(This is actually from Erin - sent via facebook since she didn't have gmail access, Please excuse any misspelled words, other errors and oddities - she used a French keyboard and did the best she could in a limited amount of time. Tomorrow, I will post another addition to this blog based on the conversation we had early this morning. Y'all, please enjoy this one from Erin and please read tomorrow's addition because Erin REALLY needs y'all! I hope y'all realize y'all's importance to Erin and that the support Erin receives from y'all truly helps her to help others. So, y'all, too, are making a difference through Erin's Peace Corps experience - MUCH THANKS!!!) ENJOY!
Thank you all so much for your letters, emails, calling me back when I can talk, thoughts, prayers, friendship and love. The past six weeks have been quite a ride…
I have:
-Checked my Gmail ONE TIME. I should be able to check it once a month when the weather is good and I can get to Deigo… but snail mail is still the best. Even better, email me then also print it and send it
to: Erin Levin, PCV
Peace Corps Regional House
6 Rue Commandant
Marchand-Place
Kabary 201
Antsiranana Madagascar
Don’t forget to write Airmail and Par Avion! If it is a package, please send it in a package envelope which is hard to break in to… the Antsiranana
(Diego) Post Office is known for breaking into boxes which are not over-tapped. In other communication news, I have a tiny, tiny bit of cell phone service when it is windy at my site! I will text message you and then you can call me back – yay!!! Phone Number: (must dial 011 to get out of states on some phones) 261-33-088-1952 and/or
261-32-514-0123
-Seen 6 types of lemurs (ankomba) which are so cute and totally worth a trip to Madagascar if I’m not a good enough reason… you all need to visit! This place is beautiful! Every few miles whole landscapes change. It’s so incredible that through the poverty there is this innate beauty here. Through the trash, smoke, shacks and millions of babies everywhere, there are the cool waterfalls, the volcanoes with rainforests on top of them, the thousands of miles of beaches with peacock blue (that’s right mom!) or turquoise or red waters. There are the plentiful fruit trees full of mangos, bananas, papaya, coconuts, lechees, jack fruit, and pibosy.
-Hung out on the side of the road with 30 Gasy (in a car which in America would hold a max of 12) because our Bush Taxi (taxi-brousse) broke down… 4 times and counting. This is actually REALLY fun once you get used to it. It’s a great chance to get to know folks and prove that you are not a vazah (foreigner). All the people in Mahitsitady (the village we live in with our host families), Ambatalona (the town on the main road near our village)… and now starting in Deigo (my AMAZING banking town) and hopefully soon in Sadjoavato (my site for 2 years) call me Gasy now. It’s really cute. Even today when I was visiting my site this weekend, I sort of found a host family there. I will be living behind the rural health clinic (they are building my house right now – it’s made out of palm – pretty cool, huh?) The mom and older sister and her fiancé (who is a rainforest guide so actually speaks some English) showed me all around and when the precious little kids would yell “Salute Vazah!” (Most white people are rich French businessmen), I shouted back “Mbalatsara Gasy!” which totally blew them away because “Hello” in Gasy is “Manao Hoana” but up here they speak Sakalava and the kids can not believe I do too, so by the end of the day they were all calling me Gasy too which made my day! It’s so hot here that by the end of 25 more months I may even look like one, but with white hair
-Seen a dozen types of geckos and chameleons which are really cool creatures, I kind of want one as a pet
-Learned a language, yeah a whole language, I am not quite fluent but I am shocked at how well I got by on this week on my own up here… thank goodness for our incredible Gasy PC staff and Franka, my amazing Sakalava teacher! Fa Mbala Mianatra (But Still Learning) Mbalatsara – literally means, “still good?!”
-Built a clay stove (fantana mitsitsy – improved stove) for my host family so they will have less smoke and less colds and use less wood and charcoal and save themselves and their precious forest which they are tearing away everyday by burning massive amounts of trash, slash-and-burning the land to plant rice paddies, etc. Here, the people live day to day. They work in the fields today to put rice on the table tonight. It’s very hard for them to think about tomorrow, needless to say 10 years from now. If they keep going this rate with slash-and-burn, their beautiful country full of lush rainforest, animals and plants which exist only here, will disappear way too soon.
(Just another reason you all need to hurry up and visit me). It’s so amazing that these small feasible actions, if taught to enough people and disseminated widely and actually implemented, can truly make them healthier, happier and sustain their lives and land.
-Learned to cook (mandoky) for the first time in my life and learned to make the best peanut butter (tutu-pistasy) ever!
