So, what is it you actually do?

First off, I would like to apologize for there being such a large gap in between posts. If I’m gonna put up a wish list, I can at least have the decency to let you know how I’m doing! I think I haven’t been writing much because I don’t feel like anything exciting has happened recently. Even though I know that’s not true; I think I’ve just gotten used to the things that happen around here, even though they are not normal.

So, I think I’ve only written about my culture experience here in Madagascar, but I’m sure a lot of you have no idea what exactly I’m doing over here. To tell you the truth, sometimes I am just as lost as you and have no idea what the heck I’m doing here. Those are usually the days where I’m stressed out and things aren’t working in my favor.

A lot of the Peace Corps is about being a self-starter, especially in Madagascar. I am a Small Enterprise Development advisor. That means I focus on entrepreneurs, artisans, organizations, and just about anyone else who wants some help. That is my specific sector, but more volunteers do cross-sector activities and projects that the community needs. The other sectors are Health, Education, and Environment. 

For the first few months at site I have been working on what we call a Community Diagnostic Survey. This not only helps keep us busy during the first few months, but it also helps us learn about the community and identify areas of focus for our work and identify possible projects. I am nearing the end of the survey and will be presenting my findings at In-Service Training, which I am traveling to the capitol for later this week. When I return, it will be time to get started with real work. Real work here is a loose comparison to work back home. Things move much more slowly in this country, it’s just part of this culture, but also because it will be a while before I am able to communicate well. 

I live in a beach town, Manakara, which is home to a terminus train station. This is the only passenger train in Madagascar. Unfortunately it also happens to be in the running for slowest train in the world. The line is only 180 km long, but can take anywhere from 8 hours (on a good day) to 15 hours. Many tourists visit Manakara for the experience of the train alone. This also means that there is a lot of potential in this area for Eco-Tourism. This, from a business perspective, is basically taking advantage of the unique environment to create business opportunities for individuals and the community to benefit. I don’t really have many projects planned yet for this, but I do plan on working with a few of the Tour Guides with advertisement and possibly creating web pages.  

My primary project is with a Non-Governmental Organization called Prosperer. This organization is a 7 year project plan that identifies artisans and farmers to assist in creating business plans and being successful and profitable. They would like me to focus on the artisans. In this area, that means weavers of baskets, place mats, etc. There are a few different materials they weave with, but the most common are rofia and rary. I’m not entirely sure how to describe these, but one of them is the stem of the rice after the rice has been harvested. This area is not the right climate for silk or cloth weaving, that is usually done on the Plateau. I absolutely promise to take lots and lots of pictures and post them on the blog when I have access to free internet longer. My main focus will be to create and association or cooperative for the weavers in the area to help with buying and selling power. Specifics aside, I would eventually like the products to be fair-trade certified and I would also like to find a market abroad. There are some very talented individuals and I think many of the products would be very successful and sell like hot-cakes. If I do get the opportunity to come home during my service I will hopefully be able to bring many of the products and be able to sell at churches or something. Hopefully by then I will also have a catalog of items available for purchase, or possibly products made to order. I am a loooong way from this, but it’s nice to have a goal and it’s exciting to think about the possibilities.

I also promise to post pictures and give more descriptions of the products my weavers make.

If you have come across something that you really like, relating to weaved goods and things that could be weaved with these materials, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email with a description or a picture of it. I will be trying to find examples of items I think the weavers can make that would be successful in the States. I may use you all as guinea pigs to find out what they should make. Once I figure out what I want them to make, Prosperer will bring in someone to train the weavers how exactly to make them and how to improve the quality.

Some other secondary projects I’m considering are: and English book drive for the public high school library, figuring out a way for the high school to get a computer lab, I’ll probably end up doing an English club at some point, working with another volunteer at her site for an Income Generating Activity that involves drying fruits like mangoes during fruit season so the community has access to those nutrients during the off-season, and many more as I think of them (hopefully)!

A note on what I’ve been doing non-work wise:

For the 4^th of July, all of the volunteers in the region, 13 in total, visited Manakara to have a Volunteer Action Committee meeting. This is where all of the volunteers get together to give feedback on Peace Corps and give suggestions on pretty much anything. Because it was out own little holiday, the owners of my hotel offered to cook a dinner for us with lobster bought at wholesale. For all of us, we ended up with 5 kgs of lobster at $2.50/kg. We each paid $2.50 for our whole meal which included rice and a vegetable salad. It was ahhhh-mazing! Now, to illustrate how good of a deal this was and how generous the hotel people were, we paid 4500 Ar each for that meal when normally a lobster meal at my hotel restaurant can range from 25000 to 35000 Ar. To make it an official American holiday, we all played beer pong. I know what you’re thinking, big deal. But, they don’t really have plastic cups in this country, and ping pong balls are even harder to come by. Both of which a volunteer received in a package from home. It was fun, but it turned into a tournament, and when nothing else is going on, beer pong is actually extremely boring to watch; especially for multiple hours.

At the beginning of August, several people decided to have a little get-together because it was the first time we were free and allowed to leave site/take vacation. We met up in a larger town and a small group of us decided to take the train. Yes, this was indeed the slowest in the world. We arrived in just 12 hours. It was actually quite enjoyable though. We had eaten pizza the night before, and we all ordered an extra one and took it to go, and voila we all had our own pizzas for lunch! We also had our own car for quite a while. We all lounged and slept for a little. At each stop there were people wandering around selling snacks, drinks, and fruit. The weather was perfect and the scenery was beautiful. As soon as I got on the train and took one picture, my camera died. I will have to take it again because I really want some pictures of it.

In between then and now, I have had a lot of time at site to get adjusted and integrated; in other words, mostly uneventful. I bought an internet stick which I can reload without any hassle and surf the net. I’m going to download some sort of instant messenger so it will be really easy and really cheap to chat with anyone almost anytime. I was also lucky enough to have smore’s with actual jet-puffed marshmallows and graham crackers. 

And then we get to today. I just ate lunch, riz cantannais au crevette, which is basically fried rice with vegetables and shrimp and some egg. It’s really good. And I bought an éclair; that will have to wait a while, I’m stuffed. The temperature is gradually rising, but still very nice. I like walking outside and feeling the warmth of the sun. Later this week I will be headed back up to the capitol for the training. It will be a nice little break from being at site. After training there is a group of us taking a short vacation to a town on the North-west coast. It should be safer to swim there and I know we will be on the beach every day. Can’t say I mind living by the beach. Not really sure what else we will be doing there, but I will write about it!

Until next time!