Week 3...Fety, Pictures and Address!

So, I've officially been at site for three weeks now and am loving it! Finally unpacked and adjusting to up at 5:30, bed by 9 with walking, talking, working and often a surprise or two in between, life is moving along in Katsepy. Stories...last week, the women's group in my community had a meeting and I had asked to be invited. So, they pick me up on their way and turns out the meeting was entirely doing Malagasy dances. They crank up the generator, blast the music and for the next couple hours they teach me Malagasy dances (even better, specific to my region). Thank goodness for my dance background, so I was able to pick up the moves no problem, but I will never be able to move my hips like they do. The next day they had a 'meeting' again, so after a morning working in my garden, I show up and we dance and then there is some talk about a ball, most of which I don't understand, but catch that something is happening the next morning in town...a women's fety (party/festival). So the next morning I show up to check things out...they're not ready yet, but they're working on something...come back at 1. I come back at 1, still not ready yet, but a corner of town has been blocked off and decorated. Too late to work in the garden, so I do my usual walk around and talk with some of the friends I am making in town. Finally 5 o'clock rolls around and someones comes up to me asking, "Where is your lamba (Malagasy sarong), you need it for the fety?" I think okay, go home, grab the beautiful lamba I was given during site visit and return. Next thing I know, the 'fety' has filled up with spectators, I'm dressed up Sakalava (tribe/culture of my region) style in my lamba and performing the dances with the women. It was completely surprising and wonderful! They continued without me with an even more impressive rice pounding dance after. It was amazing. Later on in the evening we did have a proper ball...with everyone in town dancing...old to young. The community is so culturally rich and in enjoyment of life. I feel very lucky to get to experience it and hopefully become a part of it all over the next two years.

I'm still hitting many languages walls, but hopefully I will get a tutor soon and that will improve too. And I'm not quite used to sharing my space and privacy with both curious Malagasy people showing up at my house to 'talk' (or sit and stare) and critters...the lizards are totally cool, giant incredibly fast wolf spiders not. The other night I made so much noise trying to kill one on my tin wall that my neighbor came over to check on me...armed with my headlamp and a giant stick and telling her that it was 'just' a spider, I'm not sure what she thought. :) Despite my oddities and lack of simple knowledge (Here Tara, why don't you just let me crack that coconut open for you, or this is how you cook a fish, or how you did a hole), I think that I'm definitely working my way into the community...the fact that it takes me close to an hour to walk the equivalent of four blocks around my town because everyone talks with me I think is a good sign. :) I promise I do work too, more on my 'job' will have to be the topic of my next post. Today I'm in the big city again and have meet some more wonderful new volunteers who also bank in Majunga. And I have set up a post office box!

**My address now is:
PCV Tara Smiley
BP 200
Mahajanga Principle 401
Madagascar

So enjoy a few pictures from my site...scenes from town and the women's fety. It is lunch time and I'm about starved for some rice, so I'm out, but please write...letters and emails are wonderful! I'm just as curious to hear how everyone back home is doing...and thanks again to those who have already been in touch...letters are on their way! I love you all so much and miss you!

~Tara

A Volunteer...and Katsepy Resident!

