Amie’s Adventures Abroad

I thought I would try and Quickly update everyone on some things that I have written about in the past on my blog.

House

I have finally moved into my very own home. The community that a PCV works and lives with is supposed to provide the PCV with a home; different countries do this in different ways. In some countries PCVs live with host families, but PC Madagascar’s policy is that all PCVs must have their own house. Unfortunately when I arrived in Anivorano on Site Visit I was told I would be living with the mayor. This was a situation that was not acceptable to me. So after much arguing with Peace Corps and quoting their own policies to them they agreed to support me in getting my own house. Unfortunately this was only a few days before I was supposed to move to site, so as many of you know I showed up to site with no where to live and though I was promised many times over that my house would be done in a month it wasn’t. Now six months later after much arguing, foot stomping, and out of pocket expenses I was able to move into my very own home on October 28^th. I am ecstatic to finally be in my own house and have a place I can call home.

My new home is a single 3 by 4 meter room (a meter is about equal to a yard) the floor is made of wood planks; the walls are a double layer of woven bamboo on the outside and the stem of the palm leaf (the Malagasy word for it sounds something like Falafel, unfortunately it isn’t nearly as tasty as Falafel) on the inside, the roof is made out of banana tree leaves. The entire building is raised off the ground on slits. At the front of the house it is only a couple of inches but because the entire structure is built on a hill the back of the house is a little over 4 feet off the ground. I have a separate building that will be my kitchen once it is finished; it is simply a smaller version of my house. I also have a yard that is all my own where I will be able to build a vegetable garden and grow some flowers.

The new house of course has its own downfalls, the noisy neighbors that get up at 5am, the rooster that starts crowing at 4am, the large family of cockroaches that have taken up residence with me and the long distance to the water pump. But at the moment I just don’t care I am ecstatic that it is all my own and to celebrate I am having 7 fellow PCVs over for Thanksgiving dinner.

Electricity

My village has now been electrified. Eight wonderful men from Italy came to Anivorano for three weeks in October and installed the electrical equipment that their congregation had donated. It was amazing to see them work and it has been amazing to see the community’s reaction to the gift they have given us. My house should have lights by the time I get back then I will be able to charge my batteries, cell phone and computer: Though I was really enjoying the novelty of using the solar charger to charge my batteries, even if it did occasionally take forever to charge. I hope to write more details about the electricity in the future. But it is still such a new thing it is taking a bit for the reality of it to sink in.

Claudette

My dear friend Claudette has been Medically Separated from the Peace Corps and is back in the United States. After many days in hospital not knowing what was going on the Doctors decided it would be best for her to return to the United States. We all miss Claudette horribly and I have a hard time imagining any Peace Corps Event without her, I just don’t know what I will do without my Sipako.

Bike Race

The bike race went extremely well, we all had a lot of fun and did a lot of AIDS education work. The number of people getting tested in the weeks before the race increased 300 times in some places, over the same time period last year. I ended up being able to ride in the race, I placed abysmally but thoroughly enjoyed myself and am happy I was able to do so.

Site Mate

I was supposed to be getting a site mate (another volunteer living in the same village) with the newest group of trainees. There are currently 18 health volunteers being trained and one of them was supposed to come and be my new best friend but it just wasn’t meant to be. Because it took them so long to provide me with a place to live Peace Corps decided that my village was not going to get a new health volunteer. I think I am much more severally disappointed then the village is; who is going to participate in all my crazy plans if I don’t get a site mate? We were going to go panning for gold, have card nights and burn our trash together; we were going to plant things and adopt baby animals, we could sit around and stare at each other instead of staring at the Gasy, there were so many possibilities and now I will just have to continue relying on myself for amusement and fulfilling work and that hasn’t been going so well. Hopefully I become a more reliable person.