell in. I held Christian up in my right arm while my left leg sunk thigh deep into the nasty mucky mud. Falling in was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me on a tough week and I just started screaming out “I HATE YOU ERIKA WHY DID YOU BRING ME ON THIS WALK I HATE YOU ERIKA I HATE YOU I AM STUCK IN THE MUD I HATE YOU!” all in English of course. The kids were all rolling on the ground laughing so hard and imitating me screaming “IIIIHATECHUUUU ERIKAAAA!” I finally extracted myself from the muck, but I lost a flip flop in the process. Now, all the kids in town will just yell out at me “IIIIHATEEECHUUUU” whenever they see me because the story of me failing in the rice paddy has gone all through the grapevine, and it never ceases to amuse people.

            Laundry is a consistent foe of mine, I already wrote about it during my time in home stay in July, and unfortunately I haven’t gotten any better at successfully washing my clothes by hand. It’s hard! So any time I do laundry, I always attract a crowd of onlookers who come for the show. Now that I am better at speaking, if anyone laughs at me, I just retort back “If you think you’re so good at washing, why don’t you do it!” And thus, I get other people to do my laundry for me!

            Everyone here is always really interested in my long hair, since all the women braid their hair back and have curly hair. I found out that a good way for me to pass time and also talk to people was to let them braid my hair in the traditional style! At first I just let them do it because I had nothing else to do, but now I really see the benefit to having all your hair braided back because it’s so hot here! So pretty much every other week, I have one of my friends do my hair. Right now it’s in a bunch of tiny little braids, and I’ve been told that I blend right in, and am “tena ampela gasy” which means like I’m really a Malagasy woman. HA!

My time here at my site has shown me that Peace Corps is about a lot more than just the work that you do as a volunteer, but also about the relationships you form and the presence you have in your community. All the people of Mahatalaky are so happy and excited to have me there with them, speaking Malagasy and living and working. They are so kind and welcoming, and everyday something or someone makes me laugh or smile. Already they have given me so much more than I could ever give to them, and I feel so lucky to be having this experience. 

Me and the family! Erika is standing next to me, my constant companion. This photo was taken when we went to my surrogate dad's little village.

Monitalaky: An Overview

A quick update from Madagascar in bullet form...

• I am alive and well! 
• The town I live in is called Mahatalaky.
• I live in a small two floor bungalow right next to the mayor and his family, and very close to the health center where I work. 
• To my extreme joy, I've been adopted into the mayor's family and they take care of me. I eat with them, hang out with them, and go on little trips with them. They tell me that they know if I am not smiling then that means I will want to go home, so they are always doing kind and thoughtful things for me. They have a car and a motorcycle that they say are at my disposal for whenever I need them, and I feel very lucky to have such a good support network at my site so soon into my arrival here. 
• My best friend is a 12 year old boy named Eric. He reminds me a lot of my brother, which is why I think we get along so well. He is so sweet, but also has a streak of troublemaker running through him. He was pretty much the only person who ever understood what I was saying when I first got to Mahatalaky in September, and his patience with my lack of language skills and his willingness to just sit with me on the stoop of my house really made my transition into living here smoother. Clearly, I am smitten. :)
• Work at the health center is good, if not a little slow. It's a challenge since my language skills still are not where I would like them to be, but every day I just keep talking to people and practicing, and I'm starting to be more comfortable. I do a lot of prenatal counseling talks with expectant mothers and talks about the importance of vaccinating kids. 
• Every night in Mahatalaky, they turn on the generator, and from 7-9pm you can go watch music videos and a movie. It's hilarious. I'm getting really good at some of the traditional Malagasy dances, which provides endless entertainment for everyone watching me. They think it's hilarious to see a vazaha dancing, they say I'm not very good, but I believe differently! 
• My address here is:

Monica Skelton, Corps de la Paix
Commune Rurale Mahatalaky
Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

• I'll be back in Fort Dauphin next weekend too, so I will post pictures and a more detailed blog (for those interested aka not Ian Skelton) then! 
• All my love!!

