I found Puppy waiting for me faithfully outside the hospital, next to my bicycle. The two of us headed off towards N for a nice 5-k bike ride/run along the coast. I’ve been visiting N more and more since the cyclone, visiting Zetine Marie about the Seecaline (Infant Health and Nutrition Clinic) project and passing meeting information on to my four students rehearsing the lemur play. It used to be that I’d get called “vazaha� all the time there by the kids I passed. Biking through the villages of V, C, and A is always so much fun—a little chorus of “Rachelle� follows me all the way. Then I get 5 km out to A-N and the kids don’t know me-or didn’t know me before. Today, all of a sudden, I got greeted by name all the way to Zetine Marie’s! Maybe it was due to the radio message about tree-planting day that got announced this week, or the kids talking about the play, or the new mentorship I’m starting to form with the mayor’s son from N. At any rate, it was lovely to have a little boy call out, “Mademoiselle Rachelle� from the EPP soccer field and not the conventional “vazaha!� That word has become like nails on a chalk board for every Peace Corps volunteer at this point in service. I have a 7 km radius now! Never again will I be such a celebrity, if only with the kiddies.

After lunch, duck egg salad with a packet of real mayonnaise from home, I put together a little gift bag and got ready to visit the “lopitaly� where Mama ny Sylvano [aka Dianne] gave birth two days ago. My gift was a plush lamb from Mom’s last envelope, a little story book about aye ayes, and a few bars of assorted hotel soaps from home—actually very nice soap—for Dianne.

When I arrived at the clinic, there was a large group of long-faced people assembled outside. I whispered to one young woman and she responded that a man had just died. Was he from V? No, From A. Was he old? No only 20 years old. He was not sick but drank “toaka� at the “ball� last night (the party to celebrate reforestation day). No one knew whether he drank too much or got a nasty batch of the home-made sugarcane rum. All were shocked and solemn. Somehow I still doubt the event will do anything to change the prevalence of alcoholism here. Just yesterday I went to Mama ny Pascale’s “labotika� [little store] to buy kerosene for my oil lamp and found Mama ny Kevin, young, beautiful, but with red eyes and nose, downing a 200 ariary tumbler of rum. It was 8:30 in the morning. Mama ny Linda and Bsoy are the only two sisters in that family who don’t drink. Mama ny Zulio, Mama ny Val, Mama ny Kevin, and Mama ny Bretot all take after their parents—well into their sixties and still alcoholics. All wonderful people whose children I love dearly. The predisposition must be genetic. Makes me sad!

Thank goodness Mama ny Linda has the sense never to touch toaka. She’s got enough to deal with with her 8 kids. I wish for her sake that she didn’t have so many, but I do adore every one of them. Especially Linda, Stella, Franko, Franklin, and Frankline…

Well, back to the clinic: I made my way through the solemn crowd to the little patient area, a cement room with three rusty beds and a bleached, tattered poster about SIDA [AIDS] prevention on one wall. In the only occupied bed lay Dianne, Mama ny Sylvano. Next to her, bundled up tight with a little pink bonnet tied below her chin, was a soft beautiful little baby girl. Dianne looked exhausted, herself bundled up in a sweater and ski cap, despite the midday heat. She had cotton wads stuffed in her ears, but a bright smile on her face at the sight of a visitor.

I’m not sure why the common philosophy in Madagascar is to keep sick people and babies bundled up in peak heat, when all others are sweating through their “lamba hoanys� [cotton wraps]. I think it would not be good for a newborn to be so insulated, but I’d never dare to say so. I asked how the labor went and if mother and baby were both healthy and was told that the doctor (not the midwife) delivered the baby. The delivery had taken a long time, so Dianne said. How long? Four hours! I explained that where I come from, women are commonly in labor for as long as 24 hours. I’m not sure Dianne believed me. When I asked Mama ny Dianne how they got their daughter to the clinic, she said that when Dianne’s water broke, they walked, of course. Of course. I just smiled and commented on how strong Dianne is. I took a photo of grandmother, mother, and new daughter and then we all began making preparations to move Dianne back home. Just day three after giving birth, but Dianne didn’t want to stay in the clinic with all the mourners and the body of the deceased young man in the room next door.

