Daily Night Flights Over Madagascar

So let's dive right in. This month I want to show you my market.

In my town, market day happens once a week on Tuesday. Tuesdays are no good for working in the fields (local taboo), so everybody stays in town and goes to the market. Also, people from the surrounding villages come in with their wares and wads of cash to get all their shopping done for the week. Here you can see how crowded it can get on the road.

The vendors set up in little wooden stalls and on the ground along the road. Here is a grouping of people selling clothes.

Most of the time in my town, vehicles only stop if someone needs to be picked up or dropped off, but on market day they bring in a lot of product for the vendors. Here is a truck unloading some bananas for a fruit seller. The back of the truck is full of people headed to the next towns down the road, or on to Diego.

Some people will bring a tarp to setup over their stands to provide shade. Here is a sandal shop with such a tarp for the person to sit under so the don't roast in the sun.

Under these trees there are three little roadside restaurants that appear every week, and on the ground next to them is the vegetable sellers area.

All of this stuff has to come from somewhere, and unless it comes from further out along the maid road, then it comes to town by oxcart. Here is the parking area for about 25 or so such carts while their owners are off turning a profit.

The market doesn't last forever, and at about noon the majority of people are gone. This is the same spot as the first picture the next morning. You can see the vacated wooden stalls waiting for the next week and you can actually see down the road! This is how my town looks the other six days a week.

Here is the area where the vegetable sellers set up and the wooden frames in the background are the three restaurants shut down for the week. The nice thing about my market is the size and availability of goods. For such a small town, it's a very good selection of things and the prices are usually not inflated too much for the transport to my town.

Here's one of my purchases from the market. Peanuts! I decided to make peanut butter as the grocery stores in Diego have had a decided lack of it this past month. First I roasted the peanuts as seen above.

Next I got a neighbor to help pound the roasted nuts into submission. You add a little oil to help it clump into a buttery consistency, and I put a little sugar just to sweeten it up a little bit too. If you like your peanut butter chunky or smooth you have the ultimate control so long as your arm muscles hold out.

And when it's all done, put it in a jar! I love peanut butter and this is very good, and very fresh. When you're all finished, you just pay the neighbor with a spoonful of peanut butter and enjoy one yourself!

I also made a wonderful pasta and sauce this month from a bunch of veggies I picked up at my market too. The sauce is some oil, onions, hot peppers, green beans, shredded carrot, and tomatoes sautéed with a little salt, basil, and rosemary thrown in for good measure. Delicious.

I have also created my biggest wood working project to date. This is the culmination of so many weekends of planing boards to prep them for the end goal. Here is the start of the frame. 

And because I was busy working and not thinking about posterity, here's the finished frame. The top was my already extant bed frame, and I lofted it and put a desk underneath!

Can't sleep without a mosquito net here though, so I suspended the frame for it from the ceiling and added a nice red white and blue tarp over it for dust and debris protection. The actual net itself is too long now that the bed and frame are much closer, so I cut the bottom half off and will be sewing on an elastic band in the coming month. Sleeping up there is awesome and makes it feel like I'm soaring into dream world every night!

Here's my desk in use. It's still not completely finished. I need to sand a lot still and I plan to finish the desk top and ladder rungs, but apart from that it's at least functional already!

That was a great project. It took a lot of time, but was a lot of fun too. So let's relax from the heavy lifting for a bit and take a look at the monthly animal roundup...

My jelly sometimes gets attacked by ants. To slow this down I put the jars in a frisbee and fill it with water so the ants can't get to it. The other day I went to get some jelly and found this lizard sitting there in the bottom of the frisbee having a drink! I watched him for a solid five minutes because it was fascinating to me to see a lizard licking up water like a little dog. Look at his tongue!

Of course there are still real dogs around too. Here's Papa. He came over for a visit a few times this month. Mostly to nap, but also to get a few behind the ear scratches too.

And here's Mama watching me eat at the neighbors' Independence Day celebration. That's the Malagasy Independence day, June 26th.