The Big Trip South Part I

            And I’m back! Today’s date is Tuesday, September 13, which means I only have three more days of being a Peace Corps trainee until I am officially sworn in as a volunteer this Friday! I am so excited to finally start my own life here in Madagascar, but it’s also like leaving all over again, because I’ve built a mini life from myself here at the training center over the past few months, complete with good friends, good food, and a pretty regimented routine of language class and culture sessions. So it’s scary to try and realistically comprehend living in this country on my own, and building a life and routine from scratch in a place that is totally different than where I am now. But the move couldn’t come at a better time because I’m definitely getting tired of the whole training routine here. To catch all of my followers up on what I’ve been doing for the past month, here it is: language, language, and language. ‘Burned out’ really doesn’t even cover how I’ve felt trying to soak in 7+ hours a day of Malagasy, but I have to say that I do feel it’s all been worth it since my language competency is pretty high (thank goodness!) I’ve given a 10-minute presentation on family planning, taught nutrition to a classroom full of 5^th graders and Sex Ed to a classroom full of 11^th graders, and given a 20 minute presentation on family planning, birth control, condom use, and STIs…ALL IN MALAGASY! Not to mention, I made it through language immersion only receiving one red card for speaking English (please refer to my earlier post if you don’t know what the whole red-card system is). A lot of people say that training ends up being the hardest part of your service, and if that turns out to be true, I’m happy to be making it through the whole experience still happy being here and not wanting to go home or anything.

            Today is Saturday September 17, 2011. I am finally an official Peace Corps volunteer! Yesterday morning myself and the 26 other volunteers raised our right hands and swore the official oath. And, for the first time in the last seven days, it didn’t rain! So it was a beautiful day and a very nice ceremony, and just like that, my ten weeks of training are over. It’s honestly a little surreal! The advice that Peace Corps Washington gives to incoming trainees is to pack and plan for the first three months that you will be in country. For me, that meant I brought a lot of sweaters and enough Fiber One bars to carry me through any digestive problems. But now I’m all out of Fiber One bars and I’m moving to a site where the weather is decidedly much warmer than where I’ve been for the past ten weeks. But on the other side, I am so excited to get some independence back and have the opportunity to really start working in a community and not just practicing my presentations and counseling sessions on sympathetic English-speaking listeners (haha). This morning at 6:30am, I left the Peace Corps Training Center, my home for the past few months, and started on the three day drive to my site in the south of Madagascar. We should arrive on Monday night to Fort Dauphin, where I’ll be doing all my ‘housewarming’ shopping for myself and my new house/hut. For example, I will be purchasing a powerful gas stove since my time in homestay showed me that I absolutely cannot cook over a fire for the next two years, I just do not have the skills or the patience. Then on Wednesday, we set up my new house/hut and if everything goes according to plan, Peace Corps will leave me there to start my new life! I have heard that one of the scariest moments in any PCV’s service is watching the Peace Corps car drive away after moving into site. I’m a little nervous for this feeling of momentary panic, but as with every emotion involved with being a Peace Corps volunteer, the negative emotion is accompanied by a foil emotion, in this case, excitement about moving to a new place and starting the work I came here to do!

Thanks to my friend Eric Campbell for the cool pictures

            So to sum of my last month here: survived red cards, became competent in a language that sometimes makes no sense, gave four presentations about something that I care about and is relevant to women here, got sworn in as a volunteer, and started the BIG TRIP SOUTH. The next few months will be a very interesting time for me, so there will be a lot more to write about then, especially for those of my followers who more enjoy the “Monica is an Idiot” anecdotes similar to the chicken story from an earlier post of mine. Things to look forward to in future posts: Monica tries to put Malagasy furniture together, Monica tries to quit speaking English cold turkey, and Monica tries to live on the beach without actually possessing a bathing suit. I am excited and nervous and ecstatic about the happenings of the next few months of my life, so please stick with me! I should have Internet about once a month, so look out for me again around this time in October. I miss everyone a lot, thank you so much for the mail that has started trickling in, keep it coming! It really makes my day anytime I hear anything from home. And wish me luck as I attempt to survive the treacherous and windy roads of Madagascar without projectiling everywhere over the next few days. Love and bisous from my side of the world! 

