Happy Holidays

I am using the internet quickly to send off a few emails and complete a needs assessment in preparation for the upcoming 3 month Peace Corps conference.

Holidays

A week and a half ago marked the completion of my second month at my site I am thankful that I’ve been able to adjust to life here and that God has blessed me with so many helpful neighbors here and such a supportive network of family and friends back home. I feel really settled here and while; during the first few weeks; I had a number of ups and downs, God helped me see the positive during challenging moments and helped me to laugh during the comical ones(almost being in the path of a cow on the loose, leaving church early because everyone else in my row stood up and then later realizing only the kids were supposed to leave, or telling someone I needed my umbrella because there were a lot of people as the words for people and rain sound very similar).

While trying to talk to my friends about the Thanksgiving holiday I realized certain traditions were difficult to explain such as only eating turkey, watching or playing football Americana, taking a nap after eating a lot of food, and then waking up really early to go shopping for Christmas gifts the next day. Oddly enough the Black Friday (Zoma Maintsy) activities people understand, but when I tried to explain how I could have mashed potatoes (Mitoto Ovy) without going to the market to buy potatoes but that I could add water to a mix; they seemed confused. Thanks to my family and friends who sent the mashed potatoes and gravy mixes and to my site-mate Chris; who had some stuffing mix. I invited one of my friends over for a traditional (well, minus the turkey) meal including mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing. As my grandmother reminded me; when I told her that I wasnt going to have turkey on Thanksgiving; the holiday is not about what you eat, but rather remembering the meaning of the holiday and sharing time with family and friends. I did go to visit my neighbors who have baby turkeys in the yard on Thanksgiving. I am sure people raise turkeys to eat, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about eating turkey meat. The head of the district of Amparafaravola has a really big turkey in his yard that he said was a gift. I think it is more of a guard turkey as it gobbles really loudly as you pass by the gate and chases people who try and come inside the gate. I am always on the look out to see where the turkey is in the yard when I go to visit.

When Thanksgiving meal was over, my neighbors helped me decorate my apartment with Christmas Lights and some decorations. I dont plan to have a Christmas tree this year as I will be traveling for the Peace Corps Conference and then Christmas vacation, but I really enjoy having the lights up that I was able to find at a general store. This past Sunday, I taught some choir members the words to Silent Night and O Come All Ye Faithful and told them about the tradition of Caroling. We went Christmas Caroling twice this week and I find it really fun to sing the songs in Malagasy and then English. The choir members enjoyed the outings so much they asked if they could go Caroling without me today as I am in my banking town for a night and they want to go again tomorrow afternoon too.

Community Diagnostic Survey

The week before the 3 month Peace Corps conference I will be busy completing my the Community Diagnostic Survey. I finished my individual interviews with members of the community including the mayor, principals, teachers, doctors, nurses, policewoman, village health workers and an agricultural outreach coordinator. I also received a bunch of responses from the school s answering from students the Student Questionnaire (95 so far). This past week I worked on the last of the door to door surveys in different villages(80 total household surveys as these are more time intensive and I can only conduct 10 surveys an hour for 2 hour increments if I’m lucky). While in the outset I thought it would be easy to schedule meetings, elicit responses to a Student Questionnaire and conduct village surveys; it’s really just been one challenge after another.

For instance one day I was supposed to be conducting the surveys, but there was a death and it means the people were not able to go help me with the surveys. The questions for the Community Diagnostic Survey are translated into Malagasy, which is helpful, but I still have to be able to be able to understand people’s answers. This is the reason a number of the questions in the survey are yes and no questions or have a number response such as 3 kids live here. There still been times I think the people misunderstood the question about how many kids at their home as some say a number and then say another number afterwards. It might be because they weren’t sure if they were to include kids who left for college or children of other family that live in their house. Since the town I live in is really big, and has a lot of schools it is not uncommon for kids to come and live here during the week with a relative and then go home on the weekends. Other challenges to completing the Community Diagnostic Survey include the weather. While 1:30pm might be a really productive time for work in the US it is normally the middle of the siesta time here and I couldn’t find anyone out and about at this time or at their place of work for a meeting. Despite the challenges people have been really receptive and willing to help me out, I hope the information in the final report will be a help in planning various projects and securing finding sources.