I warn you in advance, this post is sad. One of the things that is stressed to volunteers in the Peace Corps is that your service will be filled with challenges and stresses that you can't yet fathom. Well this month certainly put that adage to the test. And I can now say from personal experience, when you ride this emotional roller coaster, sometimes its gonna make you wanna vomit.
Here's a picture of my favorite girl, Snow. She greeted me when I first got to Sadjoavato, and has been a constant presence in my life since. Plus, how can you resist when she makes silly faces while you scratch her ear like this?!
She's always dirty, and misbehaving, and stealing my beef or bread or fingers... But it was all in the name of fun and love and chin scratchings. So many chin scratchings.
She even followed me to school a couple of times. But not too close, there's a lot of crazy people at that school, so always observe from afar and wonder, then wander.
She tried her hand at puppy sitting with the new kids on the block, but she couldn't quite manage to keep her out of my vegetable garden. In fact, she just went in right after her to see if she was missing out on anything by not being in there in the first place!
Night time's always hard because I don't want fleas so she slept outside. Once, I heard her shuffling and sighing from the back of my house instead of the porch like usual. I poked my head out and saw that she maneuvered my pile of sawdust into a makeshift doggy bed. She could enter competitive sleeping contests, this one!
Here she is practicing that epic sleep technique beneath my table as I plane a board above her. No distraction to her reverie, no disruption to her bliss, just moral support; presence during my labors. A presence I will dearly miss.
Here fell my first Snow in Madagascar. Her final nap, June 3rd, 2015.
And that's all I have to say about that.
This precocious bugger was her occasional babysitting charge, but now will be one of the new neighborhood irregulars. She's a lover, and a wiggler, and another new friend. I will watch this one from a distance, I am not yet ready for another attachment.
Well, after enough sadness that not even a puppy picture could lift my spirits, I set off for the beach to clear my mind, and say goodbye to some departing volunteers. Here's a shot of some beached pirogues at high tide.
It's always relaxing watching them sail in after a days fishing. What I would give to go with them sometimes. It makes me realize that its a good thing I don't live on the water, or I'd befriend them, and not touch land for weeks at a time!
For the past few days though, I've been in the always lovely Diego Suarez. This month has brought departures, but it also brings anniversaries and cause for joy. Not the least of which is getting to relax with friends in this beautiful city.
Here is a shot looking north from a rooftop restaurant in the middle of the town.
And to the south. The streets are ever-populated with the three-wheeled yellow bajaj taxi's and a random assortment of European and Chinese made trucks and cars to round out the mix.
This weekend was for celebration.
We celebrated a pair of birthdays, and what better way than with a cake decorated with the island of Madagascar! This was lovingly crafted by fellow volunteer Darcy, and even more lovingly consumed by all within a ten foot radius. Thanks to my wonderful mother for sending the cake mix and frosting!
Here myself and Chris, the two birthday boys, make the initial incision. It's been a great weekend to celebrate a birthday and it really has helped clear the mind of all that happened. It's also a celebration of my one year mark. I left home on my birthday last year to come to Madagascar, so one year down, one left to go!
Before I spent my Birthday weekend in Diego, my neighbors gave me a great gift of fresh raw peanuts. I tried to do them justice by creating this delicious spicy peanut vegetable curry. It was a decided hit with my palate, and I will definitely be recreating this as often as I can find fresh peanuts. But wait there's more!
I also created another shelf this month. This one is now standing proud in the public library in Anivorano, a neighboring town. The director of the library and a fellow volunteer came up with the idea and enlisted my help for the construction. We finished it in one morning, and now the library has a new storage space to expand its collection.
Not content to stop at one shelf, I made a second. This is a shelf for charging solar lamps. I was asked to help build it for a local NGO that is providing the lamps at low cost to the community. The station can handle 50 panels at a time, and we plan to create more as we find material to increase our charging capacity.
Here the director of the NGO checks to make sure the lamps are all charging properly and not getting hit by any direct sunlight which can damage the lamps over time.
We toured our town together with the owner of the company that supplied the solar panels and lamps so he could get an idea of how the people were using their products. One of our stops took us to the town welder, and I took this picture because it amazed and frightened me. This man is demonstrating his arc welding technique where he grabs his electrode with a pair of pliers and alligator clips it to a generator, throws on a pair of sunglasses and goes to town. If only an OSHA inspector could see this, I think they'd either give up or faint on the spot.
This, thankfully, was not the result of that man's welding technique, but was, nevertheless, another tragic event that I witnessed this past month. A neighbor's house burned down. All told it took about 5 minutes from the first sighting of smoke to...
extinguishment. Smoking remains of all that the family owned. Here there is no insurance policy, there is no fallback plan, and there is no way to bring anything back. This family lost all their possessions save for the clothes on their back in five minutes. The community rallied support in the form of donations, but it will barely be enough for them to rebuild their house, let alone regain their possessions. It amazes me to see their strength in the face of this adversity as they rebuild their lives from nothing.
There has been quite a roller coaster in this post like I promised, from death, to celebration; creation, to loss. As you have read, I have ridden. I am exhausted, I am weary, I am exhilarated, I am entranced. I am ready for more. I recharge, I grow, I explore, I endure. We'll close with this picture from the local hillside just outside town. It helps to put problems and events in perspective. That burning fire in the distance is just a small puff of smoke in the vast beauty that is Madagascar. Up close it could be a families tragedy, or a routine waste burning. The only way to know is to dive in head first and find out.