Moni Hits the Road!

            After six long weeks of training, myself and the 13 other Health volunteers were rewarded with our Technical Training Trip aka vacation!! For the first time since my arrival on this island, I actually saw the ocean! We road tripped 8 hours to the east coast of Madagascar to a city called Tamatave. And what a road trip it was. After eight hours of narrow, twisting, and winding roads, I had never felt happier to arrive somewhere. Tamatave kind of reminds me of a post-apocalyptic bohemian beach town. The roads and buildings are crumbling, and the beach is really dirty, but there are remnants of the French colonial influence all around, so it creates this very unique and strange vibe for visitors to the city. Our first night there, we all went out to pizza, and I have never been happier to eat a slice of my favorite food, except for maybe that time I gave up pizza for Lent. One of my friends got a candid picture of me mid-bite, and I will do everything I can to make sure that the photo never sees the light of day. :) And even though our hotel had electricity, old habits die hard, and I still went to bed at 8pm!

            On our second day in Tamatave, we visited Sanitec, an NGO working on water sanitation and latrine projects. They had started a locally run latrine factory and were training people on latrine building, which was pretty cool. We learn a LOT about the multitudes of NGOs working in Madagascar, so it’s nice to put a face to any organization. We also visited with Population Services International (PSI), a French NGO that focuses on sexual health and awareness. For dinner, we went out for burgers. You can probably see a pattern building here, American food is so hard to come by that it was impossible to turn down while we were somewhere that had more than one restaurant!

On the third day, we left Tamatave and drove a couple hours north to a town called Foule Pointe. Foule Pointe is a medium sized town located right on the Indian Ocean. It is very beautiful and tropical. There, we visited the CSB (the local health center/doctor’s office) and helped with vaccine distribution and baby weighing. After that visit, we hit the beach. Being that I am a genius, I forgot to bring any bathing suit with me, because really who brings a bathing suit to an island? But luckily one of my friends had an extra, so I was still able to enjoy it. The beach here was not like at home in Half Moon Bay. The breaker was waaaay far out, so there were no waves, and the water was really shallow. It was gorgeous. We all stayed in little bungalows that opened right out to the ocean, it was breathtaking. That night, we went to a PSI event where they used visual and audio media (blaring sirens, loud music videos, etc) to gather a crowd, and then they do a couple health demonstrations and then show a movie with some health message. The Peace Corps volunteers who were training us lead a couple condom races, which was hilarious because the Malagasy volunteers were so shy! After the PSI event, we all went back to the beach for a bonfire, which was a great end to the night.

After Foule Pointe, we trekked it 12 hours back to Antananarivo, the capital city. It was the longest drive of my life, but we finally made it to the Peace Corps transit house, and it has Internet, hot water, and comfortable beds! It is quite the mecca. I left for Demystification, of Demyst on Saturday. Three others and myself went and stayed with a current volunteer at her site about 95K away from Tana. We didn’t do a ton, but it was really nice to get an idea of what life will be like on our own, away from Peace Corps at our own sites. We went to her market day, cooked our own meals, and walked around. It was actually really relaxing, especially after all the extensive traveling I had been doing. The local people though were shocked to see five vazahas all together in one place, sometimes I felt like a walking freak show, but you just have to laugh. The other benefit to Demyst was to experience and learn how to use to taxi brousse (bush taxi) system. Basically, the brousse companies just fit as many people as they possible can into one brousse, and then send it off. So if a normal seat in the brousse would fit three people, the brousse fits five. Needless to say, it’s squished! On our way back from Demyst this morning, I sat next to an old lady who fell asleep on my shoulder, and a chicken that squawked for most of the ride. It’s an odd experience, but one that I’m going to have to get used to.

