Pictures from Homestay

Eric, host brother, cutting wood for the cooking
fire.




Little brother, Bien Venue, looking a lot more
innocent than he really is.




Host dad cutting wood to make a latrine



Host mom cooking and yes her smile is always that big!!




Host sister, Francie, my favorite sister of the 3.




View from balcany of my host family's house, overlooking rice fields
and yes now I know how to harvest rice!

Posh Corps

After living in the office for 17 days, the payoff came in the form of a huge gorgeous house. Days and days of disappointing house searches resulted in an attitude change. Originally, I wanted a small simple but clean house that I did not have to share with bats or rats. While this sounds easy to find the search proved to be much harder than one might imagine. By the 3^rd week, I determined that I would move into the next “reasonable” house I saw. Well, it might be a little unreasonable for me to live in a house with 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, an empty living room and bathroom with running water and electricity when the city decides my neighbourhood can have it BUT the options were exhausted. Since it’s already clear that I am not living like a normal PC volunteer working in an office with computers, generators, etc why not? I imagine that I will be the last volunteer MCA will allow to choose their own house.

After those demanding days in the office, I open my bright blue gate and stroll past my rose bushes and daisies to the entrance of my new house. I have included a picture of the house for those of you who want to see my “palace” as the other PC volunteers in the area have coined it.

NEW ADDRESS

For all of you following my new address count this makes three in 16 months. This address at my site in Ambanja is:

Andrea Goepfrich, Corps de la Paix
c/o ABC Diana, Lot C 00310 Ambanja-Centre
203 Ambanja, MADAGASCAR

Feel free to send me letters and packages. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Homelessness, Goats, Sheep and Other Animals

I arrived at my “small tree lined town” (Lonley Plant about Ambanja) over 2 weeks ago. This small town is triple the size of my site in Guinea. Luckily they were not lying about the trees. But the karma gods are getting me back. During training it was so cold that I only took a bucket bath once a week. These days I need at least 2 showers a day to cool off and get some of the sweat off. Living an hour from the coast sounded marvelous from the training site smack in the middle of this huge island. The reality is that it’s HOT and HUMID!

I understood that coming to work for an organization meant that I probably would be spending some time in an office. I never fathomed that I would be living in the office….literally. After 2 weeks of house hunting I am still homeless. My demands are too great. I don’t want a huge house but I want an indoor toilet. Only the vazaha (foreigners) have toilets inside and there is an unwritten rule that the house must also have 7 rooms.

Last week our office got a visit from the big boss in the capital. Just as he is leaving he casually mentions that the office will be moving to a location five hours north in anywhere from 2 to 10 months. So after painfully looking at houses for the last 2 weeks asking for one year contracts I was a bit surprised when everyone in the office seemed to already know including those helping me look for houses but never mentioned it to me. In addition, my service ends in 10 short months therefore; I will have the joy of attempting to integrate into 2 communities and house hunt 2 times for a 10 month service!!

Before coming to site I heard rumors of working with essential oils, cocoa, cloves, vanilla and ecotourism. All very exotic and exciting. You can only imagine my reaction when my first assignment is to figure out how to install professionalism into the goat and sheep exporting business. However, not to complain too much as my work took me to a very touristy area to look at greens and lettuce last week. I was able to swim in the ocean and even take a speed boat crammed with people splashing through the sea. I am living the glamorous life of working with an organization but not without paying the price of sitting through weekly staff meetings, helping create budgets, occasionally staring at the computer and submitting receipts (improperly stamped) for reimbursement. One could say this might help me transition back into an office life. I think it might deter me from ever taking an office job again. Once advantage here is that our meetings are all in Malagasy so I have an excuse for not knowing what is going on.

When the office guard asked me if I knew how to play basketball, I said yes because after 7 days at site I was sick of telling people I was not good at things like speaking Malagasy. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this innocent response would have repercussions coming in the form of practices and games. After my first Sunday game, Club Moment, asked me to play with them in a tournament in the regional capital. Hesitantly, I affirmed that I could play in the evenings because I was supposed to be there for work. As an afterthought, someone asked me my age. For some reason, I actually replied honestly. My invitation was immediately rescinded. The team is for women 35+ but they still allow me to practice with them and play in the weekly games against the young girl’s team (ages 17 to 20). After speaking proudly with various people about how I was playing with Club Moment someone immediately asked me if I had a kid. Since we were speaking English I knew it was not a language problem, so I was a bit taken back by what I thought was a random question. Apparently, I play with Club MAMA!!

