The end of Tulear and all of a sudden there's two weeks left!

Maeva, me, Say, on the little roof deck over
Michael and Say's house in Ankilibe

Back in Fort Dauphin!  Independent Study Projects aren’t officially over yet because we haven’t turned in our papers, so obviously I’m writing this blog instead of working on my paper, but this is productive too…I think.  and we have 4 days.

Raouely and Neni cooking dinner
while Caramel (the dog) took a nap

So last time I wrote I was incredibly stressed out with my translator situation, but things have gotten so much better since then!  The day after I wrote, Tsibara came back on the very first bus at 7 am and we did 25 interviews that day, and then 12 more the next day, which brought me right up to 99 interviews.  He was such a sweet, nice person, really practiced as an interviewer, and knew the area well having worked on (unsuccessful due to villagers unwillingness to change habits) projects on replanting mangroves and creating a fishing protected area to try to rehabilitate the fish population in the area, so he was comfortable approaching people and asking where more people were at the end of each interview, so we were always going directly from one person to the next.  We thought at the end of the first day to stop with 20 interviews, but the women heard that we were doing interviews of women, and everyone wanted to participate!  It was far enough through the end of my stay that everyone would say “Oh, the girl who runs in the morning, entrainement (one of the borrowed-from-French words in Malagasy),” and it was great to connect with people by talking to them more than just saying hi (or puffing out hi if I was at the end of a run).

Me, Say, Maeva and Mari

By the end of the last interviews, I have a pretty clear idea of the situation in Ankilibe: almost everyone goes to school at around age 5 or 6 to learn to read and write and count, and then slowly drop out starting two or three years after beginning, but averaging 4ish years of school (lots of repetition in some classes, so the kids in the 5th year of school are often 14 or 16), some making it all the way to the 5th year and getting their Certificate d’Études Primaires, which is the diploma that allows people to continue to College (like middle school kind of).  Almost no one from Ankilibe continues to CEG because you have to move to a town 15 km away, St. Augustin, or to Tulear, 12 km away,  both of which are expensive (but wouldn’t kill the family budget if the men in the family didn’t drink away the money from the occasional good catch).  The reasons for stopping school were numerous, but mostly had to do with the proximity of the sea: the temptation of the easy money which can be had from gleaning, which is picking up shrimp and sea cucumbers, but also that kids just don’t want to go to school anymore, they want to “faire la vie” or live life, and get pregnant and have kids.  Kids with kids EVERYWHERE.  There were a significant number of people who did say that the fishermen who went to more school were more successful in problem solving and finding

playing the bottle caps game

 good places to fish, and even women who were just housewives were much better money managers if they had been to school, and even spousal communication was much improved between two educated people.  These benefits just aren’t quite enough, though, even though almost every single fisherman brought up on his own, without being asked, that all the fish were disappearing, and that life was changing and people would have to go to more school, because kids continue to drop out!  There is also, according to the director of the school and one of the teachers, a huge lack of parental support (parent-teacher associations do actually exist here, but there is not one in Ankilibe), the kids only come for the midday meal, and they never come to school if the tide is low so the teachers bike all the way from Tulear and have to bike back.  According to the

Me, Maeva, Mamato, Mari, and Franco

parents, the teachers are lazy and don’t teach the kids, and a few kids mentioned drunk teachers in class, and almost everyone talked about getting hit by the teachers at some point.  Lots of problems, and not a lot of people taking responsibility!  This is really great though, because with some help, the villagers have all the makings of people ready to turn around and get going to school, they just need some basic improvements.  Glass half-full becomes kind of necessary when you’re looking at such a broken system.
On the family side of things, everything continued to be fantastic.  Neni, Say’s mom, had to leave with Rasoa, Say’s only younger sister (18 with a 2 year old already), Franco, Rasoa’s absolutely adorable son, and some other family members to harvest rice and corn in Ambonaviatra (sp?) a few days before, which was pretty sad because Neni is just the most calm, motherly, beautiful presence to have around.  We decided to make a visit out there because Tsibara left on the 20th once our interviews were done, and I really wanted to see all of them before I left on the 25th.  Took a taxi in to Tulear to buy some food and rohandalana (sp?), or road gifts, to bring out to them, and then one of the little taxis for an hour or so slightly inland through some valley to a little village.  Found out why the taxis have to stop for every single gendarme/police hut-they pay them a toll every time! Mostly people are just randomly stopped to check papers, but because the taxi trucks are so overloaded all the time (the maximum capacity of a taxi-brousse in Madagascar is always one more than what you have), they do a little pay-off system.  Walked from the village through the rice fields, where it felt so