I leave this afternoon to return to the Peace Corps Training Center for the remaining four weeks of my training, before I swear in and move to my site down south. I’m so excited for what’s coming next, but living completely on my own is a daunting concept. If the past weeks here have shown me anything, it’s that I can handle more than I thought, so I’m going forward with that mentality. I won’t have Internet again until sometime in mid-September, so please send me snail mail! I appreciate so much all the support and positivity everyone is giving out to me, it keeps me motivated and happy. Bisous!

The view from my bungalow hotel room at sunrise

The beach at Foule Pointe

Fianakaviana (Family)

Teaching nutrition and cooking with mothers at SEECALINE in Lohomby

Please note how I tower over everyone. Dada, Maravo (cousin), Kiady (sister), me, Koloina (sister),  Baltako (cousin), Mikajy (brother), Neni!

READ IT WHILE IT'S HOT: First Madagascar Post!

Akory ra from Madagascar! Six weeks into training, and I am alive and well! I miss my friends and family a lot, but I am so busy and life is so different, it makes the whole transition a lot easier. There’s so much to say, so I decided to split this entry up into small chunks with easy headings. I’ve been working on this post over the past couple weeks so I’m sorry if the chronology seems off or if something doesn’t make sense. There’s about a million more things I could say on every subject, but I wanted to keep this post at least semi-readable for all of my 13 followers! If you have any questions, email me or comment on the post! I will have internet for the next few days woohoo!!! So here goes...

First Days and Homestay

I am starting to write this during my third week in Madagascar. I hit one month away from home last Sunday! I haven’t had internet since I arrived here, but I thought I should start recording what’s been going on so when I do finally get internet, I’ll be able to update my blog straight away. I would like to start off by saying I miss everyone SO MUCH! But with that out of the way, Madagascar is great so far. I arrived at the Peace Corps Training Center in Mantasoa on a Wednesday evening, the 13^th of July. The Training Center is beautiful. It’s set right on a lake; it’s a lot like being at summer camp. We started language training right away, but by the time I moved into my homestay, I had only mastered how to say “My name is Monica. I am from California.” Not very effective for communicating, but it was something!

Moving into homestay was super overwhelming right off the bat, but I’m glad they planned training this way because it has really forced me to integrate myself into the language and culture pretty quickly. I like my host family a lot. I live in a small village called Lohomby with my host parents and 2 younger host sisters, Koloina and Kiady, and one baby host brother, Mikajy. My host mom and dad are farmers, but right now my host mom just stays home with the baby. They have a modest, neat one-story host and no running water or electricity. (A quick note on that subject: of all the amenities I no longer have, I miss running water and electricity the least! Without a doubt, I miss internet the most, which is unexpected.) My host sisters are 5 and 8 years old, and while they are sweet and often very cute, it’s been interesting moving back into a house full of little kids. My 8-year-old host sister is a little mischievous and will do pretty much anything to get my attention, whether it’s negative or positive. There have been times of cross-cultural connection, like dancing to Shakira, or laughing til we cry when my 5-year-old sister falls asleep at the dinner table for the third night in a row. There have also been times where I miss my own space, and when I’ve felt isolated even though there’s people all around me. Without a doubt, it’s been challenging to learn as I go, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Each day, I wake up at around 6:30am, clean my room, eat breakfast, and head out to school. Breakfast is usually vary-sosoa, or what I call rice porridge, or katsaka, which is pretty much corn porridge. Lucky for me, my host family caught on pretty quickly that I wasn’t a huge fan, and now we usually just have bread and peanut butter or honey. We also have dite every morning, which translates to tea, but is nothing like what I consider tea. The dite that my host family makes is hot water + condensed milk + sugar. It’s actually pretty delicious. I come home for lunch around 12 noon. Lunch is usually rice with beans or cooked vegetables and a salad. I go back to training at 2pm, where we have an afternoon session usually covering either specific health topics or a cross-culture topic. We finish for the day usually around 4:30pm, and then I go home and usually help prepare dinner! Dinner at my house is usually rice, vegetables, and meat. In case you have not caught on to the pattern, Malagasy people eat rice 3 times a day, every day. Since I’ve moved here, there has not been one meal served without rice. This was a challenge for me at first, because who really like just plain white rice, and my host family was always trying to get me to eat more. But as my language skills improved and I was actually able to explain what I like, eating is a lot easier. For example, when my host mom noticed I was consistently not eating a lot of rice, she asked me what I liked to eat at home. That led to a discussion on what I usually cook in the US, and the end result was that my host mom cooks pasta a few nights a week instead of just rice every day! So I have a pretty balanced and normal diet here, which is really nice. My host mom is a great cook.

