Taloha

(If you click on these you can see them blown up big enough to see my little cartoon pores.)

First, here's two cartoons that I drew months and months ago. Maybe like 10 months ago because the first one is from when I still had massive snack cravings and was practically eating spoonfuls of flour to keep from imploding between meals (Remember, no food available for purchase for 11km). Now I sometimes forget meals. But that was a painful adjustment period.

The second one depicts an exchange that is still part of my daily life whenever I leave my tiny village.

Next I want to talk about...

LYCHEE SEASON AT MY SITE
aka the best time and place combination anywhere/when on the planet. Perhaps you, like me before I arrived in Madagascar, have never had a lychee. You should do something about this. Like visit me next lychee season. Last lychee season I ate a lot of lychees, but I didn't really think about how we don't have them in America and they're the best fruit ever so I really need to make the most of being here. So this year I was all strategy. Example: foods other than lychees take up space in your stomach that could be filled with lychees, therefore they should be avoided during lychee season. My diet for a month was basically lychees all day and then a small portion of rice and vegetable/protein-source for dinner. You know when you're hiking in the woods and you pass a blackberry bush or something and you find bear scat that's just 100% berry, like jam...?

I also figured out the times and places where you're most likely to be invited to sit under a lychee tree and gorge yourself while fathers and children climb to very scary heights to bring them down for you. My site is covered with huge lychee trees, but it turns out they all belong to someone or another, so you can't just climb 'em yourself and pig out. Fortunately, random people bring lychees to my house several times a day during the season. These lychees don't come with the peaceful scenery and companionship that go along with an evening spent inhaling lychees under a tree, but you also don't get devoured by mosquitoes (a reason some people think lychees cause malaria).

NEXT...
One day last month I came home and opened my side door to find, hanging from the top of the door frame, inches from my face, a snake wrapped around a gecko. Swinging in fact, because I clocked it pretty hard when I opened the door. I called my friend, who called the clinic guardian, who came and killed it with a stick. Gasy people are terrified of snakes, and although I know that there are no poisonous snakes in Madagascar, I had been a little concerned since I found a long snakeskin hanging from my wall a few months ago. Also, geckos eat mosquitoes so gecko-eaters are not welcome in my home.

Teaching
I finally broke down and started teaching English to my best friend, so that she can finally pass the BAC exam. It sucks just as much as I thought it would. I hate speaking special English, and I have no patience. But my friend is fun and we've started having some really great conversations in Gasy since I'm over at her house a lot more now.

Health at my site
I went to talk to the doctor at the clinic in Mananjary about services for people from my site and he said that loads of people from my site already come to the clinic in Mananjary for birth control and vaccines and treatment. I had been thinking that people were choosing no health care at all over walking all the way to Mananjary, but they are actually making the trek, contrary to my doctor's opinion that they're all lazy. The doctor in Mananjary said I can come and help out with the education programs they do at the clinic every morning, so there's some more work for me, and I feel a lot better about the talks I give in my village now that I know that the people are not hating me for asking them to go to Mananjary.

Tomorrow I finally go back to site. I just remembered that my gas ran out the week before I left so I'll be cooking on charcoal indefinitely, since there are no longer any NGOs with cars who come to my village. But I have lots of flower and vegetable planting, cookstove building, and latrine construction to look forward to. Good times pending.