-Slipped down cliffs of red mud (teny mena) and still sat through class all day
-Mastered the art of purifying water (rano madio – clean water)
-Begun to learn how to carry buckets of water and bags of rice and peanuts and veggies and fruits on my head… it is way harder than it looks
-Been constantly stared at and shocked many people when I burst out the Gasy
-Pretty much only used a “kabone” hole in the ground, and “ladosy” rock with a “lamba” cloth or kakazu “palm-type tree sticks – around it to go to the bathroom and bucket-shower. Oh and washed all my insanely dirty clothes in an even dirtier river/rice paddy… I will not be clean until I get home December 2009. BUT it’s totally cool. The no power, no water, no nothing was pretty easy to get used to. I think it took about 20 hours to feel comfortable enough with it. A huge point of the Peace Corps, and why it is working, is because we all actually live with the people we are working with and helping at the same level they are at.
Having so little is actually more rewarding to me than having so much.
It makes me feel equal to my friends and family here and hopefully it will hugely help me integrate into Sadjoavato. I am opening the site and they are a bit skeptical but I will hopefully win them over. It is the most humbling and challenging experience of my life and I have never felt God’s presence so strongly. Everyday is a rollercoaster but thankfully because our purpose here is so evident, it is worth it for me.
-Eaten rice (vary) three times a day every day… except on the rare occasion in Tana or Diego where there is pizza, cold cokes, ice cream etc
-Woken up every morning at 4:30am to the rooster… but it’s okay because there is nothing to do after dark so I’m usually fast asleep by 9:30pm (candles only last so long for letter writing/reading and there are only so many batteries and sunlight for the music…)
-Taught 46 seven and eight year-old how to brush their teeth and seen the biggest smiles on their faces when we got to give them tooth brushes
-Become a part of two new families – my host family in the Highlands and in Sadjoavato. I love them both dearly and it should warm all of your hearts to know the patience, kindness and love they have so openly shared with me. Compared to even a homeless family in the states, they have nothing, yet they find a way to share with me. Even if it is just teaching me how to pick a mango or jack fruit that’s ripe or find a place with shade and a breeze.
-Watched a soccer (labolle) match packed with an audience that would make up 5 surrounding villages on a cliff 3 miles away from anything… it was nuts!thanks again .)
-Had one of my good PC friends family’s cow have a baby cow and that night they ate the placenta for dinner (sakafo gasy – Malagasy food they say)
-Seen the most beautiful sunsets and stars of my life and been totally refreshed by them in a way I never thought imaginable
-Made friends with an incredible Gasy band called the Spesialista and had them teach me the Gasy drums, Velia and rain-shaker. Benja-Gasy, the lead singer got so excited when I said I was a PC volunteer and told me that he was one of the very few men in Madagascar with a vasectomy and that he is famous and will come tell all the men I want him to. It was pretty awesome and hilarious. I am going to buy a valia from him (it’s a very think piece of bamboo that’s about at long as my shoulder to elbow and has 20 strings around it, I love it!
-Rode on a ferris wheel moved by hand and made for people way tinier than I am
-Had this realization about what I am doing here: Because my new friends, neighbors, and family here do not quite understand seeing past today, it helps so much to empower them by letting them know how much we care. If they feel worth it, they will change their behavior to prevent STDs and AIDS and having too many babies too young, and they will take advantage of the free vaccines for their babies and the free vitamins and mosquito nets and because they are promoting eco-tourism so much back home, they will take my free English lessons so they can be tour guides and they will see the future and they will stop burning every tree so that their soil will not totally erode and their children can live a better life than they did. The ideal “American dream” is a possibility here and I am so grateful for the opportunity to help.
However, whatever “help” I am providing is nothing compared to what I am receiving from their everyday lessons of grace and humility and sharing and cheer amid poverty.
-Arrived at my site for a visit and there was no home for me. The one thing the community must do to prove to the PC they deserve and want a volunteer badly enough is build us a house all together. It was my first time crying since the first day here. It hurt so bad to think I was giving 2 years to them and they did not even want me. However, it’s been a great few days because of that. First of all, what I am giving is so small compared to what I am learning from the Malagasy people and my time living here. I saw Gasy time put in to action, it’s slow and laid-back to the core. I have this challenge to explain my purpose and prove myself to them. I am the first American they have ever met. I am trying to make yall all look good . I got to squeeze out the energy from my toenails and make everyone laugh with the few Sakalava jokes I can say. I got to introduce myself to the town in a meeting and have every man’s hand pop up to ask if I was married, have Jean-Claude (the great nurse) shout that yes I am and that my husband lives in America (haha) and every man said “that is far, she needs a boyfriend here” and Jean-Claude said my husband is strong, it was hilarious because only me and his great family knew the truth. Everyone asked Jean-Claude questions about me and it was so fun to understand them and quickly respond myself. I am learning to be tough enough to get by, patient enough to wait, kind enough to care, and hopeful enough to stay. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers that I can continue to grow in this way and stay healthy, safe and happy. Thank you
-And so much more… It’s been amazing, it’s been rough, it’s been dirty, it’s been peaceful, it’s been life altering and mind-opening and it’s only been 6 weeks. Here’s to the next 25 months… please be in touch often and stay well and enjoy your life to the fullest and keep me posted on it!
Sambitsara (both good, goodbye),
Erin
