Rachel had been tilling ground for a vegetable garden. She said that in the village right now she mostly has bananas, litchees (seasonal), native greens [ana-mafana*] and rice , so the garden will hopefully provide some variety. She has been out harvesting rice again with neighbors and needs to bring the rice she has been given to be threshed. She mentioned that she has not had any meat in a long time and looks forward to having a bit when she goes to her banking town. She asked us to send some powdered cheese (the kind that comes in the boxes with macaroni); Teresa sent two envelopes today (June 1) along with a crush ball that Rachel can use with her kid-friends. She mentioned that she has plenty of books but would love to receive more National Geographic magazines or other pictures that she can share with those kids and even grown-ups.

She is still planning at some point to go to a vanilla plantation to see how vanilla is cared for and harvested. [It is the seed pod of an orchid that is grown on trees.] She mentioned earlier that vanilla beans look almost like bunches of green bananas when they are still on the orchids. They only look like the vanilla ‘beans’ we are familiar with after they are harvested and dried.

Rachel said she hopes to see boa constrictors (hopes?!), though she has not seen any yet. She mentioned that in prehistory, Madagascar was attached to what is now South America and that is why there are boas there but not on the African continent.

Today, Rachel told us about her boat ride to get to a village three hours upstream with other Peace Corps folks to attend an ANDAF teachers’ conference. She mentioned bathing in a waterfall that came out of the rain forest and seeing leopard chameleons. They stayed up-country several days and came back with the boat overloaded with people hitching a ride. The boat was just 2 inches above the surface of the water when they started out, but as they let people out along the way, the boat floated a bit higher! Still, it was low and the stream was shallow. They did not get back until back after dark, and at some points they had to get out and push the boat along in the moonlight. They were up to the shins [sounded like chins, but we hope it was shins!] in water, pushing the boat along.

Yesterday, Thursday, May 11, was Rachel’s first day back in her village after the trip. Everyone said they had heard about the teachers’ conference on the radio. People came by to talk to her, and a couple of women invited her to go into forest this morning to collect edible ferns and flowers. Then they harvested lychees, cocoanuts, and such. She thought she was collecting for them but they gave her the contents of the basket she had filled and showed her how to prepare the ferns and such. That dish together with rice are what she had for supper last night.

The women also took her to the river to show her how to wash clothes—not quite the same way as on the High Plateau (while they were in training). In the east coast village they go to a place on a river where only women are allowed to go. They take off their clothes and wash themselves and the clothes they were wearing at the same time. Rachel said that on the Plateau the ladies did not undress. She, Rachel, was a bit self-conscious at first but she got used to the idea. One of the women loaned her a lamba to wear home.

[Lamba is the Malagasy word for a piece of cloth used as clothing—for instance, the white shawl that Plateau women wear whenever they go out of the house, or a black and white striped shawl that Plateau men wear–or any sort of sarong. The same word is used for a men or women’s shawls.]

As in Sambaina, the training site on the Plateau, there are lots of kids who come to see Rachel in her new village, Voloina. She loves having them, but sometimes she wants some time alone. She’s surprised the kids don’t get bored. She said that as soon as she opens her door in the morning they assume she is “open for business” and come right in. A neighbor helped her hang a piece of cloth to separate the side of the room where she sleeps from the side where she cooks and receives company!

Special news is that Rachel is going to “shadow” a German researcher in Maroantsetra who is conducting tree research – regeneration of forests that have been heavily logged in the northern part of Makira [?]. The Wildlife Conservation Society wants someone to work in southern part and asked Rachel if she would get involved. She’ll get some training on “trancepts” [?] and use of equipment by shadowing the German researcher. That would start next month.

Rachel hasn’t started visiting the four or five little villages where she is to do conservation education yet. They are several days walk away from Voloina. When it rains even more (during the big rainy season in the austral summer—our winter), getting around is very difficult, so she will go soon as she can.

What she would like to have us send her: fruity teas (those that are not drunk with milk since she doesn’t have milk); also, face scrub; fruit leather. She says that she has gotten a few packages, but not many yet.

Rachel described going on beautiful bike rides. She said only one person in her village (Voloina) speaks French; nobody speaks English. Next Tuesday she’s going to someone’s vanilla fields to learn how to grow vanilla orchids and plant vanilla. On the walk yesterday, she was able to bring back one epiphyte (an orchid that lives on trees) to put on the mango tree in her yard.

She said that she and her closest PC volunteer neighbor (several hours away; also on the trip north) were really sick on the trip – something they ate. Spent a night throwing up and such and got well enough just before getting on the boat. She said she was tempted that night to try and call home for comfort, but they got through it together.

While she was away from the village, some carrots and potatoes she had in a bag went bad. (She did not know that she was leaving for a week; thought she was going to Maroantsetra only for a day!) When she got back the carrots were mushy and had gotten on the potatoes, so she put the contents of the bag on her compost pile. One of the women who took her into the forest to gather edible plants saw them and salvaged the potatoes. She washed them off and tried to show Rachel that they were still good to eat. Rachel felt quite embarrassed at having put them into the compost. Live and learn!