My host mom cooks all our meals over a wood fire. I’m very lucky, because at my house, we have a little outdoor kitchen area where the fire is, but a lot of the other volunteers live in houses where they cook inside, and where there’s fire there’s smoke (or whatever that saying is.) Upper respiratory infections are a huge medical problem in children under the age of 5 years, and wood burning fires inside is a direct cause. We have a well in our front yard, about 10 meters from the house. Again, this is the exception, as many of the local families here have to walk pretty far for their water, and a lot of them just get water from the rice patties, which is pretty dirty. All the families hosting Peace Corps volunteers have been trained on water sanitation, and I haven’t had any problems with my family not properly purifying our water.

Malagasy

Although it was pretty slow at first, my Malagasy is finally starting to improve more rapidly. It’s definitely a challenge to try and learn a totally new language, and it was very frustrating at first. The whole grammatical structure of Malagasy is different than English. For example, the basic sentence structure of Malagasy is [Predicate + Object + Subject] as opposed to the English Subject first sentence. But with four hours of language instruction per day I’m improving pretty quickly so there’s hope! We had a language assessment interview about a week ago and the PST goal was for all trainees to have achieved the level Novice High and I received a score of intermediate low! I’m learning a dialect now called Antanosy that is spoken at my site in the south of Madagascar so that adds in a whole new challenge. At first I was pretty frustrated with learning dialect, because I essentially have to relearn a lot of the vocabulary and verb conjugation, but after a week its starting to come more naturally.

I moved out of homestay and back to the Peace Corps Training Center at the end of week four, and will be spending the rest of my training living here. It’s a very fun environment living with all the other Peace Corps trainees, and very different from homestay. I’m happy for the change of pace and routine. Peace Corps Madagascar uses the full immersion method of training though, which means we’re not allowed to speak English during the day. From 7am to 7:30pm, it’s all Malagasy all the time. If you get caught speaking English, you get issued a red card and 5 red cards leads to a monetary fine! But you can also get green cards for having conversations in Malagasy and green cards can cancel out red cards or lead to a reward. Right now, the prize of American food is everyone’s main motivator.

Permanent Site

We found out our permanent sites finally…drumroll! I will be spending my two years in a town called Mahatalaky, located about 30 kilometers outside of Fort Dauphin on the southeast coast of Madagascar. Getting my site placement was much more emotional than I anticipated it to be. It’s hard to decide what your preference on placement is without knowing much about the country, but still you go into it with some sort of subconscious expectation. On top of that, there’s the year-long build up of anticipation that goes into the announcement. Initially I had very mixed emotions about my site placement. I’ll be very near the coast and a major city, which is ideal, but I’m pretty far from a lot of the friends that I’ve made so far, which is less ideal. But my viewpoint is that it’s all just a part of the Peace Corps process and experience. I didn’t sign up for Peace Corps expecting to be near friends, and to have internet every day or anything like that. Another good things happened since I first started writing this part of the post. I met someone from near my site! Part of the training staff here is a rotating group of current Peace Corps volunteers serving in the different sectors here in Madagascar. One of our trainers last week was a volunteer in the Education sector from the South, who lives about half a day from where my permanent site is. He told me so many great things about where I’ll be living and what life is like down there, I have a much more tangible idea of what my own life will be like as a volunteer there. Mahatalaky is located right on the edge of the rain forest, across from the coast of the Indian Ocean. It’s hot, but not as unbearable as some other parts of southern Madagascar because there’s the coastal wind. Apparently there’s also a British NGO that operates in the area so the people there are familiar with foreign volunteers, and there’s also a lot of volunteers that are cycling through. Even just learning this tiny bit more of information about my site makes me feel so much better and more excited. A huge part of being a Peace Corps volunteer is flexibility and patience, and that’s something that is the most challenging for me, since I really prefer to have a plan and know exactly what’s going on all the time! As the weeks have gone on, I become more and more excited to move to my site and start my work and life there! I have a lot to look forward to.

