I'm in Tulear AGAIN. Came in on a whim yesterday afternoon because the two Australian sisters, Clare and Michelle, are leaving so I just decided to come with them. I have to leave in a couple of hours (it's 8 am now) to hope to be back by kids' club at 3. Christina's not there and another gasy staff member, Lova, who speaks pretty good English is going to help out. We're supposed to do collection of sharp objects today and then figure out how to dispose of them. It'll be in a hole, but I don't know if we can dig a hole for their general use or if we should just use the ReefDoctor hole today as a model. But I'm afraid if we don't go ahead and dig them one they'll never dig themselves one. It's also fady to bury anything (fady being taboo) because burial has to do with the dead- hence the reason for all the giant poos on the beach- so this could stand in the way. I just hope I'll get back in time to figure it out. Egil is still getting settled and doing more observation than anything so hopefully he'll be better equipped to help more soon.
I finally am getting my buoyancy right with diving. Yesterday we did two hour long dives and I finally felt like a legit scuba diver. I'm glad I've gotten to have a lot of fun dives where I can just swim around and am not so focused on performing some skill when I'm not even 100 percent comfortable in the water.
Monday we did an AMAZING dive on the exterior at a site called cathedral. Since I don't have my advanced yet we had to stay at 18 meters and above but it was still the deepest I've ever been and the topography was gorgeous- rock and coral canyons and caves, just amazing. We saw sooo many fish. A couple of giant grouper almost gave us a heartattack; Will was my buddy and he grabbed me when he saw them so my heart skipped a beat automatically thinking something was wrong, and then we both went crazy not knowing where to look. Sensory overload. Now I'm spoiled and am only going to want to go back to exterior sites. But that being said, my two dives yesterday were at Ankaranjelita and Vato Soa, both of which I've been to and the latter of which I've been to at least 5 or 6 times, and they were really great dives since I'm getting the hang of everything. I start Advanced this upcoming week I believe. I'm going to try and not come back to Tulear until I have my Advanced because I think I'm mildly addicted to coming here. And my Denver app is STILL not up, and I'm going to guess it'll be up Sept 15 like it was last year.
Anyway, hope to hear from anyone soon.
Alex
Sorta Beautiful
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
I just got back from English with the new volunteer, Egil (not Edgehill like I originally thought). I’m sitting in the hammock outside the house because they are counting, IDing, weighing and measuring fish from a beach seine catch which they do about 3 times a week. It smells terrible. It’s a room full of juvenile fish dead fish spread out everywhere. Gross. And also really sad because the beach seines are horribly destructive. A beach seine is a large net (sometimes even mosquito nets are used) that is held by two opposite ends on shore and the other ends taken out into the sound by pirogue and weighted down. Then they are all dragged in by people on the shore. There are several people pulling each side in (it looks like two one-sided games of tug-of-war) and the net literally ravages the sea grass beds which are extremely important habitats for juvenile fish and sweeps up anything and everything in its wake. As you can see it is beyond terrible for the ecosystem and it has actually been illegal since the 1930s or somewhere around there but national laws aren’t enforced. Ifaty does have a law against it but Mangily and other villages don’t; and unfortunately people come into Ifaty at night and beach seine. We’ve even had them doing it right in front of ReefDoctor which is realllllly not cool. It’s people who are not Vezu (the ‘sea people’ of Ifaty and other coastal towns) who have moved to the coast from inland because the drought has devastated most of the agriculture and the sea is looked at as an infinite provider. We think the people that seine in Ifaty at night come from other villages, but we’re not entirely sure.