She told us that one of her neighbors brings her a little bit of the ro she makes for dinner every day. Rachel eats it with her rice and then brings the bowl back with a bit of whatever she, Rachel, has cooked. She said that yesterday there were little fresh water shrimp from the neighbor’s rice field together with vegetables in the ro. Rachel, never fond of shellfish—or any fish—ate what she could and, not to be wasteful, fed the little bit that was left over to a duck—so she now has a friend. She wants to get a duck so she’ll have eggs without having to buy them, but she has had enough of chickens for a while.

[ro is the Malagasy word for whatever one makes to go with rice—cooked vegetables with a bit of fish or meat if available, so a sort of watery stew or sauce. It is often named according to the vegetable; ro-mazava counts as the national dish of Madagascar. Teresa
Rick (Rachel’s dad) took the great notes that this report is based on!]

Last week, Rachel and a couple of other volunteers went to the local secondary school to try out their teaching skills. They had about 60 students who were around 17—not much younger than the volunteers themselves.

The volunteers are learning dialects instead of highland Malagasy, so, although the students speak the highland version of the language, the three volunteers were speaking Betsimisaraka (East coast dialect) and Antandroy (one of the southern dialects).

Rachel said that they were with the class for 2 hours, during which they each made a brief presentation, then played ecologically educational games with the students. Since that sort of learning is very foreign to schools in Madagascar which are still patterned on the French education system with lots of rote learning and little time to be creative, the Malagasy students really enjoyed the experience.

Rachel got some feedback from the Malagasy ‘sister’ of another volunteer who had been in the class and said to her PC ‘brother’, at home that evening, “That red-headed girl [Rachel] sure was a lot of fun to watch, even though I couldn’t understand her very well!”

Fady (taboo!)

When Rachel first arrived, her host sister made her a dish that contained 4 raw eggs, lightly beaten together with canned, mashed sardines, served over rice. Now, Rachel never was very fond of eggs and has always disliked fish. She has also been taught that raw eggs aren’t safe to eat. Peace Corps has taught her that in order to avoid being impolite, if you don’t want to eat something, you say it is ‘fady’ (taboo). So Rachel politely said that the egg and sardine dish was ‘fady’ for her.

That unfortunate event may well have been one of the things that limited her to vary sosoa at many meals: she didn’t know how to explain that, while raw eggs are indeed fady, she would be happy to eat cooked eggs. Since eggs are laid fresh daily and don’t require refrigeration if used reasonably promptly, they are a major source of protein for many Malagasy. [Even on the Plateau, meat has to be brought from the butcher’s, i.e., from the market, and consumed that very day–no refrigerator to keep it–so it is not in everyone’s daily diet. Teresa]

Now, with her increased knowledge of Malagasy, Rachel is able to explain that she will be glad to eat COOKED eggs.

Recently, Rachel had to ask Peace Corps administration to speak with her host family about giving her more to eat. She was getting much less variety than other volunteers—mostly “vary sosoa” (soupy rice), even several times a day. Now the situation is better, but here’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. One morning recently Rachel was walking to class during her Trainee period and was joined by the twins who have befriended her. They are from a poorer family than Rachel’s host family; live in a much less nice house on Rachel’s way to school.

As usual, they each took one of Rachel’s hands and started teaching her words. Rachel was in a bad mood because she was HUNGRY that morning and was just wishing that they were not with her when one of the twins pulled out two little plastic bags of Malagasy snack food from her pocket and gave Rachel one. “It’s called ‘caca pigeon’,” the little girl told Rachel. Rachel was hungry enough so that she was grateful even for pigeon poop—and touched beyond words that the twin would share her snack when snacks are few and far between in the child’s life.

Dear all,
I came home for lunch today and when I walked in from the courtyard and looked in the open door of my host parents’ room, I noticed there was a chicken sitting contentedly on the blanket in the center of the bed. I heard my host brother enter the front door behind me and I pointed to the offender and exclaimed, “Misy akoho!” (there’s a chicken!) He didn’t seem the least bit fazed that there was a hen on his parents’ bed, so I asked, “Inona no manoa izy?” [What’s it doing there?] He shrugged and replied, “Manatody“, with a duh! look on his face. I knew “atody” meant egg, so it wasn’t a stretch to figure out the verb “manatody“(to lay an egg).

Living in Madagascar you grow accustomed to seeing things each day that don’t entirely make sense to you. But I just couldn’t understand why my family thought it perfectly normal for their chickens to come in from the courtyard and lay eggs on their beds. Besides the fact that it is unhygenic, it seems to me like a violation of personal space for a nosy chicken to invade your sacred sleeping place. But then I thought about the situation for a moment.

The Malagasy don’t like dogs because they consider them dirty animals–which in this country they mainly are. Because of this, even families such as my host family who feed their dogs well would never allow them to enter the house and would be just horrified to find one lying on their bed! Aren’t dogs just as “dirty” as chickens? I still wouldn’t want a chicken in my bed, but I can be respectful of their tolerance, I thought to myself.

