Nine Stories

Well, it's been a while... I haven't written since November. Three months. I'm going to post nine stories in honor of Salinger just to recap. I don't know why I'm honoring him since I haven't read any books like I thought I would since I've been here. Just think the idea of writing Nine Stories gives me an excuse to be clever without having to edit this blog post and force my brain to write down coherent thoughts in a linear, continuous way in essay writing form.

Story #1: The Holidays
I spent Thanksgiving cooking chicken and mashed potatoes with my site mate on a rainy day. They don't sell chicken in my village so I trekked to my banking town and came back with a kilo and fried those babies up. Quiet, low key, but pretty cool. Christmas I went on a berserk-filled vacation to Diego and Sambava- regions in the North. It was awesome... Kind of. I realized I was going on a huge vacation to escape the fact that I was going to be away from my family and how terrible that was for me. I only have to do that one more time next year and I plan to stay at site, just to spend the major holidays with my Malagasy "family" since it might possibly be the last year I will ever have that opportunity (my service ends May 2013).

Story #2: Bota
This kid in my part of town got in a fight back in December. He's one of the kids that goes and plays in my house the second I wake up and open the doors. They go in clean my stuff, put on my sunglasses, and act like rich hip hop stars and run around and fight each other while I nap or eat my breakfast. One day him and his friend Eric got in a fight where he kicked Eric in the face and Eric's mom got pissed so her younger sister got all the adults in the neighborhood to chew him out and slap him in the face. I wasn't present when this happened since I was off working or doing something but I came back to all these adults pointing and yelling at him with tears in his face hiding in his house trying to be 'tough' and ward them off.

Normally, I wouldn't have cared that the adults were scolding a prickly kid who's acting a brat because his behavior asked for it. But the problem was his parents pretty much ditched him when he was a baby to go off get a divorce, and become alcoholics. He lives with two older cousins, his very old grandma, and his aunt (the town crazy woman who goes around saying everyone has her money and to give it back) and none of them have income. His crazy aunt actually wants to marry me and asks on a regular basis how many children I have, to which I reply a thousand.

Anyhow, after getting slapped in the face, he was crying and trying to ward off all these adults and I decided that I was going to "build capacity" on this one parentless kid and pay for him to go to school. Not doing anything all day and running around and basically developing deliquent issues every passing idle second of his life was not helping his 11-year old brain. I made a deal with the private FJKM elementary school that I'd substitute his education for a computer donation to which they all agreed. It was his idea that he wanted to go to school, he'd mention it frequently when all the kids were off learning and he was stuck playing all day with the other toddlers who were too young to go to school, so I decided to put him up to it.

You're not really supposed to hand out money as a PCV, but teach your community members how to earn and save money. In general. But unfortunately not everything is so black and white. None of his elders were going to learn anything- one is too old to work, one is too crazy, they barely have money to feed themselves (sometimes Bota skips lunch and lies to me saying that he has food at home.)

So I tried to make the next best sustainable option to help him out. I presented him to the mayors office after securing his elementary school so that if he acted up, he would be responsible to all the important people in the community. Luckily, to this day, he hasn't missed a class and is one of the highest ranking students.

Story #3: Ok this is getting pretty long...I'm in Tana right now and I actually have electricity but I'd rather go get a coffee and a pain au chocolat for breakfast so I'll continue these stories maybe later today or in three months...

P.S. Happy One Year In Madagascar to my stagemates (March 2011) and Tonga Soa Welcome to our new zandry stage (March 2012) who will be arriving in about one week. The hardest and scariest part is leaving and taking that first leap. Any words of advice, not like it will matter to you know, is to focus on spending time with loved ones and not the last minute minutiae. You can have anything sent once you're here. You won't really believe me until you're here though. Feel good in knowing that this is an experience that is going to rock you like a hurricane literally.

Good luck with Pre-Service Training!

Outtie.