Back to teaching, Egil is a teacher in Copenhagen and here for a month to dive and help with education stuff. There is so much to do it’s a bit overwhelming. We need to make activity books relevant to the curriculum for Kids Club and we need to do something similar for beginners and advanced English. It doesn’t sound like much but I don’t even know where to begin. The communication barrier makes everything harder, especially when people who are supposed to help you translate don’t show up, like Pepin didn’t today. I was fine with the beginners today; we review the “how many are there?” activity and “to have” and “to be” and practiced simple sentences like “I am a girl” and “I have a pencil.” Pepin was supposed to show up and explain to them “who, what, when, where, why” questions but he didn’t for God knows what reason. Thankfully Egil could sit in with the advanced students. I still have worked with them one-on-one by myself and I am extremely intimidated to do so if I ever have to. I like working with the beginners, there is a regular group that shows up and they are younger so I don’t feel so ill-suited to the task. And I guess I just prefer kids. It was nice today how I could get the ones who did understand what we were doing really well to explain to a couple of the other ones who didn’t understand so even without Pepin we could make it work. I just translated the gasy work “explain” (manadava) to manitra and hanitra and they explained for me. Next time I’m thinking I might bring in a bunch of clothes in a bag and continue using “I have” and explain “I am wearing…”
Oh and another random side note… so yesterday coming back from Tulear we were late to the taxi-brousse station so we couldn’t fit in the afternoon brousse so we had to get on a cameo-brousse instead. A cameo-brousse is essentially a school bus sans windows, wheel axels, or breathing room where at least 100 people are packed into. “Cattle car” ran through my head a myriad of times during the course of the trip. At the beginning I was sharing a seat with two other women with the various body parts of the people standing in the aisle shoved in my face. But at the first police road check (there are several that stop the brousses in order to get bribe money for no reason) all the Vazaha got our passports checked and for some reason he pulled me, Alana, Katie and Josh outside and took us under some little hut with his machine gun to look at our passports like they weren’t real or something. I was already not in the best spirits so by this point I was seriously just pissed. Alana argued with him in French some and after going through all of our photocopied passports he let us get back on. But I was the last to get back on and they started the brousse before I was in the door so I was half way flying out and finally the eight men standing in the back got me shoved in where I proceeded to cry. Thankfully my sunglasses mostly hid it because all of the gasy people in the back were shouting and laughing at me and one awful huge disgusting woman next to me was grabbing my bag asking for money. Josh took it and held it while I got to spend the rest of the ride sandwiched between two gasy groins holding on for dear life as the brousse sped over sand versions of pot holes and my entire body would be lifted off of the ground. All I have to say about that little experience was that it was character building and I am going to do everything I possibly can to avoid ever taking one of those buses of death for the rest of my life. I’m going to eat beans and rice, veloma,
Alex
Back to teaching, Egil is a teacher in Copenhagen and here for a month to dive and help with education stuff. There is so much to do it’s a bit overwhelming. We need to make activity books relevant to the curriculum for Kids Club and we need to do something similar for beginners and advanced English. It doesn’t sound like much but I don’t even know where to begin. The communication barrier makes everything harder, especially when people who are supposed to help you translate don’t show up, like Pepin didn’t today. I was fine with the beginners today; we review the “how many are there?” activity and “to have” and “to be” and practiced simple sentences like “I am a girl” and “I have a pencil.” Pepin was supposed to show up and explain to them “who, what, when, where, why” questions but he didn’t for God knows what reason. Thankfully Egil could sit in with the advanced students. I still have worked with them one-on-one by myself and I am extremely intimidated to do so if I ever have to. I like working with the beginners, there is a regular group that shows up and they are younger so I don’t feel so ill-suited to the task. And I guess I just prefer kids. It was nice today how I could get the ones who did understand what we were doing really well to explain to a couple of the other ones who didn’t understand so even without Pepin we could make it work. I just translated the gasy work “explain” (manadava) to manitra and hanitra and they explained for me. Next time I’m thinking I might bring in a bunch of clothes in a bag and continue using “I have” and explain “I am wearing…”
