When the Volunteers were in training at Lake Mantasoa about a month ago, they got a number of vaccinations. Rachel had a bad reaction to her typhoid shot, had to be hospitalized for a day or two, and missed her flight to Maroantsetra. The plane only goes once a week, so she stayed near Tana (at Mantasoa?) and was given language lessons while the rest of the Volunteers went to their sites. (She was able to go to her site the next week.)

On one of the days in Tana (short for Antananarivo), Rachel was able to go out with her tutor and buy a cell phone that works in Madagascar. It is used with a card for outgoing calls, but incoming calls are free–as long as you have electricity to power the cell phone. At her site, she will not have electricity, but in Sambaina she does, so we have been able to call her once or twice weekly. Since she is one of the only (the only?) Volunteer who has a working cell phone, she has allowed several other Volunteers to make brief calls home to let their parents know to call Rachel’s cell phone at an arranged time when the other Volunteer with be at Rachel’s host family’s house to take the call.

A phone card costs 5000 FMG (Malagasy francs) which I believe is about $10. A 1.5 minute call the the US costs 1200 FMG (if I remember correctly). Since that is a large part of the Volunteer’s weekly “allowance”, it is not possible for the Volunteer to initiate more than the occasional call. We have worked out a plan with our long-distance carrier, IDT, to be able to call Madagascar from our home phone for about 50 cents a minute. It is also possible to use *Vonage* at a cheaper rate (google Vonage!), but you have to make a certain number of minutes of calls per month, and it seems unlikely that we will be calling that much, given the fact that Rachel has no electricity at her site and therefore will only be reachable when she is in her “banking town”, Maroantsetra.

We looked into getting a solar charger that charges cell phones and IPODs, however, the one we have information on does not work for Rachel’s cell phone. We will keep looking for something that does. CELL PHONES are HEAVENLY. [Teresa lived for almost 10 years in Madagascar without ever being able to hear her parents’ voices; then, as now, turn-around time on letters was about 5-6 weeks and packages could take months to arrive.]