Hey everyone!
So this last week was the much anticipated village stay! man what an adventure it was dont even know where to begin! Guess ill start with getting there. So as ive said before the roads here suck BIG TIME and thanks to the yclone everything is extra muddy and holy so of course it was difficult to get there because the roads were flooded and then we couldnt go a certain way because it was too close to the sacred burial grounds. plus our main vehicle was the tata bus. oh the tata how can i even begin to describe it. its basically a giant tin can on wheels that would instantly fail all safety inspections in most other countries. and there was about 25 kids crammed on it with all of our luggage on top-no idea how it didnt tip over. and its not really 4 wheel drive but its pretty massive so it just kinda barrels through everything. well on the way there i was in a 4wheel drive car but on the way back i was in the tata but ill get to that later i guess. so the barreling through worked pretty well. until the end of the trip. took us literally 5 hours to go the last 30 kilometers which is like 12 or 15 miles i think? and this 5 hours included trudging through poo mud, digging paths in the sand, and literally pushing the tata. it was mostly the sands fault cuz it was just too deep. i felt really bad for all the kids in the tata so i got out and helped them with the dirty work it was good experience and helped me get a bit of a workout in. so we finally got there at 2 am - oh ya we had left at 7am so thats what 19 hours or something crazy? we ate a nice diner at " am and then set up our tents on the beach-literally on the beach! it was so beautiful when I woke up to the ocean the traveling was totally worth it! it was awesome and there were tons of cool shells so i was really happy.
This whole trip was combined with the malagasy CEL students by the way. originally we all thought they were a bit immature and frustrating to be around but now the two groups have really bonded which im really happy about and were all friends and really chill together. anyways i was in a group with a SIT friend Lisa-shes totally rad and fun to be around, really positive and fun so it was good to enter into the experience with her. Then we were partnered with a CEL student named Romuald and he was really friendly and nice and translated for us. We declared ourselves the best group pretty much instantly. So we went to the market there- real different from the market here its basically a dessert there, food is mainly manioc, potatoes, and cactus fruit.
Then the adventure really began when we got picked up in a legit zebu cart. I actually felt bad for the zebus its looked like hard work and they kept hitting them with sticks. but they kind of deserved it because they kept walking into the cactus and then they pooed and their tails flicked it on us. but thats just the beginning of the poo haha as david put it - everything was very poo-ey. so took us about an hour to go 3.5 km in the zebu cart. funny thing is that i think that was still faster than the tata. Got to the village and was greated by tons of kids who awkwardly watched us set up our tents.
Gosh i have so much to say i dont even know how to organize this so sorry if its all frazzled...
Ok so ill start with the family. Baba (dad) was the local medicine man and he has 2 wives? maybe 3 we couldnt really figure it out but I guess thats actually not a lot for this region some men have 8 or 10! we asked how many kids he has and he had to try to count them and said 8 but i think there were a lot more. but we had the main mom (nene) and 3 main daughters who were with us the most. ill classify them as old sis, cross-eyed sis, and little sis. cross-eyed sis was my favorite. then there was an aunt (or wife?) that we called papaya face because she always had yellow papaya juice on her face, apparently it lightens your skin? anyways papaya face was always all up in our business and was the one who would usually grab us and make us dance.
So on to the dance. I mean stomp. Haha Well the first full day we were there Lisa was sick so I basically entertained them and we danced for I think around 3 hours. Which is really a workout. The dancing the stomping and waving your hands and the singing is more like screaming as loud as possible. haha and they would use a drum made out of zebu skin. i atually really liked drumming i could lay down a pretty good beat. so yea they REALLY like their dancing. and they get really into it which is really entertaining but really draining sometimes. funny to watch a frail stick thin ancient looking old man stomping around. and they basically have maybe 5 different songs and 3 different dances that we just did over and over and over. cant wait to show them to you.