Oh and another random side note… so yesterday coming back from Tulear we were late to the taxi-brousse station so we couldn’t fit in the afternoon brousse so we had to get on a cameo-brousse instead. A cameo-brousse is essentially a school bus sans windows, wheel axels, or breathing room where at least 100 people are packed into. “Cattle car” ran through my head a myriad of times during the course of the trip. At the beginning I was sharing a seat with two other women with the various body parts of the people standing in the aisle shoved in my face. But at the first police road check (there are several that stop the brousses in order to get bribe money for no reason) all the Vazaha got our passports checked and for some reason he pulled me, Alana, Katie and Josh outside and took us under some little hut with his machine gun to look at our passports like they weren’t real or something. I was already not in the best spirits so by this point I was seriously just pissed. Alana argued with him in French some and after going through all of our photocopied passports he let us get back on. But I was the last to get back on and they started the brousse before I was in the door so I was half way flying out and finally the eight men standing in the back got me shoved in where I proceeded to cry. Thankfully my sunglasses mostly hid it because all of the gasy people in the back were shouting and laughing at me and one awful huge disgusting woman next to me was grabbing my bag asking for money. Josh took it and held it while I got to spend the rest of the ride sandwiched between two gasy groins holding on for dear life as the brousse sped over sand versions of pot holes and my entire body would be lifted off of the ground. All I have to say about that little experience was that it was character building and I am going to do everything I possibly can to avoid ever taking one of those buses of death for the rest of my life. I’m going to eat beans and rice, veloma,
Alex
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Still in Tulear. Was hoping to work on my law school apps but the only one I care about isn't up. The heat here is starting to be unbearable and it's technically still winter I think. I don't know if it's the heat, the smells, the coffee, or the dairy that is making my stomach turn but I have felt so ill since Wednesday. I hope whatever it is passes.
This week we are doing coral bleaching surveys which will make me feel like I'm contributing at least something to the science aspect here. And it will add several more dives to my list which is good. I'm getting more and more comfortable but I'm not sure if the vertigo-esque feeling I always get post-ascent will ever go away. I must be really sensitive to pressure changes. Advanced training either starts later this week or maybe next week, I'm not sure when the new dive officer gets here.
We have a new volunteer coming today who is older, maybe 28? who is coming specifically to help with education. He is a primary school teacher in Holland I believe, so that'll be good for me. He's only here for a month though.
Oh yeh, Lucy ran into some trouble on her way to Tana. She got robbed and stepped in a hole carrying all her bags and snapped her ankle. I'm so worried about her. I don't know why the worst things always happen to the best people. It really does seem to be a general rule of the universe.
Hopefully I'll be back on soon cause I have to check on application stuff so email me!
Alex
This week we are doing coral bleaching surveys which will make me feel like I'm contributing at least something to the science aspect here. And it will add several more dives to my list which is good. I'm getting more and more comfortable but I'm not sure if the vertigo-esque feeling I always get post-ascent will ever go away. I must be really sensitive to pressure changes. Advanced training either starts later this week or maybe next week, I'm not sure when the new dive officer gets here.
We have a new volunteer coming today who is older, maybe 28? who is coming specifically to help with education. He is a primary school teacher in Holland I believe, so that'll be good for me. He's only here for a month though.
Oh yeh, Lucy ran into some trouble on her way to Tana. She got robbed and stepped in a hole carrying all her bags and snapped her ankle. I'm so worried about her. I don't know why the worst things always happen to the best people. It really does seem to be a general rule of the universe.
Hopefully I'll be back on soon cause I have to check on application stuff so email me!
Alex
Friday, August 27, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
In Tulear again! We are all in town tonight to have a fun goodbye dinner for Phoebe, one of the volunteers who has been here for 3 months. I'm finally getting to know everyone and they are all leaving, it's sad! We have 7 new volunteers and 2 new staff coming within the next two or so weeks though so that'll be good. I think the 2 staff are an Irish man and an American man, so that has potential.
The weather is getting hotter here, I guess it is technically Spring here I think. When I first got here it was nice and chilly in the mornings and at night, cool enough to wear sweats but still warm during the days. We had a few days of really strong wind so that the days weren't actually that warm but that just happens a few times with the changing of the seasons. Now it's hot, and it's almost getting too hot to sleep with any covers so I can only imagine how it's going to be 2 months from now right at the beginning of summer which is supposedly just suffocating here. We're in the desert, so it's dry heat that literally just bakes you alive. Who knows if it'll rain at all while I'm here. I should want it to since the country is in such a massive drought but I don't because then the mosquitoes come out and they affect me differently here than at home. My bites are like hard and just gross.
