Rachel said she loves the fruit leather that her dad sent—especially the cherry flavor. She said the raspberry tea in one of the packages really was a big help while she was ill, since she still has not been able to find anything like herb tea there. She asked us to send her Emergen-C, a fruit-flavored vitamin powder to dilute in water. She got a bit from the PC volunteer she replaced.

She and her PC friends also really like the news magazine Rick recently got a subscription to, The Week, which sums up liberal and conservative opinion and commentary that appears elsewhere in the press each week. They get Newsweek through PC but think The Week might be more interesting.

When she was feeling better and was able to be out and about, Rachel met a Malagasy friend of one of the lemur researchers. He is a young man, about her age, and he works as a barber, though he attended law school in Tana for two years and would like to go back to it. He speaks excellent French and English as well. Rachel will teach him how to make a hot box (for cooking with less fuel) so that he can show his mother. She now weaves baskets in the market, and Rachel wonders whether they might be able to make and sell hot boxes. Her husband, the young man’s father, was highly placed in the Ratsiraka government, was jailed and later died. She and son had to move back to coast.

Rachel also told about having Indian spiced tea at Aisha’s cafe. (Rachel said with some amusement that you have to wait for the ants to crawl out of the sugar before you put it into your tea. I remember that!) Aisha, a Karani—Muslim–from the West coast, now living on the East coast, is a very good cook. There is no menu at her café; she just serves whatever she has cooked that day. She can apparently make many things just after hearing about them or being given a recipe and often cooks special stuff for PC volunteers, apparently. Aisha has four little kids; her husband sells cloves when they are in season.

Rachel says she learned from Aisha that cloves are harvested by kids in the area (google cloves + harvest for details on trees, etc.) What they gather is split 50/50 with the owner of the trees. The kids sell their cloves and at that point, they have more disposable income than their parents. Aisha said the trees in Madagascar don’t produce cloves every year, but when they do, kids have a lot of money. Then she, Aisha, can’t keep up with baking stuff for them to buy.

Rachel said that the volunteers had been admiring shiny black stuff that women weave into their raffia baskets and wondering what it was. Finally, they saw someone shredding used video tape and realized that that is what is being incorporated into the beautiful woven baskets and hats.