Complicated technical concepts that did not originally exist in the Malagasy language (such as ecology terminology) have been assigned consistent descriptive labels as opposed to single-word names. For example, there is no word in Malagasy for ‘botany’. Instead, the concept is referred to as fahalalana fombany zavamaniry, literally: ‘knowledge of the nature of things that grow.’ I can’t simply teach a botany lesson, I have to teach a lesona amin’ny fahalalana fombany zava-maniry. Oy vey!

One of my favorites: there is no single word in Malagasy for ‘conifer’. A ‘conifer’ is
karazana kakazo vazaha, literally, ‘species of tree white men have’. Then again, there is a word for ‘deciduous’ in Malagasy: mihitsandravina.

In many ways, Malagasy is a simple language. In others, it’s a royal pain. I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve only been studying it for six weeks and that the learning process takes time. Then again, I only have three weeks of technical and language training left before I’m off to fend for myself. Without good communication skills, this will be rough going, but I guess it’s the best way to learn.

The Malagasy love proverbs! I now do, too. Some of my favorite Malagasy proverbs so far:

This is only half a pot of honey, but my heart is full. Tantely tapa-bata ka ny foko no entiko mameno azy.

Oxen are trapped by their horns, and men by their words. Ny omby smaborina amin’ny tandrony ary ni olana kosa amin’ny vavany.

Cross a river in a crowd and the crocodiles won’t eat you. Akanga maro tsy vakin’amboa.

All who live under the sky are woven together like one big mat. Tsihy be lambanana ny ambanilantra.

If you are just a dung beetle, don’t try to move mountains. Aza manano herim-baantay.

Some days being a Peace Corps trainee feels like being a dung beetle trying to move mountains. Luckily these days are becoming less and less common, and as we wrap up training, all that we have learned is beginning to fall into place.

My garden is growing beautifully. The neglected patch of soil that used to serve as a trash-burning rubble area has shot up wonderful tsaramaso (literally ‘pretty eyes’, Malagasy for beans), korgeti (zucchini) voatabia (tomatoes) karoti (carrots) and navet (turnip) plants. My ananas (greens) have been attacked by bibikely (literally ‘little animals’, Malagasy for insects) so I applied a natural pesticide of mashed sakai (hot peppers), savony gasy (special Malagasy black soap), and water. Seems to be working now but I should have done it much earlier.

Yikes! Should also have gone to bed much earlier tonight. Will write more another day. With much love, Rachel

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.

On June 1, Rachel reported having had what appeared to be typical malarial symptoms (high fever, chills, general malaise) and also cold symptoms for several days. After confering by phone with the Peace Corps doctors in the capital she took Coartem, one of the drugs supplied by the Peace Corps to treat malaria. She was much improved though still weak for about 24 hours, then relapsed into her previous miserable state for about three days more days. At that point the Peace Corps doctors said that she probably had had chikungunya.

As the fever and chills receded, Rachel experienced “swelling and bruising” in her ankles and considerable pain in knees, wrists, and elbows, as well as aching in lower back and extreme fatigue. She says she “felt like she was about 80 years old and had arthritis”. (Teresa found on the web that the name of the viral disease is taken from a Swahili word meaning “walks stooped over like an old man”. Having it confers lasting immunity, apparently, which is good news. It is spread by day-biting mosquitoes.)

About 8 days later Rachel’s joint pains were better but still noticeable. She was able to ride her bike back to her village on June 9th. On June 12, Rachel said that she feels almost well again, though still fatigued and a bit “family-sick” though not homesick per se. She is still thrilled to be where she is doing what she is doing!

Rachel called at 5:30 on Saturday morning ,June 10, because we had tried and failed to reach her the two days before. She was back in the village and said she feels 100% better. She is planning to go on a tree-counting mission next week with her friend Philip, a German researcher, in the northern rainforests. (We also talked to her on June 12 and she was leaving on that mission the next day; will be out of touch for 12 days or so.)

Rachel said everyone in the village appeared happy to see her when she got back from her long stay, recuperating in her banking town. The teenager who used to housesit for Rachel’s predecessor had apparently had a party at Rachel’s house every night while she was away; she came back to find him and a couple of girls playing her music and generally amusing themselves. Rachel will not ask him to housesit again and hopes to arrange for her neighbor (an unmarried woman) to stay there instead. Nothing was taken so it was not really so bad but Rachel’s neighbors were upset and said that the young man was “lacking in manners.”

Rachel broke out the first of theTrader Joe’s balloons and found to her great pleasure that they are 100% biodegradable. The kids were really happy with them; she had no idea they would be such a hit. [good thing, since we have 2 lbs of donated balloons to send her, bit by bit!]

Rachel’s malaria blood slide (she took the sample herself as PC taught her to do and sent it to the capital) came back negative, so it appears that she really did have chikungunya. It’s been detected in Nosy Be, Tamatave, and Maroantsetra, as well as on La Reunion and elsewhere. Having it apparently confers immunity, though it is really very unpleasant while it lasts! She said it’s good to be back in her village and feeling better!