Yesterday on my dive I saw some huge batfish for the first time and several humongous decorated spiny lobsters and a huge school of cornetfish that was just amazing to see. We also saw this one huge (probably almost a meter long) blue and yellow grouper that always swims around with us when we go to this particular site (Rose Garden). It's unforunate how endagered grouper are because they taste so damn good.
Oh yeh, also yesterday I ran English by myself for the first time. It went better than expected. THere is one University of Tulear student who has been coming to stay at ReefDoctor some during the week to do his research on water quality in the village of Ifaty and surrounding villages and he is SO smart. His name is Jose, he's only 20, and he speaks Malagas, French and English- his English is probably the best of any other Malagas I've met. He took over and taught the advanced for me yesterday and he had this whole huge chart of past present future and conditional perfect simple and continuous tenses and no other Vazaha besides me even got it so I'm not sure how far he got with the Gasy students but he could do a hell of a lot better explaining it since he has two other languages besides English to communicate with them in. With the beginner's we reviewed some nouns and then the difference between singular and plural statements - like saying "There is one mango" versus "There are two mangoes." They don't have plural in Malagas so it's kind of a difficult concept for them. Then we went over "to be" and "to have" and the conjugation of those verbs with the subject pronouns. Teaching all of that was only possible because Pepin, the original English teacher, was there to help and to explain. They don't have the verb "to be" in Gasy either so without him there is no way I could have explained it. I also brought them a big bag of assorted biscuit wafer things that I decidely didn't want after absolutely gorging myself the past few days with Tulear food and homemade pastries some of the volunteers have made. Teachers always brought treats with them to my classes growing up so I figured it'd be a nice thing to do but at first I wasn't so sure because they didn't seem to know what to do with them. They were so hesitant at first to take any but eventually they were grabbing handfuls and at the end walked out with the whole bag and never offered me one. It's okay though ha.
I forgot to bring my adapter so I don't know how much more battery I'll have for this weekend which sucks but so I'm gona go now. More later.
Alex
The weather is getting hotter here, I guess it is technically Spring here I think. When I first got here it was nice and chilly in the mornings and at night, cool enough to wear sweats but still warm during the days. We had a few days of really strong wind so that the days weren't actually that warm but that just happens a few times with the changing of the seasons. Now it's hot, and it's almost getting too hot to sleep with any covers so I can only imagine how it's going to be 2 months from now right at the beginning of summer which is supposedly just suffocating here. We're in the desert, so it's dry heat that literally just bakes you alive. Who knows if it'll rain at all while I'm here. I should want it to since the country is in such a massive drought but I don't because then the mosquitoes come out and they affect me differently here than at home. My bites are like hard and just gross.
Yesterday on my dive I saw some huge batfish for the first time and several humongous decorated spiny lobsters and a huge school of cornetfish that was just amazing to see. We also saw this one huge (probably almost a meter long) blue and yellow grouper that always swims around with us when we go to this particular site (Rose Garden). It's unforunate how endagered grouper are because they taste so damn good.