So the poo. Basically there was poo everywhere. they sit in it, eat in it, stomp in it, play in it, basically live in it. its pretty gross but to them its not because they dont know the corelation between poo and health. and the source of the poo was the tons of animals all around-zebu, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, dogs. there was one evil dog who was in charge of the animals and the first night he started growling like crazy outside out tent we thought it was a savage beast but it was just this crazy dog. anyways the poo situation is pretty gross. the worst instance of it was one day we were sitting outside eating lunch and i was really really happy because it was a really good lunch-rice with squash and beans and manioc! and then a dumb chicken came over and so nene shooed it away with a stick and it kicked sand/poo all over my plate. the next bite i took was like pure chunks i couldnt finish it i was so sad. so the poo is nasty but i tried to stay as sanitary as possible-was definitely the dirtiest ive ever been in my whole life though. just had one kind of bucket shower.
anyways the food was good but not really traditional because we brought it for them. it was usually a massive plate with rice and beans. also a lot of potatoes which they call sweet potatoes but they arent orange. someties we got to eat them with honey-real honey with the honeycomb and everything so that was a treat.
they have lots of fields-thats where they get their food. so we went out to the fields with them. fist 2 days we went to the potatoe fields which is actually pretty funny since i always say that i want to be a potatoe farmer cuw its like digging for burried treasure. well il not so sure about that anymore-or at least not a potatoe farmer in madagascar. that was hard work! basically you just find a root and start digging. i worked with cross-eyed sis and she found them and then i tried to yank them out. then we carried them back in baskets on our heads-cant wait to show you all pics! did that twice then the third day i enjoyed more we went to their other fields and weeded and piked beans and then shelled them under the shade of a papaya tree and ate melon. also dug for manioc-like potatoes but even more work. walked to their water hole which is a rock with a huge hole in it and a ladder that goes down prob 12 feet or so? sis filled a bucket to the brim and carried it back on her head without spilling a drop-so impressive!
so we did have homework to do their and we chose to do our project on traditional medicine since baba is the ombiasa-medicine man. so we interviewed him and all was good. then after another group came to talk to him he was like oh we have to finish your homework so we said ok and went into the house ( oh yea the house is a tiny hut made of wood and mud and its probably about the siwe of most bathrooms, maybe slightly larger, with just a bed and a table and we would sit on mats of the tiny bit of floor-barely space for the 3 of us) anyways baba showed us these seeds called sikidy. so theyre basically pebbles that he puts out in a certain order which he is told by the ancestors and he uses them to do consultations. then he ground up some bone and put it in water with some tree bark and drank it and rubbed it on his head and chest. so pretty loopy but whatever you want to believe is fine so i just listened to it and it was all good UNTIL he was finished and proceded to tell us that the demonstration costed money. and 10000 Airyairy! which is only 5 bucks but still thats a ton for here and the way he went about it is was so wrong! so i paid him (was later reimbursed by the program) and we just tried to get it go but after that we just couldnt look at baba the same way. we made lots of jokes about it though- tought Romuald how to say "our dad scemmed us. it sucked" in english. found out he did the same thing to the other group who visited so he made a ton of money off of us. And i lean i know that theyre really poor but hes a hardcore chain smoker and hes probably just gong to use it to buy more tobacco-he already was using the notebooks we gifted the kids to roll his smokes. so ya the family dynamic was a bit off after that but i tried to not let it ruin the experience it was just another thing to learn from.
For living such a ruogh life they really did spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing. the number one past time was looking for fleas in each others hair. papaya face stuck her head in my lap and made me look through her hair for a solid 10 min i think that was the worst ten minutes there.