Rachel said she got the “21 seasoning salute” (a Trader Joe’s seasoning that we sent in ziplock envelopes) and cooked anamamy and anamalao [two Malagasy greens, somewhat like spinach]with it. She said it was really delicious. She grows the anamalao herself; eats the vegetable stew with rice, of course. She planted a lot of seeds from the packets we sent earlier, but nothing is producing flowers or vegetables yet.

Discover Magazine is now coming to her directly, as is National Geographic. She received some little hotel soaps in a package from Dad. Keeps a piece of onein a shell from the beach, outside at her hand-wash station. When she goes away from home for a day or so, the piece always disappears. She says she puts the soap wrappers against her pillow so as not to waste the lovely, perfumey smell they have.

She asked us to send more dark chocolate and Emergen-C powder (a vitamin C drink). She said that on “Christmas Eve”, i.e., the night they opened most of the 10 packages she received while ill, she and her friends ate a lot of the chocolate that we sent a few weeks ago. Apparently, it was much enjoyed!

Rachel is feeling much better, though she is still pretty weak. She said she found out how weak she was when she was not able to ride her bicycle somewhere but ended up pushing it instead. She said she’s okay walking and when we were talking to her she was out in the street, judging from the background noises. She went out to get food for supper she said. While we were talking a little girl from her village came by and said hello!

She went to the post office to pick up the four packages she knew were waiting for her and saw something on a shelf that looked like another package. The clerk rummaged around and in the end she went home with 10 packages–not all the ‘missing’ ones, but a good start. Only one of them had been tampered with, and even that one was not missing anything, just showed signs of having been opened. A couple of the packages contained chocolate which she was able to share with her American friends right away.

While we were on the phone with Rachel today, Teresa received an email from Kevin, Rachel’s friend from Brandeis who very kindly set up and maintains this blog. Teresa was able to read that email to Rachel right away. Rachel also received a letter from another Brandeis friend, Marli, and a postcard from Grandpa, Dorothy, and Mike. She said that she treasures every piece of mail from the US!

In one of the packages she opened (she is saving some that don’t contain anything edible to open back in the village) there was a copy of a relatively recent Discover Magazine with an article on an American woman, a lemur expert who lives and works Madagascar. There were photos of two animals Rachel has in fact seen in Madagascar: a leaf-tailed gecko and mouse lemurs. She said that the leaf-tailed gecko she saw made a display and jumped at her to scare her away, looking just like the photo in the magazine. (It’s a relatively large gecko, she said, and very well camouflaged by its leafy look.)

Back in the village, Rachel has been drinking hot water with forest honey that she bought from a passing vendor and Vitamin C powder. She never liked coffee (a Malagasy favorite) or tea, so she drinks that mixture instead. She says it tastes a bit like apple cider. We have sent some packages of herbal tea that she can use for variety, when they get there.

She said she had someone in her village make her a sort of bench to open/grate coconuts on–was not very clear to us what was meant, but she said that the coconut milk and shavings made a delicious drink as well.

She asked us to send her a rainproof cover (sort of like a big shower cap) for her backpack for treks into the rainforest. I found one at HTO today and will include it in the next letter/package. Also found a lot of copies of National Geographic for Kids for ten cents each at our local library and will send those bit by bit, minus the ads. Apparently kids and adults alike are really enjoying the National Geographics we have sent–a real window on the world for rainforest dwellers in Madagascar. We are so proud of Rachel for being there and opening that window!

Rick talked to Rachel this AM early, then we both were able to talk to her around noon our time. She says she has malaria. The PC doctor, consulted by phone, said it doesn’t sound like dengue fever, thank goodness. Rachel was in Maroantsetra (her “banking town”) with two friends when the illness began yesterday. She had intense chills, 104 degree fever, body aches and headache—the usual symptoms of malaria–plus hallucinations from the high fever. She began emergency self-treatment and feels better now, she said. She took a blood sample that was brought to Tana today by someone so that they can check for parasites (useful in determining for sure that it is malaria and what type).

She says that she had not missed a dose of her malarial suppressant (Larium at this point) but that she had gotten a number of mosquito bites recently. Rachel and the two other young people were in town for banking and such and had been intending to go out to dinner today to celebrate a birthday. She is really lucky that the illness hit when she was not out in her village and was with friends who could take care of her and help her contact PC for advice.

She is apparently now planning to leave on June 12th for a two and a half week trip to the north to study trees.

Teresa adds (from memory and without looking things up, so google to get certain facts): malaria was prevalent in the US into the late 1800s, or maybe even the early part of the 20th century, not only in the south but also in northern states in low-lying, marshy areas. It was often called “intermittent fever”, a description of the way the symptoms recede after each acute attack, then return repeatedly 24 or 48 hours later. People whose ancestors evolved in malarial areas (maybe only in Africa) are often partially protected from the ravages of malaria by what we call “sickle cell anemia”.

Both Rick and Teresa had malaria in the 70s in Africa/Madagascar. It was considered more of a nuisance than a serious disease back then, but Rick actually had the more serious falciparial malaria in Rwanda in 1978.