Well, it has been so long since I've last been able to post, I'm not even sure where to begin. Last week marked the end of training, a bittersweet good-bye to my Malagasy homestay family and fellow trainees (and now after ten weeks together very close friends) and a meaningful swearing in ceremony in Tana. The transition into Volunteer life began with a quick move into my new home of Katsepy, where I have been beginning the adjustment to a new, very hot, very beachy lifestyle. :) My counterpart (main go-to person to work with at my site) is a former Malagasy senator and an amazing resource and person - very well educated and travelled and, still at 70, going strong and working hard to improve the lives of the people in Katsepy, the town his family comes from and to represent and share the Sakalava culture of the region. He knows everyone and is incredibly well respected and will be a great resource for me for the next two years. He and the community have provided me with a beautiful little home and a rather large gardening plot. Wednesday I had the tremendous experience of transplanting rice seedlings in the rice paddies near my garden plot. Listening to the chatter of the two Malagasy women who farm there and patiently taught me how to do the transplanting as I squished calf deep, pudding-like mud between my toes and tried to keep from falling face first into the newly planted rice, I couldn't help but feel in awe of the moment. Of course, this excitement was mixed with the frustration of understanding very little of the chattering going on around me, but I know that the language will improve with time...little by little I will become tamana tsara (well settled). The tremendous generousity and welcoming nature of the Malagasy people, especially in my community, is already helping me to feel at home. Every evening (all 7 of them now :) I try to make the rounds through Katsepy - hit up Mama Jackie's (taught me how to make coconut bread the other day), wander through the little market (this is easy and fun because all we talk about is food and that is about the extent of my vocab anyway) and say hello to everyone I pass (they get a huge kick out of the fact that I know how to say hello in the local dialect and ask what's up). I gave a small speech at the town meeting where my counterpart and the mayor introduced me to everyone and so they all think I'm super mahay (smart - ha! little do they know I just nod and smile) and like to tell me so, which is a huge confidence booster. I've already aquired some teenage sidekicks who help me find my way around (not hard...Katsepy has all of two main 'roads') and show me where to buy this and that. And this is were I should mention how incredibly beautiful my site is...coconut trees everywhere...it truly is a beach paradise. Things I like...picking fresh fruit off the trees as you walk by and eating it on the spot, how unnecessary shoes are, the wind that comes off the sea and provides relief from the incredibly warm climate here on the west coast, the 'siesta' time after lunch when it is too hot to do any work and instead you lay out in your yard (sand of course) on a straw mat which you occasionally have to move to keep it in the shade, the beautiful lambas (sarongs) the women wear and I like to slip into to keep cool after my evening bucket shower while I cook dinner (rice of course), and the wide open possibilities of new friends, new culture, new learning experiences, and a new outlook on life as a Peace Corps Volunteer living and working in Madagascar. I have so much to learn and discover and do, whew it is all at once overwhelming, exciting and still totally crazy.
Just a couple notes to round up training...my stage (group of trainees) was incredible...I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to share the last ten weeks and the next two year with. And now everyone is living in beautiful, interesting and unique places across Madagascar...lots of places and people to visit! Our last tech trip was to a natural park where, yes I saw lemurs in the wild (and lizards, frogs, and chamelons)! The rainforest here is incredible. If Peace Corps had let me, or at least taken their eyes off me for more than a couple minutes, I'm pretty sure I would have headed off to explore and sleep in the mossy undergrowth for a couple weeks. My birthday was very fun, despite having language class all day. We celebrated in style with Malagasy cake, awesome homemade cards, and lots of hugs. My family even gave me a new lamba. It was a great way, and place, with great people to turn 24. We held a big picnic to say good-bye to our families in Mahitsitady, but hopefully I'll be back again sometime in the next two years to see my little sister again. Swearing in (the official ceremony where we take our Volunteer oaths) was a huge success with a fantastic speech in Malagasy from one of our very own - way to represent Brendan! And the last days together were spent cramming in last minute tech knowledge and language and the last nights talking, dancing and enjoying. We even had a talent show...another former dancer in the group, Katherine and I choregraphed and performed a 'Malagasy' dance. It was all fantastic.
Hmmm...something has interrupted the uploading of my pictures. And I've already been online too long, but what is up already are some pictures of my Malagasy homestay family...very wonderful! Our stage has created a group blog at http://www.dagudiaries.blogspot.com/ which you should check out for more insight into life as a volunteer in Madagascar and pictures as well as links to the blogs of others in my stage that are better at posting pictures than I have been. Please enjoy! And write often. Sorry to be so absent, but now I should be making the trip into Majunga to bank/internet twice a month. More pictures and stories to come! I love you all very much and am looking forward to hearing more about life back state-side. Congrats again to Lindsay and Aaron! Hope married life rocks so far. Lots of love, hugs, kisses and thoughts. And as before, know that I am very happy here and really enjoying my experience thus far. With an amazing support system both from home, here in Madagascar and in my community, this will become my home in no time. Love you!

~Tara