Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up.
Peace Corps is ultimately what I hoped it would be. Not in the details, necessarily, but in the experience. I wanted something that would push my boundries. I got it.
* Living in a none first world country is HARD. I take cold bucket showers, eat rice every day, have been sick since pretty much I got here. Those of you who have received phone calls know that I've been miserable and scared a lot of the time. However, my perspective is starting to change a little. It's best summed up, I think, in something one of the other volunteers said recently:
"I think I'm becoming less self centered. I mean, I used to go into my host families living space and just cringe because it's constantly filled with smoke and it made me cough all the time. I just realized, a BABY lives there pretty much 24/7" (Paraphrased from something another volunteer said)
* As hard as the physical act of living is, the emotional aspect has been even more draining. Not being able to communicate the first couple of weeks was heartbreaking in a way I can't really explain, I felt bereft and alone and really really missed all of you.
* I have been placed in Miandrivazo, it has the "dubious honor of being the hottest place in Madagascar". I visited this week. I was pretty happy with it when I left. After speaking with the other volunteers, my site is FANTASTIC. I have a huge room (it used to be a classroom, there's still a blackboard on the wall). The people are really nice and super happy to have a Peace Corps volunteer there again. They value the work Peace Corps does - without expecting Peace Corps to save them (no joke, another volunteer had a mayor say "now that you are here you can fix everything"), my town is big enough that most of my staples I can get in town without too much trouble and they don't mind that I run.
* Will be the English teacher for 300 Malagasy students in the 4eme and 5eme grades. 6 classes, 50 students per class.
* Some highlights:
-- I have picked out the Chicken I am going to murder (it's one of the requirements of my homestay that I kill a chicken) I'm going to murder the one that pooped in my room.
-- Went to a Malagasy Exhumation. It's a huge party where everyone gets really drunk, digs up their ancestors, wraps them up in new shrouds, dances around with the bodies above their heads and then reburies. Not even one month in country, I got clocked in the face by a dead body. Dude, Malagasy Exhumations are where it's AT yo. I am never missing one of those things.
-- I scared the living daylights out of some poor Malagasy kid while running through the rice fields. He came up and grabbed my shoulder and I screamed at the top of my lungs. He probably thinks all Americans are jumpy nervous things.
-- The vice principle of the school showed me a photo of one of the old volunteers, Elizabeth. A blond haired white girl. Her commentary: "you look like her". Only in Africa, could I be confused for a white girl
-- Every single action I take here is a spectacle that's better than TV to people. I dropped my ice cream by accident and got an "ooooooohhhh" reaction from no less than a dozen people. It's a good thing I don't embarrass easily.
-- One of the education volunteers that is here told us that she got sick of malagasy men coming into her classroom to ask her out. So she taught all of her students to say "DENIED" anytime it happens.
Anyway, things are looking up. I feel like I'll be able to live in Miandrivazo happily for two years.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment