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I opened this "new blog," stared at the page for a long time, went down to the kitchen, made a pot of coffee, took my coffee back up to the computer, and now I've finished my coffee and stillnothing. I think the problem is nothing really funny happened between the end of Mantasoa consolidation and being evacuated.

I've already talked about Mantasoa. I think my Fianar group was there for 9 or 10 days. Looking at my 2 journal entries from the time, the day before we left Fianar for Mantasoa I wrote "Everyone is convinced we're being evacuated. [expletive]." Then apparently three days after we got there everyone was convinced we would be going back to site the next week. The day after we got there Eliko texted me that PC was sending a car to bring the three Morondava people to Mantasoa -- did I need any provisions? The next morning she said she was all ready to go, and would bring me some warm clothes (at that point I was sporting a clever fusion style I call "everything-I-brought-with-me." Before I left Mahatsara Sud I texted Gabe asking if it was cold in Fianar. He texted me back something akin to "Are you kidding me?" - as in, "The country is falling apart and you need fashion advice? You have the emotional depth of a brussels sprout." Thus leaving me layering tank tops and a rainshell for warmth.) The day after, however, they decided not to consolidate the Morondava people in Mantasoa, and Eliko heard if things stayed peaceful we could go back to site shortly.

Violence in Toliara put a damper on that bit of optimism for a day or two, but since it turned out to be an attempted raid on a grain warehouse that the military repelled, it was interpreted as "opportunistic" and not political violence. The fact that the "forces of law and order" still "did their job," was evidence that the country was still functioning. So we were supposed to start deconsolidating in a couple days, except for people in the south-east or the Toliara region, who would have to wait for a site assessment before they could go back, because of the riots there earlier. I was originally put in this group and I had to go to a special meeting, but then I guess they reasonably decided that Mananjary was totally calm and you don't have to pass through any hotspots to get there, because my name showed up on the list of people getting a ride back to site as far as Fianar.

Still, everything depended on events staying peaceful over the following days.
Feb 14, 19:50 "tana remained orderly. 2 sets of gatherings pro govt large no violence. this good news. tgv has said he will take over ministries or he will perhaps not. fingers and toes crossed."
Feb 15, 19:31 "all quiet. hoping for the same tomorrow."

Finally, on the 16th:
"FEB 16TH. DEAR PCVs. DECONSOLIDATION STARTS TOMORROW. PCV WARDEN PLEASE TOUCH BASE WITH PC DUTY. THANKS."

We had a big end-of-consolidation party that night, which I threw myself into whole-heartedly despite having gotten a text from Mika around dinner time that said he was hearing lots of gunfire in Tana. I perfected my dancing-with-scarf move (think "the robot," not rhythm gymnastics) and had a long conversation with someone about Salt Lake City. Then at 10:46 pm we got this text message from our security officer:
"FEB 16. HI AGAIN. PLEASE DO NOT DEPART TO SITE. WAIT PENDING CONFIRMATION FROM PC. TANA ACTIVE TONIGHT."
My impression is that most people decided they were in no state to process that information and continued with the party.

An hour or so after I went to bed my alarm went off marking the time when we should have been leaving, had we not gotten that very vague text the night before. I heroically dragged myself to the vans, was informed that we would be leaving three hours later, and went back to bed. We finally did make it out of Mantasoa, though the entire way back to Fianar any time anyone's phone rang we were sure it would be Peace Corps telling us to turn around. Apparently "Tana active" turned out to just be rumors and the only thing that actually happened was some people robbed a gas station. That didn't seem to add up with Mika hearing gunshots, but we were going back to site so I wasn't about to argue. I got to have lunch with Mika in Tana before we left, which was nice since during consolidation I wasn't sure whether I would ever get to see him again, and then we left, in one PC van, one PC 4x4 and one rented taxi brousse (suddenly we had all the people whose sites were south of Tana with us). The taxi brousse broke down a few hours out of Tana, so we all crammed into the PC van and spent the night in Antsirabe, which was quiet as the grave when we arrived at 9pm. Apparently a curfew had been imposed during the crisis.

The next day we headed off to Fianar. Things went smoothly for the first four or five hours, and I was half-asleep as we drove into Fianar ville. I woke up when the 4x4 stopped suddenly, and I saw the van stopped in front of us. I was about to ask what was going on when I heard chanting, and saw, about a block away and marching towards us blocking the whole street, a parade of protesters waving banners and shouting. Nirina (PC Fianar regional rep and our driver) pulled an epic U-turn and we sped away in the direction we came from. The four of us in the car just looked at each other and laughed. It was too ridiculous. We finally get deconsolidated, finally get back to Fianar, and we drive right into a mob. "Retreat! Retreat!" We drove around to the other side of the city on really bad roads and made it to the Meva. Chez Nini's, our favorite hotely across the street from the meva (featuring "the vegetarian" special for PCVs) was still serving, even though there were lots of people standing in the street trying to figure out what was going on, so we all went over there for lunch. Just as we finished ordering, we started hearing gunshots. After about 10 of them Nirina and Xavier (Director of the Education program) had been on the phone with Peace Corps in Tana and we were directed to take refuge in the Meva. Fortunately the staff of Chez Nini's was willing to make our food "to go," which just meant we return all the plates and silverware later. The shots continued; we counted about 41 keeping a chalk tally on the pavement.

Picture taken from J. Selb without permission.

That night PC called and said the shooting was gendarmes firing in the air to dispel looters, and the marchers were "just students," whatever that means. They also said we could still go back to site the next day. I got a ride as far as Irondro with Xavier and Nirina who were going further south to do site assessments, then took a taxi brousse the remaining two hours to Mananjary. I bought some anana (greens) to strap to the side of my backpack (no room for other food), then hiked the two hours back to lovely lovely Mahatsara Sud, which was right where I left it.

Next up: and it's a bittersweet symphony this life...

Episode 2: Consolidated to...blah still consolidated

To set the mood for this episode I am recalling a period when I was about 9 or 10 years old and my dad was reading me Les Miserables. It had been night after night of nothing but Jean Valjean's inner anguish and ethical reckoning and I was bored. Finally, I think I exclaimed to my dad something along the lines of, "Gee whiz, Dad, can't we just skip the mental turmoil?!"

I'm not trying to draw any parallels between J.V.'s troubles and us volunteers', but mental turmoil was definitely the name of the game for a few weeks there. Basically it was way more PCVs than either Mantasoa or the Fianar Meva are meant to accomodate, crammed together for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for circumstances completely out of our control to either sort themselves out and send us back to site, or continue to worsen and force us back to the US, without a chance to finish up any of our projects, say goodbye to the people we'd been living and working with, or even retrieve our stuff. Add to that the Mahatsara Sud-esque isolation of Mantasoa and the lack of information other than one daily briefing from a Peace Corps staff member and you have a group of kids who are stressed, but so out of the loop that the natural thing to do just seems to be enjoying Mantasoa. Unless maybe you were in the group that had already been there for two weeks. I can't speak for them. Personally, I was sad and worried about Madagascar and Mika and my village, and desperately not wanting to leave, but I didn't know what I could do about it. I ruled out going to Tana and giving the president and the ex-mayor a piece of my mind (logistical complications) and ended up playing ping-pong.

The other issue was that people's feelings about the situation and our options ran the entire spectrum from "let's just evacuate now" (because they're sure the country's going to fall apart/tired of Madagascar/can't stand one more day in Camp Mantasoa limbo-land) to "surely I could just wait out a civil war at site?" (my position). For the most part a peaceful coexistence prevailed, but I certainly perceived a lot of (mostly) unspoken tension.

Now let's backtrack to where the last episode left off: I've just arrived at the Fianar Meva. This was consolidation lite; we were advised not to go wandering around the Magro or the places where people were holding rallies, but we didn't have to stay inside the Meva and we could go to the internet cafe, the post office, the market, restaurants etc. There were 10 of us from the Fianar region staying in the house and I'd say the atmosphere was cramped and merry, with equal parts exasperation and doom. It started off with us all comparing notes and opinions on the situation thus far, and basically agreeing that we should be back at our sites after a few days. But a few days went by and the crisis seemed to be getting worse. We were getting our news from occasional calls and text messages from PC, CNN.com, and a Gasy site in French called sobika.com. Much was vague and unconfirmed. The mayor had declared himself in charge of everything. The military and the gendarmes might have switched to his side. A giant hurricane might be headed for the east coast. Until February 3rd things seemed to be getting a little better, and we got texts from PC saying that the country was calm and they were "cautiously optimistic," but we should plan on being in consolidation for at least a few more days. On the 4th, however, the bad news started again:

"TANA - very tense. president fired TGV [nickname of the mayor and also name of his party] last night. TGV refuses to accept. rumours abound. STAY in place...more to follow. PCO"

The next day Tana was surprisingly calm, but we heard a minister's plane had been burned in Farafangana (south-east coast) and that night Manakara (the next city south of Mananjary on the east coast) went crazy. ("TANA CALM, but manakara erupted last night. PCVs en route to fianar now. clearly situation still fluid. stay tuned. pco") There were four PCVs consolidated at a hotel there, and they all arrived in Fianar the next day, understandably shaken-up. Their hotel had been right in the middle of the area where people starting fighting and there had been gunshots and Molotov cocktails and noise and confusion all around. They were barricaded into their hotel room, though at some point I think the army arrived to protect the hotel.

Here I think I'll mention that at the start of consolidation PC gave everyone the option, during the following month, to leave PC Madagascar. Normally if you want to leave before your 27 months are up you have to E.T. (early termination). During this period we were given the option of I.O.S. (interruption of service), which I guess is like an honorable discharge and you get the same benefits as if you had COS'ed (close of service, the normal 27 month finish). I know that many people considered this option, and several took it.

February 7 was a strange, sad, and scary day. There was a big protest scheduled and everyone was waiting to see what would happen. PC texted us in the morning that they were all on standby and that there was a crowd gathering in downtown Tana. The strange thing for us in Fianar was that while we were getting updates from PC every few hours, we were also following the day's events on sobika.com, which was being updated every few minutes with brief bits of news: crowd marching towards president's office; crowd have now reached so-and-so; military firing on crowd; at least two dead so far; people are running away. Those aren't quotes. But it went something like that. I talked to Eliko that night and I think we both assumed evacuation was inevitable. She had heard that our country director was in a meeting with the ambassador and PC Washington about a potential evacuation. I called Mika, who said I should go back to Mahatsara Sud because Fianar might not be safe. I felt terrible telling him that PC might just send me back to the United States. And then? And then I don't know.

They ended up deciding to move us Fianar people to Mantasoa, with a bunch of other regional consolidation groups. We left the next day at 6am.

8 Feb, 12:04 "10AM Tana calmed overnight but future cloudier than ever. further PC consolidation ongoing. thanks for all your help!"

Arriving at Mantasoa was like a class reunion -- hugs and screaming all around -- but you could see the strain in some people. Many had already been there for a long time, and with things looking worse politically, they didn't know what to expect for the future. They were eating American food. They were doing some (very cold) canoeing. Everyone had watched The Dark Knight three or four times. Puzzles. Beer. Welcome to Mantasoa consolidation.

If there had been 80 Jean Valjeans imprisoned at a lake resort with nothing to do and a small island's worth of rum and beer, well, maybe they would have ended up doing some Speed Dating and morning Cardio-Breakfast-Boogie (available on VHS) too. Just to pass the time.

Next up: Mantasoa back to site