Before they could leave, they needed the doctor to come by and write out a declaration of birth in Dianne’s little grid-lined booklet. “What is her name?â€? I asked, having forgotten to do so earlier. I was told that she doesn’t have one yet but that they need to decide on one quickly, before the doctor finished writing up the statement of birth. Dianne then looked at me and asked, “Do you want to name her?â€? I stared in disbelief. “Me?â€? I explained that in the West we have whole books full of names that mothers can choose from. Put on the spot, my mind blanked and I couldn’t think of a single name. I should have suggested “Teresaâ€? or “Margaretâ€? [Rachel’s mom and sister], but instead the first thing that came out was “Julietteâ€?, the name of the French-Swiss girl Mat and I just traveled to Masoala with last week. Dianne thought a moment, then Mama ny Dianne shook her head and said there was already a Juliette in V. Juliette lives down the lane and goes to church with them. There can’t be two Juliettes at church. Since I hadn’t provided anything more original, the two figured they’d go with what Dianne was debating earlier, a name I’d never heard of before that sounded like “Kanellaâ€?. “Kanella,â€? I repeated. “How do you write that?â€? Dianne looked at me, thought a long moment, and decided she didn’t know. Maybe the doctor could spell it…

Mama ny Linda came by as Linda and I were preparing to head over to the well to wash my long-overdue load of clothes, mildewy from weeks of constant rain and damp. Mama ny Linda had an exhausted look and was so hoarse from coughing she could barely produce enough sound to say “mbolatsaraâ€? [”still good = hello]. When I enquired she told me that she’d only been coughing for a few days and some “sakay tanyâ€? tea would help but she had no ginger. I went into the house, grabbed my olive-oil bottle full of rainforest honey and a large piece of ginger root from the market in M, and brought them out to her. She accepted gratefully and a little while later, my olive-oil bottle was returned empty. I always forget that when you offer something in Madagascar, you only offer the amount you are prepared to have taken because the “fombaâ€? here is to take all that is offered, instead of our custom of politely accepting a reasonable amount and returning the remainder. Ah, well… I’m happy she has the honey. Will buy more next time I’m in M.

For now, I have “siramamy gasyâ€? (”Malagasy sweet saltâ€?, i.e., a block of homemade sugarcane molasses) to sweeten my tea. The “siramamy gasyâ€? was a present brought over by Mama ny Noro soon after Mama ny Linda returned the empty honey bottle. Mama ny Noro just came back from M, a four-day journey on foot from V, the village my traveling onion-sellers come from. She carried a heavy block of solid molasses on her head the whole way, bringing over a beautiful piece as my “voandalanaâ€? (fruit of the road, i.e., souvenir of her trip). Such a lovely gesture! Today I gave away honey and was given molasses. Such is life in V.

Today was my second day back alone in V after the past three weeks of visitors. Every time I go away, I forget just how much I love this place. The house was bustling with kids all day, coloring in their new coloring books (sent with Mat by Libby), playing ball in the yard, and helping straighten the garden, fetch water, and hang my washing–for which each received a “special treatâ€? of “voankazo mainaâ€?, a.k.a. dried apricots. I just got an envelope containing a new dried berry medley (her favorite from Trader Joe’s) so figured I could justify sharing my already open, long-rationed bag of apricots. All loved them, no surprise there, and several of the boys tore theirs in half and stuffed a share in a dirty pocket, “satria tia papako e!â€? (because Papa likes them, too). Soon after, Franko and Franklin ran up to my door with an egg in Franko’s outstretched hand. Small and a little misshapen, but they were excited that my remaining duck (still lodging with their birds, since I left for Tana after the cyclone) finally laid its first egg.

Rachel did manage to get to M with the things she needed for her stay in Tana. She really enjoyed helping train the incoming group of PC volunteers. Afterwards she spent two weeks or so serving as interpreter etc. for a documentary film crew filming lemurs for public television. Then back to V and her teaching and other work there.

She has managed to help the women’s center procure the supplies for their maternal/infant nutrition classes and hopes to visit them soon to see how the center is doing. In V, she had a brief visit from a researcher friend and now is in the national parks with a friend from Brandeis for a couple of days.