Sunday after the game exhausted and sprawled out on my mattress on the floor under the window I heard a thud. I turned my head as quickly as my tired muscles would let me and a small black furry animal was staring at me from the other side of my mosquito net. When I finally got up the nerve and ran out of the room. The guard returned with me and swiftly plucked it up by its wing and casually strolled out the door. Once outside he tossed the bat just as it unhappily chirped and tried to fly away.

Easter Auctions and Christmas Arrivals

This year Easter was a step-up from last year. To start with, I was in a country that acknowledged that the holiday existed. To make it even better they celebrated it two days in a row (Sunday and Monday). The kick-off to the event was a trip to the Catholic Church with my sister. She told me that mass started at 9AM so we left the house at 8:45. We were the sixth and seventh people to arrive. After sitting outside for about 45 minutes we went inside. While I know it’s not so cool for an 18-year-old girl to hangout with a foreigner who is rendered mute by lack of language skills, it’s Easter after all. I was so hurt when my sister made me unsquish myself from the row with her and her friends and move in with another host family whose volunteer was not with them. Not only feeling hurt now, I was completely confused. The man that appeared to be a priest turned into an auctioneer. When he started asking how much money for a bunch of bananas I thought was using this as a lead in to the Easter mass. Was I ever confused when people started bidding and then the man came over to collect the money! As the novelty began to wear off (30 minutes later), out comes a live chicken from the plastic bag and the mad bidding starts. The lucky winner and his whole row benefited as they got to keep the chicken at their feet for the remaining 2 ½ hours of mass. Once the mass actually began, my sister and her friends went to sit on the alter as readers and singers AND my host mom came rolling in at 10:45 to sit next to me! A happy Easter morning after all.

Three weeks ago Molly received an email from the Guinea admin saying our bags from Guinea have been shipped. Anxious, ready and willing to have this final connection to Guinea we ask the Madagascar admin every few days if they have heard anything about our bags. Finally, while in the capital for some event we ask the office staff who has email and contact with the outside world. By the next business day, we have confirmation that they are at the airport sitting in the freight area. The following business day, a PC employee attempts to pick them up. The next day Molly and I are driven from the training site to the airport in the capital to pick them up. It was determined that we had to be there in person. However, before we could make it to the airport we stopped in the office and are told there are some fees associated with the bags. Even better, we might have to pay them but we will be told for sure in 15 minutes. Neither Molly nor I wanted to ask how much it was since we had no intention of paying. Awhile later, we are told that the combined total of fees to pick them up is $1,100USD (NOT shipping just to pick them up). We are PCVs! Next step is to have the US embassy waive the fees but it will take another 24 hours to fill out the form.

The next morning we wake up at 4AM to go on a field trip so what we can be back in time to pick up the bags before lunch. We are 25 minutes late and now have to wait until after lunch. Once we get to the airport we visit 4 different locations filling out forms or getting them stamped before the PC staff member is allowed to go into the warehouse to look for our bags. After standing in the warehouse dodging forklifts and hand operated carts for 2 ½ hours we lost all sense of sanity. What we though was originally good news turned out to backfire pretty quickly. Only my items were getting hand searched and only one of the five items was mine. For the next 2 hours we watched the PC staff member run around buying forms to fill out, waiting for them to find our now lost baggage, getting more stamps on the forms and finally determining that what the shipping form said was in the box was not.

Once we finally got the bags, I was informed that an empty bag was sent to me. I was not only surprised but also quite disappointed by this unpleasant “Christmas” gift. The customs problem was that the list said there were clothes in the box but it really contained a few larger unnamed (on the form) items and an empty bag. Needless to say when I finally opened the box later that evening, I found a bag full of books, clothes and all the items I had packed. Christmas was not so disappointing after all!