Then on Friday-the last day- they did our hair in the traditional braids. So i was really adament that they could only use my comb on mine and lisas hair and they did but then of course it fell out. so they redid it using their nasty hairy comb. then they didnt have rubberbands- they used silly bands for lisa and the first time they used string for mine but then the second time they redid it they used-i kid you not-human hair that they pulled out of the wall or some mystery place. ya nasty. and while this is happening baba was smoking in the hut and oldest sis was scratching at my sunburn. that was when i was like ok im ready to leave now. so we put on our lamawanas -cloth you tie on like a skirt. then we ate lunch-a massive plate of rice and beans with a potatoe. then we prepared to leave and nene gave us another potatoe to eat and literally a live chicken to take back to fort dauphin as a gift for our family. Then the entire village-prob about 25 people- left and danced to the main village area. not exaggerating this is a 3.5km journey most of which we were "dancing" or more like stomping/jogging through the sand in the dessert in the middle of the day with a ton of people chanting and beating drums and taking shots of rum. yea it was insanity if ive ever seen it. luckily i didnt have to carry the chicken the whole way cuz they realized we didnt know how to dance with chickens in our hands. seriously it was so crazy i dont even know how to fully describe it. we got there and all 12 of the villages were there with the other students and we all had to do our dance performances infront of everyone. we went second but the first group did the same song that we were going to do so choas broke out and then family was just screaming at each other and we had no clue what was going on and all of the sudden we were dancing in front of everyone and everything was completely different than what we practiced. we did this follow the leader theing where we would stomp and then suddenly suqat down on the ground. then they made me sing! ah but i was just like i have no clue what im doing but im just going to pretend i do and go or it! so i think we pulled it off alright. afterwards we gifted them a goat and then i just turned into a mad goat rampage dance party. somehow we said bye to the fam.
so that night was a big party and then the next morning we left nd 10 minutes in we were already pushing the tata through the sand. i was in the tata for all the ride home it was crazy! we pushed it, changed a flat tire, and fiwed the brakes once. also this whole time there are live turkeys and a goat strapped to the top-the goat woulndt stop crying i felt so bad for it- oh yes and all teh chickens under our seats. and that was nasty since the chickens would poo and then roll in the poo and then flap their feathers and get it everywhere. so we kept our feet us on the old tire which was in the middle of the entry to to bus next to us. and the whole time theres either crazy techo malagasy dance music or super cheesy celen dion blasting on the radio. insanity. stopped for lunch at 5:30 and didnt get back here till midnight. of course it was poruing rain here too. showed up at my host house at midnight with a chicken and a friend because her house was locked up. but my family was so nice they even made up ramen for dinner! so happy to be with them again i appreciate them even more now theyre so nice and their toilete is the best!
So that was the village stay. I think i did a really good job at emersing myself in their culture and just doing everything they threw at me. I dont think i coulda stayed there for more than a week but it was definitely a great experience and im really glad that i did it.
Now im in my last week in fort dauphin. trying to get a lot accomplished this week which is really difficult. today we didnt have class and i just went out to interview people for a project im donig. its on peoples attitudes towards the environment and conservation. really interesting but also really difficult since i cant even just communicate with people. but my prof helped me by translating so thats nice. my malagasy isnt really improving much i just smile and nod and repeat things without really knowing what im saying. its difficult to improve in french too cuz the people here rarely speak it and when they do its impropper so i think my grammer might actually be getting worse? but at least i can have a conversation.
getting my independent study project (ISP) rolling thats really exciting! think im going to camp out at sainte luce its the absolute last piece of coastal littoral forest in madagascar and its barely been studied so it sounds awesome! also its safe and theres a good campground with a cook! met with someone yesterday to talk about it so im pretty pumped.
besides that just trying to get organized and do regular things like register for classes-its so much more difficult here! gave our presentation on the village stay yesterday think it went alright. its interesting working with the CEL kids-some of them had never done a oral presentation before being in this program! thats so insane to think about considering that i feel like ive been doing them since i was born!
so ya thats mostly everything for now i think. ive been enjoying being here and just taking things one day at a time. malagasy culture is really helping me to chill out more. sometimes i cant believe its me whos donig all these crazy things! want to show you all pics but uploading them is impossibly slow so i think when i get home we will just have a big picture party. hope you all are doing well there! ill try to blog once more before we hit the road this weekend!
OH WAIT!!! WHAT IS THIS BUSINESS ABOUT THE KINGS MOVING TO ANAHEIM!!??!! You all need to go out into the street right now and protest this is totally unacceptable especially while i am halfway around the world! mom and dad told me and it made me so sad! go out and protest! now! no really right now!!!
Ok this is bye for reals for now. Lots of love to you all!