Under Rachel’s direction, kids from her middle school performed an environmental-education play (written by her researcher friend) at a festival in M last week. They did a good job and were really pleased with themselves–first-time actors all. Rachel said it was a new experience for her to be “directing” a play instead of being an actor herself.

In July she expects to visit the south of Madagascar with a visiting professor from Brandeis. She’ll get another chance to try interpreting and see new parts of the island. t

Marie Iodile and I loaded all possessions into my rafters, grabbed valuables and animals, stuffing them in traveling baskets, and braved the flooded road to get to a higher village, wading at points in strong current where the water reached our thighs. We joined a scattered herd of people migrating south to higher ground, close to the ocean and away from the Voloina river flood plains.

I packed an overnight bag, rice, duck eggs, a tomato, and my chicken and ducks. The way here was a nightmare, straight out of a book or movie. I started with 2 dogs, 2 ducks, and my chicken. (The neighbor’s little chicken escaped and has likely drowned by now). By the time we reached our sanctuary, I was left with Puppy and chicken and no way of knowing what will become of Doggie, who almost was swept away and drowned trying to make one of the flooded river crossings. I tried to go back for him when I saw him struggling wildly to fight the current that was sweeping him out into a flooded rice paddy, but Marie Iodile shot me an angry look, insisting that I continue and making it clear that she would not wait for me if I tried to save Doggie. To my relief, I saw that he had managed to drag his little body up onto a hummock of vegetation and make his way back to the Voloina side of the water. I hope he made it someplace high! [Thankfully, Doggie managed to get to higher ground and was fine in May, anyway. t]

I carried Puppy the rest of the way, unwilling to risk losing him. My ducks escaped from their basket when I put it down to rearrange my load, and swam away toward the house, savoring their freedom but much to my dismay. After everything last night, they disappeared in our journey to safety. Marie Iodile says they will die. I hope she’s wrong.

As we left the hut compound, I saw Zoland from next door, crouching in the high water, his chin resting at water level as he searched for little chickens that had sought shelter under Dady ny Ganny’s house. The water was just an inch from flooding the house, so they were all submerged and all Zoland was managing to retrieve were drenched, lifeless little bodies. How sad.

I really need to contact Peace Corps to tell them I’m okay, but with the storm there’s no reception on the beach. I’ll keep trying but it seems pretty hopeless. Wonderful as the people are who have taken me in, I want to curl up into a little ball and cry. All I need is to hear a familiar voice from home and be comforted and told that it’s not my fault that the chicken drowned, the ducks are gone, and Doggie got left behind to an uncertain fate.

It was really something–watching the water level rise to waist high in the courtyard, huddling under the kitchen table as my roof shuddered and banged above me, and watching people resignedly pack a basket of bare necessities and abandon their flooded and tattered houses for higher ground. My first cyclone… I guess it’s a good experience to have, just hard going through it alone.

The next evening:
I need to cry but am too physically and emotionally exhausted to do so. I’m back at home now. The town crier just made the rounds, announcing that all families with destroyed houses should visit the village “president� to find a place to stay for the night. There is a river about 10 feet wide with a raging current flowing about 15 feet from my house, behind my (kabone) outhouse where the wetland/rice paddy used to be. We had over 5 ft of water in our hut compound, rising above the level of my house’s stilts and flooding my home with a foot and a half of standing water. The water line stopped just inches from the mattress of my bed on which I had piled most of my belongings. This, I am grateful for.

My ladoucy (shower house), fence, and garden are in tatters from the cyclone’s wind and rains and Mama ni Mesido and Zoland’s rice storage huts were partially flooded. If we don’t get a dry, sunny day soon their food supplies will be in jeopardy. During preparations to evacuate yesterday I offered to store their rice in my house, but it was loose in the grain huts and there was no time and too few gunny sacks to transport it for safekeeping. As it turns out, my house didn’t fare much better.

The earth around the bridges between here and Maroantsetra has, I’m told, collapsed. I witnessed it firsthand this morning when returning home to V from A where we (Marie Iodile and I) spent the night. The river bridge is now connected to the road by a thin path of earth less than a food wide. On either side are gaping drops where the ground has caved into the river below. Not even bicycles can pass. I had to jump across the divide.