The family in the rice fields

great to recognize people working-seeing Neni was actually very comforting like seeing safe and taking-care-or-you-family, which is maybe one of the only people I can say that about in Madagascar besides the SIT staff.  Spent the afternoon on a mat under a tree, watched Neni make one cup of coffee from the raw coffee bean stage-roasting them, grinding them with a mortar/pestle type thing, and then straining the hot water through the grounds, sifting through rice, rebraiding a cousin’s hair, and listening to Malagasy.  At night we slept on the same mat, and Neni very kindly put up a mosquito net to protect my delicate vazaha skin, but it is very obvious that mosquito nets are a symbol, and they don’t actually understand how to use them: she strung it up between two posts and let it hang (think two dimensional).  I still obviously thanked her profusely, but was so shocked to see something that seems so obvious to us be done so wrong!  Got to bathe in the freshwater river the next morning before going back to some drama in Ankilibe.
The day we returned, Mari, Say’s daughter, was playing on someone’s pirogue and it broke, which meant that Say would have to pay the 20,000 Ariary ($10 US) to fix it.  I had never seen a parent physically punish a child (no lasting damage or blood or anything), but it was still a very shocking experience, especially because I didn’t know what had happened for Say to do that to Mari because no one explained it to me until later that evening.  This isn’t anything out of the ordinary and has nothing to do with Say’s character-in a rural village like this the phrase “it was just an accident, it is just money,” doesn’t exist.  Higher stress levels around money and survival definitely change the dynamic about how much physicality plays in to punishment and power.

Maeva and Franco, two of the
most adorable people on the planet!

On top of that, Say’s brother’s wife’s brother who is about 30 came banging down the doors of the house looking to sleep with Maeva, the beautiful 13 year old cousin who does Say’s cooking and cleaning when she’s not going to school, because his girlfriend just had a miscarriage and he needed a girl young enough that she was capable of having his children.  Luckily Rouely, Say’s brother, was sleeping in the room that the guy was banging down the doors of to enter, and both were surprised enough to see the other that the guy left.  He came back the next day on Raouely’s orders and Say told him that if he ever tried that again she would go to the President of the Fokotany and he would be locked up.  It led to conversations that let me in on the knowledge that that sort of thing isn’t completely uncommon, especially older Malagasy men looking for very young girls to have their kids, because everyone wants a million kids here.  Seriously, a million. The most frequent number of siblings that I have in my data is 7.  Meaning that while there are plenty of families with 5 kids, there are also plenty with 10.  YIKES!  Again, not a reflection on Say’s family or all Malagasy men, but still the search for young, fertile women is much more out in the open, and much more frequent than in the states.  People aren’t exactly popping birth control pills and unwrapping condoms around here (for anything other then creating a waterproof casing for their flashlights so that they can go night fishing), kind of the opposite of in the United States, where it can be seen as the young girl’s “fault” by her partner if she gets pregnant out of wedlock, like it is a problem that she created.  Absolutely unheard of here!

The last few days calmed down though, and we spent them blissfully playing more London-bridges games and

The ocean gives crazy food sometimes!

I got partway through teaching Mari how to write her name, which was really adorable.  My last night there, we had a fantastically luxurious dinner of fish AND beans and rice, because there had been one of those freak/random days of good fishing that keep the people in the business, and there were fish everywhere!  That of course meant that there was a little more loud drunk singing that night (and the next morning starting around 6) than usual, but everyone was happy.  My last morning I went down to take pictures of the fishing boats in the morning light, having wanted to save flashing my camera around on the beach until the day I was leaving.  While I was taking pictures of one boat, one of the men on it invited me to Sarondrano with them,

off in pirogues in the morning

and then another guy shouted, “hey, hey vazaha,” and I said that my name was NOT “vazaha” but Katherine, which set the women on the beach off laughing, and then he asked if I wanted to take a walk, which I also laughed and said no to, but realized midway through the interaction that I understood.  This made me SO happy, even if it was just a couple words and the gist of it was pretty obvious anyways with the tone of voice and everything, but it was a great note to leave on.

Jim picked me up, and he and Isaiah and I headed in to Tulear one last time to get some presents for the Ankilibe family and have one last lunch with Michael to say goodbye to Islesboro in Madagascar.  Also met up with Elizabeth and Peter who had been in Ifaty with the NGO Reef Doctor doing their ISPs, and found out that we had gotten lucky-Peter had bacterial dysentery with a fever of 104.6 and went to the hospital to have 3 drips put in, and later Elizabeth had to go to the hospital with mysterious symptoms and is now on horse-sized antibiotic pills! They were all well and happy by the time we saw them though, and we all got to spend one last night in Namekia enjoying that beautiful area and swimming in the mangroves before heading out Thursday morning to Fort Dauphin.
We were all SO jealous of everyone’s dinner last night in the United States (Thanksgiving), but the Malagasy couldn’t understand how you could have a huge celebration meal without rice, like that wasn’t a correctly planned menu or something.  It was definitely the first time I had had rice on Thanksgiving, and passed the dinner of the 3rd Thursday of November without any extra fanfare.  On the bright side, litchi fruit is in season, and it tastes delicious (kind of like those Japanese mini jello snack things you used to have at your house, Lisa, if you’re reading this), and we’ll be home in time for the Christmas food and family and friends in less than 2 weeks!