Oh yeh, also yesterday I ran English by myself for the first time. It went better than expected. THere is one University of Tulear student who has been coming to stay at ReefDoctor some during the week to do his research on water quality in the village of Ifaty and surrounding villages and he is SO smart. His name is Jose, he's only 20, and he speaks Malagas, French and English- his English is probably the best of any other Malagas I've met. He took over and taught the advanced for me yesterday and he had this whole huge chart of past present future and conditional perfect simple and continuous tenses and no other Vazaha besides me even got it so I'm not sure how far he got with the Gasy students but he could do a hell of a lot better explaining it since he has two other languages besides English to communicate with them in. With the beginner's we reviewed some nouns and then the difference between singular and plural statements - like saying "There is one mango" versus "There are two mangoes." They don't have plural in Malagas so it's kind of a difficult concept for them. Then we went over "to be" and "to have" and the conjugation of those verbs with the subject pronouns. Teaching all of that was only possible because Pepin, the original English teacher, was there to help and to explain. They don't have the verb "to be" in Gasy either so without him there is no way I could have explained it. I also brought them a big bag of assorted biscuit wafer things that I decidely didn't want after absolutely gorging myself the past few days with Tulear food and homemade pastries some of the volunteers have made. Teachers always brought treats with them to my classes growing up so I figured it'd be a nice thing to do but at first I wasn't so sure because they didn't seem to know what to do with them. They were so hesitant at first to take any but eventually they were grabbing handfuls and at the end walked out with the whole bag and never offered me one. It's okay though ha.
I forgot to bring my adapter so I don't know how much more battery I'll have for this weekend which sucks but so I'm gona go now. More later.
Alex
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Lucy left today : ( I saw her off after our dive this morning. Hopefully I’ll find her in Angleterre sometime within the next year. I showed another volunteer, Clare, the program for teaching in the Republic of Georgia and she has traveled literally everywhere, over 100 countries, and she said it looked like a great opportunity and she even knew someone who lived in Georgia for a year and loved it. So plans for that are formulating in my head… I’ll leave that for now.
Anyway, I had my first Kids’ Club today with just me and Christina. It was great. They made the little mini-poubelles (I think I mentioned before) out of 4 halves of giant water bottles tied around a stick and stapled to each other. Then the little ones traced and colored more of the sharp object stencils we made and they decorated the trash baskets with those. Making the example was even difficult for me- I guess my motor skills are lacking- but the kids did really great. They all share so well and work together, it’s refreshing to see. Nowhere near like the States where kids scream if they have to wait one turn to play a video game.
Another part of the Gasy culture that is really amazing is how communal it still is and how integrated the families are with all age groups and members of extended family. Kids run around and play with knives and babies climb unsupervised up piles of bricks (these are two examples we saw the other day) but they don’t get reprimanded and somehow they also don’t get hurt. Kids and parents and grandparents all sit around and eat together in a circle. Four year old babies hold one year old babies on their hips. The older kids at kids club tend to their toddler siblings and cousins and are just so good with them. Kids are acknowledged by the rest of the community just as much as adults are, it’s beautiful. Westerners could learn a lot from people like the Malagas.
Tomorrow is my first English without Lucy as well. I think it’ll be okay though. One of the younger boys who has been to the last two Englishes, Pala, came to kids club today and was so sweet and smiling the whole time that I can’t help but look forward to it. One of the girls that comes, Coereia (pronounced sor-ay-uh) was on the 40 person taxi-brousse yesterday morning as well, just looking at me for the entire 2 hour ride, but smiling when I’d notice and smile. I wish I could communicate more, but smiles go a long way I think.
Alex
Anyway, I had my first Kids’ Club today with just me and Christina. It was great. They made the little mini-poubelles (I think I mentioned before) out of 4 halves of giant water bottles tied around a stick and stapled to each other. Then the little ones traced and colored more of the sharp object stencils we made and they decorated the trash baskets with those. Making the example was even difficult for me- I guess my motor skills are lacking- but the kids did really great. They all share so well and work together, it’s refreshing to see. Nowhere near like the States where kids scream if they have to wait one turn to play a video game.
Another part of the Gasy culture that is really amazing is how communal it still is and how integrated the families are with all age groups and members of extended family. Kids run around and play with knives and babies climb unsupervised up piles of bricks (these are two examples we saw the other day) but they don’t get reprimanded and somehow they also don’t get hurt. Kids and parents and grandparents all sit around and eat together in a circle. Four year old babies hold one year old babies on their hips. The older kids at kids club tend to their toddler siblings and cousins and are just so good with them. Kids are acknowledged by the rest of the community just as much as adults are, it’s beautiful. Westerners could learn a lot from people like the Malagas.