It seems I have no way to get to M to contact PC or call home and let anyone know that I’m okay. (Perhaps you don’t even know that a cyclone hit my area.) My 2-way radio to the WCS office is still not working, but I spent 20 minutes sending messages in Malagasy to any listener just in case. No call reception. The rain just stopped for the first time in three days. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll have more luck—Dammit, I wrote too soon. There it is again.

As I write this, the lights of my oil lamp and candle are illuminating one of my kitchen walls, still bearing a water mark 15 inches or so from the floor. When I entered the house this morning, I found a slick layer of deposited mud coating everything in the house that touched the floor. Completely overwhelmed, I slid along the kitchen floor to my bedroom, Puppy leaving paw print trails behind me, and took in the extent of the mud. My wooden storage container (too heavy to raise, and besides, I thought putting stuff up high would really just be a precautionary measure) was flooded. I had forgotten I stored my electronics and valuables in there before making my last trip to Tana. I found them swimming in their ziplock bags like fish straight from a carnival. My solar-powered, really valuable short-wave radio was the worst casualty. Very glad I have insurance, but still will have to do without it.

My emergency money supply was laid out to dry and, at one of the children’s suggestion, covered with rice. The rice absorbed much of the moisture and by evening, the bills were dry enough to pack away again.

Since I was overwhelmed by how on earth I’d get the mud off everything, Valentine and Mama ny Noro intervened and immediately rallied the children to fetch water from the well. 17 buckets’ worth. Fight fire with fire—or in Madagascar, water with water. Valentine contributed her bucket to the cause and the children grabbed every other receptacle they could get their hands on. I called out in alarm and rushed toward Franko just as he was about to toss the contents of his receptacle onto my bedroom floor. Not the chamberpot, Franko! The kids were rewarded for their help with peanuts (literally!)

I don’t know how I’ll ever repay Valentine and Mama ny Noro for their kindness. And the family who fed me and gave me shelter last night and sacrificed a bed for Marie Iodile and me to sleep on, and even allowed Puppy inside. And Chicken in her basket! People are so altruistic here. I’ll take a lesson from their openness and remarkable generosity. The less the Betsimisaraka have, the more they give. Like the Malagasy proverb, “This is only half a pot of honey, but my heart is full.â€?

Geez, how am I going to get myself and my Tana teaching attire and materials and my gear for two weeks in the Marojejy rainforest to Maroantsetra in time for my flight next week? At least the cyclone was this week and not next! I have to at least contact the outside world. How the hell am I going to get out of Voloina? Will research the options and stop worrying about it, tonight.

My entire house is damp, including my bedsheets from ceiling leaks. I’m cold…

Rachel’s Rice Hulling Project

The 766 families in the villages near my home village grow and harvest approximately 383 tons of rice each year. This rice is eaten three meals a day and each grain must be removed from its hull via hand-pounding, a physically exhausting and time consuming process. A machine to hull rice could serve multiple small-income generation, women’s empowerment, and environmental impact reduction goals.

If the machine were in use 20 days a month, the three-village community association would generate a minimum profit of $140 per month, which could be used to pay four workers at $25 per month, a valuable stable income in this part of rural Madagascar. Remaining profit would be kept and overseen by the community association treasurer to cover emergency machine repairs,
maintenance costs, and fuel.

The introduction of an efficient, mechanical means of hulling rice will reduce the physical strain women endure hand-pounding rice twice per day and allow play time for young girls. Adult women would hopefully use their time for reading, study, and developing income generating activities such as basket and mat weaving.

An estimated 90% of the island’s original forest cover has vanished due to population pressure. A rice-hulling machine can provide fuel for cookstoves, significantly reducing local firewood consumption. Every family with a rice hull-fed, fuel-efficient cookstove could reduce its firewood consumption by as much as 75%, sparing 167 acres of forest from wood extraction, annually.

The community association proposes to contribute 25% of the requested project funds. They understand that there will be no additional funding beyond the authorized amount of US $2,687 on the proposal as submitted.

AZALAHEY! and hello to all,

I’m out of the rainforest! Just spent time in Marojejy National Park in northern Madagascar, a place of stunning high elevation montane rainforest with incredible species endemism. So many fabulous orchids!