Malagasy Culture

            To start with, all Malagasy people are teeny tiny. As an average sized human, I literally tower over everyone, men and women. The culture here is very unique because it is such a hybrid of African, French, and Indo-asian. Depending on where in the country you are, people may look more Asian or African, more light skinned or dark skinned. The culture itself is also pretty laidback. Everyone is always late, not just Monica-style late, but consistently late all the time. No one really follows a specific schedule or adheres to any set plans. Sometimes we’ll play a group game before class that will end up going on for an hour! It’s a nice change of pace to be the early one here. J Also, there is no such thing as “sleeping in” in Madagascar, which is great for me! I wake up every day at 6:30am, regardless of the day of the week, which is another cultural aspect that I can really get behind!

            Saying I attract attention as a vazaha (foreigner) in Madagascar is a huge understatement. Since government instability has devastated what little tourism industry they had, white foreigners are few and far between here, and even then, really only in the cities. Walking down the street even in a town like Mantasoa that is pretty familiar with foreigners because of Peace Corps, people call out “Vazaha, vazaha!” and will just stare at you in astonishment while you walk back. It’s definitely something I’m still working on getting used to, but mostly people are just curious and not hostile or aggressive. When I was living with a host family, people I had never met from my village would know my name and call out to me like old friends. The Malagasy people are extremely open, friendly, and hospitable. Every person I come into contact with wants to quiz me on my Malagasy vocabulary or have a conversation with me about my family at home in the US. They are patient and kind about my more than limited language abilities. It is a very positive and warm culture, which makes me tasks of integrating much easier!

Peace Corps Namanas!

            Namana means friend in Malagasy, and it’s pretty much my favorite word. There are a totally of 27 Peace Corps trainees in my stage, 14 health volunteers and 13 education volunteers. It’s a small enough group that I actually have the opportunity to get to know everyone, and we all have a lot of fun together. But beyond my stage, its been really nice to meet some current volunteers who provide a lot of insight into the life of an actual volunteer in Madagscar. Peace Corps Madagascar really promotes the “one family” idea, and the past month has shown me that no matter where I go in Madagascar, there will be a Peace Corps volunteer there that I can count on for whatever I need. I was a little bummed at first to not be placed super near to any of my new Peace Corps friends, but then I realized that not only will I see everyone from my stage during In-Service Training in December, but that there’s tons more PC Volunteers from other stages who have sites all around me.

Funny Stories

            I have to do all my laundry here by hand, and if that isn’t hard enough, I also had to do laundry during homestay in a river. By no means am I a naturally good river washer. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that I am worse than the average person. Every Saturday afternoon, I would head down to the river with my host mom and my dirty laundry from the week. Usually my host mom would laugh at me so hard she cried since my skills at laundry washing were so obviously lacking. Finally, after some big laughs on her part, she would sigh and take my laundry from me, and just finish the rest herself. This end result made the whole embarrassing routine worth it since I didn’t end up having to do it myself! Ha!