The next weekend, I had to gather with some other volunteers to properly celebrate American Independence. We went to a nice hotel for some drinks, and because we're nice people, we even cleaned up our spills before leaving. although I don't think Chris was particularly happy about it!

Here's another volunteer having a go at a Malagasy fashion show. This is the traditional way to wear a lamba, a type of Malagasy fabric with traditional patterns. Although technically a woman's garment, I think he pulled it off pretty well.

When we went out to eat, we made a few friends too. They even brought us an owl. The kids came running over so excited and had to show him off.

It was altogether a great month and full of good celebrations both Malagasy and American. Look forward to new exciting adventures in the coming month, and hopefully a change of scenery as we approach the end of the school year and I get ready to take a little vacation!

It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To

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.

Don't Believe Me? Just Watch!

So many things happened this month. It's always humbling when I get ready to do a blog post and go through and look at all that I've accomplished or helped other PCVs accomplish in the course of a month. Also, just the feeling of personal satisfaction when you finish a project is compounded when you look back on 30 days and see multiple projects finished!

First, let's take a look at the gardening results:

 The Tomatoes are ripening! I now have harvested about 15 wonderful, vine-ripened tomatoes. I wish I could claim credit for this, but as I said before this guy just grows on its own without any help from me. I just reap the benefits of delicious tomatoes. Also, when I have too many tomatoes I share them with my neighbors, so now they like me a lot more than they already did.

 While we're discussing horticultural life, let's observe the above pictured trees. These are baobabs. I'm not positive exactly which species of baobab, but there are 7 present here in Madagascar, and 6 of those are found only here, also two species are found only in the northern province of Madagascar where I am living and are highly endangered. This picture was taken from the road on my walk to the school. As a mark of my keen observational skill, I have walked past these trees almost every day for 7 months and just now realized that they were there. Hopefully, they will grow to be big and awesome and old like their more famous counterparts to the south.

 Other things I noticed this month included a leaking on my porch. Every time it rains I would get flooded back into my house. I figured that since I fixed the roof over my house its time to fix this section of roof too. I went out and purchased tarp material with a nice red, white, and blue pattern and tacked it up over my porch. From the front of the house you can't see anything, but, underneath, it creates a cool glow in the sun, and dryness in the rain!

 I also bought this unique little basket in my town this month to help store fruits and vegetables. If I leave anything like that out overnight it will get ransacked by pillaging rodents, so I hung this basket - an endemic style to my town - under my new shelf. The lid keeps all the critters out, and I can look and see what I have on hand at a glance, what a nifty convenience.

 Naturally, I had bigger projects going too besides hanging a tarpaulin and basket. My kitchen table has become my primary woodworking surface, so I decided to reinforce the legs on the table so it would stop shaking so much while I plane boards on it. Here we see the new bracing beam installed under the table, and I must say its as solid as a rock now. This is good because I've got a big project in the works that I've been saving for a while. With all my tools and acceptable work stations now sorted out I can start to tackle it, and, with any luck, in the next month or two I'll be able to post the results here!

 The real big project this month though was the brain child of our PCVL, a rotating barrel compost. The compost is located at the Meva in Diego Suarez for all of the PCVs and staff here in the north to use. I was recruited to do blueprints and lead the construction, and here we see myself and one of the assisting volunteers doing some geometry to place a perfectly centered hole in the barrel end.

 Thankfully we were able to borrow some power tools to move the project along, or this might have taken a lot more than one weekend. Here I'm drilling out pilot holes so the board ends won't split when nailed in place while Mustafa, one of our wonderful Meva guards, observes. He was a huge help in finding tools for us to use and keeping track of all the materials as we worked.

 The barrel has holes placed all around to allow air flow for the compost, and about a third of them we placed nails in so that when you rotate the barrel, the nails will stir the contents. This picture shows the PCV crew going to town with some nails and hammers.

 Before we glued and nailed the frame together we did a dry fit to assure everything would work and then...