Marojejy is home to a kind of ghostly white lemur called Propithecus candidus (the silky sifaka) which is one of the 25 most endangered primates in the world. I worked with a small documentary filmmaker and a primatologist getting his PhD in candidus scent marking and vocal communication filming a documentary on silky sifakas and local conservation efforts in this part of Madagascar.

Our Malagasy field team was excellent and the silky sifaka study group we followed were too wonderful for words! My favorite was the “dominant” male, Pink Face. Pink Face has so much character with his curious round black eyes and oddly set broken finger. When we were filming his family group he’d come down low in the canopy to within a few feet of us to check us out, letting out a “humm” that sounded remarkably like a zebu’s “moo,” a little passive aggressive warning, gently letting us know that our presence was not unwelcome, but reminding us that we were guests in HIS forest. We had bamboo lemurs and white fronted brown lemurs and red mongooses visiting camp and even a resident poisonous black scorpion in our shower.

Hiked down from our camp and then made the long drive to Sambava from Andapa last night. Spending today in Sambava, savoring last internet access before flying home to Maroantsetra tomorrow. I learned so much and think I was able to really contribute a lot to the local interviewing process with Malagasy conservationists, NGO workers, and field team members. I’ll miss working with my American friends so much when I go back to the village. They’re my new favorite people. The next time I get to speak English with friends will probably be when my professor comes to visit in July!

I used time in Andapa to develop contacts with a wonderfully motivated community looking for a Peace Corps Volunteer to work on developing ecotourism potential, helping with local environmental education, and rainforest surveying in Marojejy. It looks like an ideal third year extension site if I make the decision to stay in Madagascar. Must talk to Peace Corps about it soon. No worries, it’s still a year off and I’d have a month of home leave if I were to extend.

Thanks so much to Mom for writing out a brief version of my Rice Hulling Project proposal (see next post). I’ll be in touch as soon as the project goes online and is open for contribution. It really has the potential to have a big impact on people’s lives in several villages near mine, as well as being good for the environment. Spreading the word at that time would be such a help to me!

Sorry no personalized emails! I want to be in touch with each and every one of you but computer access is so limited. Tomorrow I will be without again for the next few months…

Love to all,
Rachel

We just got a call from Rachel on someone else’s cell phone (another person in her village who has a cell phone, that is). She has no power for either of her cell phones and/or her server is not working, but fortunately one server is. She is indeed fine, thankfully, but she rode out the cyclone in her village, in her hut in fact. She had not been able to contact Peace Corps until this morning. The last message she got from Peace Corps said to find a place to sit out the storm, apparently, so that is what she did.

She said she lay curled under her table while the winds shook her walls and tin roof and was comforted by listening to her IPOD while the cyclone passed over. Worse was in fact the flooding that followed the cyclone. She says that the water rose 1.5 feet IN her house, which is of course on stilts. That means that the water in the courtyard was very deep indeed. She was able to get most of her things up high enough before she left with others in the village to seek higher ground. So few of her belongings were completely ruined–but that was the least of her worries, apparently.

Rachel was able to flee with Puppy and one of her ducks to a village on higher ground to stay with Marie-Iodile’s relatives until the flood waters receded. She says that Doggie was able to get himself to high ground as well, though one of her ducks drowned! All of the people from her village are fine–they are used to dealing with cyclones, of course.

She says that the bridges are all washed out so she is planning to walk 25 km early next week to get to M hoping then to fly to Tananarive as planned to participate in the new-volunteer training. She hopes she can hire someone to help her carry her things on foot to M since she will have to bring stuff for a month away.

Rachel says that the other two PC volunteers in her immediate area must be safe. One was in M, she heard, and the other off in the rainforest; the teams in the rainforest are able to shelter somewhere so he should be fine, she was told.

She said the kids are busy helping her get things cleaned off and outside to dry in the sun. She will have quite a story to tell this time, so more later, hopefully!

Rachel’s dad got an email this afternoon saying that Rachel and a couple of other colleagues/volunteers? were in a sturdy concrete building in M and were fine. A cyclone appears to have done considerable damage elsewhere in the island, but by the time it reached M it is said to have lost a good deal of its force. We will post more when we hear from her.

[To read what really happened–Rachel was not able to get to M so had to leave the village with village friends to escape the flooding–see postings in June of letters Rachel wrote during and after the March cyclone, received in the U.S. two months late.]