            My other most memorable ridiculousness from homestay happened on my last night, when my host family killed a chicken for dinner. I have never seen an animal killed right before my eyes and then been expected to eat it for dinner, so I was unprepared for the experience. While I did not have to do the actual killing, I was unfortunate enough to witness it. Rather than breaking the neck of the chicken like I assumed usually happened, my host dad basically just sawed off its head. It was so gory I had to cover my eyes. [Disclaimer: I don’t have a very high tolerance for gore, so this is subjective to me.] Then, my host parents plucked all the feathers off the now dead chicken. This step of the process was actually more disgusting than the chicken’s death. But I forced myself to watch the whole process so I would know how it happened and could be prepared for it in the future. My host parents got a big kick out of all my reactions to the various steps between live chicken and dead chicken dinner, and I had to explain to them how in the US I buy pre-killed chicken, and had never actually seen the whole process before. The idea of buying a dead chicken flabbergasted them. I asked one of my teachers if you could buy already killed chicken in Madagascar, and he said “Oh, vazaha chicken? Yeah, only in the big cities.” I take a solemn vow that I will never personally kill a chicken while I am here, but check back on this blog in a couple years and see if I change my mind.

I’m going to end this post here for now, but will update again in a couple days with details from my past week of travels on my Technical Training Trip! Please send me some snail mail, I’m practically the only person who hasn’t got any yet!! :) I love you all bisou biosou

Let your soul and spirit fly

...into the mystic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVAnlke_xUY

(Shout out to you Jekka)

I leave tomorrow for Madagascar!!! I arrived late last night in Philadelphia after a long day of travels, and felt pretty drained. But luckily for me I have an awesome roommate who I immediately connected with (she's from Sunnyvale!) and she cheered me up within the first few minutes I arrived, even though I woke her up out of bed. :) Today I went to breakfast with a couple of other early arrival West Coast trainees before our staging started at 12:30. I was completely unsure of what to expect from the whole thing, but it was so great to meet all the other trainees and learn about their backgrounds and where they are from. We all share this visceral connection of our commitment to the Peace Corps institution and it's surprisingly more connecting than you would expect. I was reminded today about why I wanted to do the Peace Corps in the first place, and I feel so purposeful and convicted about this path. I am so excited for what's to come.

Tomorrow, we leave our hotel in Philadelphia at 3 am (!!!!) for New York. We depart JFK at 11:30 and after 15.5 hours, arrive in Johannesburg at 8:25 am on July 13. Our connecting flight leaves for Madagascar at 10 am so send good thoughts that we make it on time! After a 3 hour flight to Antananarivo, we land at 2:35 pm local time, and then we have a 3 hour ride to the Peace Corps Training Center in Mantasoa. So much travel! I don't know when exactly I will have internet access again after that, but hopefully it won't be too long. Regardless, I will continue writing posts and then just upload them all at once when I have the chance. Thank you to everyone who wrote me letters, sent me texts and emails, and wrote on my facebook wall expressing well wishes. I am so lucky and blessed to have such an amazing and caring support network of friends and family, and will be thinking of everyone each day I'm in Madagascar! You can comment on my blog simply clicking on the comments link at the end of the post if you ever want to. You can also email me at mrskelto@gmail.com or, of course, facebook me. I'd love to hear from anyone! Also, refer to my first post for my snail mail address, and SEND ME LETTERS! (and/or packages!)

Veloma friends! Til next time..

Famous!

Big dreams small town

http://burlingame.patch.com/articles/burllingame-native-to-join-peace-corps-in-madagascar

T-minus 5...

For everyone who's asked, this is it! I debated long and hard about my thoughts regarding personal blogs, and came to the conclusion that this is equally as pretentious as sending out long-winded group emails, but exponentially more simple and fun for me. Hopefully I will have something worthwhile to say to keep everyone interested in reading this! I've been asked a lot about mailing letters and/or packages to me, so if you feel so inclined, drop me a line via snail mail at

Monica Skelton, PCV

Bureau du Corps de la Paix

B.P. 12091

Poste Zoom Ankorondrano

Antananarivo 101

Madagascar

I leave July 10 for Philadelphia, July 12 for Johannesburg, and finally Madagascar by July 13. Can't wait!