 Its hammer time! I'm holding the rock behind the board to absorb the shock of the hammer hitting the nail so it doesn't just flop the frame around, but actually drives the nail in.

 We used lots of glue because I've heard from many a wise source that glue is cheap, so you don't skimp on it... Thanks Dad!

 And there she blows! All finished and ready to go. I don't have a picture of the last two minor adjustments I made, but one was just cosmetic (I cut down the posts sticking up in the air after the glue dried), and the other is a bracing beam on the door to give it a little more sturdiness. Other than that, this is how it looks today, ready and waiting for compost to start.

That was a great project, and lots of fun, but I can already hear people saying, aren't you supposed to be teaching? When does that actually happen? Well, it happens most weeks, but this past week we had off for a regional sports tournament. My neighboring volunteer in Anivorano Nord and I decided to host a teacher's training during the week of sports.

 Here we see day one's first topic for our seminar. We invited 8 teachers and had a turnout of 4 on the first day which was good enough to keep us going. Unfortunately, no one could attend on the second day, so we pushed the schedule around and made our 5 day training into a 4 day training overnight!

 Here's my co-teacher going over his plan on the first day. He paid in sweat for his desire to wear a tie, but I think he pulled it off pretty well considering it was sweltering in that classroom.

 Fortunately, when we reconvened on day three we were able to move to a slightly brighter and breezier facility. Here I am leading a session on lesson planning.

The advantage of having another volunteer in the room is now I have pictures of myself actually doing what I came here for! Here two of our fellow English teachers look on as I explain how I use lesson planning to great effect in my own classes.

Alas, our teacher training was not problem free. We had already lost a day to non-attendance, but by day 4 some of the teachers started being more noticeably tardy or truant. On the last day it was nought but the two PCVs and one final English teacher. Here my fellow trainer waits in silent contemplation for a class that never turned up. Overall, the training was a success because we did have great interaction with the teachers who attended, but it was disappointing to end on such a sour note.

 Now to cheer you up, at least for a little while, cute puppy pictures! Here is one of the gang of irregulars that is still roaming around by my house having a nap.

 This cute little girl came to say hi while I was filling my water jug. The dogs here in this country are remarkably curious, just as they are elsewhere, but they seem even more interested in learning here because of the way that the locals treat them. No one in my region considers dogs to be pets, but rather they are just animals that exist and can steal your food if you're not paying attention.

 Above, two of the puppies having a nap. As you can see they are very malnourished. Dogs here are either not fed at all, or only fed with the scraps that people can't consume themselves. As a result, they are very often massively malnourished, flea, worm, and tick ridden, and also dirty and mangy. Because of all the hardships that dogs in this country face, you'd expect that it might make them hesitant to try and learn about what goes on about them, but they still display that eagerness to please that endears them to many in other parts of the world.

 My favorite girl Snow is introducing herself to the newcomers here. She was unsure at first, but now they are seasoned playmates. Although sometimes Snow can play a little too rough for their tiny frames, she's trying and so are the puppies and it is just adorable.

 Snow has taken to lying on this corner of my house for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why, but I thought it was comical because she keeps throwing my wood scraps out of the way, so I took a photo.

 She took a nap in my kitchen one day and I decided to test out her sniffer. I placed a cookie in front of her, as seen above, and waited to see if she'd react to the smell alone. Nothing. I then called her attention and, as she opened her eyes, she tried desperately to wriggle sideways like a snake after the cookie until she could right herself and attack like normal. Her tail wagged for a solid minute and it made me happy to see her excited and fed.

I will be returning back to my normal teaching duties this coming week now that the regional sports tournament is over, so I thought I'd leave you with this. One of my students pulled up in front of me on his bike while I was checking my phone and asked me what I was doing. I told him "taking your photo" and he instantly struck this pose which I think is perfect. It's moments like this that can make it all seem worth it, a great photo from an unexpected source, a discovery of a tree that's been under your nose all along, the finishing of a compost or training that you've been planning for so long. And I guarantee there will be more for each month that I have coming up. Don't believe me? Just watch!