Tomorrow is my first English without Lucy as well. I think it’ll be okay though. One of the younger boys who has been to the last two Englishes, Pala, came to kids club today and was so sweet and smiling the whole time that I can’t help but look forward to it. One of the girls that comes, Coereia (pronounced sor-ay-uh) was on the 40 person taxi-brousse yesterday morning as well, just looking at me for the entire 2 hour ride, but smiling when I’d notice and smile. I wish I could communicate more, but smiles go a long way I think.
Alex
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
I came into Tulear for the day today because I'm not diving and just figured I'd come get some stuff done here. We fit a record 40 people in the taxi-brousse today, I'm surprised I got here at all.
I dove twice yesterday and twice the day before. Lucy and I were dive buddies yesterday and the first one we did a treasure hunt and the visibility was over 12 meters so all in all it was probably my best dive. The second diver yesterday my air gauge started jumping around with each of my breathes (down with every inhale and back up with my exhales). It's not supposed to move so that dive was cut short but no worries. I get slightly sea sick under the water since my body is just completely abnormal so I didn't mind coming up. The current was super strong too and I was exhausted.
The past four dives have been fun dives because our dive instructor, Teschna, and her boyfriend Morgan decided not to finish their contracts here and left ReefDoctor on Monday. I really like both of them and it is really sad to me that people can't just get along. Our new dive instructor gets here September 2nd and I'm scared no one will be as good for me as Tesch. Her and Morgan both successfully got me through a panic attack each so I got realyl comfortable with them in the water. The only positive thing is hopefully everyone left at ReefDoctor will hopefully be happy now and stop talking behind each other's back and the tension will be gone.
I'm finally at the point here where I feel at home here and can't imagine going home or being anywhere else. I'm almost nervous to come home. There's more I could write about English and Kids Club but I need to respond to the few emails people are writing me :( Hope everyone is well, I might come back to Tulear Saturday for a farewell dinner so until then,
Alex
I dove twice yesterday and twice the day before. Lucy and I were dive buddies yesterday and the first one we did a treasure hunt and the visibility was over 12 meters so all in all it was probably my best dive. The second diver yesterday my air gauge started jumping around with each of my breathes (down with every inhale and back up with my exhales). It's not supposed to move so that dive was cut short but no worries. I get slightly sea sick under the water since my body is just completely abnormal so I didn't mind coming up. The current was super strong too and I was exhausted.
The past four dives have been fun dives because our dive instructor, Teschna, and her boyfriend Morgan decided not to finish their contracts here and left ReefDoctor on Monday. I really like both of them and it is really sad to me that people can't just get along. Our new dive instructor gets here September 2nd and I'm scared no one will be as good for me as Tesch. Her and Morgan both successfully got me through a panic attack each so I got realyl comfortable with them in the water. The only positive thing is hopefully everyone left at ReefDoctor will hopefully be happy now and stop talking behind each other's back and the tension will be gone.
I'm finally at the point here where I feel at home here and can't imagine going home or being anywhere else. I'm almost nervous to come home. There's more I could write about English and Kids Club but I need to respond to the few emails people are writing me :( Hope everyone is well, I might come back to Tulear Saturday for a farewell dinner so until then,
Alex
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The staff here is basically split into two sides and they fight amongst each other like crazy and it makes me really sad. I like all of them but I hate them fighting and I hate hearing about it. Being able to look at it from an outsiders’ perspective, I can see just how petty it is and how much it’s about ego and pride. It just makes me not want to hang around the main house as much as I would. It just seems like I’m never going to get away from this kind of thing. I’ve been good about keeping myself out of stupid things like this for the most part the last few years, but even though I am without conflict, it also feels like I’m without friends since I’m not bonding with anyone over disliking someone else. I like being alone sometimes but I don’t like being lonely most of the time. I don’t like people fighting, I don’t see why people can’t just get along.
I am supposed to be going on my first fun dive tomorrow, but a girl who is leaving soon asked if she could have my spot (dives are MUCH more limited than I thought because one boat was stolen before I got here and the boat we have isn’t particularly nice and only 6 divers at a time can fit on it) and of course I gave it to her even though I didn’t want to. I’m such a pushover with strangers for some reason. But oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it now so no use complaining.