ISP: Studying School In a Rural Fishing Village

ISP (independent study project) is actually here and more than halfway done!  I left from Antananarivo more than two weeks ago for the 20 hour taxi brousse ride to Tulear, which wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds (20 hours straight stopping only for pee breaks in a 16 person van caravaning across the country with 3 other vans to avoid hold-ups by road bandits).  It was a little nerve wracking because we 3 SIT students had our entire budget for the month with us in cash, and we did have some minor engine problem during the night, but arrived in Tulear just fine.  Once we got to Tulear, Peter and Elizabth headed north to their research sites, and Isaiah and I caught a cab/bus/truck/wagon/cart thing to Ankilibe, the village which is 12 km south of Tulear where I'm doing research, and 2 km north of Namekia, which is where Isaiah is staying to research mangroves.

Once I arrived in Ankilibe, Michael Johnson's (Islesboro connection!) family here greeted me with the most open arms ever!  Say (pronounced like sigh but with an sh) is the main english speaker; and though she's a good communicator, her vocabulary is mostly "going" "stop" "I like" and "I know," and her daughter Mari (6), cousin Maeva (13), cousin Mamato (5), and mother who we all just call Neni really dont have any language but Malagasy:  This generation spanning sisterhood makes up the staple of the family, but Neni had 10 KIDS including Say all of which live around Ankilibe, so there are random bothers and uncles wandering around too, and other sisters hang out with their adorable kids all the time.



Ankilibe is beautiful and hot and dry, at least 85 degrees every day and never any clouds. 90percent of the village is works as subsistence fishermen, selling some of their daily catch to buy staples like rice (of course), but there is definitely no money left over, and if there is, they use it to go drinking.  Our house is 100 yards from the beach, which is nice if you don't look too closely: the beach is the boat launch, kids play area, crab/shrimp collection area, and bathroom.  It would be very easy to do a stool survey of the entire village baed on samples collected on the beach.  It is still great for running, and the tide washes it all away (while the kids are swimming in the high water).  Everyone is really friendly and happy, and running every morning gives me a chance to smile and say hello to as many people as possible (and get laughed at by plenty). 

My second day there Say and I went back in to Tulear to get food and charge her phone (no electricity or running water in the village) and so that I could meet with Tsibara, who was supposed to be my translator for the next 2 weeks, starting November 7.  Unfortunately, this hasn't really worked as planned, and he's been disappearing and reappearing so that we've only gotten in 3 full days of interviewing so far!  Because interviewing is my primary method of data collection, this is pretty stressful because no one in the village speaks more than a few words of french or english if any at all.  Luckily Jim, our academic director, has a guardian at his house in Namekia that has been able to help me out a little and the teacher at the school speaks french, so I've been able to do a little bit without Tsibara, and he swore on his life that he'd be there this Thursday through Saturday to do lots of interviewing! 

There are about 100 bright sides to this situation though, starting with the fact that I've been able to learn lots of Malagasy with my family, pound rice out of its shells (I have blisters), do laundry with the sisters, give and get lice checks because the little girls are covered, de-scale and gut mini fish, eat miniature fried eels, take naps, etc.  Because the directrice of the school is the only one I can work with on my own, I've been able to get a lot of information from her and now we're friends, and I've gotten to sit in on classes and everything, which is really interesting.  Writing in my journal a LOT, outlining my paper, etc, but when it comes down to it I'm just not very good at being idle or sitting still and not doing things, but this is good practice and I'm catching up on sleep/storing enough to last the next 100 years.  Unfortunately idle time means more thinking time, which reminds me how much I miss everyone at home!  My Malagasy is improving, and I've played the Malagasy version of hide and seek, duck duck goos (theirs is way better than ours), a kind of London Bridges game, and some game with bottle caps that I can't really describe.  Also, if you're ever de-seeding spicy peppers, DO NOT TOUCH YOUR FACE OR EYES and especially DO NOT TRY TO WASH OFF WITH WATER!  I looked like such a baby/novice trying to tell them I was fine with tears streamig out of my eyes and my face all red.

