What's news?

...(Standard greeting from Malagasy english students.)

Fianar turned out to be out of gas as well. My tank ran out about 3 days after I got back to site, so I've been cooking on charbon (charcoal) for the past few weeks. It sucks. It takes ages to get the charbon going, even longer for it to be hot enough to cook on, even longer to cook your food, and you can only cook one thing at a time. On the other hand, it's kind of cool to cook outside, time is really not something I have any shortage of, and it's been really cold lately so it's nice to huddle around my fatam-pera (metal charbon holder/stove thing). I will be very happy though if I can refill my tank today. I've had this minor hacking cough that won't go away, ever since I switched to charbon.

A few weeks ago we had a "video" in my village. The kids were talking about it for a week beforehand, but I didn't really know what they meant, or how we were going to watch a video when we don't have electricity or TVs. But when saturday evening finally rolled around, in trekked 3 or 4 guys, who had made the hilly, 2-hour hike from Mananjary with a giant battery, a VCD player, and a tiny TV (like Americans might have in their kitchens or dormrooms) on their backs (think hobo-style, attached with string to the end of a pole, carried over the shoulder). Everybody in my village crowded into one of the classrooms at the school, and for 200 ariary for adults, 50 ariary for kids, we got to watch Gasy music videos and a soap opera until the battery died. It was maybe the most "integrated" (Peace Corps vocab) into my community I've felt so far. (1), I'm starting to love Gasy music (except for the slow ballads and religious songs) and I've been listening to the radio a bunch so I actually knew most of the songs that the videos were for. (2), I was almost as excited as the people in my village to watch something on a TV, but (3) not quite as excited as them so it was amazing to watch everyone from babies to grandparents packed into the classroom, pissing their pants with the thrill of it all. The soap opera I did not understand a word of. I think it involved love potions and unexpected pregnancies. There was definitely a woman giving birth in the woods while running away from her alcoholic husband. My best friend was sitting next to me, trying to explain what was going on, but she had a tendency to get distracted during the dialogue, and then only explain the stuff that I could see clearly with my eyes. (eg: "pss jayne, the old lady is stashing the bottle behind a bush...the man is driving away from the pregnant woman. Mazava? ('clear?')"). But crushed into a tiny school bench/desk surrounded by my whole village, I felt so comfortable and happy with where I am. It was awesome.

In other fun news, on Wednesday night I had a fancy dinner (the appetizer was frog legs! Classy!) in Ranomafana National Park with a bunch of PCVs from the region, the US ambassador, the director of PC Madagascar, and the director of USAID in Madagascar. Turns out the ambassador went to Lewis and Clark, so he knew all about Reed which was awesome. He'd never heard of Renn Fayre though...we were talking about things that bring Reedies to the Lewis and Clark campus and vice versa, I wasn't just like wow Mr. Ambassador, that's great that you know about Reed, we do throw a killer party. Anyway, the ambassador and a bunch of hot-shot americans were in town for "America Week" (I know, it sounds like something off the Colbert Report), which originally was going to involve a lot of Peace Corps organized activities (a basketball tournament, a barbeque, a poetry slam) but then it got cancelled "indefinitely" and then last minute resurrected, so the Peace Corps participation ended up being just us staffing a tent with posters about what PC does in Madagascar, at some sort of expo about American or USAID-funded organizations in the country. So I hung out next to some health posters for about 5 hours, answering questions and scaring away annoying kids trying to steal the condoms we were handing out. I spoke mostly in Gasy, but there were a ton of university students who were actually really good at English who kept passing by to practice talking with us. I haven't met any students who can really speak English in Mananjary yet so I was quite impressed.

Last night we had our regional Volunteer Advisory Committee meeting, which should have been really interesting because the new PC Mada director came to talk to us, but about 5 minutes into the meeting my stomach started hurting and then I had to go lie down while my stomach ballooned to pregnant-woman proportions and hurt really bad, and then I threw up and then I felt better. But I missed the whole meeting. It was very disappointing. Plus, my friend Lisa who is from North Carolina and I formed the "Slaw Club" that morning and made a massive batch of cole slaw and potato salad and spent the entire day making "slaw" jokes (read that with an extreme southern drawl, please. Like so much that your friends might think you are saying something about "sloths" and start talking about how they've been moving really slow that day too.), and then I couln't eat any of it. I always do this to myself in Fianar and Tana. I think because I eat so simply and so little at site - just rice and vegetables - I make myself sick when I got to the city and pig out on rich restaurant food and dairy products. Mmmm.

Now I must go stumble around in the foggy marsh of international development project funding. Apparently solar panels are expensive. Maybe if you all just sent me your little solar powered calculators...