All pleased with myself for approaching the situation with such a culturally relativistic attitude (my Brandeis anthropology professors would be proud), I went upstairs to see what my host sister had cooked for lunch. [houses on the Plateau have two storeys; the upper floor which catches the breeze, is a pleasant place to eat and relax in the warm season…Teresa] Learning that we were having “ravitoto” with “vary mena maina” (pounded manioc leaves with dry Malagasy red rice*), I was all ready to forget the chicken-inside-the-house incident. Then I heard a rustling of feathers, and a strangely familiar cooing sound came out of the cooking area where the family prepares food on two little charcoal braziers. I looked next to the brazier which supported a steaming pot of rice and there, nestled in the warm alcove, was another chicken!

Staring at it in disbelief and disgust (you learn fast to hate chickens here: they sneak into your garden by means unknown and have a field day on your carefully planted vegetables), I pointed to the chicken and said to the cook, my host sister, “Misy akoho!” She nodded. “Fa inona no manoa izy?” (But what’s it doing there?), I asked, trying not to show my disapproval. Her reply: “Manatody.”

To top it off, as I walked down the stairs to my room after lunch, I had to stop midway. There, on the fourth step, lay a single, still-warm egg. It’s beyond me why my host family doesn’t build a chicken coop in the courtyard. Instead our “ladoshy” (the little sort of out-house where you go to take a sponge bath in private) doubles as a chicken coop at night. Go figure!

With love, Rachel

*Often during my stay, my host family would have white, soupy rice (”varisosoa“) three meals a day, whereas most Malagasy families eat soupy rice for breakfast only, so dry rice was a cause for great excitement on my part! [When the Malagasy cook rice over a charcoal fire, the rice in the bottom of the pan gets browned, almost burned; after most of the rice is removed and put in a serving dish, the rice that is left is covered with water and set back on the brazier to boil, making “ranonampango“, or “rice water”. The rice water is drunk at the end of the meal, and the browned or burned rice given to the chickens and dogs! For Rachel it was especially important to have rice water because she couldn’t drink tap water and, except for making tea in the morning, no water was heated (sterilized) during the dayunless dry rice and consequently rice water were made. When soupy rice is cooked, the bottom doesn’t brown so no rice water is made. Teresa]

We just managed to get through to Rachel on the phone for the first time since their swearing-in toward the end of April. She was in Maroantsetra today, spending two days with other PC volunteers and one of the PC staff. Then they are going up-country for a couple of days, camping out. When she rode her bike to Maroantsetra on Friday, Rachel thought she was only going there for one day, so she did not bring enough malaria medication or clothes. She will try and borrow the medicine (Larium at this point) and will just have to wear the same clothes for 4 days—not so comfy in a very rainy, very hot place!

She said that the ravinala (palm frond) house she is living in (not the same one as her predecessor, since that was no longer available) is right on the main “road”—path, most likely–and that her neighbors are helping her build a fence to screen her a bit from the “traffic”, i.e. folks passing on foot and bicycle. She is using left-over basic equipment/furniture from former volunteers for the moment—a water filter, stool, etc.—and having a table built. A neighbor helped her lash together a makeshift table out of sticks to prepare food on for now.

Speaking of food, Rachel said that there is plenty of rice, fruit, and occasional vegetables, but no meat at all in the villagers’ diet. I would presume they eat fish, but Rachel has never liked fish, so she probably is not enthused about that possibility. So she will get meat only when she goes to Maroantsetra—just to eat there, not carry back: no refrigeration. She told us about going out to the rice fields with the villagers to harvest rice. One of the women cooked a simple meal of rice and leafy vegetables while everyone was working and then they all ate it sitting around on the ground, using banana leaves for a communal plate and twisted leaves as “spoons”. Chinese litchees are in season—hairy ones, apparently. A young woman with a baby brings her a basket of them daily (if I understood correctly) as a welcoming gift.

Rachel is being “helped” by kids again—a whole horde of kids who come daily to help her sweep and prepare food and “scrub” cooking pots with dirt [??]. She said she bought and roasted peanuts to give them as treats, since that will add protein to their diets.

When she arrived in Maroantsetra, she received four letter-packages, that is, 1-2 pound brown padded-envelope packages. When she went to the post office, they said there was not enough postage on the packages. They carefully took out the requisite stamps, licked them and stuck them on the letter-packages before her eyes, cancelled them, and had her pay only for the stamps—no customs! So it was cheaper than in the capital to retrieve her mail. I bet they know that PCVs are a real addition to the community and are kind to them. (In fact, Rachel mentioned how kind almost everyone is.) She has rationed the packages so has not opened them all, but she did open the one that had Burt’s Bees mosquito repellant, and she said that it works well.

In the packages were some old Ranger Ricks and other kids’ magazines. She says lots of people–kids and grown-ups, come to sit around while she shows them the magazines and tells them what she can about the pictures while they ooh and aah over the pictures.

To be continued.