Today Lucy, Michelle and I went into Mangily and ate at one of the Malagas staff, Lova’s, house. It was amazing- so nice to just have a home-cooked meal without 20 people pushing for food and more than enough for seconds. We had pineapple and bananas and bread and rice and meatballs and stewed vegetables and salad. By far the best meal I’ve had in Madagascar, even compared to the restaurants, because meals in restaurants don’t come with sides or anything besides the one thing you order. There just isn’t an abundance of food here like at home. Children are lucky if they get to eat. They are fed last because the parents need to be fed first to have the energy to go fish or in the mother’s case take care of a family. If there is any left, then the children eat. At home, children dictate what is eaten a lot of the time. And they leave so much on their plates. Leaving food on your plates is unheard of here.
The amount the Vazaha here talk about food is really frustrating to me though. Because we don’t have access to the typical processed foods that most of us are used to, all anyone talks about is fucking food. I just want to scream at them, “HEY! Girl with long history of disordered eating here, can you please shut the fuck up?” But of course I don’t. And I guess my ancient history has absolutely nothing to do with them. But even without my past issues (that are just that, in the past), talking about all of this stuff that we can’t have because it literally doesn’t exist in this country is like complaining about something that you can’t fix. It’s just pointless and a waste of time and I swear there are better things to talk about.
I’m sorry I am ranting, it sounds like I’m not enjoying myself and that would be a lie. I really am. I was actually in a really good mood until we got back to the house after Mangily and I immediately got asked to switch my dive followed by arguing among some of the staff. Working at an NGO is hard; I wonder if it is as hard everywhere else as it is here. With no funds and limited people, basic transportation and sometimes low morale, it’s hard to get the things done we’re here to do. Right now the most organized thing about ReefDoctor is the education program- English and the Kids’ Club. And Lucy leaves next Friday morning and I take that over and I just don’t know how I can manage nearly as well as her. I had made all of these plans for English to try and teach them the basic grammar and structure of the language and as soon as I got there yesterday I just wanted to throw my hands up. No one can help me teach the way I know how to, so I am going to have to just teach them more random words and phrases that they can memorize. Even though they might not know the difference between “I am sick” and “I have sick” or “I am headache” and “I have a headache,” and even though that kind of thing would personally drive me crazy if I wasn’t given a formula for how to figure out the grammar in Latin and French, I guess what I would apply to myself is completely irrelevant to what I should apply to them. I just feel like I am teaching them incorrectly if I just gloss over words and phrases without them knowing why. But I have got to move on from that.
In English yesterday we had three new beginners, which was good, but I ended up working with them while Lucy went outside with the more advanced. Morgan and Pepin (a former ReefDoctor employee who is from Ifaty) stayed with me though. We ended up just doing body parts; I drew a picture of the body, an arrow to the part, and the English word. Then at the end we played “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” The beginners are actually more adolescent rather than adults. The girls are really sweet as well, I like working with people who smile at me all the time. Most of the class is just us smiling back and forth, not able to communicate much more than that. But I suppose that’s not so bad. I’m going to have to rethink how I’m going to work this out, but I guess I can try to teach different sort of interactions, and different phrases, rather than the basics of the language. It’s too bad, but teaching them the “right” way might end up in them learning nothing, and we are getting new people every week and it’s going so well in that aspect I really don’t want to let any of them down. If anyone knows of any other catchy songs or good games we could sing or play, like “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” PLEASE send them my way. And if anyone wants to google easy English teaching methods or anything of the sort (since saying I have limited internet access is a gross understatement) I will love you forever. I know that means a lot.
Sorry for seeming so negative, I’m really not being that way, I just wanted to vent a little bit and hope maybe someone could shoot me some advice if anyone is even reading this.
