Learning Experiences

I feel I've had a trying second month at site, but it has also proven to be rewarding in terms of what I have learned about living here in Sadjoavato and Madagascar in general.

 I tried my hand at fishing the waters around Diego finally, but I don't think they're going to be a very fruitful location for fishing. Extremely strong winds rip through the bay very frequently making for difficult casting and the shore is very rocky. I'll definitely give it a few more tries, but I think I'll be looking for a better fishing destination soon.

 Being on my own also means cooking all my food. As I have no electricity, that also means everything is bought fresh daily unless it can keep without refrigeration. It's been a process getting to figure out my way around a kitchen environment such as this, but I am happy to show you one of my many successes, I call it Spicy Beef and Rice Stew! Pretty easy to make, and I can get three meals out of a pot so less cooking on my part!

Of course there are real learning experiences going on too. Here are some of my students walking out of school at the end of a day of studying. I enjoy teaching them very much, but it is still frustrating for me to come against their ingrained educational habits that involve nothing but writing what the teacher wrote on the board and parroting it back. I could go on for hours about how the system here is night and day different from the US, in negative and positive ways, but the real thing I struggle with the most is trying to motivate them to be interested in English. For some it's a breeze, but for a majority of my students learning English only seems like an extraneous burden to their life. I'm going to stop there before I get really Debbie Downer on everybody and point you to a positive achievement!

 The SEC has arrived in Madagascar! That's right, the Sadjoavato English Club officially exists, and you are all welcome to attend for FREE!* I started this club because of the overwhelming population of people in my town who desired to learn English but were already past middle school age. I'm hoping that it becomes a self-sustaining club during my two years so that the commune can support the club even after I'm gone! Also, SEC is a kinda catchy name, I think I should trademark it before anyone else gets to it...

*Travel, lodging and food costs not included in the free offer. In fact nothing is free except the English instruction, but if I had a dime for every time someone asked me how much the club was going to cost I could probably pay for someone to get here from the US, and that's why it was necessary to include said line on my poster!

But not all learning is done in a classroom, and that's why I went to Ankarana National Park with the Regional VAC group this past weekend! VAC stands for Volunteer Action Committee, and it meets three times a year. Before the meetings, a representative from each of the different regions arranges a meeting of all the volunteers in the area at a fun location and conducts a business meeting. After said meeting we do things together like hike through a park, or sit on the beach, or whatever happens to be amenable to our VAC location! Afterwords the regional representative voices our concerns and suggestions at the VAC meeting.

 Because we were at Ankarana we went hiking! I the morning we went to see the tsingy, but before we could get there we ran across some interesting wildlife. For instance, this chameleon hanging out in a tree.

 Here is one of the 11 species of lemur that lives in the park. He was disturbed by our traipsing by and woke up to see what was going on, so we got a rare sighting of a nocturnal lemur. Only two of the species in the park are diurnal, so this was a great treat.

 Finally we reached the tsingy! A tsingy is a limestone formation created over millions of years from acid rain creating channels in the rock and sharpening the tips to scalpel like precision. The word tsingy comes from the Malagasy word "to go on tiptoes" because the original habitants of the area had no shoes and to walk on the extremely sharp rock could cause a serious debilitating injury, so they had to walk on tiptoes to avoid it!

 Underneath the tsingy the water runs into channels which also created a very amazing set of caves too. The cave system here at Ankarana National Park is the largest in all of Africa!

 What hike would be complete without a treacherous tension bridge? This one even had very helpful signs reminding you to go one at a time only!

 After a quick respite for lunch, we were back on the trail again and ran into a pack (group? school? tribe? I honestly have no idea...) of crowned lemurs. Here we see a mother with her baby clinging on!

 I've just been informed that the SI for lemurs is a troop! So this troop of crowned lemurs was quite photogenic and let us get fairly close too before bounding off.

 The goal of our afternoon hike was the bat cave! Here is a shot from just inside the entrance so you can get a feel for the sheer size of the awesome structure.

 And what would a bat cave be without bats? Here we see a bat flying over a stalagmite shaped eerily like a human being. It was quite difficult to get pictures in the cave environment because a camera lens is not as complex and intense as the human eye, but suffice it to say the caves were breathtakingly beautiful and smelled like guano!

 As a parting gift we ran across one more mom and baby on our way out of the park. A well timed whistle as I pulled the trigger on this picture netted some curious looks!

Finally, the last learning experience of this past month was don't be all high and mighty, because you can fall to your knees from something you can't even see!

 This is the Diego PC Office and Transit house, AKA Diego Meva. I have been staying here for the past few days under doctor's orders suffering from an allergic reaction. I'm fine, it wasn't that bad of an experience, but I definitely don't want to repeat it anytime soon! (side note - hives is not fun) Here we see the office and volunteer lounge area.

 Here is the kitchen and free stuff table.

Finally the dining room with the two bedrooms straight ahead and the bathroom off to the left past the stairs. The stairs lead to the PCVL (Peace Corps Volunteer Leader) apartment.

I'm heading to the capital, Antananarivo, for a training event and a doctor's appointment to determine what I'm allergic to exactly, so hopefully by next month I can fill everyone in on exactly what not to do if you don't want to test your allergies in Madagascar!