The actual study part of the time here (now a very small fraction) is about why kids here go to school. There is one public primary school which costs the families money, the teachers are apparently lazy and terrible, and almost no one continues to secondary school because you have to move to go there because it is too far to walk every day.  I'm trying to find out why bother going at all, when you're just going to quit in a few years, why not save the money?  As soon as I get back to Fort Dauphin in a week and have my complete answer (which includes needing to learn to read, write though they don't use these skills ever again, and count, and getting general problem solving skills) I'll post it, but this sticky European keyboard is actually driving me crazy!  Pictures in a week too. 

Missing everyone bunches and bunches

Towards Modernity: the end of the road trip goes to Antananarivo

Our final national park was Ranomafana, which is a rainforest park southeast of Tana and east of Fianarantsoa.  The drive in was easy, and the boundaries of the park were, once again, pretty crystal clear, with degraded forest coming up to a straight line where the thicker forest started.  For a first rainforest ever, the experience was pretty cool!  The first evening we did a night walk to find chameleons and frogs, and as a group, we felt the most touristy we’ve felt since we arrived.  There were other groups of tourists, and we just walked right along the main road and looked in to the bushes, which didn’t feel too adventuresome, but the actual park interior is closed at night because of wood and lemur poachers.  We ended up seeing several species of chameleons and another species of mouse lemur, which was really cool even if it did have to happen right along a paved pathway.

Chameleon at Ranomafana

Leaf tailed gecko

In the morning we went over to the Stonybrook College (SUNY) abroad program base, which is in the national park, and came away really excited that we had picked the program we did.  They have a really cool nature experience, but are entirely based in one area without much contact with Malagasy people or culture.  They did have running water, a dining hall, and the option to get their laundry done for them, which made us a little jealous for a couple minutes, but wouldn’t trade for it in the end.  Took a hike through the rainforest and saw FOUR MORE species of lemurs, which brought our entire count up to 10 species, more than I ever thought I’d see.  These ones weren’t too photogenic because of how thick the forest is and how many zillion people there were around also trying to get pictures, so I’m sorry to report that I didn’t get any of these ones.  We did, however, see a satanic leaf tailed gecko, which had the most absurd camouflage that I had ever seen.  The guide pointed us to the general direction of the gecko, and then had us try to find it, which was so hard!  After the hike, we went into a couple villages and interviewed a few people on how the park has impacted their lives.  The villagers were not, overall, very happy with the park, which had kicked them off of their land, shown them where to live, told them to do agriculture, asked if there was anything it could provide for them, and then never filled their promises!  The woman with which I spoke cited the fact that they had asked for a school seven years ago, and still no results from the park.  The guides also said that they worked independently, rather than for the park, because the park managers were corrupt and didn’t pay them nearly as much as they should have: they make as much in two days independently as they would working for the park.  Because we had been reading about all the community based projects with protected areas and the focus on helping the people, it was really good to get a realistic view into how the park system currently works, and how much room for improvement there is in community relations.

One of the adorable kids at the
orphanage wearing Gracie's sunglasses

Left Ranomafana for the 10 hour drive to Tana on a pretty windy, but luckily well paved, road, arriving at night for the most american dinner we’d had all trip!  It was Elizabeth’s birthday, so we ate at an Italian restaurant with pizza and pasta and then had chocolate cake for dessert, which felt unreal!  It turned out that most of our Tana week has been like that: the city definitely shows signs of globalization, but luckily no health codes have come in to stop people from selling delicious street food (the best mango’s I’ve ever had for less than 10 cents each).  We had a few lectures about the economy and poverty, talking about how the huge informal sector (street vendors to farmers) of the economy hampers the overall growth of the country, but the formal sector of the economy isn’t really stable or lucrative enough for people to get one job and keep it, unless they’re all the way at the top.  Some more about medicinal plants (we all feel like experts now), but mostly just working on our papers and getting our independent study project logistics together.  We did visit an environmental, education based orphanage, which was a really great experience and the kids, who had originally come from abusive families or been exonerated from the corrupt judicial system, were all incredibly cute, friendly and smart, and now all I want to do is start an orphanage when I get back to the states!
We also got to visit Andasibe, on the way to which we went to a reptile zoo/farm thing and saw huge chameleons.  At Andasibe, which is another national park, we saw the Indri Indri lemur, which is the largest lemur left in Madagascar, some other sifaka species, and a really beautiful orange lemur.  Of course my camera was out of batteries for that!!
People started leaving for their ISPs yesterday, and the last four of us are leaving in about 5 minutes for Tulear, which is a 20 hour trip on taxi-brousse, so should be fun!  I’m staying south of Tulear and studying education and living in a fishing village, so no internet or posts for a while, but as soon as I get in to town I’ll hopefully have more to say about that!