Alex
I am supposed to be going on my first fun dive tomorrow, but a girl who is leaving soon asked if she could have my spot (dives are MUCH more limited than I thought because one boat was stolen before I got here and the boat we have isn’t particularly nice and only 6 divers at a time can fit on it) and of course I gave it to her even though I didn’t want to. I’m such a pushover with strangers for some reason. But oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it now so no use complaining.
Today Lucy, Michelle and I went into Mangily and ate at one of the Malagas staff, Lova’s, house. It was amazing- so nice to just have a home-cooked meal without 20 people pushing for food and more than enough for seconds. We had pineapple and bananas and bread and rice and meatballs and stewed vegetables and salad. By far the best meal I’ve had in Madagascar, even compared to the restaurants, because meals in restaurants don’t come with sides or anything besides the one thing you order. There just isn’t an abundance of food here like at home. Children are lucky if they get to eat. They are fed last because the parents need to be fed first to have the energy to go fish or in the mother’s case take care of a family. If there is any left, then the children eat. At home, children dictate what is eaten a lot of the time. And they leave so much on their plates. Leaving food on your plates is unheard of here.
The amount the Vazaha here talk about food is really frustrating to me though. Because we don’t have access to the typical processed foods that most of us are used to, all anyone talks about is fucking food. I just want to scream at them, “HEY! Girl with long history of disordered eating here, can you please shut the fuck up?” But of course I don’t. And I guess my ancient history has absolutely nothing to do with them. But even without my past issues (that are just that, in the past), talking about all of this stuff that we can’t have because it literally doesn’t exist in this country is like complaining about something that you can’t fix. It’s just pointless and a waste of time and I swear there are better things to talk about.
I’m sorry I am ranting, it sounds like I’m not enjoying myself and that would be a lie. I really am. I was actually in a really good mood until we got back to the house after Mangily and I immediately got asked to switch my dive followed by arguing among some of the staff. Working at an NGO is hard; I wonder if it is as hard everywhere else as it is here. With no funds and limited people, basic transportation and sometimes low morale, it’s hard to get the things done we’re here to do. Right now the most organized thing about ReefDoctor is the education program- English and the Kids’ Club. And Lucy leaves next Friday morning and I take that over and I just don’t know how I can manage nearly as well as her. I had made all of these plans for English to try and teach them the basic grammar and structure of the language and as soon as I got there yesterday I just wanted to throw my hands up. No one can help me teach the way I know how to, so I am going to have to just teach them more random words and phrases that they can memorize. Even though they might not know the difference between “I am sick” and “I have sick” or “I am headache” and “I have a headache,” and even though that kind of thing would personally drive me crazy if I wasn’t given a formula for how to figure out the grammar in Latin and French, I guess what I would apply to myself is completely irrelevant to what I should apply to them. I just feel like I am teaching them incorrectly if I just gloss over words and phrases without them knowing why. But I have got to move on from that.
In English yesterday we had three new beginners, which was good, but I ended up working with them while Lucy went outside with the more advanced. Morgan and Pepin (a former ReefDoctor employee who is from Ifaty) stayed with me though. We ended up just doing body parts; I drew a picture of the body, an arrow to the part, and the English word. Then at the end we played “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” The beginners are actually more adolescent rather than adults. The girls are really sweet as well, I like working with people who smile at me all the time. Most of the class is just us smiling back and forth, not able to communicate much more than that. But I suppose that’s not so bad. I’m going to have to rethink how I’m going to work this out, but I guess I can try to teach different sort of interactions, and different phrases, rather than the basics of the language. It’s too bad, but teaching them the “right” way might end up in them learning nothing, and we are getting new people every week and it’s going so well in that aspect I really don’t want to let any of them down. If anyone knows of any other catchy songs or good games we could sing or play, like “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” PLEASE send them my way. And if anyone wants to google easy English teaching methods or anything of the sort (since saying I have limited internet access is a gross understatement) I will love you forever. I know that means a lot.
Sorry for seeming so negative, I’m really not being that way, I just wanted to vent a little bit and hope maybe someone could shoot me some advice if anyone is even reading this.
Alex
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